All right. Good morning, everyone. Thanks again for joining us today. It's a pleasure to introduce our next speaker. With us today is Vita Coco's Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Mike Kirban, as well as Chief Financial Officer, Corey Baker. Mike has served as Executive Chairman since May 2022, and as Chairman of the Board since 2004. Mike also previously served as Chief Executive Officer and Co-chief Executive Officer of the company. Corey has served as, you know, Vita Coco's CFO since 2023, where he joined following a very successful career at PepsiCo. Vita Coco was founded back in 2004, and 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, and just recently posted a very strong Q1 beat and raise, which helped drive the stock over 25% higher. Thank you both for joining today.
Thanks for having us.
Yes, I still can't get over the Q1 results. Let's maybe start with, you know, the health of the consumer recently. From your vantage point, I imagine your consumer remains, you know, pretty healthy, as evidenced again by the strong top-line growth in the quarter. You know, maybe talk through for us why does the coconut water consumer seem to be so strong, and does it ultimately skew higher income?
I mean, clearly the consumer is strong. We, you know, I think year-to-date scans are up almost 30%. There's a lot of growth there. But if you think about where consumers are spending today, you know, there's not a lot of growth in consumer goods. There's not a lot of growth in beverage. What's growing is, in beverage specifically, the only things growing are protein, e nergy, and coconut water being the fastest-growing category in beverage. These are some of the most expensive beverages.
Yeah.
Consumers are, I think, whether higher income or not, they're digging deeper than ever before for functionality, for wellness, for things that actually make a difference as opposed to just general refreshment.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, you check the box on the functionality. You know, I think about why consumers are gravitating. One thing I wanted to check on as I think about the consumer of your products, you over-index, I believe, to the Hispanic consumer. You know, there have been a lot of headline concerns about that cohort. How are you seeing, you know, whether it's elasticity or that consumer holding up as it relates to your product?
I think we've always said we, as of the last several years at least, we're growing across all demographics, across all regions.
Okay
specifically in the U.S. we have said historically that we over-index with ethnically diverse consumers, specifically Hispanic, Asian, and Black consumers. With this type of growth, it's hard to point to one specific segment of our consumer base that is maybe buying less.
Okay
because we're growing in all channels also. I mean, C-store is growing tremendously, so across all channels. you know, again, maybe as, you know, Hispanic consumers are potentially spending less, maybe ours is higher income. we can't really point to anything specific that's dragging the growth that we're experiencing.
Let's talk a little bit about the category itself. It's been so strong, you know, it's one of the fastest-growing categories within the beverage aisle. You know, you are the category leader. Wanna understand, you know, the steps you're taking to ensure the category stays healthy and strong, and then ultimately, where is this category sourcing from?
Yeah
Do you believe?
Historically, the category has sourced from three large, categories. Sources from conventional juice-
Okay
sources from premium enhanced water
It sources from sport drinks.
Together, that's a $125 billion global category. We're not just another juice or playing in a specific category like energy. We're used across all of these consumer occasions, therefore, we're pulling from all of these three categories. As of late, we've seen an acceleration of pull from sport drinks. We think there's really something happening within the consumer globally around everyday hydration. Coconut water has three and a half times the electrolytes of the leading sport drink, and it comes from a tree.
Yeah.
Super simple, clean ingredients, everything else. We think that there's really something there, and that's where it's pulling from. Now, we continue to grow the category through education. Why, when, how to drink coconut water, whether it is for that hydration occasion, whether it is mixing it with your cocktails or mixing it with your green powders or in your smoothies or after a workout, whatever it might be. This, we believe, brings in more and more members of the household as we're gaining household penetration.
Yeah, increasing also consumption occasions.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think you mentioned that the household penetration is low teens. Is that correct?
We used to quote Numerator data, and it was something like that. It was.
Okay
brand was low teens, category was 20, roughly 20, low twenties. The data set has changed over the past year or so, we're not really quoting any specific data.
Okay.
Household penetration on coconut water is still very early days. It's very low as you compare it to.
Yeah
even if you just look at juices. Cranberry juice at 50%, orange juice in the 80%-90%. A long runway of continued growth in terms of household penetration.
You still, I believe, expect the category to double. I think you had said last year, maybe in the next few years.
Yeah.
Given the growth that we've seen, that might happen sooner.
Yeah, it's on course.
Yeah. That's right.
potentially happen sooner.
In terms of your, you know, your results, you just reported again, very strong Q1 results. It's 37% top-line growth. You raised your full year growth guidance to 18%-21%, including mid to high teen, you know, growth for Vita Coco Coconut Water versus, I think it was prior was low teens. Again, an acceleration. Curious to again understand the building blocks or drivers of that growth and how you expect to, you know, hit that guidance range for the full year.
Well, I mean, you know, obviously, we came out really strong. We think that we're looking at the category, growing, roughly 20%, from a scan perspective for the year. We used to talk about the category growing high single digits, to-
Yeah
-ow teens. Over the last year, we've started talking about mid-teens, and now it's accelerating even further. With that acceleration, we feel confident in the guide that we've given. We think that, you know, If we look at what's happening in the U.S. and the growth in households and the consumption per household growth, and then also what we're experiencing on the international front with our European markets and now looking at other opportunities around the world, lot of opportunity to continue to grow the category and therefore the brand.
Context to this, thinking about pricing. I know you took 2 runs of pricing last year, again, to kind of cover some of the inflationary COGS pressure and tariffs. I think, you know, it seems like you've held on to a lot of that pricing, right? Help us understand this year maybe some of the mitigation or where you expect your pricing to go and then maybe your promotional levels.
Yes w e've talked about for this full year in the U.S., low single digits branded pricing.
Okay.
We're coming into the year with quite a bit high single digits. We expect that we'll have some increased promotional activity in the back half.
Okay
which will offset some of the tariff pricing taken last year. As we talked about in our guidance, we're expecting a bit more inflation exiting the year, and we'll look at potential price adjustments exiting this year and next year if that maintains.
To be clear, yes, you did touch on that. It'd be later this year, maybe more price or heading into next year.
Yeah, heading into next.
for you. Okay. I did want to also ask a little bit about Treats because I think of that being also one of the You have it. Good. Great. You know, it's been around for a couple of years now and, you know, the brand really has performed pretty well relative to, I think, your internal expectations. It's bringing in, my assumption, is incremental growth. How do you see that brand moving forward within your broader portfolio? Should we expect to see more innovation behind the brand?
We like Treats. Treats is, you know, something that we recognize this trend of consumers using coconut milk.
Yeah
as a base for kind of refreshment indulgent beverages. We saw this in Asia, we, you know, you see things like Starbucks Pink Drink and things like that working here. We launched this two years ago, last year launched it nationally, it's done well. I think we said it's adding roughly 3% to our scan growth on top of our coconut water scan growth. It's growing nicely. This year, we added two new flavors, the Frosted Lemonade, on a national distribution and an exclusive with a specific retailer, also a different one. It's bringing in a younger consumer, even younger than we might have seen historically, and a more rural consumer from what we're seeing.
Okay.
We think it's bringing in a consumer that wasn't in the family before. We think it's an opportunity to bring more people into the family, into the brand family, and continue to see them start using coconut water for hydration.
That's okay. Yeah.
everything else.
How do they interact with some of the other brands in your portfolio? Are you seeing that already as the Treats?
We haven't really-
Early?
We haven't-
Yeah
Seen the data yet, but we believe that that's happening.
Got it.
Once they're coming in and they're drinking Vita Coco.
Yeah
they're, you know.
Okay. Wanted to ask about Walmart. Always front of mind.
Yep.
You know, especially considering You know, you've recovered.
Yeah.
You know, and then some. You know, the previously lost distribution. Could you outline for everyone, you know, why you got moved out of the modern soda aisle and then into the conventional shelf-stable juice set, and then ultimately why that has been a positive?
Yeah. Okay, for years at Walmart, we were off to the side in a really weird place in the store, not even necessarily always in a beverage aisle. Sometimes it was next to, like, gravy and cooking products.
Yeah
and stuff like that. We didn't like it.
Yeah.
We wanted to move. Yeah, exactly. For years, we've been trying to get into a more, a higher foot trafficked beverage aisle, a more mainstream beverage aisle. The buyers came to us, two years ago now.
said, "Look, we're gonna build a modern soda set for like Poppi, OLIPOP, these type of things, and we're gonna use the, that little weird set that you're in today, and that's gonna become the modern soda set. We need to move you somewhere." We said juice is ideal for us at Walmart. That juice aisle gets a ton of traffic. We felt we could bring in new customers, everything else by going into the juice aisle. During this kind of, you know, really fast-moving thing, they moved us to the juice aisle, but they took most of our SKUs out.
They gave us a small amount of placement in the juice aisle, took all of our singles out. Took a lot of our 12-packs out, these type of things. We had very limited distribution throughout the whole course of 2025. We went to Walmart and we explained, "Look, this is an aisle that gets a lot of foot traffic. It's not a high growth aisle.
Yeah.
We think there's a really big opportunity for us to be a growth driver for the juice aisle.
Right.
That was a long conversation, and it came to fruition in the November resets, where now coconut water has a nice size. Billboard in the highly foot trafficked juice aisle at Walmart, which we think is adding, households.
Yeah.
We think people are discovering it walking down the aisle, which is a really good thing for us.
I think that's always underestimated.
Yeah.
The distribution placement and to your point.
Exactly. I think we've said it's adding 5%.
Okay.
It's roughly 5% of our scan growth.
Okay
adding 5% of scale growth.
Five. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Then just in terms of the inventory fill that took place.
I guess at Walmart, I just wanna make sure I understand about it from a sequencing of top line growth this year.
Yep
My memory of how that should transpire.
Can you tell a bit about the timing?
Sure. Walmart reset occurred in November, so we were shipping in distributors.
Okay
Q3, early Q4. There's some timing there to balance the year. The more impactful we talked about is at the end of the year, we saw distributor inventory.
Worth about $7 million. On a full year basis, it's not a huge impact, but on the Q4 and the second half, it has a bit more impact in the U.S. growth.
Okay. It sounds like, again, you're happy with the new placement at Walmart. Do you see further expansion opportunities within Walmart?
Yeah, I mean.
Is that a conversation already?
Yeah.
Obviously, we have an innovation pipeline, so we're constantly sharing that with retailers.
an opportunity to continue to bring in new consumers. What we also, we believe that the Walmart set I was talking about this back at the IPO five years ago. I was talking about the fact that, you know, Vita Coco had, at the time, two or three or four facings in a grocery aisle.
Yeah.
Cranberry juice and apple juice had these massive sets, and that's where we wanted to be one day. That's what we were looking to achieve, and now you're starting to see that, and you're seeing it play out not at just any old retailer. You're seeing it play out at the largest retailer. We think that's an opportunity to take that visual and bring it to other retailers and see that type of distribution, those type of distribution gains over time.
I suppose success you've had within Walmart, you can, like you kind of touched on, show other retailers.
Exactly
Highlight, look what you can do for yourself and for us.
Yep.
I assume that's happening right now.
Exactly.
In conversation.
Bring growth to the beverage space.
Right. Right.
Even in Walmart, there's still a very big set they carry. There's still thousands of stores that can move to that.
Yeah.
Move to that set.
Oh, so.
Yeah
to that point, Corey, how, what percentage then of Walmart did you say have you?
Less than half have this.
Okay
you know, some of the same where we see 20 SKUs of Vita Coco.
Okay.
I think we're averaging probably sub 10.
You could still double at Walmart.
Wow. Okay.
You touched on innovation. I'd love to hear a little bit more on your, you know, innovation and how that plays a role in your growth playbook over the medium to long term. Honestly, as I think about it, you know, relative to maybe some energy drink category where it's like just nonstop innovation, you've done some, but maybe not as much as I would expect. Help me understand that. Is that because you still see so much upside from distribution gains, et cetera? You know, how do you think about innovation?
We've always innovated.
Okay.
We've always brought new flavors.
Okay
new products, and so on. If you think about energy, it's a really good example.
Think about the 20, 30 years that Red Bull.
Yeah
built the category with, like, 2 SKUs. building a category, you wanna bring people into the category, and we have a power SKU. It's our, the blue one, right?
Yeah.
It comes in multiple flavor I mean, I'm sorry.
Yeah
multiple sizes and multiple pack formats, but that is the general driver of growth.
We think that for the next many years to come, as the category goes from really niche to mainstream, which we're starting to see that take place, not only in the U.S., but globally, the pure coconut water will be the driver of that.
Yeah.
Over time, you know, all sorts of additional innovation will start to play a role. I mean, our pineapple, we've always said is kind of like the gateway drug. It's like what people start with.
That's right. Yeah
'cause they're afraid of the flavor of coconut water.
Yeah.
They eventually graduate to the blue one.
Yeah.
This one is a really good example of the extra coconut.
Okay.
Another example of that. As we think about the near term from an innovation perspective, think about pack formats.
Package, yeah.
Also, flavors as it relates to, bringing people into the category.
Okay.
I think, you know, probably the biggest barrier to consumers coming into the category is still taste or even perception of taste.
That's something that we continually try to overcome.
Right.
It's overcome through innovation, flavors, flavor innovation, and time.
building a category from scratch.
Yeah
especially something so new to the consumer.
A new taste profile and everything else, just takes time.
Yeah.
It's been a generation already.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like a new generation of consumer whose parents started maybe, like, learning about coconut water in a yoga studio 20 years ago are now buying it.
True. Then you touched on the packaging. How do you see that evolving? Specifically, I know we've talked about this before, but out in the convenience store.
You know, how will your package innovation evolve?
So in convenience-
It's really funny. We thought we needed different packaging.
to really work in convenience.
Okay.
We way over indexed with, in convenience. Our ACV was always lower in convenience than, for example, large format.
Over the last year or two, we've taken, I think, our ACV and convenience from mid 50s to mid 60s. We think that we can easily get this to mid 80s over time. However, what we've seen is that what really works for us is the Tetra Pak.
Yeah.
We have cans.
Yeah
work okay. They do fine, and they've expanded our shelf space. We tried a PET that we're no longer doing.
Yeah.
Cause we thought that was the way to break through at C-store.
It's just a matter of building the category and creating that demand, and our C-store business is on fire, and it's Tetra Pak that's driving it.
Remind me what percentage of C-stores you're currently in. You know, when you think about the 152,000.
I think sixty-
60% now?
-five.
Okay.
Yes. The absolute number's probably a little, 'cause we're in the.
The big-
We're very well at the chain.
Yeah.
It's that long tail of independent.
Right. Yeah, that's hard to
Okay. The vast majority of the chain.
$90,000.
Okay. Thinking about channels, you know, distribution gains, shelf space, maybe a little more color on, you know, where you're gaining distribution? I know we talked about Walmart, but other channels that you can touch on, whether it's C-stores, et cetera. How do these distribution gains compare to kind of previous years? It feels like it's been elevated.
Yeah. Talking again, just about the U.S. for a second, and as we think about the opportunity from a distribution perspective.
we feel that there's not only a ton of white space.
When you think about food service and all of the opportunity that exists there, you think about the fact that we're in 65 ACV in C-store, and should be, like most beverages, 85. We think there's also a lot of room for point of distribution gain. We're seeing that at C-store play out from where two years ago we had one facing in most C-stores, sometimes two. Now we have a full shelf. We continue to build on that over time.
is the distribution opportunity. Grocery, you know, what we've seen at Walmart-
like Corey was mentioning. We could continue to expand that at Walmart, but then taking the Walmart success and bringing it to large format grocery and other mass. There's a big distribution opportunity.
Yeah.
The number one thing that we believe will continue to drive this business is household penetration. Getting new consumers into the category. We're seeing it, they're coming in at a really fast pace.
We think we could continue that for a long time to come. That is, you know, that comes with distribution as we continue to build.
In terms of your distribution, you're still happy with your distribution partner?
Getting you into some of these new channels, et cetera, or further into the channel?
Yeah, you know, we have a partnership with KDP.
Yep.
We have, about half of our business is direct, half of our business is DSD.
Yeah.
Of the DSD, KDP is our largest. They've been a great partner for us for many years now. They are, I think, doing a better job this year and over the last year.
of driving some of those distribution opportunities specifically at C-store.
Okay. That was Yeah.
They get there.
Yeah.
They're there, and now we're becoming part of their CMA programs and all these other things, starting to gain more of those independent C-store chains.
As you think about the resets that happened this summer, still going on, but have you quantified, you know, what % increase you might have gained?
We haven't, because when we did a few years ago.
Oh
every call you would ask us that.
Did you get your number? Did you get it?
Yeah.
Classic. Okay.
We won't do that.
Let me ask it differently. Did it meet your internal expectations?
Yes
or did it-
Yeah
You've been pleased?
As you know, most of the resets.
across food and drug and C-store happen around this time of year.
Yeah.
like April, May.
Yeah.
We're seeing some really nice gains.
Okay
of multi-pack still have a long way to go.
Yeah
a distribution perspective.
Yeah.
We're seeing some really nice gains and, 1L in C-store is becoming a single serve, which is really interesting.
Yes. It's a tweener apparently, I've been told.
Yeah.
Go figure. Right, yes. I, yeah. Okay. You've been pleased and that's exceeded or happy with the.
Yeah
space gains?
Yep.
Switching gears to private label.
You know, I feel like ups and downs, you know, you've lost some private label business on a few occasions, and subsequently won some of it back. You know, maybe help us understand why a particular retailer would opt to kind of leave or, you know, take that business away and then kind of come back. You know, where does that private label business stand for you, and how do you think about it as a strategic priority?
We've always talked about private label as the private label business as being somewhat lumpy.
Yeah.
you know, I think private label, retailers bid out the private label regularly.
specifically when there's disruption in supply chain or so on, whether it be pricing, whether it be tariffs, whether it be ocean freight, whatever it is. We believe that we have the best supply chain for coconut water.
Yeah.
We believe it is our biggest competitive advantage.
Right.
We have a diversified, geographically diverse supply chain that offers the best all around pricing, the most scale, quality, and so we think that even as, you know, somebody might come in cheaper sometimes, we think we eventually get the business back because we continue to be consistent and are able to deliver what we say we're gonna deliver.
Do you think about that still as a big growth driver for your business? You're gonna continue to push forward on private label? Help me. Yes, there's growth, but then the margin differential, you know, how do you manage?
we like private label when it works within-
Okay
our business model. We like private label when it's with large private label customers. We're not gonna do private label.
Okay
A small regional grocery chain.
Yeah
that might not, you know, be worth it. We think it grows over a period of time as the category grows, but there's a limit to how much private label.
Yeah.
I mean, if you think about, you know, some of the grocery retailers and things that do private label, it's like, call it 15% of the category.
In general, overall, it's low 20s% of the category.
Most of the large retailers that do private label are now in it or will be by the end of this year.
Okay.
Throughout the course of this year. Over time, the brand will grow faster than private label, for sure. you know, if you wanna talk a little bit, you know.
Yeah
how we think about the margins even though we don't discuss the actual margins.
Yeah.
Yeah. As we said, they're lower than branded.
Yeah
because of the supply chain advantages, the difficulty of the category compared to what you might see as other private label, their advantage we would say. There's little complexity to it for us. We ship direct to retailers.
Yeah.
It's more of a supply chain led business, so it works quite nicely within our algorithm.
Mike, did you just allude to that there's some customers or retailers that are going to move more into private label this year, that you're signing up private label business?
Yeah. We announced last year that there is a large U.S. retailer that will be starting doing private label, that we are going to be doing.
That you're announcing.
Their private label for them, and I think that starts to flow through this quarter.
Should be this quarter. As you know, the accounting's a little tricky. It should be in Q2.
Okay. All right. Maybe wanna switch back to sports and hydration, 'cause you touched on that, and you do, I believe, have plans to expand more into that area, especially as, you know, customers or you're sourcing, you know, customers turn to sports drinks. Can you maybe provide a little bit more color on how you plan to expand more meaningfully into sports, you know, and hydration category?
Yeah. The big thing is the messaging. We started, you know, we did the work and, you know, we, you know, got the data and coconut water has three and a half times the electrolytes of a leading sport drink. Being able to say that and have that as part of our messaging, it's everywhere. It's in our point of sale material, it's in our displays, it's in all of our communication in digital and social.
That is translating to real growth. In that hydration segment for us, we're doing a lot of programs with youth sports. Partnerships with, all sorts of smaller leagues, not really focused on, you know, we're not going after the NFL.
Okay.
Gatorade can have that.
Yeah. That's good. Might be hard.
Yeah. That's their thing.
Yeah.
What we're recognizing is that consumers in general want everyday hydration.
Not only when they're on the field, when they're working out.
They want to stay hydrated. They're drinking more water. They understand the benefit of daily hydration, and we think we play really well into that.
Should we expect to see more innovation as well?
Potentially.
This year potentially?
We're working on something.
Okay. Okay. All right. Makes sense.
Yeah.
As, you know, listening to you.
Yeah.
Yeah. All right.
Yeah.
All right. I definitely wanna touch on international. Maybe before we go there, let's talk about never-ending COGS pressures that all companies are facing. However, your Q1 gross margins were, you know, much better than expected, I assume, you know, given leverage that you guys had and the impressive top line growth. Despite that, you did maintain your margin guidance, gross margin guidance for the year. Can you talk through some of the puts and takes of the gross margins and the phasing for the rest of the year that we should expect?
Sure. We were 40% in Q1.
Yeah.
We've indicated Q2 should be similar to Q1. Our full year guidance is 38%. There's two factors.
Coming into the year, we took pricing for tariffs. The tariffs have gone away.
Yeah.
That was a fairly big number. That's supporting margins. We have not adjusted pricing at this point. That'll happen later in the year.
We do see some level of inflation impacting the business in the back half through the impacts of energy. The biggest one being packaging costs are increasing through Tetra, plastic caps, corrugated and factory energy use.
Okay.
Very manageable. Domestic logistics and fuel-related distribution expenses are increasing. We see that pressure impacting the back half of the year. That combines with what we've talked about as stronger private label growth, having some mix impact, stronger international growth, having some mix impact. You know, as we've said, we'll evaluate how long is it sustained, and we'll manage pricing accordingly exiting the year into next year if we see margin pressures.
Okay. I don't know if you haven't necessarily touched on this, but understand short term, how should we think about your gross margins maybe over the long term? I mean, you've already kind of reached that upper 30% that we talked about so many years ago.
It's where we like to be.
Okay.
I think right now our focus is growth.
As we continue to expand, Corey touched on some of the international markets are slightly lower gross margins.
Right.
As those markets grow, there's a mix effect.
That kind of, you know, approaching 40 is where we like to operate the business.
We think we will continue to operate the business. We do feel, however, that, you know, as we continue to grow, we'll continue to see leverage on the bottom line and potentially, you know, EBITDA over time becomes a larger percentage of net sales.
Yeah. Before we move off of I just wanna touch on the ocean freight, 'cause you touched on this a couple of weeks ago on your Q1 call, that base rates really haven't moved all that much. Wanna maybe understand that and, you know, is there a risk that they could Given the situation, that they could increase, or do you feel pretty good?
Ocean freight rates.
visibility?
They go up when there's a spike in consumer demand.
Yeah.
When there's less availability and capacity.
There's a lot of capacity right now. There's not a huge increase in demand, in markets like the U.S.
and in Europe and so on. Ocean freight rates are at more historical norms. We've been doing this now 22 years.
They're now at the norm that they've been. Call it 20 of those 22 years.
We saw a couple of years of crazy spikes when.
Yeah
You know, with COVID creating incredible consumer demand, there wasn't enough inventory and capacity, on the ocean freight side. We feel quite confident that this is where ocean freight rates are and will remain.
Okay.
The fuel surcharges are quite manageable.
Okay
as it relates to the, to the big picture of our Cost of Goods.
I guess that's encouraging. All right. Wanna touch on international 'cause, you know, you mentioned a couple weeks ago that growth internationally has exceeded your expectations, and you did reiterate your goal of having, you know, international be as large as your U.S. segment.
Yep.
When could that happen? No, I know. Help us understand sort of the building blocks again and the growth drivers?
Yeah
of your international business and where you see the most upside.
Yeah. Big picture, it's super early days of the development of the international business. If you think about the category in the U.K., which I think is growing 60% or something like that.
The U.K., high 30s. High 30s
High 30s. Scans in the quarter were significantly higher than that. As the U.K. business is growing and doing so well and so on, consumption per capita is still a third of that of the U.S.
Yeah.
Germany is our second fastest-growing market, and consumption per capita is 10% of the U.S. There's a long runway-
Right
-in the few markets that we're already developing that are becoming more meaningful to our P&L.
Okay.
I think those markets continue to develop and continue to grow faster than our U.S. business. At the same time, we're starting to see signs of growth in some of the other European markets, and looking at some opportunities in Latin America and in Asia where we think we can grow the coconut water category.
Right.
Something is happening where the category is working on a global level.
Yeah.
We think somewhat the communication that we're doing, the education that we're doing. Through digital and social is not only seen in the U.S.
Right.
It's seen on a global level. We think that the category has a real opportunity to be a major category globally.
As you think about that, lot to unpack because would it be a priority then to go deeper in some of the existing markets you're in, or and/or are you expecting to kind of open new markets? Just help me understand your infrastructure.
Yeah
to do this.
I think a little bit of both.
Okay.
We are, you know, as you know, we took our chief sales officer from the U.S. and gave him a global role.
Okay.
He's now on an airplane nonstop.
Okay.
He's doing both, working with the teams in the markets.
Okay
that we're already in, figuring out how to gain distribution because we're still, you know, very limited.
Yeah
distribution in these markets with great velocities.
figuring out how to double down on those while looking at new distribution partnership opportunities.
Okay
All of these other things in other markets.
That's just very early.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Maybe one final question topic. I have many others, but I did wanna ask you about M&A.
You do have quite a bit of cash on your balance sheets to fund potential M&A, and I know we've talked about this over the years. Is M&A still a priority for you? If so, what are some of the potential targets? Would it be, you know, capabilities? Would it be, you know, another platform?
Yeah
Beverages? How do you think about potential M&A?
Yeah, I mean, we're generating a lot of cash with our, you know, asset light model.
Yeah.
We have no debt on the business, $200 something million in cash. M&A feels like an obvious, right? We look at a lot of things. We wanna stay within products that we think are brands that we think we could really add value to.
Okay
Whether there's synergies on the sales side or on the supply chain side or whatever it is. As close to what we do as possible would be good.
Okay.
Whether that's shelf stable beverages that play in health and wellness and functionality
I think where we could, where we could really add value. We look at things all the time. We have conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the beverage space. We're being very patient. There's no reason to rush. We have a core business that is growing really well that we wanna continue to invest again. We don't wanna be distracted. I don't think you're gonna see us do anything transformational.
Okay.
The objective is to continue to add onto the business things that we think we could really drive value.
Okay. That all makes sense.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much
Awesome
-for your time. I appreciate.
Thank you. Thanks for having us
having you here again.
It was fun. Great.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks.