Earnings call transcript: Vita Coco Q4 2024 beats expectations despite stock dip

Vita Coco Company Inc. (NASDAQ: COCO) reported its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings, surpassing analysts’ expectations with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.11 against a forecast of $0.07. The company also exceeded revenue forecasts, reporting $127 million compared to the expected $120.41 million. Despite the positive earnings report, Vita Coco’s stock fell by 12.46% in pre-market trading, closing at $38.16 the previous day. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains excellent financial health with a "GREAT" overall score, supported by strong profitability metrics and robust cash flow generation.

Key Takeaways

• Vita Coco’s Q4 2024 EPS and revenue both exceeded analyst expectations.
• The stock price fell by 12.46% pre-market despite strong earnings results.
• The company reported a significant growth in coconut water sales but faced challenges with private label sales.
• Vita Coco’s 2025 outlook includes strategic product launches and expansion plans.

Company Performance

Vita Coco demonstrated robust performance in 2024, with net sales increasing by 5% to $516 million. The company’s flagship product, Vita Coco coconut water, saw a 10% rise in net sales, highlighting its strong market position. However, private label sales decreased by 10%, indicating potential challenges in this segment. The company maintained its leadership in the coconut water market, particularly in the U.S. and Germany. InvestingPro analysis reveals impressive returns on equity of 27% and invested capital of 26%, demonstrating efficient capital allocation. The company’s strong balance sheet shows more cash than debt, with a healthy current ratio of 3.28.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $127 million for Q4 2024, exceeding forecasts.
• EPS: $0.11, surpassing the expected $0.07.
• Full-year net income: $56 million, up from $47 million in 2023.
• Gross profit: $199 million, marking an $18 million increase year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $84 million, representing 16% of net sales.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Vita Coco’s Q4 2024 EPS of $0.11 beat the forecasted $0.07 by approximately 57%. The revenue of $127 million also surpassed the expected $120.41 million, marking a positive surprise for investors. This performance reflects the company’s successful strategies in boosting coconut water sales and improving gross margins.

Market Reaction

Despite the strong earnings report, Vita Coco’s stock experienced a 12.46% decline in pre-market trading. This drop comes after the stock closed at $38.16, near its 52-week high of $40.32. The decline could be attributed to investor concerns about the company’s future growth prospects and challenges in the private label segment. Based on InvestingPro’s Fair Value analysis, the stock appears fairly valued at current levels. Notably, COCO has delivered an impressive 73% return over the past year, despite trading at relatively high multiples with a P/E ratio of 34.6 and EV/EBITDA of 26.4. For deeper insights into COCO’s valuation and growth potential, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively to InvestingPro subscribers.

Outlook & Guidance

For 2025, Vita Coco projects net sales between $555 million and $570 million, with expected gross margins of 35-37%. The company plans to focus on new product launches, such as Vita Coco Treats and PowerLift, and expand its foodservice channel. These initiatives aim to drive mid-to-high teen branded growth, despite potential impacts from private label service area reductions.

Executive Commentary

Mike Kirban, Executive Chairman, stated, "We believe coconut water is becoming a household staple across the globe." CEO Martin Roper added, "We have strong brands and a solid balance sheet and we are well positioned to drive category and brand growth." These comments underscore the company’s confidence in its market position and growth strategies.

Risks and Challenges

• Decline in private label sales could impact overall growth.
• Supply chain disruptions may affect production capabilities.
• Market saturation and competition could hinder expansion efforts.
• Economic uncertainties could impact consumer spending on premium beverages.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s category growth potential and inventory improvements. Management addressed concerns regarding Walmart (NYSE:WMT) shelf resets and provided insights into the hydration messaging strategy and new product lines like PowerLift and Treats.

Full transcript - Vita Coco Company Inc (COCO) Q4 2024:

Conference Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Vita Coco Company Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

To withdraw your question, press 11 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. John Mills, Managing Partner with ICR. Please go ahead.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR: Thank you, and welcome to the Vita Coco Company fourth quarter twenty twenty four and full year twenty twenty four earnings results conference call. Today’s call is being recorded. With us are Mr. Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer and Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer. By now, everyone should have access to the company’s fourth quarter earnings release issued earlier today.

This information is available on the Investor Relations section of the Vita Coco Company’s website at investors.thevidacococompany.com. Also on the website, there is an accompanying presentation of our commercial and financial performance results. Certain comments made on this call include forward looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs concerning future events and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward looking statements. Please refer to today’s press release and other filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward looking statements made today.

Also during the call today, we will use some non GAAP financial measures as we describe our business performance. Our SEC filings as well as the earnings press release and supplementary earnings presentation provide reconciliations of the non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and are available on our website as well. And with that, it is my pleasure to now turn the call over to Mr. Mike Kirban, our Co Founder and Executive Chairman.

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four financial results and our expectations for our performance in calendar year 2025.

: I want to start

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: off by thanking all of our colleagues across the globe for our continued strong performance and for their commitment to the Vitacocco company and to our mission of creating ethical, sustainable, better for you beverages that uplift our communities and do right by our planet. Coconut

: water remains

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: one of the fastest growing categories in the beverage aisle, delivering double digit volume growth in our major markets, which has resulted in 2024 being another record year for the category and for our company in full year net sales, net income and adjusted EBITDA. We believe this reflects the success of our initiatives to drive growth in the category through growing households and increasing occasions. In The U. S. In 2024, we estimate that the coconut water category grew in household adoption by 9% and household buy rate by over 7% according to Numerator, reflecting very strong consumer interest in the category, which we believe is related to favorable demographic trends and increasing interest in health and wellness, desire for clean ingredients and growing demand for functional beverages.

For the full year 2024, according to SIRKANA, the Vitacocco brand grew 9% in retail dollars in The U. S. And grew 21% in The UK, while the category grew 1419% respectively. As we’ve discussed, we were hampered in the summer by significant inventory shortages due to limited ocean container availability, which limited our third quarter shipments and negatively affected our service levels. We believe this resulted in the slowdown in branded scan growth in the third quarter, which has since strongly rebounded as inventory levels have improved.

Both our depletion trends and our scan trends accelerated during the fourth quarter with U. S. Turkana growing showing 9% branded retail dollar growth even though we chose not to repeat a major club promotion from 2023. This acceleration has continued and even accelerated year to date with U. S.

Branded scan growth of 20% for the last thirteen week period ending twenty sixteentwenty twenty five. This strong momentum and much stronger inventory position than last year leads me to be very optimistic for brand new growth in 2025. In addition to the very healthy Vita Coco retail growth, we’ve seen strong scan growth for private label coconut water. During the fourth quarter, we saw our private label coconut water shipment trends improve as we put the supply chain challenges of last summer behind us. I believe that our private label business remains a strategically important aspect of our business from supply chain perspective and that it allows us to benefit more fully from our category growth initiatives.

In 2024, our commercial initiatives including emphasis behind Vitacocco MultiPacks, Vitacocco Farmers Organic and Vitacocco Juice proved to be strong growth drivers. I expect these initiatives to continue to drive growth into 2025. One highlight was that Vita Coco Juice continued to gain share at retail with U. S. Scans increasing 42% for the full year, outgrowing the can segment of the category by 2x.

The introduction of our Vita Coco coconut water one liter pack into a key convenience store chain has also been incredibly successful and we believe that it is now one of the highest performing items in that retailer’s juice store. We believe the fact that consumers are showing a desire for larger packages for on the go consumption is an encouraging sign for our long term growth trajectory. Vita Coco Treats, a refreshingly sweet and delicious coconut milk based beverage is beginning to rollout nationally with very strong retailer distribution commitments and the addition of a new flavor, orange and cream to provide a better billboard and more options for consumers in search of a midday treat. We’re excited about the initial reception for Vita Coco treats and for the future of innovative coconut milk based beverages, which create an indulgent occasion that could offer us yet another path for long term growth. In 2025, we’ll continue our occasion based marketing to tap into the versatility of coconut water to drive adoption among new consumers and give existing ones more reasons to stock up on Vitacocco.

Our initiatives will continue to focus on key occasions like smoothies, cocktails and greens amongst others. But new for 2025, we expect to place more emphasis on active hydration, attempting to position Vita Coco as the go to alternative to traditional sports drinks, thanks to its naturally occurring electrolytes. As consumers increasingly prioritize health and clean ingredients, I believe that we are well positioned to tap into this growing trend to unlock our next phase of consumer growth. Our international business is very healthy with strong performance in Europe led by The UK and Germany. In Germany, the category has grown over 40% over the last year according to Nielsen and we are now the leading brand in coconut water at three times the size of our closest branded competitor.

We believe the growth that we’re seeing in our more mature markets like The U. S. And UK is indicative of the long term potential in our less developed markets. We intend to step up our investment in international markets where we have a strong brand position and can benefit from driving category growth. And if we’re successful, we believe international will become a larger part of our growth story as these markets are significantly underdeveloped relative to The U.

S. I’m also pleased to share that we recently extended our Keurig Doctor Pepper distribution agreement. This contract extension will allow us to continue to leverage KDP’s strong distribution footprint throughout The U. S. And is a testament to a great partnership and relationship that is fifteen years strong.

Our priorities for growth remain unchanged, continuing to add households, expanding occasions, acceleration of our international businesses and innovation to drive new occasions and attract new customers. I believe that coconut water is becoming a household staple across the globe and we’re very excited and proud to be the leading brand in our primary markets and to help drive this growth. Based on the acceleration of the categories seen late in 2024 and year to date and our significantly stronger inventory and additional capacity arriving this year, I believe that we will have an exciting 2025. And now, I’ll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Martin Roper.

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to report a strong quarter to finish the year and to report record annual net sales, net income and adjusted EBITDA even with the supply chain challenges of the summer and the loss of the private label coconut oil business that started in the second quarter. Net sales in the quarter were up 20% driven by growth of Vita Coco coconut water and private label shipments benefiting from an acceleration of growth in the coconut water category and improvement in available inventory, which allowed us to rebuild distributor and retail inventories from the low levels of the third quarter. As Mike noted, our branded promotional activity during the quarter was reduced relative to last year due to decisions made to better manage our limited inventory, and this resulted in our reported net price improvements. Even so, our fourth quarter gross margins decreased relative to prior quarters, primarily due to more expensive ocean freight flowing through to our P and L.

Although slightly weaker than last summer, ocean rates have remained elevated entering 2025. We believe there is the potential for rates to decline as the picture on potential tariffs and the opening of the Suez Canal become clearer and as the shippers add new capacity. We believe that current ocean rates are at unusually high levels relative to long term averages and therefore we have only entered into limited twelve month fixed rate contracts to secure capacity and service on one lane where the service commitment is important to our reliability of supply. If we see competitive fixed rate offers for long term contracts that make sense to us, we would be willing to enter into more expansive fixed rate agreements to cover more lanes. As we previously highlighted last year, we experienced significant inventory constraints which led to unacceptable private label service levels that were below our standards.

As a result of these challenges, we currently expect to lose some regions with certain private label retailers during 2025. Assuming this occurs, this will initially appear in our second quarter shipments with deeper impact in subsequent quarters. These assumptions are built into our current forecast for full year net sales. As Mike mentioned, we remain committed to competing for private label business and believe we have value to offer as a reliable diversified partner to larger private label programs and that long term we should be able to regain some of these losses. Based on the inventory we have in transit and in country to start the year, we are confident that we can generate strong growth in 2025 driven by mid to high teen branded growth offset by the expected weakness in private label shipments just mentioned.

The capacity freed up should create more opportunities for our branded products in the second half of the year and into 2026. We believe that the strong category growth is a positive indicator and supportive of our long term algorithm for branded growth. In anticipation of such growth, we have secured production capacity for 2025 and 2026, which should provide greater supply chain flexibility than we had in 2024. The new capacity supports our goal to operate with our expected demand at 80% to 85% of available full year capacity. We expect to hit this production capacity level in the second half of twenty twenty five, which should give us more sourcing flexibility.

While our fourth quarter brand scan performance in The U. S. Strengthened, it was not as strong as we believe it could have been as Walmart reset its stores during the quarter. The location of Vitacoco moved into their conventional shelf stable juice set with some significant reduction in our SKUs in space despite Vitacoco exhibiting very strong growth leading into the reset. This has initially created mid teen declines in weekly store sales at Walmart, which has hurt our total reported U.

S. Scan performance. This has also produced outsized reported retail distribution declines accompanied by an improvement in sales per point of distribution. Long term, we believe that the Juice Isle has higher foot traffic than our old location and that this move should benefit us greatly provided we can get the right SKUs on the shelf. We are currently working closely with Walmart to improve availability and visibility within their stores.

Approaching the normal reset timing for most retailers this spring, we believe that our initiatives will result in total net distribution improvement despite the short term challenges at Walmart. Our confidence in the category and Vitacocco brand trends remains very high. We are projecting healthy net sales growth driven by strong branded net sales for both international and The U. S, partially offset by the identified losses in private label of both oil and coconut water. We’re projecting healthy adjusted EBITDA growth as well, even though we expect slightly higher finished goods costs and higher average ocean freight rates for the year relative to 2024, especially in the first quarter of twenty twenty five.

With that, I will turn the call over to Corey Baker, our Chief Financial Officer.

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: Thanks, Martin, and good morning, everyone. I will now provide you with some additional details on the record 2024 financial results and our outlook for 2025. For the full year 2024, net sales increased $22,000,000 or 5% year over year to $516,000,000 driven by Vita Coco coconut water net sales growth of 10%, partially offset by private label declines of 10%. As growth in private label water was offset by the transition of private label oil. On a segment basis, within The Americas, Vita Coco coconut water increased net sales by 8% to $343,000,000 and private label decreased 13% to $90,000,000 VitaCoco Coconut Water saw 5% volume increase and a 3% net price mix benefit, while private label sales decreased 13% driven by a 2% decrease in volume and an 11% price mix reduction due to the private label coconut oil transition.

For the full year 2024, our international segment net sales were up 16% with Vita Coco coconut water growth of 20 where we saw strong growth across our major markets. Private label sales increased 3% as strong sales of private label coconut water were partially offset by the transition out of private label coconut oil. On a full year basis, consolidated gross profit was $199,000,000 an increase of $18,000,000 versus the prior year. On a percentage basis, gross margin finished at 39% for the year. This was up approximately 191 basis points from the 37% reported in 2023.

This increase in gross margins resulted from branded coconut water pricing and favorable product mix. Moving on to operating expenses, 2024 SG and A costs increased slightly to $125,000,000 driven by increased investments in people resources focused on driving future growth and expanding our supply footprint, which was mostly offset by reduced marketing spend in light of supply challenges over the summer. Net income attributable to shareholders for the year was $56,000,000 or $0.94 per diluted share compared to $47,000,000 or $0.79 per diluted share for the prior year. Net income benefited from higher gross profit and increased interest income, partially offset by unrealized losses on FX derivatives and higher year on year taxes. Our effective tax rate for 2024 was 21% versus 19% last year.

The increase was driven by the jurisdictional mix of pre tax profits with higher net state income expense than in the prior year and the impact of higher nondeductible expense this year related to covered employees’ compensation compared to last year. 2024 adjusted EBITDA was $84,000,000 or 16% of net sales, up from $68,000,000 or 14% of net sales in 2023. The increase was primarily due to the increased gross profit previously discussed. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow, as of 12/31/2024, we had total cash on hand of $165,000,000 and no debt under our revolving credit facility compared to $133,000,000 of cash and no debt as of 12/31/2023. The increase in the cash position was due to the strong net income for the year, partially offset by the increase of working capital of $34,000,000 and the repurchase of shares valued at $12,000,000 The working capital increase was driven by an inventory increase of $33,000,000 Our higher end in inventory is representative of the help of our inventory levels as we enter 2025.

We entered 2025 with a very strong category, healthy inventory levels, exciting innovation and confidence in our team and our Vitacocco brand. While facing some headwinds, we are excited about our ability to continue to deliver strong results. We expect net sales between $555,000,000 and $570,000,000 with expected gross margins for the full year of 35% to 37%, delivering adjusted EBITDA of $86,000,000 to $92,000,000 We are expecting the category to grow mid teens this year with the Vitacocco brand tracking broadly with the category. As Martin indicated, we expect some reduction in private label service areas, which will partially offset the expected mid teens brand performance. We expect gross margins to be lower in the first half of the year as we continue to experience elevated ocean freight rates and that gross margins will improve slightly in the second half as rates improve and they should benefit from the impact of a U.

S. Branded pricing increase in the summer designed to offset some of the cost inflation we are experiencing. In 2025, we expect the net pricing impact in the full year to be approximately flat as we return to a more normal promotional calendar in the second half of the year. We expect SG and A to increase to low to mid single digits as we restore marketing reductions from last year and increase investments in people, supporting our continued capacity expansion and the growth opportunity we see, specifically in international markets. This guidance reflects our current best assumptions on marketplace trends and our global supply chain performance.

Finally, a word about the potential impact of tariffs. At this point, we have not included any impact from tariffs in our guidance. Obviously, the size of any potential tariffs in the countries to which they apply are critical to quantifying the impact on our business. As we have said before, if broad import tariffs were applied to coconut water produced in the countries that we source from for any prolonged length of the time, we would take pricing expecting similar tariffs to impact our competitors and potentially other beverage categories. Our products are primarily sourced from The Philippines and Brazil with additional sourcing in other Southeast Asian countries and co packing facilities producing in Canada and Mexico.

We believe this diversified network allows us to adjust as the relative economic change, but any adjustments have long lead times, so if tariffs were applied specific to any country we source from, we will face unexpected costs that would affect our guidance. Long term, we would flex our sourcing to optimize our total costs and adjust our pricing to cover any long term tariff impact. And with that, I’d like to turn the call back to Martin for his closing remarks.

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Thank you, Kari. To close, I’d like to reiterate our confidence in the long term potential of the Vita Coco Company, our ability to build a better beverage platform and the strength of our Vita Coco brand and the coconut water category. We’re confident in our ability to navigate the current environment and are excited about our key initiatives to drive growth. We have strong brands and a solid balance sheet and we are well positioned to drive category and brand growth both domestically and internationally. Thank you for joining us today and thank you for your interest in the Vita Coco Company.

That concludes our fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four prepared remarks and we will now take your questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you.

Conference Operator: And our first question will come from

Conference Operator: the line of Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Ethan Huntley, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. This is Ethan Huntley on for Bonnie Herzog. Thank you for taking our questions. Maybe just a question here on the category more broadly. How fast do you expect the coconut water category to grow this year in aggregate and maybe even a longer term view as well?

Then I also Then I also understand you have plans to grow your brand in coconut water business in the mid teens range this year. So just trying to understand what that might mean for you in terms of a market share perspective and as a category leader, what initiatives do you have to increase household penetration and use educations and ultimately drive growth and awareness for the category?

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Great. Good morning, Ethan. Thank you for the question. Let me start off with the category. And I think there’s sort of different answers like we talk about North America, I think we’re expecting the category to grow long term in the high single digits, low double digits.

I think that’s representative of its sort of five year growth rate. On our total business that will be augmented by international, which while a smaller part of our business, we’re seeing category growth rates that are higher than that by five to 15 percentage points. So that’s sort of how we get to our long term sort of goal to grow brand mid teens. Just pulling back to sort of this year in the more immediate term, I think last year the category in North America grew in the mid teens, which is sort of slightly ahead of what I just said. And actually in the last thirteen weeks has sort of accelerated to sort of below 20s.

And so we currently think we’re seeing an acceleration of the category whether that loss for the full year or not is very difficult to say. I think in our assumptions for mid teen branded growth, we’re assuming that the category maintains a good solid mid team branded growth. But as I said, the category is currently accelerated ahead of that. And then when we talk about that treats is sort of outside that because it’s sort of a coconut milk based product. So that’s potentially incremental for our brand.

As we look at international, we’re trying to grow share in growing markets and we’re trying to accelerate those markets and we’re trying to add markets. So our hope would be that international would grow faster than our North American business. And then as it relates to your last question, we’re very much focused on growing the category, which is about education and trial and then growing our households, which is about branded share gains and trying to make our brand more appealing than the other brands that are around us. And we do that through some of our social media marketing and innovation and then obviously retail execution is a very important driver of share and also of trial. And so that’s what we’re trying to do.

And I think what we’ve seen over the last five years is the category, at least in North America, where we have reasonable data through numerator. We’ve seen household growth rates that are pretty healthy and household buy rates that are pretty healthy that collectively combine to accomplish our growth rates in the last five years. And there’s no reason why those can’t continue. Our household penetration, we believe, is still way less than other juices. Our household buy rate is still relatively low.

And certainly, you have the old eightytwenty rule where a lot of volume is drunk by 20% of your consumers. So there’s a lot of opportunity to increase volume. So So no, we feel very good about the category and very good about our brand prospects.

Ethan Huntley, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. That’s very helpful color. And maybe just one more, if you don’t mind. On the distribution side, could you maybe touch on how much more distribution upside you see and maybe which channels you ultimately see the most opportunity in? And I think you alluded to maybe potential shelf cooler space gains and resets this year.

So maybe just curious if you have any commentary on how much space you expect to gain this year? And thank you.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. Just maybe limiting our comments to America and the Americas Tucana data, I’d refer you to Slide 10 in our investor deck where we sort of lay out our ACV, how it’s changing. That’s sort of how we think about it. We still have opportunities in food and everyday presence. We have pretty good distribution in mass.

Our big opportunity distribution opportunities are in convenience store. With that said, we still have opportunities on multipacks in food more generally. We still have opportunity in multipacks in mass. And in C Store, we mentioned that we had launched one liter with a key retailer that was quite successful. C Stor has historically been a 500 ml sort of market.

And so that provides us with, again, a nice runway to grow C Stor. And then we have the innovation like Juice, which is the canned product or like Treats, which is the coconut milk product, which also should provide distribution. So opportunity. So we still have a fair amount of runway on that, both from innovation and with the core family. Coming back to your question as to how we view things, I think we called out the Walmart reset, which relates to the modern soda set that there’s a lot of hyper wrap around.

And we got relocated to the juice aisle, resulting in some lost points of distribution, at which has caused a drag on our scan data. And you can work out how big Walmart is relative to the rest of the universe, but the Walmart trends are down double digits and that’s a pretty big lag on our actual main scan trend, so a pretty big drag on our top line right now. But certainly, we can weather it. We’re growing the business even with that and we see it as a big opportunity because if we fix the distribution and get the right product mix in that juice shelf, it’s actually a high traffic shelf and it should be really good for us long term. So we’re actually pretty excited about it, but we’re weathering that first year transition.

And putting aside if you net if you include those distribution losses in that two set reset, we still think we’re going to grow distribution this year. So on that understanding of retailers commitments to us is positive despite that track.

Ethan Huntley, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Very helpful. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And one moment for our next question.

Conference Operator: And that will come from

Conference Operator: the line of Eric Sarada with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Your line is open.

: Great. Thanks guys. Hoping you could give some color as to the current state of inventories at various points in the channel. With the fourth quarter replenishment, are you at targeted levels? Do you expect further benefit from replenishing or do you expect further benefit from replenishment in the first half?

And then in terms of The U. S. Price increase, can you give us an idea of the order of magnitude there? Have you started discussions with retailers on that? And how is it being received in an environment where most categories are having a tough time on getting incremental pricing?

Thank you.

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: Good morning, Eric. To start with the inventory levels, as you can see from the financials, we ended the year with very healthy inventory levels overall. A good chunk of that is still in transit. So we’re in a significantly better place to start the year and we feel good where we are in the year. We would like to see still more in our warehouses close to the markets, which we expect to happen in Q1.

We’re currently not seeing any shipping challenges, so we feel good overall, but still a little bit more in transit than we would like due to the shipping delays we’ve been seeing. And then in terms of pricing, those letters will be making their right out to the customers now through Q1 and the sales teams are working with the customers on market execution, which will begin in the summer. As we talked about from a guidance perspective and as we look at the promotional activity we’re cycling in the second half, we don’t expect any financial impact versus 2024, but that will start to make its way to the market starting in the summer.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: And just on the pricing, we have a pretty good story. Obviously ocean freight is higher now than it was a year ago significantly. Other costs inflation is starting to work its way through on finished goods. So we have a good story. And then but the category is also growing really healthily.

So it’s a pretty good story and at least I’m not aware of any current pushback, but obviously there can always be pushback. Just coming back to your inventory question, we started adding capacity a year ago. We have good inventory. We will provide good service with the category accelerating, then obviously that’s challenging because it might it’s accelerating maybe faster than we thought, but that’s good. And the extra capacity that is coming online would help our second half.

So we’re looking forward to getting through June with our current plans and then having inventory available for more opportunistic endeavors.

: Got it. But just to follow-up on that, any read as to where customer and distributor inventories are? I know they were clearly below target for last summer. Just sort of wondering, should we think of you guys shipping ahead of consumption in the first half as you further rebuild the pipeline inventories or has consumption accelerated such that shipping ahead of consumption isn’t really possible or practical and

: that would be

: a good problem to have or a high class problem to have. But just looking to sort of get where customers’ and retailers’ inventories are to see if there is further replenishment ahead?

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. Well, first of all, I like your comment, it would be a good problem to have, although it’s always painful, right? But back to year end inventories, I think we felt we had largely replenished retail and distributor. We are working with our distributors to try and build inventory going into the summer. And that may affect a little bit of timing on the quarters, if that actually is possible, but sometimes that’s possible, sometimes it isn’t, but we’d love to add an extra week of inventory to enter that May, June, July summer selling period just because it makes everything flow much easier if you’re not responding to fires.

But I think it’s fair to say that we were very comfortable with where inventories were at the end of the year. So in most degrees, we’re back to a normal cadence unless again something changes.

: Terrific. Thanks so much. I’ll pass it on. Thanks.

Conference Operator: And one moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Chris Carey with Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Your line is open.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR0: Hey, good morning guys. I wanted to start on gross margins. From a phasing perspective, obviously exiting the year lower than where you’re going to end the year. I think Corey made a comment about back half modestly improving or something of a sort relative to the front half of the year. In a way, I kind of read that as we should start to see a pretty notable sequential uptick into the front half relative to the Q4 exit rate.

In general, can you just contextualize the shape of gross margins through the year as you kind of strive toward this full year target? And just connected to that, freight rates are certainly up year over year, but they are declining. And so maybe just talk to the trend in freight rate that we might be seeing as we get into the back half of the year into 2026, like some level of like normalization or are we talking about at least right now higher durable rates as you look over the next few years? Thanks.

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: So, good morning, Chris. There’s a few things in there from but from a guidance and the gross margin, we are focused on the full year and the quarters as you know do get a little difficult. But the biggest item and why we expect second half to be stronger than the first half is that curve of ocean freight. We entered the year with more inventory than last year. So in the range of four months, so there’s this delay of carryover of the higher ocean freight from last year coming into the first half.

So that big spike we saw in the summer of last year is flowing through in Q4 into Q1. And then we have an expectation of ocean freight rates dropping through the year that will improve the margin with some partial offset to less pricing and some underlying inflation. But it’s really that curve from a modeling perspective, the biggest item with bits of timing in there is that curve of ocean freight improving through the back half. And we have an assumption through the year that ocean freight will get closer and I’ll let Martin comment more on rates closer to historic levels, but not all the way to historical levels at this point.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. Chris, to your point, we’re still paying above what we were paying last year and still what we would regard as unusually high. I think for the full year, we expect our average rate of ocean container cost to be higher than last year, right? So let’s start off with that. That’s baked into our assumptions.

It’s been driven by the inventory carryover that Cory indicated. And certainly in January and early February, the rates really didn’t move down that much. As we think about the rates and we develop guidance, we expect there to be some downward movement, partly because some of the uncertainty around tariffs is I don’t know whether it’s removed or what about uncertainty, but there was a fair amount of inventory buildup prior to the new administration and that should decrease demand for ocean freight. There is incremental capacity coming online and then there is hope that the Suez Canal will reopen as a passage. I think there started to be reports of some ships going through, but I think most of the major carriers are holding off probably till May or June.

And when that happens, that will release a couple of things. One is it will add capacity in terms of the carrier’s ability to move product globally. And then it will also actually reduce transit times, which will give us a one or two week inventory bump for Europe and the East Coast. So we’re looking forward to that, but obviously don’t really know when where it goes. While we think that the rates will fall, it’s very unclear how fast they will fall and we’ve expected them to fall before and we’ve probably told you they would fall before.

And if you look at the indexes, it’s been quite a roller coaster the last twelve months. So we’ve taken somewhat of a conservative approach on thinking about that baked into our guidance. But equally, if rates were to drop tomorrow to hold historical levels, as Corey mentioned, we had three, four months worth of inventory that’s got to flow through. So if that was to happen, that would really impact the back of the year. But as we think about our business long term, we think that ocean freight should drop to historical levels and that will allow us both to invest in brand and grow the business and also to support our business in a better way.

And so we think the long term outlook is very good. Just when it happens in the next twelve months, we’re guessing just like you’re guessing.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR0: Okay. Thanks so much. And regarding the business, which is of course the core focus for the long term, the category tracking over 20% branded on a year to date basis, and the outlook suggesting something more like mid teens, is there an assumption that we’re just going to normalize or we don’t know how much this strength is going to sustain? And also, I just want to be clear about this. The consumption trends that we see right now, are they inclusive of the headwinds that you’re experiencing at Walmart right now?

Or should we be expecting a deceleration in trend going forward as some of these items that you’re talking about start to work into the numbers?

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: Thanks so much.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. So the numbers we reported for brand last thirteen weeks include the headwinds of Walmart and you can probably back into what those would look like based on assumptions of Walmart share of food, right? And I think our assumptions for the year are based on category growing U. S, Mid Teens and branded holding share organic share. I think we do obviously, but we have some benefit of hopefully having inventory in that Q3 period when we had some weakness last year.

We should be able to return to normal promotional cadence in the back half of the year, which should also help. And then the promotional cadence also drives trial, so that helps the category. I think it’s fair to say, we’re reporting a thirteen week because we’re seeing it. We like to normally plan around long term trends as opposed to short term trends, but certainly the current category health is very encouraging as is our brand health.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR0: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Operator: And one moment for our next question.

Conference Operator: And that will come from the

Conference Operator: line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: Thank you. Good morning. You mentioned in prepared remarks how you’re pivoting a little bit to emphasize hydration messaging more clearly or strongly. Can you unpack a little bit what that might look like and where there may be disconnects in consumers’ understanding or is that a component of the product that isn’t really appreciated maybe as well as I would imagine that to be or how do you play that out in your marketing?

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. Hey, Michael, it’s Mike. If you think about how we started this business and marketing coconut water, it was all about kind of nature sport drink, right? And that was the beginning of the business. Over the last few years, a lot of the growth has come from marketing specific use education.

So we’ve talked several times about whether it’s in smoothies or in a cocktail or for the hangover or in greens, powdered greens, all of these type of things and that’s become real big focus for us and I think has been a growth driver. But getting back to our roots a little bit and really starting to market the product as a natural alternative to sport drinks, we think is a huge opportunity to further expand usage and households. And so we’re ready to start doing that. We’re starting to invest against it. In our typical way of investing in marketing, whether it’s digital and social and influencer and all these type of things, but we think that that’s an opportunity to really go after more consumers.

That’s the objective.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: And is there a packaging or is there an opportunity to even maybe, I don’t know, maybe even in a PET bottle or something get into the sports drink aisle next to some

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR0: of those guys or have

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: you considered that? How do you think about maybe even just a sort of more obviously parallel or mirrored extension or packaging form?

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. I think in terms of packaging, we have the PET, we have the TETRA. I don’t think packaging changes are really in the mix for this, like a sports cap or something like that. I think in terms of placement in the store, we like where we’re at and very often we are adjacent to sport drinks and enhanced waters and so on. I think it’s more about the marketing communication and getting people to realize that coconut water has three times the electrolytes of a sport drink.

So and it’s natural and it’s from a tree. And so we think there’s a real opportunity there and that’s the real focus. It’s really a communications opportunity communication opportunity.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: No, that makes good sense. And then just following up on your tariff commentary, obviously there’s plenty of uncertainty, But can you maybe just help us understand a little bit better your co packing? It sounds like that’s Mexico and Canada. I guess we’ll find out in less than a week if that’s coming through or not. But how big a percentage of your portfolio comes from those co packers and how quickly could you find new ones if it made sense to do so?

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: It’s a very small percentage of the total production. Specific items, it’s we like co packing in Canada and Mexico because it gives us the opportunity, especially with innovation to get things to market quicker, but it’s a small percentage of our total supply.

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: And nothing produced there can’t be produced. Yes.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: I think the important thing is that in the short term, there might be impacts and obviously we deal with those. In the long term, we have the ability to move that production to other countries. It just obviously wouldn’t happen to affect probably this year.

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: Okay. Thanks so much.

Conference Operator: And one moment for our next question.

Conference Operator: And that will come from

Conference Operator: the line of Eric De L’Oreal with Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

Conference Operator: Great. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the strong quarter here. Good morning, Jeff. Good morning. Good morning.

I’m wondering if you could expand on the commentary on additional production capacity that you’ve secured for 2025. I think you mentioned that should help improve flexibility. Should we think of that as any sort of new geographies and helping to improve some of the ocean freight availability? Just wondering if you could expand on that new capacity and how it helps improve flexibility?

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. I think as we talked about last year, we were sort of basically selling every case we could make and get into the country and that wasn’t a very comfortable place to be, particularly in the third quarter. And so we ran production at full capacity through the Q4 to build inventories and that’s why we feel much better about our inventory situation. We started talking last April about adding capacity to get ahead of what we conceived to be a very healthy category and to rectify this problem. Capacity takes anywhere from nine, twelve months to even eighteen months to come online.

And the capacity that we talked about or that we alluded to last April is now coming online and that production will then flow into The U. S. Starting June, July, which is related to my comments about our second half product capacity or product availability being much stronger than our first, even though we start the year with very good inventory. So we are securing capacity for next year, assuming strong category growth in the sort of mid teens and brand growth accordingly. And we’re trying to build that capacity to get up to a level where on a full year basis we’re running at 80% to 85% of capacity based on our plans.

And so we think we have line of sight to do that. We are adding facilities and you’ll see that the facility account I think in our 10 ks has changed and probably will continue to change through when we get to next year. From a diversification, it’s a lot easier to add factories in markets you’re familiar with, with partners you are. So we’re still concentrated well, not concentrated, but we’re still sourcing mainly from the countries that we currently partner with. But we’re actively looking to open up other countries.

Most of them are in Asia, most of them rely on Asia ocean freight to the East Coast and West Coast. So while the reliance on some of the feeder networks from some of the islands would change if we open that capacity, we would still be behooved to the Asia, East Coast, West Coast major lanes. So yes, on the local market basis, our goal is to be more to add some diversification in the next twelve months. We probably haven’t done so in the last twelve months, but the goal is to add some in the next twelve months, but it won’t diversify obviously our dependence on ocean freight on those long lanes.

Conference Operator: All right. That’s very helpful. Appreciate that color. And then on the increased points of distribution with upcoming shelf resets, could you just comment on how we should think about the timing of that impact? I’m guessing at second half, but any color you could share would be great.

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: No, it’s typically March, April time period.

: Yes,

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: I think Q2.

Conference Operator: Yes. Okay, that’s helpful. And then just last one from me, just looking for an update on the foodservice channel, obviously much smaller than Food and Master you guys, but I think that’s been a recent focus or an opportunity for you guys to take share. I’m just wondering if

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: you can give an update there. Thank you.

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes, I know it’s been a big focus for us. We’ve got a good team against it and we’re making really good progress. The biggest opportunities are in

John Mills, Managing Partner, ICR1: hotels,

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: hospitals, college campuses, schools, all of these type of things and opening up the broad line food distributor network and really managing that network. And it’s coming along really well. We’ve continued to get wins in that space and we think

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: it will be a big

: piece of our business moving forward.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: We’re underdeveloped there, right? I think for the big players, I’m going to guess it’s 10% of that business and we’ll wait below that. So that just helps you quantify that there is an opportunity there, that’s how much income ample it is. But I think as we’ve said, it’s a multiyear play for us to build up to that level, because those big guys have been working on it forever. And for a long time, they had exclusivity contracts that blocked us out, but now they don’t have coconut water.

So we can start to play and it’s just a long term build.

Conference Operator: Great. Appreciate the color. Thanks for taking my questions.

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Thank you. Thank you.

Conference Operator: One moment for our next question.

Conference Operator: And that will come from the

Conference Operator: line of Jim Solera with Stephens. Your line is open.

: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Hi, Jim.

: Martin, I wanted to ask and I apologize if you guys touched on this already, but you talked about successful introduction of the one liter in convenience. And if I’m looking at the chart on Slide 10,

Corey Baker, Chief Financial Officer, Vita Coco Company: it looks like there was

: a modest ACV step down for the 500 ml inconvenience. So is part of that the 1L is swapping in where the 500 ml used to be or just any color

: on what’s going on there?

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Yes. The one

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: liter sort of test or epic, but it’s been so successful, I wouldn’t really call it a test, actually was incremental point of distribution. I think that marginal change in ACV is more related to inventory flowing over. So the inventory challenges in Q3 would have probably resulted in some lost distribution, at least execution, and then it takes a little while to remember where you were selling it in Q2 and build it back. So it’s just sort of that sort of thing.

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Okay, great. And then I wonder if

: we can get an update on PowerLift, particularly Mike talking about the focusing on hydration and obviously protein content is very important for consumers right now. And so just thinking about the opportunity to continue to scale PowerLift and where we are in that right now?

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. Good question. We didn’t really talk about it too much in our prepared remarks. I think we basically have a nice healthy online business and we’ve struggled to develop to get pool on shelf even with good retail partners and execution and people in market. So for this year we said, okay, let’s focus on the online and let’s continue to build that and let’s take the learnings, do the research and understand how to get the message of the product to communicate and work on shelf because otherwise we’re just putting it on shelf and it’s too expensive to keep it there.

So we’re still pretty excited about the category. Obviously, protein beverage is still a very interesting category. I think drinkable protein is a very interesting category. I’m still drinking two a day, so mainly for lunch, right? So I still like it.

So but we have a good You look screen. And I look great. Yes, I look great. So we remain interested. There’s something there and there will be something there.

And if there’s anything I know from my history is you don’t throw good ideas out when they don’t work. And so we’re going to continue to iterate it. I would hope that if you ask the same question this time next year that we’ve grown the online community and found a way with the packaging and the brand messaging to increase the pool so we can push again because the product is definitely drinkable. It’s very popular among our investor community when we talk to them, but maybe our best marketing is these calls and that’s not effective. Okay.

Well, maybe we need

: to get some in store activations with your face on it to help drive some engagement.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: God help us all.

: Maybe if I could sneak in one more on treats. Do you have a sense for the customer that’s buying treats? Is it incremental purchase and they’re already engaging with Vitacococo in other formats? Or do you find that it’s a new household and they’re engaging with that treats product and not with the other products in the portfolio and there’s a chance to kind of cross sell them into the wider range of SKUs that you offer?

Mike Kirban, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Yes. From what we can see so far, it’s a good mix of new and current customers, but it’s also skewing quite young, probably younger than our average even younger than our average customer, which is interesting and we think is a really good opportunity to bring new continue to bring new consumers into the franchise.

Martin Roper, Chief Executive Officer, Vita Coco Company: Great. I appreciate

: the color guys. I’ll hop back in queue.

Conference Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Mike Kervin, Executive Chairman, Vita Coco Company: Just like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. I know it’s a busy morning across a number of people reporting, but we very much appreciate you listening in and we look forward to talking to some of you in the next few days. Thank you.

Conference Operator: This concludes today’s program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

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