All right. First, thank you very much. Welcome back. Next on stage, Hormel Foods, a global branded food company with over $12 billion in annual revenues across 80 countries worldwide. Brands include Skippy, SPAM, Hormel Natural Choice, Applegate, Justin's, Wholly Guacamole , Columbus Craft Meats, Hormel Black Label, and Planters, which also thank you very much w e got a little bit of a presentation outside in the hospitality room. Today, joining us from Hormel, we have Jacinth Smiley, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Mark Ourada, Group Vice President for the Foods ervice operations. Jacinth joined Hormel just in April of 2021. She currently leads all financial areas of Hormel, including strategy, performance, reporting and long-range business planning, as well as Investor Relations, Treasury, tax, accounting, and internal controls and IT.
Mark is Group Vice President of Foodservice at Hormel Foods. In this position, he's actually responsible for the sales and marketing of all Foodservice products within the U.S. He began his career at Hormel in 1988 and has spent the majority in Foodservice. So, the new organizational structure as part of Go Forward, Mark oversees all the company's domestic Foodservice business, legacy Hormel Foodservice, Jennie-O Foodservice, and all the affiliated businesses, which he will provide some more color on later. The company just reported third quarter results, fiscal quarter last week.
Given there were certain challenges on a year-to-date basis as well as a wide range of outcomes expected in the near term, near to medium term, we'd like to just ask the most pressing questions from investors and to kick it off with you. But first of all, thank you very much for joining us, Jacinth, Mark.
Thanks for having us.
All right. So Jacinth, to maybe start it off, during the most recent earnings call, you clearly provided a fairly wide range of issues that have been affecting current results. One of them being the softer turkey environment. Could you elaborate on what those issues are and how you're tackling those? And then I'll just have a follow-up on that.
Yeah, certainly. So, our Q3 results, just a reminder, was definitely in line, you know, generally with expectations. And one of the good news, certainly for the quarter, is that we grew volume. So even when we allowed our business, volume was strong across the entire business overall. Now, if we take a step back to Q1, when we talked about the dynamics that were affecting us then, it was very different than now. So, then we talked about, a couple internal dynamics, which included where we were from an inventory perspective. Planters was an area that we wanted to make sure we get that back on track, and then from a margin perspective and just cost, that was an area that we were focused on.
The good news is all those three areas have improved, and we've done what we said we were going to do. So non-working inventory is down. Planters, we're seeing the momentum there. We're better performance. We have better performance on sales. We have innovation in the marketplace. You can see that from the different flavors in the cashews that we now have in market. And I can see that the folks here are really loving that because the shelf there in the snack room is completely out. So the Planters innovation is working well. And then we've spent a lot of time from a cost out perspective, from our supply chain and getting that healthy. We're working on those areas, those areas are working well.
As we think about this quarter and going into the rest of the year, it really is a very different dynamic, and it's more around what's happening with the market itself, the consumer dynamic, which is different, and also just the competitive landscape that has changed as the consumer base and the industry has gotten more healthy from a supply chain perspective, so that you're seeing the competition being very different. So, Foodservice, our Food service business continues to perform very strongly, Mark will talk about that. And the areas overall from a category perspective, that we are very strong for us. If we think about pepperoni, bacon, SPAM, and Planters as well, continues to be a strength for the company, and that's where we're very focused. The areas where we are working on are our International.
Our International business, that has definitely been challenged and will continue to be challenged for the rest of the year. That's weaker than expected for sure. And then when we think about our Retail business, that's a little bit more complex, and that's where we're seeing the competition. Back to my comment about the industry getting stronger and healthier from a supply chain perspective. That competition on shelf and in market has been more, and so we're really focused on getting with the lift from a low point where we can, whether it be hitting it with promotions where necessary, but also being focused on innovation and really getting out into the market and driving, you know, top line and bottom line. So we're absolutely focused in the areas that we need to. Turkey has been a headwind for us.
That has certainly brought on new supply as we came out of HPAI last year, gotten supply back into the marketplace. But that's also an area for us that's been uncertain. And as we have gotten healthier as well from a yield perspective, our birds are performing better. We have a lot more meat in the market, but the market, the prices in the market has also come down tremendously. So we now have extra meat, and we're anticipating, and that's an area that we're also navigating that has caused a bit of pressure for us, for the Q3 and then also weighing into the back half of the year. But we're focused in the right areas, focused on ensuring that we're driving volume. Hopefully, turkey continues to recover.
Our expectation, hopefully, is that the customers are perhaps waiting for markets to come down even further, and we'll hopefully drive more volume there. But we're also controlling what we can and working on projects to capture cost savings and continuing the margin expansion. So a long, long response there, but we're focused on what we can control. And as I said, you know, Q1 was a different dynamic, but it was more around the internal dynamics for the company, and then now it's really navigating the external market from a consumer perspective as well.
To combine the next two questions, like, you touched on Retail, and you touched on the foods, on the International piece of it, but also on everything on, like, the internal efficiencies you've been working on. So, as you think this through, and you clearly managed to improve efficiencies internally over the last couple of quarters within the domestic market, so is there anything you would say there is a lesson learned opportunity in how we should just think about International going forward? Is it liking the playbook that you kind of applied in the U.S., that's something you can take on into the International side? How should we think about the timeline here as well, just given it was a relatively fast turnaround in the U.S.? Could International be as fast, or is there just an intrinsic slower process?
Certainly. So we think about our International business in three pillars. That we have the export piece of the business, the multinational, which is more around in country for a country like China, Brazil, and then we have our partnerships, where it's particularly the Philippines, Indonesia. And so when we think about the export piece, where its primarily commodity driven, in some cases, that's created some challenges for us year-to-date. As we see the markets recover from a turkey perspective domestically, then we will see improvement for the International piece as well when we think about exports. And then, you know, China certainly is off to a very slow recovery. The Foodservice piece, and we could, Mark can expand more on that, that Foodservice piece is strong in China today.
It's really the Retail side of the house that we're seeing the challenges. And one of the things we're seeing in the market, certainly our products, is more discretionary, in that market. And when customers have to make a decision, or consumers need to make a decision about what do they buy, if it's discretionary, certainly they're going to buy what's considered affordable. And so that's part of the challenge. And then we also took pricing on SPAM, in one of our markets, and we're seeing the elasticities show up there, and that we're also managing with promo and expect that will recover first half of, or first quarter of next year.
The dynamic there for sure looks pretty good, and we're confident about the model that we have in the U.S. and, and elsewhere, that that's still the right model for us for the International business. Just a reminder, I mean, prior to this, our International business was really growing and had consistent sequential quarterly growth, and we expect that that will return as China recovers and as turkey itself recovers as well. We have made really good investments in International that we know will really pay off in the long term.
Thank you. Let's switch gears and talk a little bit about Foodservice, Mark. It's really very positive results. On a year-to-date basis, quarter was really good, very good margin, contribution here. So what's been driving this, and what, how should we think about the segment's profitability just beyond this fiscal year, just medium term? Because it's been so strong recently. What's a normal level?
Thanks again for having us today. I really appreciate that. So really, I like to think about it as, as kind of our approach, kind of a unique approach, but it's about a balanced model, it's about mix, and it's about our people. So when we talk about the balanced approach, first of all, our portfolio. You know, the restaurant industry, you know, the needs change constantly, and what we really do is we try to develop a portfolio of products that's very value added, that really addresses the areas that our operators need. So think of today, the labor concerns out there, how important it is to provide products that are, I'll say, pre-cut, pre-sliced, pre-portioned, to help, you know, customers buy products that are gonna be consistent. They're not gonna require as much labor and prep time.
You know, you think about a restaurant, a busy restaurant, I mean, time is money, seconds are money. So if we can help take a process and cut that time in half for them to prepare and work on other areas, that's a, that's a big advantage to us. So, I think we've continued to evolve and innovate in the areas that make sense for our customers. We listen to them. The second piece is really the segmentation of the industry. So we are very well positioned across the industry in the different segments. So think of commercial restaurants, think of non-commercial, your healthcare, college, university, think of convenience stores, commissaries, all those different types of segments. We're very well positioned in those, in those markets. So, at times in the industry, one area may be struggling a little bit, and another area may be doing better.
Our balance allows us to do that. If you think of coming through COVID and how the lodging industry was just decimated. And we were impacted by that because we do a lot of lodging, but we also had opportunities in other areas to really start accelerating growth, like convenience stores. So, you know, the balanced portfolio, along with our balance within the industry, allows us to weather a lot of that and continue to drive higher margin, you know, value-added products. And the last piece is really our go-to-market strategy. So the majority of our portfolio, not all of it, but a majority, is supported by our direct sales force. And over the years, I mean, that has allowed us to develop deep relationships that we continue to nurture over the years.
As you're going through some of these more difficult times in the industry and the economy, it helps us stay grounded with our customers and really continue to work closely with them. And so our entire team is committed to that. Our culture is one of figuring out solutions. How do we make this work? And getting after it. So I think that combination of things really has set us up to continue to drive profitable growth.
We'll come back to that in a bit, but just on the short term, to wrap it up, Jacinth. The updated guidance for the last three months is still a fairly wide range of outcomes. You already said on the call last week that you expect to update the market actually with your Investor Day upcoming in about five weeks. Just remind us maybe about the puts and takes, the higher risk, the lower end, and why in particular the sales piece is still somewhat vague, just in order of outcomes in the aggregate.
Certainly. So going back to, you know, the conversation we had on the call, we certainly have a lot more visibility to the bottom line than the top line, just given the volatility in the market that drives the top line. So, for example, beef markets have been pretty volatile, and we saw an unseasonably low market going into Memorial Day, for example, and then it really has been going up and down. And so when you think about that, it's harder to predict where the markets will land, because if the market is high, then you can have a higher top line. And so that range is really could really move quite a bit versus the bottom line we have.
We have a tighter hold on what that may look like, and so that's really the dynamic that we're facing. So, it really depends on where markets are, how does the turkey recover, and then our focus is on our ability to just really capture savings to help them drive the bottom-line results from a margin and segment profit perspective.
Got it. Now, shifting a little bit more medium term, but still looking back a few years ago. You introduced a new operating model, and it was all about supply chain improvement, et cetera. If you think about it, everything that's been implemented over the last couple of years, and now as we come out of COVID, how do you think the new model has helped you to actually mitigate the more recent pressure? And if we hopefully get a more normal year, fiscal 2024, what are the real strengths of this model as it relates to your opportunity to excel in the different segments?
Yeah. So just a reminder, you know, it was a year ago here that we introduced that new model, and so we're currently focused on just continuing to stand up that model so that it can be effective to drive the outcome that we know is there to capture the value and also to continue to evolve the company. And as we sit here today, we have done a few different things. As a reminder, one of them is having this center of excellence called Brand Fuel, and it's all around just really focused on innovation, using insights, external insights, consumer insights, to drive those innovations. But also then to fuel the decisions that we make for the company as we look forward to what should we be doing, what should be we bringing to market?
How should we think about pricing and performance on shelves and all of that? So that's really working well across the company. The other piece, we're also integrating Jennie-O into the rest of the legacy Hormel, which we didn't have before. So, I mean, it's really bringing the power in my mind, and harnessing the value of the entire portfolio that we have and bringing that to bear on the market in a way that we didn't do before. So that is working well, and I'm sure, you know, Mark has seen that as well. And so, we need to show up with a toolkit of an entire portfolio of products that we have to offer the customer and the consumer. So that's really working well.
The other piece is when we look across the, the enterprise, being able to make decisions in a, in a way that we didn't before because we're using the enterprise lens versus doing it in a siloed fashion. And so, you know, a part of that, too, is, you know, we, we talk about our, our people, but our people also, in my mind, hopefully all to play in this model, because then, I, I think about finance and being a strategic partner to the business. Now, finance is really focused on truly helping the business drive decisions with data.
On the marketing team that used to be doing some of that analysis on their own, they're focused on driving brand value and protecting the brands in a way that they didn't before, because their peers looked at that way, and then finance is truly helping them with the information to go do that in a different way. And so we're seeing the value from that, and that to translate from a long-term perspective as our new ways of working become more like listening. And so we're super excited about and really focused on the long term. And then the other piece of that then is around our supply chain and operations and being and getting more effective in taking costs out of the system.
We have a few different projects that's on the way that we'll spend more time on during Investor Day to tell you about. But those projects are about, you know, helping us return to normalize, a normalized margin structure for the company and taking costs out of the system, because we know we can't price our way through everything. And so how do we get more efficient to be able to drive for the shareholder and for the customer and consumer?
Okay. And I can just add a little color, too, on the Foodservice side. So, you know, as Jacinth mentioned, we had an opportunity in this Go Forward structure to really start to align the different pieces of the business. So, in Foodservice, we had our legacy team, but then we had our affiliated businesses. We had Jennie-O Foods, we had Hormel Health Labs. We brought those all together under one roof. Now, they're all very unique in how they go to market. Some are very customized in what they provide, and, and different things like that. But what this allowed us to do is, is collaborate much more internally, and customer facing. We were able to go in with a much broader perspective of what they might need, a broader breadth of product.
You know, for example, if you think of a chain account, you know, maybe somebody in our team was calling on that account, and another part of our business wasn't had no relationship. We have found that coming together, we can bring those folks into the picture, expand the products available, and really start to do exactly what the customers need and provide more solutions. So it's really been good for us to bring things under, get a little bit better idea of what everybody's doing. Now going forward into 2024 and beyond, we're dialing that in even tighter as we continue to expand. So it's been very good.
If you just within Foodservice, if you compare how it works today, and you've mentioned, like, you get the product portfolio, you go to your customers, you maybe have more solutions, maybe someone didn't know whom to talk to, now you do. That's obviously something that, that's been a material shift in the customer experience. But if you think about it, how is it for you on the execution side? Are there any challenges to overcome, and how does that compare to, like, maybe pre-pandemic, the old system, then by the end of the pandemic, introducing the new one, and how you can now actually deliver these strong results? It seems Foodservice is like kind of the success story. So, I really would like to understand what, what's particularly behind the Foodservice to be so successful.
Sure. So I think you brought up an interesting time for all of us. It's pre-COVID and after COVID, right? What was going on before. So, you know, heading into COVID, I'd say the industry, you know, was facing many of the same challenges around labor and things like that. But clearly, COVID decimated the industry. You know, lost thousands of restaurants. But as we've learned over the years, whether it's recession or a worldwide pandemic, it's a very resilient industry. So, we kinda knew it was gonna come back, just weren't sure all the different spaces. So as we came out of COVID, you know, parts of the industry had picked up delivery, you know, drive-through. Parts of the business that a lot of operators didn't do, that became very, very big.
Ghost kitchens, commissaries, different parts of the business. And so as we came through that, we realized that, you know, we had a lot of options for all those different things. We just didn't have them collected in one spot. So we found ourselves possibly going down two paths to get to the same conclusion. As we brought the businesses together, we've gotten much better and much more efficient at saying: Here's a customer channel. How do we best go after it, and, and how do we pursue it? So I think we're gonna be much more concise in what we bring to the operators and, and the distributors and, and much more clean on what they're looking for. So, I think it's helped us for sure as we move forward.
Well, thanks for that. Now, Jacinth, one of the other things, and you've brought it up, multiple times already in the conversation, is just the commodity piece with turkey and the ups and downs on what's happening on pricing. We all know HPAI, there's, it's still like lingering, and there's still issues. So if we think about the more recent impact from it on operations, but also what are your assumptions for the next couple of quarters and into the next year as it relates to potential outbreaks, issues coming back or not? How comfortable are you on the situation right now?
Certainly. You know, I'll start with we're super happy that we have turkey back. You know, we were sitting here, you know, in a different place, as we thought about, you know, where we were last year with HPAI and having turkey in the portfolio and having certainty of supply is, it's huge for us. And so as we think about the uncertainty, it's certainly uncertain as to what happened each year with turkey, but it's a space that we're absolutely committed to for the long term for this company, which is part of why we integrated it into the legacy part of the business. But that being said, we now have a lot of meat, we have a lot of supplies.
The birds have been doing extremely well, and so we're looking for turkey to recover. And that's our hope going into the rest of the year and, you know, and into next year, that we will actually continue to have that supply. And as we think about the rest of our business and having that meat go into value added, that's really where we want the meat to go so that we can continue to have higher margins. And looking for the market itself to also recover because it's at one of the lowest levels for a very long time. So think about where breast meat sits today, and whole birds and, you know, the bookings have been down and volume has been down.
When we think about our guidance, and we don't do guidance for, you know, for the guidance, by any means, but when we think about the guidance that we gave in coming down for the fourth quarter, we're contemplating, right? We're contemplating all of that because we don't have, you know, the certainty about what will happen with turkey.
W e're also thinking about the cost, the cost structure for the business and continuing to drive volume in Retail and across all the different categories and paying attention to where we need to really apply any kind of promotion to continue to drive that volume as well. And so, all of that is really in the guidance that we have given for the company. But we really feel strongly about, you know, where we sit, knowing that we do have the uncertainty and some of the competitiveness I talked about in Retail.
Volume pricing, obviously sensitivities, you talked about it, and the International markets, there's certain elasticities coming in. So if we look into that and we think about normal consumption patterns, clearly cost pressure is easing, but if we think about the future growth algorithm, and I know in the past you always talk about, like, this 2%-3% top line growth, how should we think about this is going to turn out price versus volume? And where are issues maybe in the short term, from an elasticity point of view, if you still remain maybe too aggressive on pricing, volume not coming back. So what's the right balance, and how should we think about the growth top line in the medium term?
Yes, certainly, again, you know, goes back to the top line has a bit of, right, it's a bit more nuanced based on the commodity market. But I would say we continue to drive the top line and bottom line, the margin piece of it. We're really focused on the transformation work that we're doing from a cost-supply chain perspective, getting costs out to expand the margins. The other piece of our algorithm that's not that we don't talk about as much, but we still have as a focus as a company, is on the innovation side. So as we came out of COVID, during COVID, we weren't as focused on it because we were just focused on getting products on shelves to the customers.
Then now coming out of COVID, we are now back to accelerating innovation. So we're still focused on that 15% innovation number that we have put out there, and that's an area that will continue to drive volume, long-term value for our customers and for the consumer. And that will really help us when we're thinking about how we really accelerate and get back to the market structure that we're looking for. So I mean, it really is a combination of really focusing on where we can drive value for the customer through promotions, through innovations, and then also focusing on the long term, from a transformation of our operations and our supply chain.
Got it. Mark, if you think about the long-term expectations for your business, where do you see Hormel Foodservice, the rest of the industry, going in the next, say, three to five years?
Yeah. So I think, you know, as I talked about kind of our model and how we're going to market, you know, I see that continuing. So we're gonna continue to innovate, produce the high quality, you know, value-added products that are for Foodservice. I would continue with the segmentation and skate to where the puck is gonna be, so to speak, and understand what new parts of the business are coming forward that we need to put more resources against. So that piece of it, I believe we're gonna continue to do things in that space that's gonna help us deliver results. We change, though, you know, there's areas that we're leaning to more. So think of digital. You know, as we've looked over the last couple years, digital has become much more important.
I think the number is between 70% and 75% of operators and restaurants are purchasing their products from their distributor partners online. Okay, that's new. It hasn't been that high in years past. So, when we think about the digital space, we've got to do better. We've got to show up really, really well with our distributors on their websites. We've got to be able to show up to our operators, you know, through digital advertising and marketing and things like that. So, we're working really hard on that space. And then finally, the other piece that's relatively new to F oodservice, unlike Retail, but over the last, I'll say five or six years, the data and analytics that have come our way is getting much, much larger. So, you know, we're putting resources against understanding that data and then executing strategy against it.
You know, that's gonna be a big piece, you know, as we move forward, is really understanding the digital piece and leaning into that. And then just culinary, you know, just being a Food Forward company. We've stood up what we call our Culinary Collective. So, we continue to add chefs and build on this business because we want to give our operators the experience, bring them into our corporate office, our new innovation center, and really show them what we can do for them. So, we're gonna continue to lean into those areas a little bit heavier as we move forward.
Okay. If we think about capital allocation, and just, if you could share maybe a few examples of some of the investments on growth initiatives or just innovation initiatives from a CapEx perspective, but also how we should think about just the need to spend money or to reinvest money in the business in the medium term and the balance versus dividend, also in light of the somewhat softer earnings growth. So the dividend growth, where is that gonna shake out?
Certainly. So, as I come into this seat, the focus in our capital allocation strategy hasn't changed and will not. I'm fully supportive of what, you know, the how the company has focused on the past, and I'm aligned with the strategy. And just a reminder, it's really in this order, you know, what's required, what's strategic, what's opportunistic. And from a requirement standpoint, dividends are at the top, and that continues to be a focus for us, maintaining the dividends. And then when we ask about you know, just maintenance of the business and what do we need to actually continue to run our plants and support our assets, that's next. We certainly support the business from the standpoint of the expansions we have done for you know, SPAM, bacon, pepperoni.
Those are critical areas that we continue to see expansion. But we've put in, you know, about $300 million of CapEx each year, and that continues to be a level that we feel is good to sustain the business and whatever comes forward that we feel from a strategic standpoint, then we have strong cash flow to be able to support that. And so we will continue to do that as we see fit. And definitely, you know, paying down any debt that we have, pensions, those are areas of that we consider to be required. And from a strategic standpoint, certainly, you know, M&A, when we find something that's compelling enough that we think fits into our strategic priorities and then opportunistically, debt, share repurchases for sure.
That capital allocation strategy will continue to be how we run the business. I feel really good about that in terms of being able to be financially sound, and having investors feel good about the fact that we are still, in my mind, a fairly conservative company that really doesn't go out on a limb and take huge risks and is very balanced in terms of driving shareholder return.
Perfect. Well, Jacinth, Mark, thank you very much. Just about a minute out, so let's close it out. Thank you very much for coming and joining us.
Thank you.
We're gonna be over in the breakout room in case there are questions from the audience. Thank you very much.
Thank you.