Dan Fachner, J&J Snack Foods President and CEO, commented, “We are pleased with our strong top-line growth across all three of our business segments, including a 24% increase in net sales for the fiscal fourth quarter and a 21% increase in net sales for the full year. These results mark a fourth consecutive quarterly revenue record, including full year revenue over $194 million greater than our prior highest annual revenue. Adjusted EBITDA increased 4% for the quarter compared to prior year even as we continue to experience unprecedented cost inflation. As a company, we remain focused improving profitability.”
“Our ability to deliver strong results in a very challenging cost and operating environment reflects the success of our sales-centric initiatives. Our focus on new product innovation, leveraging core-brands to create compelling product extensions, repositioning how we market our brands, and driving cross-selling opportunities is driving this sales momentum. In addition, we continue to see robust demand for our higher-margin core products along with continued strength across key sales channels and increased demand of our products with both new and existing customers. We are also making progress on our operational initiatives focused on continuous improvement, including specific plant projects focused on reducing cost and inefficiencies, centralizing our procurement and R&D functions, expanding and improving our production line capabilities, and optimizing our supply chain. We expect these actions will result in significant contributions to our overall results in the coming fiscal years, and help to offset the ongoing costs pressures across the business.
“Despite the record sales, we continue to experience historically high inflation pressures across just about every segment of the business including wages, fuel, packaging, shipping and commodities. While our profit has been significantly impacted by this dynamic, we are pleased with our quarterly sequential improvement in gross margin and expect to see further progress in the coming quarters as the effect of our most recent pricing, product mix, SKU management initiatives take hold.”
“In summary, we are executing on our strategy. We are aggressively growing sales led by the strength of our core brands and making progress offsetting a historic cost environment. We are well positioned as we head into fiscal 2023 and expect to continue our strong sales momentum while also improving profitability. I am confident that our strategy will continue our long history of creating value for our employees, partners and shareholders.”