Good afternoon, and welcome to the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 Calavo Growers earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Julie Kegley, Investor Relations for Calavo. Thank you. You may begin.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Calavo Growers' fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 financial results. This afternoon, we issued our earnings release, and it is available in the investor relations section of our website at ir.calavo.com. With me on today's call are Steve Hollister, Interim Chief Executive Officer of Calavo, and Mariela Matute, Chief Financial Officer. We will begin with their prepared remarks and then open up the call for your questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's comments will include forward-looking statements under the Federal Securities laws. Forward-looking statements are identified by words such as will, be, intend, believe, expect, anticipate, or other comparable words and phrases. Statements that are not historical facts, such as statements about expected improvement in revenue and operating profit, are also forward-looking statements.
Our actual results may vary materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Discussion of the factors that could cause a material difference in our results compared to these forward-looking statements are contained in our SEC filings, including our report on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. With that, I will now turn the call over to Steve Hollister.
Thank you, Julie, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. 2021 was a difficult and challenging year, but we finished the year strong and we're off to a good start in fiscal 2022. As we entered the fourth quarter, market conditions that we experienced in the third quarter continued. Labor shortages, suboptimal raw materials at higher prices, and high freight costs weighed on the business. Throughout the quarter, as we predicted, market conditions improved along with our ability to manage them. We saw sequential improvement from August through October, and we continued to see this improvement as we sit today about halfway through Q1. Despite the difficult year, we remain committed to paying a dividend.
We announced the $1.15 per share annual dividend consistent with last year and continued the tradition of paying a dividend every year since the company became public in 2002. Now, I'd like to spend some time discussing the overall trends affecting each of our business segments. Trends for our core avocado business are favorable. U.S. avocado demand continues to grow with per capita consumption exceeding 9 lbs per person, which is double the consumption rate from 10 years ago. We believe that healthy eating trends will continue in the U.S. and that avocados with their favorable nutrition profile will continue to be popular among health-conscious consumers. We also believe that year-round availability of imported avocados and changing U.S. demographics will favor increased demand. As an example, approximately 19% of the U.S. population is Hispanic, and that population count is expected to double by 2050.
With avocados being a staple among Hispanic consumers, overall avocado consumption is expected to continue trending upward, which would naturally benefit our Fresh and Food segments. Value-added fruits and vegetables have also continued to grow faster than their broader produce categories. We continue to see improved demand for our products that are popular with health-conscious and time-constrained consumers who place a premium on convenience foods like those produced in our RFG segment. In addition, our guacamole and salsa products, while being affected by the pandemic in the food- service channel, have strong long-term prospects as well. Turning to some recent news. A couple of weeks ago, the state of Jalisco, Mexico, was verbally approved to ship fresh avocados into the United States beginning around the middle of next year. As many of you know, Calavo has a state-of-the-art packing facility in Jalisco.
From what we understand, individual groves and packing sheds will have to be recertified before shipments are allowed, and we believe only Jalisco and Michoacán are Mexican states that currently have the facilities that comply with certification requirements. While we have international customers for the avocados packed in Jalisco, opening up to the U.S. will give us more flexibility to manage the changing market dynamics by better balancing supply with demand, which should translate into higher margin opportunities. I would now like to provide an update on Project Uno, which picked up speed in the fourth quarter.
To date, key actions have included realizing price increases across our RFG and Foods customer base, continued unification of our supply chain across our three divisions to drive synergies from operating as one company, eliminating approximately 5% of less profitable SKUs, and consolidating RFG's food processing operations from Florida into our Georgia facility, which will improve capacity utilization. We're optimistic with our Project Uno initiatives as we are beginning to see improvements in systems with automation and sourcing. We expect a total annualized EBITDA increase of $70 million as compared to the current run rate, which we expect to be fully realized by early to mid- fiscal 2023.
As I said on our last call, total one-time cost of the program are expected to be approximately $30 million, which include professional fees, restructuring costs, and capital investments. On the corporate governance front, we confirmed our plans to reduce the size of our Board over time from 11 to nine directors from a high of 13, which is more in line with our company, our size. We recently welcomed Adriana Mendizabal to our Board as an independent director, and Scott Van Der Kar has decided to retire from the Board effective January 3rd after 27 years of service. I know many of you listening today are interested in our search for a new CEO. The process is nearly complete as we are in the final rounds of interviews with several strong candidates, all with impressive skills and experience.
I'm honored to serve as interim CEO as long as I'm needed, but I believe we will have a new leader in place in the very near future. Finally, I would like to welcome two new members to Calavo's executive leadership team. Graciela Montgomery, our first Chief Human Resources Officer, and Mariela Matute, our new Chief Financial Officer. Graciela brings 30 years of HR experience to the table, and she will play a key role for our next major phase of the growth. Mariela Matute has an impressive background of financial expertise and agricultural and food industry experience that uniquely qualifies her for the role of Calavo's CFO. Mariela is already effecting change and has embraced Project Uno by streamlining processes and procedures within the finance group. She is focused on improving our methods of planning, forecasting, and measuring results to enable the long-term growth of Calavo.
We're very happy she joined our team, and we're glad to have her with us on the call today. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mariela.
Thank you, Steve, and good afternoon, everyone. It has been a pleasure working with Steve and the rest of Calavo's management team in the two months since I came aboard. While the company has made progress in its efforts to counter the market disruptions caused by COVID, there is more work to do, and I'm excited to lead the finance team in those efforts. I also look forward to connecting with all of you, our investors and analysts in the coming quarters as we communicate our progress towards improved profitability and return on investment. Following our press release, let me provide you with further insight. I will start with revenue. On a consolidated basis, first- quarter revenue increased by 17% year-over-year.
The increase was mainly driven by a 26% increase in the Fresh segment, where we achieved a 37% higher average selling price for avocados. This was offset by a 7% decline in volume. The higher pricing was due to a better market environment. The lower volume was due to sub-optimal fruit sizes early in the quarter, which affected our product mix. Revenue was up 7% at RFG, driven by 2% higher volume and 5% average selling price due to both a favorable product mix and price increases. Our Food segment delivered 6% higher sales in the quarter, mostly due to higher volume from food- service customers, in addition to price increases, a shift in certain product lines.
With respect to our Project Uno pricing initiative, as Steve mentioned, we have been successful in implementing price increases across our customer base in both RFG and food, which contributed most of our benefits we recognized in the fourth quarter. We expect to see an additional revenue lift in the first quarter of 2022 from this price initiative. Now turning to gross margin. Our year-over-year decline in gross profit and margin was mainly due to the same factors that affected our third quarter results. In fresh, it was driven by lower volume and lower per carton margins. Margins climbed from August close, where we were selling fewer and the smaller avocados from the end of Mexico's summer crop. By October, Mexico's regular crop was in full swing and producing larger fruits. Therefore, we experienced margins at the high end of our historical averages.
This dynamic continued into November and December, which give us confidence that we will see improved results in our Fresh segment for the first quarter of 2022. At RFG, gross profit was down nearly $8 million year-over-year due to market-wide pressures of higher labor, materials, and freight costs. We are starting to see positive traction from our Project Uno initiatives, including price increases, SKU rationalization, and facility consolidation. This has begun to show in our results as we delivered a $5.4 million sequential improvement in gross profits from the third quarter. In the Foods segment, margins were pressured as well, mainly due to higher year-over-year avocado and labor costs.
Turning to SG&A, which was basically in line with our expectations for the quarter. After adjusting for approximately $1.7 million of restructuring expenses, which are aligned in the adjusted EBITDA reconciliation in our press release. During the quarter, we also recorded $9.7 million in charges related to asset impairment and other anticipated restructuring costs. With respect to the RFG Florida facility closure as part of Project Uno, the cash component of this charge is approximately $350,000. As a result of this action, combined with moving production to other locations, we anticipate an annualized profit improvement of approximately $4 million-$6 million. With respect to Project Uno, we realized approximately $2 million of profit improvements in the fourth quarter from our efforts.
We expect to see gradual and increasing improvement in each quarter of the current fiscal year, and we will update you on a quarterly basis as we make progress. Now turning to our financial position. We ended the quarter with $141 million of cash, liquid investments and available debt capacity. We continue to have a strong financial position and low leverage. That allows us to invest in our current infrastructure to drive future growth and improved profitability. Despite the challenging circumstances, we generated cash from operations of $13.6 million for the year, doing a good job on managing our working capital. In December, we amended our credit facility to reflect our lower adjusted EBITDA and the gradual return to historical levels of profitability. As part of the amendment, we have received temporary relief in our financial covenants.
In consideration for these amended terms, we agreed to a 50 basis point increase in our interest rate and pledge our Limoneira shares as collateral. As of today's date, and based on the amendment facility, our current liquidity is temporarily reduced by approximately $25 million, given the pledging of our Limoneira shares. Now turning to our outlook. As Steve said, the long-term outlook of the business remains favorable. With the current market conditions, it is difficult to predict when industry-wide inflationary pressures on materials, freight, and labor will ease. We believe that our operational initiatives and ongoing price increases will offset these pressures. We're optimistic about the early returns that we're seeing from Project Uno and are confident that we will generate improved quarterly results on a sequential basis as we move into fiscal year 2022.
With that, I will return the call to operators over for questions. Thank you.
At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Ben Bienvenu with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Mariela, thanks for the color. Nice to meet you via the phone. I wanna ask on following up on that commentary around gradual improvement sequentially as we move through fiscal 2022, recognizing that you do have reduced visibility at the moment, is there any incremental disclosure or color that you could offer around how we should think about the progression as we move through fiscal 2022? Also, what are the major milestones in either Project Uno or otherwise in achieving improved profitability as we move through the fiscal year?
Hi, Ben. Thank you, and nice to meet you over the phone. We expect Project Uno to deliver proportional benefits every quarter sequentially as we roll out our pricing initiatives, our SKU rationalization program, and our asset optimization. What we expect to come front-loaded is the investments that we have to do to roll out Project Uno and realize the benefits. I will model Project Uno benefits as sequential improvement on a prorated basis with investment at the beginning of the program.
Hello?
Ben, do you have any more questions?
Oh, I'm sorry. Can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you now.
Oh, okay, perfect. Steve, you made some comments around the favorable development associated with Jalisco.
Right.
Can you give us some sense of the size of that facility? If you are able to start to ship by middle of next year, give us a sense of the timeline or the timeframe for ramping that facility to what you would expect to be a targeted capacity utilization. Maybe just kind of unfold for us how you would expect that to mature.
Sure. Well, as it stands right now, Jalisco is going to be approved as of April next year, for shipments into the United States. As anybody who has done business down in Jalisco knows, their crop matures at a different time of year than the Michoacán crop does. In fact, April would be about the perfect time to start it up because that's when their crop is going to start hitting full stride. Now, majority of the process that's done there, and it's a large facility, but it's probably half the size of our facility in Michoacán, but that facility will still primarily handle fruit going out of the country to the Far East and to Europe.
You know, that all it's gonna do there is it's going to allow us to have another avenue to come into the United States, you know, to help with maybe some irregularities in sourcing and pricing. We're looking at it as just a total win-win for us, you know, being able to utilize it. We have growers down there that are very excited about this happening. It's very. It's a big positive.
Okay, great. Just as a quick follow-up to that, should we be thinking of this even if we can't put hard numbers around it? Should we be thinking about it more as a margin opportunity for you all or a volume opportunity for you all?
Yeah, that's a good question, Ben. I would probably say both. It's going to allow us to certainly move a lot more product out of there. But you know, the production in Jalisco is probably akin to what you would find in the United States, so it's not a volume that you would get out of Michoacán. It will just be another avenue for us to fulfill the needs of the United States as far as shipping in the United States, but it's definitely a great step in the right direction to have another state in Mexico open up for shipments into the U.S.
From our standpoint, being able to have two sources of product, and if not three or four during that time of year, is just going to benefit the consumer, and it's gonna benefit us by providing a stable supply of avocados. You know, we work on margin anyway. We don't take positions in the fruit. It's a positive for our organization, definitely.
Okay, great. Thanks so much. Best of luck.
Oh, thanks, Ben.
Our next question is from Mitch Pinheiro with Sturdivant & Co. Please proceed with your question. Mitch, your line is now open. Mitch, are you there?
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yes.
Go ahead with your question. Yep.
Sorry about that. Just staying on avocados for a little bit. Pricing is up, and you know, you still see some challenges. You know, you said you're seeing improvement. Are you seeing improvement in the mix, you know, the grades? Where is the improvement coming from?
Primarily in the avocados, which right now the U.S. hasn't really started yet. That'll start next month. Everything we get right now is still out of Michoacán. The improvement is that we're into the new crop, whereas with the last earnings call, we were just starting the new crop, so we're well into it at this point in time. The price is up primarily because nobody's really sure exactly what the crop's going to be in Mexico. You know, it fluctuates widely from predictions to actuals, and there's a lot of factors at play as well. From a sizing standpoint, earlier in the season, we were getting a lot more small fruit, and now that fruit has had a chance to mature as we moved into some of the different picking areas.
We're getting the larger sizes that are more desirable. But we haven't really hit a stride with the Mexican growers as far as a regularity of picking schedule. Their variances each day can be fairly wide from what we think is gonna happen to what actually gets picked. That's why you see the continuing pressure on pricing to remain high. We think that's going to change here in the near future as they start to pick a little more. Of course, we have Super Bowl coming up, and that's always a big event for the fresh avocado market.
With the larger supply, I mean, you're anticipating maybe pricing pulling back a bit, but is it at the point where you can have decent visibility on your gross margins?
Oh, absolutely. In fact, when prices are higher, you know, again, we work on percentage margins. You know, I guess, theoretically, we should be making more money at higher prices, but we like to move a lot of volume. Now, that lowers our packing costs and everything else too. There's always gonna be a sweet spot in there that you try to hit, but I expect though as we start really getting the volume ramping up and seeing some of the other production areas around the world come in, that the added increase in volume is going to benefit at least as much as the increase in prices that we're seeing right now.
Okay. When it comes to, you know, I know the projections vary, but California should have a stronger year over, you know, year. It's an on year for California, so that'll help volume. You think it's gonna have a better crop for the full year as well?
That's been actually debated quite a bit recently, whether it's gonna be higher or lower or the same. It's gonna be one of those. I tend to believe it's probably gonna be closer to what we've seen in the last year or two.
What's the issue there? Is it, I mean, is it agronomics? Is it a grower- packer, you know, tug-of-war? What's happening? Why wouldn't Mexico be showing a little more growth than it is in volume, that is?
You know, I haven't. I'm actually planning on going down to Mexico here shortly to kinda take a look around and meet with some growers. What I think we're seeing at this point in time is it's mostly agronomic. The groves in the Michoacán area where we're picking are anywhere from, say, 5,000-ft elevation up to about 7,500 ft. It's very high, and you get wide variances in weather and microclimates and that. A lot of it is also naturally irrigated. You're gonna naturally see a wide swing in production capacity. Again, we don't know how much of it's gonna move into the domestic market down there as well. I would say that's for Michoacán.
I know there are a lot of plantings out there that should be coming into production here shortly, and ramping up, but there's other places around the world that are increasing their production capacity as well, so.
Okay. Moving on to RFG. When it comes to, you know, you've closed Jacksonville, that, you know, increase in your facility utilization, we should start to see that have an impact on gross margin, you know, right away, or am I missing something?
No, you're spot on. In fact, you know, I don't wanna hog the airwaves. Mariela, would you like to address that?
Hi, Mitch. The savings expected from the closure are between $4 million and $6 million annualized. You're correct, as we move the production to our Georgia facility, we will see those benefits as we serve those customers.
What are your customers saying right now? I mean, you know, a year and a half ago, everybody was converting to, you know, prepackaged items and, you know, certainly, with the easing of the pandemic, so we think. It looks like, you know, I've seen much more back to open, you know, containers, self-serve kind of things happening. Where are we in that? Is it gonna be a mixture? Do you guys benefit one way or the other based on how it's delivered? Can you talk a little bit about, like, what you're seeing sort of from a, you know, a product point of view?
Mitch, yes, if I can take this one. We continue to see fruits and vegetables in these prepackaged forms to continue to grow faster than the broader produce categories. We will capitalize on that improved demand. Over the long term, I see this as a mega trend that will benefit RFG.
Sorry about that. I got a dog here. What about, I mean, you're talking, what about, like, you know, packaged sandwiches and wraps and some of those products? I mean, is that still a growth avenue for you, or is this part of or are we seeing some SKU rationalization in some of these areas?
I'll take care of that, Mariela. Mitch, what we do is, you know, all of our plants are equipped to handle a variety of different products that our retail partners would want, be it from, you know, just to cut veggies and fruits to prepared fruits and vegetables and meals and things like that. The consumers have made it known that they like the convenience foods. They just like healthy options when it's coming to that. I don't think we're ever gonna go backwards in that regard. In fact, we plan for that in some of our strategy. We see it with our competitors out there as well, and our retail partners are asking us for more and more solutions.
You know, we're hoping it comes down to a margin thing, so we're just, we're all trying to deal with the increased costs that we're having to address on a regular basis. We know our competitors are as well. It's something that everybody's trying to get their hands on at this point in time to figure out exactly where we're all gonna make money in this regard. The SKU rationalization had to do with a number of items that maybe we weren't selling very much of. You know, you take a look at the contribution margins, a number of different things.
It's really been a very good cooperative relationship with our retail partners and ourselves as to coming to profitability things that work for them and also work for us.
Okay. Just one more is just on the Club Foods business.
When should we expect to see that margin normalize? You know, you typically have been pushing a 30% gross margin in that business, and I know it, you know, for a variety of factors, last couple of quarters it's been below that. Is this something where we just need to see fruit costs come down?
Well, I'll take a swing at that one. Obviously, fruit cost is one of our two major components that, you know, that and labor down in Mexico and, you know, the ability to get fruit in there. Again, that kind of stretches back to what I was talking about with fresh avocados as well, is that, you know, being able to get a real steady supply of fruit in there. We can deal with pricing fluctuations and the cost of the fruit. When it's constantly changing and without having the ability to, in real time, to go to your retail partners and change, you know, the pricing that you need, it's taken us a little while to adapt to this realization.
From what we're seeing right now, we're more approaching where we were historically, and we're looking forward to getting back to that on a regular basis.
Yes, if I can add, it's moving in the right direction.
Thank you. Our next question is from Ben Klieve with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
All right. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me. First, on the kind of building on the Jalisco opportunity here, wondering if you can elaborate on the, you know, on that facility currently, if it's operating kind of at or near capacity. Also elaborate on if, you know, this news affects your kind of CapEx outlook for, you know, for that segment specifically, if you see an opportunity here to, you know, increase the utilization or the capacity of that plant. Excuse me.
Well, let me address the utilization of the plant, and then Mariela can address the CapEx portion of it. You know, we've been a partner in that with the growers for well a number of years now, and it hasn't been operating close to capacity. There's currently a lot more opportunities there to really add value-added products to our mix, and particularly as we start doing more overseas, that facility is just made for that. As far as what it's gonna do in the U.S., we can, you know, start ramping it up and having that as just another outlet for us, you know. I think the opportunities there are endless for us really at this point in time.
Certainly greater than what we've been taking advantage of.
For the capital investments question, we have a plan to invest up to the levels we have invested in the last year. Most of the investments are planned for increasing automation across our facilities, both in Mexico and the U.S.
Got it. Perfect. The only other question from me on kind of a high level here, you know, with all these, you know, various initiatives that you're undertaking, you know, what are you and the Board comfortable doing, you know, doing currently, you know, versus, you know, maybe waiting until you have a permanent CEO in place? Is there anything that you guys are holding back on from a restructuring perspective here until you have a full CEO in place? Or is it kind of full steam ahead and whoever you bring in will, you know, just inherit whatever has been done?
Well, let me take an answer at that one. When I came in and sat in the desk, my goal was to further the Project Uno, things that had already begun and to keep things moving forward. I just didn't wanna be a warm body in the chair. We've been full speed ahead, trying to make all the improvements necessary to increase our profitability, you know, reduce our expenses, all the things that a good business do on a regular basis.
My goal was to have those initiatives all in place up and running, so that when we have the new CEO come in, which I think will be very soon, that he will be able to just take the reins, you know, and take it and put his stamp on it moving forward. All the things that we've talked about are already underway.
Ben, if I could add to Steve's comment that we do have on the ground more than four initiatives resulting from our Project Uno, and we're not waiting. One of my primary priorities is to execute on Project Uno, and they are all profit improvement initiatives that will make RFG and the entire network just stronger for what's coming.
Got it. That's good to hear from both of you. Very good. That does it for me. I'll jump back in queue. Best of luck here in the new year.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Our next question is from Eric Larson with Seaport Research Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Thank you everyone for the question. Mariela, I extend my congratulations to you. I look forward to working with you, and I wish you absolutely the best of success at Calavo. My first question really is this, it's more of a strategic question. Under your previous CEO, you started Project Uno right at the time, well, just before COVID hit. Was the timing of trying to consolidate three supply chains into one or thereabout, you know, something similar to that argument? Was that just poor timing or was it good timing? Can you give us a flavor of where you'd be if either if you were without Project Uno or not? I mean, I guess it's a difficult question to answer 'cause it's very broad-based.
The question is, you know, was it good or poor timing to start Project Uno?
Let me answer that a little bit, and then Mariela, you can chime in if you'd like. When we did Project Uno, we were already under the plan for one Calavo, which was to bring everything under the Calavo name and utilize it that way, including, you know, bringing our various business units under it and consolidating some management and some SG&A expenses and the like. When we started Project Uno, all it did was just say, maybe there's some other things that we need to be taking a look at, and now would be a good time to do it. I mean, COVID, who predicted COVID, you know? Of course, all the supply chain issues that everybody's had to deal with, those have been challenging enough.
We also saw the opportunities by doing the Project Uno with Teneo and having them come in and do a deep dive into some of our processes and take a look at our business from all different angles to see how we might be able to improve it. I have to say, having been at the forefront of this thing and seeing it from my desk, that it's been a very worthwhile project for us. While it hasn't necessarily been inexpensive, we're gonna be reaping the benefits of their work for many years to come. I would say that the timing is excellent on our behalf, and we continue to think that.
Steve, when you say it hasn't been inexpensive, has it not been inexpensive from a capital basis or from a margin basis or from a growth basis? Can you elaborate on the inexpensive part of your comment?
Well, when I said it hasn't been inexpensive, it's cost us. You know, closing facilities are never easy, and they're never, you know, they're never something that you do in haste because it affects people's lives as well as your customers and everybody involved. Sometimes we have to do things like that in order to make a step forward. That's what we've recognized with the Jacksonville facility, is that we were able to move the production there up to our Georgia facility. Now that facility is operating at full speed. What I also meant as far as costs go, when you hire a consulting company to come in, there's costs associated with that.
They're also giving you the ability to focus on things that you wouldn't do in your normal day-to-day activities just because you're trying to, you know, run a business. We've utilized them to help us get a better understanding of all the things that go into our RFG operation, as well as some of the other things we do regarding transportation and the like. The cost, as we outlined, is we project it to be $30 million over two years. A fair amount of that's already been recognized, closing facilities and looking at our CapEx expenditures.
We're well underway, so the results you're seeing are taking into account some of those costs that we had already told you we were gonna be bearing.
Is part of this the ability to reduce your labor costs? You know, you're dealing with RFG. I think one of the major strengths of the company is your fresh avocado business. You've proven that you can manage that business through inflationary and deflationary times. RFG is a little bit different, in that, you know, you're still dealing with gross margins on average that are pretty well below your fresh margins, and those margins are well below the average packaged food industry. With all the increased labor costs and all the things that we're talking about, and I understand you're taking pricing, and that's good. With, you know, let's say average 7%-9% margins in RFG, are you gonna be able to hold those or improve them?
Is you know, because it's a really competitive industry out there. You don't have a lot of market share in that business. I guess, is there something structural here that we should be paying attention to that we're not really talking about?
We utilize automation any chance we can, and we're always taking a look to see what new equipment out there makes financial sense for us, a good return on invested capital. The problem we've had is that for a lot of the processes that we do, and I think our competitors would say the same thing, some of it just has to be hand-cut and hand-processed, and automation does not take care of everything that you're looking to do. When I say that, you know, we're looking at trying to get a hold of our costs and labor, obviously labor costs have gone up.
I would say since the last earnings call I had three months ago, our labor force has come back more towards normal levels than what we were dealing with during the massive amount of COVID departures. Our labor has stabilized to a certain degree. From a costing standpoint, all of our retail partners have been amenable to the price increases, and they continue to be amenable to it, recognizing the real cost involved. Now, what we have to do there is make sure that we're good stewards of their money as well as our own, and acting judiciously to be the best partner we can.
All right. Thank you. I appreciate the comments.
My pleasure.
We have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Steve Hollister for closing remarks.
Thank you. I'd like to thank everybody for attending our conference today, and we were pleased to be able to present our quarterly results and fiscal year results, and looking forward to visiting with you all again, in the new year, with the next quarterly earnings call. Thanks again. We'll talk to you soon.
This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.