Stryve Foods reports Q4 adjusted EPS (13c) vs. (55c) last year

Reports Q4 revenue $5.4M vs. $6.8M last year. Chris Boever, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "Our 2022 transformation is progressing as planned. As we discussed last quarter, simplifying our business, executing pricing actions and attacking operating expenses were crucial components to building the foundation for our future. In the fourth quarter, we successfully reduced operating expenses by 55%, implemented a customer and SKU rationalization eliminating low quality sales. We streamlined the organizational structure and delivered double digit improvement in pricing. While there are still components of the transformation to complete, the progress the team made has been impressive. I would like to thank my Stryve teammates and the board for their efforts and support. We have collaborated with our retail partners, listened to the voice of the consumer, and have dramatically improved our offerings to drive distribution and consumption. From this, we have refreshed our packaging to work harder at retail and invested to unlock huge advancements in our product quality. These actions have been extremely well received by retailers across the country, and as a direct result of these efforts, we will experience significant distribution gains, starting in the second quarter, across multiple retail channels, c-store, mass, natural, and in grocery. In addition, our productivity program is now in place, with several projects across the enterprise in motion. The organization’s focus on the core portfolio, executing on the fundamentals will deliver acceleration in revenues and margin expansion starting in our second quarter. Looking back at Q4, we successfully maintained stable gross margins in the back half, and again delivered our best quarterly Adjusted EBITDA Loss in the Company’s history. Our first pass productivity improvements have shown up in our numbers with materially lower cash operating expenses. I am confident that we will be able to drive further positive financial outcomes this year. Based on 52-week data in measured channels alone, we delivered retail sales growth of 27% in 2022, exceeding the overall category performance, earning share. This was largely attributed to our gains in distribution and price/mix acceleration. We expect to continue to build on this progress, while maintaining rigorous discipline on our execution. I am proud of what the team has accomplished in 2022. The demands were challenging last year, and the rewards of our efforts are beginning to show up with improved execution, expanding distribution, and enhanced merchandising of our great tasting, on-trend, healthier brands; Stryve, Vacadillos, Kalahari, and Braaitime," Boever concluded.