Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Farmer Brothers First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Kaitlin Kikalo. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Farmer Brothers First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Participating on today's call are Mike Keown, President and CEO; and David Robson, Treasurer and CFO. Earlier today, the Company issued a press release, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Farmer Brothers website at www.farmerbros.com. The press release is also included as an exhibit to the Company's Form 8-K available on the Company's website and on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at www.sec.gov. A replay of this audio-only webcast will be available approximately two hours after the conclusion of this call. The link to the audio replay will also be available on the company's website. Before we begin the call, please note that all of the financial information presented is unaudited and that various remarks made by management during this call about the Company's future expectations, plans and prospects may constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the federal securities laws and regulations. These forward-looking statements represent the Company's views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any subsequent date. Results could differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Additional, information on factors that could cause actual results and other events to differ materially from those forward-looking statements is available on the Company's press release and public filings. On today's call, management will also use certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin in assessing the Company's operating performance. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures is also included in the Company's press release. I will now turn the call over to Mike. Mike, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kaitlin. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us this afternoon. Our team entered the new fiscal year with energy and enthusiasm as we continue to focus on executing our strategy, moving ahead to complete the integration of the Boyd's business, taking additional steps to enhance our DSD operations and leveraging investments in our roasting facilities by bringing on new customers as well as expanding business with existing customers. David will review our financial results in detail, but I'd like to highlight a few things. We processed and sold over $25 million pounds of green in the first quarter. This was consistent with our volume from the fourth quarter and up 9.6% from the first quarter of fiscal 2018, with Boyd's contributing approximately 14.5% of our total volume. Sales in the first quarter, including sales from the Boyd’s business we're $147. 4 million an increase of approximately 12% over the first quarter of fiscal 2018. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $11 million compared to $12.5 million we reported in the prior year period. You'll recall we had noted on our last earnings call that we expected first quarter fiscal 2019 adjusted EBITDA would be lower than the prior year period. And we anticipated delivering stronger results in the second half of the year, as we ramp up production in our Farmer Brothers facilities; more fully realized synergies from Boyd’s; and generate cost savings from route optimization in our DSD business, which I'll talk about in a moment. Overall our start to fiscal 2019 has unfolded largely as we had expected and in some cases better than expected. With adjusted EBITDA ahead of our plan. I'd like to turn now to a review of our key areas of focus in the first quarter where we continue to make meaningful…

Thanks Mike. I'll now go into further detail regarding our results for the first quarter, beginning with coffee volumes, green coffee processed and sold in the quarter increased by 2.2 million pounds or 9.6% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2018. Volumes from our base business we're down 6.3% from the prior year first quarter driven largely by lower volume on a few large direct ship customers. The mix of coffee volumes processed and sold across our distribution network during the quarter was approximately 8.7 million pounds or 34.8% of the total volume through our DSD network. While direct ship customers represented approximately 16.3 million pounds of green coffee processed and sold or 64.2% of the total volume. While 1% of the total volume was through distributors. Turning to the income statement, net sales for the quarter were $147.4 million, an increase of $15.7 million or 11.9% compared to the same period of the prior year. The increase was driven primarily by a $20.5 million increase in net sales from the acquisition of Boyd. Excluding Boyd’s net sales declined $4.8 million primarily due to the impact of lower coffee pricing from our cost plus customers and the lower volume in the direct ship business I mentioned a moment ago. We continue to expect to realize volume and top line benefits from our DSD, sales channel model and realignment of our street account teams in future quarters and remain confident that the SQF certification achieved at our North Lake facility will help us to increase business with new large national customers over time. Gross profit in the first quarter of fiscal 2018, increased $2.2 million or 4.7% to $48.2 million from $46.1 million and gross margin decreased 230 basis points to 32.7% from 35% in the prior year period. The…

Thanks, David. Looking ahead, we continued to have a positive long-term view of the industry and the prospects for Farmer Bros. We remain excited about how Farmer Bros is positioned in the market, and about our future growth opportunities. Our DSD channel-based strategy is beginning to generate new, higher quality customer wins, and we are taking additional meaningful steps to realign our Street account teams and further optimize this business. We are making progress in bringing on new direct ship customers as well as expanding our distribution network and exploring new product categories. Our priorities for fiscal 2019 remain the same. Completing the Boyd's integration and achieving the expected synergies, leveraging the investments we have made in our roasting facilities, expanding our distribution network, adding new customers and increasing business with existing customers. We continue to believe that we have the right foundation in place to deliver growth and value for our shareholders. As always, I thank those on the call for your continued interest in Farmer Bros. And with that, I'd like to open up the call for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Gerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Mike and David. Thanks for taking my call.

Hi, Gerry.

Hi, Gerry.

I wanted to start with some of the large customer softness that has been going – ongoing as well as the two brands that one in-house that we talked about before. One on the large customers softness. At what point does that anniversary at some point so we should start seeing maybe less of an impact. And could you remind us how much – how many pounds the two large – the brands that went inside – I thought there were about three million pounds on an annualized basis? And at the end, I'm really just trying to sort of square off this – several million pound drop in base business year-over-year. So if that makes sense.

Sure. Your recollection is correct on the business that's being internalized. I think we described that is about three million pounds and that's it looks like the case. In terms of volume overall, as David mentioned, we expect to see trends improve over the next couple of quarters. And through that you'll see the effect of the anniversarying of the two large customers coupled with the internalizing of the business and for what it's worth, those are the only customer as we have that also roast their own coffee and then what we're really excited about is the new business where it looks like returning the corner to begin commercialization. So and that would be ramping up over the back half of the year. So you have probably three different moving pieces there as some of the business exits and then the new business comes on. And as also you heard in my prepared remarks, we're really seeing the impact of the channels team begin to take effect. And I just get a smattering of what some of those customers are. So we're excited to see that begin to pay off. As you and I have spoken that was probably a quarter or two later than what we would have hoped. But it is coming and we're excited about that.

Got it. And I mean, that was sort of a good segue into my next question was. I mean, you did throw out a bunch of new – I think new customer examples or how you want to categorize but obviously we had the one large one but then there were few others large convenience store and online. It kind of trading people onto an online customer, I think it’s something on the beverage side. But could you maybe anecdotally provide a little bit of maybe how big those are? Maybe an aggregate just trying to figure out the impact on a grander scheme?

That’s – what we are trying to do is give you all a better insight into the business, at the same time we have customer confidentiality. So we try to do is give you some sense for example on the large customer, we're starting it could be a top three customer. I would say the online customer would probably move into our top 10, and perhaps be a top five. But it would be inappropriate to begin to get past those rough guideposts.

No, that’s fine. I respect that. So I mean at the end of the day, these are – can be needle moving sort of improvements, that’s what I’m trying to say?

That’s right.

Especially in aggregate, I mean, there could be substantial…

Right.

Okay, got it. All right.

And you know Gerry, I’d also say the work to internalize Boyd's, which has been a significant effort for us over the last year is coming to fruition. We're really excited about that is as you know, that's 14 million to 15 million pounds of coffee which is approximately 15% of where we were. But if you think of the work the team has done to match up over 200 coffee SKUs, that's over 80 blends, and then you multiply that by the number of coffees in a blend, it's really quite notable. And I think – says a lot about what the organization can achieve so we are very excited about bringing that into our system and it's now being roasted in Farmer Bros. facilities.

Got it. And then on some of the cost savings I think on the route based work that you're doing. Is that already included in the synergies that you talked about with Boyd's, or is that something in addition to?

Before we go there and I'll let David answer that. Let me just give you flavor of what it is or what we're talking about here. So over the years, Farmer Bros. Legacy leadership has done a nice job building a DSD business, but that model really hadn't been sorted through with all of the modern technologies to better route trucks throughout our network. And we learned a lot through the Boyd acquisition. Actually, there’s a lot we’ve learned from the Boyd organization and overall. But this was one area so we're applying that technology now to try to reduce cost, but also redirect some of those cost into resources which can grow the business, in fact, we are seeing some of those Street salespeople perform very well. David, in terms of the synergy, you could probably better…

Yes, I mean, Gerry, it’s above and apart from Boyd's. Boyd’s has it's own separate synergies that we've talked about that delivers that long-term EBITDA sail forward to $13 million to $16 million when we're fully integrated. With this separate route optimization delivers incremental cost savings but as Mike said, our plan is to reinvest a good part of that into our sales force. And we've seen good signs of growth. One of the leading indicators that we called out in the prepared remarks is our coffee brewing equipment installs are up, our investment in coffee brewing equipment is up by about $1 million in the quarter. So it’s a pretty sizable increase in that. Those are the signs that we would like to see them getting more customer traction from distributing sales team. I would say reflected in the 49 to 52 is a function of some of those savings that we're going to realize. But a good part of it we want to reinvest into sales.

Okay, I mean, at the end of the day, you’re making improvement but its obviously allocating that capital back in. David, I’m sorry, just as you said the amount that the brewing equipment was in the quarter that broke up on my end.

We usually spend – if you look at our historical filings, we spend around $3 million in coffee brewing equipment a quarter. And it's about $1 million higher in the quarter.

Okay, got you. Okay, thanks. I’ll jump in – back in line, I won’t monopolize everybody, thank you.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Kara Anderson with B. Riley. Your line is now open.

Hi, good afternoon.

Hi, Kara.

Hi Kara.

Hey, so you did call out that the biggest driver behind the EBITDA outperformance versus your internal expectations I think was lower G&A. But when we think about the impact that has on the guide, is it really just conservative, conservatism built-in to the guide at this point given we're early in the year or is there something else going on that's different relative to the next three quarters than what we previously expected.

Now, what we tried to say and thanks for that – the question was we're optimistic on the year, but it's still early in the year, and as you know, we had a challenge or two last year and so we think it while we're off the blocks. Good it's early and we'll let you know when we change the guidance

Okay. But there's nothing I guess incremental or changing to the third - three balance – three quarters for the balance of the year at this point?

No, no, I mean we are just having about two months ago, we walked through the guidance, I guess 50, 60 days, right. We're still in line with what you told you before.

Okay. And then, you gave us pounds sold through DSD, direct ship and through distributors. Is there any way we could get the revenue breakout or even a percentage of revenue for the channels?

Okay. We try not to break some of that out more for competitive reasons. So, at this point we're just going to stick to the pounds mix that we provide.

Okay. Thought I'd try.

Well we appreciate that. To add maybe just a step or two of flavor, most of our allied products in non roast and ground coffee products flow through DSD or non-direct ship channel. So that might give you – another way to think about that.

Yeah, that's a really good one. You can carve out the DSD revenue for the allies essentially all DSD and not direct ship.

Got It. And then, David, can you recap the CapEx expectations for the balance of the year?

We're not updating our guidance at that point, so I just referred to what we said at the last call in our script.

Anyway you can, I guess, remind us of what that was.

What we said on the last call was $32 million to $38 million is what we said on the last call.

Okay. Thanks. That's it for me.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Chris Krueger with Lake Street capital. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon. Right? I just have a couple of quick ones. Most of my others have been answered. If I do my math correctly, your base business was down about 3% in the first quarter. Is that kind of a rate? It's continuing in the second quarter as well?

Yeah. I'm not sure there's going to be too much change in the second quarter, as I mentioned earlier, by the third quarter. We will see the impact of the installations that we're doing in Q1, but also Q2. We'll see the lapping of some of the large customer issues and so we expect to see the back half improve on a number of different fronts, but then the second quarter I don't think you'll see a dramatic change.

And Chris, one thing you should think of, coffee prices have been falling, so part of revenue decline is an impact of just lower coffee prices.

Okay, my other question is related to Boyd's. I can’t remember if you've broken this out before, but can you give us a pro forma growth rate for the results in the first quarter, top line?

Yes. We broke it out in our Q, what the standalone revenue for Boyd’s was and in the quarter it was $20.5 million.

Alright. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from the line of Gerry Sweeney with ROTH Capital. Your line is now open.

Just speaking of coffee prices. It almost was like a September 30 they started moving back up and they've gone up by a decent percent over the last six weeks. Curious, what type of impact, if any of this has on it and especially if it appears to be a faster move, a rather volatile move. Any comments on that by chance, for own edification?

Gerry, we actually hedge, for us the current move in coffee prices doesn't necessarily have a direct impact on us. There's a cost plus for direct ship customers, so we pass on, they are hedged, pass to them and for our DSD network when coffee prices are low, we typically go longer and so we'll take advantage of the lower cost in prices and we'll get that benefit in future periods.

Got it. Perfect. Just wanted to double check. Thanks.

And I’d say from a longer term basis, while the prices have come up, they still remain in a, in a lower model if you look at it on a five or 10 year basis and we'll work to continue to take advantage of that as best we can.

And I'm showing no further questions at this time. So with that I'd like to turn the call back over to Mike Keown for closing remarks.

Well, once again, thank you everybody for your interest in Farmer Brothers and we are looking forward to the next update. And hopefully we'll see several of you at our annual shareholder meeting next month. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.