Organto Foods Inc. (OGO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Well, thanks very much for joining the call today. I appreciate you taking the time. I'm Steve Bromley. I'm joined on the call today by Rients van der Wal, Co-CEO, Rients is in the Netherlands; and by John Rathwell, our Senior VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. I appreciate you taking the time today. We'd like to do a couple of things today. Just go back over and summarize the highlights of our business model really quickly, talk about '22, talk about our recently announced preliminary estimates for Q3 of '23. From there -- pardon me, Q1 of '23. Rients will then walk you through our operating priorities, our gross profit priorities, our branding priorities and our growth priorities. John will take a little time on some market analysis and then we'll wrap it up and to take questions from that room. So feel free to drop your questions into the chat room as we go through the presentation today. So again, I'm sure pretty much everyone is familiar with this, but just to go back over at Organto from a high level, we're a healthy foods platform. We're focused on value-added organic and non-GMO fruits and vegetables. We have an asset-light business model, which means that we don't own our manufacturing facilities. We connect farms with the markets, and so we add value in between, but we're not a further processor. We serve about 170 customers across 21 countries in Europe. We have a flexible product offering that's quite diverse, which we'll talk about, which I think really positions us well in these days that we're in right now. We have a dual branded product offering. So we have our IM organic brand, which is our premium organic brand, and then we have our Austin French brand, which is a mid-tier non-GMO brand. We source products from supply partners on 5 continents. We have a proactive acquisition strategy. Rients will update you on the acquisition of the New Fruit Group, which took place -- was announced late last year and closed the first day of 2023, and we have a team in place that has some experience in this space. So when we look at 2022, we take a look at the positives. We continue to have revenue growth. That's the good news. Our revenues were up 22%, currency adjusted, 13% in Canadian dollars. We had positive gross margins. But clearly, there was gross margin pressure in the past year. We'll talk quite a bit about that and also talk to you about what we're doing to correct that trend and as you'll have seen from our Q1 preliminary results, we've seen a significant improvement versus last year as a whole and also versus the fourth quarter and that's good, and that was expected, and we have to continue to deliver on that. Now we realized a number of new retail and customer listings during the year. So customers in Europe like Erica and-- customers that were added last year. Our inorganic brand has been well received. We're seeing positive traction, not as fast as we had hoped, but clearly, lots of interest and the rollout continues. I mentioned that we completed the acquisition of the new fruit Group. This is a nice business. Rients will update you on the integration, but it's moving along as planned and then we did have a large share overhang. John will talk about it when he speaks, but that's all been cleared, and that's behind us now. So those are the positives. I think the challenges were clear. The macroeconomic pressures last year. were significant. I told someone probably -- in my career, not sure that I ever saw so many all at the same time, we had inflation that grows rapidly. We had currency fluctuations. Supply chains were recovering from COVID and struggled off and on throughout the year and then, of course, the Russia-Ukraine water really impacted our operations. But the good news is, is that all of those -- we saw them normalizing as we got to the end of last year, and we've certainly seen them remain much more normalized. Rients will talk about that but the supply chain challenges that we were having are not there anymore and a lot of the inflationary pressure there are much more stabilized. So -- that was a big, big challenge for us last year. We say it's positive that we had positive gross margins because a number of our industry colleagues didn't end up with positive gross margins, which was really tough given the macroeconomic environment and some of our customers were also quite impacted. We had a really fast-growing franchise with gorillas. We were running probably on an annualized basis over $3 million, $3.5 million and when they got into their financial troubles, that impacted their focus on the markets that we were in and so we had a ripple impact on ourselves, and we also had another customer an online retailer that also had the same problem. So while we were feeling pressures, our customers felt the pressures as well, that resulted in pressure on our gross profits. Rients will talk a lot about what we're doing to address that because our goal is to continue growing gross margin and when last year, when it declined, it certainly was not what we had set to do and lastly, consumer sentiment. The reality is that in [indiscernible] times, consumers have less disposable income. We've seen that impact on some of the higher it in our portfolio. The good news is that we have a flexible portfolio, so we're able to adapt to that. But clearly, consumers have been impacted, and that's had an impact on our business. But again, I think we're well positioned to deal with that. So just really quickly, what did we do during the rise in inflationary times, we took a number of mitigating steps. But I think the real update now is that our adjusted pricing is flowing through and our margins are improving, 9.4% to 9.6% in Q1 this year versus 6% in Q4. So those are questions that we've taken we talk more about them. Also our core product focus -- we have taken our foot off the gas on some low-margin products because we just don't like the margin profile. And so that's paying off as well. But we're in progress in dealing with the inflationary pressures and hopefully, as inflation cools off, we can be a big winner in that, which is not only the case start to fall off. Pricing doesn't fall quite as quick. On the global supply chains, I would say that we have essentially -- we're very close to returning to the pre-covid order. We're seeing stability again now in deliveries. There's still a little bit of political inability where places like Peru and where they're having political problems. But for the most, the supply chains have stabilized and the transport and energy costs also stabilized for the time being. So we went through periods last year where pricing was shape like costs were changing daily and that's much more stabilized. I'll talk more about that. Then with the Russia-Ukraine war, you'll recall that about 15% of our sales were interact. Above and beyond all that, there was a real supply imbalance that happened coming out of the gate, a lot of product that was found for Russia ended up in the European markets, and we had to deal with oversupply in some commodities and reduced pricing and all of that sort of stuff. That's pretty much normalized now. The new world order is in place. The markets are opening up again for us in Russia. We're not doing any direct business into Russia at this time, but we're having a long hard look at it. we're allowed to do it. The bigger problem is you got to figure out how you're going to get paid with the Swift banking system, et cetera. So it requires advances from customers, et cetera, but we're looking hard at it. So look, it was a tough 2022. Let's talk about 2023 conditions are improving. A little bit on our business model that I just wanted to go back over. We offer a wide range of products. We do organic and we do non-GMO. We don't do any genetically modified foods and we do it in bulk. We do it in private label and we do it in branded. So we can cover high premium categories, and we can cover the lower cost bulk type categories and so we really like that as we look to look at our business and so we have seen the end markets where our customers are asking for more of the lower cost options for their customers, and we're able to do that and we also would have seen that we launched the awesome fruit brand, and that was just to address our customer needs to have a brand in the non-GMO space. Quickly on 2023, we announced these earlier this week. Our revenues were CAD 7.4 million to CAD 7.5 million. It's an increase of about 6% versus the prior year. So that's our largest order ever in the company and the teeth consecutive quarter of record sales versus the same quarter in the prior year. The big issue -- not the big issue. The big point here, though, is that margins improved significantly and so I mentioned that we've been working hard on improving our gross margins. So they're back in the range of 9.4% to 9.6%. We were 6% in Q4 of 2022 and Rients will talk more about it, but we expect to see continued momentum there and so all in all, quite pleased with how the quarter looked and we have reaffirmed our estimates for the year with revenue growth of 135% and about 200% in gross profit as we proceed through the year. So with that, let me turn it over to Rients, and he will walk through our core priorities.

Thank you, Steve. Well, as Steve was mentioning, we experienced quite a lot of gross margin pressure. So the first focus was to reestablish that take the foot a little bit of the photo in terms of revenue growth. We can see that we have made a significant step forward in that in quarter 1, but we, of course, aim to further increase that. We are focused on the items which generate for us, higher margins like herbs, Ginger and those sort of products. We are very focused on structured product sales, we had a proper repeat flow in the programs because that helps us drive the consistency and stability. We continue to drive brand and private label sales opportunities. The German market, a very interesting market in which we really have gained to a position now with the listings that we achieved, I think, with urinary and little in the largest European organic market. We have an access to about 50% to 60% of that retail market -- so that's a very, very interesting development. As in terms of the product group, we focus on what we do well and on where the rotations are high, which is in our case, Banana, Arcaro, Mango, Herbs and Ginger. With the steps that we have taken on the supply side and the integration of NFG we're also trying to see on how we can further leverage our buying strengths, and we are centralizing distribution ops as well. Brands, of course, remain very, very important. We remain a very strong believer in brands in the fresh produce segment. I think we're not the only ones because Coca-Cola just announced that they are also entering the fresh produce brands with Minute Maid and simply in the U.S. So we continue to increase the offerings, continue to pursue new listings. But at the same time, we're also very much focused on branding existing distribution by branding the distributions that we already have and increasing the visibility of the brand in the market and we're assessing a potential for premium non-GMO brands as well to complement the portfolio. In terms of the operational priorities, our core strategies are built supply, build brands, ability infrastructure we are now in a position with the retail listings that we have, something that we have been working on for quite a long time. It's far more right now for us in expanding sales. So we have a lot of retail listings where we have a single SKU listing. So it's to further develop product categories with existing retailers. The interesting thing here is as well that with the structured sales programs that we have, for instance, in bananas, we are 52 weeks per year in retailers with one of the -- or the largest fruit category. So we really can use that as a carrier for cross-selling. We continue to expand the supply base with new origins in order to ensure year-round delivery. We are accelerating the growth of the product branded portfolio. We continue to develop as well digital technologies to increase efficiency and transparency again, in the supply chains in Funan vet, it's still very basic and simple. So we really believe that digitalization can go a long way for us there with streamlining and leveraging organizational costs and, of course, completing the integration of the new fruit Group. I will touch on that a little bit later as well. Sorry, that's right here. So just to go over it again, we acquired a new fruit group in January 2023. It's an asset-light business model just like ours. It's very complementary in terms of its product portfolio. It's Banana, Avocado and Mango, bananas with the addition becoming very quickly one of the largest product groups that we have. A minimal customer overlap and as I mentioned earlier, a very interesting footprint in the largest organic market in Europe and Germany and a projected revenue of approximately CAD 20 million for the year. In terms of the integration status, the management is now integrated into our operations. They're located in our offices here in Breeder. We have established a joint advisory committee and have had our first meeting as already now ramping up the commercial efforts in trying to leverage delistings, our listings, but also on the product side. We're also seeing, and I think this is a very good example on how to use existing distribution to create more visibility for the brand. It's also what we are working on and of course, with a stronger position in the market in certain items. We're also further expanding the supplier relationships that we have. If we talk about the growth avenues, it's branded products. It's private label. We want to be a preferred partner for our retailers offering high-end brands, offering mid-tier brands and offering strong private label concepts. In short, whatever you need in organic fruits and vegetables non-GMO come to us, we'll service it for you. We want to be your category captain and help you drive the category. We are looking at category consolidation opportunities in really strengthening what we already have with strategic partnerships. We are expanding opportunities with strategic supply sources. A good example of that is the Dominican Republic. We were very active in the Dominican Republic on the banana side, with the organic. But with the addition of NFG we're looking to further expand that because they also source a lot of their products from the Dominican Republic and we're looking at a North American platform development. John, if you can speak about the valuations.

Yes. Thanks, Rients, I thought I see Nick on the call, we just had a new research shop pick up the stock and we're never going to use a couple of your slides, but I thought what might be good today is just to give us some context of where we fit in the bigger broader group and obviously, this group is more U.S. focused. We've had some Canadian stories in the last 2 or 3 years that haven't made this group. But our opinion, we're trading at 0.5 turn and probably warranted, but as we grow through the next couple of years, the next slide will walk you through where we sit in the spectrum and if we hit our numbers, which Rients will walk you through in a couple of minutes, today, we're growing -- we're a fast-going company, obviously, small market cap, a little bit more risk. But if we can make it through all the hurdles, which we've done over the last couple of years, hopefully, we can start trading at a little bit of a higher multiple and even get up into that 1x and I know Steve asked me to talk about [indiscernible]. It isn't my favorite topic. But again, just to remind everybody, we did have a big trade that we had to move last year. It took 11 or 12 months, but we did end up trading out and primarily most of it into pretty good hands 59 million shares over a 12-month period and that trade was consummated or finished on December 8. So that's in clear. Hopefully we put some good quarters together here and some get some people to come back to the small cap market.

Perfect. Just to recap, we believe we are positioned for growth for 2023 and beyond. NFG is a very strong addition that adds the large scale size and depth. The retail listings, I think it's a very, very strong position that we have. The Morgan brands gaining traction and being creative also in using existing distribution. The Olson brand, which we see in out-of-home channels as well for non-GMO fruit, continue to work our margin improvement. It's very good to see where we are right now. But -- we are really focused on making the next step towards the 11% of gross margin. I think we have a very experienced team in place that can help us grow the business and of course, we remain to have as well a good acquisition pipeline. The targets that we have is to grow our revenue, 135% versus previous year, gross refit, plus 200%. I think we're well on track and with an EBITDA positive in the back half of the year.

Great, Thanks, Rients. we'll just take a pause there, and we'll get the chat room. I think, John, you're going to start pulling questions down from the chat room.

[Operator Instructions] So in our forecast, so if I understand, like I love the sound of 11%. That sounds great and in these forecasts, we're rolling out sort of branded slowly, but it sounds like there's a big German program company. Am I correct in that?

I think we already have the programs. It's more a question of scaling them up. So we already have active listings and active distribution in retailers like Erica, Lidl and Rave and it's far more a question of scaling them up and getting more DCs where you can basically deliver to. If we take a couple of steps backwards and we look to where we were 12 months ago, we were very much still looking for the retailers trying to gain our entrants and what you see that what we have realized now is that we have that access to the biggest markets and the leading retailers. So it's far more around properly leveraging that and driving operational excellence to really ensure that you build that revenue and distribution.

Sorry, just quickly sorry, John. So on the ramp of new fruit group. So obviously, Q1, we didn't see a ton of NFG so far, right? I mean these programs, you -- can you talk about the process of getting them online and then the ramp of their business because $20 million that's significant as whatever overplus or just $6 million a quarter. So like just give us the time lines on that ticking in, in the quarter that we're in now in Q2 and how that ramps up? Is there seasonal factors?

Yes. I mean, it's a buildup. So it's an activation of programs. In some cases, you have a couple of weeks before the supply really needs to start. So we are allowing the business to take its time to get the supply really in place to get the distribution really into all of the DCs. So that's a work in progress. We can see it increasing right now. We have already seen very, very strong weeks and we expect over the coming quarters to further rebuild it up. It's the same on the other entities as well.

Sorry, John, just rick, I think it's also important to note that the avocado and Mango programs really hasn't kicked in at all in Q1, and it was just the Banana programs ramping up. So -- not only is it the program is coming on as they've been rebooked and contracted. It's also some of the avocado and Mango just didn't really have any impact in Q1 and we will go forward. I think the first loads of mango, did they arrive in the Netherlands today, a like the any day.

Yes, we have a lot of Mango that are arriving at the moment, yes.

A couple of questions -- just the last one on the gross margin. So do we see each quarter the gross margin progressing better? Is it too early to tell? Or can you -- is there enough predictability in the business to see how that tracks as we go through the year?

No. I think the best way, as Steve was mentioning in the beginning as well, we have experienced in 2022. In a normal world, you would say adding value is the best thing that you can do. But in our case, in all of our added value concepts that we had, we were faced daily with price increases. So it was very, very difficult to keep with it and to really get the right onwards or upward price increases as well. We see right now that inflation is stabilized. We are used to the price levels that we're seeing. We're now look seeing daily or weekly increases. Fuel prices have also been on back to normal. So we see it as much more of a stable position. Of course, it's hard work. I mean every point that we need to gain is a lot of hard work. You can do the right calculations, but then you still need to execute it properly. I just think if you do one full container and you've calculated it, right, but 2 pellets in the container that go the wrong way can be damaging to your results. So it's really a work in progress. But I think we're -- as you can see in quarter 1, we're very well on track on that.

Okay. Thanks, Savi. Steve, I think it's probably more -- well Steve, can probably both jump in here, but there's a couple of questions on acquisition and M&A strategy and more -- and one specifically for North America. Sure.

So I'm happy to jump in there, John. Look, our -- we are continuing to make sure that we're aware of opportunities that are in the marketplace and we're continuing to have dialogue with companies that took it over time. Our #1 focus right now is to get the new fruit group integrated and integrated well and make sure that we realize the benefits that we expect from the business and so that is our primary focus. We're continuing to have discussions with both European and North American opportunities that could be interesting. I think we've been quite clear on the fact that we would like to establish a presence in North America for a whole bunch of reasons, including -- it makes us much more relevant to growers who ship product to both continents, and I think we've been through most of the reasons why. So there are a couple of interesting opportunities that we're working on to sort out for in North America, both from a buy and/or a build point of view, and we remain pretty focused on figuring that but I do want to say we're being careful, and we want to make sure that the new fruit group is a smashing success. So -- but we're active and staying busy at it, and John and Rients spoke about developing the North American platform as a key growth priority for us.

And Rients, there's one here for you as well. I'm not sure if you're watching the chat, but it's the average margin in the organic and non-GMO, fresh fruit industry in general and I know last year was probably an anomaly, but in general, what is -- what's your view on the margins? Margin...

I think it's a good question. I think in fresh fruit and vegetables, I think we have to really clearly differentiate the fast-moving consumer goods versus fresh food. Everybody still need a lot of large multiples where profitability in here because they really increased significantly the prices to retailers. In fresh fruit and vegetables, this is not possible in that way. So I think a lot of companies have experienced exactly the same what we did last year. Overall, it really depends what kind of item you're talking about, what kind of proposition you're talking about. But I will say that on a bulk product, it's 8% to 10% on a private label concept. You go from 12% to 14%, 15%. And then on a branded product, you can go beyond there. I mean we have seen in the online segment that we can achieve gross margins of 24% to 25% on the brands. But you've got to see that hurts versus a fruit is again a different ball game. But I think that if you see that the gross margin target that we have around 11% for this year in order to hit EBITDA positive. It's a very realistic target, and we're very, very close to achieving that. At the same time, our journey will not stop there. We have seen very low gross margins last year, and we need to work very hard in creating the right propositions in the right markets in order to -- and product mixes in order to get to the right gross margin profiles.

Thanks, Rients. We don't have a lot of questions left in the chat that's the last question, Rob, guys. I can ask a question, Steve will jump on we'll wrap it up. or Corte, do you want to come on to...

Yes, yes and it's for you, John. Can you can you talk a little bit more about the new researcher board and where the trends are, I mean, obviously, we've had investment bankers cover the company and maybe with a bit of mixed results. Do you want to comment on this new type of sort of research presence, Atrium, I think they're brand new. Maybe give us a little more color on that.

Yes. Well, I should ask Nick to come on the line. But yes, look, it's a different setup than the typical research. It is paid research, 2 really smart guys from -- the Street. -- that have deep reach into not only Canada, the U.S. and more importantly, for where Organto is coming from Europe and that's where we have not spent a lot of time really marketing the story and clearly see the product all over the place in Europe. People understand who the retailers are in Europe when we mention them. So yes, we're going to focus and spend a good amount of time looking for new shareholders on the European side. So I mean that's the idea and the strategy behind hiring clearing at Atrium research.

No, I thought the report was great. I mean it's very clear and well written...

Yes, yes and look, when we get -- I mean, it's not any secret our stock pretty much at a low right now. We've done 4 transactions in the past. We've done the last one, I would say, in a very creative manner without using a lot of equity and the stock is a stock. It's hard to move the stock around or dictate where the stock market is going to go. But like Steve has mentioned, there's lots of opportunities. We've got a Board and management that have built another company with the acquisition strategy. So that's still on board. That's still part of the strategy and hopefully, things feel a little bit better here, and we get some -- we get a couple of good quarters in and our stock should -- we're a block-and-tackle stock should move along with that.

John, I think it would also be worthwhile that this research was really more focused on the reach into Europe. We're very fortunate to have really good coverage from Clarus here in Canada and their analysts who does a great job and those -- that research is out there as well, and it's really well done. In my mind...

Yes. It really is and we've got -- as you guys -- maybe you don't or don't know or do know, we do have a cornerstone investor in Europe and hopefully, we can add a few more of them.

There is few more questions from the chat room guys.

can we get your sense of your revenue breakdown by market segment is more of a retail convenience, specialty store, online wholesale distributors.

Yes. So I think here, there's clearly evolution visible in the company. I think we have -- if you now look at where we are today, I think around 70% of our business is direct retail. That's where you get that stability. That's where you get the structure. It's your final step to the consumer. So also, your best route to the right type of gross margin profiles. I would estimate that right now at around 70%. I would say there's 20% to 25% in service providers and some trades. You always need that because even though retail is very nice. It's as flexible as an iron ore. So you really need to preplan and book everything very carefully and mother nature doesn't always work in that. So the other market segments are really evolve for us in balancing supply demand. The online segment used to be quite dominant with us. But there, as what Steve was mentioning as well, we really see the impact of 2022. Also, we were very strong with all our retailers, both in a full category approach with the organic brand and also with Nordics market in Europe with a lot of herps and we are seeing that the scenario built filter with Retail who by itself also operate course online platforms, but for us, 1 entry. I don't think the specialty market would be out of that 70%, I would say, somewhere around 10% of that. The remainder is really mainstream retail where we also anticipate the largest growth for organics.

And just an add-on to that, Rients, maybe, are we still in this value-added fresh cut stuff that's going through stations and in the convenience stores and stuff. Where are we with those programs?

We -- in trying to really ensure that we have the right gross margin profile, we have looked at multiple routes to really improve that. So we have also simplified a couple of things. The main thing that we do right now in the out-of-home channel is and fruit and the reason why we do that is because it's a lower value product or consumers to buy. So it caters to the fact that consumers have a little bit less to spend them before. It has a higher share of life. This way, we can maintain the distribution in this segment and definitely, when the market is ready and the distribution is at the right level, economically speaking, for us, we will go with further developments on the fresh cut and the fruit cups as well.

Tom, I think what Green is saying is really important. It's one learning and 2 decision -- faster decision-making for ourselves. In a situation like fresh cut, you've got to have scale or you're not going to make any money at it and so we'll test with customers. But if there isn't scale coming behind, some of those categories are tougher to make positive gross margin and part of our -- look, we're improving our margins, and we just not -- if we can't make those demonstrably profitable, then we withdraw the concept until there's scale and size there. So it's a good product, but we just did a test and if you're in 25 stores, that's fine, you can do the test. But unless you go to 500 stores, we don't have the scale and that's where to REIT's point and fruits, apples, bananas, you have a much better chance and the consumer will take those. So -- it's a tricky play. We'd love to have a lot more specialty products in our portfolio, but the reality is -- we're in the business, so making positive gross margins so that's always a work in progress and frankly, looking back, this is just my observation and I haven't -- I think we probably gave some of these products at certain distribution points too long. Like if you like, okay, well, but we're going to test it for 3 months and either you're going to be able to scale it or we probably won't be doing it and that's sort of arena point around look, we're serious about our margins, and those are some of the choices that you have to make.

Thanks, Steve. There's another question here, Rice about total energy is being taken out by Circle K and what is the end result of that for Organto essentially?

Yes, it's a very relevant question, right? Because what we see happening in Europe is that to go is very high on the agenda with retailers and petrol stations and so on. So it's a segment which is really, really growing. So I do believe it holds interesting opportunities for us and again, we're not the only ones that are seeing that because if you visit-- they have their concepts on their website for hand fruit as well. So it's definitely an area where we can grow. At the same time, I really do believe that the world has been shaking up a little bit over the past 14 to 15 months. So the real trick is there also to go in with the right products. So if you go into a petrol gas station with a very -- it's again, the same story as before, a very perishable product and the rotation still needs to build up. Your investment cost in order to get that to the right level is quite high. So we're doing that very simple. I think it's in the longer run, a very interesting market segment for us to develop. But we don't want to go forward into the same trap as what we had last year with serious growth in online retail and then when they were not able to really take the second step, we needed to rebuild other markets again. So very interesting, but we have to take it at by step.

Is there another one in the chart room... I think -- I don't have it open, but I see the number there.

Yes, just... Sorry, Steve, just came up -- so one last question. Can you talk to some of the competitive advantage you have and work on?

Yes. So I think one of the main competitive advantage that we have is that it's in the brand. You could argue, in some cases, we have come quite early with it and again, I would invite everybody to have a look to what Coca-Cola is doing with entering the fresh segment as well with their brands. I think the competitive advantage is that we have a very accessible and very likable brands that, in my view, in terms of how it appears and how it looks, can take up the competition with the big ones like Chiquita I know very, very well. I think where we are really good -- we haven't been really able to leverage that at full yet is our translation of sustainability in a consumer jacket with the brand and digital passport and CO2 compensation. So I really think that that's where our competitive advantage is another competitive advantage, and that's why it's so high on the agenda is ultimately to be operating on 2 continents. Our supply to leverage our supply very well. The 2 continent strategy, I believe, is very, very interesting. You will see that a range of fruit that's being grown in certain areas. U.S. will take certain die ranges and Europe will take other size ranges or the seasonality will be different and very complementary. I think that's another competitive advantage. Our listing is an interesting tool for us. I think we have a very experienced team and of course, even though -- and it's quite rightfully to say that the organic segment is under pressure due to inflation. If you look at the numbers for organic bananas sales-wise, it's growing rapidly in Europe. The market is now close to $1 billion and it's forecasted to grow to 1.5 towards 2028. We have the political agenda of the EU. We have carbon footprint being much higher on the agenda than ever before. So I think the environment is there. I think we have just been really been struggling a lot because of running first through Covid and then through 2022 with all of its challenges. But I do really believe that our platform, the acquisitions that we have done, the brands that we have and definitely also the footprint that we now have in distribution is really our advantage.

Thanks,. We've got another one here, too, which is it's fairly complicated. It's the time line from when fruit is picked to distribution to retail and to the shelf and I know that's multiproduct and it's all different, but maybe you can give a couple of examples.

Yes. So I think it's interesting to take the highs and lows, if you talk in terms of timing that is then if you talk about bananas, you are talking about approximately 5 weeks from harvest into the market, being a green banana into a ride and banana in stores. If you're talking about fresh cut herbs, I think a very interesting product that we have that is very scalable, and we will we're not even scratching the surface there yet. It's much more shorter. So you're talking about harvesting the ERP and I would say, within 10 days, it's in stores.

Sorry, go ahead, Corte.

Yes. So I'm just thinking about some of the interesting performance indicators that maybe you guys -- you touched on it a little bit in the call. One was the ability to get more than 1 SKU in a store. Is this a type of a key performance indicator, a KPI that we can start to show in our presentations, number one, also, where the brand -- how to quantify maybe quarter-by-quarter or presentation by representation, where the brand is it either regionally or a number of stores, et cetera are these some KPIs that would help investors as well just see under the surface, what is going on with our progress here because there is a lot of progress going on.

Yes, there clearly are business drivers, right? So what really will make our business grow is the number of retail listings that we have and in which areas they are geographically located and what is the traffic that those stores have. So a German retail store compared to, for instance, in Iceland store as a whole different type of traffic in it and a potential for us then than a smaller one. So for sure, for us, it's a key business driver to look at where are we located? Where are we with the listings and how can we move and I think that's a really, really critical driver in the next step of our evolution. Again, 14 months ago, we were still really in need of obtaining a substantial footprint in retail. Now once you have that footprint, it's very important to move up the letter in terms of your presence with such a retailer. You want to move in terms of your significance in relationship you want to build your category expertise. If it's a banana, it's always going to be a banana but what are the various auctions within the bananas? Are you offering an organic banana or are you offering an organic and fair trade banana? Are you offering 5 fingers in bananas or also a single banana. So they are really critical KPIs on that really are drivers for our business. And I think we sure we can see what we can do to make them more visible going forward.

And finally, on the stock, guys. I know like it's a fun -- we're all friends here on the line. Any thoughts on a stock consolidation given a nice grown up price. I mean we are a grown-up company. We are becoming a much more respectable established Grownup player. We've survived a complete winter, both in the stock market on small cap and in the general fresh produce food industry, I mean, double whammy, and we've survived it, and now we get back on offense and for a lot of people, I think they have preconceived notions about $11 or $0.12 or $0.13, $0.14 stock and so -- and then there's a whole argument about shares outstanding, et cetera. Can I get your thoughts on that? Are we going once for all to maybe visit this seriously... Go ahead, John.

Yes, Corte, well, we've had a discussion a couple of times, right? And it's -- what I can tell you is it's being discussed at the Board and we've got a Board meeting every month. It's been discussed a couple of times. So yes, it's up for consideration, and we'll have to make a choice on that in the next couple of months.

I think we're getting to the top of the hour and John, is there anything unanswered in the chat room or are we...

No. It's just people like Dream... People agree with that. I'll get a lots of them and that's from a good shareholder, by the way, -- that's from an outstanding shareholder okay? And I always sense it to... All good Well we like Dream

I appreciate everyone joining today. Thanks for your ongoing support, and we look forward to chatting with everyone soon. So thanks again, and have a great day. Thanks, everyone.