Good afternoon, and Welcome to Arcadia Biosciences First Quarter 2023 Financial Results and Business Highlights Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to TJ Schaefer, Chief Financial Officer at Arcadia. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good afternoon. Joining me on the call today is Stan Jacot, Arcadia's President and Chief Executive Officer. This call is being webcast, and you can refer to the company's press release at arcadiabio.com. Before we start, we would like to remind you that Arcadia Biosciences will be making forward-looking statements on this call based on current expectations and currently available information. However, since these statements are based on factors that involve risks and uncertainties, the company's actual performance and results may differ materially from those described or implied today. You can review the company's safe harbor language in our most recently filed 10-Q. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Stan.
Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining us for our 2023 1st quarter conference call. Today, I want to focus my remarks on three primary areas. One, the progress we made in the 1st quarter of 2023. Two, an update on GoodWheat pasta and Zola Coconut Water. Three, insights into Project Greenfield and our path to profitability. 1st, let's start with our Q1 progress. As we have discussed on prior calls, Arcadia is focused on generating revenues that are profitable as opposed to revenues at any cost. We are intensely focused on finding ways to grow high-quality revenues and minimize our costs without negatively impacting consumers or our customers. We will not chase empty top line or value-destroying revenue. This is a core principle behind Project Greenfield and ensures that we are maximizing our resources and improving the return on our scaling investment.
The impact of this focus is clearly seen in our Q1 results as well as the results of recent quarters. While the high-quality revenues in Q1 2023 are substantially less than the low-quality revenues in Q1 last year, the result is a more than $900,000 improvement in gross profit dollars. These gross profit dollars were the main contributor to a $575,000 improvement in the loss from operations. We continue to invest in trial driving and brand building activities, which are up 43% compared to Q1 last year. This investment is primarily supporting the expansion of GoodWheat pasta to new consumers and customers while we prepare to launch into new categories during the 2nd half of 2023. Leads to the next topic, an update on GoodWheat pasta.
The pasta category continued to expand in the 1st quarter of 2023. Based on Nielsen data for the 13 weeks ending April 1st, unit sales were down 1%, while dollar sales rose 12%, driven by pricing action across the category. Looking at the last 52 weeks, units grew 2%, while dollar sales increased 21%, leading to category sales of $3 billion. GoodWheat has consistently added distribution in hundreds of stores every quarter, and Q1 2023 was no exception. Retailer acceptance of GoodWheat continues to grow, and we are targeting many large 1,000 store plus retail chains as they plan their annual shelf resets in Q3 and Q4. Importantly, we also have seen an increase in consumer pull during Q1 2023.
Our newer retail accounts with lower everyday pricing have seen GoodWheat velocity surpass many competitive better-for-you brands. Display programs have been a key lever in driving trial. Execution is underway to convert all current retailers to this model. We expect newly added retailers will follow the same playbook as they come on board in the 2nd half of 2023. Our GoodWheat pasta continues to collect accolades from trusted sources. In addition to being the only traditional pasta with the American Heart Association's Heart-Check certification, GoodWheat pasta has now received the Best New Pasta Award by the Retail Dietitians Business Alliance, which is a network of registered dietitians serving over 1,000 retailer-employed dietitians throughout the U.S. and Canada. Our GoodWheat pasta beat out submissions from multi-billion-dollar food companies such as Hershey's, General Mills, and Mars Wrigley.
No other new product came close to our combination of great taste and nutrition. According to an International Food Information Council survey from May 2022, consumers report that a conversation with a registered dietitian nutritionist is the most trusted source of information on foods to eat or avoid. With expanding store count, improving velocity, and award-winning product performance, we feel that we have just started scratching the surface of GoodWheat's potential. Moving now to Zola Coconut Water. The coconut water category was flat in units and a 16% increase in dollars for the 13 weeks ending March 25th, with pricing continuing to be the primary driver of category growth. For the last 52 weeks, units declined 8%, but sales were up 10% to $443 million.
In the 1st quarter, Zola continued to be impacted by the distribution losses I referenced in the last call. We expect these distribution and velocity headwinds in grocery to continue for the next couple of quarters while we present to new grocery retailers for their annual shelf resets in Q3 and Q4. We also plan to launch product and packaging innovation during the 2nd half of this year to drive expansion into new channels beyond grocery. We will share more details with you as we move closer to launch. Despite the distribution headwinds, we have seen improvement in gross profit margins for Zola due to the 2022 price increase and supply chain cost savings.
In fact, despite Zola's revenues in Q1 2023 declining 6% compared to a year ago, Zola's gross profit dollars this year are 3 times higher than last year, further reinforcing our focus on revenue quality. I had mentioned innovation on both brands, and I wanted to finish my remarks by linking the importance of innovation to Project Greenfield. As you might recall, Project Greenfield is our 3-year plan to unlock the company's potential and create a path to profitability. Project Greenfield aligns the company's resources around solid, achievable goals to drive shareholder value, including, one, GoodWheat's retail expansion through both innovation and acquisition. Two, driving growth of our core brands and partnerships. And three, maintaining an agile organization to cultivate next-generation wellness products that make every body feel good inside and out.
We are just starting year two of the three-year path to profitability. This is the year that category and channel expansion are planned. Over the next year, Project Greenfield calls for the launch of two incremental categories with our proprietary wheat technology, as well as entering an additional wheat-based category through acquisition. This, along with Zola's channel expansion, will generate the opportunity for exponential revenue and gross profit dollars in year three of the strategy. The innovation launches and acquisition targets will follow the investment criteria that we have outlined before. One i s there an opportunity to grow? Does the existing better for you segment have at least a 20% market share? Can our product match the leading brand in the category and be preferred to the better for you brand? Two. Can we scale without adding significant capital?
Have we identified co-packing partners that have capacity and the highest quality standards? Three, can we be profitable? Is there space for premium pricing? Can we improve gross margins as we scale? This disciplined approach ensures the entire team is focused on creating and acquiring businesses that can win in the marketplace and profitably grow share of the $10 billion of total annual consumer spend in these categories. For competitive reasons, we will wait to share the next GoodWheat launch category until our next call. With that, I will turn the call over to TJ to discuss our Q1 financial results. TJ?
Thank you, Stan. Good afternoon to everyone joining us today. Our 2023 1st quarter financial results represent our continued focus on generating profitable sales and preserving the cash required to fund and grow our business. In Q1, our net sales of $1.5 million increased 51% quarter-over-quarter, driven by higher sales across all of our brands. While Q1 is the 2nd softest quarter, we did see an uptick of more than 40% in Zola sales sequentially, despite the distribution losses that Stan mentioned earlier. On a year-over-year basis, our net sales were down 53%, driven by two factors.
In early 2022, we identified a grain issue as part of our quality testing process and made the decision to sell this grain for non-human consumption in late March following the spike in commodity wheat prices. We recorded a one-time sale of $1.3 million in the quarter with associated costs of $1.4 million, but had no such grain sales in Q1 2023. I also want to point out that more than three-quarters of the grain sold was related to traits where we currently have no commercial products. The poor grain quality had a minimal impact on our grain supply for pasta or future product category launches.
The 2nd significant driver of sales in Q1 2022 was more than half a million dollars in sales from the body care co-packing business and Savvy Naturals brand that are no longer part of Arcadia. As a reminder, we wound down the co-packing business due to its unprofitable revenue streams and divested Savvy Naturals and the manufacturing plant in August 2022 in order to reduce expenses and focus on higher margin brands. Excluding the one-time sale of grain as well as the body care businesses that are no longer part of Arcadia, our sales would have increased 10% compared to the same quarter last year.
What is even more significant is that while our reported sales in Q1 2023 were $1.7 million below Q1 2022, our gross profit was $922,000 higher, which is a testament to the progress we are making towards focusing on profitable growth. Turning now to R&D and SG&A. Research and development expenses of $359,000 declined $142,000 or 28% quarter-over-quarter, driven by the timing of innovation work at the end of 2022 as we prepare to launch additional products in 2023. The decline year-over-year was a more modest $36,000 or about 9%.
Selling general and administrative costs were $4.4 million in the 1st quarter of 2023, which is a slight increase of about 3.5% sequentially, driven by higher payroll related fees in Q1. Our SG&A expenses were essentially flat compared to last year, despite the fact that we invested 43% more in sales generating marketing activities. The net loss attributable to common shareholders will be released with the company's 10-Q filing, which is still under review given the complexities of our March financing. Moving to the balance sheet. Accounts receivable declined $364,000 to $923,000 as we received the Q1 milestone payment of $500,000 from Bioceres.
As a reminder, we have one additional payment of $500,000 related to the HB4 milestone, which we expect to receive in Q2 2023. All other working capital accounts, such as inventory and accounts payable, remain relatively unchanged compared to the end of 2022. We do expect our inventory balances to increase as we prepare for Zola's summer beverage season, as well as the launch of new GoodWheat categories that Stan mentioned earlier. Our cash balance at the end of Q1 was $23 million compared to $20.6 million at the end of 2022, primarily driven by the proceeds from the March financing. We believe our cash is sufficient to fund our operations into 2024, but may access the capital markets in anticipation of a potential acquisition. With that, I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our 1st question comes from the line of Dipesh Patel from H.C. Wainwright & Co.
Hey, Stan, TJ Just standing in for Ram Selvaraju at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Several questions. What is the total number of retail channels through which GoodWheat products are currently being made available, and which of these appear to be the most lucrative?
Thank you Dipesh for calling in. Right now, grocery, especially conventional grocery, is where we are currently selling our products. We do expect to expand into other channels as well, for example, mass, club, there's also natural, which is an opportunity for us. you know, we expect all of those channels to be, you know, relatively similar in terms of their gross profit contribution.
Got it. Then kind of just touching base on the coconut water product, how are you planning to differentiate that product versus competitors in that market?
Yes. Thank you. This is Stan again. Well, we have a couple of things that we are doing. One is the change in packaging for us. Really, it will help us highlight the key differentiator for us, which is taste. We actually are preferred 2- 1 versus our nearest competitor in the category. We have that combination of a really crisp, clean taste. So marketing that taste preference will be a key to the future moving forward. We're also, though, able to expand that taste into new innovative flavors. We think that that will also expand the audience of people that are interested in our coconut water.
Got it. Then you may have touched on this, but what are the key drivers of margin improvement, and how are these likely to trend over the coming quarters?
Yeah. I'll answer the 1st part of that question, and I'll let TJ answer the 2nd. Yeah, for us, a lot of this was product mix, and I think TJ talked a lot about it in his remarks, where there were a number of businesses that were dragging down the margin. For us, it was a shift in the resources and making sure that the businesses that had the best opportunity to grow and to scale and to contribute profitably would be the ones that we would grow. That has been the case. In terms of the outlook for other quarters, turn it to TJ.
Yeah, I mean, this quarter, you know, the gross margin was around 45%. Again, as Stan mentioned, there were some product mix issues, the expectation going forward.
Would be for the gross margin to be in line with kind of the more recent quarters, maybe Q3, Q4. We expect that mix to kind of level out as we move forward.
Got it. Thanks for that color. My last question, does the company expect to be able to monetize any of its hemp inventory near term?
I'll let TJ answer that question.
Yeah. That is the plan. We currently only have about $200,000 on the books related to hemp, so it's not as significant as it once was. We are actively trying to monetize those assets as we speak.
All right. Perfect. Thank you for taking my questions, Stan and TJ
You're welcome.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes in the line of Ben Klieve from Lake Street Capital Markets.
All right. Thanks for taking my questions. 1st, Stan, your comments around acquisitions. It sounds like you have a category in mind. I suspect you are, you know, if you don't have a candidate in mind, you at least have a, you know, down to a handful of potential candidates within that category. I'm wondering if you can elaborate a bit on kind of the maturity that you are seeking for an acquisition candidate. Most notably, are you expecting to make a move for a company that already has broad distribution in place, or is this gonna be with an earlier stage company that is going to be introducing your existing distribution pipeline?
Yeah. Hi, Ben. This is Stan. Thanks for calling in today. To answer your question, yes, we are looking at an acquisition. We do have some categories identified. What we are looking for is in those candidates is as I had outlined before, they need to have a compelling opportunity to grow, which includes an existing retail distribution footprint, which I guess would cement the fact that it has consumer acceptance. You know, it has to have that scalability in order for us to be able to grow it quickly. The 3rd piece is on the profitability side, you know, it has to have, you know, either a compelling margin story or a path to achieve that. Those are really the three criteria that we're looking for in these acquisitions.
Very good. On GoodWheat, on the, you know, distribution channels, do you see any opportunity within the food service category for this product, you know, with maybe some, you know, chains that are focused on kind of better for you know, type menus, or is this something where the value proposition is, you know, really gonna be entirely focused on retail and e-commerce?
For right now, our focus is on retail and e-commerce. We do feel like there is opportunity in food service, but, you know, instead of building an infrastructure to support that, we'd rather use a partner that would be able to, you know, quickly reach all those food service contacts.
Okay. Got it. No. That's a sensible approach. You know, curious about kind of high level expectations on Zola. You know, you talked about the rebranding of the, you know, and expanding the, you know, flavor SKUs. You know, really, as you kind of fine-tune this product over the next few quarters, you know, what do you think this is going to do for the top line of Zola in, you know, say 2024? I'm just curious how, you know, how dramatic of a uptick you're expecting here as you know, kind of refocus this brand.
Yeah, no. We still do see obviously opportunity for growth. You know, we do see Zola's opportunity, though, is only in coconut water as opposed to GoodWheat, which can expand to multiple categories. I think that does, in some ways, have a lower growth comparison to what we're expecting from GoodWheat. Again, as we've said on other calls, Zola only has a 4% distribution in grocery channels. It's only in grocery. It is in no other channels besides that. You know, that's one where we do feel like having the right package, the right size, and the right flavor lineup will help us expand to other channels as well.
Okay. Very good. We'll look forward for more updates on that. I think that does it for me. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll get back in line.
Thank you. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stan Jacot for closing remarks.
In closing, I am pleased with the progress we continue to make. We are generating higher quality revenue, as evidenced by our improved gross profit. We have increased our investment in trial-driving marketing activities while reducing expenses in other areas in order to keep SG&A expenses flat. We have managed working capital that has resulted in a higher-than-expected cash balance. Going forward, we are excited about the launch of new GoodWheat categories, as well as the innovation we have planned for Zola, and we look forward to updating you in the future. Thank you again for joining us, and have a great day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.