All right. Hello, good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. Thank you very much for being here today for the Utz 2023 Investor Day. Again, happy holidays. I know it's a Friday. I appreciate everybody making the time to come down here. It's not lost on us, and for those who are on the webcast, thank you very much for joining us today. To that end, we're gonna keep things efficient this morning. You know, our presentation should last about 2 hours, and then we'll begin Q&A. We'll have the full management team, or sorry, all of our presenters come up on stage. And then for those who didn't have a chance to interact with our digital experiences this morning, those will remain active and open when we conclude today.
Quick public service announcements, the two most riveting slides of the entire day, that I know everybody will read and take to memory. We will make forward-looking statements today, based on our current view of our business, and actual future results may differ. So here's the agenda. Again, about two hours of presentations, and then we'll open it up to the audience for Q&A. You know, we'll walk through at the beginning with Howard, how we'll talk high level about our strategy over the next few years, what that means in terms of growth, what that means in terms of supply chain transformation, cost savings, to fund investments, fund growth, and then Ajay Kataria, our CFO, will wrap up with our financial review. And with that, I will turn it over to Howard.
Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everybody. First of all, happy holidays, and I also appreciate you coming in on a Friday. For those of you who know me reasonably well, you know that I often try and keep things a little bit lighter, and I always try and find what's the first joke you're gonna tell at a store, at a presentation. So, there is no joke this morning, but I'm gonna tell you how my morning started. I got up. I went to bed last night. We were here late. For those of you who know Kevin, he's the worst-looking 27-year-old you've ever seen, right?
But we got home late, went to bed, got up this morning, went to the shower, turned it on, and it's about 54 degrees coming out of the ground, and it was about 54 degrees coming out of the faucet. Stood there for a little while, decided I was gonna brace myself. Clearly, it should heat up, and I took a 55-degree shower for this morning before I got here. So I figure if that's the worst part of my day, any questions that some of you, and you know who you are, could possibly ask me, should pale literally in comparison. But we're excited to be here. It's been exactly a year to the day that I joined. Talked to the staff, it only feels like longer.
But, we're gonna talk to you a lot about where we've been and where we're going. You know, while 2023 was certainly an exciting year and very challenging environment, broadly speaking, you know, we actually feel pretty proud of what we've been able to both deliver and learn as we've gone through it. And I have no doubt personally, that we have the brands, people, and resources to compete and win as we move forward over the next three years. In addition to the presenters that you're gonna see in a few minutes, the entire management team will get up. I want to introduce a couple of other people. Theresa Shea , our General Counsel, is here. Jim Sponaugle, our Chief People Officer. Where is Jim? There's Jim.
And then, last but not least, less than a month old, so he's got it all figured out, and he is, I'm sure, the person you're gonna wanna talk to, our Chief of Integrated Supply Chain, Mitch Arens , is also here. So they'll be walking through, and, we are really, really, truly fortunate to have them as part of the management team. Additionally, you'll see a lot of our team members who are here, and a lot of what you're going to see is their story, right? It's their delivery of the results, their building of the capabilities, and so if you get a chance to talk with them, I suspect that they may be able to answer more questions even than the management team as we go through it. So with that, how about we get started?
So, you're gonna hear four things from us, I think, consistently over the course of the day. First, is that we are building on our strong foundation of consumer love brands, and we are already for our next phase of growth. Second, that we're gonna fund that growth as well as our margin expansion through supply chain optimization, and frankly, a better and more optimized portfolio mix. We've made a lot of progress over the last couple of years, and we'll show you some of the data to show you how we have a more advantaged portfolio. Third, capital allocation remains a priority to be disciplined about.
Then fourth, we're gonna share with you. We're gonna wrap it all together into financial targets that I suspect will seem familiar to many of you because we've been discussing them for much of the 12 months since I've been here. For those of you who are relatively new to the story, just a couple of seconds on who we are and where we've been. You know, we're a little over a 100-year-old company, and we've progressed over that 100 years from a startup into a regionally strong house branded house. So everything that we sold was Utz branded. And then, beginning in 2011, when we were right around $500 million, we entered into our first major M&A activity.
Over the next decade, culminating in our 2020 IPO, or de-SPAC, we went from $500 million to $1 billion through a combination of geographic expansion, brand acquisition, and frankly, organic growth. Today, we stand at about $1.5 billion, and we have an advantaged portfolio that consumers love to buy and customers love to sell. If you now look, we compete across multiple geographies, multiple subcategories, and we have a full portfolio, and I think as you look at this, it should be no wonder why, over the last 4 years, this portfolio has not only survived, but also thrived in a very dynamic period. I was once told that numbers preserve friendships, so here are just a couple of numbers, right?
Over the last four years, on a top-line basis, our retail sales CAGR has been outright around 10%... driven by a 5% distribution CAGR, and probably, for at least from where I'm sitting, most impressively and likely most enduring, we've added 3.5 million buyers to our portfolio over that time period. For context, the salty snack category has delivered just about 2.2 million. And while I would love to say that we are responsible for all of that growth, you all know that households come and go, but with us, households come and they stay. And we, this growth has really been driven by four of our, while it's been across the portfolio, we have now branded, I'm a Yankee fan from Long Island originally, so the core four means something to me.
We're trying to find a witty handle for this, but this is our—we'll talk more about these four brands. But if you look at the retail sales CAGR, and you look at the distribution growth that we've been able to get over the last couple of years, it is something that I've, frankly, in all of the businesses I've run and would have aspired to. And probably most importantly, in all cases, and Mark will get into this in a little bit, we have more room to grow on our distribution. So it's been a busy year, and look, I'm incredibly realistic about some of the challenges that we faced.
But I'll tell you that from our point of view, it was necessary for us to clear the decks on some of the things we had to do, clean up the portfolio, start our process toward portfolio optimization, so that we could have confidence to start to talk to you about what we're gonna talk to you about over the next three years. We've acquired key talent. We brought in some folks who have capabilities that the company, frankly, when it was smaller, didn't necessarily require. But as we start to get scale and become bigger, and our portfolio of brands are essential to building up this company. We've accelerated our productivity delivery. Every year we talk to you, it was 1, 2, 3, 4. This year, we're going to be north of 4%, as we've discussed previously.
We'll talk to you about productivity delivery to not only prove that we can do it, but that it's enduring and we have the capability to continue that, that wheel spinning, to be able to fund the growth that we want to grow. We've invested in our supply chain optimization, not only in terms of capacity, and that's allowed us to bring products into our own facilities, but also in terms of capability. And we'll talk to you a little bit more about that. And we will never again, this was Jay's promise to me, we will never again discuss the SKU rationalization deduction from net revenue sales growth or IOs after we get through the end of the year. Actually, IO a little bit more next year, he'll tell me later, because precision is a financial competency.
We will really be talking much more cleanly about our growth as we go forward. Last but not least, when we went from a branded house to a house of brands, there are skills and capabilities that are important to us as we continue to learn and grow. I'm incredibly proud of this company, and I, I'm looking forward to talking to you more about where we're going from here. So our mission shouldn't feel all that, surprising, but our ambition is to be the fastest-growing pure-play U.S. snacking company of scale. We're gonna deliver that a couple of ways. One, we will continue to build on our portfolio of consumer-loved brands coast to coast. We have a significant geographic opportunity. You've heard us talk about it before. We're gonna give you a little bit more as we go through the deck.
Second, we'll continue to invest in building our world-class people and capabilities to make it sustainable. And third, it is our intention to deliver top-tier financial performance. And these strategies should seem familiar to all of you, especially for those of you who've been following us for a while or were here a few years ago. I don't think this should feel anything but more than a refinement to what has driven this company over the last four years. We'll continue to drive our portfolio, but with a little bit more focus as we penetrate our expansion geographies, and equally important, hold our core. Two, we will transform our supply chain capabilities to fund our growth, build our people, and improve our margins.
Third, we talked about capabilities, but how people work, the tools that they use, and the results that they can deliver cleanly, clearly, and efficiently, is central to what we will be doing. And lastly, we will improve our balance sheet flexibility so that we can continue to play our portfolio role and make sure that we're delivering the value that our, that our investors expect. You put it all together, and this is what we, what we believe we will achieve over the next three years. We anticipate a 4%-5% net organic sales growth, a 16% EBITDA margin, translating to double-digit EPS, and around 3x Net Leverage by 2026. Now, there are a couple of things that I think are important on this slide. First of all, I realize that historically, we've given you an algorithm.
So where we are now, wanna share with you what we believe the next three years will look like when we get there, because we're realistic about the fact that in a company such as ours, it can be a little bit more interesting as we go. But we know and are confident that we can get there by the time we deliver it. And it's also why today, we reaffirmed our guidance for this year. So how do we get to the 4%-5%? And Jen Bentz and Mark Schreiber will get up and talk to you a little bit more specifically about what we are doing. We are a company that has a tremendous amount of opportunities, and we know that it requires some focus.
Jen will speak to you specifically about the brand and consumer opportunity, and Mark will translate that opportunity into our geographic expectations of expansion and how we hold our core. While the category is a wonderful place to be and it is key to our success, we do understand that it's brand building that will become required as our push translates into pull consumption growth. We need to be able to introduce our brands to consumers who have never experienced us in expansion geographies, while we drive more consumers to the shelf to experience our products and our core. People, such as many people in this room, who love and know our brands, we need to give them reasons to buy it, and that's what we intend to do. And that will all translate into household penetration growth...
So we talked about 3.5 million households that we've grown over the last 4 years. We know our playbook works, we know we can drive the household penetration, and we know that if we execute with excellence and with speed, the results will come. Financially, you should be able to see where this is all going. The top line, volume and the cost out should ultimately translate into a 300 basis point net EBITDA margin improvement over the next 3 years. And it'll be driven by a couple of things. We will have more volume going through our plants, driving fixed cost leverage. We do have an advantage portfolio mix, which we will talk a little bit more about as we go, as we've made portfolio shaping opportunities.
Our supply chain transformation will drive lower absolute landed cost as we get through it, as we are making product efficiently and moving it efficiently to our customers. Ultimately, all of the investments that we are making, people are the difference in our company, and as we build their capabilities, we expect that to shine through. 'Cause we're a special place, and when people come in, you get a sense of who we are and how we work. We believe that if you walk into our building, you should feel comfortable being who you are in order to achieve your full potential.
So we act with respect, we drive accountability and outcomes, we do expect people to own their projects, own their results, and be very clear about what's expected of them, so that when they deliver them, we can celebrate in their success, and we can do it collectively. And we've talked a lot about pleased, but never satisfied, which is central to who we are, and that is why we will consistently drive greater excellence as we go in our performance. And lastly, we are mindful of the impact that we make, not only on our communities and the people, but our planet, and we will continue to work to minimize our footprint as we move forward. So in closing, we are super excited for you all to be here. We fully expect a robust set of questions.
It's nice to have actually all of you in one room. It's an unusual experience for, I think, Jay and I to see you all together. But we're grateful for your time and your attention. Look forward to your questions, and with that, I will hand it over to Jen and Mark. Thank you all.
Good morning. I'm Jen Bentz, and I lead marketing at Utz. I've been with the company for about 4 months, but I've been in the industry, in CPG, primarily in food, for the last 30 years.
Good morning, everyone. I head up sales for Utz, and I really like the snack business because I've been in the snacking business for over 30 years. Great to, great to spend time with you today.
We're both thrilled to talk through our growth plan with you. As you heard from Howard, we will deliver 4%-5% organic growth over the next 3 years. At its core, it really comes down to three things. The first is, the category just needs to grow 2%-3%, and I say just because we have taken a conservative outlook on the category. Historically, it's grown 4%-5%. The second, with the expanded distribution growth that we anticipate in our expansion markets, we only need to grow volume share by 0.2 share points in our expansion markets. Third, we need to hold volume share flat in our core. When these three things happen, we'll grow ahead of the category. Here's how we're going to drive the growth.
I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the salty snack category. I'll also talk through our increased marketing investment, and then I'll hand it off to Mark, who's going to talk about how we'll expand distribution, leveraging our go-to-market model. So starting with the category, we are very lucky that we participate in the large and growing category of salty snacks. It's nearly $40 billion, and it's a category that's grown faster in retail sales than other key snacking categories. And it's also grown faster in volume despite the pricing that's happened. Participating in a category the size of salty snacks, which has been growing at the rate that it has, really provides a powerful tailwind for us.
Jen, as I said earlier, I've been in the snacks business now for over 30 years. Retailers love this category, one of the largest in center store and fastest turning in center store. So it's a, it's a great, great category.
It's a phenomenal category. The tailwind that we've seen, that's going to continue, because snacking is a macro consumer trend. It's a macro trend that's been prevalent my entire career. In fact, nearly every marketer or innovator I know is looking to make their products more snackable, because snacking is just how people eat, and people are eating more snacks than they ever have before. We're fortunate because salty snacks are one of the largest snacking categories that people turn to. Now, while there are headwinds that consumers are facing with the increasing economic pressure, they are making trade-offs. They're making trade-offs in terms of where and what they purchase... But we know that salty snacks will continue to grow, because it's an affordable indulgence with a price point that fits into any budget.
We see just that as we compare the impact of pricing between salty snacks and other food categories. Salty snacks has been much more resilient price changes than we've seen across other grocery categories. However, with the changing economy in mind, we have thought about how consumer choices could impact our business, so we've taken a more conservative outlook on the category. We've assumed that salty snacks will grow 2%-3% over the next few years, versus the historical 4%-5% rate. This means that volume will be flat to up 1% with moderate pricing. Now, if the category does grow at historical levels, that will only provide a more powerful tailwind for our business.
Turning to Utz and our performance over the last four years, we're a portfolio that grows 2%-3%, with power brands growing even faster than our total portfolio. Now, given the investments that we're making in distribution, in marketing, and in innovation, we expect that growth to continue, and that translates to volume-led share growth for Utz. So that's a bit about salty snacks. Now I'd like to turn and talk about our brands, their differentiated role in our portfolio, and set up the opportunity that we see ahead of us to grow through increased investments. We have been optimizing our portfolio with a shift to power brands. As you can see, our revenue this year is more skewed to our power brands than it has historically been, and that's happened as we've de-emphasized private label and partner brands within our foundation brands.
That's built a more advantaged portfolio, with power brands being significantly greater portion of our business. While Mark and I will be talking about our business through the lens of Circana measured channels, our invoice sales of our power brands are growing 25% faster in our unmeasured channels.
Yeah, and we've really been lighting it up in natural and club with a lot of the power brands, sort of from an expansion standpoint.
Now, when we talk about power brands, we have now further segmented those brands, our power brands, and we talk about them in two groups. The first group are our core 4 that Howard mentioned earlier. They are the brands of Utz, On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon. These 4 brands represent 77% of our retail sales, and they're driving our growth. The second group of power brands are our targeted brands, and these brands have a very specific and targeted role within our portfolio. For example, Hawaiian is our West Coast brand, and TGI Fridays is our C-store brand, and our foundation brands continue to be regional gems within our portfolio.
The portfolio strategy is our basis for growth, and our investments, our investments in distribution, in marketing, and innovation will be focused on the core four power brands, and we expect that those brands will grow ahead of the category, while our targeted power brands will be growing with the category. Given our investment strategy, we'll spend the rest of our time talking about our core four power brands, and we'll talk about the opportunity that for those brands as we invest in geographic expansion, marketing, and innovation. Now, I mentioned a bit earlier about how snacking is how people eat, and while it's nearly universal, there is a bit more to this story. There are two things, two things to remember. First is that taste, it's non-negotiable, even among those that are health-conscious. The second is that potato chips reign supreme.
Now, while both of those things set us up for success, we have dug a bit deeper, because for us, it's really important to understand who our consumer is and why they buy what they buy. And what we've found is that snackers tend to fall into three groups. You're either a foodie, you're a functional snacker, or you're an adventurous snacker. Foodies, they either come into the category through taste first or through health. Functional snackers are people that are looking for a social connection through food, or they're just eating for convenience. And adventurous snackers, their eating spans both taste and health, but it's not for the weak of heart. These are people that try new and exotic foods and flavors that are a bit out of the mainstream....
No matter which of those three groups you fall in, there are a few motivations that drive you to a salty snack. You're either grabbing a snack between meals, or you're having it alongside your lunch, that's the first. Or when you're going to a party, and you're sharing a bowl of chips or tortilla chips and dip. Or the third is when you need a boost or something to distract you from a stressful situation. Actually, what we've found is that salty snacks, the most likely motivator is stress- is stress. I'm not sure, but if you all had a chance to experience our Munch Matcher er out in the lobby area, what we found is that different consumers index stronger with different parts of our portfolio.
So we had a few questions to match up the type of person that you are, with different products within our portfolio. If you didn't have an opportunity to do that, I hope you can on your way out. Because really, for us, understanding who our consumers are and why they snack is so foundational as we think about our future innovation and our marketing communication. Let me give you an example. For foodies that are driven by health, that are eating chips alongside a sandwich, Boulder Canyon is a really great option. It's a flavorful snack made with, without compromise, and it's rooted in better-for-you oils. And that understanding has been foundational in driving this significant growth we've seen on this brand.
It's why Boulder Canyon has the number one and number two potato chip in the natural channel, with avocado oil sea salt being number one, and thin and crispy dip being number two. It's also why we've seen Boulder Canyon, the expansion from kettle to flat, being a resounding success. It's up nearly 50%. I'll give you another example. For those functional snackers, people that are looking to create social connection through food, On The Border is a great option. It's a restaurant-inspired, authentic Mexican chip that has flavors for everyday enjoyment. Again, understanding the consumer and understanding why it is that they eat what they eat or snack on what they snack, has been really foundational to the growth of On The Border, which is now the number two unflavored tortilla chip brand.
Our marketing focuses on a consumer pull strategy, and we'll invest in line with the philosophy of sales overnight and brands over time. We're optimizing our retail media to support our distribution expansion, we're amplifying our marketing and innovation investment to drive our share of voice, and we're elevating our brand equity to drive our brands affinity. We're investing behind tactics that we understand and show success. Our media strategy builds on that historic success, with retail media driving strong ROIs. It's designed to support our geographic expansion with retailers, and we continue to learn, to build, to optimize our approach for growth.
Jen, I have to say, I mean, we're right in the thick of Munch and Mingle, and it's like that, you know, stopping power on the floor from a POS standpoint. We've really stepped up our game since you joined the team. Thank you.
Thanks, Mark. While we are starting at a low base from an investment perspective, we will increase that investment by about 40% each year. We're doing that to build awareness and strengthen our brands as we amplify our marketing to drive our share of voice. We're also amplifying our investment in digital commerce, and we're seeing our focus on new capabilities translate into tangible results. We've posted double-digit growth over the last 6 periods, and over the last 5 periods, we've grown faster than the category.
This is so important, too. From a retailer standpoint, we have to play in this space really effectively, and all of them have a platform and so forth that we're tying into with our marketing, their shoppers, and really going digital in terms of the way that we exchange our branding. It's fantastic.
It's been a focus for us, and it's really great to have that partnership with retailers. We're amplifying our investment in innovation. As a marketer, I feel really fortunate to have the opportunity to innovate in the rich area of salty snacks. Consumers love our brands. Each brand has such a strong heritage and a unique story, and the consumer environment is constantly changing. That makes it so much fun to innovate, and there are a few spaces that we're focused on. The first, as consumers move towards regionally relevant and cravable flavors, so do we. The second, as consumers continue to snack across new occasions, we plan to be there with a proven strategy around our seasonal and multi-pack business....
and third, as consumers continue to look for no-compromise snacks with better-for-you ingredients, bold flavors, and textures, we'll have the solutions that they're looking for. And we've seen really great results behind those innovation spaces. For example, our recent innovation with our introduction of Utz Mike's Hot Honey, which we've got some in the back, so I hope that you'll have a chance to try, has been a huge success. The flavor is very much on trend, and we value the partnership that we have with Mike's. We've made this previously limited time offer an everyday item in our portfolio, and we've seen people, they're not only trying it, but they're coming back for more, and we see that through the velocities on this new innovation.
Yeah, this, this has been a huge success, and Mike's, what, just over the bridge in Brooklyn?
That's right.
Right. But just, you know, listening to the shopper, the consumer, and making this shift from an LTO to a permanent SKU has been just a big win for our sales team as well, and our retailers. But we just continue to crank on this one, and I think you might have some more information here in a little bit in terms of what we're gonna do next.
That's right. That's right, and Stacy Schultz is in the back of the room. Can you wave, Stacy? She's standing by some of our innovation that we're launching in 2024, so I encourage you to stop over and grab a bag. We will also elevate the equity of our power brands. We're launching a new campaign for both Utz and Zapp's in 2024, and we're beginning the development on a campaign for On The Border , and we're launching media behind Boulder Canyon. Before I hand it off to Mark to talk through our opportunity to further penetrate our expansion geographies, I wanted to share a bit more about our core four power brands, and I'll start with Utz. Utz is our largest and flagship brand, and it's marching towards a billion-dollar business.
It's a brand that consumers love for our crafted quality and taste, and it's fueling potato chip growth. It's growing 1.3 times faster than the category, and in 2024, we'll build from our strong heritage, quality, and taste, engaging consumers in a fun and an energetic way with a fresh brand voice and increased investment. Utz will introduce new innovation. We have our new Mixed Minis, Mixed Minis flavored pretzel line. In potato chips, as I mentioned, our success on our Mike's Hot Honey item is now available every day, and we have a range of multi and variety packs to delight consumers and drive growth. On The Border brings restaurant-inspired, authentic Mexican flavors to consumers with the number two unflavored tortilla chip. It's growing three times faster than the category as we build out our next $500 million-dollar brand.
On The Border drives basket building and fuels category growth with 35% larger baskets, and we're driving these baskets with retail media, shopper activations, and social content that drives usage occasions. On The Border is leaning into consumption windows to win the occasion with thematic party-worthy packaging. Zapp's brings the love of Voodoo to new consumers as we build and expand this brand to be $200 million. There's a big opportunity with this brand to bring in new and younger households by leveraging the unique, full-flavored equity to expand across flavor forward subcategories. Our Voodoo flavor is really an equity all in its own, and it's grown 2.5 times the rate of kettle potato chips over the last four years.
Zapp's will be launching a new campaign in 2024, bringing the unique, full-flavored snack portfolio that originated in New Orleans to the rest of the country with a beat all of its own. The new campaign is designed to not only resonate with Zapp's lovers, but to also drive awareness for people to consider that don't know the Zapp's brand today. At Zapp's, we like to say we do voodoo, but we also do amazing flavors that are inspired by New Orleans cuisine. And this year, we're, or in 2024, we're launching spicy Cajun pretzels and expanding our offerings to meet consumers' needs.
Spicy Cajun pretzels, we're in the midst of the selling season right now to gain floor or shelf space, and the retailer response on this flavor, I don't know, Voodoo might have a rival here. Could be, but it's been fantastic.
Well-received.
Can't wait to see the growth as we move into the selling season.
I see what you did there.
Boulder Canyon is bringing the number 1 and number 2 potato chip in the natural channel to new consumers as we build the brand to $100 million. And we define or we measure the brand's growth through both Circana as well as SPINS data. As we expand, Boulder Canyon will invest to drive awareness with geo-targeted investments in digital and social platforms, and Boulder Canyon is rooted in snacks made with better-for-you oils and non-GMO certified seasonings and ingredients. We'll be expanding our snacking portfolio to include a new sub-line, Canyon Poppers, which brings the deliciousness to cheese balls. We've got 2 flavors, jalapeño ranch and white cheddar. Again, we have that in the back of the room, and I encourage you all to grab a bag as you leave.
That's another one. Just as we look at Boulder Canyon and the sort of where it emanated from, natural channel, did really fantastic, and now we're bringing it to the other channels. I mean, it's really been a winner and one that we can get behind across the country. So, I'll talk more about that in terms of when we go into cross channels. Oh, and that's right now. All right, so let's switch places.
Okay, sounds good.
All right. All right, how's everybody doing? Good, good, good.
All right, when you were talking about, you know, stress eating-
Yeah
... I may have had 6 bags of snacks earlier, but not stressed. Not at all. Right, Jason? All right. So, these are really exciting plans, and it's fantastic to be able to represent that in front of the, in front of the customers and really our entire team. So very exciting plans, Jen. Thank you, and it's been this energizing force since you joined the team. So thank you for that. But let's get into further about, you know, really how we're going to penetrate these markets and ultimately, hold the core and grow some more. All right, so clearly, our opportunity exists, you know, outside of our core, with, you know, 64% of salty snacks being sold in the country outside of our core, and while only 40% of our UTZ sales being sold in the same area.
This represents huge potential, you know, outside of our core and moving our expansion. If we take just our expansion market from 2.7 to our national share of 4.4, it's huge. It's $400 million in terms of upside. Do not put that in my plan. So I knew this, I knew this is where this was gonna go. All right, so we've already got a healthy start, looking at this, and we're making advances in these markets. As you can see, it's led by our explosive growth on Zapp's across the U.S., and then followed by Utz. And it comes down to gaining distribution by building shelf space and activating on our perimeter with key retailers in these markets. The result is significant growth on our power brands. I mean, look at it.
Utz, On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon all growing double-digit over the course of this time frame. So we're making progress in these markets. There's still a lot more upside, right? You look at this chart and you say, "Wow! You know, you've got, what, 92% ACV distribution. That's pretty good." However, when you delve down under, we've got opportunities when we look at these brands. That's why we're talking about bringing our core four west. And, you know, we can do this by cross-pollinating households when we merchandise together out on the perimeter and also as we grow space and put more assortment into our existing accounts out west. Now, the important part: How do we unleash really the potential in this expansion market?
So first, we follow a playbook that we've really improved over time, and we prioritize the large markets and essentially go where the juice is worth the squeeze. And next, we pair our power brands with our local favorites, and in the form of promotional activity and then overall merchandising. We build on our retailer relationships, and really, folks, it's kind of a small community. A lot of our grocers that were on the East Coast or center part of the States, they go west, and so we establish that relationship, and from there, we expand across the channels, such as value, where we have national agreements. A route to market oftentimes begins with established local multi-line distributors and then evolves into our current, what we call our traditional independent operator format with time.
This requires distribution centers and considerable infrastructure, and of course, management to accelerate. I'm proud to say that we've had a 100% hit rate. What I mean by that is that we've never pulled back from a market that we've gone into, ever.
Mark, it really shows the power of our portfolio, right? When you're talking about power brands and local favorites or our foundation brands and that connectivity.
It does. It does. So... All right, here we go. So leveraging that playbook, it's got proven results. And if you just look at these metrics on the slide here across these three brands over the past few years, we've had big moves on TDPs, which has led to the expansion of households that Howard spoke about earlier, and then delivered double-digit growth on these brands. So most of you know about the work we've done around the Southeast, and more specifically, the Florida expansion, with the largest grocer in the Southeast. And next, our focus is on these key four areas of the country. And the reason we focused on these four key areas is that our potential for overall salty snacks sales, one that we talked about before, and our significant opportunity in terms of our household penetration across subcategories.
We can address almost half of the national category sales by just these four areas west of the Mississippi, and we're already taking action. In the Great Lakes region, in addition to the expansion we did in Chicago and Greater Illinois with regional brand acquisitions, we recently acquired a route network, a route network in Michigan, and have already begun to move our power brands across those routes. In the Plains, we have partnered with a strong regional retailer in St. Louis to drive one of our largest brand assortments in the country. Our brands are resonating with the consumers there, anchored by the success of On The Border, and continuing to see route expansion. In the South Central, where On The Border is very strong, with high velocities that both our retailers and IOs get very excited about.
It's the highest household development in the area, in this area in the country, and which is anchoring our expansion in this market. Zapp's household penetration in this region just happens to be pretty strong, too, in terms of that, that, that area, and so we're leaning on those two brands, as we follow our playbook, adding buildings, routes, and customer space to win with assortment on this important region, with 14.5% of the overall salty snacks consumption in the country. Now, out to the West, another strong market for snacks, which we have upside at only 7.5% of our mix for total sales.
Our Tim's and Hawaiian brands, which Jen shared earlier, right, is our targeted power brands, are enabling our teams to expand our power brand further with more shelf space and tying into, you know, major events, big events, throughout the year, such as back to school. And we've delivered 80% TDP growth in these focused areas in the past. Moving forward, our plan. So one of the questions that's kind of asked is like, "Okay, so you're going west, but why, why do retailers want you, right? Why would they carry Utz outside of your core?" And I think there's plenty of reasons, especially when it comes to driving incrementality to their category and satisfying the customer needs, and not to mention, we have great-tasting products.
So when we meet with retailers, we talk about really these five areas, and they talk about, you know, what their shopper needs are. And essentially, they have their strategy, and we have a menu that they can choose from that fits within their strategy. So it is flexible, but we go across craft, convenience, local favorites, better for you, and clearly a big winner from a seasonal standpoint. And I have to say that it works, right? So you're probably looking at it saying, "Tractor Supply?" 2,000 Tractor Supplies across the U.S., not really expecting to see Utz. There it is. So that's another trial generator across the country, and, you know, it allows the consumer to find us wherever they are.
When it comes to more traditional retailers, our portfolio resonates with some of their most valuable shoppers, and we refer to those as loyals. Loyals shop more frequently. They buy three times more categories, and we've invested behind our portfolio, especially our power brands, to partner with these retailers to win these important shoppers. We're speaking to them digitally and in more of a curated fashion, and Jen talked to you about that before from a marketing standpoint. But they're really valuable shoppers. From a standpoint of just incrementality for the retailer, we, we take this very seriously. We don't want to just be part of the... you know, on the shelf. We want to add value and incrementality to the overall category.
This means bringing in new households by offering differentiated forms and flavors, so our barrel line, as an example, very differentiated, that shows up on the shelf. And we've done just that, and in the case of Publix, I mean, the overall salty snacks category has grown, for them, 1.6 points in the grocery channel since we came on, sort of the expansion of their stores. And we have more accounts across the expansion markets that this formula is true, and that dynamic is happening, and that's going to lead to more space gains and, and, and more assortment. And a special shout-out to Ashley Cox, our Vice President of Sales. Ashley here somewhere? Okay, Ashley, largely responsible, for Publix in terms of the expansion down south. So thank you, Ashley, and great that you were here to join us today.
All right, so the channel penetration's so important as we scale across expansion markets, and the good news is that our range really works across each of these channels and leading retailers with them. So let's take a quick virtual tour. All right, so nobody has to get out of their seats. We're going to do a virtual tour. I'm going to walk you through a couple of our customers and the way we show up in the market. All right, so first, we're going to stop out to Schnucks in the Plains area, and you can see, I mean, we are leveraging our DSD strength to provide a localized assortment. You know, this has been a home run. I just talked about sort of the breadth of the line. But from a convenience standpoint, too, we go to 7-Eleven, both DSD and DTW.
And again, this is one where our local DSD provider, our independent operator can put in that assortment and service on a more higher turn rate. And then we also show up, for instance, in the pegged section, where we'll attack that area through our DTW. And then going to the mass channel, right? We leverage, again, both DSD and DTW, especially on the perimeter. In a lot of cases, we'll have a permanent fixture in Walmart that our independent operator is going in and servicing and merchandising again, localized assortment. And then we have national programs like On The Border, one of the fastest-turning items that they have in their section, and we'll do that out on the perimeter through a direct-to-warehouse approach. And then from a club standpoint, club packs are giant.
You put those through a route truck, I mean, you're going to make one stop a day, that kind of thing. So we have a lot of bulk there, and we leverage direct-to-warehouse. The brand really enables us, and the brand and the team enable us also to go after the hard discount areas like Lidl and Aldi. And we'll have some items that we'll bring through there rotational-wise and go after the holidays and so forth, that we can execute here in this situation. And then from a Dollar General standpoint, we have DSD coverage in this area across Dollar General, and really, it's about getting on the perimeter, but also providing that value line for their shoppers. And we're in a lot of areas.
From a vended food service standpoint, there's no better place, that captive audience when they're having lunch and that, you know, that Potbelly. Have you ever been to Potbelly? Love Potbelly. Yeah. You might be from Chicago, right? I am. Yeah. So, Potbelly, you know, it's been just a fantastic partnership with them, even to the point where we've created flavors together. But that's a third-party distributor, like Sysco, that will go through and put our products out in those locations. And then, natural. So we're Whole Foods and Sprouts, great relationships with both of those customers and, of course, leveraging KeHE and UNFI, and Boulder Canyon really being the flagship in terms of what we drive there. All right.
So we've modeled the business growth by driving our TDPs really to our fair share at 4.4, we shared that earlier, on just these four brands. And we all know that incremental distribution improves household penetration. In this case, you know, it's six points. These added households in our expansion will increase our share, which equates to a full 2% growth nationally. And so as I showed you before, together, our team has many proven examples in our expansion markets. All right, so let's pivot now. We're going to switch to the core and our plan to hold the core with respect to share. And look, as a sales guy, I mean, I hear "hold the core," and that's just kind of not my style. I'm more about we got to push past and grow share.
So that's my game plan. But for today's purposes and the model that we're showing you, this only requires that we hold, hold share, and I'm going to walk you through that. All right. So while we've grown share on our core four power brands, we have room for improvement across targeted power to offset the losses on foundation as we rebalance this portfolio. And listen, we didn't grow share in foundation brands for a myriad of reasons, one of them being you saw the SKU rationalization numbers earlier. Now, we have a clear plan on how to drive more consistent growth and really hold our share. Now, let me walk you through what we are doing about this moving forward.
Our opportunity on the core is leveraging our strength of Utz brand in these markets to drive distribution on On The Border, Zapp's, and Boulder Canyon. And just look at the average items. I mean, that's a telltale right there. You look at the average items in these sections, that's huge potential for us comparison to Utz. All right, so our opportunity on the core is leveraging our strength of the Utz brand and really working across four pillars that are essential to taking care of our most developed markets to hold share in the core. First, it's talent and capabilities, and we've made changes to bring in new thought leadership and stronger talent to drive our execution. DSD excellence is essential in the core with a focus on DSD fundamentals: distribution, service, merchandising, pricing.
We have also improved our customer connection with powerful insights and multifunctional customer engagement. Moved from essentially a one-to-one buyer and sales rep approach to more of a team approach, where we're leveraging, you know, multi-functions, marketing, sales, insights, and doing a joint business planning approach or multi-level customer wiring. The marketing support around our power brands that Jen spoke about earlier will help accelerate their growth as well. Our route infrastructure has significant room for expansion in our core to drive higher levels of service, to execute more consistently on the base and incremental. I'm gonna speak to the technology support that we plan to provide later that will assist our system in execution.
Now, for example, a recent assessment using our Power BI analytics revealed a distribution opportunity. I almost feel like I'm doing my performance appraisal on the top SKUs, top 5 SKUs, at one of our major grocers in New England, showing around 75 voids. What we define as 75 voids, no sales for 4 weeks, top 5 SKUs. Not happy about that. Fixing just this small slice with a major retailer in the Northeast, all right, is nearly a $500,000 opportunity. Our opportunity is really how do we get to that data and make it real time? Addressing these opportunities in the core is essential, and we've placed it into our 2024 KPIs from a sales standpoint. Getting these fundamentals right in the core will allow us to drive our channel performance and will stabilize our, our share.
So while we're number 2 in share across our core, we can improve across the channels, especially mass, club, followed by C -store. Winning with winners in these channels is key. We have a four-pronged approach, recall, that I shared with you, to address this opportunity. For example, look at the work and success we've had with On The Border in the core. On The Border has had an incredible surge in the Northeast with a move to our DSD system, and we far outpaced the Northeast with 27% growth versus nearly 9% for the category. A lot of the success is rooted in our TDP growth, which you can see is more than 3x the category, and even greater from overall food nationally. We can do the same with Zapp's and Boulder Canyon.
Successes like this is why I'm confident that we can hold the core and more likely, grow it as we execute well and balance our portfolio. All right. So that's the opportunity, both from an expansion and a core standpoint. Let's just take a look at our go-to-market and what our DSD fundamentals are. We have a variety of ways that we show up and that we can service our customers. Our DSD system of 2,200 routes, plus, coupled with multi-truck distributors, is quite capable, both in the core and our expansion markets, to service across channels. And in order to serve all the necessary channels, we also have a solid direct-to-warehouse network, which you will see even more improvements in when Chad comes up later. Now, let's take a look at our DSD system.
Our team works daily to out-execute and win our fair share of the shelf and the perimeter, plus a little more if you push the little elbows and that sort of thing. But retailers appreciate the margins and the service pressure on our high-turn category, which requires localized assortment and service, and we prefer DSD for the speed to market and the ability to respond to market events, hurricanes, floods, that kind of thing. Our team is on the ground and making that service available. And our ability to service via DSD keeps us competitive in the aisle. Now, Howard mentioned this earlier, we are 99% independent operator, so we've made the transition, and we're gonna continue to drive this model forward. We think it works very, very effectively. So the IO model, the pressure on the street, is really a difference maker.
The way I see that, we're creating over 15,000 tickets a day, 15,000 invoices, and putting pressure on the street across our entire route infrastructure. And when the IO wins, when our independent operator wins, we win, and really, for that matter, the retailer wins as well. The independent operator, that business, their business, their entrepreneurial approach, earns money on every case, and their ownership mindset comes through. It motivates them to go after the incremental sales opportunities across the store, and they're primarily motivated by two things: it's the income that they earn week in and week out, and the multiple or the equity value of the route long term. So together, we've shared desire in growing the sales on the street each and every day.
To maximize our impact with most efficiency, we'll make significant improvements to the technology and support our IO partners, process and tools, people, process, and tools. So our next generation handheld, I believe, will arm our independent operators with information that can help them build their business further. What I mean by that is that we can help them with ordering and modernize the way that they interact with their personal business goals and also their ongoing performance. So just like all of us utilize technology such as the Apple Watch, right, to keep you on task and keep your goals in place, we're going to do that with our independent operator partners and help them build their businesses.
So separately, we have thoughts about best motivating our frontline sales organization, and we can help them with more interactive dashboards, motivate through the perfect store measures, and then prioritize where they should spend their time for the biggest bang for their buck, right? So meaning, which stores have the best opportunity based on households that shop at that particular store, brand affinity and share gap, and ultimately, distribution? We talk a lot about distribution. Remember, talked about earlier in the Northeast. So imagine having that information at their fingertips in real time to make that change, either from a route standpoint or from a frontline standpoint. Along the same lines, we can assist our account management team with you know, really more clicking and create presentations that focus on growth areas such as assortment suggestions, gap analysis, and share of shelf.
These advancements will allow our team really to access more data sources, and then integrate that data behind the scenes for a more compelling storytelling and financial acumen. So while we have made great strides with our sales model, we have work to do, and a clear vision of what that future really can be with stronger technology and support across, across the team. The goal is to drive efficiency and to allow our independent operator partners to best grow their businesses and allow our sales employees more time to sell, because in the end, that's what, that's what it's all about, more selling pressure. Really, the opportunities are endless. All right, so let's wrap up the sales and marketing section. Sound right?
Sounds good.
Okay. We've committed to delivering a organic sales growth of 4%-5%.
We have.
Yeah, and how are we going to do that, right? So we're gonna grow responsibly, delivering this plan that we just walked you through, volume of +2-3, price of +2, and our overall retail sales of 4-5. And this happens when we hold the core and grow some more in our, in our expansion. And together, as a team, I think we will deliver on our mission to become the fastest-growing, pure-play snacking company. Thank you, and with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Cary, Shannan, and Chad.
Thank you.
Thank you, Shannan and Mark. So let's talk about how we're gonna fuel this growth. I'm Cary Devore, Chief Operating and Supply Chain Officer. I'm gonna kick off the supply chain component of our presentation today, and Chad and Shannan will come up and dig in deeper. I'm gonna talk about two things: one, what we've accomplished the last several years in building out capability and supply chain, and two, the value creation opportunity that's in front of us. There are four key takeaways that we want to leave you with today and make sure are well understood. First, we're focused on transforming our supply chain into a more cost-efficient system. Second, our productivity program is scaling well, and we've got a good foundation, but it's still early days. Third, there are three key pillars that will underpin our future supply chain transformation.
That's driving productivity, optimizing our network, and building capability. Fourth, we are targeting $135 million of cumulative cost savings over the next three years, alongside deploying capital efficiently to support our future growth. This plan is the underpinning to delivering our future EBITDA margin target. I'd like to spend a minute on how we are defining the fundamental pillars of our supply chain. The first is productivity, which is focused on taking costs out of procurement, manufacturing, and logistics. This is a continuation of the productivity program that we've already built the last several years, but as you'll see in a minute, we've done a good job at scaling it. Second is network optimization, and this means a couple things. First, it means right-sizing our production network to make sure that we have scale manufacturing centers that are capable of meeting demand in a cost-effective way.
Second, it means flowing the product that these centers make into scaled mixing centers or warehouses. As an example of this is the Northeast Logistics Center that we're currently building adjacent to two of our largest, volume plants in Hanover. This logistics center will enable us to consolidate seven existing warehouses into a single warehouse with 650,000 sq ft under one roof. And the last leg of network optimization is focusing on lowest total delivered cost. This means being able to make the products at scale in different locations across the country to optimize total cost. And the last fundamental pillar is capability building. And as you might expect, it comes down to people and process and technology.
We've done a lot in the last several years in this area, but there's still a lot, lot of opportunity to improve how we do things and the cost at which we do them. Digging in deeper to productivity that we've achieved since we went public, you can see we have consistently achieved higher productivity rates every year. We believe that what we've accomplished in building this program is emblematic of what we can accomplish going forward, leveraging where we are in 2023, and continuing to drive progress going forward. In a sense, productivity now is a reflection of scale for us, and as we scale, the opportunity for productivity increases. The key drivers of productivity to date have been focused on procurement, manufacturing, logistics, and network....
Later in the presentation, Shannan will walk you through our future expectations around productivity and what we expect those drivers to be. We're very bullish on our future with this program. In September, we announced some additional actions that we took to optimize our network. We announced an expansion of the network actions that we've taken over the last several years which really began in earnest when we started to insource product made by co-man partners across several different product lines. Since 2021, we have insourced over 60 million annual pounds of volume that was previously made by third parties. In our network, we are effectively down to 13 facilities from 17 at the beginning of 2021.
So we've been able to take these network actions thus far by standing up incremental capacity, primarily through labor optimization and process enhancements, and less so, capital investments. Additional actions we've taken around the network include the Northeast Logistics Center that we're currently building. We expect that to be up and running in Q1 of 2025. And we also recently outsourced our private tractor trailer fleet to a third party who can utilize those assets better than we can, which resulted in good cost savings for us. So we've made good progress on our network, and we've collected some several key learnings along the way, which will benefit us in the future in terms of complexity and safety stocks and having co-man partners at the ready to step in if the need arises.
But we're really bullish on this opportunity in front of us, and I think it's best encapsulated by the fact that even at 13 plants, which is an improvement, we're still just north of $100 million in net sales per plant, and our goal is to drive toward $180 million over the next three years. As I think about the future, you know, a body of work that I'm really excited about are the improvements that we're gonna be making to process and how we do things. Underpinning the work that we're going to do is the largest scale process enhancement that we've undertaken to date, and that is the installation of our integrated business management system, or IBM.
The first steps we've taken in this journey are focused on foundational improvements to demand and supply planning, and they really represent a fundamental shift in how we're managing our business. We're still early days in putting in IBM, but we have the starting tenets, and the data is getting sharper. Let me give you a couple examples of what I mean. We now have an algorithmic order-based model that looks at historic trends and future promotions to help estimate demand. We now understand SKU-level demand and SKU-level profitability across all of our product subcats. And we also understand capacity, production capacity by line in each plant, and we can convert the demand plan to the most efficient production plan. These are capabilities that did not exist when we went public in 2020, but are ones we are actively using and developing as we implement IBM across the company.
This brings us to a perspective on the next three years, where we are targeting a cumulative $135 million in cost savings, as well as building greater capabilities, both of which we expect to drive higher margins and fuel the investments and that to drive sales and marketing. We will do this by driving our base productivity program, optimizing our network, and focus on improving our capabilities through people, process, and technology. Our base productivity program will drive $90 million of cost improvement through lean manufacturing, sourcing and procurement excellence, and increased use of technology and automation. Our network optimization will drive $45 million in cost improvement. While there is direct linkage, obviously, to productivity program, we're calling it out separately here because the scope of what we expect to do in the future is much greater than what we've done in the past.
Our intent is to create scale production centers that result in better asset optimization, leveraging our existing footprint without the need for a greenfield site. This will allow us to increase our capacity utilization from where it is today and drive efficiency in manufacturing and logistics. The end result will be minimizing total delivered cost. We're calling this effort Project Slingshot, which is not a reference to a toy, but rather a NASCAR move where a driver passes his fellow driver. So Howard and Ajay get to use that going forward. You're welcome. And touching on capability building, it's about having the people and systems to execute our growth and cost objectives with excellence. We continue to make investments in talent, and I'll give you two examples. The first is Mitch Ahrens, who Howard introduced.
Mitch is EVP, Chief Integrated Supply Chain Officer. He ran all of North America's supply chain for Kraft Heinz and will work closely with Shannan and Chad to achieve our objectives. Second is setting up the transformation office that I will lead. We recently hired Carla Lisnicki to help run this business, and she comes to us from Tyson and Tropicana, where she held similar roles. With process, it's about just continuing the IBM journey that we're on, installing that throughout the course of 2024, as well as the capabilities that the transformation office will bring across the business. With technology, it's about leveraging the ERP infrastructure that we installed in 2021 by enhancing our data quality and speed through software applications in areas like demand and supply planning, procurement, warehousing, with the common goal of improving efficiency and service to our customers.
So with that, I'd like to thank you for your time, invite up to the stage Shannan Redcay, EVP Manufacturing, and Chad Whyte, EVP Supply Chain.
All right, thanks, Cary. Shake and bake. And good morning, everybody. I'm Shannan Redcay, and I lead manufacturing, which for us includes not just production, but also functions underneath production, like continuous improvement, engineering, quality, and R&D, all of the critical pieces of supply chain that you're gonna hear us talk about today. Cary just delivered the punchline here. He, he took our thunder, but the $135 million in savings over the next three years, how we get there is through one of the most exciting transformations I've ever seen, and I know both Chad and I are eager to tell you a little bit more about it. Like he mentioned, we're up to 4%, so we have demonstrated success in delivering our productivity and our cost savings, but we do still have significant opportunity within the organization.
If you look down on the road a little bit, you're gonna see our buckets of savings shifting. So historically, logistics was almost untouched from an optimization and an efficiency standpoint. In the last few years, though, under the leadership of Chad and Tim, that has changed dramatically, and they became one of the largest contributors of savings, arguably over-delivering relative to their total spend. If we look beyond that a little bit into 2024 and beyond, you're gonna see that procurement and manufacturing really start to increase their relative contributions, and they're doing that by leveraging our scale, while at the same time, we're continuing to build capacity and flexibility through automation and redundancy. Excuse me, redundancy.
So tied to those two initiatives, our work in network optimization will continue, and we're gonna deliver the savings by minimizing our total delivered cost, like Cary said, and using the capacity we've been so focused on building over the last few years. All that said, let's start with procurement, and Chad will take you through their recent evolution.
Thanks, Shannan. My name is Chad Whyte. I'm the Executive Vice President of Supply Chain. My responsibilities include demand planning, supply planning, logistics, procurement, and our customer supply team. I've been at Utz for just under 2 years. Prior to that, I've been in the CPG industry for about 25, in a variety of functions. I'm delighted to share some of the transformational work that is underway within the supply chain and how procurement will be a primary delivery of productivity going forward. First, our company has grown through acquisition, as Howard stated earlier. The acquisitions have. To support those acquisitions, our procurement group has been organized by brand, focused to make sure we're delivering business continuity. We believe we can deliver significant transformational productivity savings by reorganizing the group into categories. Those categories, that reorganization has taken place April this year.
Ron Schnur has been hired as our CPO and has added some additional folks that can bring the capability for that category management to our team. It also, the team that has been developed from a category management perspective is also going to be working together with the Utz legacy team that has delivered these savings year over year and brought the company to where it is. The category focus has driven immediate simplification to our businesses by allowing the team to dive deeper into the cost structure of the categories and becoming subject matter experts. I see a lot of you had an opportunity to grab a bag or two. One of the examples I'd like to give you from a category procurement perspective are our flex bags.
Our flexible bags are made of various structures, of both film and adhesive, as well as the size of the bag. Today, within our environment, through the acquisitions that we've made over time, we have 264 unique structures across our business. We believe that we can reduce the number of structures by 70% in the next 2 years. This reduction in structures will provide our suppliers and our manufacturing organization with less complexity, while increasing our leverage and buying power for the remaining structures. This is an example of one category, but I hope it provides an illustration of the benefit that we'll realize across all of our procurement categories with the reorganization and focus on the category strategic management. I'll pass it back to Shannan to talk a little bit about productivity and manufacturing.
Thanks, Chad. All right, turning back to manufacturing. Historically, like Cary mentioned, our savings projects have been primarily labor optimization and process improvement. So think about things like scrap reduction, how people are moving throughout the facilities. So going forward, you're actually gonna see much more focus on automation. In many, almost all of our sites, automation was just not a consideration when they were built. So coupled with that, our focus over the past few years on the acquisitions and the integration of those acquisitions for automation historically has really been hyper-focused on specific pain points. It has not been a broad, holistic strategy.
But today, having taken complexity out of the system and continuing to, like Chad just mentioned with the film, and having built that capacity that affords us the downtime necessary to do these larger installations, we've laid a really solid foundation to do the broad, systemic automation that we always knew we needed in the form of case packers, palletizers, and conveyance. By employing this automation in a really thoughtful way, we also have a dynamic opportunity to retrain and upskill our employees into higher skilled positions, which is to the benefit of not just those employees, but also to the community and Utz as a whole. All of that, coupled with the inherent efficiency and rate improvements that you're gonna see off of new assets and off of all of this automation, results in significant cost savings.
That forms the future foundation for even more complex automation as we look a little further... An automation strategy like what I just described requires coordination across almost every facet of the company. So why do we think we can do this? Cary talked about the transformation office and what we've built there. With that program management, as well as experience we've gleaned from some of our prior automation, we feel very confident in our ability to execute this with excellence. I've highlighted a few of our prior automation projects here. Each one focused on some of those pain points I just mentioned. So let me talk about them in just a touch more detail. The first example is pretzel rod packaging. That was previously a fully manual process.
Think picking up pretzels and putting them in a barrel by hand, and now we've replaced that with a robot. When we did that, we reduced our total headcount associated with just that packaging step by 50%, so an immediate 25% gain in our efficiency, and that was a huge unlock to being able to produce even more, because in that case, packaging was the rate-limiting step. Looking to the other two, these were really focused on variety pack. So we built the partnership with our integrator on that first pretzel rod that has now become a very successful longer-term view. They're working very well with us, and they've had a hand in some of these as well.
These two take our small bag components, and they put them into their next package: a barrel, a sack, a box, which is historically a pretty high labor unit operation. They're highly flexible. I mentioned they can go—we can do a number of different counts, we can do a number of different inputs, we can put them into a number of secondary packages, and they yielded us dramatic improvements in rate and our ability to get more throughput, which really served to build a strong foundation on which we could then build our multi-pack and variety pack business, given that that's one of the fastest-growing segments within salty snacking. So in a similar vein, if you think about us positioning ourselves well for growth into the future, I wanna talk a little bit more about Project Slingshot, our network optimization.
As we assessed our total manufacturing network, which was largely built through acquisition, it was very clear that there's significant room for optimization. By implementing our foundational programs that we've done, an integrated work system, lean flow manufacturing, we have challenged the historical rules that limited our efficiency. Cary talked about the 60 million pounds we've insourced. We did that largely absent CapEx, by just challenging the way that we run and looking end to end. This has created even more available time and capacity in a deliberate and measured way, thinking longer runs, consolidated production campaigns, that improved our total utilization, our efficiencies, and minimized our cost. In addition to optimizing all of our assets, we're also focused on creating redundancy. Today, not all of our facilities make all of our subcats, which limits our flexibility and our capability to service the whole country most efficiently.
By making meaningful investments over the coming years in targeted sites, we're gonna build plants of scale that can produce multiple subcats. We're gonna add additional lines to Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and Goodyear, Arizona. And by doing that, we'll not only be able to access the Southeast and service new demand in the West, but we will also deploy automation and best-in-class manufacturing from the get-go, instead of having to go and retrofit post-fact. All of this increases the net sales per plant, enables regional mixing centers that Chad will cover here in just a moment, and overall, builds a more flexible and dynamic supply chain that is really well poised to deliver our growth at the most effective cost.
Thanks, Shannan. As Shannan mentioned, one of the things that we're looking to do is develop mixing centers within our network. Today, again, as I mentioned earlier, through a number of acquisitions, we have brand-based regional distribution at some of our locations and some of our brands. What we're looking to do is to consolidate that network into a network of mixing centers that can offer all products to all customers. Meaning, the customer now be able to order one order for all items. In 2022, we completed a network study. That provided us the guide of how large and the locations of where these mixing centers would be. And the results, you can see up here, are three different logistics centers. A high percentage of our previous distribution centers were former plants.
Lower ceilings, a lot of runway where the operators had long lengths of time to run. They weren't appropriate for a distribution model that we have now grown into. These new facilities are gonna allow us the space, they're gonna be Class A warehouses, that not only allow us to go up from a storage perspective and height, but also a condensed footprint that's gonna have less travel time for our operators. In the Southwest, we have already executed a plan to consolidate three finished goods locations, and that's currently underway. Our next plan is the Southeast, where we're expanding that location and consolidating two additional finished goods warehouses with a much more efficient warehouse that's gonna allow improved productivity.
Finally, our largest facility in the Northeast, as Cary mentioned, 650,000 sq ft, consolidation of five warehouses within our Hanover campus and two regional brand locations. It's gonna provide us a significant amount of opportunity to drive efficiencies within our operations. So not only is it fun that we're getting under one roof, but this is also gonna unleash a whole different level of technology that we're gonna be able to deploy. First, best-in-class warehouse management system that's gonna allow scalability, but also inventory accuracy across our network. Second, as you can see in the pictures on the right, we've got some interesting technology that we've been working on for the last 12-18 months. We've been piloting all of these in our current locations. So the top example is a way for us to improve our inventory accuracy....
So the computer vision is able to pick up each of the pallet IDs as well as the scannable label on the case, count the number of cases, and help us to improve our inventory accuracy without manual intervention. So those locations, as they're going through the dock doors, are able to count and provide our customers with a better level of service. The lower right-hand corner, well, I guess, take it back. Most locations you've heard about autonomous vehicles. A lot of those autonomous vehicles are being used to move product throughout the warehouse, point A to point B, from a distribution perspective. We're gonna continue to utilize that and look forward to that. However, the technology we've been working on now is the actual autonomous unloading and loading of vehicles, which has been a more difficult area to tackle.
We've been operating some of these within our current facilities, and as we expand to these new distribution centers, we're also gonna look to expand that capability. So the technology is part of our strategy to improve inventory accuracy, safety, and reduce repetitive manual activities. As Cary talked about, building capability to deliver greater value within our supply chain. This has been one of the key pillars that we've been talking about from a supply chain perspective, and Shannan and I are both gonna go through some examples of where that's worked within procurement, manufacturing, and logistics. From a procurement perspective, we've introduced a technology platform, best-of-breed software, introducing spend visibility, market intelligence, category benchmarking, contract lifecycle management, and e-procurement, all which support the reorganization into a category management from a procurement standpoint.
All the systems have been rolled out in 2023, with contract lifecycle management in the next few months. The systems are providing the team with improved data and should-cost modeling, which allows us to build up and figure out: where should we be from a cost perspective? The spend visibility is providing the team with full visibility of supplier terms, spend, and category intelligence. And finally, our e-procurement software is now part of the process for all RFPs. This provides a consistent process for our suppliers and a competitive bidding platform. Shannan will now cover some of the manufacturing systems and driving our improved results.
Thanks, Chad. So similar in the same vein to our focus on procurement that Chad just covered, we're likewise very focused on enhancing our capabilities within manufacturing. Even with the pace of our historical growth, the teams were able to install a couple of very powerful software systems, Redzone and EAM, to name a few, that give us real-time visibility to our data and our trends that we're using as the foundation of our efforts. From my phone right now, I can look at any one of the 300 packaging machines across the company and tell you who's operating, at what rate, where are they trending, and what was the downtime to the minute.
So using that to enhance the maturity of our integrated work system, we're gonna ensure routine, consistent, and actionable review of the data at the right level, at the right time, in the right cadence, which will be core to our goal of zero defects, zero losses, and full employee ownership. We're also evaluating technology for every other possible solution. Automated feedback at every unit operation, think as small as barcode scanners, as large as full PLC control and feedback loops from the packaging machine to the actual production equipment. That incorporates all of the learning, the adaptation, and adjustment that we're seeing throughout the industry right now. That all provides us an advantage in consistency, reliability, and cost. Chad's gonna take you through some logistics.
Thanks, Shannan. So from a logistics perspective, we had the opportunity to consolidate a lot of our spend. We had a decentralized transportation management solutions, and we centralized it in 2022, late 2022. Through the activities of bringing a consolidated, controlled, centralized transportation network, we've now have 100% of our spend under management. Previously, it was close to 55%, 55%. The utilization of our transportation management system, the bidding tools we have impacted, the benchmarking processes that we have, have allowed an additional reduction of almost 20% reduction of transportation costs for that additional previously unactively managed spend.
Our tracking and tracings on our systems are now also active for that freight spend and the volume, driving improved service across our network and allowing us to continue to improve, to deliver better service to our customers, and also have visibility to our inbound supplier movements, helping our manufacturing plant with supplier scorecards. Which is a great segue to our next topic: How are we supporting our customers? We've talked a lot a bit about cost management and how we're gonna maintain and deliver improved cost savings. However, key to our delivery method has also been our performance to our customers. We wanna be the supplier of choice across the supply chain, and we wanna be a strength for our sales and marketing team to help grow our business.
We want it to be easier for our customers to do business with us. We recently established a customer service team in April as well, that is gonna now be the liaison between our sales, our customer, and our supply chain. They'll help quarterback the opportunities with the customer across the appropriate supply chain functions and delivering improved results to our customers. The team is focused on the automation through our ERP capabilities, which now a focus is, is a no-touch order. We want the capability for the order to flow into our systems, directly to our picking and shipping systems, with minimal human intervention. By reducing the amount of manual touches, we'll be able to redeploy their time to focus on customer and process improvements.
One example of these improvements that we're looking for them to help to manage is considered one order, one invoice. As stated earlier, with the development of our logistics centers, that'll unlock the ability for us to have all products in one location, allowing our customers the ability to order all of our offerings on one order. This simplifies our order-to-cash cycle and provides our customers with a more efficient and simplified way to work with us. One example we were able to execute this year was the consolidation of our salsa and dips into our current logistics centers. Previously, this was managed on separate orders. It was managed out of a separate location, and we've been able to introduce that back into our snack customers. We consolidated this business into the warehouse with our primary logistics centers, reducing overall distribution while simplifying the business for our customers.
In total, by allowing our customers to order these together, we already reduced 8,000 orders and invoices that were previously managed by our customer and by us from a back office perspective. This reduction drives efficiencies with our customers and with us internally. So in summary, I've covered the six primary drivers for sustained savings and improved service. Sourcing excellence, which has transformed into category management and a deeper collaboration with our suppliers. Continuous improvement, which has become an ongoing process and strength across our functions, supported by the supply chain. Automation. Shannan talked about the manufacturing automation. I gave you some examples of what's happening in the distribution network. Network optimization of our supply chain structure, which is focused on delivering the total reduced cost to our network. Integrated business management.
This is a complete way of working for an end-to-end business, not just within the supply chain. Finally, wanting to be the supplier of choice. We want our customers to support the growth and expansion that Mark and Jen have discussed. These six activities are where we're so confident that we have the processes and projects that will deliver $135 million in savings over the next three years. With that, I'd like to pass this to our CFO, Ajay, to review our financial outlook.
Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Shannan and Cary. That was the money page right there. All right. Good morning, everyone. Now, you've heard this incredible management team lay out our growth and cost opportunities for the next three years, and we talked about how we will deliver these plans by continuing to invest in our capabilities. Now, as the CFO, I don't get fun pages and fun topics to talk about, so I'm going to stick to laying out a financial outlook for you guys. But I am very excited about Project Slingshot. Through the process, I learned a lot about NASCAR pop culture, so that was good. So let's get to the content. So let's lay out some key messages first. We believe Utz is well positioned to deliver industry-leading financial performance for a few reasons.
Mark and Jen outlined this for us today. We compete in the U.S. salty snack category, which continues to be one of the better places to be in food. Now, within this category, Utz is uniquely positioned with volume growth opportunities driven by our power brands, which, as you saw from the data, historically, have grown about 2% on a volume basis above the category. We have significant white space opportunity as we expand outside of our core markets. Now, in order to fuel this growth, our supply chain transformation program, as you saw, will deliver $135 million in savings. Cary, Shannan, and Chad outlined the specifics of how we are gonna get there.
Now, as we work through our growth and cost opportunities and we invest in our business, we will maintain a disciplined capital allocation approach because we are fully aligned around delivering our net debt and leverage targets. Finally, we'll continue to pursue M&A opportunistically within the parameters of our capital allocation priorities. Now, before we dive deeper, I'll note a couple of things. First, as we noted in our press release this morning, we are reaffirming our 2023 guidance, 2%-3% net sales growth, 8%-11% adjusted EBITDA growth. Second, if we look back to the last couple of years, we have delivered net sales CAGR of around 11% and adjusted EBITDA CAGR of around 9%. Now, while we are pleased with our top-line growth, our margins have continued to lag our peers.
As of third quarter 2023, our trailing twelve-month margin was 12.6%, but on an adjusted EBITDA. There is clearly a lot of room to grow. The plans that we laid out today give me a lot of confidence that we will deliver our three-year targets: 4%-5% organic net sales CAGR, 16% adjusted EBITDA margin by 2026, a double-digit EPS CAGR, and 3x leverage by the end of fiscal 2026. Now, Mark and Jen provided a lot of color around our growth opportunity and how we are going to grow volume faster than the category. They talked about investing behind our brand strategy, particularly our core four power brands.... They also talked about building upon our success in the expansion markets, and importantly, holding share in our core by growing power brands.
And yes, I heard you, Mark, you are gonna grow share, not hold, but we're gonna hold share first. By stabilizing our foundation brand business, our portfolio has been rationalized. SKU rationalization is behind us, and that will be our gift to Howard for these holidays. And we will execute all of these top-line opportunities by deploying our hybrid go-to-market model. You heard Mark describe the power of our hybrid model, where a combination of direct-to-warehouse, third-party distributor, and an advantage direct store delivery options allow us to access new distribution faster and more efficiently. We will fuel this growth by accelerating our supply chain transformation in the next three years to expand margins. In total, we will deliver $135 million in cost savings from this program, and this team laid out we are in early innings of establishing a mature productivity program.
Shannan and Chad's teams are covering a lot of ground in this area. Outside of base productivity that we have, we have been working on, what has me most excited is Project Slingshot. This incremental cost opportunity that we have in terms of optimizing our network, putting the right assets in the right place on the map, scaling them, and fully utilizing them. I will point out just one example of generating greater flexibility with scale, and Chad described this earlier, and I'll paraphrase: Our investments in scaled warehouse capacity effectively creates more than 1 million sq ft of space under three roofs across three parts of the country, versus about 12 buildings that we operate in the same geographies today to access similar sq ft. Tim Varner is in the back of the room, our warehouse and transportation lead.
I've never seen a person smiling ear to ear, with the prospect of what this will bring to his organization and to the company. There we go. Our ability to execute this growth and these cost plans relies on our investments that we are making in the next three years. We'll not only step up investments behind our brands, but also behind our consumer insights, that then allow us to focus on higher return and, higher ROI projects. I'm glad that Jen is on our team. In the last few months, she has been transforming our capabilities around insights-led marketing and innovation, and you've seen some of that data and some of that work here today. With that foundational work in place, we will definitely see incremental benefits as we step up brand investments going forward.
Now, speaking of capabilities, you also heard a lot about our plans to invest behind our people, our processes, and our technology. Additionally, we'll continue to invest in our selling infrastructure. Mark talked about this a lot. This is incredibly important for our ability to access new distribution, expand to new markets, and do that efficiently and drive cost effectiveness. This volume-led growth and advantage product mix, transformation in our supply chain, and investments in our capabilities will deliver our target of 16% adjusted EBITDA margin by 2026. This is about a 300 basis point of margin expansion over the next three years, and with the foundation that we have established in 2023 and these plans that we have laid out, we believe that that target is within our sights.
Now, the supply chain plan that we have outlined today will mean that our CapEx will be elevated in the near term. We expect to spend about 5% of net sales in the next 3 years, and then normalize to around 3% of net sales long term. Now, while run rate CapEx supports continuous improvement, improvement within the four walls of our manufacturing and warehouse facilities, we'll need to deploy additional CapEx in order to deliver incremental savings from Project Slingshot. As you heard from the team, we are investing in our Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and Goodyear, Arizona, plants, as well as our warehouses, to support demand in our expansion markets. These are large, fully integrated build-outs to scale our supply chain assets to best-in-class. One example of this, Kings Mountain, North Carolina.
When fully built, this facility will produce several of our product subcategories, so we can single source products to serve our southeastern part of the country. Our balanced approach to investments will continue. It'll be tied to productivity and growth, and we are going to be mindful of our capital priorities and leverage goals. Now, an important area for us to unlock is our cash conversion cycle. We have worked on this in 2023, and we will continue to transform all three areas: procure to pay, order to cash, and inventory management. Now, these improvements are truly cross-functional efforts. We are driving working capital improvements by the work that our functional teams are doing, such as procurement, as well as the changes we are making in the way we run accounting operations.
I've noted this throughout 2023, cash is a key area of focus for us, and we have some of our best leaders deployed in this area. Our target is to meaningfully improve cash conversion cycle to below 20 days by 2026. As you can see, we are part of the way there already. Now, an outcome of the work that we have just heard about around growth, margins, and cash, will be that we will deliver about half a turn of leverage improvement every year to be at 3x levered by the end of 2026. We will get there even with the step-up in CapEx investments. Now, part of the equation in the next three years is a little bit of benefit from asset monetization as we optimize our network.
Now, we are laser-focused on this particular target, and I believe this plan has all the right building blocks for us to get there. Now, let's talk about our capital allocation approach. Everything you have heard today says that we must deploy our capital to drive top-line growth, as well as invest in our supply chain to enable productivity. We will continue to prioritize that. Along with growth, if meaningful M&A is available to accelerate our growth and margin plans, we will invest behind that as well. That said, our target is to deliver 3x leverage by 2026, by end of 2026, and paying down debt is our second most important capital allocation priority. Dividend payout and share buyback remain our third and fourth capital allocation priorities. I'll touch on M&A briefly, as this has been an important part of our investment thesis.
As a pure-play snacking company, Utz is well positioned to be a logical consolidator with several opportunities that can be transformative or even smaller tuck-ins. We have a scalable platform, which we continue to improve. We have been thoughtful in applying our acquisition criteria, so M&A drives geographic and subcategory expansion or otherwise enable, enables growth. We have also driven strong synergies. Since 2011, when our M&A journey started in a meaningful way, we have acquired businesses at a post-synergy multiple of about 7-8 times. Some of these brands, as you can see on the page, Zapp's, Boulder Canyon, and On The Border, are now part of our core four power brands. All of this has been possible because we have a management team that is acquisition savvy, and we have a very experienced board.
Now, as we think about our future M&A, we will continue to use our playbook, make sure we evaluate every opportunity with the same rigor, so they are additive to shareholder value and consistent with our capital priorities. To bring this all together, I am very excited about the plans that we have laid out for the next three years. The business is well positioned to deliver short-term and long-term shareholder value by driving our fundamental strategies: grow in expansion markets and hold share in our core, transform our supply chain and grow margins, invest behind best-in-class capabilities, and improve our balance sheet flexibility. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now ask the presenters to come back up on stage so we can answer some questions.
So we should have Kevin and Theresa will have mics so that we can hear everybody. And then the only other thing, we'll just-
Sit in.
Make sure that for the people who are on the, on the call, we'll do our best to make sure we repeat the question before we answer.
Mm-hmm.
You all want to sit down?
Mm-hmm.
All right. Are we hot?
We are.
Awesome. All right, let's start with Michael.
Thank you. Michael Lavery from Piper Sandler. Is this on? Just on the top line, I realize you called it a target or an aspiration when you went through the core four in a little bit of a detail on how those might grow, but that adds up to, like, $1.8 billion in 2026. If you hit all those, around a 7%-8% CAGR, even with not a single other brand. I guess, can you explain a little bit of just how you think about that relative to the targets? Obviously, there's a bit of conservatism. I'm sure there's some, you know, declines in the foundation that continues, but help us just tie those two pieces together a little bit.
Yeah, I appreciate the question. I'll give it a shot, and then we'll see where we go. Look, I think we feel pretty confident in our ability to deliver around the 4%-5%. There's a lot of unknowns as you think about a CAGR, and we know that there's going to be some lumpiness. There is, you know, there continues to be our foundation, it remains something that we expect that we will continue to have some declines in, which will offset some of the overall top-line growth. So if you look at our core, I think your, when— If you look at our core, just holding...
Overall relative market position there basically gives us a piece of our growth, about a third of it, and then the expansion markets give us the two-thirds driven behind the distribution. So yeah, I'm not sure that we all can say what's gonna happen in the base year, but I think we all feel pretty good about that 4-5.
Hey, folks. Thanks. Jason English, Goldman Sachs. And Ajay, I thought your slides were lots of fun. Thank you. And Kerry, I don't think I'm gonna be able to look at you without thinking about Ricky Bobby going forward.
Woo!
So I have a question on Slingshot. The math, $135 million, it equates to about 8.4% of sales in your FY 2026 target, yet you're committing to only 300 basis points of margin expansion, and the math on marketing suggests you're gonna take it from around 1% of sales to 2.6-2.7, somewhere around there. So that's not where the bulk of the reinvestment's going. Where is the rest? Like, what's the leakage between the 840 to 300?
Yeah, Ajay, you want to take that?
Yep. So Jason, it's $135 million cumulative over three years. So that's about $45 million per year on average, and that's 300 basis points of sales that we expand in terms of margins every year. We invest back, either we cover inflation or we cover investments that we talked about, of about a couple hundred basis points and net about 100 basis points to adjusted EBITDA margin.
Okay, yeah, I get that math. I just, I'm really still not quite sure where the reinvestment is, but I'll pivot to a different question. To get to three turns of leverage, you need to reduce your net debt by $110 million, $111 million, roughly, by 2026, which suggests that there's not gonna be a lot of cash flow generation over the next few years, at least relative to the EBITDA that you're committing to. You gave us the CapEx numbers, but it sounds like there's another source of cash leakage somewhere in the cash flow statement. So is there a lot of incremental cash expenses, or why is the cash flow conversion, implicit cash flow conversion ratio so low for the next three years?
Thank you.
Yeah. So we'll continue to make a lot of these OpEx investments. We'll continue to step up CapEx. We are projecting out a certain interest rate, but, you know, you're right, so we will step up to 16% margins. That gets us to about a little over $260 million in EBITDA. 3x leverage means we should be about $790 million net debt by then, so that's about a $60 million net debt improvement over that timeframe.
Thanks, guys. Pete Galbo from BofA. I'm gonna ask Jason's question in maybe a different way.
Sure.
Look, the margin target is 16%. You have, you know, similar peers or peers with similar market share that are targeting 18%-20%. So just... Is there anything structurally different between your business and theirs that you can't eventually get to that level that we should think about? Or-
Yeah
... just kind of help us bridge that.
Yeah, so maybe I'll start and then hand it over. I look, Pete, I would tell you that we've been chasing 16, right? I think we've been talking about we were late on pricing on inflation. I don't think that there's anything structurally different about us other than the fact that we are a company that is still scaling, and I can't really speak to what the larger companies are doing and how they allocate it, but I think we feel really good that, as we continue to improve our portfolio and we grow our more profitable businesses, and we get our costs where we need them to be, that 16 is within sight.
And then I think we'll look at that margin target, and we'll say, we'll show you how we continue to progress. You know, our, our job is to continue to add value and, and grow stuff that people want to buy, and make a little money along the way.
And then, Ajay, if I look back at the M&A slide that you... There's a bullet there about RTM, so, so I feel fine asking this question, but just how, how do you think about how you're not adding brands to your DSD network, right? Obviously, that'll help the scale, but just how you might be additive to someone else who's looking to gain scale quickly?
Yep.
You know, how are you guys thinking about that?
Well, I'll do this in two parts. Listen, we have a very sophisticated board, and we'll look at, you know, all of the options that are in front of us, which is why, you know, the M&A commentary was holistic around we'll continue to drive our playbook within our capital priorities. Now, when it comes to our brand portfolio, our assets, you know, we are continuing to look at all of our options. We are focusing our investments where we think we should drive it. And our job is to grow our business and drive our business organically, and we feel very good about our plans that we have laid out here, and we'll continue to focus that.
Anything you want to add? No, look, I think we, as you saw us lay out our agenda, we've got a pretty full agenda. You know, and we're very excited about it. We have discrete projects. It's initiative based. We understand it. And so, you know, M&A has been central to the story from 2011 to now, and I think that right now we are demonstrating the capabilities we're building to be able to deal with a more sophisticated portfolio that we have. The future will bring what the future brings, but right now I think we like what we're doing and sticking to the knitting, and we think there's a lot of value to create for people on the call, people on the stage, and people in this room.
Good morning, I'm Andrew Lazar at Barclays. Just two questions. One, what would your expected cadence of margin improvement be over the next three years? Is it even or does it sort of build momentum over the course of the latter part of that three-year program?
... and then, I appreciate the long-term sort of growth track of the salty snack category, but maybe you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing kind of currently, right? 'Cause the category itself, like a lot of others, has slowed some. This is a category that's maybe historically been more resilient, and we're seeing a little less of that right now. So I'm curious just what your take on that is and how transitory or not you sort of see that. Thank you.
Yeah, so, let me start. I'll try and answer both of your questions, and then Ajay will correct me where I'm wrong. I think if you look at the specific initiatives that we are seeking to execute, the logistics center work, the automation, the capital improvements that we're doing, a lot of that benefit will happen later in the cycle. So I think in the near term, should be able to count on higher levels of productivity, as we've discussed previously. Some of the capital and automation's coming on. Chad talked earlier about how the Northeast Logistics Center should be operational early next year, by 2025. So we would expect the margin improvement.
We will continue to grow our margins as we have been this year into next year, but I think you'll also see a step up as we progress through the cycle, I'd assume.
Yep.
With respect to the top line, you know, obviously we, you know, from our perspective, one of the things that's a little goofy about our story, and Ajay keeps promising me that we'll never discuss it again, is you have to keep in mind a couple of hundred basis points of SKU rationalization. So in the context of what our overall sales growth has been, if you add 3.5 to where we've been versus our range, we're running pretty much right in the heart of that 4-5. And that we don't believe that there's any reason, with the geographic expansion and the effort we're putting into our core, that that 4-5 shouldn't be able to persist and continue.
I think in the near-term headwinds, you know, we talked a little bit in our last earnings call, our volume growth, which we have seen, and, you know, we've seen unit and volume growth in the back half of the year, much like we've discussed. The magnitude of it was perhaps a little bit more delayed and a little bit slower than we'd expected, but we have the plans in place to make sure that we start driving that top line as we're getting distribution gains. Mark talked a little bit about Michigan. We're early stages of, and we're seeing continued customer enthusiasm across the portfolio in both our core and expansion geographies.
So we'll, you know, we feel good about our growth expectations, and I think the consumer moving up and down the ladder and channel shifting, which we've all talked about, is true and benefits us in some cases, and in other cases, it's places where we're growing quickly, and we've got to have them level out.
Hi, Nick Modi from RBC Capital Markets.
Hi, Nick.
So I just maybe a follow-on to, to Andrew's question regarding your view on snacks over the next few years in terms of your underlying assumption. Obviously, we know what's going on right now, some weakness. I mean, is that kind of informing your view on that, or is there something else that you, you expect that would lead to that, growth rate being much lower than what we've seen historically? And then just kind of second question for me is just on California and cracking the code on California, 'cause it's obviously a huge opportunity.
Sure.
Your perspective on that would be great.
Yeah. So, let me start with the 2-3 that we talked about. You know, one of the things as we were building our volume forecast for ourselves, we're, you know, specifically, you know, we felt like it would be prudent if you're gonna look at a 3-year cycle to be a little bit more conservative because we don't...
If anyone can tell me what the category is gonna look like in a few years, I don't think any of us would have projected the last few years, but so we intentionally took a conservative approach, knowing that if the category delivers what it has historically delivered, that it would be a tailwind for us and that we wouldn't be reliant and we wouldn't have to be in a position where we were disappointed in our own execution and in our own performance. So we took a very conservative view and understand that our building blocks then added to that 4%-5%. And as Jen pointed out, if it's higher than that, that's a tailwind for us. If it's not, we felt pretty comfortable with the build.
So there's no reason to believe that the category, which has grown 4-5 historically, won't continue to be able to do that, but we felt it was prudent to take a more conservative approach, given what we've experienced over the last cycle. So that, that's why we landed at 2-3. There's nothing to convince us that volume and price growth can't continue well into the future. We love our category. It's been tremendous, it's rational, it's brand-led, and consumers want to do and it's supported by a macroeconomic environment. With respect to California, look, I think there's a couple things. We took a "let's fish where the fish are," and Mark talked a little bit about the salty snack category really does overindex in the expansion geographies that we selected.
We have a business in California, and we are growing it, and we'll continue to grow it, but in terms of let's make sure that we are getting our revenue indices more in line with what the category looks like, those were the expansion geographies that we selected first.
Great, thanks. Rob Dickerson, Jefferies. Two questions. I guess, first question, we might have touched on a little bit, might be stating the obvious, but, you know, as we think about cadence in the top line, right, coming back to, Mr. Lazar's question on margin, you know, is it fair to say kind of, you know, given current dynamic on the volume side, as we think through kind of first half of next year, and then probably as we get through all of next year, that we would likely be a little bit below the 4-5, right? And then with the expansion geography build-out, and benefits coming kind of longer or, more in the out years in 2026, that kind of what's baked into the CAGR is just-
Sure
... essentially kind of slower up front and faster in the back. That's all.
... Yeah, so, a couple things. Obviously, we're not guiding today, so I'm gonna keep it, a little bit more general, especially as we talk about next year. But I think, there are a couple things I think we would say. One, similar to what we talked about on the capital, you know, as we build out our expansion geographies, you would naturally expect that will phase in a little bit over time. I think in the near term, we would expect to be, you know, probably lower than where the long-term CAGR is, because that growth should be coming later. But the reason we gave you a three-year CAGR is 'cause it's where we think we're ultimately gonna wind up, you know? And so that's kind of where we see us today.
Okay, great. And then second question is just, in terms of any other further potential on optimization, right? I mean, we've seen some steps. Clearly, there's a presentation here. It seems like this is it, right? Kind of, you know, foot in the ground, so to speak. But as you move through the process, you know, could there be any other facilities that you could foresee being transferred, or essentially divested? That's it. Thanks.
Yeah, so I'll start and then maybe hand it over. But look, I think we as we talked earlier, today, we like our network, and we constantly are about looking to understand where we can deliver total, lower our total delivered cost, right? We took some steps this year. I think they all were made a lot of sense, and we've learned quite a bit about it. The real goal for us is to make sure that our network is sufficient to support our growth. And so if we're at about $100 million in revenue today, going to $180 million per plant, that means investment in our buildings and our people and our capacity to make sure that we can deliver it.
But, you know, beyond anything, anything else, you know, there's nothing really yet to share.
Hi, thanks. Rob Moskow, TD Cowen. The productivity savings that you've laid out, how... To what degree does that accelerate compared to your 4% run rate right now? Isn't it really just 5% instead of 4%? Am I reading that right?
Yep. So it is about $45 million on a cost of goods basis, about $1 billion, so 4.5%.
That, that's cumulative, though, right? So-
Per year. Yeah.
I'm sorry.
Per year right now, we are at a run rate of 4% this year.
Yeah.
We should step up to 4.5%.
4.5%?
Yeah.
Okay. So my next question is, you know, you've been running at 4% or 3% the last couple of years, but margins have come down. And this was the year where your pricing fully caught up to cost. So what gives you confidence that margins can now go up, even though the productivity is... You know, it's getting better, but it's not, you know, it's not an enormous step change compared to what you had?
Yeah. So I think what gives us confidence is that the next three years should be more normal than the last three years, the last two years. Price net of inflation was all over the place in the last couple of years, so it was consuming, you know, some of the productivity that we were delivering. In the next three years, we should see the normalized P&L scenario of productivity flowing through, and then us making investments and netting EBITDA margin expansion.
And most companies say: "Okay, of that productivity, we'll reinvest half, and then we'll drop the other half to the bottom line." Do you have a similar philosophy, or is it different?
We are, you know, as we have described in the numbers, we are investing a little bit more than half. We are generating about 300 basis points of sales in productivity, and we are investing or covering inflation with a couple hundred basis points, because of the opportunity we have in terms of building capabilities, investing behind our brands, and kind of, you know, ramping that piece up.
Got it. Makes sense. Thank you.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Rupesh Parikh, Oppenheimer. So just first on e-commerce, you guys have had a lot of traction within e-commerce.
Yep.
Where are you seeing the most traction right now, and then what are the bigger opportunities going forward?
Yeah. So we're, you know, we're obviously very excited about e-commerce, and I'll hand it over to Jen after I, I start, because it- it's something that, you know, frankly, it is a great example of something that when, when we started the journey, we didn't fully understand how best to compete. We brought in... We had some local talent, and Shawn Adams is in the back, who's leading e-commerce for us. But the opportunity to get better data and a better understanding of sort of the hard wiring was the first thing that we, that we needed to do, and then we started to experiment, and so in the beginning of the year, we started experimentation. That's why you've seen over the last five periods, you started to see that flywheel start to spin.
But I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity still. Jen, do you want to-
Yeah. It's been about learning this year, and so we've really paused. We've built our strategic playbook, we tested, experimented, read the data, and have optimized around it, and we've seen the results over the last six months.
Okay, great. And then maybe just 2 questions related to the leverage target of 3x. Is there a way to frame the asset optimization opportunity? And then, do you still expect to continue growing the dividend before you hit that 3x leverage target?
So asset optimization, it's gonna be a little bit of benefit from asset optimization. And then from a... You know, we are not dimensionalizing it, it's not a huge number. And then from a dividend standpoint, we'll continue to grow dividends when we are able. You know, that is the intent, so you'll see that as well.
... Mitch Pinheiro with Sturdivant . Just a question on the 2% pricing that you include in your organic, long-term organic sales growth. So is that 2%, I imagine, it, it's gonna be mostly a mix, a revenue mix rather than pure pricing? And if it's not, if it is revenue mix, can you talk about is this, is the positive revenue mix coming from, the product type channel mix? Which brand-- If you could give us a little more color on that.
Yeah. So look, I, I think the first thing we'd point to is if you look at the category over time, it has consistently demonstrated 2-3 points of price. And one of the things that we have spent a lot of time investing in over the last 12, 18 months has been our revenue management capabilities. And so we're very comfortable with the price gaps that we have and where we're supposed to be on the price ladder relative to our more premium peers and maybe our more value-oriented peers. So the assumption is very simply, as price shows up in the category, we would expect to maintain our gaps where we can.
And in the places where there are opportunities for us to maybe drive a little bit more volume while being responsible about it, we would evaluate that under our capabilities. There will obviously be some portfolio mix opportunities as you shift to power brands. You will see some natural pricing show up in the category, but we intend to play our role and maintain our gaps, and that's what the underlying assumption is.
Thank you.
Thank you. Jeff Walkenhorst, Copeland Capital. Thanks. Good presentation. Mark, where can we get those socks?
Company store. These guys always give me a hard time. They're like: "You're always wearing some kind of Utz somewhere," you know?
Okay, I have a few questions. One is to follow up on Rupesh's question, which you knew I was gonna ask you. The dividend growth, you said when you were able. What does that mean exactly?
So it is. It, you know, if you look at our capital priorities, it is a third priority for us. So we have to prioritize investing behind our growth, make sure we are covering our debt paydown, and then think about dividends.
Yeah. The only thing I would add, obviously, we have our capital priorities are what they are, but we also have a board and several shareholders who are obviously quite interested and continue to look at the dividend. So it's that it is on there. We'll consistently grow it over time. We have it, but we're mindful of the fact that our role as a growth company is to just make sure that we keep our capital priorities in balance.
Right.
But there's nothing more exciting than that.
Would it be safe to assume that the objective, if your earnings are growing every year, would the dividend also grow alongside earnings over time?
That's right. Yep.
Okay. So I wanted to follow up also on the technology investments.
Mm-hmm.
So computer vision was mentioned, and I wonder if... or machine vision, if you've used that to date or if this is a brand-new implementation, and kind of how that, how that is implemented and what that does for your warehouse productivity?
Yeah. So I'm gonna—I'll let Chad answer. One of the things I will, I'll offer you, certainly, about technology and our overall supply chain opportunity, we are fortunate that Mitch has joined the company, 'cause Mitch has done some, a lot... lent a lot—a lot of the projects that you're seeing are things that are, we are undertaking. We're fortunate to have brought in talent, Mitch and Carla and some others in our supply chain who have experience with a lot of these things, so we get to benefit from other people's learning curves as we implement. But specifically to computer visioning, Chad, you want to take that?
Sure. Yeah, it's something that we're using today. We're using it on a smaller scale. So with a lot of the technologies, we've been introducing it into our locations on a per-use basis to try and understand it, to make sure it's something that works for us. And as we have understood it, we're getting ready to scale. So the larger warehouses, the more stable they are from a dock door perspective and capabilities, we're gonna look to expand those type of technologies that have been working for us. So we've been using it for, geez, close to eight months now, maybe a little bit longer, from a trial perspective, but we actually have it in one of our facilities on an ongoing basis, and we're experimenting with a second facility currently.
When we go to these larger warehouses, that's gonna be the expectation that it's an ongoing implementation.
Okay, thanks. One more maybe. I guess the e-commerce sales. So how much of that... You've learned a lot over the last year.
Yep.
You've built this, this e-commerce distribution. How much of this is DTC versus third party, Amazon, or other platforms?
Well, two things. One, you can certainly get Mark's socks direct to consumer if you go to utzsnacks.com. We can get some of those stuff directly from the company store. Look, the majority of our sales is through retailer.com, Instacart, those sorts of things, less direct to consumer.
Okay, I think actually one more. The leverage question, net leverage. So you did reaffirm your targets for this year, 4.5 by year end?
Mm-hmm. That's right.
You feel good about that target 100%?
We do.
Okay. And then from there, it's a half turn per year is the target?
That's right.
Yeah. Thank you.
Okay, I got a follow-up. Jason English . This one's for, for Mark, and it, it comes back to the conversation around pricing, 'cause where we sit, it looks like a fairly favorable input cost environment, meaning benign, if not actually beneficial for the company. And, given, given that, given the volume trends, I think the perception of most investors, including myself, is that pricing is gonna be really hard to come by in the next 12-18 months, that you've put out a target here that's embedding 2% price growth. So can you talk to us about what you're seeing, the interplay with retailers and, and what the pricing and promotional environment looks like from your vantage point? Thank you.
Yeah, it's certainly not an easy... Thank you for the question. It's certainly not an-
... easy environment, although when I, when I think about what Howard's talked about before, about maintaining our price gaps, and if there's pricing that is occurring out there, that we're gonna continue to maintain our price gaps, to that. And I think, you know, from a mix standpoint and from a promotional standpoint, we are changing some of our approaches and testing different pricing constructs that allow for us to benefit through that and also the retailer. So you can imagine becoming more efficient and effective on that, on that promotion, and being able to extend throughout the year.
Hi, guys. Jim Salera with Stephens.
Hey, Jim.
Appreciate all the detail in the presentation, and especially the sales targets for the core four brands. I was wondering if you could dive into a little more detail there and just give us kind of a channel composition as you're thinking about building out those core brands and as you move west. You know, is the majority of that coming from still traditional grocery? Is there some club embedded in that? Maybe even some food service? Any color on that would be great.
Yeah, so I mean, so I'll start. I feel like I keep saying I'll start, and then I answer the question. But anyway, you know, I think what Mark laid out was right as we think about... As we expand, we will likely start in food, look at the retailers, and look at the existing distribution infrastructure that we can either acquire or develop, and then broaden it out across channels, right? And so, there is certainly going to be some unmeasured channels in our growth. We would expect that. It's pretty standard for the category. But I'd point to the opportunity we have across C -store, across mass, across club. Overall, we have a lot of growth opportunity across all channels.
And then food service vend is, you know, something we're very happy with the relationship that we have, and it's a lot of growth and a lot of trial for us. But the heaviest hitters are gonna be the biggest channels first, and obviously, we'll round it out. Mark, anything to or Jen to add?
Yeah, I would just add to that, that it's that two-lever approach, right? So we are leveraging direct-to-warehouse now throughout all those areas, and it's just building that DSD mechanism where it's appropriate in the channels.
Great. And then if I can ask a follow-up. Jen, in your presentation, you talked about the opportunity to, you know, really ramp kind of the marketing spend, and obviously, you guys talked about that in the presentation. Could you give us a sense for what the messaging is? I mean, is it, is it introducing the brands to people, especially maybe some lesser-known brands like Canyon? Or what the goal of the advertising is, just as you kind of put that strategy together.
Sure. As we talked about, penetration is our overall strategy, and so as we think about our marketing, it's really about building awareness for our brands.
Thank you. Ann Gurkin with Davenport. I have two questions. One, you put up a slide highlighting your product range that you take into the retailers when you meet with them, and I was just curious, are there any specific white spaces you could call out when, in those meetings, whether it's a package size or a capability or a product offering, when you meet with those retailers that you'd like to fill in? And then secondly, if I could just follow up on input costs, where are you with contracting for potatoes? For 2024, I think you were at 30% contracted at the end of Q3, and that should be a positive tailwind looking out the next 12-18 months. So if you could comment on that. Thank you.
Sure. Why don't you take it?
Yeah, I can take the first part of that question. You know, the white space or the opportunity when we've met with retailers over the last several years is really around multi-pack, and you heard Shannan talk about, you know, the innovation and the automation that we put into that space, and that's really been a game changer for us in terms of these connections with the retailers in terms of. It was an opportunity, where we needed to really accelerate. So we've got more variety and more formats in terms of the multi-packs.
Yep. So I'll take the potato question. We are about, I think, six months out at this point. You know, typically, potato contract runs from Q2 to Q1, so right now, in November, December, we start to negotiate contracts that will be applicable for Q2 from next year. So right now, we are starting to sign those contracts, so by the time we get to mid-Q1, we should have the year covered.
I think this will be our final question.
I'll book it-
'Cause you know, if you're not first, you're last. Oh, wait-
Oh.
Michael Lavery from Piper Sandler. Just wanted to follow up on the marketing spending increases you talked about, and just if you could give us a sense qualitatively of some of what to expect. Is that primarily advertising or, you know, just a little bit of what you might have in mind? And a little bit related in the marketing mix, just how do you think about packaging? Is there room to have some refresh there? Is that an initiative as well?
Sure, yeah. So when we think about our marketing spend, I talked about the philosophy of sales overnight and brands over time, and so we're looking at things like retail media and really supporting our customer, and our expansion. And then while we're doing that, we're also building our consumer communication, and our media plan will also be focused on our consumer spend so that we can build our brands as we continue to invest. So it'll be a mix of both.
Yeah, and I would just add, you know, Mike, if you think about the targets we have for somebody like Zapp's, right? You're going to wind up being a more digitally native, more online, more social, than you're gonna see sort of a linear TV or something, right? So, if we happen to hit you with our target, it will say something about, you know, the consumer overall. But we're, we're excited about where we are. And packaging, you know, of course, we need to look at. You know, Chad talked a little bit about the actual structure work, but, making sure that these brands come to life in the primary, in the first moment, that a consumer interacts with it will continue to be something we look at, not only in terms of graphics, but pack architecture and, and that sort of thing.
Mhm. All right, great. That concludes the Q&A session today, and I'll just pass it over to Howard to bring us home.
Yeah, listen, I. So it's been a year, and it's been a pleasure getting to know all of you, and, you know, obviously, our goal has been to try and give you a little bit more texture and a little bit more clarity on the conversations we've been having over that time period. What are you doing about growth, and are you reliant on the category? How do we get our core where we need it to be in our assortment? Where are you gonna be on leverage and margins? You know, we believe that this plan is measurable and actionable, and we have discrete activities to do that, and we look forward to checking in with you along the way, and talking to you later. So we look forward to the feedback. Thank you all for coming.
We hope you all have a great holiday and safe travels. Thank you.
Thank you.