Rogers Sugar Inc. (RSI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Rogers Sugar Inc. Please note that today's meeting is being recorded. If you participate in today's meeting and disclose personal information, you will be deemed to consent to the recording, transfer, and use of the same. If you disclose personal information of another person in today's meeting, you will be deemed to represent and warrant to Computershare and the corporation that you first obtained all required consents for the disclosure, recording, transfer, and use of such personal information from all appropriate persons before your disclosure. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's meeting over to Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr. Dallas Ross. Mr. Ross, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dallas Ross, Chair of the Board, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Annual Meeting of the Shareholders of Rogers Sugar Inc. As we have done for the last 4 years, we are holding our Annual Shareholders' Meeting in a virtual format. Our main objective is to ensure all shareholders have the same opportunity to participate in the meeting and vote regardless of their geographic location. The meeting will be conducted in 3 parts. First will be the formal business of the meeting, following which our President and CEO will deliver remarks. And after such remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Before we begin with the formal business portion of the meeting, I will provide some comments on voting and questions at today's meeting. As a reminder, only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders can vote or ask questions. Voting can only be done through our virtual voting platform. If you are a registered shareholder or proxy holder and wish to vote, click the voting icon at the top of the webcast page. Voting can be completed at any time from now until the end of the formal business of the meeting. If you have already voted in advance of the meeting and do not wish to change your vote, you do not need to vote again during the meeting. For those who have not yet voted, we encourage you to vote now. Questions can also only be submitted through our voting platform. If you are a registered shareholder or proxy holder and wish to ask a question, click the question icon, at the top of the voting platform page, type in your question in the text box at the bottom of the messaging screen and then click the send button. If your question relates to a specific motion, please start your question by identifying the motion, so we can address your question at the appropriate time of the meeting. We will save all questions that do not identify which motion they relate to for the general question-and-answer session at the end of the meeting. We will receive the questions and read them out in order for everyone to be aware of the question being addressed. If we have a number of questions that are the same or very similar, we will consolidate such questions so as to avoid duplication. We will endeavor to address all general questions. However, please note that due to time constraints, we may not be able to do so. If you have questions, we encourage you to submit them now. Questions can be submitted throughout the meeting. Finally, we would like to remind you that our answers to your questions and our CEO's remarks may contain forward-looking information. By its nature, this information contains forecasts, assumptions and expectations about the future outcomes, which are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed more fully in our public disclosure filings. I will now call the meeting to order. Pursuant to the company's bylaws, I will act as Chair of this meeting. Jean-Sebastien Couillard will act as secretary, and representatives of Computershare, our transfer agent, will act as scrutineers. To ensure that the meeting covers all the business for which it was convened within a reasonable period of time, we have prearranged with a number of persons attending this afternoon to move and second certain resolutions. This procedure is not an attempt to discourage participation but merely a way to expedite proceedings. Notice of this meeting and related materials were mailed to shareholders and to all Board members and the auditors in compliance with applicable securities and corporate requirements, as well as posted on SEDAR. The secretary will append the declaration to the minutes of this meeting. The scrutineers' report shows that a quorum is present. Notice having been mailed in accordance with the company's bylaws and a quorum being present, I declare that this meeting is duly constituted for the transaction of business. The first item of business is the election of directors. 6 directors will be elected at this meeting, and the company has proposed 6 nominees. Each proposed nominee's biography is included in the notice of this meeting. Therefore, I will now entertain a motion nominating such individuals for election as directors of the company. Michael Heskin has moved that the following individuals be elected as members of the Board of Directors. Dallas Ross, Dean Bergmame, Gary Collins, Daniel Lafrance, Shelley Potts, Stephanie Wilkes. Rod Kirwan has seconded the motion. Are there any other shareholders wishing to make nominations for election as directors? Thank you. I declare the nominations closed. Can the secretary please advise if any questions specific to this motion were submitted?

No question, Mr. Chairman.

No questions are specific to this motion were submitted. Thank you. We will now proceed with the vote. Please record your vote now, remembering that if you have already voted in advance and do not wish to change your vote, no further action is required. The next item of business is the election of 2 directors of Lantic, which the company is entitled to nominate as holder of all of the common shares of Lantic. The company has proposed 2 nominees. Each proposed nominee's biography is included in the notice of this meeting. Therefore, I will now entertain a motion nominating such individuals for appointment as the company's nominees to the Board of Lantic. Michael Heskin has moved that the following individuals be appointed as nominees to the Board of Directors of Lantic: Dallas Ross and Daniel Lafrance. Seconded by Rod Kirwan. Thank you, Rod. Are there any other shareholders wishing to make nominations for appointment as company nominees to the Board of Lantic? Thank you. I declare the nominations closed. Can the secretary please advise if any questions specific to this motion were submitted?

No questions specific to this motion were submitted, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. We will now proceed with the vote. Please record your vote now, remembering that if you have already voted in advance and do not wish to change your vote, no further action is required. The next item of business is to receive the financial statements and the auditor's report for the financial year ended September 28, 2024. A copy of the 2024 annual report, which contains the audited consolidated financial statements and the auditor's report has been mailed with the notice of this meeting and 2024 circular as well as posted on SEDAR. As no vote is required to be conducted in respect to the financial statements, we will respond to any related questions during the answer and question session. May I now have a motion to appoint the auditors? Michael Heskin has moved that KPMG LLP be appointed auditors for Rogers Sugar Inc. to hold office until the next annual meeting or until their successors are duly appointed and that the Board of Directors of Rogers Sugar Inc. be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. Dean Bergmame is to second the motion. Thank you, Dean. Can the secretary please advise if any questions specific to this motion were submitted?

No questions specific to this motion were submitted, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. We will now proceed with the vote. Please record your vote now, remembering that if you've already voted in advance and do not wish to change your vote, no further action is required. The next item of business is the adoption, if thought advisable, of the non-binding advisory Say on Pay resolution on the Board's approach to executive compensation decisions as disclosed in the company's 2024 circular. As mentioned in the 2024 circular, this Say on Pay is meant to facilitate accountability for compensation decisions by giving shareholders a formal platform to share their views through an annual non-binding advisory vote. I will now entertain a motion for the adoption of such resolution. Mike Heskin has moved that the following resolution be adopted. Be it resolved on an advisory basis and not to diminish the role and responsibilities of the board that the shareholders accept the approach to executive compensation disclosed in the company's circular delivered in advance of the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Dean has seconded the motion. Thank you. Can the Secretary please advise if any questions specific to this motion were submitted?

No questions specific to this motion were submitted, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. We will now proceed with the vote. Please record your vote now, remembering that if you have already voted in advance and do not wish to change your vote, no further action is required. I would now ask our CEO, Mike Walton, to provide an overview of our company's business since the beginning of the last fiscal year.

Thank you, Dallas. Now that the formal part of the meeting has concluded, I'll take you through a short presentation outlining our business and our vision, our accomplishments in 2024, and our outlook and priorities for 2025. First, let me remind you of the standard cautions around forward-looking statements. Please take a moment to read this advisory before we move on. Now I'll begin with a brief overview of our business. We are listed on the TSX and trade as RSI. We operate Lantic, and we sell sugar across Canada and in key American markets under both the Rogers and Lantic brands. We are the largest publicly-traded sugar producer in Canada. We are also proud owners of a maple syrup business known as the Maple Treat Corporation, which is the largest maple syrup bottling business in the world. We seek to generate consistent, profitable, and sustainable growth by optimizing our business to meet the needs of our customers. As we begin the review of our business and discuss the strong results of 2024, I would like to tell you that we recognize the potential challenges related to the recent discussions in relation to the potential changes in trade policies between the United States and Canada and the potential implementation of export tariffs in the future. Should tariffs be applied, the magnitude of the impact will depend on the quantum of the tariffs, the timing and duration of such tariffs and the potential impact on our domestic customers producing sugar-containing products for the U.S. market. Our Sugar segment exports 5% to 10% of its production directly to the U.S. Our industrial customers sell sugar-containing products to the U.S. Each year, between 40% and 50% of all the sugar refined in Canada is exported to the U.S. in the form of sugar-containing products by industrial food transformation companies located in Canada. Conversely, each year, a slightly lower amount of sugar-containing products are imported into Canada by U.S. companies. For the Maple segment, we do export to the U.S. as there is not enough production capacity in the U.S. to meet the demand for maple syrup. Canada produces 80% of the world's maple syrup. We currently estimate the proportion of all Canadian maple syrup sold in the U.S. to be approximately 50% on a yearly average. Considering what I've just described, we believe there are very little alternatives to supply in the U.S. market for sugar-containing products in maple syrup in the near to medium term. Although we know that potential tariffs will likely have a negative impact, it is very difficult to estimate, especially on the sugar side as counter tariffs are likely going to be in place on sugar-containing products coming in from the United States. Still, our responsibility in an environment like this is always to be thinking about how we can fortify ourselves even more. So that's what we are doing. And of course, we are focusing on meeting the needs of our customers as we always have. It's important to remember that whatever happens, we have been in business for over 135 years, and we have seen all types of challenges in trade. We have not just survived these, but we have thrived within them. This slide shows the locations of our operations with facilities for producing, packaging, and distributing our sweeteners. What's really key here is that we are well located close to our customers. This is a big strategic advantage for us, enabling us to ensure our customers get the sugar they need when they need it. Our vision for the business is to create value for our stakeholders. We want to make Rogers Sugar a great company to partner with, to work for and to invest in. We do that by providing best-in-class sweeteners, which are a vital link in the food value chain. You will hear more about that in a bit. Looking now at our company and our investment proposition, we are running this company with a long-term focus on generating consistent, profitable, and sustainable growth. That focus has paid off in 3 straight years of record financial results to date. As the largest publicly-traded Canadian sweetener company, we offer investors the opportunity to benefit from 2 healthy market segments: the growing North American sugar market with Canada as a favorite source of supply, and the increasing appeal of Maple products around the world. Let's look more closely at each of our segments. Sugar is the foundation of our business and makes up about 80% of our revenue. Demand for sugar in Canada is steadily increasing. It's rising because a lot of the foods that people enjoy every day contains sugar. There is no real substitute for sugar. It's an all-natural product that brings so much more than sweetness. Nothing else gives food the same look, weight, consistency, blend or taste as pure refined sugar, our sugar. Sugar is such an important ingredient that food manufacturers are building and expanding the facilities to be close to our reliable source of supply. And that is the reason we are expanding our capacity to serve our customers where the sugar is needed. As they grow, we will grow. We are also proud to be the world's leading distributor of maple syrup. Maple is another all-natural sweetener that is growing in popularity. We believe in the long-term potential of our Maple segment, and our results this year give us confidence that we are on the right path. Our Rogers Refined framework is our road map for optimizing and growing both our business segments, harnessing supportive long-term demand trends to deliver solid revenues to shareholders, including a consistent quarterly dividend of $0.09 per share. Let's spend some time on our Rogers Refined framework. We introduced Rogers Refined in 2024. It's our road map for how we operate to build value for the shareholders in the future. The pillars of the Rogers Refined are: modernizing, optimizing, and growing in sugar; driving profitability in Maple; maintaining a strong balance sheet; and advancing our ESG program. Now let's look how we did in 2024. Simply put, we got a lot done. Starting with our strong financial results, we delivered record revenue of $1.2 billion, an increase of 12% over 2023. We delivered record adjusted EBITDA of $142 million, an increase of 28% over 2023. Our adjusted net earnings increased by 50% to $67 million, and our free cash flow increased by 60% to $73 million, but we did a lot more than that. We made significant progress on our LEAP Project, our Eastern expansion project. In keeping with our Rogers Refined pillar of modernizing and optimizing and growing in sugar, in 2024, we advanced site preparation and construction. We secured the financing needed to complete the expansion. This is in alignment with our pillar of a strong balance sheet. We concluded a 5-year agreement with the unionized members of the Vancouver refinery. This sets us up to meet the needs of our customers in Western Canada in the years to come. We also recently concluded a 5-year agreement with the unionized members of our Toronto distribution center. This is good news for the supply of our customers in Eastern Canada. In line with our Rogers Refined focus on advancing our ESG program, we made significant advancements to our sustainable sourcing initiative. You will hear more about our sustainability goals when we publish our ESG report later this year. And our company is stronger than ever. As of February 1, we had a market capitalization of $736 million and a dividend yield of 6.3%. Drilling down to our business segments, I am pleased to report that our strong financial results were driven by contributions from both our Sugar and Maple segments. I will take you through the results from each of those in turn. Volumes in our Sugar segment declined somewhat in 2024. This was mainly due to 2 things. The first was the effects of the labor disruption in Vancouver in the first half of the fiscal year. The second was inflation in the price of sugar-containing products due to increases in the prices of other commodities such as cocoa. We have seen this many times over the years. Typically, inflation causes consumers to change their consumption patterns, while they absorb the price increase and the normal demand growth resumes. We are managing this business for consistent, profitable, and sustainable growth. As you can see, our Sugar segment has delivered compound annual revenue growth of 12% since 2020. That revenue growth translates into higher profits. Our profitability measured by adjusted EBITDA increased by 27% last year. We are proud of our efforts to deliver profitable growth in our Sugar segment by focusing on serving our customers where and when they need us. I'll take a minute to bring you up to date on our Eastern expansion project, which we call LEAP. Our LEAP Project will add approximately 100,000 tons to the production capacity of our Montreal refinery. This project will enhance our ability to meet our customers' growing needs for sugar in the years ahead. We are building for the future. It involves site preparation, the addition of new equipment and the construction of a new bulk loading rail facilities to enhance our shipping capabilities closer to our food manufacturing customers in our major markets. Last year, we made significant progress with LEAP. The planning and designing phases are complete and some of the specialized equipment we ordered has been received. This year, we will be advancing our construction work and equipment installation. If you visit the site today, you'll see the team hard at work and pushing toward our goal of being in service by the end of 2026. And as this work progresses, our Montreal refinery will continue to produce and ship sugar, which is no small accomplishment. We have also completed the key elements of our financing plan to fund our LEAP expansion, including some strategic loan agreements and a well-received equity offering early in 2024. We recently provided an update on our estimated cost and timing to complete LEAP. The total cost estimate is now between $280 million and $300 million. The drivers behind this are: design additions made necessary by the complexity of repurposing an older facility in Montreal; market-based increases to construction costs; and the cost of meeting new and updated safety standards. I am pleased to say that this updated cost estimate is achievable within our existing financing plan, combined with the improvements in our operating cash flows. As I said, LEAP is scheduled for completion by the end of 2026, which means we will be getting a lot done in 2025. I'm looking forward to updating our investors with our progress along the way. Turning to Maple. We were pleased to see the return to healthy customer demand combined with a strong crop in 2024, allowing us to meet that demand as well as replenish stocks that have been depleted in recent years. While meeting that demand, we continue to drive profitability improvement in our Maple segment through investments in process improvements and automation. The results in 2024 were adjusted gross margin above 10% and a record adjusted EBITDA. The strong performance of both our Sugar and Maple segments contributed to a third consecutive year of strong consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the business as a whole. It also contributed to a significant uplift in our free cash flow generation, allowing us to fund the consistent dividend to shareholders while maintaining a strong balance sheet, which is one of the pillars of our Rogers Refined framework. Looking ahead, we believe all the elements are in place for another year of performance and progress. Based on the recent trend, we expect consistent financial performance in 2025, with expected volume of approximately 800,000 metric tons in sugar and growth in demand in maple. However, the expected sales volume and consistent financial performance of both of our business segments could be impacted by tariffs on U.S. on exports to the U.S. The impact on RSI would depend on the following: the quantum of the tariffs, the timing and duration of tariffs, the impact of some of our domestic sugar, industrial and liquid customers that are exporting sugar-containing products to the U.S., along with the impact of new demand from potential impact of countermeasures put in place by the Canadian government. We are starting the year with a lot of momentum in both of our business segments. The underlying long-term strength in the market demand for both sugar and maple continue to support our view that these are great businesses to be in. We recognize that the market conditions are uncertain right now, but remain confident in the long-term demand for Canadian sugar. As I said earlier, we are focused on managing this business through uncertainty to meet the needs of our customers, just as we have always done throughout our long history. We expect to deliver these results by keeping these 5 priorities in focus, delivering a safe and healthy working environment for our employees, that is always going to be #1 at Rogers Sugar; continuing to focus on providing excellent service to our customers while adapting our business to changes; making significant progress on our LEAP Project to increase our production and logistics capabilities; building on the momentum from operational improvements and good crop in our Maple segment; advancing our ESG program, particularly as it pertains to sustainable sourcing. Taken together, our focus on these priorities will enable us to continue the work we have begun to build a company that delivers value to all stakeholder groups. We are pleased with our achievements in 2024. We are the largest refiner of sugar. We are Canadian-owned with operations across the country, and we have been in business for almost 140 years. We have been there, and we will be there for our customers. I thank you for your support of Rogers Sugar and for your participation today. I'll now be pleased to take any questions.

No questions right now. Thank you, Mike. There being no further matters to vote upon, we will proceed with announcing the results of the meeting. Mr. Secretary, do you have the preliminary results of the voting?

Yes, Mr. Chair. I've received confirmation from the scrutineer that each of the motions passed, including the election of each of the nominees for directors.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I declare each of the resolutions considered at today's meeting carried. The exact number of votes cast in respect of each matter will be filed on SEDAR and press released in due course. Are there any questions?

No, Mr. Chairman.

Okay. Thank you. I think that concludes the formal business agenda of the meeting, and I declare the meeting terminated.

This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.