BellRing Brands, Inc. (BRBR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Before we get started, I'll just read a quick disclaimer. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales rep. Thanks, everyone, for being here and for those joining on the webcast, thank you for joining. Welcome to Morgan Stanley's Global Consumer and Retail Conference. I'm Megan Clapp. I'm the U.S. food analyst here at Morgan Stanley. Really thrilled to be here today with BellRing Brands, the company's President and CEO; Darcy Davenport, and CFO, Paul Rode. So thank you both so much for joining. For those who aren't familiar, BellRing convenient nutrition company focused on the ready-to-drink shakes, powders and bars through its Premier Protein and Dymatize brands.

With that, maybe Darcy, first formal fireside chat since your IPO. So for those maybe in the room or on the webcast that are newer to the story, maybe you can just start with a brief overview of who BellRing is, what fundamentally differentiates your main brand, Premier within the broader consumer staples landscape as we see it today.

Perfect. Well, first of all, thank you for having our first fireside chat, and thank you all for joining us. BellRing Brands is a pure-play company focused on the convenient nutrition category. Our biggest -- we just finished our fiscal '25 and our revenues are $2.3 billion. And our largest brand is Premier Protein, which represents about 85% of our sales. Most of our business is ready-to-drink shakes, about 80%. The remainder is powder, as you mentioned, Megan. And we're largely a domestic company. About 12% of our business is international, but we're largely a domestic company. For those of you who are newer to our story, we were part of Post Holdings. We are a division of Post Holdings, and we spun out -- partial spinout in 2019 and then the remainder post spun -- liquefied in '22. So we are completely independent. And your question about how we're different versus other staples. I would focus on 4 things. First of all, our category. So the convenient nutrition category is high growth, low household penetration, a ton of opportunity. has a lot of tailwinds. So first of all, protein, functional foods and beverages and most recently, GLP-1s. And GLP-1s happen to be a headwind for many, but they're actually a tailwind for us. Second piece is our brands. So Premier Protein specifically is the #1 brand in the category and #1 household penetration, #1 repeat, #1 loyalty. So we happen to be not only the #1 brand within convenient nutrition, but also RTDs. The third is our financial performance. So we have -- since 2019, when we IPO-ed, we have grown top line at 18%, bottom line at 16%, and we generate a lot of cash because we're asset-light. So we can use that cash to invest in our business. We can use it to do share buybacks. We can also eventually do it for M&A. So that gives us a lot of advantages and flexibility. And lastly, probably what you guys are all interested in, we have a ton of room to grow in the future. The overall category is only about 50% household penetration for the RTD side of the business. Premier Protein has about 20% household penetration. So if you think of all the opportunity for the overall category and us as the #1, a lot of room to grow. So favored category, #1 brand, great financials and a lot of room to grow.

Great. Great overview. Let's start with the category. So RTD shakes grew mid-teens this year. You talked about a lot of the tailwinds to the category, still room to grow. You did talk about a bit of a step down this year to high single-digit growth, but still getting back to low double digit over time. So maybe kind of 2-part question. What's driving that step down in the category growth this year and maybe some of the recent trends we've seen that suggests a little bit of slower category growth? And then how are you just thinking about the opportunity to reaccelerate that and the durability of the category growth longer term?

Yes. So in our last earnings call, we did -- we -- this is the time that we do our planning. So we always look at what we think we're going to do in the next year and we look at our long-term algorithm. So we did bring it down. And the main reason is honestly a lot of big numbers. I mentioned that the overall category since we went public in 2019 when we set this up, it's doubled in size in about 5 years. So it's just really exploded. Our business when we went public was $850 million. It's now $2.3 billion. So that is all part of it. And I would say, for the most part, it is just lot of big numbers. Nothing has happened to the consumer. There's still a ton of tailwinds, which I already hit on, and the opportunity is bright.

Can you maybe talk about do you have a target for household penetration longer term? You said 50% category today. What have you kind of seen? What did you see in 2025 from a category penetration increase perspective? What's baked in for '26 and beyond?

Yes, for the category?

For the category.

Yes. So we look at kind of -- if you step back, we like comparing the RTD, the protein RTD market to energy. And there are a lot of differences. But the reason why we like the similarity is, first of all, they're both functional beverages. Also around the same age, it's a pretty -- they're pretty young categories, only about 30, 35 years old. And what we've seen -- so energy is about 70% to 75% household pen, we're about 50%. We think it's very -- this last year, the category grew 4 points. So we think it's very reasonable to see every year grow 3 to 4 points. And in 5-ish years, we're going to be bumping up to the size of the energy category.

Awesome. Helpful. And with the change in the category, law of large numbers, you also took down your long-term revenue algorithm to 7% to 9% from 10% to 12%, again, much bigger company than you were. But as you think about, I think that implies Premier grows a bit above 7% to 9%. So as you think about your ability to grow in line with the category, you are the market leader. There's been more competition. What are the drivers of your confidence in continuing to grow in line with the category?

Yes, you're exactly right. So 7% to 9%, we looked at Premier driving the category Dymatize, which is our second brand, slightly weighing down that. So our assumption is that we are growing with the category. This has been the case for the last several years, where we have basically held market share. If you peel it back a little bit, we've lost a little market share in club, but we've gained everywhere else, and we expect that to continue.

Okay. And then maybe a good segue to my next question on club, which there's been a lot of discussion around the increase in competition in club. I think a lot of investors have concerned that your early lead and kind of first-mover advantage in that channel, in particular, could continue to erode over time as more entrants have come in and maybe some of them stick around. So how are you approaching the club channel, in particular, in '26 and beyond, just given everything that's evolved? And what drives your kind of confidence and visibility to maintaining your leading market share in that channel specifically?

Yes. Club is a really strong channel for us. It's where we started. It continues to be not only a strong channel for us, but we are very important to the club channel. So we are the #1 brand within the category. We are actually -- I talked at the beginning about our kind of equity, all the #1 equity measures. We're actually the #1 household penetration and #1 loyalty within the club channel as well. So that's really important. So just realizing how important we are to the club channel. Our velocities are always in the top half. So strong brands within that channel. As we go through, it is absolutely a priority channel for us going forward and beyond. Our focus next year is going to be improving the assortment. So continuing to have our kind of strong core flavors there, but also testing new ones. So we're looking for incrementality that is exactly what they're looking for. So you can expect to see us continuing to test new items within the club channel. The second is we're investing more. So specifically within the club channel as well as outside, within the club channel, our focus is really around merchandising, increased merchandising as well as sampling. So getting our product in consumers' hands. It's one of our best kind of attributes. It's one of the reasons -- the key reason why consumers repeat is because we taste so fantastic. So inside the club channel or inside the club, all around increasing merchandise sampling. And then outside, we're increasing our marketing and advertising, and that will benefit the club channel as well. The third piece is just around competition. There's no doubt competition has increased specifically in the club channel, but even a bit broader, but the focus has been the club channel. What I would say is there's a lot of insurgent, what I call insurgent brands. And we're already seeing that some of them aren't going to make it. And that -- one of our main partners that is their model. Their model is around treasure hunt. They bring in small brands, which is great. But those thresholds in club are high. And so a lot of them are not going to make it, and we're already seeing some of that shake out. And what we're going to do is I have the utmost confidence that we will be one of the winners. We're going to continue being that #1 brand in the channel and actually toward the end of the year, and we even talked about this, is club channel is going to start lapping some pretty high numbers. And there, I fully believe that they will come to us as their key partner to bring to -- and proven partner to bring more sales.

Helpful. A good segue. I guess big picture, what drives brand loyalty in the RTD Shakes category? And as you think about like what the category will look like in 5 to 10 years, and you alluded to it a bit, but how do you think it will shake out between leading brands, insurgent brands, legacy brands? Do you think it's -- the 2 leading brands today, I think, are close to 50%. Do we stay there? What do you think the category is? Is there another category you look to, to kind of as an analogy for what you think the category will look like longer term? A lot in there.

I know. I was where should I go in this? Okay. I'm going to hit your 3 to 5 years, what does the category look like? We will absolutely be one of the winners. There -- again, no doubt in my mind, you can't have the size of business and equity and brand equity measures without staying on top. We have this inherent following, and it continues to grow because of the word of mouth, which is such a key part of this business. Where I see the category going from a household penetration, we hit this at the beginning, but I do believe that we will start getting closer to the energy drink category. Second, around products, this category is on fire, and there's going to be -- and it's maturing. I think that there's going to be -- it used to just be 30-gram shakes. Well, now there's going to be different formats, different liquids, different macros, up, down. They're going to be different pack size, different package types. So I think what you're going to see is more of the maturing of the category in different types of products going after incremental occasions and incremental consumers. From a retailer standpoint, I think the biggest change you're going to see is in grocery and food. It is by far the most underdeveloped. They know it. They are testing different areas of the store. And so what I think you're going to see is this category and not everybody in the category. So we expect to see the main brands move into the -- the mainstream successful brands moving into a higher traffic aisle and more of the legacy brands staying likely in the pharmacy. And so that's from kind of product, retailer standpoint. Competition is going to continue. You can't have this type of success in a category and not expect people to -- different brands trying to make their way. But I think that what will be clear is that the leading brands will continue to lead. Insurgent brands, I think there will be churn and the legacy brands will continue to be donor brands, which they have been for the last several years.

Makes sense. Maybe we can shift a bit towards the near term. So you -- one year in your first quarter right now, as you mentioned, you guided to a 5% decline. We're seeing the consumption data, you can see that it's a little bit softer right now. You talked about an acceleration expected starting in mid-December and return to that kind of high single-digit rate on the top line. So can you just talk about key drivers of that expected acceleration in consumption and ultimately, your top line in the second quarter?

Sure. So Q1 has a bunch of unique elements, specific -- less about this year, but more about what we're lapping. So we're lapping a club promotion that we chose not to repeat. We're also lapping within another one of our club retailers. We're lapping a period where there were less new entrants. And then there's a few other things like port strikes, et cetera. But I would just say there is several unique items within Q1. When we start getting to Q2, Q3, Q4, it kind of goes back to what we have seen for many years. But I'll tell you, there are basically 4 main accelerants. The biggest one is, and I talked about it on our earnings call just a couple of weeks ago, it feels like a long time ago. We have a major partnership with a mass retailer. I'm really excited about this one, specifically because we've never had a partnership at this level. We have had a lot of success getting out of the aisle. So why that's important with a low household penetration brand is because you get eyeballs. It's much more relevant to people that don't even know we're in the pharmacy section. So once they see it in the aisle, they see 30 grams of protein, they know they need it, they try it. And then because of our fantastic repeat metrics, they stay within our brand. So we know getting out of the aisle is key. What this partnership does is it's like that on steroids. So we are doing -- it's [ 12:15 to 3:15 ] so a 3-month program. We have about 3/4 of our business that will be on a rollback, in exchange for that, we get multiple placements throughout the store. The placements include pallet drops outside of pharmacy, end caps in the grocery section, end caps outside of pharmacy as well. We're getting several tests with our single bottles within coolers, which will be great for immediate consumption. So the whole partnership, again, lasts for 3 months. But I think one of the reasons why I'm excited about it is because I think it will show the potential. It will be a great case study to not only bring back to that mass retailer to potentially repeat later in the year, but also to sell it into grocery where I talked about how underdeveloped they are and to give them a potential example of what they can do to really jump-start their category and our business. That's one, a long one. Okay. So two is advertising. So we're increasing our advertising. We started in the end of December, and it goes throughout the rest of the year. We've increased our spend as well as we have a new agency, new campaign, and it will be really a 360-degree surrounding the consumer. So that's the second. Third is distribution. Not -- we've talked about expanded distribution within the mass retailer, but we have a lot of distribution opportunity within grocery, and that will continue to grow throughout the year. And then lastly, innovation. So -- and that's a little bit of a slower build throughout the year, although our coffee house line starts in the mass retailer within exclusive, so those are kind of the 4 reasons that you're going to see an accelerating from our Q1 guidance.

So clearly, the mass retailer partnership, the biggest in the second quarter. That technically ends in the second quarter, but it seems like you're perhaps optimistic that this -- it's not as if the shelf space necessarily goes away? Or can you kind of just talk about what that looks like beyond 2Q, your point on the case study, is there an opportunity to do it again? How should we think about just like the durability of that?

Yes. So some of it is finite for those 3 months. But some of it does change -- some of it does stay. And some of the pieces like the singles in the coolers, that's a test. So if we perform well, that will stay on. But like I said a moment ago, I really believe that I think, a, it will be successful. And b, if it's successful, then we will repeat it later in the year. So we have -- and also Coffee House, that's going in early staying. And then just remember, we've seen this kind of time and time again. When we get out of the aisle, we get trial and then those consumers repeat. So that's also just part of the flywheel.

Makes sense. Innovation, the fourth bucket you talked about. You on the call a couple of weeks ago talked about a demand landscape that I think you just said validated some of the white space, that white space helped refine your innovation pipeline. When you -- maybe you can expand just on what you learned from that study and how you're thinking about change how it refined your approach to innovation? You talk a lot about incremental occasions. Is there an offer you've done very well with a lot of flavors. Coffee seems like a bit of an incremental occasion, but different forms. How are you kind of thinking about the pipeline with what you're willing to share today?

The demand landscape study that we did had over 6,000 consumers that we talk to, both in the category as well as prime to enter. So it gave us a fantastic map of where the category is going and not only where kind of the heat is, so think of consumer segments across the top, down the left-hand side, occasions. And there's actually a unique third dimension, I won't go into. But when -- I mean, the biggest thing I wanted to know is how much runway is there in the RTD marketplace. And that came back incredibly clear that there is a ton of runway. It's only kind of started to mainstream. It will continue to mainstream. So that was the first piece. The second piece is that it validated a lot of the innovation that we already had started. So we felt like, okay, check, we're on the right track. And it also highlighted some white space that would be highly incremental to what we already have out in the marketplace and what's already in our pipeline. So those are the 3 main pieces. What I will also -- I'll also just add that it also -- it highlighted a big opportunity, I think, for us as the leader in the category to consumers need more education. They need more education on how much protein they need, what type of protein they need, when they should eat it, when it's the most optimal time to have it. And so as the leader in the category, I think it really gives us an opportunity and kind of a responsibility to do more education. So we've factored that into our marketing program.

Got it. That's helpful. We talked about this a little bit, but the FDM channel has been a great driver from a growth perspective, gaining a lot of distribution there. What -- 2-part question. What inning do you think we're in, in terms of that expansion? What kind of visibility do you have beyond the mass retailer partnership to continued distribution growth there? And second part of the question is when you think to the convenience channel where you're underpenetrated, how do you think about the opportunity there? You've talked about the need to partner with the DSDs. So kind of where are you in those conversations?

Yes. FDCM is by far the biggest opportunity ahead of us. And I think you hit the second one, which is convenience, which we believe is smaller, but still highly incremental. So I'll start with FDM. As far as innings, it's early third, to be specific. Yes, I think it's early. It's second to third inning. It started mainstream. They are behind. But I think what's -- I mean, when we did -- we actually did another study where we're going as the leader in the category, we want to be the thought leader and partner to our retail partners. So we've gone to them with leadership around where -- how to maximize the category opportunity. So where it should be, what aisle should it be in, what it should be called, what products should be in, what should be out, how it should be merchandised, what brands should lead off the aisle? And what would that mean for incremental sales for their category. So we have been -- we want to be, again, the partner to them. And I think what's exciting about it is they're listening. They're actually coming to us with ideas about when they're going to test it in higher traffic aisles. And that's actually happening, not only in mass, but in grocery. So we're starting to see not only the thinking, but the action. And so I mean, ever since we went public, I talked about getting to a higher traffic aisle. And finally, I feel like there's movement. So that's the FDM side of things. The convenience and singles opportunities, I would -- I'd like to pull apart because I think that sometimes is convoluted. I like pulling apart singles versus convenience. So singles is a big opportunity. Part of that is in convenience, but part of it actually is ambient in FDM. And we're going after that opportunity currently. It's one of the main reasons why we brought on a new broker partner, which specializes in merchandising around the store. So we're going after the singles opportunities in FDM. You really need a DSD partner, like you mentioned, for convenience, and we are strategizing around that. We're talking to different DSD partners to figure out how do we create a win-win partnership and who we partner with. It's just going to take a little time. But I'm optimistic that, call it, in the medium term, I think 3-plus years, I think we will have -- we will be in convenience stores, and we will have a DSD partner.

Great. Paul, maybe we can get you in the mix.

Great, give Darcy a break.

Talking about margins. So this year, you guided to 280 bps of EBITDA margin compression, gross margin being the biggest driver, a way inflation and tariffs, I think were 2 big things you talked about. So how should investors kind of think about the progression of gross margin throughout this year? And I think the guide still does imply in the back half, you kind of get back to 20%, which is the high end of your long-term target on EBITDA margins. So what are kind of the levers that good guys that we start to see in the back half of the year that give you visibility to that?

Yes. So you hit the key point. So we are calling for -- at the midpoint, our EBITDA margins to be down about 280 basis points. And the biggest drivers, again, at the gross margin line, which is mostly inflation as well as tariffs. We're also making incremental promotional investments. And a lot of that over-indexed to the first half of the year. So if you look at our fiscal '25, our first half, you see our gross margins, in particular, were very high. We had nearly 37% margins in Q1, nearly 35% margins in Q2. So if you kind of look at '25, protein costs, which is the biggest input cost for us, kind of started at the lowest point and moved their way up as they went throughout the fiscal year. So we're lapping a very favorable environment in the first half of '26. And so that's really the biggest driver of some of the bigger headwinds in fiscal '26, in particular in the first half. As we get to the second half, those inflation trends moderate significantly. And we also have the biggest increase in marketing spend in our second quarter. So our first quarter kind of takes the brunt of a lot of the inflation and increases in spend. And then also because Q1 is always a seasonally low quarter for us. It's just the seasonality of the category. We also lose some G&A leverage in the first half. So as you get to the second half, we have our cost savings initiatives, which become more impactful in the second half. We took pricing on our Dymatize powder business late in Q1. So the second half gets more of a full benefit from that. And then we have a little bit more G&A leverage in the second half because of just the higher sales. In Q3, in particular, typically is not a high promotional quarter. So it tends to be a higher margin quarter for us. So those are the big drivers for why the second half, as you mentioned, the margin should be stronger.

Okay. And then maybe a follow-up. You kept the, as I mentioned, the long-term EBITDA margin target, 18% to 20% -- there's clearly a lot of competition. You're doing more promotional activity this year. You're stepping up brand investment. You're still going to be up 4% versus -- you said 4% to 5% longer term. So again, kind of longer term, like what gave you the confidence to continue to say this is an 18% to 20% EBITDA margin business?

Yes, I mean, really since IPO, we've been operating in that -- that's been our long-term algorithm since IPO. We actually operated above that for the last couple of years. But what gives us confidence and to your point, to also still have some room to increase our marketing spend is there's still opportunities for us to improve our margins over time. One is, I mentioned whey protein, which is the primary input cost for our powder business, which is about 15% of our total portfolio. Those have been at historical highs, and they continue to rise. That will normalize at some point. And it has -- while we've taken several rounds of pricing, it has chipped away at our margins. So we do think that will normalize over time. Cost savings initiatives, as we've talked about, that's something that we've stepped up. It wasn't that long ago, we were capacity constrained, right? And so cost savings was not the highest priority, but we started prioritizing that in '25. And so that's another lever that we expect to allow us to enhance our margins. And then G&A leverage is something we've been consistently getting over time. And when I say G&A, I mean G&A, excluding our marketing spend, which we call A&P, I'd expect to still see some G&A leverage over time. So I think there's still opportunities to get us back into that kind of upper half of our EBITDA algorithm.

Okay. You talked about it a little bit, but can you just -- the cost savings again, maybe a bit of a new topic for selling investors. So expand exactly on where these cost savings are coming from? Is this kind of a multiyear effort? Was it kind of done this year to protect the P&L, just given some of the headwinds big picture, kind of what the -- what are the primary buckets that you're looking at?

Yes. So as I mentioned, I mean, if you step back in 2024, we were still replenishing shelves fully for -- as we are exiting capacity constraints because obviously, demand outpaced our capacity. So cost savings became a bigger initiative for us in fiscal '25. And then as we move into '26, it become a bigger initiative. And it's mostly in our supply chain. That's where the biggest opportunities stand within our co-mans, within our distribution network, within our freight network. So that's where -- but it's across our P&L. We're looking at G&A and marketing spend efficiencies and trade spend efficiencies. But supply chain is where you'll see the bulk of it. We'll see a little bit of it earlier in the year, but it tends to lean more to the second half of the year. We'll start to see some of that cost savings, and so I'm really happy with the progress that the team has made. They've got a long list of items that they're working through. One example is something we've talked about for different reasons, but we went through a packaging redesign on our Premier Protein brand in late fiscal '25. And while that obviously has brand implications and consumer-facing implications, that also had some cost savings behind it as well. We rationalized some ingredients. We optimized some suppliers to get some of the cost out. So that's an example of this one. But there's things across our distribution and logistics networks and our supply chain that are the biggest opportunity.

Okay. Maybe shifting to capital allocation. Darcy mentioned at the beginning, capital-light business, highly cash generative. You've leaned into buybacks more recently, but maybe you could just kind of talk through priorities from a capital allocation perspective and how you think about M&A as fitting in over the next 3 to 5 years and kind of the desire to diversify the product portfolio if there is one.

Yes, I can start if you want to add anything on M&A. So from a capital allocation perspective, our priorities have been pretty consistent really since we went public. When we went public, we were actually -- we had higher leverage at the time. We're closer to 4x. And so because of our EBITDA growth and our strong cash flow generation, as you mentioned, we delevered very quickly. So really from then on, we've been pretty focused on share buybacks as a return to our investors. And so we've leaned into that over the course of really since going public. So as we go through our priorities, it's been invest behind our business, which mostly we do through marketing, promotions, systems and processes, which mostly flow through our P&L. We're asset-light. Our CapEx has been generally kind of $5 million or less over the course of time. Share buybacks have been -- maintaining leverage and getting our leverage in the right spot. And then share buybacks have been the primary focus. From an M&A -- yes, from an M&A perspective, we still see that as a key for us as we go forward, but it's still more mid- to longer term. We still believe we have so much organic growth opportunity in front of us, and we still think share buybacks makes the best use of our capital. So M&A is certainly part of our story as we go forward, but still we see it as keep on our -- focused on organic growth.

You said it all.

Great.

I have one more, and then I want to make sure we leave time for questions in the room, if there are any. Darcy, maybe we can just end my last question is just what do you think is most underappreciated about the Premier brand or Boeing's kind of competitive advantage by the market today?

As you might expect, I have thought about this a lot. I think there's 2 things. So the first is the power of the Premier Protein brand. And then the second piece, and I'll go into a little more detail. And the second is, I think that it is -- I think it's underappreciated the -- how hard it is to get to be the size we are. There's a lot of talk around insurgent brands. And it is a different skill set. It is hard to launch a brand, but it takes a totally different skill set to go from $100 million to $2.3 billion. So I'll first hit the Premier Protein. It is such a special brand. It was the first mainstream brand that really -- I mean, I say that it's for kind of the everyday person. It's a protein shake for the everyday man, everyday woman. It was totally -- it was kind of revolutionary at the time because at the time, there was -- there were protein shakes for old people. There are protein shakes for weight management. There are protein shakes for gym goers, but there wasn't anything for all of us. And so it was unique and it resonated and it still resonates. And I've never been -- I've worked on a lot of brands, and I just haven't seen how much passion there is around a brand like this, the way it helps people, the way it helps them lose weight, the way it helps -- we get these testimonials from consumers. And the passion for -- I always say like it's a protein shake, but it is more than that because it gets involved in what -- how it helps people be something better than what they are. And then it shows up in the brand equity measures. It's the #1 brand. It's the #1 household penetration, #1 repeat, #1 brand I love, #1 Net Promoter Score. There just I can go on with the power of the brand, and that is hard to build. And so that is the first one. The second piece is just it is difficult to scale with where we are. And we have had bumps along the road with capacity constraints. And -- but what we have built is a national supply chain. We have built a sales organization that calls on over 200 retailers that we are category captains in many of our retailers, and we're literally helping them design the future of the category. And we have great financials. And so it is one of those things that it is -- you can get caught up in all of the competition and the insurgence brands. And -- but at the end of the day, like we are a 25% market share company with a brand with a ton of room to grow. And our own consumers are almost doing some of the marketing for us. So it's unique. It's a great brand and business to work on. And yes, underappreciated.

We have about 90 seconds. I want to open it up to see if there's any questions in the room. Sarah? Do you mind with the mic for the webcast can hear you?

Two quick questions. One, why is 5% the right level of marketing spend to eventually aspire to? Kind of curious what benchmarking you've done there. That's the first. And the second is you speak about the tremendous white space in convenience and yet the DSD opportunity is midterm, I believe, were your words, Darcy. So why not accelerate that? What are kind of the limitations to have that midterm versus near term?

Okay. I'm going to hit the second one. I didn't hit both if you want. Okay. So DSD, it takes a partner. So if you think of -- we've been looking at it for several years. At the time, several DSD partners, they knew the opportunity in protein, but it was behind energy hydration and then came the protein space. At that time, that was okay because for us, we were building capacity. So it actually was behind FDM and making sure that we had filled our shelves. We had built that national supply chain network that I just talked about. So it was okay. But what we've been doing is staying in touch with all the -- getting smarter on DSD and then also staying in touch with the different partners. And so I think the time has come where actually the -- our priorities are aligned. And so I put out the -- because I know if I tell you guys that it's going to be like in this year, then you guys are going to continue asking me about it. But it's going to take some time. We have to make sure it's aligned interest. We have to make sure -- I mean, we have a very sizable warehouse business. So we just have to make sure that the partnership makes sense and we find the right partner. So it's definitely on our priority list. We see it as incremental, but we're also not waiting around for it. So I mentioned that we are getting after that singles opportunity within FDM, and we're using a broker to do it. So that's the DSD piece. On advertising, we were -- we've been kind of 2.5% to 3%. And so we're easing it up. Our -- we think it's around 4% to 5%. But if it's working, we'll increase it. We are easing into it mainly this year because we've got other headwinds. We've got other headwinds around inflation, tariffs, et cetera. So we wanted to ease into it just because in mind of the P&L.

Great. Well, Darcy, Paul, thank you so much for being here. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Have a great rest of the conference.