Earnings Transcript for JVA - Q3 Fiscal Year 2015

Executives: Andrew Gordon - President and CEO

Analysts: Michael Solomon - Raymond James Chris Reynolds - Neuberger Berman Anthony Chiarenza - Key Equity Investors

Operator: Good morning everyone and thank you for participating in today’s Conference Call to discuss Coffee Holding Company’s Financial Results for the Fiscal Third Quarter Ended July 31, 2015. Joining us today is Coffee Holding’s President and CEO, Andrew Gordon. Following his remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Before we go further, I would like to make the following remarks concerning forward-looking statements. All statements in this conference call, other than historical facts, are forward-looking statements. The words anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, intend, guidance, confidence, target, project, and other similar expressions typically are used to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and may involve and subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Coffee Holding Company’s, business, financial condition, and operating results, which include, but are not limited to, the risk factors and other qualifications contained in Coffee Holding Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other reports filed by Coffee Holding Company, with the Securities and Exchange Commission to which your attention is directed. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Coffee Holding Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and will be available for replay through September 22, 2015 starting later today. It will be accessible via the replay number provided in today’s earnings release. With that, I will now turn the call over to the President and Chief Executive Officer of Coffee Holding Company, Mr. Andrew Gordon. Please go ahead, sir.

Andrew Gordon: Thank you for my introduction and good morning everyone. As you saw yesterday evening, we issued a press release announcing the results for our fiscal third quarter ending July 31, 2015. Our fiscal third quarter represents the first clean look at our core business without speculative trading activities. This is also our third consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales growth despite continued headwinds in the overall coffee market and commodity pricing. While the top-line growth was modest, we returned to profitability as expected. Operationally, our three business segments remain strong, with growth across specialty green coffee distribution and sales of private label and branded products. Our new channels of distribution in the Texas market for our Café Caribe label and expected continued growth in that market, has now made this the second most important marketing area for us for our Café Caribe label, surpassing our distribution efforts in the Chicago mid-west market and trailing only our distribution in the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania marketing areas. We also remain on target to hit our 2015 goal of 56.1 million pounds of coffee sold, which represents a 4% increase from 2014. Now before commenting further on operations, I’d like to provide a quick overview of our business for new comers to the Coffee Holding story as well as our financial results for the fiscal third quarter. Our business operates across three primary divisions, wholesale green coffee sales, private label and branded products. In our green coffee business, we sell unroasted green coffee beans to roasters and coffee shop operators of all sizes throughout the U.S., Australia, Canada and China. Specialty coffee is widely considered the fastest growing category in the coffee industry and we have roughly 115 different high-end quality Arabica specialty coffee offerings for our over 300 accounts. In our private label business, we roast, blend and package coffee for over 30 different private labels that wholesalers and retailers then sell as their own brands. It’s an ideal service for grocers and retail stores that want to sell their own coffee label without entering the coffee manufacturing business. Our high quality coffee enables these retail chains to provide coffee that’s equivalent to major national brands at a lower price point. And finally, our branded coffee business

Operator: Thank you. At this time we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Solomon with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Solomon: Thanks Andy for taking the call. My question is regarding the tea. You didn’t mention any sales of the tea business. Can you tell us what’s going on?

Andrew Gordon: Yes, Michael. The tea business was rolled out in this quarter and it is progressing a little slower than one would have hoped. But given the timing of -- the seasonal timing of it and trying to establish new product line into customers when many are on vacation, we believe that the fourth quarter will see much greater results in this area.

Michael Solomon: And you mentioned -- do you think the margins, the normalized margins for the business is going to be like 12% based on…

Andrew Gordon: I believe we should be looking at a total gross profit margin of roughly 10 to 11 points, yes, on the overall -- before SG&A.

Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Reynolds with Neuberger Berman. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Reynolds: Just a general question about the private label business, it seems like that could be a category that could have an above average growth given how expensive some of the premium coffee offerings like a Starbucks and others would be. Is that an opportunity for more pricing and growth or is that not an accurate observation?

Andrew Gordon: It’s a fairly accurate observation. We continue to view private label with optimism. However, as you and I have met in the past and as I mentioned to you, we look at opportunities and try to be selective. We’re not willing to do business for anything less than our targeted margins. And that does in some instances limit who we can attempt to provide private label for. But we’ve seen growth in this area. And we will be picking up new customers in this category for the fourth quarter.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Anthony Chiarenza with Key Equity Investors. Please proceed with your question.

Anthony Chiarenza: My question is on the trading program. I am new to the Company and I want to try to understand how you scaled it back. Previously you were actually doing some speculative trading and now you’ve gone down to more of a hedging program. Or can you just provide some explanation please?

Andrew Gordon: That’s a fairly accurate assessment. In the past there would be positions out there which we felt would be opportunistic for us to capitalize on market moves. Given that we’ve had 30 years plus experience in the business, we felt with the recent volatility in the green coffee market due to the change in the trading platform from open outcry to commodity algorithm and black box type fund business through the computers, we’ve scaled it back to more of a one to one correspondence business to hedges.

Anthony Chiarenza: And you don’t anticipate any change to that; it’s really just going to be a hedging business, so like a lock-in inventory or lock-in spreads, as you buy something and expect to sell it over the next few months or so?

Andrew Gordon: Correct, unless the market provides us a unique opportunity where we can acquire an additional inventory at a much, much lower price when we -- that we believe that we could sell it at, we anticipate being more of a one to one correspondence hedges to realize business.

Anthony Chiarenza: The other thing is you’re a little bit concentrated in terms of your sales. Is one of the main objective is to get more diversified as again as one customer is a significant amount of your sales?

Andrew Gordon: Correct. Obviously, nobody likes concentration but in this case when you have a customer this big and who is also -- has certain panache in the market, we don’t believe that this is a negative but obviously we would like to broaden our overall customer base to get this concentration less than 50%. And that is definitely an achievable goal over the next several months.

Operator: At this time, I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Andrew Gordon for closing comments.

Andrew Gordon: Thank you. Thank you and thanks to everyone for joining the call. I want to thank our hardworking team of employees and we look forward to speaking with our investors when we report our fiscal fourth quarter results next year.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day.