Earnings Labs

Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. (RKDA)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 15, 2021

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Arcadia Biosciences Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s presenters will be Matt Plavan, President and CEO; and Pam Haley, Chief Financial Officer of Arcadia. This call is being webcast, and you can refer to the company’s press release at arcadiabio.com. Before we start, we would like to remind you that Arcadia Biosciences will be making forward-looking statements on this call based on current expectations and currently available information. However, since these statements are based on factors that involves risks and uncertainties, the company’s actual performance may result – sorry, performance and results may differ materially from those described or implied today. You can review the company’s Safe Harbor language in their most recently filed 10-Q. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Matt Plavan, President and CEO.

Matt Plavan

Management

Thank you, Delfin. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter conference call. Thank you for joining us. I’ll begin by saying that the third quarter has been marked by a heightened intensity of focus building on the themes of capacity building, integration and alignment that we discussed back in August. It’s also been marked by strong financial results, a further validation of our successful transformation into a consumer products company. Our third quarter showed continued sequential growth during the year with revenues up six-fold over prior year same quarter, and year-to-date, we are up four-fold over the prior year to date. In addition, revenues are increasing sequentially during the year as well, with revenues up 70% Q2 over Q1 and 69% Q3 over Q2. To help ensure the positive momentum continues, we’ve been persistent with our expanded bench of CPG talent in place in honing our focus, further refining our go-to-market strategies for 2022 and identifying ways to accelerate our path forward. To that end, the company has also made decisions regarding leadership. As we announced in September, I will be stepping down as CEO when a successor is identified. After planning a flag as a CPG company, we’ve made substantial progress in establishing a portfolio of plant-based better-for-you food and wellness products, and we’ve done it in a remarkably short period of time. I’m very pleased with the brand platform that’s now in place and prime to penetrate the market. At this point, having accomplished a lot of the foundational heavy lifting, the timing makes sense to begin the process of transitioning to a new leader, someone with deep experience running successful CPG organizations, who will be able to build on our progress, accelerate speed to market and capitalize on the tremendous growth opportunities ahead. Our Board has…

Pam Haley

Management

Thank you, Matt. I’d like to take a few moments to share the financial highlights for the recent quarter and year-to-date with you now. As Matt mentioned at the onset of the call, we are pleased with the revenue performance of the brands acquired last quarter of Q2. Total revenues recognized for third quarter 2021 were $2.4 million compared to $314,000 in third quarter 2020 with the majority of the $2.1 million increase driven by the acquisition of the portfolio of body care products and Zola coconut water, in addition to higher GLA sales this quarter. The year-to-date increase in revenues of $3.7 million were mostly attributable to the acquired brands as well as they generated $2.6 million of revenue in addition to GoodHemp seeds, GoodWheat grain and increased GLA sales this year-to-date. Total operating expenses of $11.1 million in Q3 2021 were $3.2 million higher than the $7.9 million recognized in Q3 2020 and total operating expenses of $26.3 million Q3 2021 year-to-date were $5.2 million higher than the $21.1 million recognized Q3 2021 – 2020 year-to-date. Cost of product revenues were $2.5 million in third quarter 2021 versus $1.8 million in third quarter 2020 and $5 million in third quarter 2021 year-to-date versus $3.5 million in third quarter 2020 year-to-date. The $670,000 year-over-year increase for the quarter was primarily driven by the product sales of the portfolio of newly acquired brands, partially offset by lower inventory write-downs this year versus last. Write-downs charged to COGS totaled $449,000 in the third quarter 2021 for the adjustment to fair market value of the commodity hemp seeds in inventory and the destruction of hemp crops due to disease with $1.5 million of write-downs in the third quarter 2020. As for year-to-date, the $1.5 million increase in COGS over the same period…

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Pam. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ryan Meyers of Lake Street Capital. Please go ahead, sir.

Ryan Meyers

Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First one for me, I just wanted to get some insight on your hedges level of confidence in launching the GoodWheat five product SKUs in the first quarter, if you think some of the headwinds that delayed the soft e-commerce launch in the fourth quarter here will subside by them?

Matt Plavan

Management

Thanks, Ryan. I would say we have high confidence that as we understand the implications or the impact of the shipping delays on our co-packer that Q1 is reasonable. But I want to be – I’m cautiously – we’re cautiously optimistic simply because this has been difficult to predict, and we want to be careful. But suffice it to say that the date we’re expecting is not at the end of the quarter. So we’ve baked in a little bit of time for additional delays. Don’t expect them, don’t know that they’re happening or don’t have any reason to expect that they’re happening. We think we’ve baked in enough cushion. But at the same time, again, it’s been difficult to predict. So we feel good about Q1 now, and I think I’d say we have high confidence.

Ryan Meyers

Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then what are you guys hearing so far from some of the retail partners about the GoodWheat products ahead of the launches in 2022?

Matt Plavan

Management

A lot of interest and enthusiasm for the product and its nutritional profile. And it’s really about lining up with the category reviews and the timing of those reviews, and we expect to see good things from some of the larger chains that we’re currently – that we currently have relationships with on our body care products.

Ryan Meyers

Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then just wondering if there’s any other investments that you guys want to call out that you’re making ahead of both these product launches, whether it’s on the R&D side or the selling and marketing side of things?

Matt Plavan

Management

So I would say that the primary investments are in what we covered, which would be taking the body care products into the online space, which requires a fairly sophisticated website with data analytics that enable you to target – discretely target consumers and evaluate the performance marketing and potentially scale up those digital brands to drive revenue. And our hope is that every dollar towards digital advertising produces reasonable or is a good conversion to revenue dollars. So that’s where I think you’ll see a fair amount of investment here in the early 2022 during the launches over the next 90 days and into early 2022.

Ryan Meyers

Analyst

Okay. And then last question for me. Do you plan to still do some sort of e-commerce launch on the GoodWheat side? Or are you guys just looking to go straight into the retailers in the first quarter?

Matt Plavan

Management

So let me clarify. Thanks for asking that. The actual full-scale launch we’re referring to is online initially. And what we were thinking we would do previously was start with a single SKU in December to begin collecting data. So the Q1 launch is actually the e-commerce online launch for GoodWheat and shortly thereafter would follow traction in the brick-and-mortar retail space.

Ryan Meyers

Analyst

Okay. That’s it for me. Thank you.

Matt Plavan

Management

Thanks, Ryan.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Ram Selvaraju of H.C. Wainwright. Go ahead, sir.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi Matt, This is [indiscernible] on for Ram. Thanks for taking our questions. So through your acquisitions of Agrasys, Lief and Zola, you’ve transformed into a vertically integrated food company. Do you plan to integrate your proprietary food innovations into these acquisitions? So for example, GoodWheat in-house breeding technology into the Agrasys products.

Matt Plavan

Management

That’s something that we had originally considered. It would be a strategic opportunity that would make sense or potentially make sense for us. In the spirit of focusing in the near-term, we will simply be focused on launching GoodWheat online and in retail in the U.S. So we’ve really kind of set aside pursuing other potential strategic opportunities until we’ve demonstrated the kind of traction that we think is appropriate and important to leverage into other channels thereafter.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then could you please update us on your GoodWheat presence in Europe in the context of the partnership with GoodMills innovation?

Matt Plavan

Management

Yes. So GoodMills continues to develop the ability to produce or breed into local variety so that they can have their own production of GoodWheat to serve their markets. They’ve continued to progress, however, COVID and kind of the economic challenges associated with it have slowed them more than they would like, but their enthusiasm for the product and their commitment to be the largest miller selling GoodWheat is remains intact. And I think they’re looking to 2022 as the year that they demonstrate that first online through their e-commerce strategy. And so we remain committed and together working to bring GoodWheat to Europe through GoodMills.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That’s very helpful. Thank you. And just finally, you gave us some color on the GoodWheat direct-to-consumer digital marketing efforts. Do you have any indication or can you give us any more color in terms of customers gained quarter-over-quarter or any other metrics?

Matt Plavan

Management

So for the body care products, we are just bringing those sites up. And so we have no sales to report just yet. We expect – since they’re going to all be up by the end of the year, we would have something to report out in Q1. And since GoodWheat is also similarly being launched in Q1, we’ll expect to have initial feedback as of Q1 as well to for the metrics around the sales for those products.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Congrats, and thanks for taking our questions.

Matt Plavan

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Well, at this point, I’m not showing any further questions. Now I would like to turn the call over to the President and CEO, Mr. Matt Plavan. Please continue.

Matt Plavan

Management

Thank you. To close out the call, we are very pleased with our continued progress and the steps we’ve taken to hone our focus and strategically deploy our resources for maximum impact. The company is well-positioned to execute on its plans with the goal of elevating our brands, further penetrating the consumer health and wellness category and creating shareholder value. Thank you, again, for joining us today, and have a great afternoon.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today’s conference. And this concludes today’s program. You may now all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.