Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Leah Jordan, the packaged food and food retail analyst at Goldman, and it is my pleasure to introduce the management team of Dole. We have Rory Byrne, Chief Executive Officer, and Jacinta Devine, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you for both joining us today.
Thank you, Leah, for having us here.
Yes, absolutely. As a quick refresher, Dole is the leading global producer and distributor of fresh produce operating in 30 countries with over 250 facilities and 300 lines of fresh produce that range from conventional to exotic. Now let's get into our chat. This is a consumer conference. I just wanna start off on the demand side, given more in a dynamic macro backdrop. What demand trends are you seeing across your portfolio? Any notable shifts across products or by region? How are you thinking about the long-term tailwinds or even headwinds across overall demand for produce as a category?
Yeah. Well, I think we're very happy to work in the fresh produce industry. Our demand has been very consistent over a long period of time, that continues to be the case. You know, we've got some noticeable shifts, I suppose, there's a in some markets, a little bit in the U.S., probably more pronounced in Europe towards organics, for example, across all of the categories. In the U.S. and in Europe, even smaller categories like plantains, exotics have got a wider demand. Mangoes, papayas, products like that, have become more popular.
We're also seeing, in particular some new varieties in the berry space coming on stream, particularly blueberries that can now be grown in a wider geographical area, and they're available in greater volumes and much better, much more attractive varieties from a consumer experience point of view. I suppose kiwis is the other product. You know, we have a big partner in New Zealand, even, say, last year in Spain, we sold over $100 million worth of New Zealand kiwis. It's interesting that, you know, I think demand has been very, very consistent.
I think when we look at the long term, you look at, I think the younger generation, and I don't know where we all sit in younger or older generation, but certainly in Europe, you look at the investment by the EU and by government in Fruit For Schools programs, Five a Day consumption programs. I think they're starting to yield a benefit, and the younger people, younger generations are taking, are focusing more on healthier eating. We have some anecdotal evidence, some recent reports, around people who are starting to use the GLP-1 drugs that you mentioned, that post the usage of those drugs, they tend to focus on healthier diets, and we are expecting that that will provide a positive tailwind for us as an industry as well.
Overall, the demand, underlying demand, consistent, strong, you know, the structural tailwinds we think are positive for our industry.
I think that's great and good to hear. I think building on that, maybe you could just provide more detail on how you think about price versus volume for your business as a top-line driver going forward. You know, I think, you know, if we see continued inflationary cost pressure, how do you think about your ability to take pricing in this environment?
Yeah. It's interesting. You know, we would like to see steady growth in volume, you know, taking advantage of those tailwinds. In the short term, certainly there are some unusual inflationary pressures. You know, we went through the pandemic period and the post-pandemic inflationary period. It didn't have a material adverse effect on volume or consumption in that period. We have found, you know, you look at I think we've got products and fruit that is positioned at all price points in the marketplace. If you look at bananas, which is 40% of our sales, still very important. In both the U.S. and in Europe, it's still a relatively cheap product relative to other fruit products or relative to other convenience products.
It's certainly much healthier, much easier to use. We think that, you know, consumers, it's been, you know, even small increases in price and that has had no impact whatsoever on consumption. You know, the current inflationary pressures, particularly fuel, fertilizers, urea, inputs like that, we are seeing a sudden surge in those costs as a result of the current Middle East scenario. We do believe in our two Diversified Divisions that our dynamic pricing model will give us the flexibility without much impact on consumption going forward.
That's great color. Thank you for that. I know we're gonna dig more into all of your different segments here shortly, but maybe overall, as you've been able to see pretty resilient demand in times where you've been put through a little bit pricey, but maybe just talk about the competitive landscape.
across your different regions and in categories and anything you're seeing there.
Yeah. I think you've got to differentiate between the banana and pineapple business and the rest of the fruit sector. In the banana and pineapple sector, it is more consolidated, and there are more, I suppose, recognized names as competitors. You've got, you know, people like Chiquita and Del Monte in the North American market. Chiquita, ourselves, and Del Monte would have maybe 70% market share in the North American banana market, for example. Probably a similar share in the pineapple business. And Europe in the banana business is the same three players, you know, participate in a significant way in the European market, but have a less significant market penetration. There are a lot of local players.
There's, you know, a big French company, a big Italian company, Orsero, Compagnie Fruitière, lots of local players that only operate in individual geographies. It's quite different. In the general fruit category covering, you know, berries, apples, pears, grapes, even the full range. It is still quite fragmented. There is some consolidation in the berry category, and there has been, and we've seen recently some further consolidation in the avocado space. There's been a few deals, Mission Calavo underway at the moment, but a few other West Pak with some private equity interest has been solid, but still quite fragmented. You know, when we look at competitors, yes, in bananas and pineapples, Chiquita and Del Monte would be significant competitors. In all the other categories, we look at our competitor dynamic in a quite localized way. It's quite different.
No, that's very helpful to get a lay of the land there. Maybe we'll just dig in a little bit closer on each of your segments and starting with Fresh Fruit. I mean, continued strong top line growth as we've talked about so far. But that even before the inflationary pressure here recently, there's been some sourcing cost pressure as well. So maybe you can talk about what you're seeing there, and then how do you think about the path of improving profitability there?
We've had some unusual dynamics in the banana business over the last 18 months, two years. We ourselves, back at the back end of 2024, were hit by Tropical Storm Sara that pretty much wiped out our own production in Honduras. Chiquita had an issue in Panama where a little bit political, a little bit labor and some other issues, but they decided to temporarily pull out of Panama. Even just the combination of those two seeking spot fruit in Ecuador. Ecuador is the single biggest export country in the banana business, tends to be the safety valve when there are shortages of fruit, and people go there, and it drove up significantly the spot price and it disrupted our logistics, which are designed around the different sources.
Some weather issues in Central America and Costa Rica and Guatemala, probably some lower yields, exacerbated that to some extent. That's starting to unwind. We've rehabilitated all of our own farms in Honduras. We're seeing the production coming on stream. We expect that to continue to grow further over the course of the year. Chiquita has made some new arrangements with the Panamanian government. They've gone back into Panama as well, that'll ease some of the pressure in Ecuador. Of course, we're seeing some pressures out of the Middle East, where there's some logistical disruptions and some lower demand from that market short term that has brought the supply-demand equation back into balance.
We're hoping that will be helpful as we go into the back half of the year, particularly our own production coming back on stream in Honduras and not having to source temporarily from on the spot market.
Okay, that's very helpful. Maybe just more color on that. On the fresh fruit supply side, just maybe more detail on trends, maybe any more color on the timeline, specifically what you're doing in Honduras and in Colombia and in some of those dynamics.
Yeah. Colombia was affected a little bit by weather, but that affected quality more than volume. You know, we're certain with quality requirements from the most firm, major U.S. retailers, so some of the fruit went to Europe instead of the U.S. That's temporary and, you know, has fixed itself. Honduras, we expect to be fully up and running by the end of this year, and we already are partially up and running. It's not a long regrowing cycle. We've probably expanded our acreage a little bit in Honduras. We've also invested a little bit differently. We went to one of our joint production joint ventures in Guatemala.
We've bought a new farm in Guatemala to give ourselves a little bit of a better strategic position and a source that's closer to the west coast from the Pacific side of Guatemala going into the west coast of the U.S. Yeah, I think with all of those, we expect our Honduran production to be fully up and running over the course of this year. Chiquita I think will be back in Panama. Ecuador will have less pressure. The fruit sourcing costs should get more into balance as the year evolves.
That was pretty much in line with what we had anticipated to the market with our Q4 results last year, where we anticipate that the phasing of profitability would be a little bit different to the historical trend with a higher weighting towards the back half of the year.
Yeah. No, I think that's been consistent with your messaging so far.
Yes. Yeah.
Absolutely. Yes. Okay, then maybe switching over to Diversified Fresh Produce and we'll be in the EMEA region. You know, there, though, profitability is held up well while demand has as well. Maybe just key drivers that you're seeing in that business and then how you think about trends going forward to the back half.
Yeah. I think our EMEA business in Europe, particularly is probably one of the most unrecognized pieces of our business, you know, and probably because it's close to my own heart because it was part of the old Total Produce business that was the acquirer of Dole. If you go back over a long, long period of time, that's been a very steady, solid business, consistently growing, not by quantum leap percentages, but by steady percentages year in, year out. We've got the number one market position in a range of markets across Europe. We've got the full range of services, the full product range, the full spectrum of customers from wholesale to food service to retail in each of the markets.
Number one market position in Ireland, in the U.K., in Sweden, in Denmark, Czech Republic, Spain, Holland, significant presence in Germany and Italy, Portugal. You know, we've got a really fantastic upstream market capability for importing, handling, distributing, servicing our customers with ripening facilities, cold storage facilities, handling facilities, pre-packing facilities in all of those markets. You know, very strong A-list customer base across all of those markets. And you know, it's the sum of all those factors that have provided that business. You know, there's always gonna be a few ups and downs, and we've had a few ups in the U.K., for example. This quarter has been a little bit more challenging.
I think the U.K., as we know, economically is suffering a little bit for a range of reasons and probably impacted in the wholesale sector by some weather issues in Southern Europe that caused shortage of supply into the wholesale segment. Overall, normal ups and downs, I think we're strategically very well positioned there. There are further opportunities for growth in those markets but really pretty satisfied with their whole EMEA Diversified division.
That's great to hear. Thank you for that. Then maybe just switching over for Americas and rest of world on Diversified Fresh Produce. Can you walk through the key trends you're seeing there and how you think about expectations for the balance of the year?
Yeah. I think the Americas rest of the world is probably the best example. One more five years closed than July of 2026. We've closed it when I became listed on the New York Stock Exchange in July of 2021. Time goes by, I think the Americas and rest of the world is the area that we have achieved the most in terms of bringing together the legacy Dole Food Company and the legacy Total Produce plc. The management teams are now fully integrated. The last piece of the jigsaw was late last year, integrating the marketing arm of the Dole Diversified division, Dole Diversified North America, into our co-op business here in North America to take out cost, to make it more efficient in terms of our offering to our key customers. That's worked very well within the marketplace.
Our Chilean business has performed very well, particularly our cherry business. We're probably the leading player in the cherry segment. You know, we've got the cherry business, really the cherry on the cake, for want of a bad pun, is getting your product into the Chinese market before the Chinese New Year. We've got our production well organized, well planned. We've got high quality, big berries, good color, get them into the market before the Chinese New Year, and we've been achieving good pricing and good profitability on that segment. Q1 is probably a little flattered because it overlaps Q1 and Q2 and just the way the season fell this year with a little bit more going into Q1, numbers look particularly good in Q1.
Well, you know, other aspects, the grape business, the kiwi business, the apple business have all been going very well. Some further opportunities for expansion in Peru that we're looking at, all in all, we're pretty satisfied. Very strong management team within that division, and the business is running well.
That's great to hear, and thank you for that update. You kind of talked about cherry, and that came through on the last call of how strong and growth there. I think on the last couple calls you've talked about, you know, even a new pineapple line that you have, and that seems to be doing really well. We never think about innovation in produce always, but you guys continue to push the bounds. You have your core kind of pineapple and bananas business and then have ranged into exotic. Maybe just if you could talk about how you think about, you know, innovation and longer term opportunities within your portfolio, how you think about kind of the R&D timeline or anything there and how those products are resonating?
You wanna say something on that, Jacinta Devine?
Yeah. No,
Very CFO-report-oriented.
Banana Royale has been a great success, a wonderful product, really well received in the marketplace. It's the product of 15 years of R&D . It's a non-GMO product, which I think is important. Non-GMO takes time. There's no doubt about it. It's very well received, where it certainly created a bit of momentum in the category, which is really nice to see, and the retailers, our customer base really appreciate that. The volumes are still small, but we hope to continue to scale that. Other than that, I suppose that an important area of focus for Dole is in the banana space, disease-resistant varieties. There are some challenges in Tropical Race 4 and also in things like black sigatoka.
We're focused on developing varieties there that are disease resistant. It's an ongoing process. Again, will take some time, but we see some opportunities there. I suppose in the wider innovation arena, we are very focused on efficiency in our facilities where we're packing and preparing for our customers. Rory talked a little bit about this on the earnings call. We have a strategic opportunity to invest in one of our Scandinavian facilities, and we're gonna be taking our already quite sophisticated packing robot technology. We're taking it to the next level, and we see wonderful opportunities there. We're gonna invest around $100 million all in.
It's a great opportunity, and we believe we get the appropriate returns for that investment. Exciting for that opportunity as well.
Yeah. No, that's great to hear. I mean, you have a global operation, always a lot of opportunities to drive.
Sure
efficiencies. Absolutely. Then maybe on the branding side as well, I feel like this is a trend we're seeing across the fresh category here in the U.S. You know, everyone knows the Dole pineapples and bananas. How do you think about opportunity to leverage your brand, you know, across different regions, across different products? You know, what do you see there?
Yeah. You're right, Dole is the number one fresh produce recognized brand in the U.S., and it has a very strong recognition in certain European markets, Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy. We see opportunities in the other markets, mostly, I suppose, from a B2B point of view that, you know, Dole is very recognized for consistency of supply and quality in the markets where it's well known, and we're seeking to develop and evolve that. We see lots of opportunity in that regard as well.
That's very helpful. Thank you. Then maybe just switching gears, Rory, you kind of mentioned at the top some of the higher cost pressures.
Yeah
right around fuel and the like. You guys move product around the globe. You have 13 of your own vessels. Maybe just what impact are you seeing to your business with the recent rise in fuel costs and then how do you think about mitigation tools that you have in the back half?
I think that's probably been the most dramatic impact that we've seen is the fuel. I mean, the fuel, it's not like you have stocks of fuel that you can when you're running ships, you fill them as part of the route. It's instantaneous, it always seems to be the case that when the price goes up at the wholesale level, it goes up at the usage level very quickly. It doesn't always come down as quickly when it reduces. It's a direct and immediate impact on us. I think there's two aspects to it. 1, most of our U.S. banana and pineapple business, which is what we primarily use our own ships for, is on fixed price annual contracts with our retail customers, with one exception, and that is a bunker fuel charge adjustment.
It comes in a quarter in arrears, a trimester in a year in arrears. We believe it's a mathematical equation that's been up and down. We believe that we've got a fairly high degree of protection of that coming through, and it's the most significant cost impact that we'll have as a result of the Middle Eastern scenario. In our other divisions, you know, it is an ongoing dynamic pricing model and all of the factors such as supply, demand, production trends, production yields, quality, freight, discharge, competing seasons all go into the mix, and the price is constantly changing. It is much easier to put those kind of changes through. Customers are used to it, consumers are used to it. The prices do change quite considerably over periods of time.
We expect them, and we've seen it. You know, we look at pandemic shortages, logistics disruptions. We had similar circumstance. You know, even tariffs, we had similar scenarios, and we were able to adapt to those circumstances, and we believe we'll be able to adapt appropriately as well. We'd prefer if it wasn't the case, but it is, and we will be able to deal with it.
Yeah. That's great to hear.
Yeah.
I think kind of building on that, and that's an incremental headwind that maybe you weren't expecting at the start of the year, but you still got top-line momentum, some of the profitability, you know, accelerating in the back half on what you already saw. Maybe as we bring it all together, you know, high level puts and takes as you think about your FY 2026 guidance, you know, what are the biggest swing factors you're watching to kind of hitting that $400 million EBITDA number?
Yeah. It's certainly complex, and you're right. It's more complex than we would have anticipated when we first set our target when we were announcing our Q4 numbers. I suppose Rory's just explained the fuel piece of it and how we can expect to get that back as the year progresses. Otherwise, demand, as we've talked about, has been good. Price, we've been able to increase price, and that has been positive. Overall, we think from the banana side, banana and pineapple side, you know, that will flow through well in the year. Our diversified businesses have performed very consistently, and we can put price prices through.
Overall, we feel reasonably good, but it's complex. There's no doubt about it. There's a lot of moving parts, and we certainly wouldn't have anticipated some of the cost pressures that we're now seeing. Demand is good, and that's a key message.
Yeah, absolutely. No, it's tough for everybody, and you guys seem to be managing just well, so that's great to hear. I think, you know, one of the other things I wanted to talk about is just, you kinda touched on this earlier, right? There's been a lot of change in your business over the last few years and part of that has also been moves around just optimizing your asset base, and I know there's still ones like selling a port and then just opportunities to drive efficiency around your whole network. Maybe you could just talk about some of the strategic rationale of moves that you've made over the last couple years. You know, how much more opportunity do you see to optimize your assets going forward?
I mean, I think it's been a constant process. I mean, post the bringing together of Total Produce and Dole, we took a good hard look at the portfolio. I think one of the problem aspects of the business was the value-added salad business. I think the pandemic really highlighted some underlying weakness in that business that was very hard to fix, and it struggled post-pandemic with some excess capacity in that sector. That was a bit of a drag on the business for a few years. I think it's probably even, you know, maybe the most significant drag on our stock price over that period of time. Around the middle of last year, we were very happy to do a deal to exit that particular business.
We also sold another business that we were very happy with, the Progressive Produce business out in California. We got such an attractive price in terms of our leverage, we decided I mean, we got like a double-digit EBITDA multiple on an average of, you know, a number of years' EBITDA, which is maybe double the rating the market was giving to us. Given our debt profile at the time, we decided just it was the right deal rather than a strategic move, and we took it. Then we've been looking at any excess assets that we've got around the group. You know, we sold some, you know, Hawaii in the past within the Dole Food Company used to be an important producing source, but it had become less important.
We've a reasonable land bank in Hawaii that's not producing the EBITDA, so we've been gradually selling down some assets there. As you say, the port in Ecuador, we own, you know, a significant position in the port in Guayaquil in Ecuador. When originally that was built, it became of essential to make our exports of bananas out of Ecuador more efficient and get our own ships in and out of the port. The whole port world has moved on. It needs significant new investment. There are some big port operators out of that in the world now. We had quite a competitive bidding process. TiL, which is a subsidiary of MSC, came out on top, and they've got something like 39 ports worldwide. They're gonna make a significant investment in expanding it.
We'll end up operating on the same commercial terms that we do today, and we'll crystallize $75 million that really was generating quite low returns for us. It's just good asset optimization from our perspective.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I guess on the back of this, right, there's multiple things you went through to get the asset base where it is today. As you kind of sit with more of a clearer path forward, maybe to round out our conversation, if you could just spend some time talking about your overall capital allocation strategy at this point.
I mean, the capital allocation strategy I suppose is a very dynamic subject and, you know, it's one particularly that there may even be different perspective from U.S. investors and European investors and emphasis on different aspects of capital allocation. It's something that we consistently look at all aspects of capital allocation. You know, we've got routine CapEx we like to keep. You know, we have a chunky asset base, we like to keep it well-maintained. We keep our farms up to date. We keep our facilities up to date. We do that as a matter of course. You know, we've held our dividend at a consistent level. There's a chunk of our investor base very happy to have a dividend, a steady, consistent dividend.
You know, we've got some interesting development opportunities, particularly the Scandinavian opportunity to modernize and be at the leading edge of technology in terms of robots, in terms of AI, in terms of technology. We think that that's a very good strategic opportunity. It's a chunky investment. In our terms, $100 million. We've a good track record in Scandinavia. Even if we can get that to work very efficiently, it will be a step change within our industry, it may be a blueprint for further expansionary opportunities. We have a buyback program approved. We have said to the market that we will use it opportunistically rather than programmed.
There's been a lot of volatility in the market, you know, we do use that now almost as the benchmark to judge investments like the Scandinavian investment to make sure that the returns from an investor perspective are at least equal to the returns that we would get from a buyback. If we can beat the buyback return, we think it's a better investment for the long-term growth of the business. I mean, all aspects of capital allocation constantly under review, dynamic process and, you know, I think having the buyback program in place, if there was a sudden correction in the market, it may be an opportunity to do a little bit more in buyback or things like that. We've got the flexibility and we've got the tools in the kit to do it now.
Yeah. That's great. That was very, very helpful color. Thank you. Maybe one topic I didn't hear about, but I'll just follow up on the M&A side. You know, just how do you see opportunities today, appetite across products or regions? You know, what characteristics do you typically look for?
Yeah. I mean, it is products, it is geography. I think our short-term focus is more on bolt-on or tuck-in acquisitions as sometimes called and decided upon. You know, where we can link it into an existing geography. We've a number of smaller opportunities available in markets like Spain, Italy, Ireland, and, you know, we're working on a few of those. As the year progresses, we'll give further updates. They tend to be the best ones for us. You know, it's easier to manage them, it's easier to integrate them, it's easier to get a little bit of synergy. Not huge in the overall scale of things, they do add to the pie and give us a little bit of incremental growth. They're at prices that are sensible.
You know, we're seeing in, say, the berry space, we would probably You know, we're growing step by step internally our berry business. If we wanted to make a quantum leap step in the berry business, we would have to acquire something. At the moment, the berry companies that we're looking at have a significant premium over our rating, so it makes it a little more challenging for us. It's a sector we keep our eyes on. You know, we've seen in the avocado space some further consolidation, Mission acquiring Calavo. You know, we looked at the financial dynamics around that, and that certainly Mission appeared to have an opportunity to get a significant synergy benefit out of that we would not have been able to achieve.
That probably justified them paying a very significant price for that business that again, without the synergy we wouldn't have made. We do have our own internal corporate finance department. We keep a close eye on what's happening in the world, right around the world, Asia, Australia, Europe and America, core markets, so we know who's doing what, generally speaking. We're going to be cautious. We're not going to overpay for businesses. We have a long track record of buying things if we need to be patient for a period of time. We've also had a lot of competition from private equity over the last number of years and, you know, we're seeing some of those come to maturity. We'll see where they go.
It's You know, we're only gonna do deals that we genuinely believe can add to our shareholder value.
Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. I think I have time to sneak one more in and maybe just switching gears a little bit. You recently transitioned to being a domestic filer here in the U.S., obviously several years ago being listed. You know, maybe just talk about the rationale behind the recent move and just maybe next milestones and how you think about the path going forward and what this opens up.
Yeah, I think it was a natural next step for us. We had already been providing all our information in domestic issuer format, and I thought we were ready to file as a domestic issuer. We filed our annual report this year for the first time on domestic issuer form and then for Q1. We think it's important to get access to some of the indices here. We're already in the Russell Index. We achieved that a little while ago and we're seeking access to S&P, MSCI. It's not straightforward, as you may know. We believe we now have all the attributes to allow us to be included, and we're knocking on the door and hope we will.
Particularly we're focused on the S&P initially. We think we can get there. Exactly when, it's difficult to project, predict. Yeah, we're delighted to have that opportunity.
Understood. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much both for all the detail today. This has been a great chat.
Thank you very much, Leah Jordan.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.