Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the UNFI Fiscal twenty twenty one Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Steve Blumquist, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Sir,
the
floor is yours. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on UNFI's second quarter fiscal twenty twenty one earnings conference call. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release issued earlier this morning. The press release, webcast and a supplemental slide deck are available under the Investors section of the company's website at www.unfi.com. Joining me for today's call are Steve Spinner, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Howard, our Chief Financial Officer Chris Testa, President of UNFI and Eric Dorne, our Chief Operating Officer. Steve, Chris and John will provide a business update, after which we'll take your questions.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that comments made by management during today's call may contain forward looking statements. These forward looking statements include plans, expectations, estimates and projections that might involve significant risks and uncertainties. These risks are discussed in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward looking statements. And lastly, I'd like to point out that during today's call, management will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures.
Definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.
Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our fiscal twenty twenty one second quarter earnings call. As you saw in this morning's press release, we delivered another quarter of outstanding financial results. Second quarter sales grew 7.1%, second quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 57 or $74,000,000 and second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 95 basis points. This quarter's $2.00 $6,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA was the second highest in UNFI's history behind only last year's third quarter that benefited from the significant jump in demand as consumers began loading their pantries heading into the pandemic.
This quarter also represented the fourth consecutive quarter where we've grown adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS at a significantly higher rate than we've grown sales. We continue to make great progress in our debt reduction efforts this quarter and improved our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio to 3.2x, a full two turn improvement since last year's second quarter. As a reminder, we have paid down almost $1,000,000,000 of debt since fiscal twenty nineteen and are well on our way towards less than three times leverage. Momentum continues to build throughout our business, and we are delivering strong results as we execute on our strategies. This quarter's results are a clear validation of the great work we are doing to increase shareholder value.
Our cross selling strategy is resonating with both existing and new customers who are looking to aggregate volume. Our award winning brands business, an important differentiator for UNFI, continues to grow as does our professional services business, both of which help our customers succeed in today's evolving retail landscape. Looking forward, we continue to believe that UNFI is well positioned for continued growth and that food at home consumption will remain elevated for the next several years. Companies continue to push office return dates further into the future as they evaluate return to work strategies in light of increased productivity and work flexibility that come with working from home. At the same time, many Americans continue to manage their household budgets closely with dining in providing a more affordable meal option and a great opportunity to connect as a family.
Consumers also continue to look for better food options with ingredient transparency and UNFI continues to lead the way forward in this important segment. We expect this backdrop will continue to provide a tailwind for us as we pursue growth within the $140,000,000,000 addressable wholesale market, of which $38,000,000,000 comes from gaining share of wallet with our current customers and an additional $78,000,000,000 from adding new customers. In addition, we continue to move forward on optimizing our distribution network, generating additional operating benefits through the Value Path initiative and investing in technologies that provide valuable insights into our future business growth and lower our cost structure. Finally, I'm pleased that we've extended the contract with our largest customer through late twenty twenty seven, almost seven years from now. We believe this reflects the strong working relationship between the two companies and the benefit UNFI brings to their operations and growth.
Let me now turn the call over to Chris to provide more context on our business performance. Chris?
Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, I'll provide additional color on our fiscal twenty twenty one second quarter performance and discuss the key trends we're currently seeing in our business. I will also highlight the drivers that continue to differentiate UNFI, giving us confidence in our ability to drive long term market share growth. As you saw in this morning's press release, total sales for the quarter increased 7.1% or $450,000,000 compared to last year's second quarter. Excluding retail, our wholesale growth rate was 6.5%.
For perspective, we believe Unifi's growth was about 200 basis points higher than Nielsen's retail syndicated data when accounting for the 400 basis points difference in retail versus wholesale inflation and our 80 basis points foodservice channel headwind. Our second quarter sales growth also accelerated 110 basis points compared to the 6% sales growth in our first quarter. We believe there are several reasons for this sales growth expansion. The first is Unifi's unique ability to cross sell. Our cross selling efforts generated approximately $90,000,000 in incremental sales for the quarter, bringing our total incremental revenue from cross selling to nearly $500,000,000 since the SUPERVALU acquisition.
Looking forward, we see a path to delivering a cumulative $1,000,000,000 in cross selling revenue by the end of our fiscal twenty twenty two as we continue to gain traction with larger wins. As we mentioned on the last call, we believe that there's a $140,000,000,000 adjustable market for UNFI, including $38,000,000,000 of upside opportunity by cross selling and gaining further penetration with our existing customers. We are gaining momentum and cross selling remains an exciting key benefit for our customers and UNFI. The second reason for our Q2 sales growth was revenue gained from new customers. Our sales teams have been aggressively capitalizing on our opportunities to drive sales gains across all parts of the store.
And we're winning business every week across all categories including fresh and general merchandise, center store grocery, frozen and others. Unifi has the portfolio and distribution footprint to compete with the local and national wholesalers and provide customers with the advantage of our scale. We also continue to invest in our people and expertise. To that end, we've hired Dorne Wininger as our SVP of Produce. Dorne comes from us from Walmart Mexico and he's already hit the ground running.
He's another great example of the talent we've added over the past year to accelerate growth for our customers and UNFI. The third reason driving our outsized growth is the changing consumer behavior at retail. McKinsey has reported that roughly 10% of people have changed their primary grocery store during the pandemic, largely based on proximity to home. UNFI customers have benefited from this, especially our independents who tap into an additional growing consumer preference to shop smaller footprint stores. We have and will continue to support all of our customers, particularly as the future of work remains uncertain, but likely does not entail everyone returning to work in the same fashion they did pre pandemic.
Also the rising importance of e commerce is changing how consumers interact with our stores. We estimate that 70% of independents and a a larger percent of chains now offer e commerce solutions to their customers and Unifi provides the digital platforms and necessary support to help our customers succeed. My point of fact, we have onboarded hundreds of new customers onto platform solution since the start of the pandemic and have many more in the pipeline. Moving forward, we believe these consumer trends will continue and UNFI is uniquely positioned to adapt to changing consumer behavior by servicing our diverse customer base through an unmatched portfolio of products, programs and services. Turning to our sales performance by channel, second quarter sales to chains retailers were up 9%.
Both channels were ahead of the syndicated data I cited earlier when adjusting for inflation and both experienced accelerated growth versus Q1 twenty twenty one. Our continued growth with customers in these sales channels is the result of the factors I just mentioned. Specifically with chains, we have had cross selling gains with natural customers that had begun to use UNFI to support their captive conventional distribution. And we have won new business with many independents that are now UNFI customers. Wholesale sales in the supernatural channel were up 7.2% compared to last year's second quarter, which was the combination of greater sales to existing stores as well as sales to stores opened less than one year.
And finally, our other channel grew slightly as strong gains in our e commerce business more than offset the softness in foodservice and military. Second quarter e commerce sales increased 97% led by new business and sales growth to the largest e commerce player who is now a top 25 customer for UNFI. Speaking of e commerce, we'll soon be introducing a new platform called Community Marketplace. This will be an exciting extension of our easy options B2B e commerce solution that will provide Unify customers additional access to growing on trend local brands. Similar to other e commerce marketplaces, sales proprietary community marketplace will bypass their traditional distribution through our DC network and allow for smaller emerging brands to be ordered and shipped directly to retail customers throughout The U.
S. This will give our customers access to an even broader assortment of items with flexible order sizes and convenience to order from multiple sources online in one place. For existing Unifi suppliers interested in expanding their portfolios or for newer brands of suppliers looking for a gateway into Unifi, they gain immediate opportunity to access Unifi's more than 30,000 unique customer locations and benefit from a fast and easy onboarding that could eventually lead to broader distribution in our DC network. In short, we believe community marketplace is the disruptive digital innovation needed to connect growing brands with our customers to ultimately bring end consumers more freedom of food choice. We're finalizing the details that I look forward to sharing more on our next call.
Our strong top line results include another quarter of growth in our retail business, where same store sales increased 15.3%. E commerce at retail continues its robust growth trajectory increasing by nearly 190% at Cub. Last month, one of the two Cub stores that were damaged during last year's civil unrest in Minneapolis reopened and included several new offerings in departments based on input from the community. Cub maintains its long held number one market share position in the Minneapolis market and we're very proud of our commitment to serving communities that depend on us. We expect the second store to reopen in the next thirty days.
Another sales growth driver was our Brands Plus private brands business, which grew 7.3% in the second quarter. Within the portfolio, our largest brand Essential Everyday grew double digits driven by gains with larger customers and better in stock levels than many of the national brand alternatives. Our inbound fill rates for our own brands have been averaging 1,000 basis points higher than national brands. Our Field Day brand exclusively distributed via our natural independent customers has seen over 30 growth this fiscal year fueled by supporting core grocery categories and new items. Across the entire Brands Plus portfolio, innovation continues to be the focus with approximately 200 new item launches planned for this fiscal year.
To this end, we've seen tremendous growth from products like Woodstock's organic frozen avocados, which quickly became the number two ranked new item in the frozen fruit category in The U. S. Natural enhanced channel. We have a strong long term plan for this portfolio that capitalizes on the upside opportunity with existing as well as new customers and leaning into Brands Plus as a point of difference for UNFI and our customers. Moving beyond our product offerings, we continue to expand our professional services portfolio to offer customers unique solutions beyond selling groceries to them.
One recent example involves bringing digital currency such as Bitcoin to our customer stores through relationship with CoinCloud. CoinCloud is a small footprint kiosk that empowers consumers to buy, sell or trade digital currency with cash without the need for a bank account or debit card. To date, we've signed 80 contracts and see this potential to grow to 4,000 plus unified locations. This is just one example of new services we are adding to our current portfolio, including more traditional services like store design, merchandising and payment processing. In total, Unifi offers 150 types of services to keep our customers stores relevant, to drive their retail sales and to help them lower their costs.
Lastly, the operations side, we continue to move forward with optimizing and expanding our distribution center network to better service our customers and deliver operating efficiencies. In Pennsylvania, our work is well underway on our new Allentown campus, which will be operational in time to ship key food early next fiscal year. Our new Riverside, California facility and a major expansion in Ridgefield, Washington are complete and fully operational. We introduced automation in portions of both of these distribution centers where we expect to experience a 100% increase in throughput as measured by units picked per hour, which will yield expense savings in addition to improving our order accuracy and lowering operational credits. Given the truly differentiated business model, which includes aggressively growing our wholesale business while monetizing our unique assets like brands, e comm and services, we're optimistic about the rest of the year and our prospects beyond fiscal twenty twenty one.
As Steve said, we're running on all cylinders and we truly are. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.
Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. On today's call, I will provide additional context on our quarterly financial performance, balance sheet, capital structure and full year outlook for fiscal twenty twenty one. As Steve and Chris said, we're very pleased with our operating momentum in this quarter's strong performance. We set second quarter records for net sales, which totaled $6,900,000,000 adjusted EBITDA, which came in at $2.00 $6,000,000 and adjusted EPS of $1.25 per share.
Second quarter gross margin rate expanded 12 basis points versus last year's second quarter driven by a margin mix benefit from greater retail sales growth relative to wholesale sales growth as well as lower levels of promotional spending in our retail operations. Gross margin rate for our wholesale and other businesses was approximately flat as a decrease in shrink expense, which last year included about seven basis points of expense associated with customer bankruptcies was offset by lower levels of supplier related income. Second quarter operating expense rate declined 82 basis points to 12.59% of sales including 45 basis points associated with the reduction in bad debt expense versus last year's second quarter that included three customer bankruptcies. The remaining improvement was driven by our Value Path productivity initiatives and strong leverage of the fixed and semi fixed portions of our cost structure. Our second quarter results also included the benefit of lower health and welfare costs based on lower usage levels during the pandemic.
As COVID vaccination levels increase and doctor visits and medical procedures return to pre pandemic levels, we expect our benefit costs to return to pre pandemic levels as well. Our 57% growth in second quarter adjusted EBITDA on a 7% increase in sales translated to a 95 basis point year over year expansion in our adjusted EBITDA margin, the fourth consecutive quarter we grew year over year adjusted EBITDA at a significantly higher rate than sales. Excluding the impact of last year's customer bankruptcies, second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin grew approximately 45 basis points. These results again demonstrate our ability to translate top line performance into even stronger bottom line growth, which we believe will continue to generate significant shareholder value. On a GAAP basis, we reported $1 in earnings per share, which included $0.25 per share in after tax charges primarily related to advisory fees for our transformational Value Path initiative and the acceleration of unamortized debt issuance costs and original issue discount tied to the $150,000,000 term loan prepayment made early in the quarter.
Our adjusted EPS, which excludes the impact of these items and several smaller adjustments totaled $1.25 Turning to the balance sheet. Our total outstanding net debt finished the quarter at just under $2,500,000,000 the lowest quarter ending level since the SUPERVALU acquisition. We generated $265,000,000 in net cash from operating activities in the quarter, which led to a reduction in total outstanding net debt of nearly $250,000,000 Free cash flow in the second quarter included the anticipated working capital recapture as we sold through inventory that had increased for the holiday selling season. Our year to date net debt reduction now totals approximately $115,000,000 Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage improved to 3.2 times and benefited from both lower debt levels and higher trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA compared to the first quarter. As Steve mentioned, this leverage ratio has improved by two full turns since the second quarter of fiscal twenty twenty.
In addition to lower debt levels, we recently took two other steps to lower our annual interest expense. Early in the second quarter, we borrowed $150,000,000 on our asset based revolving credit facility and reduced the balance on our term loan by an equal amount. Then following the end of the second quarter, we took advantage of favorable credit markets and successfully repriced the term loan lowering the interest rate by 75 basis points. Based on the second quarter ending balances, these two actions will reduce annual interest expense by approximately 11,000,000 which equates to about a $0.13 annual increase in earnings per share. We believe the operating environment will continue to benefit from food at home consumption, which combined with our year to date results and the anticipated continued build of benefits from our acquisition synergies and value path gives us a high degree of confidence in our ability to achieve our fiscal year twenty twenty operating guidance.
We are reaffirming our full year guidance for net sales, which we continue to expect to be in the range of $27,000,000,000 to $27,800,000,000 and now expect to finish towards the upper end of the previously provided ranges of $690,000,000 to $730,000,000 for adjusted EBITDA and $3.05 to $3.55 per share for adjusted EPS. We're maintaining our previous guidance of $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 for capital expenditures and approximately $250,000,000 of net debt reduction both of which include this year's investments in our new Allentown distribution center to support Key Food. Last, we now expect to finish the year with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio of approximately 3.3 times. Although we don't provide quarterly earnings guidance, I do want to comment briefly on our expectation for the third quarter. As a reminder, our third quarter results in fiscal twenty twenty benefited from the unprecedented stock up surge as COVID driven demand began to spread.
While we expect continued elevated demand and strong absolute levels of performance in the back half of fiscal twenty twenty one, we do expect our fiscal twenty twenty one third quarter sales, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS to be below prior year levels. However, we remain confident and optimistic in our full year outlook as reflected in our expectation to finish the year towards the upper end of our ranges for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. Increasing value for our shareholders remains a priority and focus of UNFI. With our differentiated business model and large addressable market, we remain confident in our ability to grow our business and generate meaningful free cash flow. In the near term, we will continue to use our free cash flow to further reduce debt and improve our leverage.
Thank you for your time this morning and for your interest in UNFI. With that, let me turn the call back to Steve.
Thanks, John. As John discussed, we remain laser focused on driving our business forward and are committed to increasing shareholder value. We're pleased with our year to date performance and remain confident we'll deliver on our full year outlook. Since our last call, we released our 2020 ESG report. We're proud of the progress we're making and have launched an ambitious 02/1930 agenda built around the theme Better for All.
This past year, UNFI has improved its CDP climate change response score to an A minus through purposeful actions and enhanced disclosures. We've announced new paid parental leave benefits. We've delivered the equivalent of 19,000,000 meals to those in need and achieved a 7% year over year improvement in food waste diverted from landfills, just to name a few. Longer term, we've challenged ourselves to reduce food waste by 50% by 2025, achieve zero waste to landfills from our DCs by 02/1930, reduce our distribution center energy intensity by 30% by 02/1930 and donate the equivalent of over 200,000,000 meals to those in need by 02/1930. Corporate citizenship is very important to us and part of what makes UNFI a special company.
We're dedicated to serving our customers while doing right for those in need, all while being sensitive to our impact on the planet and the environment. To that end, we've expanded a zero emissions all electric trailer pilot with 53 new trailers that will operate in California. We also remain focused on succession and continue to evaluate candidates to serve as UNFI's next CEO. COVID has made the process a bit more complicated and the Board has asked me to extend my timeline in order to ensure that we continue to have a comprehensive process. And I'm committed to staying until I can turn the reins over to our new CEO.
Our business is strong, our future is bright, and I'm confident UNFI will have a new and exciting leader later this year. Our associates deliver results every day safely and efficiently, and I want to thank them for all their hard work during the quarter. In conclusion, I'm very pleased that fiscal twenty twenty one is unfolding largely as we had originally anticipated. Our optimistic full year outlook demonstrates the confidence we have in our people and business. And as I stated on our last call, I continue to believe that UNFI's best days lie ahead.
With that, we're ready to take your questions. Thank you.
Your first question comes from the line of Edward Kelly from Wells Fargo.
Yes. Hi, guys. Good morning. Good morning. My first question is on the Whole Foods contract.
Any more detail that you can provide? I think the economics were the same, which I'm not so sure was the case the last time you extended it. And then it's been extended for two years.
I thought last time maybe it
was extended longer. So just any additional thoughts you can provide there?
Sure, sure. Thanks. I am unbelievably proud of what we've accomplished in this negotiation because it really demonstrated to us and it demonstrated to Amazon and Whole Foods how important the programs are and how important the companies are to each other. And if you remember, those of you who have been around for a while, we typically had negotiated with Whole Foods every five years. And now we've got a whole new process because Whole Foods is no longer independent.
So we're dealing with two parties. And so really one way to look at it is in the old world, even though we had a ten year contract, we were really negotiating a brand new one every five years, which to me meant we had a five year contract. And now we have a seven or almost seven. And so that's a spectacular result. For those who follow Amazon, you know that those kinds of contracts are really unusual.
And so we were we feel really fortunate to be able to get that done. As far as the economics, you're 100% right. They're essentially the same as the agreement that we currently have in place. And just for perspective, seven years is a long, long time. It's, I think, one of the longest contracts that we have throughout the entire company.
And just for perspective, Amazon in 2014 was $80,000,000,000 I think they did $386,000,000,000 last year, so 6x growth. So to be able to have a customer that exhibits that kind of growth, I think, is something that is really good for our shareholders.
Great. And then just a second question for you on consumer products or vendor promotions and kind of what you're seeing out there in the marketplace today? Has that picked up at all? Remind us what a normalization, in that sort of means for your P and L? And then as we look at the gross margin, I know shrink helped, but I guess the vendor stuff hurt.
As we sort of think about the world normalizing, can you sustain sort of flat wholesale gross margins when we net all this out?
Well, I mean, we don't guide to gross margin, number one. But number two is what I would tell you, there's far more tailwinds than there are headwinds as it relates generally to gross margin. Because if you think about general service level is still lagging where it was pre pandemic pretty significantly. And when you're in a situation where suppliers are having a hard time filling the demand, there's obviously a lack of promotional activity as well. So the retailers are seeing that in their gross margin, right?
Because since there's no promotional activity, they have a higher retail margin. But because we do have margin that we earn in promotional periods, when we start to get the fill rate back, when the manufacturers start promoting again, when the retailers start promoting again, that's opportunity for UNFI to be able to jump back in, in a big way to that marginal income. Now we disclose, you know, the value associated with it, but, you know, it's a good number and it's a pretty significant tailwind for us. The other thing is inflation. Inflation still runs in the 100 basis point range.
And we all have an expectation that, again, once we come out of COVID, once products start returning to the shelves, once retailers start bringing back all the items that the manufacturers discontinued, we're going to start seeing some of those input costs pass through. And that's a really good thing for us as well.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Rupesh Parikh from Oppenheimer.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the nice quarter. So I guess just starting with the guidance. So you guys now expect EBITDA and EPS to be at the higher end of the range, but you didn't change your sales expectation. So just curious why you still believe in a current sales range and you haven't adjusted that.
And also the Key Foods contract, I was just curious in terms of what sort of contribution you expect related to Key Foods this year and then what percent impacts next year?
I can start with the Key Food Key food is not going to start until our next fiscal year into 2022. Go ahead, John.
Yes. No, I appreciate it. That was going to be part of the comment. So there's the key food, the FY 2022 as we continue to invest in the Allentown facility. As we think about the sales and the EBITDA numbers that we're seeing right now, we feel comfortable from a top line perspective with the range that we provided.
What we're seeing as think about the first half of FY 2021 and what we are forecasting the back half, we're seeing the continued improvement and value coming from the leverage and the scale comes from UNFI and we're seeing the continued value from our value path and productivity initiatives that are flowing through our margin and SG and A OpEx. We're seeing all of that flow through our P and L. So that's why we're thinking about from holding that sales in that range but guiding towards the upper end on the EBITDA and EPS. Of course, you get into the benefit of the interest as well.
Rupesh, what I would tell you is good management teams look out two years in advance. And I would tell you, this is a really good management team because, as you know, we made a lot of big strategic decisions a couple of years ago. And what's proving out is pretty close to what we hope to do, and that was to be able grow our bottom line EBITDA at a rate that was considerably faster than our top line. And that's exactly what's happening as a result of a lot of initiatives to increase productivity, to optimize the network and to provide a higher level of service to our customers. And that's what we're doing.
From a revenue perspective, I think Chris gave some just terrific analogies in his script that essentially try to explain wholesale revenue growth versus retail revenue growth. And I think that's where a lot of people get confused because the retail revenue growth has retail margin embedded in it. I think the important note is that UNFI on a net basis is growing considerably faster than the market itself.
Then, Rupesh, just to build on a lot of that is just the idea that, number one, we are so confident in the guidance that we provided that we're actually providing that guidance. I mean, it's something where we feel good about our numbers, we feel good about our outlook for FY 2021 that we are putting the guidance out there. So we feel really, really good about that.
Okay, great. And then just one follow-up question. So since we don't have comparable financials for the prior year for Q3, So you look at the expense operating expense this quarter is around $860,000,000 or so. Is that the right baseline to think about going forward? I don't know if you can provide any color there.
And then you also called out a reduction in benefit expense this quarter. So I don't know if you can quantify what that temporary benefit was for the quarter.
Yes. So we generally don't provide any information or any guidance by quarter. If I think about I know you want to think about your model in the I think the part that we would focus on is the upper end of that EBITDA range and the upper end of the EPS range. I think that's what we're focused on.
We manage, of course, the entire P and L, but we wouldn't provide that information by quarter, Rupesh.
Your
next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel from Guggenheim.
Steve, curious, you talked about the $90,000,000 of cross sell revenue. Roughly speaking, what was the contribution from new accounts, right, as part of that four fifty And then what does the pipeline look like? And is it predominantly, if you think about independents versus I imagine there's not too many key foods out there, but predominantly the independent pipeline is robust and larger account maybe a little less so or
no? Is going
to take this
John, it's Chris. The $90,000,000 so that is incremental on a rolling basis since the acquisition. It's close to $500,000,000 The pipeline literally has 1,000 different opportunities in it ranging from all categories, all sizes. And what we saw in the quarter was the wins were not concentrated in any category or any channel. So what we're experiencing is exactly what Steve laid out two years ago when we talked about the strategic decisions we made to build out the store.
The wins are happening in independents. They're happening in chains. They're happening in ecom. And it's across produce, meat, general merchandise, center store, natural, conventional. Key food, you're right.
There's not a lot of key foods out there, and we announced key food because it is a significant new win. However, every day, every week, there's a lot of smaller wins coming in across all channels, across all categories.
And John, what I would add is two things. One, one of the really interesting outcomes is that some of our fastest growth is in conventional distribution with retailers that have captive facilities, either because we're closer to the stores or we can do it more efficiently. But more importantly is the whole world has changed. Retailers think about supply chain differently today than they did a year ago. And the focus is on aggregating volume to few.
It drives down their cost. It makes it easier. It lets them focus on what they really need to concentrate on, which is keeping consumers either in their store or on their site. And again, as you think about the strategic acquisition of SUPERVALU and the migration towards being a wholesaler of scale that can provide everything that a retailer needs, that's going to benefit UNFI for years to come.
And then just a follow-up on the cross sell, right? So going from $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 I think that's by the end of fiscal twenty twenty two. Correct me if I'm wrong. And so that's $500,000,000 over six quarters, which seem to be a little bit less than what you've had this last quarter. Is conservatism?
Do you think that for whatever reason, cross sell slows down a little bit and then picks up again? Curious that $500,000,000
Yes. John, it wasn't meant to be strict financial guidance for the next fiscal year. It's just what we think we're doing for as a run rate basis on our cross rate. We don't expect it to slow down. The number was over $1,000,000,000 and I think that is that's a fair estimate based on what we're seeing and what we're adding each quarter.
And I would tell you, John, we're just starting to get really, really spectacular as fresh. We've made some additions to our leadership team that Chris mentioned. We're building out the infrastructure. I think we're now the largest in protein and produce across the country. There are some holes that we need to fill.
But that could be the leading driver towards cross selling over the next couple of years. Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Greg Badishkanian from Wolfe Research.
Good morning. This is Spencer Hanis on for Greg. The industry is facing pretty tough compares over the next few weeks. Any color on how much of the sales growth you're expecting the industry to retain? And then I guess post COVID, how are
you thinking about what your customer mix is going to look like?
Yes. Good questions. It's been a really volatile environment. And just to lay out the guidance like we did in the beginning of the year and reaffirm it at this call, You know, it basically what we're looking at is what we thought was gonna happen for the year was grocery was gonna remain elevated throughout the fiscal year. We still believe in that.
As we head into a post pandemic world, we still think the work from home is gonna be a tailwind for us. So we'll continue, we'll continue to have elevated levels. We think that shopping closer to home is gonna remain. That's a consumer behavior that's gonna remain. That's gonna help our independent and change business that is out in the suburbs.
Greg, what Spencer, was the other part of your question?
Just in the next couple of weeks. You know, I don't think we could comment on kind of what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks. But what I I think what I would tell you is, first of all, our revenue did kick up quarter to quarter, one to two. And we've seen some real consistency in our overall revenue since we got past, let's call it, May of last year. And so since then, we think the revenue has been pretty consistent and will likely be pretty consistent, albeit leaving the next month or two out.
Got it. That's really helpful. And then just to follow-up on the cross selling commentary, I think you mentioned that one of the biggest sources of the cross selling lifts you're seeing is opportunities from retailers with captive distribution centers. If you think out longer term, you think that retailers with those type of distribution systems, do they move to a more capital light model? How are you thinking about that longer term?
I mean, I think that people are doing the work. You know, maybe twenty years ago, certain large retailers of scale said, Look, we just need to own our own captive network. Now remember that some of our largest customers on the natural side are retailers with a captive network. It's just that they couldn't replicate and they can't replicate what we did on the natural side. But I think retailers today are very sophisticated, especially retailers with captive networks, and they're taking a look at what's the most efficient route to market.
And if that means using using a third party like UNFI, then that's what they're going to do, and that's exactly what's happening.
Got it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Jim Salera from Northcoast Research.
Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to drill down a little bit on the operating margin line. You guys had a really impressive improvement both year over year and quarter over quarter. I just wanted to see how much of that is just benefit from not having some of the COVID related issues at the warehouse?
And how much of that is sustainable from investments in the consolidation and the automation across the distribution network?
So this is Eric. I'll start out and then John maybe you can jump in. I mean, would start by just acknowledging our team's efforts around COVID and our safety protocols and all the tireless efforts that they put forward keeping each other safe. I I think what you saw was a reflection of our consolidation, stabilization in the Pacific Northwest. We mentioned it on the first quarter call.
And our DCs have really become fully operational in those markets, which were reflected in the overall reduction in OpEx expense. We've also introduced our operations excellence program as part of our Value Path initiative, which is also starting to show out some results. So I think we're very confident in going forward on where we are and part of our guidance obviously is maintaining.
John, I'll turn
it over to Yes. Eric, I think you're spot on with that. When we think sequentially, we saw a 3.2% increase in sales from Q1 to Q2, but a 30% increase in EBITDA. Some of that is driven by those Q1 challenges that we've talked about before, particularly in the Pacific Northwest that have substantially subsided at this point and we have much more sustainability in those. And the rest of it comes down to some of the additional productivity we talked about earlier, the value path initiatives as well as some of the timing of those benefit costs that will come back towards the end of FY 2021.
So I think it's really a great quarter and a great year from that perspective to show that sequential improvement in EBITDA even with the anticipated or one time Pacific Northwest consolidation issues.
Great. And so looking forward, do you think that there's any room for improvement? I know historically, wholesalers have been able to have that EBIT margin level above 2%. I mean, do you guys think that as you work through some of the order distribution centers, like you said, add some of these efficiency gains,
do you
think it's possible to get to a sustainable level or your EBIT margin may be 2% or 2.5%, somewhere in that range?
Yes. I'll tell you, I think about it and Eric can chime in as well. Without providing any type of forward looking guidance on numbers or anything else, I think it is comfortable to tell you that we are still working through productivity initiatives. We still have upside related to value path that we know we're still going after between now and FY twenty twenty three. We know we still have a large final component of the synergies related to the system standardization.
That's going to be a big tailwind for us as we get on the other side of that aspect. So I think we still have lots of opportunities in front of us to continue to improve our EBITDA margin.
And we've only really optimized two networks, Pacific Northwest and Southern California, and there's still quite a few to go.
And we're also continuing our investment in automation, which is really starting to settle in and will continue to throw off productivity improvements.
Perfect. Thanks guys.
Thanks for the question.
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Fishbein from Jefferies.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. Just really a clarification question for me and I apologize if I missed it or I misunderstood here. But the SG and A stepped down sequentially from Q4, Q1 levels. But even though you have higher sales this quarter, I think you're talking Pacific Northwest stabilization combined with productivity initiatives.
Just want to make sure I understand correctly, is it some trapped costs coming offline in the Pacific Northwest? Or I think you just said maybe it's route consolidation. Just trying to get a sense of what inning we're in with the pressures you saw in Q1 going away. And then if you can just clarify, I guess, on the value Path end, what so far has been done for you to include Value Path in the explanation of the operating margin improvement this quarter? And kind of what inning are we in with hitting those targets?
I know those were much longer term targets and I'm surprised that we're already seeing some of that play through in Q2. Thanks.
Yes. This is Eric. So I'll start in Pacific Northwest. I would say we're in the middle innings on our optimization. Those one of the DCs was brand new, came out of the ground.
So we have to start up and to settle in another experienced large remodel and expansion. And I can tell you that the staffs in the buildings have become fully productive. We've eliminated most of our third party labor support. So I think we are well on our way, but we still have room to continue. As
far
as ValuePath goes, we've experienced a lot of progress on our initiatives from private brand sourcing to working with our customers on delivery frequency, our distribution center productivity initiative that we call our operational excellence, as well as working on our administrative footprint across the network. As Steve mentioned, our distribution center network footprint. And then we're also tackling our organizational effectiveness and looking at all of the components for all of the support functions. So yes, we are seeing value, but there too, we're probably in the middle innings and we have a line of sight over the next couple of years of where that will shake out. But really solid progress given the pandemic and, the all the other challenges we've been, dealing with, but the momentum is there.
And the team is really in a different mindset. It's all about our, you know, evolving as an organization.
Your next question comes from the line of Karen Short from Barclays.
Hi, good morning. This is Kate Howard on for Karen. Just one question for me. I don't know if I missed it, but can you share any update on what you're seeing with fill rates currently and where you think that will go over the next few quarters?
Yeah. Hey, Kate. This is Chris. So they still remain they still remain behind historical fill rates pre pandemic. We did see sequential improvement by about 400 basis points across the business largely from the larger CPG suppliers that are catching up to demands.
But we are still seeing we're still lower than we expected. And as Steve mentioned, that's headwind as it relates to promotional dollars. We are getting get healthy rates from all of our suppliers. We have hundreds of calls every day about get healthy rates. And most of the sentiment is that it's going to come back over the course of the summer.
And we'll start to see a little bit better fill rates, historical fill rates as we go through the summer months.
Great, thanks.
Sure. Your next question comes from Eric Larson from Seaport Global Securities.
Yes. Thanks, and congratulations on a good quarter. Steve, I may have heard this right or wrong. Just it's just a near term comment that I think you said inflation was 100 points this quarter. We obviously, in the industry, have quite a bit more inflation, and it seems like many of the CPG companies aren't all taking pricing up fairly aggressively.
Obviously, there's a lag to how that comes in. But could you comment more on how you might see inflation maybe later in this fiscal year? Maybe it's more really accelerating your next fiscal year, but how that might translate into your inflation rates? And then would that maybe possibly increase the promotional activity? Or how would you view that?
Yes. So you're 100% right. And we have very marginal inflation right now. But we do expect that inflation rate will start to ramp up, I think, pretty dramatically. I mean I don't have any facts that would say it's going to happen other than I've been doing it a long time.
And based upon what we see in the pipeline, I think one could make the assumption that inflation will start to ramp up pretty dramatically in our fiscal 'twenty two, not in the current year, but in fiscal 'twenty two. And what will also happen at the same time is a pretty significant increase in the promotional rate. As the CPGs really work hard to get their products back on the shelf, product that was discontinued. And so we'll start to see a lot of that promotional activity return. And so that will be a pretty significant tailwind for us as we go into 'twenty two because obviously we do make a profit on retailer promotions and the math of inflation just works in our favor in a really big way.
Yes, that's exactly what I was getting to. So thank you for that answer. And then let me just ask a little longer term question. And I you've already touched on it, where you've optimized some of your distribution systems, obviously, in the Pacific Northwest. You've only hit really two in Southern California, you've got a whole bunch more.
I think of the center of a country like Iowa, except where you have concentration now of, you three or four DCs. Number one is will that require a lot more capital, number one. And number two is what is really truly the upside for that? Have you given any guidance or any kind of notion of what EBITDA benefits or margin benefits might be as you gradually get through those optimization programs?
So this is Eric. I'll try to fill in those blanks. I mean, are still very much in the process of evaluating our network, both conventional, natural, given cross selling, giving the additional demand and protecting our capacity for growth. So I think we're very early on that planning besides the markets we've already talked about. We also have utilization of automation that's across the network that we're also very focused on.
And I think over the coming months, we'll have a little bit more detail to share, but we're not just quite there yet.
Okay. Thank
you. But just from a common sense perspective, if you have multiple DCs, you have multiple inventory, you have multiple overhead and multiple trucks and multiple material handling equipment and so on and so forth. Obviously, we can improve our service level. We can improve our the capital nature of a market by operating out of fewer DCs. And one thing that is a big part of our strategy is the power and scale.
In the Distribution business, the more volume you can flow through a singular DC, the more EBITDA you're going to create.
Correct. So on the capital side of that, is more of consolidating existing facilities and eliminating maybe the less efficient or does it require build up ground greenfield?
Yes. No, it's not this is not a CapEx play. It's not a greenfield. I mean, it's possible that could happen within the next five years, but we don't see that near term. We're still comfortable.
We're still operating in that kind of 1% of revenue from a CapEx perspective, we've disciplined with that number. Perfect. Thank you.
Your final question comes from the line of Kelly Bania from BMO Capital Markets.
Hi, good morning. Thanks. This is Kelly Bania from BMO. Hi. Just wanted to follow-up on inflation again and what you're seeing at wholesale versus retail and if there's any differences maybe between what you're seeing across channels at retail in terms of inflation?
We lost Chris. Hold on a second.
Okay. Sorry. I'm on back. Can you hear me? Is the echo gone?
Sorry about that, So I'll I'll start from the top. The biggest the biggest driver of the retail inflation is the lack of promo dollar spend. Right? So that's the CPG dollars that are going against the retail dollars, and they're just not spending those promos. And as we've mentioned a few times, those promo dollars also flow through us and impact our margin.
But it doesn't impact our inflation, and that's where you're seeing the biggest gap. It's not in any specific channel, at least we're not seeing any specific channel. We look at inflation across all of retail and the number that I mentioned earlier, the 400 basis points difference was across all channels. So that's the biggest reason for the promo dollar spend that's not happening.
Yes. Is also, Kelly, many retailers have also taken price. And so that's also embedded in the number as well. So that's the gap. The gap between what you're seeing in retail and wholesale is what Chris just said.
It's retailers taking price and the lack of promo, which gets you that 300, four hundred basis point difference.
Okay. So you're saying your wholesale inflation was 100 basis points and you were expecting Yes.
I remember exactly what it was, but it was in the 100 basis point range, which has been what it's running what it's been running for the past one point years, two years. But I find it hard to believe that coming out of COVID, where so many products have been discontinued, fill rates have been so poor that and by the way, manufacturers to a large degree have held their pricing relatively flat despite increasing input costs. We know some we know that there's been a lot of increasing input costs through a lot of the commodities. So I really believe that once we get into late summer, fall, we're going to start to see our inflation rate ramp up pretty materially, which is good for us. Because remember, we get the benefit of the math on the inflation and then we get the benefit of running the promos through our systems.
Right. Okay, that's helpful.
And I just had to ask another question on Whole Foods and the contract. I guess I was looking at it as if it were a shorter duration than historically given that it's seven years versus ten. I guess, are you expecting that you would renegotiate halfway through that contract as you did historically or this will be renegotiated in seven years?
will be renegotiated in seven years. So that's one of the major changes, you know, in the contract. You know, in the old world when we were just negotiating with Whole Foods, it was, you know, we had a ten year agreement. We negotiated every five years. We all decided that was not in the best interest of either company.
They're focused on growth. We're focused on growth. And so now we have a full seven year contract without renewal periods in between.
I see. And just last very basic question on the DC optimization. As you look back to what you laid out to us at the Investor Day in terms of the DCs and how the inventory would flow between slow moving and fast turning, is that how does that compare to what you are doing or what has changed? And when will we get products going on one truck? Is that part of the vision?
Or can you just really help us understand logistically what is happening and what is changing?
Yes. Yes. So that is still the vision. The vision is to get the product on one truck. That obviously is what drives real economies both for us and for the customer.
We are doing that in some markets. It's still a little clunky. But obviously, we have gone through a network optimization in the Pacific Northwest and in Southern California. We've added automation to those facilities, which is handling a lot of the slower moving and each pick inventory. But the strategy is still the same, and that is to have fast moving warehouse, slower moving warehouse and a general merchandise regional facility to supply all those types of products.
Again, this is a multiyear journey. We're migrating onto singular IT platforms because that obviously is a precursor to getting onto that one invoice, one truck. And we've made a lot of progress. The strategy hasn't changed. COVID did delay us a little bit because obviously we had to ramp up the demand.
But we will get there. That is still the strategy.
Thank you.
Well, thanks everybody for joining us. It was a great quarter. I really want to thank our team of over 30,000 associates around The U. S. And Canada.
The work that they did to get product delivered every single day through weather and COVID and so many other things was just amazing. The strategy that we've put in place is working. Our customers are telling us it's working and they're showing us that it's working with what they're buying from us and what they continue to buy from us. So terrific quarter. We anticipate having a really good year and thank you for being with us today.
Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now all disconnect.