Lifeway Foods, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 25 Mar 2021

[John Waldron:]

Good afternoon. Welcome to Lifeway Foods Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. On the call, with me today are Julie Smolyansky, Chief Executive Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the press release that went out this morning. If you've not received the release, it is available on the Investor Relations portion of Lifeway's website at, www.lifewaykefir.com. The recording of this call will be available on the company's website. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. The words, believe, expect anticipate, and other similar expressions, generally identify forward looking statements. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore undue Reliance should not be placed on them.

[Julie Smolyansky:]

Thank you, John. And good morning to everyone joining us. It is my pleasure to be speaking with you regarding our full year 2020 earnings report. And thank you as always for your interest in Lifeway Foods. I would like to start by expressing our condolences to the boulder community, and our customers at King Soopers, and that community. Our thoughts and prayers are with those impacted by the recent violence. Similar to our last earnings call, the world is still navigating through COVID-19 and on behalf of our entire team, I would like to express our sympathy and support for all those who remain affected by this virus. Yet today, we have more reason for optimism, as vaccines are being distributed at a remarkable pace. And hopefully by the end of this year, we will finally be emerging from the right side of this pandemic. Throughout this unique year, the health and safety of our team has been our number one priority. Yet despite the complicated and unpredictable environment, at Lifeway we haven't missed a beat, and continue to deliver our healthy probiotic products to each and every one of our consumers whenever they need them. We have maintained our great relationship with each of our valued partners, and continue to pursue and deliver on our long-term transformational plan to deliver growth and value to our shareholders. Before I get into the results, I would like to say, a huge thank you to all of our employees for working together through this very difficult time, and leading Lifeway to a year full of amazing growth and a year where we accomplished our mission of expanding consumer access to healthy and nutritious food. Today, I will review our highlights for the year, in addition to sharing our full year 2020 results. Net sales were $102 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, an increase of $8.4 million, or almost 9% versus 2019. This increase was driven largely by higher volumes of our branded drinkable kefir and was partially offset by lower cream revenues with a decline in the market price for butterfat. The increase in volume combined with favorable milk pricing has also driven an increase in our gross profit margin from 23.6% in 2019 to 26.4% in 2020.

[End of Q&A:]