Earnings Labs

Oil-Dri Corporation of America (ODC)

Q1 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Dec 12, 2018

$74.64

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Transcript

Laura Scheland

Management

Hi, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Laura Scheland, General Counsel of Oil Dri Corporation. This year is the first year that the Annual Meeting is available via phone line and webcast, so hence opening the lines. Our agenda for today is, I will first conduct the Annual Meeting of Stockholders covering the Election of Directors and other stockholder voting items. I'll try to move through this quickly and [indiscernible]; so we can move on to the more interesting point part of the meeting. Next, will be the presentation and business review followed by time for Q&A. So we ask that you hold your questions until the Q&A portion of the meeting. It is now 09:31 on December 11, 2018, and I now call to order the 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Oil Dri Corporation of America. While I conduct the meeting, Tony Parker, the Assistant Secretary of Oil Dri will record the minutes for the meeting. As you enter the meeting room, you should have received an agenda and the rules of conduct that will govern this meeting. We ask that you adhere to these rules. Stockholders who previously voted by proxy using the internet, telephone or mail may not cast ballot today unless they wish to change their vote on the proxy. We'll provide ballots to those who desire them at the appropriate time. Oil Dri has appointed Gary Farrar of Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. to serve as the Inspector of Elections for the meeting. He is present and has taken the oath [ph]. Commencing on October 31, 2018, a notice regarding the availability of proxy materials or a copy of the proxy materials was mailed to all Oil Dri stockholders of record as of close of business on October 15, 2018, which is the record date…

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Karen Jokhosvky [ph] and I am a stockholder of record. I hereby move that each of Daniel S. Jaffee, Ellen-Blair Chube, J. Steven Cole, Joseph C. Miller, Michael A. Nemeroff, George C. Roeth, Allan H. Selig, Paul E. Suckow and Lawrence E. Washow be elected as Directors to serve until the 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or until their respective successors are elected and qualified.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Leslie Stephenchow [ph] and I am a stockholder of record. I second the motion.

Laura Scheland

Management

Are there any questions or comments on this motion? I hereby call the question and declare the polls open to vote on the motion. We'll provide ballots to any stockholders who have not previously given their proxy or who desire to change their votes. Please raise your hand if you would like the ballot. I now declare the polls closed on this motion. As described in the proxy statement, the second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of Grant Thornton LLP as Oil Dri's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2019. Grant Thornton has just completed it's fifth year as Oil Dri's independent auditor. The Audit Committee and the Board of Directors of Oil Dri has appointed Grant Thornton to again serve in the role for fiscal year 2019 and has directed that the appointment be submitted for ratification by the stockholders at this meeting. A motion to ratify Grant Thornton as Oil Dri's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2019 is now in order.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Michelle Hazer [ph] and I am a stockholder of record. I hereby move to the appointment of Grant Thornton LLP as Oil Dri's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2019, be ratified.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Bruce Payty [ph], and I am a stockholder of record. I second the motion.

Laura Scheland

Management

Are there any questions or comments on the motion? I hereby call the question and declare the polls open to vote on the motion. I now declare the polls closed on this motion. I will now report the results to the voting at this meeting. As described in the proxy statement, a Director may only be elected plurality of votes count. The 9 nominees who received the largest number of votes will be elected. Mr. Ferrar has informed me that the 9 candidates nominated by Oil Dri received the largest number of votes. I therefore find that each of Oil Dri's nominees for Director has been elected as a Director of Oil Dri to serve until the 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders or until his/her respective successor is elected and qualified. Congratulations to each of you. As described in the proxy statement, affirmative majority of the votes represented in this meeting is necessary for ratification of the appointment of Grant Thornton as Oil Dri's independent auditor for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2019. Mr. Ferrar has informed me that such ratification received more than a majority of the votes represented at this meeting. I therefore find the appointment of Grant Thornton as Oil Dri's independent auditor for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2019 has been ratified. Note, that representatives of Oil Dri are here with us today and will be available after the meeting to answer any appropriate question. You have now heard the results of the voting and this completes the business to be conducted at the meeting. Since there are no other matters that come before this meeting, a motion to adjourn is now in order.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Curtis Welburm [ph], I am a stockholder of record. I hereby move that this meeting be adjourned.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

My name is Tony Mitchel [ph] and I am a stockholder of record. I second the motion.

Laura Scheland

Management

All in favor of the motion of adjournment, please signify by saying 'aye'. Those opposed, please signify by saying 'no'. The motion has been carried. It is now 09:38 on December 11, 2018 and I hereby declare this meeting adjourned. Thank you for attending. I am happy to invite Dan Jaffee, our President and Chief Executive Officer to provide a review of Oil Dri's business. Please note that Dan's presentation and any commentary by any Oil Dri's employees today may contain forward-looking statements of expected future performance. Any such forward-looking statements are subjects to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially. We highlight a number of important risk factors that may affect our future performance and our SEC filings including our Annual Report for the fiscal year ended July 31, 2018. We urge you to review and consider these factors carefully in validating the company's comments and evaluating any investment in Oil Dri stock. Thank you.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Good morning. Thank you, Laura. What I'd like to do is start by introducing the Board. As I call your name, please stand up and then let's hold our applause until they've all been introduced. Before I start that introduction, I just want to emphasize what an increasingly valuable role the Board is playing helping me devise strategy and I hope that stacks [ph] to keep that strategy, it's not just governance, it's really they all have a wide array of business experience. And with my father's passing, I think I've been leaning on the Board harder and harder and it's been nice to know they've been there to help me run the business. So I appreciate what you guys have done. I'm going to ask you to stand or do you want me to raise it up? Okay, fine. Good, while I call your names in order of importance, I'm just kidding, alphabetical order, that's my typical joke. Ellen-Blair Chube, Steve Cole, Joe Miller, Michael Nemeroff, George Roeth, Bud Selig -- Bud, if you're on the line, you can stand up; Paul Suckow, and Larry Washow; let's please recognize the Board of Directors. Thank you. I'm also going to recognize people who were promoted during the year to positions of Vice President or higher, and in the essence of time because I really -- we have a long program for you today. We've got a lot to cover, we're going to cover our supply chain, and B2B and then a lot of exciting things that are going on at consumer; I'm just going to recognize these individuals, so please stand when you're called, but I encourage you, you can go out on the web and learn more about them either from news releases, or LinkedIn and so forth. But…

Operator

Operator

This is the operator. Would you please turn up the volume on your end?

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Sure. I guess I got to lean in. That's probably better now. Is that better?

Operator

Operator

Much better, thank you.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Okay. And now I'm done. So Mark, you're going to have to do this.

Mark Lewry

Management

Good morning. I have several slides to share with you this morning. We're going to go over the past year of fiscal 2018 and then we'll talk also about some of the challenges we've faced in Q1. Manufacturing actually had a really good fiscal 2018. From a quality standpoint, we had a gap particularly in our consumer products. We had to close that gap so we invested in our manufacturing infrastructure, we invested in our quality systems, in our quality team and really delivering products now that meet-or-exceed what the business requires. From an efficiency standpoint, we start at measuring efficiencies in our plans, in our packaging lines a couple of years ago. We evolve to a new metric this past year called TEEP, which is Total Effective Equipment Performance. And what that does is not only measure your packaging systems in lines, but also upstream and downstream from there, so it's a more comprehensive measure and we had great success -- of course which measure you can approve on because we like to stay at Oil Dri and we did with an improvement of 20%. On the cost side of the equation, again, we're a good success with a number of initiatives to deliver cost savings basically to the consumer business by streamlining our manufacturing and driving some efficiencies there. That's really one of the key port leg for the consumer business strategy. Shifting over now to look at the beginning of this fiscal year, there have been some highlights, as well as low lights. Quality continues to be outstanding so despite the turbulence we've had, we continue to stay the course there, had another good news, element that's the growth in our business. Cat litter business has been up significantly. One of our brands is up actually 30%…

Michael Nemeroff

Management

One of the best performing years for our B2B groups last year and what I thought I would do today is give everybody an overview of what type of markets were involved in our B2B groups. I'll talk a little bit about some of the highlights for certain aspects of the business and then I'm going to give a little bit of a glimpse on some new products we have coming out of the pipeline. When I meet with customers -- perspective customers that are not familiar with the company -- probably one of the most common questions I get is, 'could you explain to me a little bit what B2B is and what type of markets you're involved in when yours ay B2B? We understand the consumer side of the business. We don't really understand when you say B2B.' My answer to them is our B2B group in Oil Dri largely is involved in the agricultural marketplace in the broader sense. If you look at the top of the supply chain, that's where [indiscernible] and her group focuses, which are agricultural input. This is seeds that grow plants, fertilizers that helps the plants grow, crop protection chemicals that help protect the plan from weeds and insects and increasingly which we'll talk a little bit later about some of our R&D investments, natural pesticides, microorganisms that help control insects and weeds instead of synthetic chemical. Since [indiscernible] has taken over as Vice President and General Manager of that business group, sales into that market place have nearly -- I would say the profit is nearly tripled and she has done that by helping better-align as Dan mentioned, our investment at R&D, we have an incredible laboratory, incredible equipment and knowledgeable people on how to make these synthetic and microorganisms be…

Operator

Operator

Pardon me. This is the operator. Your audio has dropped volume again. Can you please adjust?

Michael Nemeroff

Management

Sure. I'll move closer to the mike To support this business, we looked across the commonalities of all of Oil Dri's businesses and increasingly, the commonality is microbiological sciences. When our research center was built 25 or 30 years ago, it was a traditional chemistry-based facility; that's the core of Oil Dri for 75 years where a lot of the future growth opportunities though aren't grounded in that type of science. In Yasnus [ph] business, what's emerged are microorganisms that control weeks and kill insects, not synthetic chemicals that a lot of consumers and governments would like to eliminate. In order to understand how to develop new products and solutions for our customers, you have to actually understand something about living microorganisms -- bacteria, fungus and other things that can control it. In our Cat Litter business, if you want to make improved odor-controlled products, you have to understand what causes the odor, which is bacteria, not just you have to understand the mineral. So that's has been the fundamental shift to try to make our products more potent, more effective to the consumer, you have to control bacteria at required scale that we didn't historically have. And obviously in our M1 business, we've been incubating within Oil Dri Lifescience company. To develop the type of intestinal health and disease management products, you have to have the ability and knowledge to do that work. We were fortunate that Dan approved The Richard & Jaffee Laboratory for Applied Microbiology, it was approved in the summer of 2017, it became operational in August of 2018, so the start of a fiscal year. And his question at the time was, 'What do you hope to accomplish from this other than obviously it's going to support the business?' And I said well, the hope…

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. My name is Lea [ph], I'm in Division 3 working on our Litter for Good Pride program. So this time last year, we announced the new program that's going to be launching in January. So today, I wanted to talk to you about our Cat's Pride Litter for Good program success to-date. So the Cat's Pride Litter for Good program is a program as I mentioned that we launched in January of 2018 with the main goal of helping animal shelters in need. So how the program would work is with every green jug of Cat's Pride purchase we donate one pound to the Animal Welfare Organization. And what we hope that to do is to increase our sales of Cat's Pride Fresh & Light, we hope that it frees up resources for Animal Welfare Organization, and ultimately, this is not a one-off promotion, this is something we plan on doing from now and into the future. So how does Litter for Good work? First, we reach out to all of our shelter relationship, letting them know about the Litter for Good program. We developed marketing and educational resources that they can then use to spread awareness to all of their supporters, letting them know to; 1) go out and buy a green jug; and 2) join the Cat's Pride Club and nominate their local or favorite shelter. And with that, we then see increase in trial of our Cat's Pride Fresh & Light green jug, as well as those consumers letting all of their friends and family know about the program as well; so really increasing the Cat's Pride brand awareness. When we first launched the program and throughout the year we have a 360 degree marketing support, so everything from the shelter word-of-mouth program…

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

Hi everyone, my name is Jessica Moskovitz [ph], and I am on the marketing team for Cat's Pride and the brand side of the business in Division 3. I have the fun job today of talking to you about our latest TV integration but before I do that, I want to give you a little bit of an update on our spokesperson. So in 2016, we signed a 2-year partnership with Katherine Heigl, that will be coming to an end as of the end of December. She's been instrumental in helping us build the Cat's Pride brand, relaunch Ultimate Care, and most importantly, really expanding our Litter for Good program. She's got her own ties, philanthropic efforts, and so her passion for animal welfare has really shined through for Cat's Pride as well. So well, that partnership is going to be coming to an end, we are excited to announce that we've actually identified a new spokesperson. This spokesperson has an equal passion for animal rights and a long-term commitment to helping animals in need, he also has an unmatched passion for the Cat's Pride brand; and as shareholders, you will be excited to hear that we received the spokesperson at a significant, significant discount to Katherine. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our new spokesperson, none other than up, Dan Jaffee. But in all seriousness, I want to share with you our most recent TV integrations this past October, we had the privilege of sponsoring Cat Week in October of this past year on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, garnering over 36 million impressions over the course of that week. While we're particularly excited about this opportunity, clearly, getting a TV integration is unique in itself of this nature but it was particularly synergistic for a number of…

Daniel Jaffee

Management

How about another round of applause for our presenters. I think you've got a great glimpse into who we are, which are creative product innovators and we're trying to take this unique mineral that mother nature into the ground billions of years ago, and put really everything we need to thrive and survive in it. It's just upto us to figure out what's in there and how we can economically get that to consumers, whether it's in the food chain or whether it's for cat. And so we are just so excited about the future and I hope you got a feel for that excitement from the presenters. I'd love to open it upto Q&A to answer any questions you guys might have. We've got three different segments of Q&A going on. Let's start with the phone lines and please after you ask your question, put your phone back on mute just so we don't get any background noise. And Reagan [ph], I think you will handle the phone line. So we'll take the 17th caller.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ethan Starr, an investor.

Ethan Starr

Analyst

Good morning, Dan and everyone. Fabulous presentation, really very excited we're going forward. And my question is, this, to what extent will cost related to the new ERP system, in fact second quarter results? And also how will the system help save you money over the longer term?

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Good questions, and not totally quantifiable. I mean there is certainly going to have a negative economic impact on the second quarter and then we absolutely believe positive economic impact going forward. We are still spending money on consulting, on bringing in programmers and developers to help us refine, tweak, and make sure that the system is doing everything it was intended to do, and all of those dollars are being expenses, those aren't capitalized at this point because we went live. So it's really hard to quantify and I hate to be evasive, you know, we don't really give guidance and I've just sort of given you generic guidance; I will just put it in the terms of it's not going to impact our ability to invest in our growth opportunities and it's not going to impact the dividend. So that's about the best guidance I can give you and as a long-term shareholder, those are the private two things you'd be most interested in. Are you going to have to pull back on some of these great new product opportunities, the answer is no; and are you going to hurt my dividend, and the answer is no. So that's the best way I can answer your questions.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Smith with the Center for Performance Investing.

Robert Smith

Analyst · the Center for Performance Investing.

Dan, thanks for your eloquent and gracious and loving tribute to your dad in the stakeholder's letter, it was deserving and I admire them. My question is, you expressed disappointment with the first quarter results, and I'm wondering how you plan to address the disappointments and challenges in the immediate future?

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Let me talk about the disappointment. My disappointment was not certainly with the team's effort, our team put forth an incredible effort trying to overcome things that probably should have been tested and validated before we went live. And so my disappointment was not that it was painful but that we didn't anticipate all the pain that we experienced, we knew it was not going to be easy going live, everybody launches these ERP systems, it goes through what we did, they take longer, they cost more, and we put in so much time doing these conference room pilots that my expectation was, we were going to know where the high fast balls were coming from, but as we went live, all of a sudden we started seeing curved balls and knuckle balls and everything else that we frankly didn't do a good job of testing on the front-end; so we were learning and training on the fly, that's where my disappointment came from, it was more of a lack of anticipating, it certainly was not in the lack of execution, our team did an amazing job on that. I think you had a two part, I can't remember what the second part was. Oh, how are we addressing it? Well, first of all, you can't connect all the dots but certainly we're going to continue to upgrade the talent level at Oil Dri, that we are playing in the major leagues and we need major league hitters. And so bringing in someone with Susan's background, not only on the CFO side, but also on the IT side; I mean, just yesterday at lunch we took the IT team out for lunch and then we took the accounting folks out to dinner and during the IT session, just the questions…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we do have a follow-up question from Ethan Starr.

Ethan Starr

Analyst

How can you address the cost of the trucking issue? I don't know if you can raise prices on that before the next fiscal year or not? And also I see you have a new Dr.Green [ph] jug on the Cat's Pride Fresh & Light.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Good catch. So we did raise prices 81 [ph] in anticipation of 8% to 10%, maybe even 15% in some areas of freight increases but what we experienced in the first quarter was well north of that. We are going to be going out with a second round of price increases this fiscal year, however, in the consumer business for sure, we've got to get our supply numbers, our fill rates up because you can't go into an account where you're filling at 59% or even 90%, you've got to be in the 95%, 96%, 97% and then you have the -- that you're on the solid ground to go ahead and raise their price. When you're at 50%, 60% and 70% and then tell them, on top of that you're going to be raising their price, those meetings don't go very well. So we will definitely be raising our second round of prices this fiscal year, all of our competition has been raising their prices, all of the retailers -- retail prices are going up, this is not an oil dry issue, this is an industry -- nation-wide systemic issue, not just cat litter but anyone who is shipping truckload product is experiencing the lack of supply and the increase and demand. So the cost are going up, and we will be getting our prices out but we will be lagging this next bump, we were leading the first bump but we will be lagging the second bump. And thank you for noticing our green jug [ph], that was just we're putting so much brand equity behind look for the green jug that Lisa and her marketing team rightly so tested all sorts of new packaging, you will see some new packaging design either later this fiscal year or early next fiscal year but in conjunction with that or in advance of that we really wanted to enhance the ability of the green jug to pop at retail and that new green jug does just that. Okay, let's switch over to webcast and we'll take questions from there. I would love to encourage people to type their questions, did we do webcast live than other typing. So if you have your envelope and you want to type some questions, we'll get out of the room and we will ask them but we will open it up to all audience here and we've got some microphones that we will hand deliver if you have any questions. John, you have a question? Let's get John a microphone.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you, Dan. It's a great presentation and I congratulate all the different divisions and what they're doing. I think this is my seventh attendance to an annual meeting and always gained some pretty incredible insights as to what you're doing and where you're going. And particularly excited about the animal health related business; so I have a couple of questions regarding that. Number one is, the cost effectiveness of using [indiscernible] product versus the traditional antibiotics and if that is a good selling point for you. And along similar lines, the recent problems that China's had with the pig disease, I think it's in African -- I know it's a virus I think, so I'm not correct, so maybe that's not really applicable but has that helped out in your efforts in selling over there? Thank you. I've got a follow-up question.

Mark Lewry

Management

How the industry looks at antibiotic usage really depends by country and by producer. I meet with a company last week that uses 3x, I mean it's not spoken about, 3x the normal recommended dose which cost about $9 per metric ton of feed, that's extremely favorable compared to vary [ph] near prime. If you look at sometimes a typical producer, the cost of an antibiotic especially if they used a generic one from China might only cost $1.50 per metric ton, we're not going to replace those types of -- that type of use of antibiotics. If you go antibiotic-free or you operate a farm [ph] that's so heavily diseased and poorly run which is typically the case at many developing countries. They are using products like Varium and NeoPrime on top of their antibiotics, there is only so much you could put into an animal before it starts to harm them. So we find the market is plenty big enough for alternatives antibiotics where the cost of our products are not prohibitive, and in many cases you have people that are using such a large amount of antibiotics that the cost for the total amount of dose compares favorably to our new products. So we don't think that will impede growth at all. In terms of the African swine flu which is a virus that slowed the business a little bit in China because they are now beginning to call the large producers are all pretty heavily infected. They are calling a large percentage of the pigs now, and they are just kind of stopping the use of any new additives, adding more cost to their -- that really now trying to figure out how they're going to slaughter and how are you going to process and landfill 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 pigs per producer across 20, 30, 40 producers; it's a lot of pigs. So right now it disrupted the sales process there but it's not having a negative impact, it's just slowing our growth down in China.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

My follow-up question is; for Litter for Good program, Dan, I think you indicated that initially a lot of the product that was being donated was 'old product' and so I'm wondering kind of where you are and working through that? And if the current product that is on the market for consumers is what's being used appears to be given the videos there. And as I sight [ph] on this, have you considered using billboard advertising along heavily trafficked Interstate 94 and other areas with those big green jugs on the picture there? I think -- personally, I think that might be a interesting thought there if you're not already doing it. Thanks.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Lea [ph], why don't you handle where the litter is coming from and what kind of runway we have before we can actually have to produce first-run product.

Unidentified Company Representative

Management

So in terms of the donated product, we are still donating obsolete product, so we have not run out of that obsolete product, shelters can either pick it up at our plants or warehouses or pay for third-party freight to have it delivered. And all shelters who are eligible for over a pellet of litter are able to receive that and then just for efficiencies, if it's anything under our pellet we provide coupons for the litter to be picked up. When looking at our obsolete report, we do have probably over 6 months left in terms of providing obsolete, I mean that report continues to add inflow based on whatever we're running and if packaging changes etcetera. So things are looking good in terms of those cost savings.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Yes, and from the manufacturing efficiency standpoint, it's been good for us because we're either paying for this space, somewhere on an outside warehouse or it's been taking up valuable space on our own warehouses, so either way, we've cleared up a lot of space which is good. Regarding billboards, we look at cost per thousand of impression, and we certainly look at all sorts of different ways to communicating and I'm sure we looked at billboards but at the moment, it's not part of our mix.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

[Indiscernible].

Daniel Jaffee

Management

What are the vehicles that are more efficient on our cost per thousand price? There are millions of cost per thousand impression. We have any typed questions? Okay, one more audience, who wants it? You moved on, you were over there.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

[Indiscernible]. I'm a long time Oil Dri shareholder, and I have good questions, the suggestions one about marketing and the other about acquisition but first I want to personally give my condolence to the passing of your father. I wish he were to see me with serious questions, and maybe in the future, wearing a suit and a haircut. My first question consumes marketing and anecdotally [indiscernible] my friends and neighbors who used Cat Pride -- preferred light multi-cat uncentered [ph]; it's sometimes difficult to find what all the other flavors and whereas multi-cat uncentered [ph] is the highest price of them and if it's the highest priced and the best, it should be the one that people ordered [indiscernible] but lots of luck trying to find it in supermarkets. I hope you can encourage supermarkets to at least have double row of that or much more of it in-stock. And the second type is; with Oil Dri as the local company here in Chicago, WFNP [ph] is a 20-filler [ph] local classical radio station and when they do fundraising, they used to have something called at Cat Fund and the Dog Fund; cats always won. And those people have classical radio, lots of times they have a cat, it's worth trying at least for a couple of times putting advertisement which are announcing that life, it's worth a try, you could even probably care [indiscernible].

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Well, first of all on the first one, Dave, who manages our e-commerce business, those items are on Chewy, so you can get a chewy.com and they deliver for free, and they have those items. So if you're neighbors can't find the item, tell them to go to www.chewy.com and they can order and it will be delivered to their home for free.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I think my neighbor is a little old fashioned, just we have to grab what they prefer at the grocery store. So for instance, you buy a bunch of them and then I'll charge them and sell. That's what I do with these coupons which is limited to two this year.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Okay, good.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Wait this one, the second one concerning acquisition; Bayer or as we call in The United States, Bayer AG, which exempted [ph] Aspirin and just took over Monsanto has decided to sell their pet care and animal health products. It's a limited line that's animal from an animal health products, and I'm wondering your [indiscernible] investigate if it might be a good fit to enquire them?

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Certainly to the extent booked with our motion [ph], I appreciate that you gave me some information on it and we would file it up. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have a follow-up from Ethan, two-fold. Last quarter you indicated you'd be adding a new private label cat litter customer in the month. Will there continue to be new private label cat litter customers added in the upcoming months? And the second part, for the Litter for Good program, are there any plans to provide marketing materials to that new practices that treat feelings only?

Daniel Jaffee

Management

I'll take the first part and either Lisa or Leo, however, you guys can take the second part. Yes, I mean we're continuing to roll out both, new customers and the private label lightweight, scoopable and new skills with existing customers. So it's moving so well that they want to expand their [indiscernible] presence with the light weight. So both of that happening and we're rolling out a major Canadian customer, I won't tell who, Ethan will have to go upto Canada and find it [indiscernible]. One, have we started shipping that yet; maybe the next week. The orders are in -- maybe, it was earlier and the PO is in or not yet [ph]? Okay, so we're awaiting for the initial PO but certainly by January 1 that ought to be out in Canada and through the major Canadian retailer who is the first one to take a real swing at the private label lightweight, they've seen how successful it's been in the United States. We'll give Lisa Mak, our Vice President, Marketing the microphone, in the consumer.

Lisa Mak

Analyst

So to answer your question about reaching out to veterinarians, I think it's a great idea, we do have a database that we actually can reach out to and rather worried about Litter for Good. And also we have some promotional materials that we can eventually have it there, ship out to the veterinarians offices so they can hand out to their consumers because I think it's a great idea to reach them at the point of inception and with an expert like a veterinarian making a recommendation on litter, I think that's a great place to start. Thanks.

Daniel Jaffee

Management

Great Lisa, thank you. And if you're pooling the audience too, I'm going to be very, very impressed, those are multimedia questions, you did the phone, you did the typing and now I'm sort of looking for you. But I don't see you, so I will wish you a happy holiday season. And I wish all of our investors a happy holiday season, and I'll sort of close how we started. The rule go for all guys for long-term, we are extremely excited about the long-term, my family and I have increased our ownership, my sisters and I in the company, and that's just a testament to our belief in the long-term future of this incredible mineral that we've been blessed with, and you can see, we have an incredible team who wakes up every morning trying to maximize our value out of that mineral. So thank you very much and we will see you again next year.

Operator

Operator

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