Earnings Labs

Lifeway Foods, Inc. (LWAY)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 27, 2023

$28.02

+0.88%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. Welcome to Lifeway Foods' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. On the call with me today is Julie Smolyansky, President and Chief Executive Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the press release that went out this afternoon. If you have not received the release, it is available on the Investor Relations portion of Lifeway's website at www.lifewayfoods.com. A recording of this call will be available on the company's website. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that the prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements, and management may make additional forward-looking statements, in response to your questions. The words believes, expect, anticipate and other similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed on them. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. Lifeway assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking projections, that may be made in today's release or call. All of the forward-looking statements contained herein, speak only as of the date of this call. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Lifeway's Chief Executive Officer, Julie Smolyansky.

Julie Smolyansky

Management

Thank you, John, and good afternoon to everyone joining us today. As always, we greatly appreciate your interest in Lifeway Foods. I'm thrilled to be speaking with you today, regarding our full year 2022 earnings results. A record-setting year of growth for our business. Before discussing our strong results, I would like to first call out the incredible efforts of the entire Lifeway team whose efforts and impressive execution allowed us to deliver seamlessly for our valued partners and customers, despite the challenging industry-wide operative environment presented to us this year. Quite simply, we crushed it in 2022 and delivered the highest recorded year of sales in our company's history. This top line record reflects the efforts of the great team we have in place, as they effectively executed on our Lifeway 2.0 strategy throughout the year and the continued dominance of our core Lifeway Kefir assortment. This was my 21st year as the CEO at Lifeway Foods. And on the back of our strongest year yet, I couldn't be more pleased with our business, as it stands today. Now I'll review our full year 2022 results. Our record high annual net sales were $141.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2022, an increase of $22.5 million or 18.9% compared to the prior year. The net sales increase was primarily driven by our higher volumes of our branded drinkable kefir and the impact of price increases implemented during the year and, to a lesser extent, the favorable impact of our acquisition of GlenOaks Farms during the third quarter of 2021. Year-over-year, our net sales grew every single quarter this year, a result of our enhanced focus on our flagship Lifeway Kefir product with the fourth quarter, marking our 13th consecutive quarter of growth. Our growth is even more impressive…