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United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Jun 9, 2015

$47.88

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the United Natural Foods Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to Ms. Katie Turner of ICR. Thank you, Ms. Turner. You may now begin.

Katie Turner - Managing Director, ICR Inc.

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon. By now you should have all received a copy of the third quarter fiscal 2015 earnings press release issued today at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time. The earnings press release and webcast are available under the Investors section of the company's website at www.unfi.com. On the call today are Steve Spinner, President and Chief Executive Officer; Sean Griffin, Chief Operating Officer; and Mark Shamber, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we'd like to remind everyone that comments made by management during today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements discuss plans, expectations, estimates and projections that might involve significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward-looking statements. In addition, in today's earnings press release and during the call, management will provide both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures include adjusted net sales, operating income, net income, and earnings per diluted share and a reconciliation of all the non-GAAP financial measures can be found under the Investors section of the company's website. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Spinner. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Katie. And welcome to UNFI's summary discussion of our third quarter 2015 results and updated expectations for our fiscal year ending August 1, 2015. It is an exciting, challenging, and very opportunistic time for our industry. UNFI strategically made decisions over the last several years to build out our capacity and begin a migration towards the perimeter of the store, which we believe is one of the new frontiers for growth in our space. We began moving our Albert's business towards fresh foods in addition to organic produce and acquired Tony's Fine Foods last year. Fresh perimeter products…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up, so everyone may have a chance to ask their questions. The first question is from Rupesh Parikh of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Rupesh D. Parikh - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks for taking my question. I have a longer term question, maybe for you Steve. So with all the headwinds that you're seeing right now in your business, do you still think that UNFI can get back to that double-digit type organic sales growth you guys laid out at your Analyst Day. I'm just trying to think you guys have talked a lot about your opportunities in fresh and ethnic or gourmet and I just want to get a sense of whether you feel there is enough growth there to maybe offset some of the slowdown we're seeing (23:19) in other categories. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, absolutely. We invested a lot in infrastructure as you know Rupesh. We are more than well prepared to begin – we've already begun, but to see a really nice rollout of our fresh platform. I talked in my comments that a couple of customers that we had won that are rolling out in July. The total value of those customers is approximately $100 million. And it's really compelling to be able to be a provider of center store and a provider of fresh. The economics work really well for the retailer. We see a lot of room in the customer pipeline, that we're excited about. We see a lot of opportunity, as you said in your question in ethnic/gourmet, we now have a complete sales force dedicated to it. And we – I…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Robby Ohmes of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Robert F. Ohmes - Bofa Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Steve, maybe just a follow-up on that question. Can you help us think about how soon you could return to double digit growth and what the barriers are to all the investments you're making in refrigeration coming online in a way that maybe supports a stronger revenue outlook? Thanks. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean, look I don't think it's going to happen tomorrow. It's going to be slow, but sure, which I think is the better way to do it. We've got a couple of great opportunities in our customer pipeline as I said earlier. We've got two really nice wins that are rolling out in the next couple of weeks that we're excited about. And like I said to Rupesh's question, it's a really compelling model to be able to say to a retailer, we can combine economically the fresh and the center store, and the gourmet/ethnic into a pretty good story and having the capacity to do it, goes a long way. So I really wouldn't want to back myself into a corner to say specifically when we're going to get back to 11%, 12%, 13%, 14% other than culturally we're very driven towards being there.

Robert F. Ohmes - Bofa Merrill Lynch

Analyst

And can you just comment on just the supermarket channel, and has there been an acceleration in their sort of shifting of items into their internal distribution? What is the trend there and what gets it to stop? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, interestingly, we haven't seen anything change in the way conventional retailers who have captive, migrate the products to direct. And interestingly, if you do the math and you look at the distribution difference, the cost difference between captive to UNFI and then you apply a cost of capital because in the direct model they have to carry five weeks' worth of inventory, in our model we're carrying a week's worth of inventory, if you apply a service level component to it, in other words, our service level is going to be in the 93%, 94% range. Their service levels because they're only buying for themselves is going to be in the 83%, 84% range, because they only buy in truckload. If you do all that math, in many cases, it's a wash as to whether the retailer is better off buying it direct or buying it through UNFI. So we've actually seen products migrate back to UNFI after having been direct, even though the conventional retailers first inclination is to say, well once it reaches to a certain volume, it's going to be more efficient for us to take it direct. So it really is nothing new there.

Robert F. Ohmes - Bofa Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Meredith Adler of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. I have a question about private label. And you said a couple of things that were interesting, I mean, not only do you have the capacity to handle from a logistics perspective retailers private label, but something about working with co-packers, and I wasn't sure exactly, could you maybe talk about that a little bit more? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, sure. So Meredith, if you think about it this way, there is a limited number of co-packers who actually make this product, and so in many cases, you got one co-packer making many different retailers' private label. Well, because these products are relatively slow moving, yeah, we are buying many brands from the same co-packer. We have the ability to consolidate the weight or the volume into intermodal or rail or full truck to get to a really efficient low cost distribution model. And so our slots are agnostic to what's in them. As long as the product moves, we are okay with it, which is why we are carrying a lot of retail private label. And again just for the simple fact that there are a limited number of co-packers and we are already buying direct from so many of them, I mean, the economics just work in our favor.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

And just a follow-up to that is what is the obstacle to making that happen? Is there any pushback from the retailers or the co-packers? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Generally, I would say no. I mean, I think, there are some retailers who just want to buy direct and for them that's what works and that's okay. I think for in many cases, there are items that are private label that work best in direct and there are many items in private label that work best in UNFI distribution. Those are the programs that I think that work most efficiently.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It doesn't have to be black and white.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

And if I may just ask another question, this is maybe a little bit bigger picture, but did you anticipate the slowdown on the dry grocery side and the timing of that slowdown when you started pushing for more fresh and investing in refrigerator capacity? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. So I think, a couple of years ago, we knew that the industry was going to migrate to fresh, right. And fortunately, we got a lot of people with lot of background in fresh given where we came. And in many respects kind of the retail is just a little bit behind what happened in food service in a lot of cases. And so when food service migrated to fresh, and so we said, what I think as we look at our business out over the next couple of years, our business is going to migrate to fresh, we need to be really good at it and have the capacity. So we were fortunate. Did the change in center store happen faster than we thought? For sure, for sure, because it happened really quickly. All of a sudden, the product became much more available in so many places. So I think we were a very little surprised by the speed at which it took place, but not by the overall shift in the migration from center store to perimeter.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

And I'll be selfish ask one more related question, does the slowdown have an impact on return on invested capital because you have invested a lot of capital? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I think that if you go back to 2008 or 2009 when we had a slowdown because of the recession, we responded in a way that said we're going to be much more careful in how we allocate our capital. We're going to be much more careful on how we create free cash, and we were very successful in 2009 and 2010 as a result of that. So when the top line slows, we have to have a much more disciplined approach around our CapEx, which is exactly what we're doing.

Meredith Adler - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Steven Forbes of Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Steven Forbes - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi, guys. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi.

Steven Forbes - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Going back to the two customers that you're bringing on in July, can you talk about what DCs these customers are going to be served out of? And I guess just broadly what drove the new wins? What brought them on board? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, it's primarily West Coast and the wins were really a matter of having the capacity on the fresh side, having the capacity on the center store and being the expert in making sure the stores have the right products at the shelf I think were the two or the couple of key factors that moved us in that direction. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Yeah. No, I think it's all of that and we have demonstrated high rate of execution, fill rate, logistics, and that translates very positive for prospective customers. And to that end, the pipeline continues to be very robust, certainly not from a July perspective, but certainly looking forward to the next couple of quarters.

Steven Forbes - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

And then when thinking about some of your larger conventional customers, say those that may eventually have to scale to switch over to a direct distribution model, how much visibility do you have into the tipping point of such an event? And is there a specific discount that would prevent this from happening? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, the question is it's different by retailer because everybody does it a little bit differently, some do it by line, some do it by SKU, some do it by product category. I would tell you that one of the components to our gross margin contraction is the fact that we are giving up a little margin to ensure that where it makes sense we keep the direct. It makes sense for the retailer and it makes sense for us. But again going back to the math, for retailers who really want to go through the exercise and you factor in cost of capital, service level, and the differential in the actual captive mark-up versus the UNFI mark-up, in many cases it's a wash. So direct is not something I'm really concerned about.

Steven Forbes - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks Steve.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Sean Naughton of Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead. Sean P. Naughton - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Yes. You guys have talked in the past and I think you gave some of the numbers here, I just wanted to make sure that I understood what you were talking about before around produce deflation and FX, stock out, just any comments on those and how those impacted the organic growth rate in the quarter? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean, I talked about in my scripted portion that the produce deflation and the continued higher supplier shortages was about 60 basis points on revenue, but we also had Canadian FX and a little bit of additional drag at Albert's. And if you – they are a little bit intermingled, but just the Canadian FX and Albert's was about 100 basis points, supplier shortage is 60 basis points, so it's 160 basis points between the two roughly. Sean P. Naughton - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Okay. That's helpful color. And then just maybe on the gross margin as well, you gave Tony's was about 47 basis points and then you gave about three other numbers or three other categories. Were those all roughly equal as a component – or whether, or some of those more impactful than the other two categories? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Tony's was 47 basis points, fuel was 12 basis points, FX on a basis points was... Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Well, but he's talking on the gross margin side (38:45) Yes, so I mean I would say, Sean, in that respect, I mean – I would tell you that…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Scott Van Winkle of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. Thanks. First a follow up on a couple of other questions about the two new customers shipping in July. Just to make sure I have it clear, these customers were doing no business with UNFI either on natural organic or with Tony's, so they're incremental to all segments of the business? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: The answer is a little complicated. But both customers were doing some business with either company. But it's a significant amount of incremental business.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. So if they were doing a little bit of business, say, with Tony's, they're getting – Tony's is getting a lot more business as well as you're adding on the natural organic specialty side? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Excellent. Okay. And then, as we look at the Q3 growth rate by channel, kind of relative to what we saw in Q2 and obviously the channel shift we're seeing and expanding distribution in supermarket (41:16) explains independents and we saw the Whole Foods comps. But the deceleration in year-over-year growth that we see in the supermarket, obviously in Q2 you took a step down as the big currency hit from Canada as well as the Safeway Texas change, but this quarter, another deceleration. Is there anything incremental? I know currency is a little bit worse. Is it just a softer category environment or what was different in Q3 than Q2 and obviously we saw a lot of the stuff in Q2 as well. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Scott, I think, it just got softer.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I mean, I wish there was a silver bullet, everybody has been looking for it. We haven't found it. I think it's just got softer.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then when you talk about the improvement kind of going into the fourth quarter, I think modest improvement in growth we saw in the press release. Is that across all channels or is that more specific to one channel? Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: No. That's across all the channels. So we saw things start to pick up – I mean adjusting for the shift in Easter we saw things start to pick up towards the end of March, beginning of April. And as we got towards the end of April and continued into May, we've seen that. Now, we're still dealing with some of that. I mean, we still obviously will have the FX headwinds in the fourth quarter and we're still seeing some of the deflation challenges with Albert's. But as we look at the broadline business, we've seen a nice acceleration. And on a consolidated basis, we're probably in the 40 basis point, 50 basis point range without the new business being layered in yet.

Scott Van Winkle - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Thank you. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Karen Short of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I guess, just following up on an answer that you gave to Meredith's question. You indicated that you saw the slowdown. I think you said a while ago, I don't remember exactly what words you used or what timeframe you used, but yet you did continue to accelerate facility openings and square footage growth. So I guess the question I have is, in hindsight, was that the right decision because while you are as you said no more than 200 miles within 80% of the U.S. population, it's not totally clear that that population is shopping at retailer that's supplied by you. So can you maybe give some color on that. And then I guess the second question I would have as a follow up is do you have any flexibility on capacity if you needed to flex your capacity utilization? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, on the first question, Karen, I would tell you we 100% made the right decision because without the capacity, we can't take on new customers, and we knew that. And we would have gone at the same speed, and we would have built the capacity for the refrigerated space that we need for our fresh platform. These decisions are decisions that you make years in advance. And so if we saw a slowdown six months from now that ship has already sailed because the shovel is in the ground, we own the land, these projects are two years incoming. So it's not like you can shut it off on a dime. But the major point I want to try to make is it is 100% the right decision to invest in the buildings the way we have. Now, on the other side,…

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Yeah. You gave some very helpful metrics, I think, beginning of the call on that. I maybe follow up offline on that. But I guess, the second question I have is, can you maybe give a little color on the organic growth rate and say non-perishables versus Tony's and then on Tony's, I think Mark, you had said that, well now the number, the dollar amount that you gave on Tony's includes any SKUs, a product that you're now supplying out of your legacy UNFI DCs, but do you have an organic growth rate on Tony's versus an organic growth rate on non-perishables or legacy SKUs? Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Karen, I'm not sure. I can try to answer it offline. I'm not sure that I can – I'm not sure that I understand the question, but I don't have a breakout between the non-perishable. I have to – we have to cut it in different ways than we usually present things to answer that question. But I would tell you that to I think the second part of the question, there is not a significant amount of volume that is being served by Tony's at this point in time that was in legacy UNFI DCs or vice versa. To the extent that we're combining – we tend to be merging the loads versus having one DC or the other handle what was previously served by the other division. Does that help on the second part of your question?

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Yeah. That helps. I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of how much in terms of your organic growth rate, the slowdown is related. I mean, I can obviously do as a percent of sales, but it seems like there is a pretty meaningful deceleration in the legacy non-Tony's UNFI component of the business? Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: You mean, you're looking for us to break it up beyond the 6.7%. I guess, that's what I'm trying to understand – make sure I understand the question (48:48).

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah. Yeah. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Yeah. Well, beyond...

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Well beyond the 6.7% or like 5.9% for supermarkets, 3.2% for independents, and 9.8% for supernatural. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Okay. Sorry, Steven and I are both looking each other. I'm not sure, following the question. So I'll try to...

Karen F. Short - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

We can follow up offline, that's okay.. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Scott Mushkin of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

Hey guys. Thanks for taking my questions. So I wanted to look at the kind of the pricing issue. If we do – in our pricing surveys, we definitely show a lot of your customers price meaningfully above some of these people you mentioned Steve that are taking share. So I guess my question for you is, what can you do to help your customers price more effectively in the market? It's number one. And then my corollary to that question is, Wegmans which is a customer of yours, doesn't price meaningfully above the direct guys. And what's the difference between Wegmans and maybe the independents and Whole Foods? What's Wegmans doing differently that's putting them in a better position in the marketplace? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, on the first question, what can we do to help them on price, and there is really not a whole lot we can do to help them on price. What we can do is we can help to make sure they have the right items, right. So if a new retailer in this space carries three of the most popular organic cereals and they try to compete price for price on those three items (50:35) they can't win. But what we can do is we can make sure that they have the right highly distinctive SKUs that have a greater ingredient offering that's more differentiating within the geography that provide consumers something different. That's what we can provide and that's what will propel the independents forward over time other than a migration to perimeter. As it relates to Wegmans, I can't really comment on what any individual customer is doing. In the case of the Wegmans stores, I mean they're trying to satisfy a wide variety – and this is my opinion, not fact. They're trying to satisfy a wide variety of consumers just by the size of the store and the magnitude of the product offering.

Sean F. Griffin - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

I think also that there is a narrow assortment in some of the retailers that presently we're not playing with. We have an opportunity as well to work with the independents around innovation and local brands and that's something that we spend a lot of time and have deployed resources to put our independents, particularly, in a position to win there.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

And on the private label side, obviously Kroger is probably the 800 pound gorilla right now with their Simple Truth line and now targets moving them with Simply Balanced. I mean, is there something you can do for your operators or particularly the independents or maybe some of the regional supermarkets to help mimic what's going on in the private label area? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. We have actually a very robust private label program for independents. It grows 20% plus a year. It's one of the fastest growing organic non-GMO brands within the – in this space. And so we took great product for the independents to use to compete head-on with both of those brands.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

And then, I guess my next question and I'm trying to understand the numbers a little bit, is that the supernatural channel accelerated I believe just a smidge yet the biggest component of that I believe is Whole Foods and they clearly decelerated quite a bit. So I'm trying to square that. Also I know there were some kind of, you guys had a charge or something like that (53:12) out of the sales numbers last time. So I'm just trying to square that we don't have an inventory problem building up some place in the channel because the numbers seem to be go in different directions a little bit. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Go ahead, Mark. Go ahead. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: I was going to say, I mean, I would say just in the supernatural channel it's only Whole Foods, I mean, just as a point of clarification there. But, I mean, I don't know what when we had the adjustment last quarter what it would've done to the number ex that. But I would tell you that we saw some acceleration in our part of the business and again our quarter doesn't necessarily completely overlap with what they're seeing. So whether they were stronger in the center of the store or by virtue of the shift with what they reported versus where we're covering from that timeframe. I can't fully explain it, but we did see it pick up a little bit in this quarter. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You also get the benefit of new store openings as well as our continued rollout of prepared foods, fresh foods.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

To that. And then finally, Steve, on acquisitions, I mean you talked about the capacity you built out on the Tony's acquisition. I mean, is this an area of fresh, is this an area where we'd like to do more? It's not something you commented on, but I would think it must be. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Four sure.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

And what's your capacity to do it? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So we're going to look at M&A across ethnic/gourmet, we're going to look at M&A across fresh and M&A in Canada, and we have a tremendous capacity to do it. We've got a really strong pipeline. It's just a question of waiting for the right time, and make sure – making sure that we can buy it at the price because we typically would not overpay for a company, even if it was the most strategic company on earth. We got to pay a fair price. So I think that I am really excited and optimistic about where we are from an M&A perspective and the easiest way for us to really fully build out the fresh platform is through M&A.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

And balance sheet capacity, I think you have it... Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

... I mean, you are decently levered, not hugely levered, but you think you can go – where are you comfortable going to? And then I'll yield. Thank you. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I mean (55:36) we would historically go to around 3 times, where I think we ended the quarter at under 2 times. So I think we've got plenty of room on our balance sheet to do it.

Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks for taking my questions. Really appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Vincent Sinisi of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Vincent J. Sinisi - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking my question. I wanted to ask a little bit more kind of longer term here, regards to your sales force, I know you said you have over 1,000 sales associates and the first pressure this quarter that you guys had called out was the speed at which some of these products are being adopted, a channel (56:33) that you're not primarily serving, at this point. So is there anything that you can or maybe are or will be doing more from the sales force perspective to see kind of what you can do to get some of those channels, not your primary right now, but to let them know what you are doing more from an infrastructure as well as from the assortment standpoint? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean we have separated out a sales channel specifically for ethnic/gourmet for the simple fact that there are a lot of ethnic/gourmet retailers that we don't have a relationship with today. And so, we carved out that channel. We have a new sales force that specifically calls on them and that way we can really track our performance and we're very optimistic about our growth there. The same thing applies to fresh. We'll be building out our sales channel for fresh as we have the appropriate SKUs across the country. And if you look at our fastest growing customers, that's obviously where we're spending the most amount of time. And we were pretty fast to adapt, and we've done a lot of it already and we'll continue to do it. Fortunately, we have a lot of resources out in the field.

Sean F. Griffin - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

I think also that we do have opportunity as it relates to collaboration with respect to the selling teams that are in the field around thinking about the portfolio of companies within UNFI versus solely recommissioned. (58:22) So, we believe that there are some other opportunities there. Vincent J. Sinisi - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And just as a quick follow-up, in regards to the Tony's infrastructure, I know that, as you said in the past, that you continue to roll these products further across the system. Any updates this quarter just in terms of the distribution points that maybe since last quarter, can you give us a little bit of an update there? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean, we made a very conscious decision to be very proprietary about how we release that information because, as you might expect, there is a competitive part of that question, that we've just rather not talk about which DCs and when. But, you guys know the DCs that we've built with refrigerated capacity, and those are going to be the markets that have the greatest speed to market with its group of products. Vincent J. Sinisi - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. Fair enough. Thanks very much. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks. You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Kelly Bania of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Kelly A. Bania - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst

Hi. Good evening. I just wanted to follow up on the acceleration into the first couple of weeks of the fourth quarter. Just curious, if you could comment on how much of that is being driven by just a change in volume or if there's any change in price and I guess I ask because I was kind of surprised to see your inflation on a net basis accelerate sequentially, so particularly given some of the deflation in some of the produce that you mentioned, so just curious if it's any change in pricing there that we're seeing or if it was a volume pick-up and was – if there was a volume pick-up, was that in the core business or Tony's? Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Yeah. Kelly, and I would tell you that while we did see some deflation challenges with Albert's, given their portion to the overall business, it did not have a meaningful impact on our overall inflation number. And what we've seen in the fourth quarter, some of the increases that we saw from an inflationary standpoint in the third quarter were in place for a good part of the quarter. So, these aren't recent price increases, they sort of started in the March timeframe. So, I would tell you that what we're – barring some major changes when it gets around the data when we close the month, I would tell you that most of what we're seeing now is volume and not price in the first four weeks to five weeks of this quarter.

Kelly A. Bania - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. And then as we think about your comments about just trends in the center of the store clearly reflected in your core growth rate relative to some of the perimeter categories more reflected, I guess, by Tony's growth rate. Are you seeing that similar trend across all three channels? I guess, the mix of your business with those channels is different. But do you feel like that slowdown was comparable in the center store categories at a similar rate with all of your channels? Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Yeah. I mean I would say that we – it certainly appeared that way. I mean we didn't see anything that was noticeable; I mean there may have an instances with an individual customer. But when you look across the broad swath of customers in each channel, it certainly appeared that it was across all the channels.

Kelly A. Bania - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst

Okay. And then just lastly, if I can just squeeze in kind of one more big picture question, as you think about some of these retailers that have gained some share that primarily source direct, as you think about getting back to that kind of faster double-digit growth, do you think you need some other channels or parts of, say, the supermarket channels that have lagged in catering to this shift, whether it be either the drug channel or second tier supermarkets that haven't shifted towards natural organic, or perhaps dollar stores or mass market stores, do you need that – those other channels to maybe replace what has maybe eventually been lost to the direct sourcers of natural and organic? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I don't think so. I mean, the reality is we sell most of them to one degree or another. I think when you look at our capabilities on Internet fulfillment, which is pretty stunning, we expect some pretty spectacular growth in that channel over the next couple of years. And again, in my opinion, as I look out over the next year or year-and-a-half, there's been this massive migration on – and it's just not mass and drug, it's convenience store, it's so many points of retail. We were looking at a – an organic item here in the room that came from a hard goods retailer...

Sean F. Griffin - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

Home goods. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Home goods, home goods. And so, I believe that we're going to get to a point where a lot of these retailers, non-conventional, in other words, non-conventional organic and natural retailers, who have run to add SKUs, are going to wake up one day and say, wait a second, these items, they don't move as fast as we'd like. And so, I think that, a lot of those SKUs are ultimately going to find their way back to UNFI. I think, people are reacting to what they think is customer demand and they're placing the SKUs into stores and retail points that if you would have asked us five years ago, whether 7-Eleven would have a – an organic protein bar, we would have said it's probably not going to happen. But, will there be enough demand to keep the products in those types of retail points, I think that the answer is probably not and we will get an influx of the items back to within our distribution network. When it happens? I'm not sure. But I believe that is what will take place.

Kelly A. Bania - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our final question comes from Andrew Wolf of BB&T Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: Thanks. Just want to follow up on the sales cadence again. So, Mark, you said it's 40 bps to 50 bps. Is that off the 6.7% internal sales growth for the...? (01:05:36) Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: Yes. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. And I just want to make – it hit the bottom early April, so it's been (01:05:43). Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: I mean, adjusting for where Easter shifted, yes. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. Mark E. Shamber - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Senior VP: So, we had to adjust our numbers to reflect having Easter earlier and having a strong week and a good week there, and a little bit of softness in the April. So, you take those weeks into the mix and adjust accordingly and it tended to be the end of March, beginning of April. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: All right. So, if I were to plug that 7%, let's say, into my model, get to the higher end of sales and to get to the higher end of the implied Q4 EPS, looks like operating profit would turn up and still on the lower internal sales than you guys have been running. So, what explains that? Have you adjusted operations more towards a current high-single-digit internal sales growth, where before it was geared to double-digit, or something else is going on in the gross profit line? I'm just trying to understand – it's good thing, but I'm trying to understand why that would be. Mark E.…

Sean F. Griffin - Chief Operating Officer

Analyst

We're not going to help you there, Andy. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. All right. Worth a shot. Could you tell us what it is – who gets – is it – what's getting displaced? Is it is direct getting displaced or is it other distributors or another distributor? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's other distributors. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: And lastly, Steve, just as you want to take the strategy national, obviously, this seems like a good incremental win and good news, but what – in your mind, what would be a tipping point kind of announcement in terms of size? And also, I just wanted to ask you about profitability. Even on the $100 million, is that something where it's incrementally at the corporate rate and how this business will trend? Is it something, if you do get some big wins down the road, either in existing infrastructure or with (01:08:56) M&A assisted, what the profitability looks like? Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean it'd be hard for me to comment on the profitability of any one customer. I'm not sure that will be fair to talk about that. I think that tipping point is to continue to slowly but surely win new pieces of business in the geographies in which we've built the capacity. And on the second side is to make the right acquisitions that we can fold in to the buildings that we built the capacity for. And so, I think, those are the two areas that I would kind of refer to as the tipping points. Our Albert's business, we've converted to run up underneath our Tony's fresh platform, that's now completed. And so now, we have a produce protein, cheese and added value fresh product offering in a large swath of the United States. And I would look forward to additional customer wins and I would look forward to some pretty interesting M&A within the space. Andrew P. Wolf - BB&T Capital Markets: Great. Thank you. Steven L. Spinner - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Thank you everybody for joining us today for our third quarter 2015. We look forward to speaking with you again for a conclusion of our fiscal 2015 and our guidance of fiscal 2016. Thanks and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.

United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) Q3 2015 Earnings Date, Estimates &… | Earnings Labs