You did. Well, we're gonna talk a lot about it. Good morning, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to introduce our next speakers. With us today, we have Vita Coco's Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Michael Kirban, and CFO Corey Baker, who just joined Vita Coco in March after a 16-year career at PepsiCo. Vita Coco was founded back in 2004. They are the market leader in the attractive and fast-growing coconut water category. They have a full pipeline of products that fuse functional benefits with authentic and better-for-you ingredients. Just recently posted a strong Q1 with a beaten raise. I'm gonna join the two today. Thank you so much for coming. Looking forward to our chat.
Great. Thanks.
Let's kick things off with, you know, talking about maybe the health of the consumer, especially given that elasticities really seem to have been holding in much better than expected. You know, certainly still a challenging time, but just curious to, you know, to hear from you both if you've seen any changes in consumer behavior.
I mean, we've actually seen our consumer grow, right? In terms of volume is growing. We just, you know, had a quarter where volume grew 15%. It's not just price. I think we're in a very unique position. We did take price last year, both in Q2 and Q4, I believe. But it wasn't super significant, and it was less than a lot of the rest of the beverage category. I think it put us in a unique position within the beverage aisle where the discrepancy between Vita Coco, which is premium in the beverage aisle, and everything else in the beverage aisle is smaller, right? The price difference is smaller. I think we're much more competitive now from a pricing perspective, even though we did take price within the beverage aisle in general.
I think that's, you know, one of the factors that is helping us really mainstream this product and expand.
speaking of pricing, remind me just with your guidance this year, what's you know, implied in that guidance as far as further pricing?
I think we're happy with the pricing we took. It's sticking quite well, as you can see, with the volume increases. We don't have any immediate plans to take further price this year, but we'll continue to watch and see what's possible and continue to see, you know, what we can do over the long term.
Are there any call-outs with the next few quarters for you know, just given the results you saw in Q1 in terms of phasing of your top line? Is it expected to continue to accelerate, or I'm just thinking about comps being difficult and...?
It's continuing to accelerate. Q2 and Q3 are our best quarters always.
Summer.
If you recall Q3 and Q4 of last year, we had some inventory issues. I think the comps actually get a little easier, right? We grew, you know, call it roughly 25% in scans in Q1, or 22%, that's off of roughly 25% last year. We're going against heavy comps in Q1. Q2 also, Q3 and Q4, the comps are actually a little bit lighter because of the inventory issues we had last year.
Okay. That's helpful. Then I definitely wanted to drill down on the category.
Mm-hmm.
You know, just the coconut water category. It's just been very impressive growth that we've seen over the last few years. Maybe touch upon the key drivers of that growth. You know, given the sense, you know, you're the category leader, you know, in the context of that, what are your plans to continue to drive further household penetration?
Yeah.
Which will ultimately drive category growth.
That's what it's all about, right? Take a step back to when we started this business in 2003, walking around the grocery stores in Brazil, seeing coconut water everywhere. You would walk into a store, and you would see Gatorade packed out, Powerade packed out, the coconut water, that just completely destroyed, right? That was what was moving. Consumers were buying it for all these different usage occasions. coconut water has been an important part of culture in Brazil and the entire tropical world for generations, but now it was in a packaged format. It was used in all these different usage occasions, now it was kept in a Tetra Pak in people's homes. We said 20 years ago, "Maybe one day we can do that in the U.S." It's finally starting to happen, right?
You're seeing now all these different usage occasions are what's driving the growth of the category and us as the category leader. You know, we started selling in yoga studios. It was like, that's when you drink coconut water, when you're doing hot yoga. It went to, you know, after you work out, and then it went to a meal occasion. During COVID, we started, you know, really honing in on this smoothie occasion.
Mm.
That occasion is now, we think, roughly 30% of our consumption. It's huge.
Yeah.
The hangover occasion.
Oh, yeah.
Now we're focused on the on-premise and mixing with cocktail occasion.
Yeah.
All of these occasions are real legitimate occasions for using coconut water, which is unlike a lot of other beverages. You have all these day part, you know, usage occasions and so on and so forth. That's been a big driver. We see that continuing to drive the growth of the category as we bring in households.
Is part of it also the package, you know, innovation that you've brought to the market also driving a lot of that? You mentioned Tetra Pak and then the evolution and...
Yeah. That's been a big part of our growth the last couple of years is. You know, we started, you know, I would say three years ago, you go into a grocery store, and there was, like, five single-serve Vita Cocos. Then, in a convenience store, there was maybe one if we were in the convenience store, one facing. Then we started adding new, you know, flavors and new sizes and new shapes. Now we've got all these different multi-packs. You know, and we have the canned juice, which is now expanding the C-store, you know, shelf. For the multipacks, in general, are driving more consumption per household.
More family members are now getting into the category because it's in the home instead of the, you know, whoever's shopping buying 2 or 3 units, they're buying 12 or 4 or, you know, whatever it might be. I think that that is helping us a lot, not only just move more volume, but bring in actual new consumers and usage occasions.
Do you think, as you think about recruiting new users, do you still see a barrier for the consumer with this category? Meaning, do they understand it? Is it, you know, just once you get them to try it, you get a conversion? You know, what is the perception of this category? Has that evolved for the consumer?
When we started, it was tough.
Yeah.
It's like: What is this? Why is it a liquid that's clear, that's sweet with a little bit of a texture, doesn't really taste like coconut? So it's been a 20-year grind in trying to, you know, communicate to consumers what it is, why, and when to drink it. I think now people are drinking it in so many occasions. A great one, which is growing really fast for us, is mixing with powdered greens, right? Athletic Greens and all these type of brands that are really taking off. It cuts the flavor. It adds a little bit of a sweetness. That's becoming a big usage occasion.
Yeah.
I think people who might not have grabbed a coconut water with their sandwich at the deli, you know, 3, 4, 5 years ago might now be putting it in a smoothie, might be mixing it with their tequila as a cocktail in the evening, might be mixing it with their greens in the morning. That's kind of the key to, I think, growing consumption in households.
Then that definitely makes sense. Is another driver, and I know you've touched on this on your earnings call, is stepped up marketing spend.
Yes.
You know, that's again trying to drive awareness. Maybe touch on that a little bit just in terms of how you plan to execute on that?
Sure
this year. Maybe quantify, if you can-
Yep
the acceleration expected.
Yeah. I mean, If for anybody who's been following our business, the last couple of years have been really tough, just from a cost perspective for everyone.
Yeah.
You know, our product is all imported. You know, we're dealing with ocean freight, and ocean freight rates skyrocketed, as we know. It changed the entire economics of our business. Over the last couple of years, we've actually scaled back on marketing. We've scaled back, you know, wherever we could, and we've still, in three years, doubled the brand of business even by scaling back on marketing specifically. This year, ocean freight rates have started to normalize. We're seeing, you know, we're seeing, I think, what is playing out as one of the best margin recovery stories on the street, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's really great to see. That not only helps us start to add, you know, real profitability back into the business and real cash generation back to the business, but allows us to go from really playing defense to playing offense. We have the resources now to reinvest back into the business the way we might have, you know, seven years ago or five years ago or whatever it is. Now the category is mainstreaming. It's things like, for example, we used to have a massive summer sales execution program where we'd put 50 additional people in the streets, in stores just building displays on top of our 150 people that are already doing that. Last year, we had a policy, no displays.
Mm.
We had sales guys literally were not allowed to build displays, and that hurt them. They were like, you know, that's what they do. Now we have inventory. You know, they're able to go out there and do these type of things. That's just the sales execution. On top of that, significantly more spent in marketing, specifically against the key usage occasions and growing those usage occasions.
That's all already started or stepped up?
Really starts Q2, building from there.
That's what I thought.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hit the key summer season.
Yeah, right.
...and hit the different occasions and the different product lines.
That's so critical. Maybe before we move into that a little bit, let's stick with the gross margin expansion in Q1. I mean, it was very impressive, up year-over-year 11 points.
Mm.
Maybe give us a little more color on the phasing of your gross margin ex- improvements this year. I'd love to hear ultimately, you know, where you see the potential and any, you know, potential upside to gross margins or downside risks that could be.
If you think of what Mike talked about, the history from 2020 to 2022, there was $67 million of ocean freight that hit the P&L, which is a staggering amount. That is starting to normalize. You know, we generally run 2-3 month lag before that flows through the P&L, but we're seeing favorable rates out in the market. We've talked about it sequentially improving over balance of the year. We were about 31% in Q1. In Q1, we also talked about incremental retailer activity in Q2. That'll drive strong sales in Q2, but a little bit less gross margin improvement. You'll see that top line benefit in Q2 at a little bit less gross margin, and that'll sequentially improve balance a year.
When we think about the guidance we gave on the full-year margin, 32%-34%, that range gives us some flexibility for upside and downside, but we try to give the best estimate where we think we can land. With a stable ocean freight environment, we think we are a little bit more accurate than maybe previous last couple of years.
I know it's early, any visibility on next year in terms of, I don't think you're locked in as much as you used to be as part of it, any thoughts on where gross margins could trend in the next one or two years?
We haven't provided guidance on next year, and we don't really have a good view other than we see ocean freight being stable at this point. We'll see how the market develops. Our longer term are to get closer to 40% on the gross margin line.
Yeah.
Not next year, but over time, we think we can get there.
That's still doable.
Yeah.
Especially, yeah. With the leverage from the top line.
There's a leverage from the top line. There's continued sequential improvement on, you know, gross margin just from ocean freight, right? Because like Q1, we were selling product that we imported in Q3, Q4. It's still getting better throughout the year, even into next year as we, you know, start to lap Q1 and Q2 of this year. In addition to that, I think one of the big drivers is the growth of the branded business as compared to the private label business.
Right.
When we went public, the private label business was high 20% of our total revenue. Over time, we see that coming down significantly. Not that private label isn't growing, it is, but the branded is just growing so much faster, and the gross margins are obviously better on the branded business.
Right.
Yeah.
Just thinking about the supply chain, I know you've normalized the inventory levels, just wanted to verify there are no call-outs or potential risks there. What does the inventory look like ahead of the important summer selling season?
I mean, we're in a really good place, better than we've been in years. I think you saw that we had quite a lot of inventory coming into the year. There are no major supply chain, you know, issues now or in the foreseeable future.
I know it's gonna get that Wood.
You know, certain items are selling faster than other items. You know, there's always the chance that one item is, you know, challenged for week or weeks while we're, you know, repacking or whatever it is, or shipping in product. We're in a really good position for the summer.
Okay.
Yeah.
Team is very excited to have inventory and marketing and sales execution.
Doesn't make sense.
Yeah, we haven't had everything firing. Like all, it's like we're really... Yeah.
Okay. Just sticking maybe with the summer and the pricing comments that you made earlier, are there any thoughts as to, you know, stepped up promos, you know, in terms of, you know, sort of the reinvestments that you touched on? Is that a form of also driving?
Yeah. I think we'll be promoting at historic levels.
Okay.
You know, slightly more than last year, possibly, because we have the inventory to do so. Nothing crazy. I think you'll still see the price flowing through throughout the year over last year. We just, you know, we expect to see volume continue to improve and increase.
Okay. You already talked about the marketing spend, but I believe you've called out SG&A growth to outpace...
Mm-hmm
... you know, your sales this year. Can you give us a sense of the expected magnitude and then maybe the cadence of that spend? I, you know, I'm thinking about some of the innovation maybe coinciding with that, if that's logical.
Yeah, there's a few drivers, but sales and marketing spending are the biggest and the people associated with driving incremental growth. We said it'll grow faster than the top line. The phasing will depend on when that lands in the markets. We haven't provided guidance on that, but it'll grow full year ahead of the top line.
Okay. Innovation, I know of some. Is there anything that you haven't announced that you have plans to roll out this year?
We're doing a lot.
Okay.
You know, you've seen, we've talked a lot about Farmers Organic.
Yeah
... which is our organic line, which is now rolling out across grocery specifically in NSF. Doing really well, and that's actually margin accretive, right? Our canned coconut juice, which we launched in C-store in a test last year, now rolling out nationally this year, is a game changer from a visibility standpoint in C-store. I was in L.A. last week and just walking around looking at stores, going from C-store to C-store to C-store. Historically, you go in C-stores, and we had one, maybe two facings. Now, everywhere I went, we had 3/4 of a shelf, if not a full shelf. It's really changing our ability to get more and more space, which just drives visibility and therefore drives volume. You know, those are two of the big ones.
PWR LIFT is something that we're working on, we're really excited about. It is a protein-infused water that we're, you know, if you think about somewhere between a sport drink and a protein shake, so it's like a chuggable protein shake. We're really excited about it. It's in Texas. It's doing really well with KDP. We have a lot of other, you know, little things we're testing here and there. You know, we're excited about the fact that we have this core brand that's working really well and we can continue to expand off of the core with sizes, shapes, and formats like multi-packs, with other products like Farmers Organic playing in the premium segment, cans playing in more of the value segment. Other things around the coconut, which is exciting.
Yes.
Yeah.
You touched on it, and I wanted to ask about is KDP, the relationship and the distribution. Talk a little bit more about that and how important that's been.
Yeah
... as you mentioned, especially in the C-store channel. You know, some of the distribution gains that you've seen have been great, but where do you still see opportunity?
Yeah. If you think about it, so the KDP partnership is great. We've been partners for over 10 years. I would say over the last few years, since Keurig, you know, merged with DPS, it's been a game changer in terms of just, you know, the partnership. Yeah, it's a total game changer. Real difference. It's working well. You know, we've brought them all of our new items, and we're getting them to market. If you know, if you think about the canned juice we were talking about, You know, it's early days. I think we're at 17% ACV or something like that. It's, you know, just launched over the last month.
Multi-packs, we're getting them into grocery, but still we're only at roughly 40% ACV on the 12-pack and the 1- liter 4-pack. These items have a long way to go as we continue to build them out over the, over the years, you know, ahead. The partnership has been great and they continue to execute. I've been talking a lot lately about Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray is a brand. You walk into the grocery store, and you see this block of so many different flavors, sizes, shapes, formats, and they just have this whole block in the grocery store. This is a brand that has four times the distribution we have in grocery, and they are four times the size we are.
There's no reason, over time, by continuing to bring these new type of sizes and formats and flavors and everything else to market, we can't create a block like that for coconut water. That's the objective, and we think that we can get there, and we're just continuing to just chip away at it.
That makes sense. What about just sticking on the shelf and the cooler space? Spring resets that have happened, how did you guys make out in the spring resets? Did you gain incremental space?
A lot of incremental space.
Quantify or can you?
We talked about a number last year, and every call you would ask, "How are we tracking to that number?" We actually beat that number last year.
Great. All right.
It was 25,000 new points of distribution, and we actually exceeded it.
Great.
I'm challenging the team this year to exceed last year's growth, even on a percentage basis. I'm pretty confident we'll get there.
That's great.
Yeah.
Multi-packs, definitely a big driver of your growth. They sound incremental. Give us a sense of the impact you're seeing from multi-packs on your business. You know, I think you've already talked about this, but just wanna hear if you've seen any cannibalization on singles.
I think we're finally growing up and becoming a real beverage company. It's, like, amazing. They actually sell multi-packs at grocery stores. You know, this is something, again, we've been building a business and with single serves on the shelf in the middle of a center store grocery, you know, beverage aisle. Over the last two years, expanding multi-packs has given us the ability to, you know, operate like a real beverage company. You try to get the single serves in the cooler in the front of the store, some single serve options in the main line, you know, aisle, but the volume in grocery comes from multi-packs for beverage companies. Whereas, you know, the on-the-go consumption, C-store, food service, whatever it might be, is more single serves. We've actually seen little cannibalization-
Okay
... on single serves, surprisingly, and incredible growth on multi-packs. We really think that it's driving significant additional consumption.
Okay.
Every grocery item in the store, you buy 6, 12, 18, 24, whatever it is, and people were buying 2 or 3 Vita Cocos, and now they're buying 12.
Oh.
They're just, you know, it's in your home and they move. I see it, you know, in my own home. Like, it's like, you know.
It's there, yeah.
Yeah. If you've got a couple of them, you know, it's like, here you go, and then you go, "I'll get it next time I go to the grocery store." Same time period, you're moving through 12.
Okay. Is this a competitive advantage? Just thinking about it relative to the other competitors within coconut water.
I look at, you know, the category we play in now, it's really, you know.
Broader
broader than just coconut water. It's healthy, natural, functional beverages. If I think about just coconut water, we're the only one with the size and the scale and the brand to do multi-packs.
Okay.
There's not much. From a competition standpoint, you know, I mean, there's not a lot out there. There's a long tail. There's quite a bit of private label, which we do most of it. There's the super premium, you know, brands and the value brands. In the, in the premium, you know, brands, we kind of, you know, we're the player.
The impact on margins from multi-packs, it's dilutive, but yet you've got the growth.
Yeah. It's dilutive, but even with the dilution, you've seen the 6%. In Q1, in scan data, we saw 6% price. That's even with all that growth coming from multi-packs. The actual price taken, you know, the growth in multi-packs was offset by the price taken, so it's roughly 6%, I think, price increase.
There's about 11% pricing, you lose it in multi-pack. You do give up some margin, but like Mike said, trading from 2-3 units to 12-18 units is an equation that we're pretty happy with.
We'll take all day long.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you feel like right now that you have the right package mix, or is there still some tweaks or additions or?
There's more to come.
More to come? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Is it primarily, you know, focused on a certain channel that I'm just thinking?
It's grocery.
Okay.
Grocery mass. That's where, you know, I mean, we've been doing multi-packs obviously in club for a long time. We're bringing new items to club, while at the same time, expanding multi-packs into conventional grocery and mass.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right. Switching gears a bit. I wanted to talk about alcohol.
Let's do it.
I know. It's a little early now.
It's early, but yeah.
On-premise. You know, you highlighted it earlier, but I think there is a potential opportunity here in alcohol in the on-premise channel in terms of future growth. I know on your Q1 call, you mentioned the launch of Vita Coco Spiked has gone well. You know, it's still early, but any color on, you know, what you're seeing, repeat rates potentially, and, you know, long-term future partnerships in alcohol, et cetera.
Yeah. You go back to those days in Brazil 20 years ago. It's used in all these occasions. Mixing with alcohol is a big one. It hasn't really been a thing yet here in the U.S. The category is getting to a point where we believe it is the next big usage occasion. As part of the strategy, we created a partnership with Diageo, where we announced, you know, as you know, this ready-to-drink canned cocktail. It's, there's a Mojito, a Piña Colada, a Strawberry Daiquiri, it's Vita Coco Spiked with Captain Morgan. We launched that product with them maybe one month ago, a little bit over one month ago, and it's getting great distribution. It's Diageo.
I mean, for us to have done this on our own would have been a challenge, right? They are just a powerhouse, and they're getting the distribution. There's significant marketing spend against it coming into the summer. We're excited for two reasons. One, we think it could add, you know, actually starting next year, have an effect on our P&L, right? Be incremental to the business. Most importantly, it's getting people to see coconut water as a cocktail mixer. At the same time we're doing that, we have a couple of partnerships we're working on this summer.
Okay.
... where we're promoting Vita Coco as a cocktail mixer and with bottle service, in some very large clubs, bars, restaurants, and so on. We think that over time, that could be not only a new usage occasion that is a significant usage occasion, but also a distribution opportunity. Through Sysco and other partnerships, we're building an on-premise strategy, selling Vita Coco to bars and restaurants and clubs. You get a Vita Coco in almost any corner store or, you know, whatever it might be, but you go into a restaurant, it's very rare that you could get a Vita Coco. There's no reason that you shouldn't be able to get a cocktail with coconut water or a mocktail with coconut water or just a coconut water when you're at a bar, a restaurant, or a club.
That's kind of the objective, is to continue to expand distribution based on a new usage occasion.
We'll see some of that this summer.
Yes.
... it sounds like.
Yep.
All right.
Yep.
Stay tuned.
Yeah.
In terms of your distribution, maybe update us on the points of distribution you have. I mean, you've touched on a little bit of this in terms of opportunities to accelerate that or increase that. Maybe going back, you highlighted where's the biggest upside, but, you know, trying to also think about the important C-store channel and how much progress you've made there.
Yeah.
Maybe talk to that a little bit.
Yeah. I mean, this is a channel that, you know, it was, you know, the last conventional channel for us to kind of attack, before you start getting into food service and so on. I'm gonna quote a number. I think we're roughly low to mid 50s ACV in C-store today.
Yeah.
Yeah. whereas when you think about everybody else in beverage, they're closer to 80 or 90.
Yeah.
I think we have a lot of room for growth in terms of ACV in C-store, but we needed the right items to be able to get there. It was hard with one facing or two facings. Now we're seeing not only are we growing ACV, but we're growing points of distribution.
Mm.
The ability to build out three-quarters of a shelf or a full shelf is a game changer for us. C-store is a big opportunity as we continue to grow this business.
Okay, great.
Yeah.
What we're seeing is velocities are increasing. You're going further down the size of the C-store, so it'll start to come pretty quickly, especially with juice.
Yeah.
It's starting to really turn. Actually, Corey, if I may, in thinking about your time at PepsiCo, as you've just somewhat recently joined this company, what do you see as the biggest potential opportunity or, you know, things that either whether, you know, they've been doing well or could improve from your background?
Oh.
I know.
I think it is probably C-store. If we think about, it's C-store and on-premise. If you think of generally the big beverage companies lock up a lot of the on-premise, and there's some channels, if you think of college and university, that could be huge for coconut water, where that younger, more affluent demographic is, bars and restaurants, gyms, on the go, and then C-store in the broader distribution, where it's harder even for KDP to get that far down. As the products approve.
Mm-hmm
... improve, especially juice to me is one of the most promising new products because the market's quite big. We have a great product. It's starting to turn, and then that'll just kind of open more doors. As Mike said, if you can get a few facings to a shelf, and now you can go into C-stores and capture a whole shelf, you can really drive the expansion.
You drive trial that way, right?
Yeah, definitely.
Which then leads eventually to, you know, multi-pack and grocery and the club multi-packs, right?
User for life, hopefully.
There you go.
Right?
That's the goal.
maybe let's talk about EBITDA.
Mm-hmm.
The EBITDA guidance, which you just recently raised...
Mm-hmm
... which was great to see, especially early in the year. Things are going quite well. Maybe talk through some of the key drivers of that. You know, continued top line strength, easing cost pressures, you know, just what's your level of confidence that you're going to be able to achieve this target?
Yeah. We provided in Q1 guidance $54 million-$59 million of EBITDA. It's a combination of the top line strength and obviously the reversal of the Ocean Spray.
Yeah.
If you think about $67 million, we won't get all of that back, and some of it will go to private label customers. We'll get a meaningful amount of that back, which will drive the EBITDA. When we provide the guidance, you know, as we said earlier, we tend to be pretty confident. We don't wanna miss that guidance, so we feel good about coming within that range. We'll watch the market closely and manage the P&L to ensure we get there.
If you thought about, you know, calling out one or two, you know, the biggest potential drivers of upside to that guidance or the risk to the downside or at the low end of the range, is there a way to identify that in the context of top and bottom line? Thank you.
As we look at the outlook now, you know, I would say top line would be the risk, right? We feel very confident in our numbers, and the range provides us the flexibility, but we would need to deliver the top line guidance to get there.
Okay. Then longer term.
We would need to spend the additional SG&A in order to-
Drive the top line.
Not only to drive the top line, but, if we're not able to spend it all, obviously then we end up at the higher end of the EBITDA range, right? It's, you know, we wanna spend it to drive further top line, to drive further EBITDA over time.
That's a good point because I know a lot of companies with this top line strength are choosing to reinvest, you know, some and letting some flow to the bottom line. From your perspective, is it that to do both or is it all reinvested back into-
I mean, both clearly, because we're going from $20 million last year in EBITDA to, you know, mid-high $50s million this year. It's both.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right. Then you do have a mid to high teens EBITDA margin target, I believe. What's a realistic timeframe for achieving that?
I mean, the business model, as we get, you know, into the high 30s%, mid-to high 30s% in gross margin, the business model calls for it, right? It works. The model works. You know, without putting a timeline on it and, you know, projecting what, you know, 2024 and 2025 look like, we think that the business model as the margin, you know, gross margin recovers and gets to a stable mid to high 30s%, we think that high teens% EBITDA is achievable for the business.
Okay.
Yeah.
We just have a couple minutes left, but I did wanna ask you about, you know, M&A.
Mm-hmm.
You just filed a new shelf registration.
Mm.
I know you mentioned that, nothing is imminent in terms of M&A, could you just talk about your M&A strategy and sort of what you might look for in an ideal target? Do you ultimately have ambitions to be a platform company?
Yeah. I think that's key.
Yeah.
I do, obviously. It's why I'm doing this. I think we have the ability to build a large and impactful beverage company, you know. The core brand is where the strength is, and we believe will continue to grow and be a very important part of the business forever. We're building a platform. We're building an infrastructure that we could add onto. You're seeing us, you know, try new things like PWR LIFT and Runa and so on. I think M&A will play a role at some point in time in building out that platform. As we think about M&A, center store healthy functional beverages is kind of, you know, obviously gonna be, you know, where we focus our attention because that's our wheelhouse, that's what we do, that's what we're good at.
That's the routes to market we have and the, you know, relationships at retail and so on. Brands that are growing, that, you know, are connecting with consumers that might not have the financial resources, the routes to market and the industry, you know, relationships and so on to really, you know, achieve their full potential, are the kind of targets that we'd be looking for.
You're looking, but nothing's imminent.
We're looking, yeah.
You have the flexibility.
We have the flexibility. We think that, you know, when the right deal comes for the right brand, you know, we're generating significant cash now. We have zero debt on the business. We're in a unique position to be able to do stuff as the right opportunities arise.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for that. I think we're basically out of time.
Thanks.
Appreciate it.
Good to see you again.
Thanks so much for coming.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you both.