Greetings, and welcome to the Lifecore Biomedical Q4 and Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce your host, Stephanie Diaz, Investor Relations. Stephanie, please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Lifecore Biomedical's fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2024 earnings results. Hosting the call today from the company are Paul Josephs, President and CEO, and John Morberg, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today, we'd like to remind everyone of the Safe Harbor statement. Certain statements made in the course of this conference call contain forward-looking statements. It is important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in such forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to, the company's Form 10-K for fiscal year 2024 filed yesterday. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Josephs, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for our fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and yearend update. I'm pleased to join you for my first earnings call as Lifecore's President and CEO. I joined the company in May of this year, and this is my 30th year in the CDMO industry. I've leveraged this experience to help me assess Lifecore's strength and significant growth opportunities ahead. After my first 90 days with the company, I am pleased to share that I have even greater confidence in Lifecore's business potential than I had when I decided to join the company. Supported by a robust quality management system, highly skilled team and long-standing track record, Lifecore has a strong foundation that I believe will enable us to provide differentiated solutions to our customers and the high-end quality products for their patients in the U.S. and abroad. And it is my intent to lead our teams to implement efficiency-driving initiatives that will further improve the company's performance over time. I look forward to earning your trust and sharing more exciting information as it becomes available. In the meantime, I'd like to pivot to discuss the company's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024. Operationally, fiscal 2024 was a strong top line year for the company as we recorded $128.3 million in revenues, representing a 24.2% increase over fiscal 2023. And while we are very pleased with this performance, it's important to address the hurdles that the company overcame in parallel with these achievements. As previously recorded last year, Lifecore's parent company completed divestitures of several food businesses, which enabled Lifecore to establish itself as a standalone CDMO. These divestitures unfortunately contributed to several public reporting challenges, including the previously disclosed restatements for several historical periods, and as a result, significant delays in its public filings. We recognize that these delays have caused concern among our stakeholders and we deeply appreciate your patience as we work through these issues. I am also pleased to report that with yesterday's filing of our Form 10-K, the company is now current with its SEC filings and is looking forward to refocusing its efforts to drive improved performance. We will now turn to our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended May 26, 2024 in further detail before discussing our outlook for the future. With that, I'll pass it to John.

Thank you, Paul. As Paul stated, we are pleased to announce that we are now current on all our SEC filings. On August 9, we filed the three 10-Qs for the first three quarters of fiscal 2024 and yesterday, we filed our fiscal 2024 annual report on Form 10-K. Before we discuss the company's financial results in further detail, we want to share some important changes regarding our financial presentation since our last earnings call, which we believe will provide helpful context in comparing our performance to historical periods. First, as previously communicated, we have transitioned to a single reporting segment as the food business divestitures are complete, and the company is now a standalone CDMO business. All of our financial information has been consolidated into what was previously the Lifecore Biomedical segment, including what was previously categorized under the corporate other segment, which is now collapsed into our income statement. Secondly, we have changed our methodology for calculating adjusted EBITDA on a go-forward basis, which begins with this fiscal '24 presentation as well as the historical periods that are being compared and also carries over to our fiscal '25 outlook. Specifically, we are adding back stock-based compensation into our calculation of adjusted EBITDA, which is consistent with the reporting method used for the Lifecore only segment in prior years and many of our peers. We will continue to provide transparency regarding stock-based compensation as a line item in our adjusted EBITDA reconciliation. This change is aimed at providing a clearer and more consolidated view of our ability to generate cash as well as to align our performance with that of our peer group, which largely follows the same convention. With that in mind, I will turn to our full year fiscal '24 financial results. For the full fiscal year…

Thank you, John. To reiterate, I am pleased to report our accounting issues are resolved and we are now current with all our SEC filings. I would like to say my sincere thank you to our dedicated accounting, finance and support teams that worked tirelessly with our auditors and legal groups to complete this formidable task. With this administrative matters behind us, we are fully focused on the business ahead. As I mentioned in my opening comments, I believe the growth opportunity at Lifecore is substantial. To capitalize on this growth opportunity, we must execute our strategic plan with precision and conviction. This work is already underway as we are conducting a comprehensive review of Lifecore's operations, procedures, capabilities and facilities. I will now provide an update on our progress in each of these areas, beginning with operations. One of my first acts as CEO was to conduct a comprehensive review of all aspects of the company's operations, including headcount. As part of this process, it became clear to me that our company's headcount was oversized for our current business. While such decisions are never easy, a reduction in force was necessary to align the organization with our current business needs. While unfortunate, I believe this decision was key as a first step, to achieving our goal of improved efficiencies and creating a more agile, responsive and competitive organization. With these adjustments made, our focus now shifts to driving impactful growth through three key areas. The first is maximization of our base business and customers. I have spent considerable time with our current commercial customers to better understand their business and long-term needs. Based on these discussions, I believe that our current commercial business represents a strong opportunity for growth in the next few years. In addition, based on our…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Michael Petusky from Barrington Research. Your line is now live.

Hi, good morning. Part of the call, I was sort of going out and I'm just curious, did you guys mention the sort of the current projects that you have ongoing as has been sort of the historical way you guys sort of talk about development stuff.

Michael, thanks for the question. This is Paul. We talked about with regard to our development pipeline, a number of programs that we anticipate commercializing over the next few years. I did articulate that during that review, in my first 90 days, we did call out or call out a handful of programs from our forward-looking projections. But the pipeline itself, commercial projections remain strong and robust. And we're very excited about the potential future of the commercial revenue associated with those programs.

Well, I'm sorry. And maybe it's just been my phone but I missed about half of that. Did you guys talk about given the headwinds that you have with this key customer rebalancing inventory and the one customer that I guess, will be sort of a negative $3.4 million or so headwind, did you talk about essentially what are the assumptions in terms of new customer wins or going deeper with customers? How do you make up sort of the gap between the headwinds you're facing and sort of getting to flat revs for the year?

Yes, so with regard to the flat revenues, as you stated, we did lose one specific customer who won't be recurring, they have moved their production internal. The balance of our commercial revenue remains very strong. We have a strong outlook with regard to the forward-looking demand for those programs and have great significant confidence in our 2025 projection. That's how the revenue is made up. On the development side, there's a small component that we are anticipating contributions from our BD team from new programs. But for the most part, our revenue is known to us and we have great confidence in that for FY25.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Thanks. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Jacob Johnson from Stephens. Your line is now live.

This is Mack on for Jacob. Just a few questions for me. Paul, now that you're in the CEO seat, how are you thinking about the medium-term outlook beyond FY24? I know you just kind of touched on it. But is double-digit growth a reasonable expectation beyond FY25? And given the fill-finish assets you have and some of the demand we are seeing in the injectable market, are there any opportunities for you to support GLP-1s?

Mack, thanks for the question. We're only providing guidance here for FY25 but I would articulate to you that we feel very strongly about our future and our ability to participate favorably with regard to the growing market, specifically with regard to the injectable space. We certainly have the capability to produce GLP-1s. And the entire prefilled syringe market is an exciting and growing market, which we think we will favorably compete in.

And just a quick follow-up, on EBITDA margins, EBITDA margins were like roughly 15%, 15.5%, 15.7% in FY24. You're guiding to flattish EBITDA margins for FY25. How much of a benefit does the RIF include? You may have mentioned in the prepared remarks but I may have missed it. And looking ahead, how should we think about incremental margins as Lifecore returns to growth?

Well, certainly, from an EBITDA margin standpoint, we expect for improvement over a period of time through significant volume being added to the site and then the operational improvement. With regard to the impact this year. I'll let John speak further to that.

Yes. I think I had mentioned in the remarks, as far as guidance goes for next year, we do have a reduction that we're expecting in the gross profit margins primarily due to the mix between commercial and development revenues. But then with the RIF savings, everything that we've done, we see us picking that up in the operating expense side, leaving overall flat margins. But as Paul mentioned, we think those margins can certainly improve over time with a higher revenue base. We certainly expect to leverage margins, particularly in the operating expense side going forward.

Thank you. Appreciate the color.

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Paul for any further closing comments.

Thank you, operator. In closing, I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to our Lifecore team for the warm welcome I've received. Your dedication and hard work are the heartbeat of Lifecore. I appreciate your openness to change and your efforts to make us stronger every day. To our customers, thank you for your partnership and trust you place in us. And to our shareholders, your confidence in Lifecore is the foundation upon which we build our future. Together, we have an exciting future in front of us. That concludes our call today. Thank you for participating.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.