Balchem Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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July 26, 2024

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Balchem Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Martin Bangston, Chief Financial Officer.

Operator

Thank you, Martin. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call this morning to discuss the results of Balchem Corporation for the quarter ending June 30, 2024. My name is Martin Bengtsson, Chief Financial Officer, and hosting this call with me is Ted Harris, our Chairman, President and CEO. Following the advice of our counsel, auditors and the SEC, at this time, I would like to read our forward looking statement. Statements made in today's call that are not historical facts are considered forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

We can give no assurance that the expectations reflected in forward looking statements will prove correct and various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations, including risks and factors identified in Balchem's most recent Form 10 ks, 10 Q and 8 ks reports. The company assumes no obligation to update these forward looking statements. Today's call and commentary also include non GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the reconciliations in our earnings release for further details. I will now turn the call over to Ted Harris, our Chairman, President and CEO.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Martin. Good morning, and welcome to our conference call. This morning, we reported solid second quarter financial results with growth in sales, record earnings from operations and record adjusted EBITDA. I am particularly pleased with the excellent results within our Human Nutrition and Health segment, which once again delivered strong sales growth and record earnings. In addition, I am very pleased with the strong results within our Specialty Products segment, which also delivered strong sales growth and record earnings.

Speaker 2

Our consolidated revenues of $234,000,000 were higher by 1.2% versus the prior year, with the strong growth in human nutrition and health and specialty products being partially offset by a decline in animal nutrition and health. Our gross margin dollars grew 7.3% and we expanded our gross margin percentage by 210 basis points to 35.5 percent. Earnings from operations of $46,000,000 were higher by 6 0.9% versus the prior year quarter. And we delivered record quarterly adjusted EBITDA of $62,000,000 an increase of 5% with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.6 percent of sales, up 90 basis points from the prior year. Our 2nd quarter net income of $32,000,000 an increase of 6.5 percent resulted in earnings per share of $0.98 on a GAAP basis.

Speaker 2

On an adjusted basis, our 2nd quarter non GAAP net earnings of $36,000,000 an increase of 3.3 percent resulted in earnings per share of $1.09 on a non GAAP basis. Cash flows from operations were $45,000,000 for the Q2 of 2024 with quarterly free cash flow of $38,000,000 Overall, a solid quarter for Balchem with performance that highlights the strength and resilience of our business model. Before passing the call back to Martin to cover the financial results in more detail, I would like to make a few comments about the overall market environment and what we are seeing. Over the last 4 quarters or so, we have seen a gradual stabilization of demand and customers returning to more normalized order patterns after the volatility we experienced in 2022 and the early part of 2023. When we look across our portfolio of businesses, we are seeing excellent performance in our Human Nutrition and Health segment, led by our Minerals and Nutrients business where we continue to see strong end consumer demand for our unique portfolio of minerals, nutrients and vitamins and steady demand for our food systems.

Speaker 2

Our Animal Nutrition and Health segment is going through a challenging time along with the broader animal feed additives market. We believe we have bottomed out here in the first half of twenty twenty four and expect a modest improvement in the second half of twenty twenty four compared to the first half on improving dairy economics and the early contribution from a new product launch. For our Specialty Products segment, the primary business is our Performance Gases business, which continues to perform well in a stable market and we expect this to continue. From an overall Balchem perspective, I am very pleased with our market positions and value propositions which have enabled us to maneuver through these volatile times over the last few years. In fact, this quarter represents the 20th consecutive quarter where Balchem has delivered quarterly year over year growth in adjusted EBITDA despite all of the turmoil experienced in global markets over the last 5 years.

Speaker 2

That is quite an accomplishment. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire Balchem team for their exceptional performance and contributions towards a significant achievement. Thank you all very much. Additionally, I am excited to share that in May of this year Balchem launched a new product into the market, Optifolin Plus, which is a patented choline enriched bioactive reduced folate ingredient that supports cellular health at all stages of life. Optifolent Plus is biologically active, which means that is readily available for transport and use in the human body and tissues, making Optifolent Plus an excellent choice to meet vitamin B9 recommended requirements.

Speaker 2

This product launch

Speaker 1

will

Speaker 3

add to

Speaker 2

our existing offering of minerals, nutrients and vitamins and enable us to bring even more value to our customers, while at the same time supporting our vision of making the world a healthier place. And with that, I'm now going to turn the call back over to Martin to go through the 2nd quarter consolidated financial results for the company and the results for each of our business segments. Martin?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ted. As Ted mentioned, overall, the 2nd quarter was a solid quarter for Balchem with sales growth, record earnings from operations and record adjusted EBITDA. Our 2nd quarter net sales of $234,000,000 were 1.2% higher than prior year, driven by strong performance in both our Human Nutrition and Health and Specialty Products segments. Our 2nd quarter gross margin dollars of $83,000,000 were up 7.3% compared to the prior year, and our gross margin percent was 35.5 percent of sales, up 2 10 basis points compared to prior year. The increase was primarily due to a favorable mix and decreases in certain manufacturing input costs.

Speaker 1

Consolidated operating expenses for the Q2 were $37,000,000 as compared to $35,000,000 in the prior year. The increase was primarily due to net favorable impact in prior year from adjustments to transaction costs and the impact of restructuring related impairment charges, as well as higher charges related to outside services this year. GAAP earnings from operations for the Q2 were $46,000,000 an increase of 6.9% compared to the prior year. On an adjusted basis, as detailed in our earnings release this morning, non GAAP earnings from operations of $55,000,000 were up 4.2% compared to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA of $62,000,000 grew 5% compared to prior year, with an adjusted EBITDA margin rate of 26.6%.

Speaker 1

Interest expense for the Q2 was $4,000,000 a decrease of $900,000 compared to the prior year, driven primarily by lower outstanding borrowings. We continue to use our strong cash flows to pay down debt and reduced our debt by $35,000,000 in the 2nd quarter and ended up the quarter with a net debt of $203,000,000 with an overall leverage ratio on a net debt basis of 0.9. The effective tax rates for the 2nd quarters of 20242023 were 22.2% 21.6% respectively. The increase in the effective tax rate from the prior year was primarily due to lower tax benefits from stock based compensation and certain higher state taxes, partially offset by certain lower foreign taxes. Consolidated net income closed the quarter at $32,000,000 up 6.5% from the prior year.

Speaker 1

This quarterly income translated into diluted net earnings per share of $0.98 an increase of $0.05 compared to the prior year. On an adjusted basis, our 2nd quarter adjusted net earnings were $36,000,000 an increase of 3.3 percent from the prior year, which translated to $1.09 per diluted share. Cash flows from operations were $45,000,000 with free cash flow of $38,000,000 and we closed out the quarter with $64,000,000 of cash on the balance sheet. As we look at the 2nd quarter from a segment perspective, for the Q2, our human nutrition and health segment generated sales of $148,000,000 an increase of 9% from the driven primarily by higher sales within the minerals and nutrients business. Our Human Nutrition and Health segment delivered record quarterly earnings from operations of $33,000,000 an increase of 21.3% compared to the prior year.

Speaker 1

This was driven by the aforementioned higher sales, a favorable mix and certain lower manufacturing input costs, partially offset by higher operating expenses. 2nd quarter adjusted earnings from operations for this segment were $37,000,000 an increase of 17.6 percent. We were very pleased with the overall performance of our Human Nutrition and Health segment, delivering strong sales and record earnings from operations. We continue to see strong demand in our minerals and nutrients business and a more normalized demand picture in our food and beverage business. Our Animal Nutrition and Health segment generated quarterly sales of $50,000,000 a decrease of 19.2% compared to the prior year.

Speaker 1

The decrease was primarily driven by lower sales in both the monogastric and ruminant species markets. Animal Nutrition and Health delivered earnings from operations of $3,000,000 a decrease of 64.9 percent from the prior year. The decrease was primarily due to the aforementioned lower sales, partially offset by certain lower manufacturing input costs. 2nd quarter adjusted earnings from operations for this segment were $3,000,000 a decrease of 61.1 percent. As we've shared in earlier calls, our Animal Nutrition and Health segment along with a broader animal feed additives market has been going through a tough period over the last few quarters.

Speaker 1

We've shared earlier that the European animal feed market continues to show relatively soft market demand and continued competition from low cost imports flooding the market. And the North American dairy market has gone through a period of low U. S. Milk and milk protein prices impacting demand for our rumen protected encapsulated nutrients. More recently, we've seen a stabilization in European demand and an improvement in dairy economics as U.

Speaker 1

S. Milk and milk protein prices have started to improve. And while the market demand has not yet returned to healthy levels, we do expect the second half of twenty twenty four to be modestly better than the first half. We're also pleased with the early interest in a recently launched next generation rumen protected product that we believe will further support the second half of the year. Our Specialty Products segment delivered quarterly sales of $35,000,000 an increase of 7.2% compared to the prior year, primarily due to higher sales in the Performance Gases business, but also supported by higher plant nutrition sales.

Speaker 1

Specialty Products delivered record earnings from operations of $11,000,000 an increase of 20.8% versus the prior year, primarily driven by the aforementioned higher sales and certain lower manufacturing input costs, partially offset by higher operating expenses. 2nd quarter adjusted earnings from operations for this segment were $12,000,000 an increase of 17.1%. We're very pleased with the performance of Specialty Products in the Q2, both from a sales growth and margin perspective, resulting in record earnings from operations and expect demand to remain healthy as the year progresses. So overall, the 2nd quarter was another solid quarter for Balchem. I'm now going to turn the call back over to Ted for some closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Martin. Once again, we are very pleased with the solid financial results reported earlier this morning. At a consolidated level, we continue to show an ability to deliver results in a variety of market conditions, given our strong market positions and our value added portfolio of products, and we remain confident in the long term growth outlook for Balchem as a company. I will now hand the call back over to Martin, who will open up the call for questions. Martin?

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ted. And just one quick correction, I mentioned non GAAP earnings from operations were $55,000,000 I should have said $51,000,000 So just let that be corrected as we move forward. So this now concludes the formal portion of the conference. At this point, we will open up the conference for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Thank you. Our first question is from Kyle May with Sidoti and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning, everyone. Ted and Martin, congratulations on a great quarter.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Kyle.

Speaker 3

I wanted to start with the new product, the optifoland that you mentioned. Just curious if maybe you can expand on that and maybe talk about your expectations for the new product and maybe how we should think about revenue generation or the potential market opportunity there?

Speaker 2

Yes, sure, Kyle. We really are excited about Optifolone Plus. It's from our perspective a breakthrough innovation that we have developed in partnership with Aprofol, which is a Swiss life science company. It is patented, choline enriched, bioactive and it's a reduced folate ingredient that supports cellular health at all stages of life. So unlike folic acid, Optifolins Plus is biologically active, which means that it's readily available for transport and use in the body, making it a great enhanced replacement for basic folic acid.

Speaker 2

And so the target market here is really the folic acid market, which is a huge market. It's probably about $1,500,000,000 in size and in total. And the opportunity that we have, not unlike the opportunity we have in so many of our other products, is to penetrate that very, very large market with a better product, obviously more expensive product, but it is a better product. And so the target market here is to increase that sliver of the market that's using a reduced folate, a biologically active product to replace folic acid. So our goal is to take a percentage of that market.

Speaker 2

And we view this as an opportunity that is $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 of opportunity over the course of the next 3, 4 years or so. And maybe that's kind of under clubbing the opportunity given the market size is so large, but we feel like that's a realistic goal for this new product that we've launched in the marketplace. So we're excited about

Speaker 3

it. Excellent. That's exciting. My next question is around margins. This is an area you guys continue to improve on.

Speaker 3

I was wondering if maybe you could expand a little bit more and kind of help us understand is this I know you mentioned several different factors, but

Speaker 2

is it

Speaker 3

lower input costs? Is it better efficiencies by the company? Any color there? And then also, as you're thinking about the back half of the year, can you continue to squeeze more out of this or have we kind of hit a peak?

Speaker 1

Yes, let me take that one, Kyle. I think just taking a step back first and what we've said in the past, we talked about sort of how our margins got squeezed a little bit in the inflationary period, right, as raw materials were going up and we were passing that through kind of dollar for dollar, but just from a margin percent perspective, they got squeezed and we were sort of saying that we expected that to come back and return as we got into more deflationary period and that's exactly what we've seen. So now we've seen raws come down. We're passing some price back to customers, but not necessarily 100% of it. So you're seeing that uplift in margins.

Speaker 1

And you have a little bit of a timing benefit there, right, of raws coming down prior to you passing things back to your customers. So you get a little bit of a boost in that margin from that timing lag. That being said, we have also seen a favorable mix in our portfolio. We have our minerals and nutrients within our Human Nutrition and Health segment doing very, very well at the moment. That is also a higher margin part of our portfolio.

Speaker 1

We're seeing specialty products coming back doing very well, which is a higher margin part of our portfolio. And while we obviously don't like that Animal Nutrition and Health is going through a tougher time, that is relatively speaking a lower margin part of our portfolio. So that being down also supports a favorable portfolio mix from a margin percentage perspective. As we move forward, I think we are we'll see some moderation in the margin rates as we give some of this raw material deflation back to our customers. So pricing is negative for us.

Speaker 1

We gave back price in the quarter. We gave back price in prior quarter and I expect us to continue to give back some price here in the next quarter. So that will moderate the rate a little bit and also as we'll see A and H, our animal nutrition segment come back a little bit, that will moderate the margins a little bit as well as they are dilutive to the overall. So I think going forward, they will moderate a little bit, but probably stabilize. That's something that's at or above historic rates.

Speaker 3

Excellent. That's great. And last one, Martin, you had mentioned the new product launch in Animal Nutrition and Health. Is there anything else you could tell us about that product in the second half of the year?

Speaker 1

Yes. We sort of introduced it. It's an encapsulated rumen protected amino acid. There is an established market for that today already and we've sort of come up with a next generation product to gain share in an established market there, which we think we're very well positioned to do. So we have just started selling it.

Speaker 1

And we'll sort of be ramping that up a little bit as we go through the year and as we ramp up production and inventory levels, etcetera, we'll start going harder after it. But if it should contribute a couple of 1,000,000 here in the second half of the year and then be more significant in 2025 for us.

Operator

Our next question is from Ram Selvaraju with H. C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your question. Thank you

Speaker 4

very much for taking my questions. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2

Yes, Rob. Thanks for calling in.

Speaker 4

So with respect again to the Optifoliant product, just two things there. Firstly, I was wondering if you could give us more of a sense of how many additional potential new product franchises might come out of this technology platform or this technological approach that you use to formulate Optifol? And if you can confirm that you're using some of the same technological innovations that power OptiMSM?

Speaker 2

So there is a similarity there in name with OptiMSM, but it's really in name only. So I would say that the technology there is completely different. Mentioned in my response to Kyle, this was an external innovation that we did with a partner. And so it is unique technology. But choline plays quite an important part of this innovation.

Speaker 2

It's, as I said, choline enriched and choline plays an important role in the solubility of this product, which is inherently an issue with other reduced folate. So we feel that it is well aligned with our leadership position in Colleen where we're leveraging that capability and technology, but it is very unique to the OptiMSM technology and really there's no connection there. But the fact that choline does have this hygroscopic nature to it, which can be a problem in certain applications, but also in this case a real benefit, I do think there is an opportunity for this type of technology that's being used for this new innovation to be used and developed into additional franchises. Obviously, that's a ways away, but Optifolent Plus is, I think, kind of the first innovation that's using this choline enrichment and there could be others. But let's get this one.

Speaker 2

It's been launched. There is actually a product on the store shelves already incorporating OptiFolent Plus. So we're excited about that and let's see how this one goes.

Speaker 4

And then with respect to the key franchises, the key brands that you're developing within the HNH space, can you give us a sense now of where you expect those to shake out in terms of relative size, one versus the others? Clearly, vidicholine has been an important contributor for a lengthy period of time. But now you've got K2 Vital, you've got OPTI MSM, you've got OPTIFOLIN plus So maybe just give us a sense of which of these you think are likely to be the most significant contributors going forward? And maybe this is a question for Martin as well. As we go forward, when do you think perhaps you might start to give us more granularity and break out the individual sales of some of these key brands in future reporting periods?

Speaker 2

So let me go first just kind of relative size. Today, our line of as we brand them Albion Minerals is the largest opportunity.

Operator

And a

Speaker 2

little bit like what I talked about for Optifolent Plus relative to a very large folic acid market of $1,500,000,000 or so, the broader minerals market is massive, just like that. And so I think that while our minerals business, our chelated minerals business, our Albion line of minerals is our largest today, I think it also will be our largest in the future because we have a very, very significant opportunity ahead of us to continue to eat away at that inorganic mineral, less bioavailable massive mineral market. So I think that position will remain our largest going forward. The choline business and the K2 business, I would say, are kind of very similar sizes. And I think also have similar market opportunities, maybe the choline having even more addressable market opportunity than K2 because of its kind of broad therapeutic category benefit.

Speaker 2

So while they're similar size today, I would think in 5, 10 years, our choline franchise would probably be larger than a K2 because of again the breadth of the therapeutic category. So that's where I would rank those market opportunities and market sizes. The chelated minerals are Albion branded products, largest today, continue to be the largest. K2 and vidicholine, the same today, but vidicholine has a bigger market growth opportunity long term. So I would expect that to be number 2 and K2 to be number 3 long term.

Speaker 1

Yes. And I think, Ram, in terms of breaking them out, we have no plans at the moment to do that. Obviously, there's some commercial sensitivity in breaking that out by brand in terms of competition and then knowing exactly what you have and don't in the markets. So no plans at this point.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then lastly, with respect to the effective tax rate, Martin, again, as is typical, I'm just looking for some additional granularity, additional guidance on what you expect the effective tax rate to look like in the second half of this year and if we should expect it to be in line with what you reported for the Q2 or if you expect it to trend a bit higher? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes, I mean, we're sort of just below 22% year to date. And I previously said I was expecting it to land somewhere between 22% to 23 and I still think that and we're probably going to be closer to the 22. So I think 22 plus or minus a little bit is probably a good estimate based on where we are at this point in time in the year.

Speaker 4

Thank you very much and congrats on all the progress.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Thanks a lot, Ram. Appreciate

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the floor back over to Ted Harris for any closing comments.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Paul. Once again, thank you very much for joining our call today. We really appreciate your time and we look forward to reporting out our Q3 2024 results in October. In the meantime, we will be participating in the H. C.

Speaker 2

Wainwright Annual Global Investment Conference in New York City on September 9, and so we hope to see some of you there. Thanks so much.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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Balchem Q2 2024
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