Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to introduce our next speakers, John Fieldly, CEO of Celsius Holdings, and Toby David, Executive VP. Celsius is a rapidly growing brand in the energy drink category, with North America sales up triple digits in Q1 and an exciting pipeline of innovative and better-for-you beverages. Celsius's distribution agreement with Pepsi, which was announced last summer, is off to a great start, helping the company double its share within the energy segment over the last year, while the stock has meaningfully outperformed the market over the last year, up nearly 135%. With that, I'm going to join the two of you, and thank you so much. Wow. It's been exciting. I mean. The last 12 months since we've been here. It's like I was looking back at that because I had some notes, and it doubled, right? It's amazing. It's amazing. The brand. Congrats ... resonating with a broader consumer than ever before. You know, coming back here, the latest data as of April, you know, we've always talked about being a billion-dollar brand. Mm-hmm. The latest scan data has Celsius as of the last 52 weeks, as of April 26th, we've reached that billion-dollar brand status at retail, so just a really exciting time for the company. Congratulations, honestly. What do you think have been, you know, the key drivers behind this? It's certainly resonating with consumers, but, you know, how much is the, you know, the Pepsi relationship kind of boosted some of this? Talk to some of these key drivers. Yeah. You know, when we reflect on where we've been, you know, over the last 12 months, we go back to the last time we were at the Goldman Sachs Global Staples Forum. You know, we were growing. We're bringing new consumers into the category. We're continuing to gain, really grow our ACV, and really build solid relationships with a lot of the key retailers in the country. We've built. We continue to build upon that. In October, we partnered with Pepsi, where we moved our distribution from mainly the independent Anheuser-Busch distributors to Pepsi on a national basis in North America. That opportunity further building on our sales team and marketing team. As of the end of the Q1, end of March, as of March 26th, we had a 95% ACV. We just achieved that. We had great resets that have taken place this year with our new partners. Gaining a lot of the independent accounts that we brought on has really been exciting and just the momentum behind the brand. That's really a lot of the key drivers was getting it, getting to that 95% ACV, which we got there a lot faster than we ever thought. Actually, internally, we were thinking it would be another 12 to 18 months before we reached that 95% ACV. We're really excited about that. Where are you source-sourcing share from? I mean, I think you're bringing incremental, you know, consumers into the category, but just curious. We are. We actually, Toby and I were just talking about that. I don't know if you want to... Yeah, sure. About 24% of our of our consumers are incremental to the category, new to the category, per Numerator. Then another 44% is incremental to the category because it's what they term user intensification. In totality, you're looking at 68% of Celsius sales are incremental, retailers love that. It's just not brand shifting. You know, obviously, when you look at the brands we source from, you know, Red Bull and Monster, they're 70-plus% of the category, they're going to be a preponderance of it. Obviously, what's, you know, happened with Bang, we've been able to capitalize on that as well. You know, we're able to dabble in both. We're able to source from the biggest players, we're also bringing these new consumers to the category, which is exciting for everybody. I think that goes to our positioning as well, right? The new age energy. Y ou know, I can't tell you the number of people that even ran into today at the conference here. You know, they consume Celsius. They've replaced it with their coffee, but they don't consider themselves an energy drink consumer. You know, when Toby mentions, like, incremental to the category, that's what differentiates Celsius. It's we're truly incremental. People see us beyond an energy drink. I think, you know, when we were here last year, we were talking about we want to be a major player in the energy category. I think today, the last 12 months, what we've seen is opportunity is to be a major player in total beverage, and that's really what we're seeing now with some of the expanded distribution with Pepsi. We're 10% of our Pepsi sales right now are in this food service, this untracked channel, which is quite interesting. You know, I know a lot of, at least a lot of our employees, a lot of people we met today, some of the investors out there, you know, they have CELSIUS with their lunch. You know, that's outside that traditional energy drink usage occasion. That really, when we talk about CELSIUS now, we really see it as a total beverage opportunity. Does that get you to, you know, thinking about your share next year when you're hopefully going to join us at this conference. Do we look at another double? I don't want to push it. How about I ask it this way? I mean, is 10 share within reach, you know. Yeah. Given all this momentum? Yeah, I mean, I think so. What's exciting, we just reported our Q1 numbers, and as of March twenty-sixth, we reported that we're a 7.5 share. Yeah. 30 days later, the latest data comes out April 26th, we're at an 8 share now. We've gained a half share point in 30 days. When you go back, you know, the last 12 months, we were 3.7 shares. We just gained 95% ACV, like I said. We have 13.6 items on average, scanning at retail right now, which is a major opportunity. We're seeing our velocity starting to increase. Even though we gained a ton of distribution and really lower turning chains and accounts. I think between Toby and myself, I've been with the company 12 years, Toby's been here 10. We have a lot of great team members. I think everyone's really excited on where the company is right now. I would just add to that, you know, John said it on the earnings call that, and this is the first time we've released any data like this, but in the South Florida market, which is a top 10 energy market in the country, we're about 22% market share in South Florida. A mature market where we still view there's plenty of upside left, especially in the Miami area. You know, we'd always cited Amazon, we're at 19% on Amazon. When you look at like those, you know, Amazon's obviously a big national player, but to be at 22% in South Florida really, I think, indicates where some of the runway is for this brand. It's like some of the new markets that Pepsi brought us to, I mean, like Buffalo, New York, we're a strong double-digit player right now, and that's really a new market for us. We never really marketed there. We're seeing a lot of great opportunities in certain regions of the country that are popping up that we didn't really have that presence or distribution availability. The brand is resonating. You know, we're saying as this broad consumer base, it's resonating with the next generation of energy, and people that are traditionally aging out will keep them in the category with something better for you. The big push this year, you know, a lot of brands are pushing the no sugar, so that's allowing consumers to really think about their energy drink and what they're consuming, and we think that could be further opportunities for brands like Celsius. Yeah. Speaking of that, I think what is most impressive about your performance is you've done this with just stepped-up competition. I mean, with the success you've had, I think is certainly attracting more players, you know, into this new age, fitness, performance, energy drink category. How do you think about that? How worried are you, and how do you defend, you know, sort of the share you've Yeah. Listen, we're hyper-paranoid at Celsius. I think that's really key. Competition's fierce. It's a growing category. The category's been growing at double digits. We think there's a long runway of growth ahead in the energy category. You know, there's always going to be competition. Right now we're the third, number 3 brand in the category. We have a, you know, a ways to get to number 2. We have a lot of people coming after us, below us, so it's a little bit of an uncomfortable position to be in number 3. We're glad we made it. We're growing from there. Listen, we can only control what we can control, and we keep the teams extremely focused on what we need to do to really leverage our playbook and execute against our plans or annual operating plans. You know, and you got to outmaneuver and out execute. That's what I tell the teams all the time. We never be complacent. Category's evolving, consumers are evolving. We need to make sure we stay up with the trends of today, as the trends today will be gone tomorrow. It's constantly reinventing yourself, I think is really critical as a company, and we've done that in bringing in new consumers. We're connecting with new consumer segments within the, you know, the consumers as well. We started to get into, over the last year, MMA. We've been partnering with a variety of MMA fighters and really going further expanding. As our ACV and our availability has increased, we've had to reach out a little bit farther into additional consumer segments. It's worked out well. Speaking of that, as you try and touch new consumers, your innovation pipeline, you know, frame it for us in terms of how it compares to last year. I know you've come out with some new flavors. Is this. Yeah. I brought our, The Green Apple Cherry. Green Apple Cherry, 'cause I think this is a great example of some of the highlighting of the innovation that we had. This was a partnership with 7-Eleven. It's one of the fastest growing SKUs they have in 7-Eleven, growth to the category. It just shows you, like the innovation team at Celsius, we're really on the forefront. They did a great job. It's a great flavor profile. We partner with 7-Eleven. We do extremely well at 7-Eleven. Built a variety, a ton of brand awareness around it. We also have a Lemon Lime out there, in the hall. We have a Lemon Lime flavor where we partnered with Walmart on the launch, an earlier launch. It's done really well. It's allowed us to really ignite Walmart, which is one of the largest energy drink retailers, in sales, in the category. Lots of opportunities all around. We got great flavor innovation for this summer. We already have our plans in place for 2024 as well. Some really good new innovations. More to come on that. It's been exciting and a lot of new innovation out there. You got to stay fresh, you got to stay relevant, and, you know, we need to partner with our retailers as well. No, that makes sense. You don't have to tell me, but in terms of what your plans are for 2024, but is it further flavor, you know, profile or is it package innovation? Do you foresee some of that in the future? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, next year we're going to really stay focused on our core portfolio. You're going to see some really great innovative flavors coming out of our Vibe line and our core fruit-forward line. Also we have our 16 ounce opportunity that we have with our CELSIUS HEAT line. We're going to further innovate there. We think there's opportunities there. We're also looking at, always looking at where the category's going, what opportunities are adjacent to the category that we're looking at. Right now the main focus is timing and sequencing and, really, you know, considering that we just got to a 95% ACV, we're going to stay focused over the next 12 months and really drive this portfolio forward. Okay. The spring shelf resets just occurred. Talk about how much incremental, you know, shelf or cooler space that you got during the resets. Have you quantified that or, you know, how does that compare also to the entire energy drink category? As of March 26, what we cited during the earnings call, we were up to 13.6 SKUs per location in the MULO data, which is all grocery and convenience. I believe that was up from about eight SKUs roughly from the year prior. Really a lot of that growth had come from convenience. We're historically, you know, That was our last channel that we entered. You know, you're looking at last year, we probably were at three or four SKUs in a lot of convenience stores around the country, and we're, you know, we're nearing double digits now. You know, that 13.6 figure, that was as of March 26 in the 4-week data. You know, that's during high season of the reset. I think there's still some meat on the bone, so to speak, that by June, late June, you'll probably have a good perspective of how the resets went. We felt like we had a great selling story going into the selling season last fall. Obviously, with what was going on with Bang, that was helpful for us, and we capitalized on that with our very aggressive sales organization that was able to capitalize on that. You know, the story that we're already speaking of, the incrementality to, you know, for retailers, they love it, was we were able to get some really nice placements. Yeah. I think the biggest win is inconvenience, right? If you look at where this brand was built in fitness. We built it in the chains, you know, Gold's Gym, 24 Hour, Vitamin Shoppe. For a variety of, you know, because of the brand's DNA, we weren't really able to penetrate convenience. We had 7-Eleven in the early days, but we built it in mass, drug and now club, and then really like the frontier for Celsius was really the convenience channel. If you go back, most recently, we gained 37 share points with ACV. That I think on the last resets, that's really the amazing opportunity at hand. We're at a 93% ACV right now at the end of the Q1. That allows us to play on the playing field in energy. 70% of energy drinks are sold in convenience and gas. Now we have a presence there. To Toby's point, there's opportunities to gain further items in each location and better placements. We're in, you know. That's what gets us excited, you know, especially finalizing those last resets. I think that's the biggest win that the company's had right now. I mean, given how attractive this category is, the growth, the profitability, retailers are allocating more space. Where do you think some of that space is being sourced from? Are they allocating... Some retailers, I think, are allocating, I don't know, better for you energy drink space, which you are hopefully capitalizing on as well? Yeah. I ask that question a lot to a lot of the buyers and retailers, you know, because you're right. There is more space being allocated to energy. The category continues to grow. You know, we hear, especially coming out of NACS, you know, last year, I asked that question a lot as well. You know, it seems to be a lot of the teas, juices, and waters was getting consolidated at that point to allow that additional energy door. You know, there's a lot of fragmentation. Obviously, a lot of the lead players in energy want to fragment the energy door to protect their shelf space and precious real estate. They'll try to, you know, talk about new age, talk about better for you, and that puts you either in the gutter, in the nosebleed section, and it doesn't allow for the bull's-eye placement, which is the optimal placement. When we talk about it, we talk about total energy. We, you know, we warrant, our sales warrant, our velocities warrant to be placed in energy, and in that main door of the cooler. That's what we go after. We try not to be pigeonholed to these other adjacent categories that are subpar in the door. The teams, our key accounts team has done an amazing job, really getting, you know, moving us out of the gutters or out of the nosebleed section into the bull's-eye area, as we call it internally, so. I like that. Switching gears a little bit to pricing. You've put in some pricing over the last 12 to 18 months. Remind us of how much and maybe when that was implemented. Do you have plans for incremental pricing this year? I'm thinking about it too, with what the other, the big guys have done. Yeah. I mean, we took a like around an average, around a 6% price increase last year. You know, we're constantly evaluating pricing and opportunities that are out there. I think there's more opportunity to take price, but just due to the, you know, the macroeconomic conditions, you know, and working with retailers, you know, there might be further opportunities to gain leverage working with our suppliers and our supply chain versus taking frontline pricing at this time. I think we're a little bit cautious on the current environment. We're going through the processes. We have a pricing committee that meets every month. We talk about the pricing in the category. Seems to be a lot more promotions potentially happening now. You know, will that whole 6% take place? No, because you're going to deal down and average in. They're, you know, the whole category pretty much took price, but now you're starting to see some deals come in. We're watching that closely as well. I think there's just a lot of uncertainty right now with the category on how much pricing consumers can take and also retailers as well. That was going to be my next question, is promos, because hearing from many companies, you know, certainly all depends on which one, but you know, some level of promotions will step up, especially over the summer, and I think in energy you're already starting to see some. Do you have plans also then to promote to... in line with what you're seeing from some of the others? I mean, we're getting questions now from retailers. Retailers are asking for more promotion. I think, you know, somewhat they're seeing traffic. We're hearing some traffic slowing down, so they want more promotions to help bring consumers, entice them to come into their stores. Promotions are going to be key, especially this summer. Internally, you know, when you look at the summer beverage season, right? That's a huge opportunity. Call it the 100 days of summer as we all get ready for it. There's going to be promotions. There's going to be a lot. You need to promote in order to get, you know, off-shelf placements, and, you know, I think the team's done a really good job on that. Not to say it's going to impact gross profit margins or anything, but we... You know, about 24 weeks, 24 weeks a year is really, you know, promotional activities traditionally in the energy category. You have to be able to promote in the category to stay relevant. We plan to do that. Okay. In the context of that, you mentioned gross margins. you know, you expect mid 40% range this year, but I think some pressure in the H1 as you fully integrate into your new distribution system. Can you help quantify the pressure you're expecting in the H1 on your margins and then any kind of incremental efficiencies in the back half of the year? The transition with Pepsi went incredibly smooth. We're not here to pat ourselves on the back. No. It, it went very well. I will do that for you. I will say, I did assume there would be more disruptions just based on historical. Kudos to both of you. Well, thank you. That being said, the operational, call it challenges that you face when you inject yourselves into a new national distribution network, you know, there's going to take some time to synchronize with their system, trying to understand which SKUs sell best in which regions of the country. There's a lot of different layers that go into it. To answer your question, from a gross profit perspective, when you look at, you know, I think some people were maybe expecting a step up from Q4 into Q1, and we were trying to, you know, when we spoke to investors, take more of a conservative approach in the H1 of this year because of what we call our orbit model, where we try to manufacture, ship to a warehouse, and ship to our distributors all within orbits around the country to put as few miles as possible on the cans, we had to destabilize that a little bit throughout Q1 and maybe a little bit in Q2 as well, because sometimes you need to sacrifice margin to make sure you have product on shelf as you're learning each other's systems. If you have to ship from Walla Walla up in the Pacific Northwest down into Dallas, Texas, not ideal on gross margins, but something you're going to do to sacrifice because you want to keep the product on the shelf. That being said, you know, we still, you know, anticipate mid-40s in the, you know, H1 of the year and, you know, there could be some upside on the, on that. We don't put a specific number out there, but on the upper end of the mid-40s in the back half of the year, there's opportunities for us. We'll see. Are you operating back within these orbits right now, or is that going to take a few more months? It, you know, we're trying... You know, each month is a little bit better, so it's fewer shipments outside of orbit. You know, it's going to take the full year to get synchronized with Pepsi. You know, we've been speaking with investors about it today. You know, Pepsi operates on a different wavelength than we had previously. I mean, everything seems like it's three years in advance. Yeah. We're down to 12 months now, and we're doing pretty well as far as planning out for 2024. You know, we inked our deal with them on August 1st. We, you know, integrated in October 1st. We didn't actually get a chance to take part in their annual operating plan, their AOP, for 2023. Everything we're doing is kind of jammed into the Pepsi system outside of their normal, the way they typically operate. 2024 is going to be, I think, a superior opportunity for us. You know, things. We're still, we're not content, but, you know, things are going pretty well right now. Yeah. No, it sounds like it. Yeah. I think, you know, as Toby mentioned, that's really key, that AOP, the planning is that. You know, that's a good point that we were jammed in at the end, we weren't able to really leverage a lot of their internal programs. This 2023 or early 2024 is going to be the first kind of official year where it's a cohesive portfolio integration, which is great. Talking about gross margins as well, in addition to the comments Toby made, we are also looking at opportunities on further, like, vertically integrating opportunities to drive further margin down the road as you look over the next two to three years out. We have roadmaps in place and opportunities to increase gross profit margins to gain more efficiencies in our orbit models and through the entire supply chain. Speaking of that, I don't know if you've put a target out there. What's a realistic gross margin over the next several years? I mean, you're guiding what mid-40% range this year. Is it high 40s% at best? Yeah. Like, I think it's When you look at the range, we said mid-40s% this year. We'd like to finish the year in that range. You probably can get to the upper mid-40s%, you know, with some further vertical integration. Keep in mind when you're benchmarking us against Monster, we include outbound freight. In our cost of goods versus Monster includes it as a selling expense. You need to take that into consideration when you're comparing margins and margin profiles. Okay. All right. still upside in 2024 sounds like a better year. Just based on what you mentioned. Talk a little bit about your sales and marketing expense. I think you've mentioned you expect it to remain consistent with historical run rates this year. Just simply trying to understand the marketing spend in the context of that. Are you expecting to increase it or step up to remain competitive and, you know, given this momentum? Then just thinking about even driving further awareness. I feel like everyone should know what CELSIUS is by now. Right. I agree. Right. I agree. You might argue that there's an opportunity there still. Yeah. Right? No, there definitely is an opportunity there. Our household penetration still is extremely low when you look at it across the nation. Our sales and marketing spend runs roughly around, you know, 22%-23% of sales. We were a little bit lower in Q1. We're a little bit higher in that range in Q4. It's really timing of events and activities. There's definitely leverage to be gained in sales and marketing as we grow, but it's almost like we just put a shoe on that's a little bit too big, right? Our ACV just went to 95% across the nation. It's important that we continue to invest in market, you know, ahead of the brand growth. That's what we're doing now. We've got some great programs planned for this summer, starting in Q2 and Q3. We just had a great launch party. We don't have the product up here, but Oasis Vibe was a really great flavor innovation. We launched a launch party out at Coachella. We were ranked as one of the, what is it? one of the top- Top party. Top, exclusive parties to go to. Okay. You're having a lot more fun. I didn't go. Toby went, but. What happens in Coachella stays in Coachella. Stays. That's the right audience too, right? Uh- Demographic there, I would imagine. We had about 1,200 influencers. Yeah ... and VIPs that attended the party. You know, it's just one of the tactics we use to, you know, John always says, "Own the phone." That's the key. You know, everybody's head's down on their phone all day long. It's, whether it's through, you know, TikTok, Instagram, whatever's, you know, Snapchat, whatever the social media platform it is, important for us to reverberate with, with the people that are consuming it. This Oasis Vibe is just, we touched on innovation a little bit earlier, but it's on trend, right? It's like ranch water is on trend, right? We tied it in there with this, it's a Prickly Pear Lime. It's a really great flavor. It's very unique, and it's got this cool cactus oasis vibe theme, and the team's done a great job. Beautiful looking can. It's a piece of art. You know, we've gotten a lot of excitement and partnered with Target on the launch for that. You know, that's just another form of innovation, getting more awareness around the brand with these events. It's really it'll be inclusive into our, what is it? Our Essential Vibe tour that's going coast to coast. We'll be up here, out here in the Hamptons this summer. We got a variety of events going on. A lot of great things in the works. It sounds like you mentioned earlier the innovation, you just have to constantly reinvent to some extent and stay relevant and continue to innovate with flavors, et cetera, right? You do. You got to continue to reinvent yourself. Okay, we've got a few minutes left. I wanted to definitely ask about, you mentioned it earlier, the e-com, you know, channel, and you have an impressive 19 share, second largest, energy brand on Amazon. Talk about how important that channel is for the future growth within the category. Yeah. I mean, Amazon has been key to our strategy from the beginning. We have an omni-channel strategy. Consumers want it when they want it, how they want it. Building a consumer products brand, it's important that you really embrace that concept. You know, consumers, you got half a second at best for them to make a buying decision. If your product's not there, they're going to move on, potentially move to another brand and portfolio. It might be difficult to get them back or, you know, the... We do have a great loyalty, which is great, but Amazon is critical. I think it's, it allows us to have that broad national distribution, although we're at a 95% ACV at retail now. I think it's exciting to see us hold at that 19%, the number two brand. We're only a few share points away from being number one on Amazon, even though our ACV has expanded exponentially. We also do extremely well at the club channel. The club channel is, you know, we just got in the club channel 12 months ago when we were at this conference last year. Yeah. You know, sales were going well and, but now we have two flavors. We have our core 18-pack, we have our 5-pack at Costco, we're in Sam's, BJ's. We're doing extremely well in those channels as well. You got to be in an omni-channel world. Yeah ... especially these home delivery systems. There's a variety of areas, and it's just another point of disruption. Really quick on the club channel, remind me of the margin impact that that channel has on your business or the headwind and where you're at? Yeah, I mean, we, you know, the club channel does require additional reworking and repacking, so there's additional costs associated with that. I think at the end of the day, we still feel confident in kind of the numbers that Toby talked about, those, that mid-40 range on the margins by the end of the year. It's a mix in our business, as that mix changes, it could impact our margins. Moving to an 18-pack helped us, 'cause before we were in a 15-pack last year, that was basically hand-packed. Now this 18-pack allows us to be in line, which improves efficiencies, allows us to produce a lot more product. That was a major initiative that we had working with the club channel for this year as we reset. We're still confident in the mix that our margin mix there. Okay. Finally, switching gears, again, a few minutes left, I was very intrigued by, you made some comments on your quarterly call about further international expansion plans. I think you said early next year. Any more color on that? Just, you know, how big of an investment do you expect this to be? You know, think about in the context of your partnership with Pepsi and the role they will play in this expansion. I've had Toby really integrated in a lot of those discussions. I'll let you lead on that. Yeah, sure. I mean, we're working closely, we have been for a few months, with Pepsi as far as, you know, they are a preferred international distributor. They're a little bit unique, where most of their international distribution is through third-party bottlers. It's just trying to figure out, you know, making sure that we have the right pricing systems, where everybody can make, you know, the necessary margins and the P&L works out. That being said, you know, we've talked about certain countries, you know, over the last year, even prior to Pepsi. You know, we want to fish where the fish are. Number 1, the U.S., I mean, of the top 10 markets we're interested in right now, the U.S. is the top 10 market. After that, we're going to look at, you know, the U.K., Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia. Really where, you know, these are energy markets already, where we don't have to, you know, create the category. you know, and we're just working through the systems with Pepsi right now. I do think there's some opportunities towards the end of this year, maybe for an entry in late Q4 into Q1. Really, you know, consensus has it's over $1 billion in revenue in 2023. Overall, the percentage will probably still be a small percentage. When you look at Monster, 37% of their revenue is international, but it's taken them 20+ years to get that, to get to that number, and they're still having some difficulties even in, you know, like China, where they launched 6 or 7 years ago. We're going to be methodical about it. No shotgun approaches here. We're judged every quarter on our earnings. We're cognizant of that, and we're going to be tactical. Yeah. I think it's important when we enter a market that we're successful, right? We just want to put it on the shelf. As they say, "Spray and pray," you know, that's comments we were talking about internally. It's really critical. We want to make sure we build that loyal consumer and make it successful. Also resource alignment, right? Yeah. You know, there's only so many dollars out there, so what markets are we going to strategically invest in, where are those dollars coming from? We'll need to communicate that to our investors that are expecting certain, you know, EBITDA and operating income margins as we grow forward. As Toby mentioned, we want to be really tactical in our approach. The biggest opportunity out of the 10 is the U.S., which is, you know, the number one biggest market right now. You know, sitting on an eight share and 95% ACV with 13.6 SKUs and $1 billion of retail sales ringing at the register in the last 52 weeks, I think we're, you know, we're really excited where we're at. Yes. My God. No, that sounds great. Maybe that is a great time to end with just a minute left, honestly, end on a high note. Congrats for a great quarter and the last year plus. Thank you. It's been great to see the success, so congrats. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.