Hi everyone, and thanks for joining us today. My name is Pooran Sharma . I'm the Agribusiness Equity Research Analyst over at Stephens. It's my pleasure to welcome you to today's Fireside Chat with Westrock Coffee Company. For those of you who are not familiar with the company, Westrock Coffee is a leading integrated coffee, tea, flavors, extracts, and ingredient solutions provider in the United States, with operations spanning 10 countries and sourcing from 35 different countries. With me from the company are Chris Pledger, CFO, and Robert Mounger, the VP of M&A and IR. Now, to help us learn more about Westrock's operation and strategy, let me turn it over to them to provide some background on the company and the exciting opportunities ahead.
Hey, thanks so much for having us. My name is Chris Pledger. I'm the Chief Financial Officer at Westrock, and I'm glad to have Robert Mounger up here, who works with me in just about everything that I do, so anything I say that's wrong, he'll be able to clean up. The company origin story is one of my favorite things to tell, and I know we talk about it a lot because I think it's important for us to be able to continue to connect with where we are because it drives who we want to be as a company. Our company started in 2009 in Rwanda.
Scott and Joe Ford, who a lot of y'all know and have heard about from their exploits through Alltel, started the company as an export business in Rwanda in order to be able to provide a fair price to the coffee farmers of Rwanda. And it was really a dual purpose. We wanted to be able to drive shareholder value, but we also wanted to make sure that the farmers from whom we sourced, which were smallholder farmers and hundreds of thousands of them post-genocide, that they got a fair price for the coffee that they were providing. And so that dual source and that dual purpose of a business is something that continues today.
As the business grew, we had an opportunity to start a retail roasting business in Little Rock, Arkansas, really focused on selling single-serve coffee cups to some of the biggest retailers in the world, private label, which is really kind of how our business started on the roasting side. We had an opportunity to buy a company called Falcon Coffees out of the U.K., which if you're thinking about kind of a coffee supply chain, you have the export origins that you source coffee out of, and then you have the roasting companies that roast it and package it and sell it to customers. And in the middle of that, you have a trading company that manages the flow of coffee, the logistics, the financing of coffee from origin into roasting. And so when we did that, we became one of the first vertically integrated coffee companies in the world.
One of the main reasons that we did that was because it allowed us to be able to have visibility up and down the supply chain. Typically, a coffee supply chain is fairly opaque. And then today, when people talk about transparency and the ability to be able to know where your product comes from, it's one thing if it's grown here in the United States, it's fairly easy to find. But if you're sourcing coffee from 35 origins around the world, given the size of a coffee bean, your ability to be able to know where your coffee comes from is hugely important given some of the challenges that you have in coffee supply chains. But being able to drive that allows us to be able to know that we're being true to our dual purpose.
We can look at the stock price and we can look at our financials and know what we're doing in terms of relative to driving shareholder return. But without traceability, without knowing how we're impacting the farmers that we work with, we don't have any way of doing that. So building digitally traceable supply chains down to origin was key for us in terms of delivering on that dual purpose that we have. In 2020, we had the opportunity to buy a company. We were focused on the retail side. We had the opportunity to buy a company called S&D Coffee & Tea. They were six times larger than us from a revenue basis. And where we focused on retail, they focused entirely on the food service space. And so their customers were all the blue chip restaurants, convenience stores, travel centers, distributors.
And most of those customers had started out of roast and ground coffee and tea, but they had moved into what S&D had created around extract. And so extract is the ingredient that goes into your cold brew coffee. It goes into if you have a coffee-flavored ice cream or anything like that. They had started creating these products for their customers because that's where the market was moving. And so when we bought the company, we closed literally three weeks before COVID hit the United States. So our blue chip customer base took a siesta for a while. And so we had to look at the business from a merger integration perspective and go, you know, how do you look at a cost run rate for this business based on sales that were significantly less than what we expected?
But it gave us a great opportunity to imagine not only what the business was, but what we could turn it into. And so we spent COVID kind of re-engineering the expense base of that business, looking at how do we put the two businesses together and how do you take this blue chip customer base and turn it into what's going to be next. If you look at kind of the straight hot black coffee companies across the United States, most of those are struggling. And we knew that. We recognized that we had a great customer base, but let's leverage that to go where the customers are moving and let's capture the shift from hot to cold. And so creating this facility that's up and running in Conway, Arkansas now, Robert and I were talking last night.
A year ago, we were at the conference and we were breaking ground. I mean, it was just a big construction site. We were making nothing. We had started to sell product and we had started to kind of talk about the vision of what it could become. And so sitting up here today, it's pretty exciting to talk about the reality of what it is. If you look at that facility now, we've got a number of different capabilities. Our multi-serve bottle line started in April this past year. We've got a high-speed can line that's turning on now. We've got a glass bottle line that's going to turn on in kind of the third quarter of next year. And then we've got a medium can line that's coming on in about that same time frame. The facility is largely sold out.
As we look to next year and you think about kind of the sales ramp and the kind of production ramp for it, our can line is largely full as you get into the second quarter. The medium can line turns on in the third quarter. It's largely full when we turn it on and you continue to sell velocity through. So what became sort of a dream to really take the company public in 2020 or 2022 in order to be able to capture this shift is becoming a reality that comes true in 2025. And so if you think about kind of the beginnings of the business in Rwanda, you think about the dual purpose of what we started it for.
And to sit here today with 1,200 employees, seven manufacturing facilities across the globe, and about to embark on what's going to be a state-of-the-art flavors, extracts, and ingredients facility in Conway, Arkansas, we're really excited about where we are. We continue to focus on our roots in terms of driving price transparency and fair price to our farmers, but also how do we turn this into really focus on how do you drive shareholder value, which is what you'll see this year as we turn on that facility.
Great. Well, appreciate that. Talking about some of the core pillars and differentiate yourselves. And maybe we could just hone into Conway a little bit. It's really a transformative project. And you've outlaid some of the puts and takes in terms of what to expect in the ramping timelines. But could you give us an update on where things stand in terms of kind of your production readiness and?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, I mean, you start from nobody makes money unless you make a sale. And our sales team's done a fantastic job of going out and selling the facility. Like I talked about earlier in the first question is when you look at the facility, in terms of the capabilities that we're turning on over the next year, it's largely sold out. And so the sales effort is what do you think about selling after that? And then more focused on how do you, with the sales that you've already made, how do you make sure that you get the hay in the barn that you're getting? It's not just about signing a contract, it's about getting the PO. And so the sales team is focused on how do you deliver the purchase orders and the transition of products from other vendors into Conway.
And the lion's share of that starts as we get to the first quarter of next year. That's kind of as you think about the sales ramp, that's where it hits. And so the facility is largely contracted out. And so continuing to be able to monetize those sales is what becomes kind of the next stage. If you look at kind of production readiness, we started the medium can line or the multi-serve bottle line started in April and has really done a great job of scaling. It is more a product where I think there's two main customers on it right now. It's organic growth through the sales cycle and it continues to grow. The volume continues to grow and it is continued to expect to grow next year. We've got a couple of other customers that are coming on.
As we sit here today and think about next year, that line's probably 50% full. And that's with the ability to continue to sell into it going forward. If you look at the high-speed can line, it is designed given kind of the speed at which it runs. It's designed for the biggest customers in the space. And Scott talked about it on the call and I think it's a pretty incredible stat. If you look at, as we think about 2025 and you think about the top 22 customers of Westrock, 12 of them are going to be new to the business in 2025. If you want to talk about what a transformational project that is, I think being able to just look at that stat is a great way to be able to do it.
These are the largest CPG companies in the world that make these products. These are the largest coffee companies in the world that make these products. So being able to transform the business from roast and ground single serve into this business, I think that's a great stopping point to be able to kind of recognize that we've done that. As you think about 2025 and you think about the scale-up of the high-speed can line, all of our can customers are starting out on that one because that's the only one we have. Our medium can line, which is designed for a slower speed, more medium tier, medium volume customer, some of which will be producing in the first half of the year on the big can line, that comes in place, that comes online in the third quarter of next year.
And then once you do that, that line is largely full whenever we turn it on as we sit here today. And you're able to ramp up the speed of the big can line because you don't have to run it slower to accommodate smaller customers. And so the volume throughput throughout next year is really just a ramp up and up and to the right. And so being able to monetize that, I think when we talk about kind of what your exit velocity for EBITDA is, you think about 2026, being able to continue to see that ramp through 2025 is what kind of drives the $120 million that we think will be kind of run rate or more as you hit into that. And then the glass line, we had originally expected the glass line to turn on in the third and fourth quarter of this year.
After conversations with our customer, our customer had asked us if we'd push it out until the third quarter of next year. They had some internal kind of how do they allocate capacity to their existing vendors, and for us, it was just a smart business move. This is a big customer for the facility, being able to take a little bit of short-term pain for the long-term gain that comes from doing right by your customer. We've got six months added to our contract and it'll turn on in the third quarter of next year and be at full volume as you head to 2026, and so we're super excited about where that project is. It's simply about, we've got to get the sales through the door, and we've got to make the products for the margin which we've contracted for. Other than that, it's going to be easy.
Great. Well, appreciate that detail. Maybe we could just shift over and talk fundamentals for a little bit. Single serve coffee facing challenges recently, but you noted a rebound in volumes. Could you maybe elaborate on the dynamics of this recovery and how you're securing these new commitments?
I think there's a couple of things. If you think about, I mean, Conway is easy to talk about and it's kind of always the exciting thing to talk about, but there's really some great things that are happening within the base business. Before we get to single-serve, if you'd want to talk about just kind of hot black roast and ground coffee, it's been from a volume perspective, not just in our business, but in anybody who does it. I mean, volumes have been challenged over the last several years, quite frankly, kind of starting with COVID and coming out of COVID. What we've decided, and we're mostly, if you looked at kind of the customers that we had on the roast and ground side, most of them were food service based.
What we've looked at over the past year is how do we start to sell in roast and ground coffee into the retail customers that we have. And we've done a really good job of being able to do that over the back half of this year. We're going to onboard and have onboarded, I think it's six new retail customers into our roast and ground coffee. So rather than looking at hoping that organic growth comes back, hope not being a strategy, we've gone out and we've created new ways to be able to sell into the retail space. And so we've got customers coming on board in the back half of this year that you get the full year benefit of next year.
And a lot of the customers that are coming on in the roast and ground space are customers that are also going to be customers for single serve cups and for cans. And so if you think about us taking a step back, the goal of the business is to be a beverage solutions provider. And you do that by being able to produce the products that our customers need across their product portfolio. And so being able to produce, if you go to the grocery store, a lot of the same brands that have hot black coffee or roast and ground coffee also have single serve cups and they're already in cans or they want to be if they're not.
Being able to provide that entire portfolio makes us an easy button for our customers, and there is nobody else in the industry that's able to do that. As we brought customers in to look at Conway and they've seen the capabilities of the business as a whole, it's created opportunities to cross-sell across the business. The retail side is a great space to do that. Now, getting to your question about single serve, single serve was quite frankly a surprise to the kind of challenge in volumes this year. I don't think anybody at the company had lower single serve volumes on our bingo card when we started 2025. I think there have been macroeconomic challenges that have impacted the consumer. People have talked about those at length, not just in coffee, but across kind of the consumer space.
And I think what you've seen is kind of a trade down from pack sizes. I think you've got some people that are moving, I mean, just kind of the natural attrition as people move from hot coffee to cold coffee. I think that's part of it. But I think as we look at it and kind of the conversations that we have, we expect it to be transitory. We don't think it'll last forever and we'll be well positioned with the same great customers that we have as it starts to come back. Now, what we've done in the interim, because we had spent a pretty good amount of money in order to create capacity in our single serve business over the past year, we've been able to go and sell volume to existing customers.
New volume is coming in for single-serve cups kind of in the second quarter of next year. And then the potential for a new customer coming in that would be kind of in the middle of next year, that would be huge volume growth in single-serve. And so as you sit here today, I mean, 2024, we had some better expectations on 2024 in terms of where it would end up. I think we're going to finish the year somewhere around $60 million Adjusted EBITDA. But if you think about, I guess it's $50 million under our new presentation. I've got to learn how to do that. But as you think about the business and kind of where we're going to end up this year, we've done a really good job of executing on the things that we control.
I've been extremely pleased with the team and how they've continued to deliver. What I'm most excited about is that as you think about Conway, we've taken this year. Conway won't be the contributor that we expected it to be for 2024, but what we've done is we focused on how do you commercialize as many products so that when 2025 gets here, you're able to run your facility and you're able to run your lines for profit, not for getting customers onboarded. So you've got one line that you can do that on. You're either running it for volume or you're running it to commercialize a new customer.
So being able to take the time in the fourth quarter of this year in order to be able to do that for as many of the customers that we have allows us to be able to maximize what we do in 2025. So I've been excited to see how that's come through.
Great. Great. And I guess as investors kind of think about when you're scaling up Conway, how do you kind of think about mitigating potential risks such as customer delays, operational bottlenecks, and how that could impact your EBITDA trajectory?
One of the things that we do really well is partner with our customers. And I think that's kind of the, it's been kind of the ethos of the business. I think if you know Scott and Joe Ford, that's kind of how they, I mean, that's how they think about business. They think about it as partnerships. If you think about kind of how we've grown Westrock, and if you think about how S&D partnered with their businesses, with their customers, I think being able to develop that partnership with your customers and being a vendor of choice for your customers, I think really helps us get visibility into what's really going on within their shops. So when you think about transitioning volume into a new facility, it's really just about how do you manage the timing of that transition.
And so, I think it's around kind of intelligence of partnering with customers and knowing when. So when you think about how do you mitigate it, you mitigate it by partnering with your customers and understanding what's their realistic movement of product into the facility. The other thing that we've done is we've created a plant that's largely automated. And there's nothing in our plant that you'll find that's new to our plant. You could find the same equipment somewhere else in the world, not necessarily put together the same way that we've done it, but we haven't gone out and created something new that we're hoping works. We're using equipment that's been used in other facilities and operated by people who have a tremendous amount of experience operating this equipment.
The last thing we did is we went out and hired the people who not only installed this equipment in other plants, but operated in other plants. So if you think about going out and hiring really smart, competent people that do the thing that you're going to do, focusing your sales team on partnering with our customers to make sure that the volume's coming when the customer has committed to come is really kind of how you de-risk the project. Anytime you turn on a new facility, I mean, there's going to be bumps and fits and starts. I mean, there is no way that's not going to happen. We've experienced them as we go through the commercialization project or process. The thing is, you never want to make the same mistake twice, which we don't.
You want to learn from everything you do. You want to build time into the schedule so that you're not just beholden to perfection. We all operate and hope for perfection, but we know that's not what we're going to achieve. I think we've got a very realistic schedule of how the facility onboards, how the lines and capabilities onboard. We've got a fantastic team to deliver against that.
Great. Great. Thank you for that detail. I guess just more on Conway, and so Conway is expected to drive substantial EBITDA growth, so how do you think about prioritizing free cash flow between reducing debt, spending, kind of if you could kind of give us a little?
The good news is we're on the backside of writing all the CapEx checks, which as the CFO, I'm super excited about. We've spent, I think it was $275 million of the original $315 million we spent through the end of the third quarter. We've got about, I think it's $30 million that we'll spend in the fourth quarter and about $10 million we'll spend in the first quarter of next year. We are going to spend about $20 million in addition to that around building in the medium can line capabilities and finishing out some of the infrastructure around the plant build. But at the end of the day, it's really about we're going to monetize the asset in 2025. As you start 2026, we'll be free cash flow positive.
We'd expect it to be free cash flow positive in kind of the end of 2025, but with the additional CapEx spend, I think we're going to push that into 2026. And then at that point in time, it is just about delivering. There are going to be great opportunities that we'll continue to look at about how do you grow the business, but the leverage levels that we're at are what we expected when we built a project. I mean, it's a huge capital outlay. But the reality is that we're going to get our leverage down to, I think somewhere around kind of the three times is kind of where I think was sort of normalized leverage for our business. And so we're going to continue to, we'll pay down debt in order to be able to do that.
You're going to have to, obviously, the EBITDA growth that comes from the facility helps with that as well. But we're going to use free cash flow to pay down debt. Then the world's your oyster. You've got a lot of great opportunities about what do you do next in terms of deploying capital.
Appreciate that, Chris. I guess on expansion, I just want to understand what factors would lead Westrock to build versus buy when entering new markets or expanding?
It really kind of depends on where we're going and what we're doing. So with Conway, there wasn't anything like it. And so there wasn't really an option to go out and buy. And so it was really our only alternative in order to meet the needs of our customers and meet the opportunity, was the capital outlay that we did. I think as you look at kind of energy-adjacent opportunities around acquisition, I think there's great opportunities to go look at companies that will allow us to be able to expand our product portfolio. Largely, the products that we make are coffee and tea, coffee and tea extract based. But looking at some of the adjacent areas, I think there's certainly be acquisition opportunities around that.
I think there's certainly space within the Conway facility that you can expand capabilities or you can further capabilities. So there's more CapEx that you could spend in order to be able to build out the facility even more. And there's space within the facility to do that, whether that's more coffee products and tea products or whether that's into other areas. As we think about internationally, I mean, I think if you remember during COVID, we started a roasting business at the request of one of our big quick serve restaurant customers in Malaysia, which has really been a fantastic investment for us because it's opened a lot of doors in Asia Pacific, not only for that customer, but for a bunch of other customers.
If you look at the customer base, particularly around the quick serve restaurant customers that we have, they've got as many doors internationally as they do in the U.S. We serve about 88% of their doors in the U.S., less than 1% internationally. So the ability to be an easy button for them as they are already international or as they consider to go international is something that's a great opportunity for us. I think that most of the growth, most of the opportunities are national, be less about greenfield and more about acquisition. I think there's opportunities to buy existing coffee roasting businesses that have capacity that you could layer on the volume from our customers on. It's been interesting to see the kind of cold coffee movement, I think is really kind of U.S.-generated, but it really has grown internationally.
And so you see a lot of cold coffee interest in Asia Pacific. You're starting to see it in Europe. And so being able to capture that as an opportunity. So I think once we get through 2025 and we start generating free cash flow, we start paying down the debt. I think our opportunities for capital deployment after that are wide open.
Great. Sounds like you have plenty of avenues to kind of go.
There are. I mean, there's been a lot of, I mean, a lot of companies for sale now. I mean, it's really being smart capital allocation and looking for the right places in order to be able to make moves to incrementally grow the business. I think what's been exciting is I think our business is really about our customers. We've got a fantastic set of customers. Conway only adds to that. You'd be hard-pressed to go to a quick serve restaurant or a convenience store that's not serviced by Westrock Coffee. You'd be hard-pressed pretty soon to walk through a Whole Foods or a grocery store and look in their cold counter and not see products that are made by Westrock Coffee. We've really become, I think, the partner of choice for the biggest brands in the world. It's exciting to see. We're excited for 2025.
I was just going to mention, as private label products kind of take more and more hold on the consumer, it seems like you're really well-positioned to kind of capitalize on that trend just given your.
I think we absolutely are. I mean, if you think about what happened kind of with single serve coffee, I mean, single serve typically used to be, people used to think about branded is where everybody was. And then as we really kind of focused with our customers on their private label coffee brands, people have realized that your single serve cup branded private label coffee tastes as good as whatever your branded coffee is, and it's a whole lot less expensive. And so I think people are opening up more to the idea of private label as, quite frankly, a great alternative that's not really a trade down in quality. It may just be a trade down in price, which a lot of people are looking for ways to trade down in price these days.
Great. Great. I think we're close to about 15 minutes left. So I just wanted to give investors a chance to ask some questions here before I kind of continue down my list. So if anybody had a question to ask, we ask that you please use the mic up here.
Go to the mic, I guess. Off work. Sorry.
Thank you, Adam.
Okay. Can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
All right. Chris, can you speak to the structure, the preferred, and any new investor, so dividend, conversion price, how you got into it.
The preferred stock. So whenever we bought S&D, we took on a private equity partner that helped fund the acquisition of S&D. They came in with a preferred security. And whenever we wanted to go public, kind of the trade-off was if you go public via an IPO, you don't know what the value of the business is going to be until the night before when you price. And so they were all in on us going public as a way to be able to kind of replenish the balance sheet and build out Conway. But what they needed was value certainty. And so as we started talking about what does it look like, we negotiated. We decided to go the SPAC route in order to be able to provide value certainty.
But what they needed as a private equity investor is they needed a security that had a floor price, kind of a liquidation preference. And so the way that the Series A preferred is set up, it's really just a liquidation preference at $11.50. And other than that, it acts as common. It votes as common. It converts into common. And we think of it as common. I think the expectation of the folks that hold it is that they're going to eventually convert into common. And so that's kind of where that security is. Is that helpful?
Yes.
Okay.
What's the dividend number?
There's no dividend on it. No, no, no. It literally is. I mean, it's common with a liquidation preference. There's a put call that takes place in, is it 2028? And so there's a put call feature in it that they have the ability to put it to the company at whatever its current price is at a floor of $11.50. And then we have an ability to call it at $18.50, I think is the call price. But that's not until 2028.
I guess I'll just ask a question here. We could just maybe go back to Conway. I know we've talked a lot.
That's great. No, I like being at Conway.
But yeah, if we could just kind of dive into it more. I mean, I think on the most recent earnings call, you guys said something interesting. You mentioned that Conway's plant contract could generate more annual EBITDA than your current base business.
Oh, absolutely.
And so if you could just speak to that dynamic, maybe your conversations with your customers or just help us kind of understand Conway?
If you think about the base business this year generating about kind of the $60 million of Adjusted EBITDA, I guess I got to get back to it. It's $50 million under the new presentation, so if you think about us generating $50 million of Adjusted EBITDA this year, then all of that is coming from what's functionally our base business. We've got extract business that's part of that, but the lion's share of that's coming from the base business. If you think about what Conway's going to do, I mean, that facility itself is going to generate in terms of the capabilities that it has now, it could generate $120 million of EBITDA.
And so if you think about the growth of the business and the transformation of the business, where now we're a roasting ground single serve business that is transitioning to flavors, extracts, and ingredients, two years from now, we're going to be a flavors, extracts, and ingredients business with a legacy roasting ground business. And so the earnings power around flavors, extracts, and ingredients is really the big driver.
And so continuing to capture that wave with our customers is what drives the EBITDA growth and the value of the contracts that we have. I think the exciting part about being more overweighted to flavors, extracts, and ingredients is not only is it, I mean, the margins are better, EBITDA generation is better, and then the multiples that they typically trade out are better. And so you're really moving into kind of the, like I said, I mean, it's a big transformation for the business.
I appreciate that. I guess a little bit more on Conway too. And I know we touched on this during your comments here, but you mentioned the second canning line 2025. Could you just give a little bit more detail? What's the timeline for the expansion and maybe how does it fit?
It fits. We did talk about this a little bit earlier, so if you think about kind of the sequencing of turning on capabilities, you never want to turn it all on at one point in time, and so what we did, given the customers that we had lined up and the volume commitments that we had, the volume commitments that we had were of large customers that were more weighted towards what you need with a large can line, and so we started with a large can line in order to be able to kind of accommodate what our customers had, and so in the interim, we sold product to customers that would have been given the size and kind of the volumes that they run would have been more appropriate to run on a line that runs a little bit slower.
And so for us, we looked at it and said, "Well, hey, we're going to commercialize the big can line. We'll commercialize all the customers that we have on the big can line. And then as we get to kind of the on-ramping of the medium can line, we'll be able to move them down." And so when we talk about kind of volume growth throughout 2025, you really start from kind of close to the bottom as you get in. There's some volume coming in as you exit 2024. But really 2025, you get into the second quarter of 2025, you've largely sold out the capacity of what the big can line can do. And then you've got the medium can line that comes on in the third quarter, kind of the middle of the third quarter is the target.
You're able to move the medium customers to it so that it's running the way that it was designed, at a speed in which it was designed, at efficiencies in which it was designed. And it allows you to be able to turn up the high-speed can line to what it was intended to from when we first imagined it. And so that creates more capacity that we've sold to other customers. And so you really do see kind of a ramp throughout the entire year in terms of if you think about kind of the EBITDA generation of Westrock next year, it's obviously going to be back here loaded, but it should be a continued ramp as you get throughout the year. So the medium can line allows us to, quite frankly, be able to kind of round out the capabilities based on the customers that we've sold.
Okay. Thank you for that.
Yeah.
Just want to see if there's any other investors that'd like to get up and ask a question. If not, I think there's about 10 minutes left. We could give some time back, but maybe if you could just for parting words, what do you want to tell investors? What are you most excited about? If you could just.
I guess first of all, I'd like to thank Stephens. I think Stephens has been a great partner to Westrock. And Stephens has been a great partner to the Ford family for decades before Westrock. And so we're always excited to be able to come to this conference. We're always excited to be able to talk to you and to be a part of this because, like I said in the beginning, partnerships are at the core of who we are. And Stephens has been a fantastic partner. As I look to next year, I mean, I think it's an exciting time for us. We talk a lot about Conway and all the Conway, and the questions were all about Conway. And rightly so because that's the largest driver of shareholder return for the business over the next year and over the next several years and making that transition.
But what I'm really excited about is sort of the number of ways that we have in order for the business to grow. Conway is going to be a fantastic success next year. And I'm excited to be able to talk about it on quarterly calls and at conferences. But I'm also excited about the growth opportunities in the rest of the business. We have built a really good business. And there have been parts of it that have struggled around some of the economic and macroeconomic impacts around COVID and around inflation. But being able to see the shift to retail packaging in our roast and ground business, to be able to see the new opportunities coming in single-serve, you don't want to be a one-trick pony, and we aren't.
We know where the focus of the business and the focus of the executive time, the focus of execution is on delivering Conway for next year. And we're excited to be able to do that. We feel like we're poised to do that. We feel like we have the right team to do that. And we're excited to really kind of continue to tell the success story of this business as you look at 2025, delivering on 2025, and as you get to 2026.
This is just the next chapter of what's going to be a long story. And we're excited to be able to deliver that over the next year. So thank you all so much for your time. I really appreciate it. If y'all have questions after this, feel free to come up and ask or follow up. We've got emails and phone numbers and all that sort of stuff. But thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Robert, and thanks, everyone.