Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MAV Beauty Brands first quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 11th, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Craig Armitage. Please go ahead. Thank you, good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'll just make a few quick notes before we get started. The remarks today may provide certain information regarding our expectations, future plans and intentions that may constitute forward-looking statements. I refer you to the most recently filed AIF and the MD&A for the first quarter, which are available on our website and on SEDAR. These include a summary of the significant assumptions underlying these forward-looking statements and the risks that could affect the company's performance and the ability to deliver on these forward-looking statements. You'll also find the Q1 earnings release, financial statements, and MD&A on the IR section of the website. Lastly, I'd highlight that the financial discussion today largely compares Q1 2023 versus Q1 2022, unless we state otherwise. With that, I'll turn it over to Serge. Thank you, Craig. Good morning and welcome to MAV's first quarter conference call. I'm joined by Laurel MacKay-Lee, our Chief Financial Officer. I will briefly cover the operational results before Laurel covers the financial highlights. It was a challenging first quarter. From a sales perspective, Q1 revenue was down 9% year-over-year to CAD 19.3 million. These results reflect the continuing impact of distribution losses and broader macroeconomic challenges, notably higher interest rates. As previously disclosed, we're experiencing further distribution losses in 2023, mainly in the U.S. mass and drug channel. Continually e-commerce growth was not enough to offset these declines. With regard to brand performance, two of our brands were positive year-over-year, one was flat, and one showed strong decline in line with its reduced footprint in the U.S. mass channel. As we work to stabilize our total results and position the portfolio for improved performance, our team is focused on strategies to strengthen each other brand with an emphasis on product innovation and marketing. We understand these are not quick fixes. These efforts will take time to yield results, given that most retailers' shelves reset annually. For the Marc Anthony brand, we're strengthening equity in our core Strictly Curls and Grow Long collections and pursuing growth opportunities in new categories through innovative salon-inspired products. For example, our new Repair Bond collection was launched earlier this year with select retailers. Early consumer feedback has been encouraging and validating, and we recently initiated our marketing and PR campaigns. We aim to establish Repair Balm with Rescuplex as a new core collection that can be rolled out more broadly in 2024. With Renpure, the major push is this year's brand relaunch. This encompasses a new master brand across all categories: hair, body wash, body lotion, with improved formula that adhere to elevated standards for clean beauty and first to market sustainable packaging. The new products are flowing through points of sale, and our marketing campaign is set to commence next month. We're proud of this work and hopeful our efforts will allow us to rebuild Renpure's distribution footprint and establish the brand over time as a leading player within conscious beauty. With Cake Beauty, our priorities include innovation and accelerating digitization, particularly growth on Amazon and our D2C channel. We're also working on a high-impact strategic collaboration to increase brand awareness, and we will be rolling out the limited edition collection later this summer. Lastly, with The Mane Choice, the priorities include a simplified assortment for better retail impact and improved velocities. The brand team is building collections around our store products, such as the Alpha Growth Oil. As with Cake, our emphasis is also on innovation and accelerating digitization. The early results of our new store on Amazon are encouraging. We also believe in the potential of our D2C business. Overall, our success in e-commerce has helped to partially offset our lower brick-and-mortar footprints. We believe the channel has the potential to be a pillar we can continue to build on going forward. In addition to these brand and sales priorities, our team continued to implement cost-saving initiatives and operational improvements which will make us more efficient business and positively impact gross margins and operating profitability. We're tracking to our 2023 plan on these initiatives. I will now ask Laurel to cover the financial highlights in greater detail. Laurel. Thank you, Serge. Good morning, thank you for joining us today. As Serge highlighted, net sales decreased from CAD 21.1 million last year to CAD 19.3 million this quarter, principally reflecting the impact of distribution losses in the U.S. mass and drug channels. Q1 2023 gross profit decreased by 16% to CAD 7.8 million compared to CAD 9.3 million in Q1 2022, mainly as a result of the sales decline. Gross profit margin for the quarter was 40.7%, a decrease from 44.1% in the Q1 last year. The decrease mainly reflects the impact of sales mix for the quarter, notably the weight of U.S. mass and off-price year-over-year. Q1 Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $1.3 million from $2.9 million in the same period last year, reflecting lower revenue and gross margin. As a result of changes in the interest rate and payment terms in the recent amendment of our credit facilities, we've recalculated the carrying amount of the total obligation and recorded a loss on modification totaling $1.5 million in Q1 2023. Combined with the softer operating results, this resulted in a net loss of $3.9 million in Q1 2023 versus a net loss of $0.6 million last year. Adjusted net loss for Q1 2023 was $2.4 million, compared with adjusted net income of $0.1 million in Q1 2022. Q1 free cash flow came in at negative CAD 0.1 million, a decrease from CAD 3.7 million in Q1 2022, reflecting lower Adjusted EBITDA and higher cash interest. At quarter end, our cash position was CAD 8.3 million, and net debt was CAD 115.6 million. Before we open the call to questions, we want to thank the MAV team for their ongoing efforts. Joelle, would you please open the call up for questions? Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from Megan Bergen with Acumen Capital Partners. Please go ahead. Good morning. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit on your sales by brand, please. Good morning, Megan. Thanks for joining us. As mentioned, we had two of our brands, notably the largest one, posting a positive results year-over-year for the first quarter. One was directionally flat and one showed a significant decline in line with distribution losses in the U.S. mass channel. Okay, thank you. Can you also speak a little bit about your pipeline for innovation? Our pipeline for innovation, if we look at the Marc Anthony brand to start with, the largest initiative this year is the Repair Bond with Rescuplex, that was introduced with really the reset earlier this year. On Renpure, we can consider that the whole brand in certain way is innovation as we have really revamped all the different touch points of the brand, from a formula to packaging, to branding. We also have innovation on the other two brands that are notably the Shine Collection on Cake, or have hit the markets on time in full and are ramping up. Okay, thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you, Megan. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star followed by the one. There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed. Thank you for joining us, this morning, and have a nice day. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your line.
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