TRUBAR Inc. (TRBR.V) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and welcome to TRUBAR's Second Quarter 2025 Investor Webinar for the period ending June 30, 2025. This call is being recorded. I trust that everyone has received a copy of our financial results press release that was issued yesterday. Listeners are also encouraged to download a copy of our quarterly financial statements and management discussion and analysis from sedarplus.com. Please note, portions of today's call other than historical performance include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. Please refer to today's press release and our management discussion and analysis for our disclosures of risks and uncertainties. We provide forward-looking statements solely for the purpose of providing information about the management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. We do not undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstance on which any such statement is based except if it is required by law. We use terms such as adjusted EBITDA, gross revenue, gross profit and gross margin, which are non-IFRS and non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definition set out in our management discussion and analysis. Joining me on the call today are Erica Groussman, Co-Founder and CEO of TRUBAR; along with the company's Executive Chairman, Kingsley Ward. With that, let me turn the call over to Erica.

Thank you, Fern, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter conference call. I'll start off with a quick update on some corporate developments. As you know, we announced plans earlier in the year to change our corporate name from SBBC to TRUBAR Inc. We completed that process in May, reinforcing our strategic focus on the TRUBAR brand. We also announced the sale of the No B.S. Skincare brand in July. This completed a process we began last year to focus fully on our star, TRUBAR, and streamline the portfolio by exiting noncore businesses. Turning to TRUBAR Inc., we're very pleased with our performance in the quarter. Our results demonstrate the growing strength of the TRUBAR brand and the continued execution of our strategy. The foundation of that strategy is our focus to expanding distribution, accelerating our marketing efforts and advancing our innovation pipeline. I'll touch on the progress we're making in each of those areas and how we're driving trial and awareness of the TRUBAR brand to increase household penetration. As I've always said, we won't rest until TRUBAR is in every home in North America. Let's start with an overview of our financial performance in Q2. Our net revenue was $17.7 million, a 176% increase over Q2 '24. This is a record quarter for TRUBAR. Our gross profit was $4 million, an increase of 35% from the year ago quarter. Our gross margin percentage was down versus a year ago as we invested significant trial and awareness programs with retail partners to build the brand. Our investment was as planned and is very much in line with early-stage brand-building programs in CPG. Our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $1.7 million in the quarter, also impacted by the large brand-building investment we made at retail in Q2. Looking at our revenue breakdown for Q2, we had outstanding growth across all channels: direct-to-consumer, physically retail, and club. Retail was up 328% in the quarter, followed by DTC at 281% and the club channel at 135%. I'm very excited about the progress we've made over the last year, growing our total revenue and diversifying our mix across all channels. This is reflected in our sales breakdown by segment for the year-to-date compared to the same period in 2024. Our strong quarter-over-quarter growth in e-commerce was one of the highlights of 2024. The momentum continued in Q2 as we reported DTC revenue of $3.8 million. Based on our growth in DTC channel, we have reached a forward-looking annual run rate of more than $15 million. TRUBAR's growth trajectory over the last 4 years has been truly impressive. Based on our performance in the first half of 2025, today, we're reaffirming our full year guidance for net revenue in the range of $65 million to $70 million. That's a 50% to 60% year-over-year increase driven by our current footprint, new doors we're opening in 2025 and increasing velocities across all channels. Our growth, particularly over the last 18 months, has been driven by the expansion of our retail footprint across North America. These new retailers cover the full range of channels including grocery, mass, drug, convenience and club. We're very pleased with the progress of our Target launch, which is benefiting from the rollout of our full suite of marketing activities to support the growth of the brand. In addition to Target, we have strengthened our regional footprint with the recent addition of 500 stores across the U.S. Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Colorado in major grocery chains, including Meijer, King Soopers, and Fred Meyer. While our primary focus remains on driving growth in North America, we're also introducing TRUBAR in selected international markets through our retail partnerships. We launched in Mexico earlier this year and we'll update you on additional launches as they occur. As you know, we've previously announced our intention to increase our retail presence from 15,000 to 25,000 doors in 2025. I'm pleased to report we are now at more than 20,000. This keeps us well on track to meet our target of 25,000 doors this year. I'm also super excited about our most recent announcement, the launch of TRUBAR KiDS, a line of allergy-friendly nut-free bars. This highly anticipated launch is already generating solid listing momentum across multiple channels, including e-commerce. The better-for-you kids bar market is growing extremely fast and is highly underserved. We believe we have a winner with a bar that delivers the highest fiber and protein content in the category. TRUBAR KiDS marks a major step in advancing our innovation strategy. Our focus here is on developing new flavors, pack sizes, bar sizes, all designed for new occasions to enjoy the brand and to increase household penetration. Another key area of focus for us this year is our investment in marketing initiatives to drive consumer awareness and trial of the TRUBAR brand. We have significantly ramped up our marketing investments across the full range of owned, earned and paid media, including the launch of our first national ad campaign. We're already seeing the benefit of our full funnel strategy in several areas. These include increased visibility and sales across major retailers like Target and Walmart, significant e-commerce sales growth at Amazon and trubar.com, strong engagement and reach through our social media campaigns and influencer marketing activations, and a 1,200% increase in media impressions quarter-over-quarter through our PR outreach and activations. We continue to make meaningful progress scaling our business for growth. In operations, we've announced -- we've enhanced our quality and safety program, our supply chain efficiency, and we have also stood up a fully integrated ERP system for our core processes, including finance, management reporting and customer information. This provides our team with full visibility into all aspects of our business. In addition, we continue to build out our team with additional experienced CPG professionals to support our growth and expansion. In summary, we're really pleased with our performance in Q2 and the continued discipline of execution of our strategy. We are on track to expand our retail distribution to 25,000 doors. We continue to scale our e-commerce business. We're seeing the benefit of the ramp-up of our marketing investments, and we're excited about the launch of TRUBAR KiDS and our innovation pipeline. With all of that, Kingsley and I will be pleased to take your questions.

Thank you, Erica. We will now open the call to questions. Priority will be given to equity research analysts who will ask the questions live. [Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Noel Atkinson from Clarus Securities. Noel, you may unmute your mic. Noel, I'm not sure if you can unmute your mic. Okay. I think while Noel is trying to unmute his mic, we also have some questions from Rob Goff from Ventum. First question from Rob. Can you provide some color in terms of growth expected in the DTC channel? And what other sort of opportunities do you have in the DTC channel other than Amazon or Shopify? Are you selling product directly from your own branded website?

Yes, of course. So our growth from our DTC over the last year has obviously been phenomenal as you can see from our chart, and we believe that growth will continue. The growth is a direct result of our investments that we are building with our consumers and just building that trial and awareness. People are going and purchasing it in stores and then using the convenience of our DTC. We also are going to continue to bring out new flavors, multi-packs. The KiDS bars are also going to be incremental and take a big part in our continued growth.

Actually, a follow-up on that. Rob also asked if you can share any more details on the initial reception of the KiDS bar and if the distribution will be across all channels eventually.

Yes, so it's still really early. We just launched. We can see that a lot of people are enjoying them, and we believe that this market is super under -- like undertapped, and we know that the bar is not only great-tasting but has high fiber and great amount of protein. So it's a very well-rounded bar that we're seeing as a lot of people are enjoying, but it's a little too early to get full data. However, there is plans to eventually bring it out into DTC as well as into other retailers. We're already getting a lot of people having interest within the retailers.

And I think this is the last question from Rob. When do you expect the company to become adjusted EBITDA positive again?

Well, that's our plan. As mentioned earlier, our current focus is remaining on making large investments in trial and awareness and building the programs out to build the brand. The strategy is consistent with early-stage brand-building programs in the CPG space. So as we grow and we become less resilient on investing at this level, we expect to become positive.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes. Erica, just a little bit of added color there, we're looking at being EBITDA positive end of 2026. Okay?

Thank you, Kingsley. Noel, I'll come back to you if you can unmute your mic. But if I don't hear anything in next 5 seconds, I'll just move on to some more questions.

Hi. Can you hear me?

All right. Perfect.

Okay. Sorry about that, folks. Yes, so great job in ramping the revenue in the quarter. That was really impressive. Can you talk about, as you're diversifying your revenue stream away from the club channel, you're growing the club but you're also growing a lot of the other channels as well. What happens with vendor spend and gross margin? Like do you start to see some economies of scale as you're diversifying into the 25,000 doors?

Yes. Our gross margin percentage will definitely continue to go in a positive manner. I mean, obviously, it was pretty heavy because of this large investment that we had to build out with our awareness programs with our retail partners. But yes, as we grow, that will definitely improve. We also have our ERP system, which we just came on board with and is going to help us become more efficient and improve our COGS, which thus would improve our gross margin.

Okay. And then G&A expenses went up to about $4 million, I guess, in Q2. It was a fairly sizable increase from Q1. Is any of that sort of a one-off spend or a seasonal spend or is that $4 million a quarter a new normal for the company?

I would not say that's a new normal. Some of those are because of the additional sales, so some of it went along with our sales as far as percentages, our brokers. And then we also have some extra legal fees in there from this prospectus and just other legal fees of us building out the brand and just making the company as strong as possible.

Okay, great. And then just 1 last thing. So in terms of -- can you talk a little bit about funding availability just to continue to drive sales as you're going into 2026?

So we mentioned in the Q1 call that we're in a great place, like we're not looking to bring on any kind of capital. We have our current banking lines of credit and we are sufficient in what we need at the current moment.

Thank you, Noel. I've got some questions here from Gianluca Tucci from Haywood Securities. First question. Are there any other product launches that you can talk about and how you will position them in the market?

So we have no other product launches that I want to talk about right now, but I can tell you that we will be having other launches and they'll be in the better-for-you space. And when we do go into launching our next product, whatever that might be, we will have a full funnel 360-degree marketing plan that goes along with it, owned, earned and paid media. So we're really excited about the structure that we've built out and that we will go forward with. And as you can see, we just did that with the KiDS bar launch, which I know it's very early because it just went into stores just about less than 2 weeks ago, but we can see that the full plan is all coming together.

Thank you. Another question from Gianluca. What's your current level of comfort on the guidance range? You must be expecting a second half -- a strong second half for the rest of the year in order to get in that guidance range.

Yes, we're feeling good so that's why we reaffirmed it today and we have good plans in place.

That is it that we have for analyst questions. We have some questions also coming in from the audience. First question is what -- when do you expect to have more international expansion? And do you expect to expand more in Canada?

We are spending more time on Canada. We have some other flavors that will be coming out in the near future so you can get ready for those. We also just launched recently, I saw a lot of people starting to post that they're seeing the Costco Canada new flavor pack so that's really nice to see. And as far as international expansion, we're only going to expand into those international markets with a partnership. So we're just really waiting and choosing and making sure that it's the best structure for us so that we can be successful.

Okay. Another question from investors is in terms of also kind of tied to the guidance that you've mentioned today. Are you comfortable with the additional of the 5,000 more doors by the end of the year?

Yes. As I shared today, we're already above 20,000 and we are on a great path to get the additional 5,000 doors. So I'm very confident.

One more question here. There has been a clear diversification of revenue from the 80% club that was before. What has driven this diversification and where do you expect to be in 1 year?

Yes. So we've just continued to grow, right? A lot of the trial and awareness is coming from club, but then people are going and going for convenience and getting it at DTC or they're getting at their local store. So we're just continuously seeing that just based on the trial and the awareness, just the brand position that it's been in. And as far as the percentage, I can't really give a percentage right now for what that will be. I don't know if Kingsley you want to comment on that? Or maybe not, but it is going in the right direction.

Sorry, I was on mute there, Erica. Yes. Without a doubt, the activity in the other channels has really just been ramped up just along the lines of exactly what you're saying here. And we expect this to continue. We're excited about where we're headed here. And we want this expansion in all channels to continue.

Okay. I'm just getting a couple of more answers coming in -- a couple of more questions coming in here. Any update on how the Walmart rollout is going? Last you put out that we were in 100 more stores. Do you know any more expansion coming in soon in the Walmart channel?

Yes. Walmart, we're having a really strong -- it's continuously growing month-over-month so we're seeing that everything is working and in the right direction. As far as new doors, we don't have any set right now. We would be finding out soon but we're very happy and everybody on the Walmart side is happy in the success of the launch.

Okay, perfect. There are no further questions right now at this time, so I'll turn the call back to Erica for any closing comments.

Yes. Well, as I shared, I'm just very excited about everything that's going on at TRU, and we're going to continue to get our 5,000 doors and continue to bring out new flavor pack sizes and drive trial and awareness. So thank you very much.

Thank you, all. That concludes TRUBAR's Q2 webinar. Thank you all for joining.