Good. Perfect. Morning, everybody. My name's Jim Salera. I run the Packaged Food and Beverage practice here at Stephens. And with us today from SunOpta are Brian Kocher, CEO; Greg Gaba, CFO. Thank you, guys, for joining us today.
Thanks, Jim, for having us. Really appreciate it.
I think a good place to start is just at a high level. Brian, 2024 has been quite the eventful year for the food industry. As we near the end of what is also your first year at the helm of SunOpta, how did your business in the industry as a whole perform relative to your initial expectations at the beginning of the year?
Again, thanks, Jim, for having us. Appreciate that. I've really been excited before I even took the job. I was excited about SunOpta, the demand generation that we have, the opportunity that we have to service and support customers, and I am just really excited about the position we're in. I love the categories that we're in: plant-based beverage in the whole category. If you look at all channels, tracked and untracked is growing in the mid-single digits. Our healthy, better-for-you fruit snacks is growing significantly. Even the category is growing 22%+ over the last 52-week period. We grew 40% in the last quarter, so I love the categories we're in. I love our role as a private label co-manufacturing solution provider for our customers. We solve their problems. When we solve their problems, we've got a chance to participate in share gain.
We have a chance to participate in innovation. And so I love that aspect of it. And then specifically at SunOpta, I think we've done a really good job on the growth side. As I mentioned, our demand generation engine is pacing us. This year, revenue is up 20% year-to-date through September. And almost all of that, not almost all, all of it, is volume-based. So that's a really good sustaining metric for us is volume growth as opposed to just price. So we're excited about that. And I've been excited about the first year. I'm probably, not probably, I am more upbeat about our opportunity in the coming years to unlock some trapped capacity that's in our manufacturing network and really fuel our growth without the need for significant growth CapEx. That's a big win that's more clear to Greg and I today than maybe it was when I started a year ago.
Great. Well, there's a lot of things that drill down on there. But maybe starting with one of the last comments you made, this is also the company's first full year without your frozen fruit segment. And I think that unlocked a lot of operational simplicity. So how should we think about the simplified structure of the company? Has it increased your flexibility to pursue more new business in your core categories? And how does that enhance your ability to drive operational improvements with your assets?
Right, so for those of you who do not know, SunOpta had been on maybe a five-year journey to divest commodity-oriented, low-margin, high-working capital businesses, and that culminated with the sale of our frozen fruit business in September, October of 2023, so there were some financial benefits to that. Paid down debt, working capital requirements came way down, and certainly, those were financial benefits. I think the management focus, the simplicity of the business model, those benefits we still feel today. Think about it. When you're selling businesses all the time, you have management who's dedicated or focused on selling businesses. Now we have the opportunity to be squarely focused on operational excellence and fulfilling our customers and continuing to generate the demand that's pacing our business. Now we have the opportunity to really dig deep in each one of our operating processes and make incremental improvements where we can.
Now, even as a management company, not only did we take the opportunity with the sale of frozen fruit business to thin the infrastructure, but we've got very clear roles, very clear responsibilities, and very clear accountabilities to each other that we can continue leveraging as we take advantage of categories that are growing, with customers that are growing, and really with assets that are primed to improve.
Great. So let's drill down on plant-based beverages because I think this is a category where there's maybe a lot of debate among investors, just given some of the limited visibility that we have from what we can see. So how do you think about all channels' long-term growth potential for plant-based beverages? And what gives you confidence that this category is going to continue to be an area of growth at retail and food service?
Yeah. First and foremost, I think there's a lot of enduring tailwinds in this category. If you think about it, plant-based beverages have been growing for 40 years. And the intent or why people get into the categories, some of it is medicinal purposes, maybe lactose intolerance or allergies or other things. Some of it is taste preference. Some of it are animal welfare or ESG initiatives that they want to participate in the category. Those aren't changing. People aren't all of a sudden deciding that they're not allergic to milk anymore, right? There's a medicinal need. And that continues to fuel the category. So I think, A, those are enduring tailwinds for this category. I think, importantly, and what we've yet to see is we're probably in the first generation now that was raised on plant-based beverages. I was raised on dairy.
So when my kids were born, we provided dairy. Now, even in my own house, all of my kids have switched to plant-based. There's a large population. I think household penetration is like 63% now. 63% of the population has tried it and has it in their fridge. So what are the chances that my kids are going to serve dairy to their children? They're not. They're going to serve the plant-based products that they're comfortable with. So I think there's a lot of enduring category or a lot of enduring tailwinds in this category. And I think, in particular, shelf-stable lends itself to a lot of channels that aren't tracked. Food service and club channels are perfect for shelf-stable product where you don't have to worry about refrigeration. And remember, though, in the plant-based segment, they probably are three to four times larger than the tracked channel data.
So a lot of tailwinds in big mass distribution channels where we have a high household penetration rate.
So maybe to tie off that thought, how should investors size up the plant-based beverage opportunity, whether that's relative to dairy, relative to total coffee sales or something else like an oat? How should we think about where the category can go?
We continue to believe that the category in total, right, all channels, food service, club, retail, tracked channel, all channels is growing in the mid-single digits.
Okay. I think most people's image in their mind dies when we talk about plant-based beverages, soy milk, oat milk. But you guys also have tea assets. You have broth assets. How should we think about the growth opportunity in those categories relative to the kind of more prominent oat milks and soy milks?
Yeah. I'm really excited about our product categories. I mean, every category we operate in is growing. Plant-based beverage, as I mentioned, growing in the mid-single digits. Protein shakes, which we put some investment capital in place a year and a half ago and have a public relationship with BellRing Brands, growing at the last 52-week period, 17%-18%. My goodness, broth is even growing 8% over the last 52-week period. So I'm excited that the categories that we're growing with or that we're involved with are growing overall. On top of that, remember, we're a solutions provider for our co-manufacturing and private label providers. If you look at that data, remember, not all participants in a category are equal. If you look at the data for our customers, the brands that we support are outperforming the categories that they operate in.
Not only are we in categories that we're growing, but we're supporting the winners in those categories. And I think that's exciting. And I haven't even mentioned fruit snacks. If you look at snack bars overall, you'd say that's flat volume-wise. It's flat to a little down. The better-for-you segment, in which we operate on, the last 52-week period, I think, is growing at 22%. That does not, again, just club or sorry, just tracked channel. That doesn't include the club channel where the preponderance of that product is sold and distributed. So I love the categories that we're operating. I love our portfolio and how we're there to provide solutions for our customers.
And as I've said most of this year, our demand generation engine, which is a combination of our innovation efforts with customers, our share expansion with new customers, and our share expansion with existing customers, that demand generation engine is pacing our business. And right now, our supply chain is fighting to keep up.
Touched on a lot of stuff there. Maybe one to drill in on the RTD shakes. That's been a category that's seen really explosive growth over the last couple of years coming out of COVID and then, I think, catching some tailwinds from GLP-1s. I guess maybe two questions on that. One, what made you want to get into that industry in the first place to supply RTD shakes? What did you see about that category that made you think that you could have a good opportunity to grow with an incremental line there? Then as we think about the longer-term growth trends for shake, how much potential do you think you have to scale your business? I mean, you mentioned BellRing, but whether it's BellRing or any other brands in that category.
If you think about why we entered into this space, again, we're a solutions provider for our customers. We saw a market dynamic where a category was growing quickly. The capacity was scarce. The growth was outstripping the capacity creation by an order of magnitude. We thought it was a unique opportunity that we could partner with someone where more or less, not financially, but economically, they could underwrite an investment. We partnered with BellRing. Essentially, we've got a five-year agreement with them where they bought out the entire production of the line. We're excited about that relationship. We continue to ramp up production. Remember, that's a brand new line in a brand new format, a 330 mL size format that we launched April of 2023, April, May of 2023. We're excited about the progress that we made.
We've got room to grow. We're not all the way to right on our throughput or our efficiency initiatives, but we have room to grow. And again, we're operating in an environment where we have a customer that'll take every product that we can produce. I think the category continues to grow. The last data that I saw across the entire protein shake, nutritional beverage shake was growing 17%-18% for the last 52-week period. So again, even as capacity comes online, when you've got a $5 billion-$6 billion category and it's growing, you got to add $1 billion of capacity every year. And that's good.
Can I just apologize?
Absolutely.
Can you size what your run rate is today in RTD shakes and what it could be once you get to full run rate of this capacity once it's fully run?
Remember, just to put in perspective, we have one manufacturing line in our entire network. So we have one line that we've devoted to that network. We've seen the volume ramp as we become more adept and more skilled at operating the line. In fact, I think in the third quarter of 2024, we produced 23%-24% more units on that line than we did even in the second quarter of 2024. So we still have a lot of runway to grow. It's a big part of our overall growth, but I'd still say is a relatively small part right now of our total revenue portfolio.
Maybe one last category to touch on. Brian, you brought this up earlier, but the fruit snacks business, which I think is probably your least known or maybe most underappreciated category from the external perspective. You guys have meaningfully increased your capacity there. What do you see as the growth drivers for organic fruit snacks at retail? And maybe if you can just give us some color on the types of customers you service and again, category growth potential for fruit snacks?
Yeah. We love this business. We love this fruit snacks business. If you look at the customers we supply, it's a very similar model to our plant-based customers. We're a co-manufacturer and private label provider. They're in a segment, a subsegment of the overall, let's call it bars or snacks category, which is, I would call, better for you. So our base is apple juice and apple purée. So we have some sugar, but it's simple sugars. It's natural sugars. So again, I think it comes from a lot of the tailwinds we have on health and nutrition. It comes also on guilt-free snacking. It's very easy for the if we look at shopper intent. A lot of the shoppers are the family meal provider.
So maybe it's a mom or a dad who's the family meal provider, and they want to feel good about what they're dropping in lunchboxes or having snacks after school. So there's a lot of those tailwinds that are driving the category. Frankly, when we put the capacity in place in the third quarter of 2023, we were on allocation with our customers. We couldn't service all the volume that they wanted. We've installed the capacity. We thought we were going to increase capacity by about 40%. In the most recent quarter, we produced 49% more units than we did in the previous year. And so we're getting the exact capacity enhancements we thought when we implemented the capital. And then on top of that, the category has grown so much that we still have customers who would take more than we can supply them right now.
We love that category.
Great. So now everyone's a believer in your categories. They take the passion there. They are excited about the growth opportunity for the categories you supply. The next question becomes, what makes SunOpta the right partner for the companies that you service? How are your assets differentiated? Why would they pick SunOpta to manufacture their products for somebody else out there?
There's a couple of technical reasons, but let me start with a more intangible reason. We are at peace with our role as a co-manufacturer, private label provider, solutions provider. We have a couple of brands, but we're not competing with our customers. We're using those brands for some innovation. We're using those brands if a customer needs a quick fix. So that, A, they know we're not competing with them. B, we want to provide solutions to their problems. The first rule of any sales rep in our organization is don't talk. Go into the customer meeting, ask them how things are going, listen to what their problems are, then we know what we need to sell because all we need to do is solve their problems. That could be an innovation. They may have a gap in their product portfolio. It could be supply.
They may have an issue with an existing supplier and availability of supply, so that's really important to think about the mindset. There are some technical reasons. One, we have a multi-plant national distribution network in a diamond shape with our aseptic network, and even our fruit snacks network, we have East Coast and West Coast locations, so we have an opportunity to provide customer transportation savings that might be value to them. We have the largest breadth of packaging formats in the industry, so if they want half gallon or two liter or one liter or even, as we mentioned, we now have 330 mL capacity. We've got that. We have resiliency in our network, so except for our 330 mL line, remember, we only have one of those in the network, but except for that, we have resiliency in our packaging format amongst all four of our plants.
So even if there is an issue at one of the plants, weather issue, disruption, disaster, whatever, we have that capacity at three other facilities and provide our customers resiliency in the supply chain. So I think and then the other technical aspect is we've got 21 food scientists who are deployed for no other reason than to satisfy our customers. Sometimes that's new product R&D. Sometimes it's a line extension. Sometimes it's reconfiguring a flavor profile or a nutritional content, even working with them on what's the right packaging size for their usage. And we deploy those assets liberally and deep into our customers' organizations. So if you're a customer of SunOpta, I'm hoping that you hear us solve the problems. You know that our capacity to execute gives you the most flexibility that you can have in the network.
Our main job is to solve the challenges that you have. When we do that, we get access to innovation. We get access to share expansion. Remember, the single biggest entry we have to share expansion with our existing customers or bringing on new customers is when they come to us and say, "We're having a problem with our existing supplier. We're having a problem with our secondary supplier. We're having a problem with our tertiary supplier. Can you help us?" That's a really good position to be in commercially.
I think, Brian, that last thing you mentioned with what drives your branded partners to make changes in their suppliers, how should we think about the stickiness of the relationships that you guys have, whether it's from kind of long-tenured customers or your newest customers? I mean, do they switch often or once you kind of bring your resources to bear, do you find that?
We have long relationships with our customers. In fact, our largest customer is a 20+ year relationship. If you look at many of our customers, I think on average, our customer tenure is like 15 years. These are long relationships. And I think part of that is human nature. Remember, if one of the best ways we grow is to solve customers' problems, one of the best ways we retain is do not cause problems. Right? So when you satisfy your customers with availability of supply, with consistency of fill rate, with consistency of product quality, and you're helping them on innovation and expansion and reducing their overall cost by reducing food miles in the network, when you do all things, that's built-in stickiness and retention. Now, some of our agreements, look, don't get me wrong, we have agreements and they last two, three years out in the horizon.
And so we do have contractual agreements, but I'm a big believer that your contractual agreements are nice. We want them. They help us in a lot of areas. But stickiness is a result of our ability to out-service the competition, and it's that clear.
Great. Any questions from the audience?
Can you talk about price-cost dynamics in both of those businesses? Contractually, how does the cost increase?
Yeah. Yeah. So luckily, most of our contract structure is commodity pass-through, open-book pricing with our customers. That helps actually create the stickiness with our customers because we're not trying to win or lose on our commodity price. If the price goes up, we pass that on. If the price goes down, we'll give them a decrease. We're trying to make a fair margin on actually producing the product, what we call a manufacturing toll. So because we're structured that way, it actually really helps those conversations. And pricing, when it comes to commodities, doesn't really become an issue.
Is there a lag in pass-through?
There could be. But with most of our customers, we talk to them, as Brian mentioned, multiple times a month, right? So we're always in communication. So for example, apple purée is a good example. We see that price coming up, right? We're already in those conversations where we're going to have to buy it. The cost is going to go up. Let's have that conversation and get that price pass-through.
So it's not like a contractual automatic increase. It's actually a conversation?
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's conversation. It depends on contract. A lot of times it's protected by the contract, and it's pretty easy to do, but other times, there's conversations. Oats is another great example. Oat has gone down quite a bit this year, and you'll see that in our 10-Qs and our press releases that we've passed that on, the commodity price pass-through. That's mainly oat and a little bit of coconut this year.
Thanks. You mentioned on the private label side, you're not interested in competing with customers, and it's more innovations or whatnot. What happens if a customer enters a category where you have existing private label? Will you then pull out so you don't have that conflict of interest, or?
We don't have a conflict of interest. I would submit to you that that's not a conflict of interest. We are totally transparent with all of our customers. They understand we provide contract manufacturing services. They understand we provide private label services. In fact, at most of the places that we're providing private label product, one of our branded players is already in the category in the same retail establishment. So they know transparency solves everything. What they neither want us to do is we produce a product, let's say some fancy oat milk for a brand, and then we launch the exact same formula and go try to sell it to all the customers. We're not interested in that conflict. We're not interested in that competition. But transparency cures all of those concerns.
Again, it's common in kind of a co-manufacturing environment that the brands and the retailers understand that.
So now the portfolio is optimal. It sounds like working capital, CapEx, all of those things are approaching optimal levels. What should the return on invested capital look like at that optimal capacity utilization before you start adding CapEx?
Yeah. Really good question. So as we talked about a couple of times, right, the best use of our investment dollars is to get the most that we can out of the assets that we have. By far, that's the highest return, right? So we've talked about we see opportunities where we can unlock the trapped capacity in our current asset base and defer the significant growth CapEx. We're still going to have maintenance productivity CapEx. I would view that as coming in less than our depreciation. So as we do that and execute that strategy, the ROIC will continue to increase and be much better than where it is today. And that's our primary goal here.
When we get to our 2025 guidance, which will be on our next earnings call when we announce Q4, we plan on outlining this in full detail, right, and going through our capital allocation priorities as well.
Greg, I think that's actually a great thread to pull on. If we think about your current production lines, how much more efficiently can you run your kind of installed capacity? And how should we think about the unlock that that has for continuing to grow as these categories are growing and to have your lines be able to produce more alongside that without installing incremental production lines?
Yeah. As we've spent the time digging into it, I mean, this has been a huge focus for us this year, digging into the operational efficiencies. We now feel that we can get to at least 2026, maybe further, with the assets that we have without having to go and invest that significant growth CapEx. We'll continue to monitor, and again, our plan is to lay out that longer-term plan for everyone on our next earnings call.
Can you put that in volume as opposed to time?
David, I think one way that we've tried to think about it, and again, we'll come out with a little bit more detail when we report Q4 and outline 2025. But the way I'm dimensionalizing it is we've publicly commented and still affirm a long-term growth rate on the revenue side of approximately 10%. All right? So one quick way for me to think about what could that potentially be in terms of volume is if we're saying we can do in 2026, maybe further without significant growth CapEx, we're also saying we can handle 10% growth for 2025 and maybe most of the way through 2026, maybe further. That's how we're dimensionalizing it right now, if that helps.
So you've got a sense for what we can do with the installed capacity, which sounds like still a long runway from there. If we think about kind of the infrastructure outside of the existing production lines, how many more production lines could you install in your facilities without having to go out and build a whole new greenfield facility from the ground up? Do you guys have a sense for kind of space?
Yeah. We have the capability to install two more lines in Texas. I'd also say we have the ability to install one or two more lines in our fruit snacks business. So quite a bit of runway. I would not assume we would expand the wall. And we do have the ability to open up the wall and use additional land in Texas. But that's long-term. I wouldn't anticipate anything like that in the next five years.
Great. We touched on this a little bit, but how should we think about external competition in terms of another company kind of replicating the asset capabilities that you have, given that you're servicing branded partners? If somebody wanted to come along and try to replicate your production facilities, what's, I guess, A, the likelihood of that happening and B, how difficult or easy would that be for somebody to replicate that?
Yeah. I think there's a couple of things to think about when you're assessing the competitive landscape in which we operate. One is I'm not sure that we have an exact direct like-kind competitor. We are focused on plant-based beverages, but we love our broth business and we love a tea business that we have. Now, I would say we're in those products because the customers that we service with those are strategic as opposed to maybe the products being strategic. But think of it as we're focused in plant-based and then we do some broth and we do some tea. A lot of our other customers are focused in broth and then they do some plant-based. Or competitors, I should say, not customers. They do some broth and then they do some plant-based. Or they do tea and then they do plant-based.
Or they do coffee and then they do plant-based. So I wouldn't say we have an exact pure-play competitor. That's one thing to think about. The second thing to think about in terms of what would prevent someone from doing it, one of the reasons we're so focused on unlocking plant capacity and driving operational efficiency is the positive benefit that it will have on the return on invested capital. These aseptic assets are not cheap. They are expensive and they take a while to fill up and they take a while to fine-tune and run. It's a hard manufacturing process. Remember, I spent almost 18 years in the produce industry where every processed product that I produced died in seven days. This is as hard as that, right? This is a hard product to produce.
And so I think there's also some intellectual horsepower that goes with that that prevents it. I am not suggesting that other people couldn't invest in a category and get skilled. But we've already got a nationwide distribution network that has a lot of resiliency in packaging format. We already have a demand generation engine that's built on solving problems of our customers as well as not creating further problems. We already have an expertise in processing, particularly in plant-based, that's at a level that I'd say is differentiated in the market amongst the competitors. And then finally, and please don't ever forget this little nugget, we've got 21 food scientists that, I mean, I'm going to say this as affectionately as I can, but 21 geeks who are out there all the time trying to solve customer problems.
And those are all pretty big barriers to entry to replicate exactly what we do. Again, I don't want to say we don't face competition. Of course we do. But I love our chances versus competition.
Great. So maybe bringing everything together, you like the categories you service, strong operational know-how, good relationships with customers. Difficult, let's say, for an external competitor to replicate what you have. I think as investors go, that all sounds great. The one area that might come up as a potential risk, though, is how easy would it be for one of your branded partners to just in-house, given that they know what their demand is, they have products that they can see kind of line of sight to growth. And so how difficult would it be, not for a competitor to kind of replicate your co-man model, but just for a key branded partner to in-house their production?
I still think that they have the challenges we mentioned before about the investment hurdle, the intellectual know-how, and creating the resiliency in their own internal network. I mean, you have to remember for a large portion of our customers, we are their supply chain. Now, they may have some secondary or tertiary suppliers, but they don't have their own assets right now. They'd have to go acquire the assets, build the know-how, execute well. And that's a hard challenge for, in large part, what is something that they're officially getting produced now. So that's one thing. We do have some customer bases. This is really interesting as well. We do have some customers that are manufacturers right now and are leveraging us and the solutions that we have. So their own return on invested capital is in the range that they'd like.
So I think it's a really good spot. It's a really good relationship. I think many of the challenges that I mentioned in terms of the competitive landscape, one of our customers would have. And for the large part, our customers aren't really interested in being great manufacturers. They're interested in being great brands. They're interested in gaining distribution. They're interested in, even on the private label side, they're interested in being great retailers or great club stores. Not many of them are saying, "Well, now we want to be a great manufacturer in plant-based beverages.
Talked a lot about the growth potential for the categories. Talked a lot about the relationships with your branded partners. Maybe if we just shift gears to some of the internal operations. Greg, you've talked about the opportunity for better margins as the business scales. Can you just walk us through some of the primary levers you can pull to achieve that margin uplift as we think about the opportunity there across the footprint?
Sure. I mean, one of the key things is filling up our capacity, right? So we've put the money in, we've invested in the assets, and now it's filling those assets up with revenue and generating the return that we should on those assets. The second thing that we've been talking about quite a bit is unlocking the capacity within our current asset base on how that is the best return. And there's a lot of ways to do that, and we're focusing really hard on accomplishing that. And that's why we have that confidence to say that we're going to defer the significant growth CapEx because we see the runway of opportunities that's going to allow us to unlock that capacity and obviously generate a better return. So we're pretty excited about it, and we feel great about getting to a long-term margin target of 20%+ .
Great, and we had a question on this earlier, but maybe to follow up on the commodity piece of your input costs. What does inflation look like across your commodity basket? Happy to have you touch on any key inputs that you think are important or just kind of broadly on the commodity basket. And then again, how that passes through your business and if there's opportunities to get incremental margin uplift or maybe incremental margin headwinds from commodity pricing.
Yeah. I kind of touched on that a little bit earlier. The structure of our contracts with the commodity pass-through, with the open book contracts, I mean, that's really important to us. That really protects us from the inflation up or down. We talked about apple purée going up and how we are already having those costs, the conversations with our customers about the pass-through of the price. And similarly, we gave away the old pricing this year. I mean, all those things help protect us from a margin basis. We're not trying to make money off of the commodities, right? So that helps us there. Overall, when I look at 2025, yeah, I think costs will go up a little bit on the commodity side, but we already have started having those conversations of passing that pricing on.
Again, with the contract structure we have, I don't think that's going to be an issue for us.
Great. How should we think about labor costs and what are you seeing in terms of wage increases, turnover? I would imagine the capabilities of the employees working in the plants is kind of a key value unlock in running these lines more efficiently. So just any comments on the, like I said, wage costs, turnovers?
Yeah. Wage costs, it does continue to increase, although nowhere near the rate it was a couple of years ago, right? It really has slowed down. The nice thing is when it comes to employee turnover, we've seen some nice improvement. We look at all of our plants, and I'd say almost every plant has shown significant reduced turnover versus where we were a couple of years ago. And we continue to work that with different incentives for our employee to make them excited to come to work, a lot of productivity initiatives. And one thing that is really important in our business is if you're making the product the right way the first time, having incentives for doing things the correct way and the safe way is also helping us retain our employees.
Because basically, if you come to work, you do things the right way, we're going to incentivize you. So it's really worked well in helping to retain some of our employees.
Great. Given that you have a lot of opportunity to drive these efficiency gains, we talked about the unlock, the incremental capacity. How should we think about CapEx spending and whether you want to give a dollar or a percentage or just kind of cadence over the next couple of years, given that it sounds like there's a lot of opportunity to increase the capacity within your installed production lines?
Yeah. So this question also came up earlier too, right? So we plan on outlining this a lot more on our next call. But at a high level, I would say we're always going to have the maintenance productivity CapEx. You need that in our type of business to have the lines running. I would say that's going to be less than our depreciation every single year. There will be some small growth CapEx, but our plan is to defer any of the large growth CapEx to the longer term. And again, we're going to highlight all of that on our next earnings call.
And then building on that, just offer any thoughts on capital allocation, obviously beyond CapEx. I mean, do you see opportunities for M&A? Maybe any thoughts on types of assets or capabilities you would be interested in? And if not M&A, then return of capital to shareholders, how do you think about that?
Yeah. So our primary goal is to pay down debt, right? Our goal is to be under three times levered by the end of this year. We view we're on track for that. When it comes to allocation priorities going forward, you mentioned it. There's a few options, right? We can continue to pay down debt, lower that target from three to say maybe 2.5. We'll look at M&A opportunities. We'll also look at returning some capital back to shareholders. And we plan on outlining that in greater detail on the next earnings call.
Maybe two final questions. One, I will say a high-level question. It seems new administration could be more strict regarding artificial ingredients, coloring in food, dyes, things like that. Still unknown impact and what that will actually look like in its final form. But do you just have any thoughts on how that could impact your business or the industry more broadly?
Greg and I played rock, paper, scissors to decide who was going to answer this question if it came up, and I lost. So look, I think, first of all, there's a lot that has to be done and understood and evaluated to determine what will happen in food, regardless of what administration is in power. I think a couple of things. I mentioned the tailwinds that we had in our category and how I thought they were enduring. We have a halo effect that in general we're already thought of as better for you. Our fruit snacks absolutely are. Lower sugar content, cleaner label, less ingredients. Still have sugar, but I'd rather have sugar from apples than processed sugar. Our plant-based beverages, again, are often thought of as cleaner label, healthier alternatives for the consumer. So that's good.
I think the other thing that I would talk about in our business, back to those purchase intent areas, someone who is in the plant-based category because they have a medicinal issue, they will have a medicinal issue no matter who's Health and Human Services Secretary or not. They still have an issue. If someone has a dedication and focus on a healthier lifestyle or potentially animal welfare issues, those endure no matter who's in power. So we believe we're already in a good spot in terms of our products generally having a cleaner label than a lot of other processed products. We're in a good spot because we have a halo effect of already being considered, both in our plant-based as well as our fruit snacks, a better-for-you option.
And then lastly, I think we're in good shape because those purchase intent reasons are enduring regardless of what administration or process is going on.
And then maybe Brian's final thoughts to close out. Transformative year for your business. As we think about next year and 2026 and beyond, what are you the most excited about and that you have line-of-sight insight into right now for your business?
When I joined the company on January 2nd, I was excited about our demand generation engine. I knew enough people in the industry. I knew enough people to kind of get references. And I saw the data and I felt good about, "Okay, SunOpta has kind of got demand generation down. They're growing. They're growing faster than the categories. They're gaining share." I'm more excited about that today than I was on January 2nd. So I wouldn't qualify that as most, though, most excited. What I'm most excited about is we entered this year with a group of assets that we wanted to make better perform. And we thought we were going to get the volume that naturally helps make them more efficient. But Greg and I spent the larger part of 11 months working on the supply chain. And think about it in terms of this context.
We had an idea in the first quarter. In the second quarter, we had a big volume surge, and that highlighted some areas that we either needed to reinforce and/or we could accelerate to improve our operational efficiency. So we did some investment there. We did some investment in the third quarter to operating expense investment to try to capture those benefits. But in the third quarter, now all of a sudden we're testing the theories. We're testing on one line here. We're testing on another line in a different plant. We're testing on a third line in a third plant. These things are coming to life. And it's one of the reasons why we said, "Hey, now that we're testing and we can see the results, give us a quarter. We'll come back when we announce fourth quarter results and give an outlook for 2025.
We'll come back about what the size of the prize is on operating efficiencies. But each month that goes by, it becomes more crystal clear, easier to quantify, easier to calculate, hard to execute. Think of this as a journey of a thousand steps. I wish there was a switch in some closet that no one thought to turn on. "Oh, no, turn that switch on. You increase volume 10%." "Oh, my goodness, why didn't we do that?" This is a journey of a thousand steps. And so it's slow, gradual progress, but they have gone from concepts to actual process changes that we're testing in the network.
We'll be excited about sharing how that unlocking capacity really fuels the growth that our demand generation is providing, drives increasing gross profit margins, drives increasing EBITDA margin, drives free cash conversion, and ultimately positions us to have a significantly better return on invested capital than we have today.
Great. Well, I think that's a great place to leave it. Brian and Greg, thank you guys for your time and your thoughts today. And thanks for joining us.
Thank you, Jim. Thanks for all the questions too. Appreciate it.
Thank you.