Good day, welcome to the Lamb Weston fourth quarter 2018 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Dexter Congbalay, VP investor relations of Lamb Weston. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, thank you for joining us for Lamb Weston's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018 earnings call. This morning, we issued our earnings press release, which is available on our website, lambweston.com. Please note that during our remarks, we'll make some forward-looking statements about the company's performance. These statements are based on how we see things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in our filings with the SEC for more details on our forward-looking statements. Some of today's remarks include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with our GAAP results. You can find the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations in our earnings release.
Please note that all references to our financial results reflect the reclassification of a portion of our incentive compensation costs from selling, general, and administrative expense to cost of goods sold. On our website, you can find a schedule that provides the amounts reclassified by quarter for fiscal years 2016, 2017, and 2018. With me today on our call are Tom Werner, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Robert McNutt, our Chief Financial Officer. Tom will provide an overview of our overall performance and the operating environment. Rob will provide the details on our fourth quarter and full year results and our fiscal 2019 outlook. Let me now turn the call over to Tom.
Thank you, Dexter. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining our call today. We're pleased with our strong performance for the quarter and for the full year. Our financial results reflect our commitment to our customers, our unwavering focus on operating with excellence, and a continuation of the favorable environment that we've enjoyed over the last couple of years. We're proud of the operating momentum that we've been building since becoming an independent company less than two years ago. Fiscal 2018 was a continuation of the entire Lamb Weston organization executing at a high level against our strategic and financial objectives, creating value for all our stakeholders. Our strong fiscal 2018 performance provides us with a solid foundation for future growth. Let me take you through some of the highlights.
Sales increased to $3.4 billion, which is up 8% and above our target growth rate of the upper end of the mid-single digit range. The increase was driven by price mix and volume growth in each of our core segments. Adjusted EBITDA, including unconsolidated joint ventures, increased 16% to $820 million, which is above our target of $805-$810 million. We generated more than $480 million of cash flow from operations. We reinvested nearly $310 million of that cash flow into capital expenditures, with much of it towards expanding capacity to support future growth. We reduced our leverage to 3.2 times adjusted EBITDA from 3.7 times. We increased our dividend and paid out $110 million to our shareholders. Finally, we established a new Lamb Weston Charitable Foundation focused on fighting hunger and food insecurity.
Our strong financial performance in fiscal 2018 is a direct result of the entire Lamb Weston team's sense of pride and ownership, our focus on our customers, and the accomplishments of our supply chain and commercial teams. First of all, our supply chain team continued to improve our safety performance with an OSHA recordable incident rate of below 1.5 for the first time in our history of the company, a major milestone. During the year, our supply chain team supported demand growth and service levels by continuing to operate our manufacturing asset at a very high utilization level. At the same time, the team invested in capacity expansions and productivity programs that will help offset inflationary pressures in the coming fiscal year. In the second quarter, we started up our 300 million pound french fry line in Richland, Washington on time and on budget.
In fact, we were able to ramp up production on the line in record time, which gave us added flexibility to take down other lines for extended maintenance in the back half of the year. Early in the third quarter, we announced another capacity expansion with the addition of a 300 million pound french fry line in Hermiston, Oregon at a total cost of about $250 million and construction is on schedule with a target operational date of May 2019. This line will serve both domestic and international demand. Also in the third quarter, our new 180 million pound facility in Russia became operational and is in the process of ramping up. As you may recall, our interest in this plant is through our Lamb Weston/Meijer joint venture in Europe, which is a minority owner in this facility.
Finally, our 115 million pound french fry plant in China continues to ramp up production levels to serve strategic customers in that fast-growing market. In addition, our raw potato procurement team completed negotiations and entered into agreements with our grower network for the current crop year with price increases in line with expectations. On the commercial side, our teams were able to continue to drive profitable growth and capture market share. In our global segment, we continued to focus on our traditional customer base of chain restaurants to drive domestic growth. We successfully renewed contracts for a large portion of our North America volume base, including implementing new pricing structures and partnering with customers to drive growth through limited time offerings and innovation.
Going forward, we'll continue to support customer growth across North America and in fast-growing international markets like China and Southeast Asia, while expanding our innovation focus to increasingly include non-traditional outlets such as convenience stores, sandwich, and bakery concepts. In our food service segments, we've taken steps to align resources to build and strengthen relationships across our food service customer base, including our distributor partners, small and regional restaurant chains, and independent restaurants. Most notably, over the past few months, we've expanded our direct sales force and eliminated our remaining broker relationships. We've completed hiring a new sales and support team that hit the ground running as we transitioned to a direct sales model in June. The initial response of the market has been positive. Over the long term, we expect this change will lead to deeper customer relationships and broader customer coverage, leading to faster growth and improved mix.
In retail, we drove category growth and gained market share by leveraging our three-tier strategy of offering premium Alexia branded, Mainstream branded, and private label products. At the beginning of our fiscal year, we launched our new Mainstream brand, Grown in Idaho. Today, Grown in Idaho has an ACV of nearly 85% in the grocery channel and total market share of about 4%. In addition, our Alexia branded and licensed brand products have increased share over the past year. With respect to new products and innovation, we teamed with existing and new chain restaurant customers on limited time offers, helping them expand menus and drive consumer traffic. In addition, we announced Crispy on Delivery, a first of its kind comprehensive proprietary fry and packaging solution that enables fries to stay hot and crispy for the fast-growing home delivery channel.
We're in the process of working with some larger chain restaurant customers about adding it to their menus, and we'll begin rolling it out to food service customers later this year. In summary, fiscal 2018 was a terrific year. Our performance reflected our entire team's laser focus on execution against our priorities, as well as each team member's passion and commitment to each other, our customers, and all our stakeholders. Now turning to fiscal 2019, we are targeting another year of solid sales and earnings growth. We anticipate demand growth for frozen potato products in North America to be in line with recent trends, barring any unforeseen economic event that would significantly impact consumer sentiment. We continue to expect that industry capacity in North America will be tight through fiscal 2019, given current utilization levels of around 100%.
This is consistent with the view that we presented in January, which already included the impact of new capacity additions later this calendar year. With solid demand growth and tight industry capacity, we believe the environment to improve both price and mix will remain relatively favorable in the near term. However, as we've demonstrated, we'll continue to take a balanced approach to improve price and mix so that we can maintain and reinforce our strategic customer relationships and deliver sustainable, profitable growth over the long term. In addition, consistent with our growth strategy, we've given notice to our partner in our Lamb Weston BSW joint venture to exercise our call option to purchase their interest. We'll move to close that transaction as soon as practicable. Despite the continued favorable environment, we do see some potential risks and headwinds in the coming year.
First, inflation is accelerating for many of our production costs, and most significantly for transportation costs. As Rob will describe later in our outlook, we anticipate being able to offset these costs through improved price mix and productivity. The higher inflation will likely temper opportunities for significant gross margin percentage expansion. Second, we expect increased market volatility outside the U.S. The imposition of tariffs or other trade barriers raises landing costs for products made in the U.S. and opens the door for more competition from non-U.S. sources in key international markets. At the very least, the threat of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products may encourage customers to seek alternative suppliers. In addition, significant new capacity in Europe becoming operational within the next 12 months may lead to some near-term supply-demand dislocation. The third potential risk is one we face each year, potato crop quality and yield.
As usual, we tend to be cautious about the potato crop, given that we're very early in the growing season. We'll have much better insight as we enter the September and October harvesting period. Finally, as Rob will describe later, we're strategically investing in our infrastructure, resulting in higher SG&A costs. While a significant step up versus FY 2018, these investments will help us support future growth and drive operating efficiencies over the long term. As you can see, we've delivered strong results by supporting our customers and executing well across the organization. We expect the operating environment to remain favorable through FY 2019, and we're strategically investing in our capacity, infrastructure, and capabilities to support growth over the long term. I'm confident that we'll deliver solid top and bottom-line growth in FY 2019 and create value for all our stakeholders.
Now let me turn the call over to Rob to provide the details on our results and our outlook for the coming year. Rob?
Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. As Tom noted, we're pleased with our strong results in the fourth quarter and the full year as we drove sales and EBITDA growth above our long-term targets. Specifically, net sales in the fourth quarter increased 10% to $918 million. Price mix was up 8% as we benefited from new pricing structures in recently renewed contracts in our global segment, and we improved mix in our retail segment. In addition, in food service, we continued to benefit from pricing and mix improvement actions taken in FY 2017, as well as actions taken in the first half of FY 2018. Volume increased 2%, led by growth in our global and retail segments. For the year, sales grew 8% to $3.4 billion, with price mix up 6% and volume up 2%. Gross profit in the quarter increased 18% to $233 million.
Higher price mix, volume growth, and supply chain efficiency savings drove the increase, more than offsetting the impact of higher transportation and warehousing costs, input cost inflation, higher fixed manufacturing cost per unit as we took some downtime for maintenance, higher depreciation expense, primarily associated with our new production line in Richland, and higher incentive compensation expense. Our gross margin percentage in the quarter expanded 160 basis points to more than 25%. For the year, gross profit grew 13%, and gross margin expanded 110 basis points to 25.7%. The improvement was largely driven by favorable price mix, volume growth, and supply chain productivity, more than offsetting higher inflation, depreciation, and incentive compensation costs. In the quarter, SG&A expense, excluding items impacting comparability, increased $23 million to $98 million. Three factors primarily drove the increase. First, incremental labor benefits and infrastructure costs related to operating as a standalone public company.
Second, a $7 million increase in advertising and promotional sport in our retail segment, which was driven by our first on-air campaign for Grown in Idaho branded products as it achieved some key distribution milestones. Third, higher incentive compensation cost based on our actual performance for all of fiscal 2018. The increase in SG&A also includes two additional expenses that we do not expect to recur. The first is approximately $5 million of seed funding to establish our new charitable foundation. The second is roughly $3 million of costs in the fourth quarter and $4 million in the year associated with transitioning our food service segment go-to-market strategy to a direct sales model. This included the cost of hiring and training sales representatives, as well as costs related to terminating our broker relationship.
Adjusted operating income was up 10% to $134 million in the quarter, driven by the increase in gross profit. For the year, adjusted operating income was up 9% to $589 million. Again, this was due to higher gross profit, partially offset by higher SG&A. In the fourth quarter, equity method investment earnings from our unconsolidated joint ventures, which includes Lamb Weston/Meijer in Europe and Lamb Weston RDO in Minnesota, were $25 million. Excluding the year-over-year impact of unrealized gains and losses related to mark-to-market of commodity and foreign currency hedging contracts, equity earnings increased about $8 million in the quarter. Lower potato costs in Europe, as well as volume growth by both joint ventures, primarily drove the increase. In addition, about $2 million of the increase is due to favorable currency translation benefit. For the year, equity earnings were $84 million.
Excluding the mark-to-market impact, equity earnings increased about $34 million, driven by solid operating results, a $5 million currency translation benefit, and a $4 million gain related to a divestiture of a non-core business. Putting it all together, in the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA, including the proportional EBITDA from our two unconsolidated joint ventures, increased 15% to $203 million. For the year, it was up 16% to $820 million. Moving down the income statement, interest expense was about $28 million for the quarter and $109 for the year. Our effective tax rate, excluding the impact of comparability items and provisional impacts from tax reform, was 25% in the quarter and 27% for the year. This is below the 28% that we anticipated due to the benefit of timing and discrete items.
Turning to earnings per share, adjusted diluted EPS increased $0.14 to $0.65 in the quarter and includes a $0.10 benefit from applying a lower tax rate as a result of recently enacted tax reform. The remaining increase was driven by operating gains and higher equity earnings. For the year, adjusted EPS was up $0.34 to $2.66. Operating gains and higher equity earnings drove the increase. The benefit of a lower tax rate was offset by higher interest expense related to debt incurred in connection with the spin-off. Let's review the results for each of our business segments. Sales for our global segment, which includes the top 100 U.S.-based chains, as well as all other sales outside of North America, were up 10% in the quarter.
Price mix rose 8% as we continued to benefit from new pricing structures associated with recently renewed contracts, and continued to improve both customer and product mix. We expect these new pricing structures will continue to deliver solid price mix growth through the first half of fiscal 2019. Volume grew 2%, primarily driven by sales to strategic customers in the U.S. For the year, net sales increased 7%, with price mix up 5% and volume up 2%. Global's product contribution margin, which is gross profit, less advertising and promotional expense, increased $17 million, or about 21% in the quarter. The increase was driven by favorable price mix and volume. This was partially offset by higher transportation, warehousing, commodity input, and manufacturing cost inflation, higher depreciation expense, primarily associated with the new Richland line, and higher incentive compensation costs.
Global's contribution margin percentage expanded by about 190 basis points in the quarter and about 70 basis points for the year. Sales for our food service segment, which services North American food service distributors and restaurant chains outside the top 100 North American restaurant customers, increased 6% in the quarter. Price mix increased 6%, compared to an 8% increase in the prior year period, reflecting pricing actions and continued improvement in customer and product mix. In fiscal 2019, we continue to expect favorable pricing in food service as pricing actions taken in November 2017 continue to be implemented. Because of the timing of contract renewals, broad pricing actions such as these take 6-9 months to be fully reflected in the marketplace. Food service volume grew nominally behind increased shipments of higher margin Lamb Weston branded and operator label products.
However, this was mostly offset by the continued effect of losing some lower margin distributor label volume earlier in the year. As we mentioned in our last earnings call, we anticipate the loss of this volume will continue to be a headwind through the first half of fiscal 2019. For the year, food service sales grew 7%, with price mix up 6% and volume up 1%. In the quarter, food services product contribution margin increased 6%, as favorable price mix more than offset higher transportation, warehousing, input, and manufacturing costs, the Richland depreciation, and higher incentive compensation costs. As a result, food services contribution margin percentage was essentially flat. For the year, it was up about 120 basis points, driven by favorable price mix. Sales in our retail segment grew 26%.
Volume was up 14%, driven by distribution gains of Grown in Idaho and other branded products, as well as growth of private label products. Price mix increased 12%, with higher prices across our branded and private label portfolio, as well as improved mix. For the year, sales grew 17%, with volume up 12% and price mix up 5%. Retail's product contribution margin in the quarter increased 47%, as higher volume and price mix more than offset cost inflation and significantly stepped up advertising and promotional investments behind Grown in Idaho. Product contribution margin percentage expanded by 230 basis points. For the year, retail's product contribution margin increased 13%, while margin percentage declined 70 basis points due to higher trade spending earlier in the year and advertising and promotional support behind Grown in Idaho.
Switching to our balance sheet and cash flow, our total debt at the end of the year was about $2.4 billion. This puts our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio at 3.2x , slightly below our target range of 3.5-4. As we've previously noted, we're comfortable being below our target range for a period of time, as it provides additional balance sheet flexibility. With respect to cash flow, we generated more than $480 million of cash from operations. We invested $309 million in capital expenditures, which included the completion of our new production line in Richland, Washington, and about $50 million to begin construction of a new production line in Hermiston, Oregon. We use the remainder of the cash we generated to pay dividends to our shareholders, as well as debt service. Let me now turn to our fiscal 2019 outlook.
As Tom noted, we anticipate overall favorable operating environment with continued growth in global demand for frozen potato products and high capacity utilization in North America. Higher inflation rates for our production cost and increased volatility in international markets pose some macro risks and headwinds. Consistent with our overall guidance philosophy, we're taking a prudent approach to our fiscal 2019 outlook. Specifically, we're targeting sales to grow in the mid-single digit rate for the year, with stronger growth in the first half as a result of the carryover benefit of pricing actions in our global and retail segments, the benefit of incremental volume availability from our new Richland, Washington capacity, which became fully operational in the third quarter of fiscal 2018, and more difficult year-over-year comparisons as the year progresses. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA, including unconsolidated joint ventures, to be in the range of $860 million-$870 million.
We expect sales and growth profit growth to drive the increase in adjusted EBITDA. We're targeting gross profit to grow at least in line with sales, with favorable price mix and productivity more than offsetting higher input, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing inflation, as well as higher depreciation expense. We anticipate our total production cost per pound to increase in the mid-single digit range. Cost per pound will be a little higher in the first quarter as the effect of planned added downtime and maintenance costs that we incurred in our fourth quarter continue to be realized as we sell that inventory produced during that period. As we've previously stated, we expect our weighted average contracted raw potato price to increase in the low to mid-single digit range on a per pound basis. Contracted prices, as you may recall, are only one element of understanding our total potato cost.
Potato yield, quality, and how they hold up in storage are all key to determining how the potatoes perform in our production facilities and our actual cost. Our outlook anticipates an average potato crop. We'll have more insight on yield and quality of potato crop as the harvest takes place later in the year. We're projecting that the increase in gross profit will be partially offset by significantly higher SG&A. The majority of the increase in SG&A relates to information systems, including investments to modernize our overall IT infrastructure as we continue to fully develop standalone capabilities after transitioning off Conagra systems a few months ago. In addition, it includes some costs related to beginning the process of replacing our mid-1980s vintage enterprise resource planning system.
In addition to inflation, the remainder of the increase in SG&A includes investment in sales, marketing, innovation, operations, and other functional capabilities to execute our growth strategy and drive operating efficiencies over the long term. We anticipate that we'll incur an elevated level of investment behind our IT and ERP infrastructure over the next couple of years, after which we expect our SG&A cost to normalize. With respect to equity method earnings, we anticipate it will increase modestly, reflecting solid underlying operating growth in our joint ventures in Europe and the U.S., as well as lapping a $4 million gain on sale in fiscal 2018. Altogether, operating gains in our base business, as well as a modest increase in equity earnings, will drive the majority of our adjusted EBITDA growth.
We're targeting the rest to be from acquiring the 50% of our consolidated joint venture, Lamb Weston BSW, that we currently don't own. As Tom mentioned, in June, we exercised our call option for that stake. We will finalize transaction as soon as practicable. We anticipate the total cost will be about $65 million and will finance the transaction using cash on hand and our existing credit line as needed. For more details on Lamb Weston BSW, please refer to our SEC filings. In addition, we anticipate total interest expense of around $110 million, which is about the same as fiscal 2018 due to higher interest rates on our variable rate credit agreement. We're targeting an effective tax rate of about 24%, in line with our previous expectation of mid-20s. We expect capital expenditures of about $360 million.
Approximately $200 million of that is related to completing the construction of our new french fry production line in Hermiston, Oregon, which we anticipate will be operational in May 2019. Finally, total depreciation amortization expense will be approximately $150 million, up from nearly $140 this past year. In summary, we're pleased with our performance and the operating momentum that we've built. We expect to deliver another year of solid results in fiscal 2019, driven by sales and gross profit growth, while strategically investing in our capacity, infrastructure, and capabilities to support future growth and operating efficiencies. Let me now turn the call back to Tom for some closing comments.
Thanks, Rob. As you can see, we feel good about how we're executing across the organization and the investments we're making to serve our customers, generate attractive returns, and create value for all our stakeholders over the long term. We're well-positioned to deliver our fiscal 2019 and long-term strategic and financial objectives as we continue on our journey to become the number one global potato company. I want to thank you for your interest in Lamb Weston, and now we're happy to take your questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the one key on your touchtone phone now. If at any time you would like to remove yourself from the questioning queue, just press star two. Again, to ask a question, please press star one now. We are currently holding for the questions. Our first question comes from Andrew Lazar, Barclays.
Got two questions for you. First one would be, I think on your fiscal 2Q call, you had a slide that put your expectation for industry capacity utilization to still be above 100% in fiscal 2019, even with some of the new industry capacity coming online. It sounds like that's broadly still very much your expectation. The reason I ask is because you talked about the carryover benefit from pricing taken last year. I'm trying to get a sense of maybe what percentage of your North American volume have you finished your pricing negotiations with for the coming fiscal year? Given your expectation for continued industry-tight capacity and some inflation cropping up, how should we think about what incremental pricing might be in store as we even lap through the first half of carryover price?
Good morning, Andrew. It's Tom. The first part of your question in terms of capacity, obviously there's some capacity coming on this fall. Our outlook, as we've stated six months ago, is that even with that additional capacity coming on, the industry is going to be still at high utilization levels. There is some normalization within our capacity in terms of, as we brought Richland on, we're running mid-90s. We've had to take some downtime on some other facilities, just some catch-up maintenance. We feel good about where the capacity is of the industry, even with capacity coming online, because there is going to be a normalization effect across the industry network in terms of utilization levels. The second part of your question is we had a pretty big contracting season last year in our global business unit.
In terms of %, I would say we roughly contracted about over around 75% of our North America business.
In global.
In global. Excuse me. Thanks, Dexter. That's largely in place. The timing of those contracts vary in terms of the length of them. As Rob noted in his remarks, we will have a carryover effect of that pricing, particularly in the first half on those contracts. The second part of that, in our food service segment, we do have a portion of that business that's list pricing. Like we do every year, we continue to evaluate the market demand, what's going on with our inflationary costs. We have the ability to react a lot faster in that portion of our business in terms of just taking list pricing.
Got it. Okay, thanks for that. A quick follow-up would just be, you noted that in Europe where some more capacity has come online, there's always the chance close, really more closer in just for some near-term supply-demand disruptions as folks try and fill some of that capacity. I wonder, is that something that we should be concerned about at all as some of this capacity comes online in North America? Or is it just that utilization rates are still so high and tight here that that's just less of a concern for you? Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Andrew. It's absolutely a concern and the environment where we're at today as an industry, we're experiencing a lot of capacity coming online that quite frankly hasn't happened in the past. It's imperative for us to continue to execute our business and our plans. We obviously keep a close eye on what's going on in the marketplace. I will tell you right now, we haven't had any material impact with the capacity coming on, and I think that's a function of two things. One is what I was saying earlier where people are normalizing production and maintaining their plants. The second thing is the demand continues to grow based on our outlook that we gave six months ago. We're watching it. It's a different environment than we've had in the past in the industry.
We'll continue to react the way we need to drive our value creation model.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Andrew Carter, Stifel.
Hi. Good morning.
Morning.
Couple things from me real quick. Good morning. Real quick, could you discuss in your FY 2019 guidance the degree of incremental spending you're expecting, and could you quantifying that and then letting us know how much will be recurring and when will these fully level off?
Thanks, Andrew. Rob. In terms of quantifying, do not want to get into specific numbers in the income statement and guidance, I think you can work backwards into it from the growth in sales guidance that we've given and the EBITDA guidance and the margin guidance. I think you can put that together to come pretty close. Again, the bulk of that spending is related towards IT, and specifically ERP. Those are typically from start to finish in that it'll be over the course of 2019 and 2020 that we expect to put that in place, and thereafter, we expect SG&A levels to normalize.
Thanks. Second one, returning to the top line. You mentioned some difficult comparisons to consider from FY 2018 here, Overall, what's your volume growth outlook, assuming robust operating environment? Should we expect a 2% volume in line with your long-term guidance or something south of that?
Well, the guidance that we'd given was the low to mid single digits.
Sales.
In terms of revenue. Yes. I'm sorry.
Yes. Well, Andrew, are you looking for volume or total?
Volume. Yes, that's correct.
Yeah.
Yeah. Volume is in that low single digits, again, we'll get the carryover benefit from those prices as mentioned.
Okay. Thanks. I'll pass it on.
Our next question comes from Bryan Spillane, Bank of America.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Morning, Bryan.
A couple questions. First, I guess as we were looking at some of the spending that you had in the fourth quarter, some of the more discretionary spending, had you pulled forward anything that you had originally planned to do in fiscal 2019 into the fourth quarter of 2018?
No.
Okay. Second question, just on the Grown in Idaho distribution gains, I would assume some of that has come from some of the supply disruption that has been experienced with Ore-Ida. Just kind of curious as to maybe how sticky some of that distribution is. Is there a chance that you might give some back as Ore-Ida comes back in full production?
Yeah, Bryan, it's Tom. I'd like to think of it as it is going to stick, and we've had great reception from our customers with Grown in Idaho. We have certainly invested behind the brand, in Q4, and right now we're continuing to invest in the brand. It's a terrific product. We get great response, great trial, great repeat once we get the trial. There's no doubt our competitor had some issues in the marketplace, and I feel good about where Grown in Idaho is positioned, and we're gaining velocities, and we're gonna continue to invest behind it. The other thing we've done is serviced our customers, so they understand that, and we've supported their category needs, and it's a great place to be. I feel good about where Grown in Idaho is. We're gonna continue to invest in it.
I will acknowledge there was some gain based on the disruption. I think we're past all that. We continue to see good velocities.
Okay. Just last one for me. I guess the industry outlook is really important, right? It will really dictate whether or not too much capacity has or hasn't been added to the market, and it obviously has an effect on the ability to price. I guess, could you remind us, there was an acceleration in the industry growth in North America since the spin. I think a lot of that has been driven by just how well the food service, especially QSRs, have marketed. Could you just sort of remind us of the factors that have driven this elevated growth and kind of what drives your confidence that that'll continue?
Yeah. As I've stated before, the accelerator was North America and Europe, probably now two and a half years ago, started growing at the two-ish range. 2% on those two marketplaces, that's a lot of french fries. That really accelerated the overall category. In addition to that time, we continued to see a lot of the international markets continued to grow at levels that were consistent to their past. That was really the changer. I think, as I've stated, we think the category is gonna continue to grow at 1.5%-2.5%. I feel good about that continuing. As that happens, that's going to drive capacity utilization even with the oncoming capacity. I feel good about how we're positioned. The category, everything we're looking at continues to be positive. I think we're set up to have another really solid year.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Akshay Jagdale, Jefferies.
Good morning, congrats on a good, solid quarter again.
Good morning, Akshay.
My question's for Rob. I wanted you to help us with the JV issue, right? I'm trying to parse out what your guidance is excluding the JV, the buying of the stake of the RDO JV. Can you help us quantify the impact there? Obviously, it's fully consolidated, so the only impact is going to be on the EBIT line, not on the sales line. I'm assuming some of that is coming up.
Yeah.
Equity income would be Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. If you go down the income statement, you can see where we basically take out the non-controlling interest there. If you go back over the course of last year, that 50% is in the $17 million range. If you look at it from an EBITDA perspective, it's in the $20 million range last year. That gives you some guidance, and I think if you dig into those filings in the income statement, you can pull that out.
Got it. Okay, perfect. Secondly, just on volume growth. Obviously you're assuming, again, low single-digit volume growth, as you mentioned before. With the capacity from the new line that's come on, what are the puts and takes as to why wouldn't it be higher, right? Demand is pretty strong. You're at 95% utilization rates. You have the ability to flex that up significantly. Can you help us understand the puts and takes as to why you're at low single-digit and not, let's say, mid-single-digit on volume?
Yeah. The $300 million of incremental capacity we added, again, was partway through last year, so we had the benefit of that partway through the year. Again, that's on our $5.5 billion base. You run that math, you look at where we had been running at really effectively over 100%, where we've been running the assets very hard. Now we get more normalized capacity utilization so that we can get some of the preventive maintenance done that we need to do during the year. Now, some of that, as I mentioned, took place in Q3, Q4, especially Q4. We'll see some of the cost results of that into Q1. Specifically on the volume issue, it'll be more balanced in terms of capacity utilization and utilization of some of that maintenance downtime.
The other piece is that with the extra capacity, we want to leave some of that available for LTOs, which help support our customers' traffic and growth and their profitability, and that's attractive business for us as well.
Just one last one. On the change on the food service go-to-market model, I'm actually pretty thrilled to hear that, can you give us some perspective on how you arrived to that decision? Because from my perspective, the food service business has been doing really well. It seems like an offensive move. Just trying to get a sense of what kind of positive impact this could have and why you actually took this step. Thanks.
Yeah, Akshay, it was clear to me and our team as we went through our strategic planning process that this move is the next evolution in our food service organization and where we want to take that business. I'm a big proponent of having control of our products. Our salespeople now, we're going to have great coverage across the marketplace. They'll all be focused on selling french fries. When you have a broker, they've got a lot of different things in their bag. I'm excited about it. The team's excited about it. We got great people that came on into the organization. It's early innings right now, but I'm excited about the opportunities that these folks are going to find, and it's just the next evolution in our food service strategy.
Perfect. Thanks a lot. I'll pop off.
Our next question comes from Adam Samuelson, Goldman Sachs.
Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Hi, Adam.
I guess first question is on Europe and just making sure. I want to understand a little bit what's in the outlook for the Lamb Weston/Meijer joint venture. Obviously, there's more capacity in the industry, and there's a competitive impact there. Potato futures in Europe have been up pretty significantly of late, given what seems to be some unfavorable weather in Northwest Europe and also, currency. Just help me understand the moving pieces of the outlook for the European business and what's actually embedded in the guidance there.
Sure, Adam. Our European business, much like our North American business, has really been operating at pretty strong capacity levels there. They've been operating the assets pretty hard. From our perspective, last year, as you recall, raw prices dropped significantly, and we were able to hold onto prices, that helped us expand margins in that business there. I think it's important to understand that all capacity is not equal, and some of the capacity being added tends to be more what we would refer to as line flow capacity as opposed to some of the QSR-capable capacity that is really the sweet spot of the market that we participate in in Europe. Demand capacity in our markets where we service, we feel pretty good about in Europe.
The additional capacity we anticipate will have some impact, but feel good about our position and where we're positioned in the market. Your point on raw costs in Europe and in the futures market, Europe's been seeing some drought conditions here recently and some hot weather. One hot day doesn't make a summer, we're monitoring that closely. The early crop appears to be okay in the Umatilla region. The later crop, we are watching that closely and looking into how that's going to impact. As you know historically, product prices tend to move more in Europe with those raw prices. We're watching that closely, watching our ability to move market price, et cetera, in Europe.
The other point I'd make is that our plant in Austria, as well as in the U.K., give us a little bit different climate from what we're seeing in the Umatilla. Overall in Europe, we don't forecast the currency into our outlook per se any different than it is today. Overall, as mentioned, we'll be up modestly in Europe, with some of the increased sales gains there. Recognize that we are lapping. We've got that $4 million gain on the sale of the non-core business in Austria that we saw. Really early in 2019, FX is a bit of a drag.
Okay. That color's helpful. Maybe just a question back in the North American business. Some color about going after some kind of new market opportunities in different channels in convenience, bakery, also on the delivery side. Any way to quantify any impact from those or what kind of opportunities you think those could be over a two, three, four-year period?
Yeah, Adam, it's really early to quantify that right now, but I will tell you, we've reorganized our innovation organization six, nine months ago, and it's a focus area, as I mentioned before. We have some really interesting new products that obviously I can't get into on the call, but I'm excited about where we're at right now. It's really early in the process as we explore those channels. We have a terrific Crispy on Delivery product and innovation in packaging that we've launched. That's early innings, too. As those start to develop and opportunities start to present themselves and we start executing in the marketplace, I'll keep you updated on those developments.
Okay. I appreciate the color. I'll pass it on. Thanks.
Thanks, Adam.
Our next question comes from Michael Gallo, C.L. King.
Hi. Good morning.
Good morning, Michael.
Just a couple of questions. First, in terms of the transition of the go-to-market strategy from the broker-led sales model to the direct sales model, can you talk about how long you think it'll take to kind of ramp things up or start to see the benefits? Just more specifically, where you think you'll get the biggest benefits from that change? Thanks.
Sure, Michael. We've been very prudent in our planning and our ramp-up time. Obviously, we've got a lot of new talented folks we brought on board. There's a training element with that, as you can imagine. I expect to start seeing some impact modestly in the second half of this year. We're in startup mode. It's early innings, like I said, and we'll start seeing opportunities in H2. The other thing is it's really about coverage directly with a lot of the independents that I believe continues to grow, and it's an area that we're going to be laser-focused on going forward, but that's really where the big benefit's going to be.
Okay, great. Then just a follow-up question. When we think about LTOs, we think about the overall rate of industry growth. It would seem that the industry growth rate perhaps could have been even higher over the last year had the industry had capacity to pursue more LTOs. I was wondering, as we think about some of this new capacity coming online in the back half
Whether that might actually lead to a higher industry growth rate than we've seen because there'll just be more capacity to do perhaps some of the more non-traditional LTOs. Thanks.
Yeah, Michael, I think the way to think about it is LTOs with customers, that's part of their playbook and their plan. At times, those take a long time to go to market. When a customer decides to do an LTO, it's really got to fit with their strategy and their consumer. There's a lot of product development that goes into it. Just the addition of capacity does not translate into more LTO offerings. Certainly, as we interact with our customers, we're always bringing them creative ideas based on products and opportunities and things that we see in other markets. It's a process. Like I said, open capacity is not going to translate into more LTOs. There's other opportunities with customers and new customers that we're pursuing with the capacity that we brought online.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mike.
Okay, we have time for one final question. Next question comes from Brett Hundley, The Vertical Group.
Hey, good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for allowing me the questions. I just have two for you. Rob, the first is, I just want to make sure I'm crystal clear on what you said at the end of your prepared remarks about SG&A remaining elevated across the next couple of years. When we think about the guidance that you gave for fiscal 2019, as I just think about my model beyond that, should I be thinking about the SG&A expense ratio continuing to grow beyond fiscal 2019? Or should I just think about that step up in absolute terms from fiscal 2019 maybe continuing into fiscal 2020 before it potentially falls off? I hope that question makes sense. Then Tom, just my second question is for you.
You referenced contracting and how you have the majority of that done into parts of fiscal 2019, and it sounds like you're being very open and honest about where the industry sits today, that the industry remains favorable and in a good place today. Then it sounds like you're being very open and honest about potential risks on the horizon down the road. The one thing I wanted to revisit with you was just maybe if you could go deeper into the nature of contract talks with customers. Because one thing that I found really odd was there were some recent media reports that McCain was looking at property in Idaho for a potential processing facility. They actually came out publicly and said, "Oh, we're just evaluating. That doesn't mean that we're going to build." It just seemed like a very odd action from them.
I'm just wondering if you could maybe further describe the nature of contract talks with customers and if customers are really starting to bring up forward capacity additions and what that price discussion looks like. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Yeah. Brett, let me take the SG&A first, and then I'll let Tom follow up on the capacity issue. On the SG&A, again, recognize that we spent some money getting off of Conagra's and building our IT capabilities internally as we came off of that in the back half of the prior year, 2018. As we go through building the IT infrastructure and the new ERP, that will elevate our dollars here for the next couple of years, as I said, 2019 and 2020, I anticipate. I think about SG&A as a percentage of sales and where we've been running in the kind of 80-ish% range. We'll elevate that as a percentage of sales for a couple of years and then revert back to normal once we get the IT infrastructure in place.
Again, while we're elevating from where we have been historically, I think it's important to note that if you look at our comps, and again, there's no straight potato comp as we are. If you look at other CPGs and adjust for things like advertising and promotion, we're still at the low end of the range in discipline in terms of SG&A spending. I think that's important to keep in mind.
Yeah, Brett, in terms of your second question, I do not specifically talk about our customer and our contracting process and the nuances around that. As I said, we've contracted a large proportion of our global business unit, North America chain business this past year. It's our normal process. I will tell you the other part of this is our competitors, we keep a close eye on what's going on in the industry with capacity. We have a really good feel for what's happening or not happening or what's announced and what it really means. We'll continue to do that. In terms of how they're adding capacity and where and when, that's something that we've got a good handle on. That's their decision.
My focus, my team's focus is on continuing to execute against our operational activities and make sure all that lines up with our strategic plan going forward. That's what we're focused on. We keep a pulse on what's going on in the market. Again, in terms as you can respect, in terms of talking specifics customer contracting, I will never get into that.
Thanks so much.
Hi, this is Dexter. Just one quick clarification. Either somebody asked a question or we misspoke on one thing. We exercise the option on our joint venture on Lamb Weston BSW. Either the question or we misspoke. Somebody might have heard Lamb Weston RDO. We exercise the option on Lamb Weston BSW. Our relationship and our joint venture with RDO remains the same, and there are no plans to have any changes associated with that. With that, this is going to be the end of our call. Happy to have any questions, follow-ups later on today over the next week or so. Please shoot me an email if you'd like to schedule some time. We'll go from there. Thank you very much.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.