All right, let's kick things off. So good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Carden , the North American Food Retail and Food Distribution Analyst from UBS. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. Thanks to ICR for putting together another great event. Super excited right now. Got with me today the team from US Foods. For anyone new to the story, leading food distributor, partners with roughly 250,000 restaurants and food service operators across the country. We have Dave Flitman, the company's CEO, Dirk Locascio, the company's CFO, with us today, and with that, thanks, Dave and Dirk, and let's dive into some questions.
Appreciate it. Thanks for having us.
So maybe to start, we'll just start with the consumer. Obviously, we faced an extended period of demand softness in the food away from home space overall. How are you guys just thinking broadly about the health of the consumer today?
I think, to your point, I mean, the consumer has been under pressure for two and a half, three years now coming out of COVID. I don't really think anything has changed in that regard recently. We were encouraged coming out of Q3, as we talked about on our earnings call, about momentum in the early part of the fourth quarter. It got a little choppy between the government shutdown and some weather in December. I think for us, fundamentally, nothing has changed. I think we've got a stable consumer backdrop. We'd love to see it stronger, but it's stable. Ours is very much a self-help story, as it has been for a very long time.
Our ability to continue to take market share in our three focused customer types, along with the work we've got going on in gross profit and operating expense productivity, is really what's carrying the day for us. We've been at this for a very long time, and we've got a long runway of doing more of the same.
That's great. And then as we think about 2026 and the year ahead, there's some tailwinds that are potentially on the horizon. You've got the potential for higher tax refunds. You've got the potential for some stimulus. What have you guys seen typically with your business demand in situations like these in the past?
I'm hopeful that both of those that you pointed to could be nice tailwinds for 2026. Importantly for us, I think the key is interest rates. As you think about the consumer and the pressure that they've had over the past few years, anything from mortgage rates to buying a car to leases and all that is really tied up in the interest rate piece. I think as we start to see that continue to come down, I was encouraged last week to see that get below 6%, first time in three years. If that's a bellwether of things to come, I think that will only strengthen consumer sentiment. The tax piece, any stimulus will certainly help. I'm encouraged and think 2026 will be a stronger consumer backdrop than we've seen for the past few years.
Gotcha. And then just from a general spend standpoint, we've also got a situation, of course, where household savings tend to be a bit lower than what we've seen historically. To the extent that we do see consumers get any incremental dollars into their pockets, do you think that it could be any different this time around, just given the different consumer setup in that sense? Or would you expect them to continue to spend?
I think for us in our space, particularly the restaurant space, very resilient. Again, I'd point to the Great Recession for us specifically. That's about as bad as it will get, separate from a big cataclysmic event like COVID. We saw a mid-single-digit decline in cases. And I think the foot traffic in the industry, albeit pressured over the last couple of years, has still held up relatively well, certainly better than other parts of the consumer sentiment industries and other places. Very resilient industry. I think it'll rebound very quickly once that consumer sentiment starts to rebound.
Makes sense, and then I guess to that resiliency, I think one dynamic that's been pretty interesting is that we've seen independent restaurants have continued to outperform chain restaurants. And this has come in a setup where, I mean, independents in a lot of cases are going to have higher cost structures. Presumably, they want to have some of the advantages that large chains have on cost. I mean, would you expect for independents to continue to outperform in 2026? How do you think about that general setup?
We would. And really, that's not just a more recent trend. That trend has been a long-term trend where independents have been taking share from chains and even QSR. I think the difference around independents is they have a very loyal local customer base. And they come in for a dining experience. Tougher to get that on a consistent basis with chains. Now, there's chains that do a great job, but we really believe that the decade-plus trend that we've seen of independents gaining share from other segments, the restaurant space will continue in 2026 and beyond.
Makes sense. Then in terms of pivoting a little bit over to your overall algorithm, your initial three-year algorithm built in 5%-8% annualized independent case growth, contingent on the industry, returning to 2% traffic growth. Industry traffic growth, I mean, obviously it hasn't materialized outside of your control. But you guys have still been able to hold firm on the 10% EBITDA, 20% EPS CAGRs. What's allowed you guys to really sustain such strong profit growth, even with some of the industry-related top-line pressures?
More effective execution. It really boils down to that. It's more complicated, I guess, to do, but it's that straightforward. And it's really what we've talked a lot about the last few years of control of the controllables, and keeping the teams focused on what the things are that we can influence. We can't influence the macro, but we can influence whether we gain share. We can influence how we drive gross profit initiatives. We can influence how we drive productivity. And that is a big change over the last few years, just the effectiveness in which we've done that.
The thing that I continue to, and we continue to be very excited about and really like is the balance in which we're doing it from. We know top-line growth is important, so gaining share in those three core customer types of independents, healthcare and hospitality, along with continuing to drive increased gross profits and drive productivity to offset a good portion of our cost changes. You see that balance really show up in our P&L when you see, again, some of the top-line growth. You see gross profit has been a big driver of our improvement. Our costs are going up, but we are offsetting a good portion of that with productivity. You see, though, we are investing in the business. That shows up still in higher costs. It shows up in our record levels of CapEx.
So we think that we've got a long time of that to come, not only through this long-range plan, but well beyond.
That's it.
Dirk made a lot of good points there. Just let me reiterate, we are the only one of the large food service distributors that are focused on the three fastest growing and most profitable segments in the space, that being independent restaurants, healthcare, and hospitality. In each one of those cases, we've got significant differentiation, be it our people and expertise, the technology, the way we go to market. And our message is, I'd love to have a stronger economic backdrop, but our ability to continue to take share in those segments is completely within our control. And that's what you see our team executing.
It seems like you guys have been able to do this without really cutting into any muscle, so to speak.
No, and we get this question a lot. We're driving productivity and efficiency at 3%-5% because it's the right thing to do, and our focus is on offsetting inflation. We are still investing heavily in the business, both in terms of capital expense. We've never invested more, in fact, and our operating expenses continue, while we're driving productivity, they continue to escalate, so we will continue to invest in the business aggressively to support our growth.
That's great. Turning to M&A, obviously you guys explored a merger with Performance, and as we know, those talks didn't really progress beyond initial diligence. Can you walk through maybe just what attracted you to Performance initially and just your decision to end negotiations mutually?
Yeah, I probably limited it a little bit, Mark, in terms of what I can say at this point. But I would say initially, you don't get a chance to take a look at a large transformative acquisition that would actually transform both companies and also an industry very often. So our executive management team and the board felt it was worthwhile looking at. And we did a lot of work before we engaged with PFG just on our own and had a point of view. And for us, it really came down to three key points. One is synergies, two is the regulatory environment, and three is return for our shareholders. And while we had a point of view on all that until we actually engaged and exchanged information through the clean team, you really didn't know what the data would tell you.
As a result of that analysis, we decided that it didn't make sense. I will tell you that the synergies were strong and we felt would be solid. It was really those other two pieces that didn't make sense. We backed off quickly, did not want it to be a distraction for ourselves or for our shareholders, and it wasn't.
Great. Then just in terms of M&A, you guys still have been pretty active in it. You guys have targeted a lot of, called smaller companies that fit quite well with your existing strategy. Has looking at Performance, though, has that changed at all how you might think about? There's a lot of players that are larger independents that might be in, call that two to 10 range. I mean, does that open up your thoughts more on some of those larger players? Are you still thinking mainly the smaller players? Or what makes the most sense?
Yeah. I think obviously we're open to anything that makes sense. But our focus has been strategically on the Tuck-in M&A. I think there's a long runway of opportunities for us to continue to acquire small companies in certain markets to help our local market scale, take miles out of our delivery system. And that's where we'll remain focused. Anything opportunistic that comes along, we'll take a look at if it makes sense, but that's not our day-to-day focus.
Yeah, and our team continues to work the pipeline, continues the outreach, and some of these transactions that come to fruition. We've known them. We're engaged with them for a number of years. And they're at that point where they're ready to finally engage in a discussion. And we're going to continue to do that because there's still a number of opportunities out there that we think would be good fits within our network.
That's great. Then in terms of moving maybe to your compensation model, it's obviously been a big topic of discussion as well. You guys are moving now to a 100% commission model. It's similar to what you operated in a previous life when you were out at PFGC. Why is now the right time to go over to a 100% variable compensation model? Maybe you can walk through that thought process.
Yeah, I think, well, first of all, to your point, the background that I've got in the industry prior to this was in a 100% commission system, so I actually contemplated that change the day I showed up at US Foods. And for me, it was all about timing and when to get there, to your question, to your point. We had a lot of work to do over the last three years. I think we've got very good momentum on the top line, focused on taking share where it makes sense for us to take share, driving the productivity and efficiency, and just strengthening the core of the company, and now it makes sense. The other thing, we've been working on it for quite some time.
And when I said on the earnings call back in November that we've been working on it the entire year of 2025, that's reality. So it's not something that we stepped into quickly or thoughtlessly. We spent a lot of time on this. And for us now, we're in the middle of some pilots. So we're organized geographically, and we've got a pilot going in each one of those geographies. And we're not changing any compensation in those pilots. We're just giving visibility to the old comp plan and the new comp plan and how that will look. And when we go forward to take this across the company, we'll take whatever learnings from those pilots, make any tweaks that make sense.
But we'll do exactly the same thing as we take this across the company, meaning that we will not change comp for some period of time, give visibility, gives us a chance to have important individual conversations with our sellers, and make sure that we're doing this thoughtfully and right. Another key point I think that's lost on people is we have a 50/50 commission plan today. No seller comes into the company at 50/50. They all start at a 100% base, and they work their way into a 50% commission. We will do the same thing as we move to this 100%. There won't be a date certain by which we will take everyone to 100% commission. In fact, Mark, it may take us a few years to get the majority of our sellers to 100% commission, and that's okay.
It's more important for me and for the organization that we move thoughtfully and start this journey than it is that we get there by a date certain. So we've got a robust change management process in place. And the important part also to point out is we've had no increased turnover since we started these pilots. It's been four months now since we announced this to the sales organization. They're excited about it and looking forward to the change and what it can mean for them personally.
And.
Overall, I mean, this is not a headcount play. It's not a cost play. It's really about effectiveness of the go-to-market, allowing our sellers to actually have the opportunity to make a lot more money, as Dave often says, and we want our sellers to make as much money as they can, so this really is about taking one more step and aligning their incentives and our incentives as a business.
And then in terms of just this whole click-through process, it sounds like your initial move to a 50/50 compensation structure also involved similar phasing. Is everyone, I guess, phased over to the 50/50 plan before you guys go over to this 100% variable plan?
Not necessarily.
That's still in place?
Right. They can insert themselves into that click-down process wherever they are in the existing process. It's just a different ramp now to get to 100% versus it would be 50%. So we're not going to force this in any sort of timing, either collectively for the company or for any individual.
Gotcha. And so in terms of within your test markets, I mean, has turnover been any higher than expected in any of these?
No. We've not seen any increase in turnover at all.
That's great. And then just in terms of independent restaurants, obviously you guys continue to do a nice job taking market share. I think it's what, 18 quarters?
18 consecutive quarters.
Consecutive market share gains. How are you guys thinking right now just about the balance between new account growth and penetration growth? I mean, obviously in this kind of environment, there could be limits on the penetration front. But as you guys think about how you target your focus and with the new compensation model, how do you think about that balance?
We work on all of them every day, the new, the lost, and the penetration. I think there's opportunities for us to continue to improve in all those areas. The reality is the lifeblood of our growth is the new account generation and minimizing lost business. That's why we're so excited on the third quarter to point out that we grew that net new account generation, the difference between new and lost, by 4.4%. That was the highest since the second quarter of 2023. We focused on this particularly because the penetration, to your point, that's where the foot traffic challenge shows up. While we continue to drive that, it's been masked by the foot traffic. We've leaned into that pretty hard and really glad and excited that the sales force is delivering as they are.
And then just in terms of another initiative you guys are pretty excited about is Pronto. Obviously, you're investing more into the concept in 2026. How are you guys thinking about the opportunity both between Legacy Pronto and Pronto Penetration, how the two can kind of act off each other?
We're excited about both. We've been at Pronto Legacy much longer, several years. That's, again, as a reminder, where we took Pronto to just new customers, really proving the model and trying to aggressively grow our new customer base. Pronto Penetration is only about a year old, a little more than a year now. That's offering it to our existing customer base. By the way, we're calling that Pronto Next Day now because it speaks to the service model and the intentions of later cutoff deliveries and the ability to deliver the next day overnight. We've got that in 20 markets now. To your point, we announced that we're going to make the largest single investment in Pronto in 2026. That's aimed at continuing to expand that to more markets.
But also importantly, another very important element of growth is when we enter a market, we may go in with one or two trucks. And as the market continues to prove out the model and it supports that growth, we'll continue to invest in trucks and drivers to do that. And so that will drive that growth in Pronto for a number of years to come. So we're very excited about it. We just took our long-term projections up to $1.5 billion revenue over the midterm from $1 billion. And making that large investment kind of speaks to our excitement around Pronto. And much of this is opportunity that we otherwise really couldn't effectively reach with our big trucks in the past because either they wanted more frequent deliveries or they were in dense geographic areas that we couldn't get to as easily.
So this really allows us to serve a broader array of customers, address essentially more of the TAM, and better serve our existing customers that are buying some from us, but rather than have them split with others, now can buy more from us. The more operators that someone buys from, our distributors that someone buys from, it is more complicated for them.
Sure. And then you guys have talked about this as an opportunity for you guys to compete in some of the specialty business that you guys might have been letting go in the past. Maybe walking through a little bit of the opportunity on that front?
Yeah, to Dirk's point, that's where the TAM opens up for us because those specialty suppliers, oftentimes that's focused on center of the plate or produce. We have all those great products in our distribution centers. What was missing for us was the service model. Broadline deliveries are typically larger trucks and a couple of weeks' deliveries a week. The service model around Pronto could be as frequently as daily if they want it, smaller deliveries, fresh product. So it's really opening up that competitive opportunity for us, and we're getting really good traction, and that's why we'll continue to invest.
Yeah, in fact, we've been investing in our capabilities in proteins and in produce over these last several years. And they're each growing faster than the overall business. And so it really makes it even more conducive to the Pronto.
Maybe quickly on healthcare notes, obviously, I mean, a big focus for you guys, just you guys have continuously taken margin in this category. I think that from a market share standpoint, you guys have even more consecutive quarters of growth relative to even independent restaurants. What do you think has just really been most impactful in terms of helping you guys outperform in what's a pretty complex category?
Yeah, so overall on healthcare and independent healthcare and hospitality, it's different forms of differentiation to effectively serve those customers. So in healthcare specifically, it's some of our expertise within the particular team, our go-to-market, but also our technology suite, Vital we have there, which in healthcare, our technology suite even reaches further into the customer to help them beyond just their interaction with us. Vital has things that help them with understand their own patient feeding costs, understand retail performance, nutritionals. So it really is a very robust offering. And as you know, that's a tough business to operate in. So it really helps us help them. Again, our own capabilities with some of our own dietitians and nutritionists on staff that help operators because that's important to them.
And then lastly, I would just comment too on our significant partnerships with several large group purchasing organizations across healthcare and hospitality that we've had in place for decades. And that really allows for effective economics for the end customer, but also allows them to still be profitable customers for us. So you put that together to make it a very attractive value proposition. And we're taking it to market, and that's why we've been able to continue to onboard significant amounts of net new business there. And hospitality is very similar.
That's great, and I want to save you some time at the end, but one question I do want to ask before we get to that is just, obviously, Dirk, you've talked a lot about in the past the self-help opportunity that you guys have at US Foods. You have some pretty big initiatives in place between Strategic Vendor Management, indirect spend, Descartes, a number of other margin opportunities as well. You guys are doing some exciting work with AI. Just how do you think about in terms of impact, which ones will be the most impactful over the course of the next couple of years and just how they fit together?
Sure. Well, I think I'll start with the end. How they fit together is I love, like I said earlier, that balance that we're approaching with top line growth for share and then the combination of GP and OPEX. Strategic Vendor Management by itself is probably the biggest initiative that we have. But really, it's each of those that you mentioned drive significant value in our form of sustainable improvement. And then there's a number of other smaller items that go together with it. But in each of these, they're just great examples of, as they reach maturity, we have other initiatives that continue to come online and onboard. And I look back over the last decade plus, and we've continued to improve EBITDA per case pretty much year in and year out.
And that's why when we get the question of sustainability of our ability to do this for a long period of time, we're both highly confident that we'll be able to continue to improve our EBITDA margins for a long time to come and our overall earnings because the combination of process improvement, technology, and some of the technology enablements now will probably enable step changes over time that we haven't seen historically. So we're excited, and we know there's a lot more to go, but very pleased with the execution we've seen across each of those.
That's great. Then with the time we got left, Dave, you're quite excited about this company overall.
I am.
What excites you most?
Everything. We've got a lot of very good momentum. And as excited as I am about the journey we've been on for the last three years, I'm more excited about our future than I've ever been. We're the only pure play food service distributor, U.S. focused with national scale. Our business model is simple. It's easy to communicate both inside and outside the company what we're focused on. And we're staying true to that. We're the only one of the big three that are focused on the three most profitable segments and taking share, which we've been doing for quite some time. And I think I get this question all the time, like, what's most misunderstood about the company? We've just talked about a lot of it here.
The amount of self-help that we have both at the GP level and the operating expense level is not a flash in the pan. It will continue for a long time to come. And in the same context of that question, we get asked, are we starving the business in any way? Well, first of all, we wouldn't be growing the top line and continuing to deliver the bottom line if we were starving. We're making significant large investments both in capital and operating expense as that continues to grow. And we will continue to invest aggressively in the business. So the results you've seen for the last 10 quarters in a soft backdrop are sustainable. We're excited about the future, and we're going to deliver.
Fantastic. Well, with that, please join me in thanking Dave and Dirk, and appreciate you guys all coming in today.
Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.