Farmer Bros. Co. reports continued sales decline in Q3, but expects trends to rebound

Coffee roaster Farmer Bros. Co. (Nasdaq: FARM) reported financial results for its third fiscal quarter, ended Mar. 31, 2021.

Third-quarter business updates

• Successfully completed key initiatives within its supply chain optimization strategy, including: doubled capacity at the Northlake, TX, facility; ended production at the aged Houston, TX, facility; and opened a new West Coast distribution facility in Rialto, CA.
• Negotiated new credit facilities, effectively increasing borrowing capacity and flexibility while lowering overall borrowing cost.
• Achieved notable improvement in March 2021 DSD sales compared to January and February 2021 months;.
• Seeing strongest DSD sales levels since the start of the pandemic with average weekly DSD sales in the month of April 2021 down approximately 27% compared to pre-COVID levels.

Third-quarter financial results  

• Net sales were $93.2 million, a decrease of $36 million, or 27.9%, from the prior year period, primarily due to the impact of COVID-19.
• Gross margin decreased to 25.6% from 29.4% in the prior year period; continued improvement trend in gross margin each quarter of fiscal 2021.
• Net loss was $13.7 million compared to net loss of $39.8 million in the prior year period.
• Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $0.8 million compared to income of $6.6 million in the prior year period.
• As of Mar. 31, 2021, total debt outstanding was $88.0 million and cash and cash equivalents was $8.5 million compared to $122.0 million and $60 million, respectively, as of June 30, 2020.

Deverl Maserang, Farmer Bros. president and chief executive commented: “As the nation continues to recover from the pandemic and, more recently, severe weather throughout the central U.S., relative performance in our more impacted DSD business continues to show improvements from pre-COVID levels. At the same time, we are seeing early benefits from our focus on our five key turnaround strategies, particularly in the form of considerable and scalable network efficiencies that will be seen more fully in our results as sales continue to improve. March results were the best we’ve seen since the pandemic began, and we expect trends will continue to rebound as certain markets begin to more fully open and as certain parts of our business.

See Farmer Bros. Co.'s full announcement and financials at Globe Newswire.