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

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to BellRing Brands' Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Jennifer Meyer, Investor Relations for BellRing Brands. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for BellRing Brands' Third Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Call. With me today are Mike Axelrod, our President and CEO; and Paul Rode, our CFO. Mike and Paul will begin with prepared remarks, and afterwards, we'll have a brief question-and-answer session. The press release and supplemental slide presentation that support these remarks are posted on our website in both the Investor Relations and the SEC Filings sections at bellring.com. In addition, the release and slides are available on the SEC's website. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call, and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and an audio replay will be available on our website. And finally, this call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued this morning and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter earnings call. I'm excited and honored to lead BellRing, and I'm grateful to the Board, the executive leadership team and colleagues across the company for the very warm welcome. As it's my seventh day at the company, I'll start the call with introductory remarks and then pass it on to Paul to cover our third quarter performance and outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2026. I joined BellRing after 30 years in the consumer packaged goods industry across both entrepreneurial and large-scale businesses. Throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to grow businesses profitably by strengthening execution, improving operations and speed to market, and investing behind strong brands. What attracted me to BellRing was the combination of an attractive category with a long runway for growth, the market-leading premier protein brand and a meaningful opportunity to improve execution. I built my career by putting the consumer first, building strong customer partnerships and creating value through disciplined execution, and I see many of these same opportunities here. Encouragingly, consumer demand for ready-to-drink protein shakes remains strong, and the category among the fastest growing in CPG. We continue to believe there is substantial runway for growth supported by long-term health and wellness trends. While competition has increased, that is exactly what you would expect in an attractive, growing category. Premier remains the category leader. Consumer trends improved every quarter this year, and we continue to see considerable opportunities to better realize the full potential of the business. These category and brand strengths give me confidence that our current financial performance, which has been affected by some transitory factors, does not reflect the long-term potential of the business. As the categories become more dynamic and competitive, winning requires greater operational discipline, faster decision-making and new capabilities. While we've done many things well, we have not executed consistently at the level we expect ourselves, and we are not satisfied with our financial performance. As Paul will discuss, actions are already underway to put the business on a healthier footing, but I believe there's considerable more opportunity ahead. I believe in building winning teams that are highly accountable, customer-focused and data-driven. Over the coming months, I'll spend time listening to our employees, customers and partners, identifying opportunities to improve, and empowering our teams to make thoughtful decisions and drive accountability across the organization. There are certainly near-term challenges to work through, but I believe they are manageable, and I see meaningful opportunities to improve performance and better translate our category leadership into more consistent, profitable growth over time. In closing, I believe BellRing's top and bottom line growth opportunity remains compelling. My commitment is straightforward: move with urgency, execute with discipline and create long-term value for our shareholders. I look forward to speaking with you again on our fourth quarter earnings call to share more about my strategic priorities, operating plans to create long-term shareholder value and our 2027 guidance. I'll now turn it over to Paul to talk through the quarter and our updated outlook.

Thanks, Mike, and welcome to the BellRing team. Our third quarter net sales and consumption exceeded expectations with both Premier Protein and Dymatize contributing to the upside. However, adjusted EBITDA margins were below our guidance, reflecting inventory-related headwinds and higher freight costs. We expect these pressures to continue in the fourth quarter and have incorporated them into our revised guidance, which I will discuss shortly. We remain focused on our growth priorities, including innovation launching this quarter and are encouraged by the resilience of Premier Protein's brand metrics despite a highly competitive environment. That said, we are not satisfied with our financial performance and are focused on restoring a stronger profit trajectory and delivering more consistent results as we look ahead to fiscal '27. To support that objective and the long-term growth of the business, we are taking decisive actions across pricing, channel mix, productivity and supply chain capabilities to bolster our operating model and address cost pressures. First, we have announced a double-digit price increase on Premier shakes and additional pricing on powders, both effective in our first quarter of fiscal 2027. We believe these actions are necessary to offset sustained inflationary pressure in key input costs and support a healthier margin profile over time. With this price increase, we expect volume-related elasticities to be slightly greater than 1. Second, we continue to take steps to diversify our business across channels, categories and adjacent product segments. In FDM and e-commerce channels, we expect meaningful distribution gains in '27, supported by strong retail demand for both core and innovation offerings. In convenience, we are advancing a disciplined expansion through targeted regional DSD expansion. We believe our core 30-gram protein shakes and our new Premier Protein Ultimate product with 42 grams of protein are well suited to the convenience channel and can drive incremental growth. We are also excited about the launch of Premier Protein Sparkling soda, which expands us into the refreshment category and creates incremental distribution opportunities. Together, these initiatives are expected to broaden our consumer reach and further diversify our channel mix over time. In club, we currently expect our shake assortment next year to be generally consistent with this year, with one item representing a low single-digit sales percentage of this year's net sales expected to rotate out. We expect to retain a portion of that demand with our remaining flavors and continue to see opportunities to expand our club presence through innovation and new offerings that align with retailers' evolving assortment strategies. Third, we have completed several productivity initiatives, including this year's cost savings programs and our organizational realignment, which we announced in late June. These actions are designed to simplify the business, reduce structural costs and improve execution discipline as we enter fiscal 2027, where we will continue to focus on cost savings. And finally, we are working to strengthen our planning capabilities and end-to-end supply chain processes to improve inventory management. These efforts are in the early stages and include investments across people, systems and processes to support more consistent supply chain performance going forward. We'll provide further updates on our 2027 initiatives on our fourth quarter earnings call. Overall, we expect to deliver improved margins over time with progress beginning in fiscal 2027. I'll now turn to an update on the category, our 2026 operating plans, followed by our Q3 results and guidance. Starting with the category. As Mike mentioned, category fundamentals remain healthy with strong consumer demand for protein. We continue to expect fiscal year category growth in the high single digits, primarily driven by volume. Household penetration continues to grow for both the protein shake category and Premier shakes. Premier household penetration has reached almost 23%, with shake repeat rate consistently the highest in the category. In the third quarter, 70% of RTD shake category volumes were sold on price promotion. This is relatively in line with historical norms for this period after adjusting for the shift of a major e-commerce promotion, while down sequentially from the heavier promoted second quarter. While category fundamentals remain strong, our outlook assumes fourth quarter promotional levels will be more similar to the second quarter trends, reflecting continued value-seeking behavior and elevated promotional activity during the key Q2 and Q4 seasons. Over time, we continue to expect category-based price increases as a result of meaningful input cost inflation. Our demand drivers for fiscal '26 remain centered on: one, growing our distribution both in and out of aisle; two, increasing advertising investment while elevating its impact; and three, launching innovation that provides consumer excitement, ad occasion and drives trial. We remain on track to grow TDP double digits in fiscal 2026. Store activation improvements with our new broker and internal retail sales teams continue to drive meaningful FDM growth. Recall, Q2 and Q4 reflect our typical seasonal increase in promotional activity. Our fourth quarter will include a promotional event with a major mass retailer featuring displays and end caps, which is similar to our second quarter event. In addition, we are repeating our Q4 club promotions with similar timing to last year. Our Q2 promotions delivered significant household gains, including many new to category consumers, and we look for further gains in Q4. With respect to advertising, we increased our investment this year and launched Premier's Go Get 'Em campaign, which is driving solid lifts in brand equity, awareness and traffic to our website and e-commerce product pages. Campaign ROI is stronger than last year, and our full year outlook continues to reflect advertising investment at approximately 4% of sales. Turning to innovation. As we've discussed previously, our demand study identified performance and refreshing protein as 2 of the most attractive and underserved areas in the category. Our Premier Protein 42-gram Ultimate Shake and Premier Protein Sparkling Soda expand our product portfolio and performance with high protein and refreshment while creating new opportunities to reach consumers across additional occasions. Both products are rolling out to mass, food and e-commerce channels this quarter and will be supported by targeted retail and social media campaigns to drive awareness. Moving on to third quarter results. Net sales increased 4% in the third quarter with both brands ahead of our expectations. Premier Protein brand and RTD shake net sales increased 1%. Shake volume grew 3%, partially offset by a 2% decline in price mix with dollar consumption up 6%. Sales growth trailed consumption primarily due to e-commerce promotional timing, a greater promotional impact on net sales and retail consumption, and modestly lower trade inventory. Regarding e-commerce, total consumption growth benefited by approximately 1 percentage point from a promotional timing shift to June compared to July in 2025. Excluding that benefit, consumption outside club grew approximately 16%. Compared to our expectations, shake sales and consumption both benefited from the early start of a small portion of a promotion at a major mass retailer, and stronger baseline velocities. Dymatize net sales were up 27%, with volumes up 6% and strong price/mix of 21%, reflecting the inflation-driven price increases we implemented earlier this year. Compared to our expectations, Dymatize saw higher consumer demand primarily in e-commerce and international channels and benefited from distribution gains in overseas markets. Adjusted gross profit was $158 million, with adjusted gross margin of 27.7% compared to 35.1% a year ago. The year-over-year decline was driven by significant protein and freight cost inflation, including tariffs. Additionally, we recorded a charge in Q3 on excess bottle shake inventory. This inventory-related charge, which was a 180 basis point headwind, was the primary variance from our forecast with the remainder from higher-than-expected freight costs, which were offset by the benefit from higher sales. SG&A expenses were $94 million or 16.4% of sales, including a $7 million advertising increase or approximately 100 basis point increase as a percentage of sales. SG&A expenses also included a $5 million charge related to our organizational realignment, which was treated as an adjustment to EBITDA. Once complete, we expect this to generate an annualized run rate operating expense savings of $10 million to $12 million. The fourth quarter will benefit from modest savings with the majority expected in fiscal 2027. Turning to our 2026 outlook. We now expect full year net sales of $2.335 billion to $2.375 billion, which represents growth of 1% to 3% versus our prior guidance of flat to 2% growth. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $275 million to $295 million with a margin of approximately 12%. Our full year adjusted EBITDA outlook includes $28 million of unfavorable inventory-related impacts, $21 million of which have already been recorded in Q2 and Q3. The remainder primarily relates to targeted trade spend anticipated in our fourth quarter to support excess bottle inventory sell-through, reflecting a prudent decision to optimize those levels ahead of year-end. We continue to expect tariffs to be an 80 basis point headwind -- margin headwind for the year. The change in our outlook versus our prior adjusted EBITDA guidance is primarily attributable to 2 items: inventory-related actions and higher freight costs. Freight rates have risen sharply since our May earnings call and are expected to remain elevated, incrementally weighing on second half margins by approximately 140 basis points. Turning to the fourth quarter. We expect net sales to be flat at the midpoint, with Premier up low single digits inclusive of an approximate 100 basis point headwind from powders. Similar to Q2, we expect double-digit volume growth for RTD shakes to be mostly offset by unfavorable price/mix from strong promotional activity in club, mass and e-commerce. We expect Premier shake consumption to be up mid-single digits, modestly outpacing sales due to the larger impact of promotions on our net sales. Dymatize and all other are expected to be down mid-single digits as Dymatize faces a tough fourth quarter comparison. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be approximately 10%, reflecting our seasonal promotional activity during Q4 as well as significant commodity and freight inflation ahead of pricing. Additionally, auto inventory-related actions are expected to be a headwind of approximately 100 basis points to the adjusted EBITDA margin rate in the quarter. Now I'll make a few comments on cash flow and liquidity. In the third quarter, we generated $79 million in operating cash flow, in line with our expectations, and ended the quarter at net leverage of 3.2x. Recall that we anticipate payment of a sizable legal settlement in our Q4. As a result, we expect to end the fiscal year at net leverage of approximately 4x. In closing, our conviction in the long-term potential of our category and the Premier brand remains strong. Fiscal 2026 has been an unusually dynamic year with meaningful inflationary pressures and evolving category dynamics. Yet, Premier remains the category leader, and we continue to see healthy consumer demand and strong brand fundamentals. We are taking actions to improve profitability while continuing to invest in the long-term growth of the business through advertising, distribution expansion and innovation. We believe the strength of the brand provides a solid foundation for stronger long-term financial performance and value creation. We look forward to sharing more about our plans on our fourth quarter earnings call. Before we open the line for questions, I'd like to thank Darcy Davenport for her many contributions to BellRing. Darcy has led this organization for over 10 years and was instrumental in taking the company public in 2019. Under her leadership, revenue has grown tenfold, with Premier Protein now a $2 billion brand and a category leader. As much as she loves the company and brands, it's the people and company culture that she loves the most. It's been a privilege to work alongside Darcy for the past decade, and we all wish her the very, very best in the future. I will now turn it over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar of Barclays.

Welcome, Michael. I realize you've obviously only just officially started, but the company is obviously in the midst of trying to address a number of challenges, all while facing tremendous cost pressure at the same time. So this makes it a bit more difficult to assess, I think, where sort of a trough in performance and profitability might be. As we think ahead to fiscal '27 and beyond, once the company is past these near-term inventory and trade costs, I guess, does the business also require more in terms of ongoing marketing support given where we are in the category competitive dynamic? And how do you view the company's ability to take pricing to deal with elevated costs while at the same time discounting to move inventory? So basically, I'm trying to get a sense of whether you see fiscal '26 as a trough and where you think margins could ultimately settle and sort of how long the journey is to get there.

Andrew, I'll start and then Mike can chime in if he likes. So we do not see '26, obviously, as our new normal for our margins. In fact, we -- as we said on our prepared remarks, we expect '27, our EBITDA margins will improve. And so I just want to go through a couple of the puts and takes. So first, we do have a number of inventory-related impacts that we called out on the call that we would not expect to recur. So that's about 120 basis point headwind to our '26 results that we would not expect to recur in '27. We also have a number of initiatives that we are taking to improve financial performance, pricing, productivity and improved execution. So we talked about on the call, we're taking pricing on our shake business, a double-digit price increase that goes into effect in the first quarter. We're also taking a third round of pricing on our Dymatize powder business that also goes into effect in the first quarter. I think you know we've been chasing pricing on powder really throughout the year. And then obviously, we've seen a lot more inflation in '26 than we anticipated on our shake business. And so this price increase is addressing those things. And then we talked -- we announced obviously the cost savings initiative, the reorganization. So that obviously will be a $10 million to $12 million benefit, with some offset as it relates to bonus. But it really comes back to pricing and some of the initiatives that we're taking to improve our margins as we move into '27. So we do think that '27 margins will improve from where we are in '26.

Yes, Andrew, I'm not, given my 7 days, ready to put a stake in the ground where it ultimately settles. But my focus over the next several months is really to understand the structural earnings power of the business, the execution issues and really build a path to sustainable profitable growth. And as we gain confidence there, we'll communicate that transparently to you.

Our next question comes from the line of Tom Palmer of JPMorgan.

I wanted to maybe clarify some of the pricing plans as we think about moving into fiscal '27 when it comes to shakes. To what extent does this fully offset input cost inflation? How have kind of discussions with retail partners gone? And do you expect others in the industry to take similar actions?

So I'll start with the last. So we have seen earlier this year, the other kind of major player in the RTD space did take a double-digit price increase. And so our increases, in line or similar to what they took. So we do expect that there will be more. We've heard rumors there will be more, but we know we need to act. As far as is it covering our inflation, the last time we took a price increase on shakes, it will be coming up on 2 years ago. So we really have absorbed inflation really over the last couple of years. And so yes, we do expect that this increase will allow us to get back to healthier margins as well as continue to invest in the business. And then there was a third -- what was the third point?

Yes. Just communication with retailers, visibility. I'm trying to understand the elasticity piece, how much of that is factoring in any distribution effects?

Yes. So as always, with a price increase, retailers don't generally like it, but we're having good conversations with them, and we're near finalizing our price increase. So yes, and as you mentioned, we are assuming elasticities greater than 1 from this price increase as we think about our next year. We also expect strong distribution gains, especially in FDM and e-commerce. We have a lot of innovation, obviously, that's launching this fourth quarter. And so that will obviously full year benefit next year as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Alexia Howard of Bernstein.

Welcome, Michael. You mentioned in the press release that strengthening execution was listed as the first meaningful opportunity on your agenda as you come into the company. Can you talk about where you see the biggest opportunities for improved execution and how long it will take to achieve those?

Were you referencing the quote from the earnings release, that's what you're referencing?

That's right. Yes. I think you mentioned it in the opening remarks as well, the strength -- the opportunity to improve execution.

Yes. I mean I think it's on several fronts. So part of this, I think there's opportunities for us to improve execution around just as we've seen some inventory write-offs in this year. And so I think continuing to ensure that we're executing our supply plan, demand planning processes, there's opportunities for, I think, some system improvements, process improvements. And so those are some of the primary things that we're referencing. Obviously, Mike has just started. So he will have his own viewpoints, I think, on operations and potential opportunities as we move forward. Yes.

I view it in the context of really supply chain excellence. And so really working with our supply chain partners to really drive to the lowest-cost production and distribution, really optimizing that. I think there's a lot we can do on the procurement side and strengthening our procurement and really working with our [ co-managers ] to drive to the lowest cost possible. And also to be integrated within our supply chain, so we get in front of any inventory issues much sooner and are able to anticipate that and drive actions before it actually impacts us.

And the one thing I would add too is we did the reorganization in late June. And some of that was to reduce layers, which should speed up decision-making, get people closer to the decisions as well. So some of that is the decisions we made around the reorganization as well to enhance our -- to be more nimble and flexible as we move forward.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank.

Welcome, Mike. I guess my question is on the targeted regional DSD expansion that you spoke to. I guess maybe just a little bit more detail on what the plans are, how much has already been ironed out in terms of distribution partners, et cetera? And really, I guess, what does success look like for you in that initiative over the next 12 to 24 months? How material could it be as a percentage of sales, incrementality, that kind of thing? Just how you're thinking about that initiative. Because it's been something we've been talking about for a long time, but just interesting that now is the time to kind of press go on it. So just how you're thinking about it would be great.

You're correct. We have been talking about DSD, and we have been focused on it and active on it. So let me just give some background and then dig into further your question. So first, convenience represents about -- it's a meaningful white space. It's a big opportunity for our business. We have very little sales in convenience today. Overall, the convenience channel for RTDs is about 10% of the category. So that's a part of the category that we start playing in today. With the launch of our 42-gram Ultimate, that gives us another product in addition to our 30-gram so that we can push through the convenience channel. So that just -- as our portfolio has evolved, it's giving us greater flexibility to pursue the channel. We've been working through kind of a parallel path for a bit of looking at potential regional and national partners. And we remain focused on the opportunity. We're building internal capabilities. We've been hiring some folks with ESG expertise. So we're building our internal capabilities and our muscle and have made progress. So as we move into '27, we do see an opportunity to do some -- to have some partnerships with some regional players in some key markets at the start of the journey. So it's launching into those channels. We can learn quickly, apply learnings to the future expansion. But the thinking is, yes, there's kind of several phases of the rollout that would start sometime this year. So we would expect to see some sales start flowing in our fiscal '27 and then grow it from there. This doesn't preclude us from continuing to pursue a national opportunity, but we feel like this is a good place for us to start, and it's something we've been working on very hard. And we can provide further updates as we get into our November guide on where we are in that journey. We're still -- it's still being worked through. It's not -- still working through with our partners to set the course forward.

Our next question comes from the line of Jim Salera of Stephens.

Paul, I wanted to ask on the dynamics around volumes sold on promo. You guys called out that 3Q is kind of more seasonally normal and a step-down from a heavier promo in 2Q. I wonder if you can give us some details around it. Is that due to presumably other people in the industry also experiencing the same freight headwinds and commodity cost increase, and so that's just kind of a de facto way to help take a little bit of price back relative to the promo level before and we would expect to see promo step back up? Or do we think that maybe in 2Q, that was just a little irrational and we should expect, I'll say, a more normalized promotional cadence from the industry going forward?

It's a great question and one we probably don't fully know the answer to. So I would say that, to your point, we saw a more rational or lower promotional quarter, which is typical for the third quarter. So I think what's hard to read is that -- and it's really in the second quarter we saw kind of a heavier spending really from our insurgent brands. I mean it was across the category, but it was the insurgent brands that really were spending more heavy in the second quarter and really they pulled back significantly in the third quarter. So I think it's hard to read if that's them kind of following the category lead, so to speak, where you have kind of 2 big push periods in the year, the second quarter and the fourth quarter around new year, new and back-to-school, or if it's the inflationary pressures that are starting to create some angst with them spending on demos and promotion spend as they had been. So I think time will tell which direction that goes. I think either of those are possible or it could be both. But for sure, that's what we saw in the third quarter, was promotional spend -- or the promotional -- yes, the percent of spend on promotion was certainly lower and back to more normal levels.