Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Unifi's third quarter fiscal 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, A.J. Eaker, Vice President of Finance. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you, RJ, and good morning, everyone. On the call today is Al Carey, Executive Chairman, Eddie Ingle, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Creaturo, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found in the investor relations section of our website at unifi.com. Management advises you that certain statements included in today's call will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Management cautions that these statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and/or projections about the markets in which Unifi operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed, forecasted, or implied by these statements.
You are directed to the disclosures filed with the SEC on Unifi's Forms 10-Q and 10-K regarding various factors that may impact these results. Please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS, adjusted working capital, and net debt may be discussed on this call. I will now turn it over to Al Carey.
Thanks, A.J. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining Unifi's third quarter conference call. After a few comments about the state of the business, I'll then turn it over to Eddie Ingle and Craig Creaturo, who will fill you in on the Q3 performance for the company, and then we'll move to our usual Q&A session. I'd say most of us on this call are operating in some of the most turbulent times that I can remember and, experiencing some of these macro headwinds, such as pandemic, inflation, and labor shortages. Now there's a whole new round of challenges, such as the war in Ukraine and the COVID lockdown in China. I would say despite all of this, our team at Unifi has remained agile in trying to work around these challenges.
That's why I'm happy to see that our Q3 revenue is right on our forecast of $201 million. Our adjusted EBIT of $12.2 million is also a little better than forecasted, and we had to offset some new costs that came in over the course of the quarter. The $201 million on Q3 revenues are gonna allow us to deliver the full year of $800 million+ on revenues, and that's a significant milestone for us at Unifi. You'll recall back in Q3 that we were working on two pretty significant challenges that was in North America. One was getting pricing to offset the raw material cost, and then the second challenge was the labor shortage that we had in North America.
While both, I would say, still are a challenge, we've seen improvement in Q3, and going forward into Q4, we'll see more improvement as well. These lockdowns in China began to be a headwind at the end of third quarter. They're gonna continue to impact us in the fourth quarter, but the underlying mid and long-term demand trends are very strong for our Asia business. We feel positive about that when the lockdowns finally end. In Brazil, while we're seeing some margin normalization that we spoke to you about last quarter, we're really happy with the current performance in the region, and we expect strong demand and market growth opportunities, and REPREVE begins to become more of a factor in Brazil, which it hasn't been in the past.
On REPREVE, it continues its growth. We were at 36% of our mix in the quarter. We're at 38% year to date. I think this is driven by the increased attention to sustainability and recycled products from our customers. You know, many of our customers now are looking at us as a very good partner to help them deliver their sustainability targets. Most of them have significant targets that come due in 2025. This trend is not only gonna continue, but I think it probably accelerates in the upcoming quarters. As I look out over the next quarter, yes, we do have our work cut out for us with the China COVID lockdowns, but we have a lot to look forward to in Unifi. Our labor situation in North America is getting better. We have been able to pass along pricing.
Our REPREVE momentum is good. Despite Asia lockdowns, that market has very strong demand, and we think that's gonna come back fairly quick. All of this makes us feel confident about our future. As we take a look at our goals that we laid out during Investor Day, we continue to be very optimistic about that. I would say we're beginning to see some positive momentum building. With all that, let me turn this over to Eddie, who will now take you through some of the details of our quarterly performance.
Al, good morning, everyone. Our third quarter results were in line with our expectations, and we are pleased with the strength of our results despite some of the persisting challenges we're facing in today's operating environment. I'm proud of and encouraged by the way that everyone on the Unifi team continues to show resilience, and I wanna thank all of our employees for their ongoing hard work and commitment. During the quarter, we produced strong sales and profitability figures and saw sequential margin recovery into several pockets of the business.
The underlying demand, paired with our continuous improvement on the U.S. labor front, gives us confidence going forward, and I'm excited for what lies ahead. Moving into the slide presentation, we will begin on slide three with an overview of the quarter. For the second consecutive quarter, we achieved sales of over $200 million, an increase of 12.3% on a year-over-year basis, resulting from strong demand and proactive pricing initiatives. This figure could have been another 1%-2% higher if we were not still somewhat labor-constrained in the U.S. Though as Al mentioned, we are making solid progress on this front. While some production inefficiencies remain because our improving labor metrics have not yet reached historical norms, our recent actions have generated noticeable improvement in our yields, which is evident in our sequential margin profile.
We will continue to strive towards improving the situation and achieving optimal thresholds in order to continue to satisfy the needs of the market and, of course, our customers. We remain optimistic in our ability to do so going forward. Now, as we communicated in our last earnings call, the inflationary environment impacted domestic margin performance and pricing levels once again. Raw material costs and inflation continue to be headwinds, and unanticipated cost increases continued during the third quarter. We remain confident in our ability to adjust prices responsively and maintain a margin profile that keeps us on a trajectory towards our short-term and long-term targets. We have further price increases scheduled in the fourth fiscal quarter in response to the cost pressures that we experienced in the third quarter. While impacts from COVID-19 have subsided domestically, unfortunately, we cannot say the same for Asia.
As we're all aware, China's zero-COVID policy has impacted the economy and supply chain in the Shanghai region, and our thoughts go out to the health and well-being of everyone impacted. Given the lockdowns across China, including some of the ports, sales and profitability for the Asia segment will be negatively impacted in the fourth quarter. However, I want to be clear that the demand has not faded and is waiting to be filled as many industries are similarly impacted. Our team in Asia is very resilient, and I'm encouraged by their optimism that the business environment will open up quickly once the restrictions are lifted.
I'd also like to state that while the Russia and Ukraine conflict is creating volatility in major markets, other than the impact on crude oil pricing and the resulting increase in petrochemicals, we have had no direct impact on our operations as a result of this geopolitical event. In Brazil, we have maintained a strong market position, but we are starting to see some of the expected margin normalization begin to take effect from the exceptionally strong environment in the prior year period. The business remains strong, and we are looking forward to seeing volumes grow as we move through the next few quarters. Our new texturing technology, both in place and forthcoming, will serve as a volume growth driver. Now I'd like to move on to slide four to discuss REPREVE.
Revenues from REPREVE products represented 36% of net sales during the quarter compared to 34% a year ago. On the marketing front, we kicked off a busy quarter with a strong REPREVE presence at the WM Phoenix Open golf tournament again. The activation was accompanied by a national television ad featuring WM's 30-second commercials, which showcased the REPREVE process. Loosened COVID-19 restrictions allowed us to increase REPREVE mobile tour stops. Highlights included activations at the Los Angeles Marathon in partnership with ASICS and at the Pac-12 Men's Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. The latter is part of our founding sustainability partner of Pac-12 Team Green sponsorship. Beyond events, we have focused on increasing brand partnerships across our digital and social media channels. REPREVE was recently featured on the Instagram feeds of Speedo, Manduka, and Beyond Yoga, among others.
Levi's brand, Beyond Yoga, is made in the USA and committed to sustainability, and our relationship has mutually beneficial synergies. We will, of course, continue to seek out brand partners that enable us to amplify the REPREVE story. Our REPREVE momentum continues beyond apparel with a number of new co-branded initiatives, such as in the home space, we have secured a new throw program with JCPenney's private label, Linden Street. Igloo recently mentioned their REPREVE collection of soft cooler bags in a press release, announcing their intent to recycle 30 million post-consumer plastic bottles by 2025. Dickies has added a REPREVE automotive seat cover and steering wheel cover to their range of automotive accessories, which are available at Walmart locations nationwide.
Overall, I have to say it was a very busy quarter for our marketing team, and they continue to do an outstanding job in helping us increase the REPREVE brand across the globe. It's especially exciting to see the way our customers use the REPREVE brand to differentiate their product in a very visible way on the packaging. Our continued co-branding and customer engagement give me confidence, just like our recent indicators of business momentum. Now I'll pass the call over to Craig Creaturo, our CFO. Craig?
Thank you, Eddie, and good morning, everyone. To echo the sentiments from Al and Eddie, I'm pleased with our sales and profitability performance consistent with our expectations, especially in an environment with several moving pieces all around the globe. Demand for our products continues to grow, and our management team is keenly focused on achieving a healthy balance of both short-term and long-term goals. As we look at the quarter from a high level, we can see that we accomplished our short-term sales and profitability goals for the third quarter and maintained the underlying business momentum as we implemented responsive selling price adjustments and made positive step changes against our recent U.S. labor challenges.
Beyond our operating income and specific to Brazil, you may recall that in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, we recognized an estimated benefit from expected recovery of non-income taxes in Brazil in the gross amount of $9.7 million. During the just-completed quarter, we reduced the estimate in connection with additional clarity and review of the recovery process during the months following the associated Brazil Supreme Court decision. Accordingly, $815,000 of recovery of non-income taxes net reflects the impact of slightly lowering the estimated benefit of recovery. This amount has been included in our reconciliations of adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS within the earnings release, consistent with our treatment of this same matter in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021.
As we look below the pre-tax income line, the headwinds that Eddie outlined for our Q3 and Q4 have impacted our effective tax rate due to a decrease in overall U.S.-based earnings, and we have not been able to fully benefit from certain U.S. tax attributes. This brought our effective tax rate slightly above the expected range for Q3 and will extend into Q4. Let's turn to slide five of the webcast presentation. Consolidated net sales increased 12.3% from $178.9 million to $200.8 million. The increase was primarily driven by responsive selling price adjustments, partially offset by volume shortfalls. For the polyester segment, performance was muted by the U.S. labor pool challenges Eddie mentioned earlier.
The price and mix change demonstrates the selling price adjustments that have been made over the last several months in response to rising input costs. We are still working to fully normalize the portfolio for today's cost levels. In Asia, sales volume was challenged during the month of March 2022 by the beginning of the current pandemic lockdowns in China in proximity to our Asian operations. For Asia, January and February experienced growth over the prior year, but March volume stagnated. Inflation in Asia has been calmer than the U.S., sales prices in Asia are still increasing accordingly. In Brazil, year-over-year price levels followed market dynamics and inflation as this segment continues to exhibit strength, driving a price mix benefit of 19.1%, although lower volumes were the result of a comparatively strong quarter in the prior year.
Nylon exhibited stability with higher sales following the increase in raw material costs. Turning to slide six of the quarterly gross profit overview, the polyester segment experienced decline in gross profit and weaker gross margin percentage were attributed to the U.S. labor and input cost headwinds that we mentioned during our last conference call. When comparing Q3 fiscal 2021 to Q3 fiscal 2022, input costs and U.S. labor challenges each represent about half of the total gross profit decline of $3.3 million. The Asia segment maintained a strong gross margin profile as underlying demand for sustainable products continues. The volume shortfalls in the month of March 2022 for Asia, due to the COVID-related lockdowns, had a limited impact on this segment's profitability.
However, the impact from lockdowns will be more evident in our business and will become the biggest headwind we will face in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, and accordingly, this has been factored into our updated guidance for fiscal year 2022. In Brazil, the gross margin rate includes some of the expected normalization, but Brazil remains the segment with the highest gross margin as a percentage of sales and is an important contributor to the success of Unifi both currently and in the future. Beyond the year-over-year gross profit changes, it is important to observe the sequential quarter changes presented on slide 7. We are proud of the progress we have made sequentially in the polyester and nylon segments from the December quarter. The polyester segment showing an improvement of over $3 million in gross profit.
As Eddie highlighted, our focused efforts are starting to pay off, and we are expecting continued gross margin improvement during the remainder of fiscal year 2022 and into fiscal year 2023. Moving on to slide 8, which provides a brief update on our balance sheet and capital allocation priorities. We ended the third quarter with $18.5 million borrowed against our ABL revolver, which had an availability of $65 million as of March 27, 2022. Under our balanced approach to capital allocation, we expect to continue to invest in the business to drive innovation and organic growth, maintain a strong balance sheet, and remain opportunistic with share repurchases and/or M&A opportunities.
As noted on this slide, as we described in the press release, we spent $1 million to repurchase 50,000 shares under the previously announced share repurchase program during the third quarter, for a total of $2.2 million and 101,500 shares in fiscal 2022 year to date. Following that activity, $45.8 million remains available for repurchases under the current program. I'll now pass the call back to Eddie to take us through the last slides of the presentation and make some final comments.
Thank you, Craig. Before we conclude today's call, I'd like to finish with slide nine of the presentation and discuss our outlook and expectations for the remainder of the fiscal year. As we have highlighted in this call, our revenue numbers have exceeded our expectations and leading us to increase our previous top-line outlook for the fiscal year 2022. Still, we must continue to work through all the global uncertainties, including ongoing labor pool constraints in our U.S. operations, inflation and raw material costs at all locations, and COVID-19 lockdown impacts in Asia. For the full year fiscal 2022, we expect sales to reach $810 million or more, representing an increase of 21% or more from fiscal 2021's revenues.
We are lowering our outlook on adjusted EBITDA to range between $54 million and $57 million due to the recent and ongoing COVID-related lockdowns in Asia and renewed global volatility. Our CapEx outlook should fall in the range of $40 million-$42 million. Lastly, we issued longer-term targets during our Investor Day in February. I want to highlight that we remain on track to achieve our previously stated $1.1 billion or more revenue target by 2025, comprised of 50% REPREVE fiber sales. We remain confident about the momentum and growth outlook for the REPREVE brand, enhancing our margins and profitability and helping us achieve $110 million or more in adjusted EBITDA by fiscal 2025. Sustainability is what separates us from our competitors and is the driver of our growth.
Our segments are growing their recycled composition, and demand continues to be robust for recycled products. With this growing market and our current initiatives taken to increase our margins and operations, Unifi is set to close 2022 on a positive note while setting up the company for long-term success. We will now open the line for questions. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star, then the number one. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Chris McGinnis from Sidoti & Company. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just in relation to, you know, the impact of Asia, I guess just how much in revenue is there a way to think about how much that impact's gonna be, you know, just given the stronger trends there? Then also, you know, are there any conversations about, you know, shifting maybe supply chains, that could benefit you know, if it goes to Central America or another region? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Chris, for joining us today. There is an uncertainty around how much it's gonna impact us. I think in part, a lot of our business in our Asia segment actually is not in Asia. It's not in China. It's outside of China. We are expecting a significant shortfall in revenues in April. We do see this improving, the shortfall reducing as we move through May and June of this fiscal quarter. It's hard to determine exactly how much. Now, on the longer term, your question is interesting around shifting supply chains. We are having conversations with several big brands around what is the possibility of moving some of this volume to Central America, which will help us long term in this region.
Of course, I'd like to remind you that the volumes of polyester in China are so large that any small movements towards Central America would make a big difference to our Central American operations. I think the world is probably pausing a little bit to see how quickly the zero COVID policy will impact the supply chains. No doubt with all of the geopolitical noise that's going on, everybody is rethinking moving concentrations of business in China into some other regions. It will take time. Thank you.
I appreciate that. Then I guess just thinking about that, do you need more investment in Central America or just how is that? You know, how are your assets there positioned, you know, for what could be some stronger growth?
We announced we were more clear in our Investor Day in February where we announced we are investing in all regions of the Americas, including Central America. We are well-placed with the investments that are underway to capture greater market share and greater volumes in that region.
Great. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking my questions, and good luck in Q4.
Thank you.
Thanks, Chris.
Your next question comes from the line of Dan Moore from CJS Securities. Your line is open.
Hi, this is Stefanos Crist calling in for Dan. How are you?
Great. Thanks so much.
First, what are the gross margin levels implied in both Asia and Brazil in your revised Q4 guidance? When do you expect those to start to improve, particularly in Asia?
Yeah. This is Craig. I would say that the gross margin levels implied for Q4 for Brazil are very close to where we're at for the just completed Q3 for Brazil. That business has had its peak of gross margins in Q3 of last year. The quarter we just completed, we think that's a pretty representative amount of gross margin that we should see from that business in Q4. In Asia, definitely our expectations for the gross margin percentage is pretty close, but slightly lower than what we just completed this year, or excuse me, this quarter. As we finish out the fiscal year, that much lower sales level should generate a little bit lower of a gross margin profile.
Still profitable for sure, and we're fortunate that our business there, where we're not owning manufacturing assets and resources, has definitely kept us away from a significant pull-down in gross margin. We do think that the product we'll get out will have a good margin profile, but not quite as good as if we had been at a full level of sales without the COVID lockdowns.
Got it. Thanks. Can you just give us an update on the labor shortages, which have impacted margins in the polyester segment in the back half of last year? You know, just what steps you've taken to alleviate that and, you know, I guess, the expected cadence for margins in poly going forward?
Yeah. As I said on this call earlier, we are still experiencing labor challenges, but not to the same extent that we had in Q2. We've done a lot of things. We've hired more trainers. We've changed our onboarding process. We have moved to a team approach to change how we really focus on more the group work and the efficiency of the machines rather than the individual contributors. We've done some things around labor to really understand what are their needs, and we're listening to them loud and clear. We did see an impact in productivity in Q3, but we didn't see the impact that we had in Q2 around our efficiencies and yield losses. We definitely saw improvements as we moved through Q3.
We are seeing improvements in April, just better than March. It's a long journey for us. We see it as something we're gonna have to continue to invest time and money in, but certainly not in the situation we were back in Q2, our fiscal Q2. Thank you.
I think we lost 10 points of volume growth in North America in Q2. It looks like about 5% in Q3, so it improved.
Yes.
I appreciate the color. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Marco Rodriguez from Stonegate Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Hey, I was wondering if I could follow up on a couple of those questions that were just previously asked here, mainly on Asia. If you can maybe kind of help us understand a little bit more perhaps maybe from a percentage standpoint, how much of that business over there is China, and if you can help us understand if the revenue or the volumes that are being impacted in China, are they completely shut down? Is there some shipments that are going out, and any sort of additional color there so we can kind of think through the revenue impact in Q4?
Yeah, I'll take this call. Thank you, Marco. You know, the whole country of China is not shut down, although there are many restrictions beyond Shanghai. Shanghai is where the real problem is. The challenge for us in China, Shanghai, is actually getting some of our export pounds out. Most of the textile production facilities are in other regions such as Suzhou, where our commercial operations are. The challenge we've had is that when Shanghai, late March and early April, really started locking down, some of the other provinces around Shanghai started creating more restrictions, so they didn't get into the same situation that Shanghai did. At this time, it's very hard for us to determine exactly how much the quarter's gonna be impacted, so that's why we're reticent to give you the exact number.
It will be significant. As Craig said, we are not expecting the margin to change, but we are expecting volumes to be much lower than what we had forecasted. We've been growing the China revenues by 15% a year for the last several years. This is a pause in growth, so we're not gonna see growth, and we're gonna see some decline. Q4 was expected to be a really fantastic quarter for us, and it's not going to be. The exact margin, in fact, the exact volume reduction, is hard to determine right now.
Marco, this is Craig. I'll just add on. You know, in a typical or a normal Q4, we would see, for Asia, we would see a nice growth because that Q3 is impacted by the Chinese New Year. Just to put it in perspective, usually we would see Q4 increase over Q3 somewhere between 10%-15%, somewhere in that range. But now, as Eddie’s saying, we're definitely expecting a reduction. Again, I think we can say it's gonna be 20%-30% or maybe more.
We don't really know and that's why we did have to range out, not only the revenue guidance was not as specific as we otherwise would have been able to give, it's also one of the reasons we had to range out the EBITDA guidance a little bit more than we normally would.
Understood. Very helpful. Is there any sort of thinking through perhaps trying to shift the supply that you do have access to, sounds like in at least in China, to different ports that may not be as impacted such as Shanghai?
Yeah, we are. Ningbo is a port that's. It's not fully locked down, and we're doing some odd things like putting containers on the river to float down to Ningbo, to get our products out the door. I will tell you know, I'm just if they're listening, our team in China are doing an amazing job, working around all these restrictions, whether it be local very, very localized restrictions. Our customers are really, they're screaming for yarn, and we are doing everything we can to get it out there. We don't have a supply issue right now internally in China. We do have an issue around certainly getting some of the products to the customers. I hope that helps.
Yeah. Very helpful. In terms of the labor issues that you've seen some pretty nice improvements here sequentially, I understand that this is a longer process, a longer focus for you guys to see those improvements there. Can you maybe talk a little bit about your expectations as far as what sort of sequential improvement you might be thinking about next quarter, and then how you sort of see that playing out into fiscal 2023?
I don't have a crystal ball, obviously. The work that we're doing around onboarding, around engaging with our employees, around putting in different types of training programs, around our focus on machine efficiency and not the individual contribution, all of that is helping, and we're seeing that actually bear fruit. What we also are doing, as you know, is putting in our new Evo technology, which is improving our productivity because it's less labor intensive. We're expecting really another two quarters probably of improvements. We've, our productivity, we're hoping by the end of our second Q2, fiscal 2023, by the end of December, to see really meaningful impact on our productivity and on our retention rates with our employees. That's our expectation. We'll have to wait and see.
All right. Great. Thank you guys for your time. I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Marco.
There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to our speakers for their closing remarks.
Thanks, RJ, and thank you everyone for participating today. Our next earnings release for the fourth fiscal quarter ending July 3rd, 2022, is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, August 10th, after the close of the market, with a conference call to follow the next morning, Thursday, August 11th, at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Time. Thanks again for joining the call.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.