Good morning. My name is Jeannie, I will be your Conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Phibro Animal Health Corporation Q2 Fiscal Year 2023 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question again press the star one. Thank you. Damion Finio, Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.
Thank you, Jeannie. Good morning, and welcome to the Phibro Animal Health Corporation earnings call for our fiscal year 2023 second quarter ended December 31st, 2022. My name is Damion Finio, and I am the Chief Financial Officer of Phibro Animal Health Corporation. I'm joined on today's call by Jack Bendheim, Phibro's Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel Bendheim, Director and Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Today, we will cover financial performance for our second quarter and share our current thinking on financial guidance for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2023. At the conclusion of our opening remarks, we will open the lines for questions. I'd like to remind you that we are providing a simultaneous webcast of this call on our website, www.pahc.com.
On the investors section of our website, you will find links to the earnings press release and second quarter Form 10Q filed with the SEC yesterday, as well as the transcript and slides discussed and presented on this morning's call. Our remarks today will include forward looking statements and actual results could differ materially from those projections. For a list and description of certain factors that could cause results to differ, I refer you to the disclosure notice marked forward-looking statements in our earnings press release. Our remarks include references to certain financial measures which were not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles or US GAAP. I refer you to the non-GAAP financial information section in our earnings press release for a discussion of these measures.
Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable US GAAP measures are included in the financial tables that accompany the earnings press release. We present our results on a GAAP basis and on an adjusted basis. Our adjusted results exclude acquisition-related items, unusual non-operational or non-recurring items, other income expense as separately reported in the consolidated statements of operations, including foreign currency gains and losses net, and lastly, income tax effects related to pre-tax adjustments and unusual or non-recurring income tax items. Let me introduce our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Jack Bendheim, to share his perspective on Phibro's second quarter financial performance and guidance for our fiscal year 2023. Jack?
Thank you, Damian, and good morning, everyone. Our top line continues to grow. Second quarter net sales of $245 million reflects growth of 5% over the same quarter last year. This improvement was driven by 9% and 27% sales growth of our Animal Health and Performance Products segments, respectively, offset by an 8% decline in Mineral Nutrition. In our core business segment, Animal Health, we reported our seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth in each of our three major product categories. On a calendar year basis, this translates into sales growth of more than 20% in 2022 over 2020, which relative to some industry reports puts us in the top tier of animal health companies.
Our Mineral Nutrition business was down year over year, primarily reflecting the lower value of the underlying commodity minerals, such as copper, that drives this business. Our Mineral Nutrition business is also the one area where we have exposure to the U.S. feedlot industry, where we are seeing fewer cattle placements as compared to the same quarter last year. In terms of sales by region, we realized 12% growth in Latin America and Canada, and 7% growth here in the United States. Our markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific declined due primarily to the lingering effects of COVID-19 and persistent economic challenges. Overall, we posted a strong financial performance for the first half of our fiscal year with an even stronger projected second half. I also want to share that we added companion animal experience to our board of directors.
On Monday, we announced that Alejandro Bernal, the newly appointed President and CEO of PetDx, joined our board. Alejandro is a former executive in Mars Veterinary Health and worked in senior positions at Zoetis. We welcome his insights and believe they will be particularly impactful with respect to our companion animal business, which we seek to meaningfully grow over the coming years as we continue to focus on progressing our pipeline of projects in development and on growing Regano. Looking beyond Phibro, the global economy is showing signs of improvement, but there are still challenges. The improving trend of the consumer price index is encouraging, but of course, for margins to improve, input costs will need to decline, and we will need to work through higher-priced inventory on hand.
We are focused on maintaining continuity of supply, which has resulted in us adding about one month of inventory in order to mitigate the risk of supply chain disruptions impacting our ability to get products to our customers on time. In the months to come, as we rebuild our confidence in the supply chain, we will look to bring inventory levels down, which in turn should help to improve our operating cash flow. We continue to focus on raising prices where market conditions allow. I remain bullish on our business and our ability to grow sales, given the strong demand for our current portfolio of products and the projected demand for the pipeline of future nutritional specialty, vaccine, and companion animal products we have in development.
Finally, we are reiterating our full fiscal year 2023 net sales guidance of $960 million-$1 billion, an adjusted EBITDA guidance of $113 million-$118 million. However, to reflect the unfavorable impact of the tax-adjusted, non operational environmental remediation costs charged to the P&L in the second quarter, we lowered guidance for GAAP net income and GAAP diluted EPS. Damian will explain these charges in more detail. I also encourage you to read our updated disclosures included in our latest Form 10Q. Overall, I am pleased with our second quarter and first half performance. Our guidance implies an even stronger second half of fiscal year 2023. These projections are achievable and consistent with how our financial performance played out last fiscal year.
Like you, we are hopeful that the global economy will continue to improve. Irrespective of the global backdrop, I remain bullish on Phibro and our opportunities to drive growth. I'll hand it over to Damian to review our second quarter financial performance and fiscal year 2023 guidance in more detail before opening the line for questions. Damian.
Thanks, Jack. Let me start with consolidated financial performance on slide four, then cover segment-level financial performance, key capitalization metrics, and conclude with a review of our financial guidance for the full fiscal year 2023. Consolidated net sales for the quarter ended December 31st, 2022 were $244.6 million, reflecting an $11.9 million or 5% increase over the same quarter one year ago. This increase was driven by improvement in both the Animal Health and Performance Products segments, offset by a decline in Mineral Nutrition. GAAP-based net income and diluted EPS decreased 59%, driven by higher SG&A and interest expense, offset partially by lower income tax expense, primarily due to a $6.6 million charge pre-tax or closer to $4 million after tax charged to the P&L in the second quarter. Most, but not all of these charges relate to a tentative settlement of a lawsuit filed in 2014 seeking contribution from Phibro-Tech and one of our other subsidiaries, which are included in our Performance Products segment and several other parties towards past and future costs associated with the investigation and remediation of a regional groundwater plume affected by the Omega Chemical Site, which is upgradient of our Phibro-Tech facility in Santa Fe Springs, California.
In January 2023, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the Environmental Protection Agency, and certain defendants, including Phibro-Tech, Inc., reached a tentative settlement that would provide for a cash-out settlement with contribution protection, which would release Phibro-Tech, Inc. and its affiliates from liability for contamination of the groundwater plume affected by the Omega Chemical Site, with certain exceptions. The tentative settlement would also resolve claims asserted by the EPA in August 2022 for its unrecovered past and future response costs related to the Omega groundwater plume, as well as claims for indemnification and contribution between Phibro-Tech, Inc. and the successor to the prior owner of the Phibro-Tech, Inc. site. You can find further details in our second quarter Form 10Q in footnote seven, Commitments and Contingencies, under the subheading Environmental.
In addition to the increase in the environmental reserve related to the groundwater plume affected by the Omega Chemical Site, we adjusted the reserve for other non-operational environmental remediation costs relating to contamination at the Phibro-Tech site that also predated our ownership. After adjusting GAAP results for one-offs and non-recurring and/or non operational costs, including the environmental costs I just discussed, acquisition-related items and foreign currency movements, consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased $1.8 million or 6% in comparison to the prior year's quarter, driven by higher adjusted EBITDA in both the Animal Health and Performance Products segments, offset by lower Mineral Nutrition and adjusted EBITDA and an increase in corporate expenses. Adjusted net income and adjusted diluted EPS decreased 9% respectively, driven by higher SG&A expenses and taxes offset by higher gross profit. Moving on to slide 5, segment-level financial performance.
I'll start with second quarter financial performance for our largest segment, Animal Health, which includes three product lines, namely MFAs and others, nutritional specialties, and vaccines. The Animal Health segment posted $163.8 million of net sales for the quarter, which represents an increase of $12.9 million or 9% versus the same quarter prior year. Within the Animal Health segment, we reported a $5.5 million or 6% increase in MFAs and other versus the same quarter prior year, driven by increased demand for MFAs in Latin America and processing aids used in the ethanol fermentation industry. $6.5 million or very strong 17% growth in nutritional specialties driven by higher domestic demand and selling prices for dairy products along with growth in Regano.
Lastly, a $0.9 million or 4% improvement in vaccine net sales driven by increased demand. In terms of profitability for the segment, Animal Health adjusted EBITDA was $37.1 million, a 10% improvement over the same quarter prior year due to higher gross profit on higher sales and margin improvement, partially offset by an increase in SG&A. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the segment improved 30 basis points to 22.6%. Moving on to second quarter financial performance for our other business segments on slide six.
Let's start with Mineral Nutrition. Net sales for the third quarter were $61.6 million, $2 million more than the prior quarter, but a $5 million or 8% decline versus the same quarter prior year, driven by a decrease in demand for trace minerals, a consequence of some customers lowering post-COVID inventory levels to adjust for the impact of heat and drought in the U.S. Midwest on feed intake, as well as other economic challenges, partially offset by higher average selling prices, which are correlated with the movement of the underlying raw material costs. Mineral Nutrition adjusted EBITDA was $4.4 million, reflecting a decline of $1.1 million or 20% driven by lower gross profit.
Adjusted EBITDA margin for the segment was 7.1%, a 120 basis point decline versus the same quarter prior year. Looking at our Performance Products segment, net sales of $19.2 million reflects a $4.1 million or healthy 27% improvement, driven primarily by increased demand for copper-based products and higher average selling prices for copper-based products and ingredients for personal care products. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.3 million, a 73% increase and reflective of a 310 basis point improvement in Adjusted EBITDA margin. Lastly, corporate Adjusted EBITDA declined 12% or said differently, corporate expenses increased 12% driven by increased costs related to employees and strategic investments.
Turning to key capitalization related metrics on slide seven, free cash flow for the 12 month period ending December 31st, 2022 was a negative $45 million and was comprised of trailing 12 months of negative operating cash flow of $5 million less $40 million of capital expenditures. It's important to note that the $40 million of capital expenditures excluded a first quarter $15 million purchase of property. Although for GAAP reporting, this purchase is categorized as capital expenditures on the consolidated balance sheet and statement of cash flows, it was financed with the 2022 term loan referred to in the other long term debt footnotes included in our second quarter Form 10Q and therefore excluded here.
The negative $45 million in free cash flow for the 12 months ended December 31st, 2022, is driven primarily by a $58 million increase in inventory over the same period, representing approximately one month of additional inventory on hand, which is intended to mitigate the risk of supply chain disruptions which impact the company's ability to fulfill customer orders on a timely basis. Consistent with the projections we communicated on our last call, operating cash flow for the second quarter reflected a $9 million improvement over the first quarter. Although on a trailing 12 month basis, free cash flow declined $24 million versus the last quarter end.
This delta relates to the difference between free cash flow for the quarter ending December 31st, 2022, that's included in this quarter end calculation versus the same quarter prior year that is now excluded. Moving on to liquidity, we had $202 million of liquidity available at quarter end. This includes cash and short term investments of $78 million plus $124 million of unused and available revolving credit subject to the same leverage ratio limitations as defined in the 2021 loan agreement. In terms of our dividend, consistent with the past several quarters, we paid a quarterly dividend of $0.12 per share or $4.9 million in aggregate. Turning to leverage, our gross leverage ratio at quarter end was 4.2x consistent with last quarter end.
This is calculated by dividing total debt of $477 million by trailing 12 month adjusted EBITDA of $113 million. It's worth noting that this is not the leverage ratio used to determine financial covenant compliance. For covenant compliance, we calculate a net leverage ratio as defined in the 2021 loan agreement. Lastly, I wanted to highlight that $300 million of our $477 million of gross debt is not exposed to current market interest rates. We have an interest rate swap in place which has now been fully converted from LIBOR to SOFR, the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, at a fixed SOFR rate of 0.61%.
The variable interest expense paid on the remaining $177 million of total debt is subject to rising interest rates, but is partially offset by interest income earned on short-term investments. Let's turn to slide eight, which lays out the revisions we made to our GAAP guidance for fiscal year ending June 30, 2023. As Jack mentioned, in addition to reiterating guidance for net sales of $960 million-$1 billion and adjusted EBITDA guidance of $113 million-$118 million, we are reiterating guidance for adjusted net income, adjusted diluted EPS, and our adjusted effective tax.
We are lowering guidance for GAAP net income and GAAP diluted EPS to reflect the unfavorable impact, net of tax, of the non-operational environmental tentative litigation settlement and remediation costs charged to the P&L in the second quarter. Let me summarize where we now stand for our full year guidance. We are projecting net sales of $960 million-$1 billion, no change. Net income of $34 million-$38 million, which is a reduction from the $39 million-$43 million range previously communicated and reflective of the after tax effect of the $6.6 million of environmental costs charged to the P&L in the second quarter.
Because of the reduction in net income guidance, diluted EPS guidance now stands at $0.84-$0.94, which is a reduction from the $0.96-$1.06 range previously communicated. adjusted EBITDA of $113 million-$118 million, again, no change. Adjusted net income of $49 million-$53 million, which is unchanged. Adjusted diluted EPS of $1.21-$1.31, also unchanged. Lastly, an estimated adjusted effective tax rate of 33%. Again, no change. Guidance for full year GAAP metrics assumes actual foreign exchange losses for the six months ending December 31st, 2022, and the company's projected currency exchange rates for the next six months for the six months ending June 30th, 2023.
In closing, we're pleased to report that our second quarter and first half adjusted financial performance was in line with our expectations. As our full year guidance implies, we are projecting and looking forward to an even stronger second half. With that, Jeannie, could you please open the lines for questions?
At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Wright with Roth MKM. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning. I have one and a follow up if possible. Just, and I apologize if I missed this, but could you provide a little quantification between the higher SG&A between employee costs and strategic investments or any color around that?
Yeah, I could take that question. On the employee cost, we had more vacancies last year that we were able to fill this year given the free up in the labor market. That's what's driving the higher employee cost. It's a combination of the number of people as well as the costs, you know, per labor hour. On the strategic investments, as I think we mentioned in our guidance earlier in the year, our intent was to spend about an additional $10 million. A good portion of that is allocated to our companion animal development pipeline, but also our development projects for vaccines and nutritional specialties.
And think about that kind of ratably over the year. Is that kind of the way to think about that?
In terms of growth, second half over first half, we expect a slight increase in the second half of the year, but that's baked into our guidance.
Great. Thank you. On the follow up, you know, with the additional board member on Alejandro, is, I understand, you know, getting strategic advice on, you know, competing in the companion animal business, but are there also potential. It seems like there might be synergistic business opportunities, between the two organizations.
I mean, we're, well, Alejandro just started. I don't believe so. I think we're obviously more concerned about conflicts of interest than we are about synergies. As a matter of fact, the more synergies, the more conflicts.
Got it. Okay. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin with Bank of America Securities. Your line is open.
This is both on for Mike. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start with a high level one. Phibro's Animal Health business continues to post fairly impressive results relative to the livestock division to some of your peers. Can you talk to what's allowing your Animal Health business to perform do so well in the current environment? Is it a function of portfolio and species mix, or are there other factors that we should be considering here?
It's just great management.
Fair enough. Can't argue with that.
Okay. I think it's literally where we're positioned in the market and the products that we've developed. You know, especially concentrating on the changes that happened in the industry when antibiotics came out. I've said often that the antibiotics came out, but no one told that to the bacteria. Bacteria is still there, and we've done a great job. Our team has done a great job in developing non-antibiotic, mostly nutritional specialties and vaccines that help control that bacteria and help, you know, help the farmers raise the animals in a healthy way.
Got it. Just as a follow up, you noted seeing some weaker feedlot placements. Can you talk to what you're seeing more generally in the market? Are you expecting this to kind of persist for as long as we see the drought persist, or are there other things going on there?
Well, you know, there's, as we mentioned earlier, we don't do a lot of business in the feedlot, but what we are seeing and where it has affected us, the drought has forced the farmers to take animals off, you know, off the pasture because there wasn't any ability to feed them in the pasture and move them faster to feedlots. That has been, in the early first part of the year, sort of an increase. Now that those animals have been processed, there are fewer animals following it, and that will have, I would say, more of an effect next year than even it has this year. It'll have more effect in calendar year 2023 than it had in calendar year 2022.
Much appreciated. Just a last one here. There've been a flurry of recent articles on the impact of the bird flu to the global layer flock. I know that you're not super exposed there, but can you talk to your outlook for the poultry market in general? Has this gotten any worse over recent months given how long this has been going on?
Well, I think the shock to the industry is how long it's persisted. I mean, normally, you know, we've seen avian influenza in the past, but by the summertime, it's gone. This year it's not gone. Continues to persist. As we all see the effect it's had on the price of eggs, even though that might be, you know, there might be a consumer pullback and that those prices might start dropping. So far it hasn't really hit the broiler industry, which is the biggest part of our business, the biggest part of the chicken business. It's out there and it's scary.
Got it. Much appreciated. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes to the line of a representative at Barclays. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. This is Bishal. Thanks for taking our questions. We see that one of the important contributing factor for your growth in the MFA business is a growth in Latin America. Do you expect this trend to continue, or what is your outlook for your MFA and Animal Health business in Latin America? Thanks.
Thank you for that question. We've been investing a while in Latin America and expanding our presence there. Yes, I think we will continue to see growth in those markets relative to what we've done in the past.
Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Jeannie, is there any more in the queue that we can respond to? You may be on mute. We cannot hear your line. We will assume there's no more questions for today. We appreciate your time. Thank you for your interest in Phibro Animal Health, and have a great rest of your day.