Primo Brands Corp (PRMB) June 3, 2026 Conference Transcript

All right. Welcome everybody. Thank you. Last but not least today on day two, I'm very happy to welcome Primo Brands to the conference. With us today from Primo, Eric Foss, Chief Executive Officer, and David Haas, Chief Financial Officer. So thanks guys for joining us. good to be here. All right. We're going to use the entirety of our time for Q&A. A lot to cover, but I guess, Eric, I'm going to start with you and just start very high level because there's a lot of moving parts to Primo's story at this point in time, but I guess if there's one headline that you want to kind of emphasize at the top, what would it be?

I think it'd probably be that if you go back to the time of the merger, the deal thesis and really the overall investment thesis is still firmly intact. And there's several reasons, I'm sure we'll talk about many of them as we go through the next, you know, 30-35 minutes, but the way I would characterize it is this is a company that first and foremost is powerful. Powerful in the fact that we've got, you know, leading industry brands. Powerful in the fact that we have a go-to-market that has speed, reach, and flexibility. In addition to being powerful, I think this is a company that's proven, given we're the clear leader in water and the clear leader in healthy hydration. And actually a major player, I think sometimes it goes a little bit unnoticed, but a major player across liquid refreshment beverages. particularly when you think about velocity of the category and our brands within the category were a very important partner for our retail customers and then I think the final P is is the promising future that is in front of us as a company and part of that promise is driven by the fact that we compete in a very attractive category large growing and profitable and importantly the consumer and how she thinks about health and wellness and how she is continuing to think about you know the future of municipal water are all pretty

attractive components of the primo story great let's let's dive in and we'll start with direct because that's been the focal point I think the biggest you know trigger trigger of debate with respect to the investment story we've now cycled last year's disruption. And we've seen pretty clear sequential progress over the last couple of quarters, really underpinned by sequential improvement in service. I guess to what do you attribute the progress you've made so far? Where are we as we sit here today in the early part of June? And I guess what remains to be done as we go forward?

Yeah, I think a lot of the improvement, you know, was anchored in building the right culture and mindset, certainly addressing some of the process and technology outages and also people. And so I think if you think about what created some of that, it was integration related. It was related to, you know, kind of the pace of what we did relative to some of the consolidation on the manufacturing side or warehouse side or even route optimization side. And so I think what we did was try to just simplify what really needed to happen to deliver a great customer experience. And the first thing is, is we had to get product produced scheduled. We also had to get the warehouse out-of-stock situation solved and then get trucks loaded as ordered so that the sales teams could go deliver kind of account services scheduled and this important metric that we talked somewhat about in Q1 around on time in full. And so as we've worked through that process, the reality is, as you've seen, that important leading metric of on time in full move back north of 90%. I'm really pleased with what the team has done, both on the pace and the speed of how that has recovered. But at the same time, I would characterize it while pleased we have more work to do. And the more work to do, to me, really centers around, in particular, the call center, on making sure we've got the right capability, we've got the right tools, technology. There's certainly AI applications that we could be thinking about as part of that. And so that's kind of really still work ahead of us. We've also talked about we're in the process of piloting a warehouse management system that will improve both the out-of-stock and enable trucks to be loaded as ordered. So really pleased with the progress, but continuing down the success journey. Okay.

When you dig into that above 90% on-time in full metric, is it spread like peanut butter, or are there still hot spots where you're not quite back to where you need to be?

Well, there's some hot spots geographically, but I think for the most part, there's not hot spots on the production side. If there's hot spots, it's still within that warehouse situation or within the service model. And again, we've talked about it. We've continued to invest resources, feet on the street, selling resources. The way I think you'll see the evolution of that play out, Steve, is, you know, while we were over-resourced during the off-peak time frame, we're kind of growing into our body now in terms of the staffing of those routes as we move through summer. And as we come through kind of the peak summer selling season, we'll right-size that infrastructure. So you'll begin to see that tail off as we get into the second half of the year in terms of the investments.

Maybe, David, just around the cost or I guess the cost slash margin trajectory associated with this recovery, how do we think about, you know, as the service improves, as you've been doing a lot of things, route densities, a bunch of stuff going on, what's the expected margin trajectory here? most of your cost dynamics are somewhat controlled for this year come back to that maybe a bit later but just in terms of on the direct business itself as revenue improves you know assuming it does what's the the margin implications associated yeah this is a business that's always made its peak margins in Q3 first of all as we move into Q2 that would be the second most most sort of

beneficial quarter and then you have the natural Q4 Q1 or Q1 Q4 depending on sequence of sort of the shoulder seasons. So as Eric mentioned, coming into Q1 and into the new year with the progress made where Q4 of last year sequentially improved from the down 5 in Q3, we posted about a down 4-1 in Q4, we started seeing earlier signs of OTIF journey and saying, hey you know this route investment is paying dividends plus the cultural change and leadership change that Eric brought in sort of helping everyone understand the customer has to feel that satisfaction and when they order that it shows up in full and on time and that's really what what started. So again sequentially Q2 will look better than 1, 3 better than 2, and as long as we continue to see that OTIF journey lead to lower call volume, lead to higher sentiment and satisfaction from the consumer side, we're not going to overly prescriptive manage the margin side if it continues to unlock top-line growth. That's really what we've seen occur. Again, it's a natural sequential improvement period for us. We are growing into that route count and are growing into that volume as seasonal lift comes in both the exchange and home delivery side. So we're pretty pleased with that progress so far. Okay.

Where are we on the path to, you know, net additions, you know, the top of the funnel exceeding the bottom of the funnel. We're around about the time when we were, I think you were targeting to get back on the positive side. Have we hit that mark yet? Are we close? What's the trajectory there?

Yeah, I think if you think about some of the most important metrics, while north of 90% is good and some of that journey is still ahead of us, the customer nets and ultimately getting at that quit portion of the nets, because the top of the funnel has been on been fine is really still ahead of us and so you know as we get through the next you know several months you know I think you'll begin to see that get back to a more normalized level so I think you know so to come work in progress yeah what when you dig dig into the quits what what what is is it service is it what what are what's the rank order of rationale and

And how do you, therefore, how do you address it?

Yeah, I think one of the bodies of work that's still ahead of us is what I would call just almost reconceptualizing the entire customer journey. And so if you think about it, you know, from exploration to sign up as step one, service and delivery step two, making sure you've got an accurate and timely bill step three, and then step four, the issue resolution. I think it's in those last three buckets, right, of first and foremost, it's the delivery and the service dimension. But as we've, you know, brought systems together, we have had some hiccups on the billing side as well. And then, again, while most consumers don't expect you to be perfect, we've spent a lot of time on that last bucket of issue resolution. As we dug into the process, we found out there was, you know, more coordination, more communication and more process and technology needed. When somebody made a call to the call center, the call center operator would solve it in his or her mind, but wasn't connecting the dots back to the depot and the route. And so we've also stood up this respond and recover solve by sundown process that has helped solve those issues on a 24 hour basis. All of that, I think, is helping us make progress against those leading metrics. Okay.

So when I think about some of those, so warehouse management, harmonization of data, call center investments, you know, does that, you know, kind of thinking about that over the course of the next, you know, looking at it over the next 12, 24 plus months, and juxtaposing against, you know, economic forecasts at the time of transaction. Do those, some of those things seem like added investments, added costs. Can they be funded within the original financial forecasts, funded by synergies or whatnot? Or are they, or should investors start to think about maybe some incremental costs to come?

Yeah, I think relative to reinvestments, I think some of those are going to begin to fall off. I mentioned earlier the feet on the street and the routes. Certainly the Winback Initiative reinvestment monies, those will begin to build a tail here as we get into the second half of the year. I think the ongoing reinvestments still ahead of us that will continue are in the area of the call center capability and technology. Those three, I think, are with us for a while until we can get, you know, get it set up for a great customer experience day in and day out. I'd say those three are still ahead of us. Okay.

Have you, as you've settled into the, I mean, you were familiar with the business before you became CEO from a board perspective, as you've gotten closer to the day-to-day, have you seen incremental opportunities value? Let's fast forward and let's say the businesses have gotten through this. The business is now humming along. Service levels are strong. Are there incremental upside opportunities that maybe you didn't fully appreciate a year ago?

Yeah, I think there are. I think, you know, I've talked about kind of the three phases of our evolution of how we're approaching this. First phase is stabilization. I think we're working our way through that phase, you know, efficiently and at pace. The second phase is optimization. And then the third phase is more strategize. And so I think as you look at this business, what are we really great at? Again, we spend the majority of our time talking about the customer direct business, but we got half of our business sitting over in retail. So as you think about that and you think about the growth vectors available to us as an enterprise, I would line them up as follows. I think, number one, getting that great customer experience on the customer direct side unlocks growth potential. Two, on the retail side, we have an opportunity to really be much better in terms of in-store presence, more in line with our fair share and what we rightfully deserve. And this is a business that's grown up being really good at the cheap case pack water. Most of the profit pool sits over an immediate consumption. And so how we take advantage of that through a Conquer Cold initiative and cold drink, whether it's coolers or Coal Vault, is another growth vector for us. And so I think as you think about this business, there's plenty of growth vectors here in terms of execution, selling, service. And, you know, I didn't mention, you know, what's probably one of the hottest things going right now within the category. And that's our premium portfolio, which is also, you know, has a long runway ahead. Yeah.

So let's dive into some of those things. So as you say, retail has had some externality events. We've had some weather. We've had, you know, had tornado hit one of your facilities, but overall the retail, the category has been strong. The category is premiumizing. Your business has been delivering well. I guess, you know, how do you, you talked about some of the, some of the unlocks in terms of single service. I guess, do you have the capabilities to get at all those opportunities that, you know, but whether it's in-store execution or it's actual manufacturing capabilities for single serve, how much of that is kind of low-hanging fruit that's relatively easy to go after versus things you're going to have to build capabilities to realize?

Yeah, there's no doubt there's a capability investment, Steve, but I think most of it is within our reach. And so on the retail side of the business, I mean, what makes us what we are today is the strength of the product portfolio that we bring to market each and every day. And so as you think about that, we're positioned very well to meet the consumer where she wants, how she wants, when she wants. And it starts with, you know, we can compete at the value end of that spectrum with a product like Pure Life. We obviously can compete in the, you know, both value-oriented consumer and brand affinity consumer with our leading edge, leading market share regional spring waters, and then it moves into premium. And then you complement that, which I think is a muscle we're going to get better at building, which is the in-store execution part, right, which is how do we get more of our fair share of the feature activity? How do we get more display inventory to support that feature activity? How do we get more space in the gondola? How do we get, you know, more points of distribution and availability throughout the store? That's all opportunities for us. And, again, it'll come with some investment in people and capability. On the premium on Saratoga Mountain Valley, I guess maybe frame size the prize as you see it. you know where we are with capacity to be able to deliver on on that and I guess you know yeah just how big can premium become and and what what lies in your way essentially yeah I think one it's great to see the 40 plus percent continued growth we're getting off of of those two trademarks so I think there's a long runway ahead of us on double digit growth I would characterize it in terms of framing is we're in kind of the early to mid-inning still if it were a baseball game and so where do we need to go or how do we go forward I think it's important to know that we're not capacity constrained and yet we because we're still in the early and mid-innings we still have tremendous points of distribution opportunity and then we really have an unlock that you know X X a channel or a customer or two on the whole getting its rightful, you know, visual inventory levels and gondola space and properly positioned with more visual unity than it has today. So, again, there is a long runway of continued growth in this, and obviously it's a very attractive portion of the category for us to compete in. Yeah.

David, maybe help a little bit in terms of the profitability implications, the mixed implications of growing that premium segment. And as it scales, does it achieve even greater profitability? Or does that incremental growth require more brand investment? Is there both a margin and revenue store here? Or is it more about revenue, profit, dollar growth and positive mix on the portfolio.

Yeah. So, you know, I think we're in a very fortunate position where both of these brands are incredibly attractive and popular, but they come at their go-to-market a little bit differently. And, you know, you've heard Eric talk about RGM capabilities, and that's really an unlock that is still a capability build to come for us as a business. But with that, it allows those prices and go-to-market activities to be set up incredibly profitable for those respective brands. Each of those brands come to market a little bit differently. Mountain Valley had tended to come to market a little bit more balance between a retail offering and a go-to-market or direct delivery, direct-to-consumer setup. And Saratoga has typically been more of a retail, away-from-home established brand that's now having some increased success off-route. So anytime you can have a better balance with the off-route part or direct-to-consumer part, you start to unlock the margins in a very nice way. You just had asked a question about sort of capacity expansion and the like as well. So the board and management was at the Hawkins facility, the same facility that was hit by the tornado. We actually had a nice cultural event there with the associate groups celebrating what I'll call kind of the grand reopening, as well as the new commissioning of the line that had been introduced to that facility that allowed retail unlock of sort of our glass capability. So that's been very nice. The Mountain Valley expansion in Greenfield is starting to produce test product today as we speak, and so that's also an unlock. So both the brand portfolio opportunity, where it gets distributed, a balance between retail and direct-to-consumer, the RGM capabilities, and then these capital investments all start to bring this to a nicely accretive position for us as a company.

Maybe talk a little bit about the opportunity. To what degree are, you know, packages and brands, I would argue Saratoga and Mountain Valley to me, I think retail, right? But to what extent are, you know, kind of retail packages, retail brands being leveraged in the direct business? I guess we'll stop there.

Yeah, I think if you think about our direct business, once we get to the real growth flywheel we desire, right, you would have kind of this dimension of, you know, really solid customer retention, adding, given the opportunity at the top of the funnel, net new business that's accretive to the algorithm. ensuring you've got the right RGM and pricing strategy up against that business and then you would take that existing in-home five-gallon consumer and start to attach case pack to them or if they're having a dinner party this weekend and don't want, you know, a PET bottle of Poland Spring in the middle of the table or to their guests would have a glass bottle of Saratoga Springs or Mountain Valley. And so that attachment opportunity is one that, you know, to a large extent, to use a basketball analogy, we've been trying to figure out who to guard on the customer direct business and playing a little more defense and on our heels than we'd like. As we get on our toes and start playing offense, particularly as we get into the latter part of this year and next year, you'll see us start to think a lot more about how you bring some of that business back into the customer direct selling strategy. Okay.

What about the flip side? I mean, to what extent does the logistics and some of the warehouse management, some of the capabilities you're trying to build on the direct side become leverageable in the retail business, especially as you're almost building more of a DSD type presence in retail, trying to control the perimeter and stuff? So are there operational sort of leverage points in the opposite direction?

There are some. I think actually our warehouse management system on the retail side is, you know, I don't know if light years is right, but certainly well ahead. But I think your question is a relevant one. I think one of the things as we think about the growth opportunity on the retail side of the business, and I'll use immediate consumption, but I could apply the same principle to in-store execution. As we think through that opportunity to get more covalent space or to get more coolers into the market, one of the things we're beginning to test in Texas is how we might stand up a more DSD-like delivery model. You could do that off our customer direct trucks today, or you could begin to think about it. And to be honest with you, where I'm agnostic is on the delivery aspect. Where I'm passionately engaged on the unlock is how we identify selling eyes and merchandising arms to activate and keep that cooler or coal vault, you know, full and presented the right way to the consumer. So I think, on that side, there's an ability to take some of that model that we use on the direct side into the retail business more so than we have it today.

Overall, the category is premiumizing. We see that, you know, we see that in your portfolio, we see that in the category. But is there any kind of degree of value consciousness or competitive activity that is picking up in the current consumer environment? And to what extent is that, you know, a planning assumption that you're becoming more elevated as you think about the go forward, given the state of the U.S. consumer?

Yeah, I mean, I would, first of all, you know, I'm a big believer that you have to play your game and control what you can control. But, and I would characterize the pricing environment as very rational. I think what's the beauty of our portfolio, in addition to the brand breadth we speak to, is the value spectrum in which we can engage the consumer. So if you really think about it, almost the minute she steps away from tap water, the best value per ounce for her is going to be our refill business. As she steps up the chain, she could go to our exchange business. As she steps further up the chain, she could go into a retail package business or ultimately to the home delivery business, and then she could do it across brands in that from, you know, our existing brands up through the regional spring waters and premium brands. So I think it's really important for investors to understand how broad a value spectrum we have and can deliver against. And so, you know, there's no doubt with some of the inflationary discussion on commodities that, you know, we'll see where all that lands. But I like our position in terms of the value impression to the consumer.

I want to talk about the cost side of that in a second. But in terms of, for either one of you or both of you on a tag team, just the capabilities as you're thinking about offsetting the cost inflation to come and what we're talking about is being able to flex revenue growth management in a way that allows to deliver the consumer what it needs in a way that also protects your profitability. How well developed are those capabilities and are you ready for this moment as you go into the back half and think about 27 potentials?

Yeah, I mean, the way I think about it, Steve, is pricing is probably one of the most complex levers on the P&L. And the reason why it's complex is you need somebody that understands how the consumer defines value. You need somebody that understands how the customer is going to manage through on their trade margin and execution of that. And you need somebody that understands, you know, the in-depth economics of the company P&L. And, you know, so you have a small number of people who really understand that. And so to be great at pricing, you need to be very principle-based. You're definitely going to have to invest in capability and tools and technology and, you know, look at AI applications, so on and so forth. What's most important to me, though, is, and I've been through this journey before at another company, whereby as we were being stood up through an IPO as a bottling entity and losing the concentrate P&L, pricing became the most important lever for us. And so at the time, we talked about how we were making pricing decisions, and as I came back from Europe, one of the answers I consistently got was, we wait and see what competition does, and then we follow them. And my point was, I sure hope they know what they're doing, because if not, we're going to be in big trouble. And we changed that day from that mindset of waiting to see what competition does to making sure all of our pricing starts and ends with the consumer. And so as we think about pricing and RGM at Primo, we're going to make sure all of our pricing decisions start and end with the consumer. What do you have to do? You have to figure out how she defines great, good, and no value across usage occasions, price points, you know, pack types. And so as we do that, one of the early bifurcations you'll find in this category is you have this future consumption business where the consumer's definition of value is very much price. You have this immediate consumption business where the consumer's definition of value is very much convenience. So how you choose to play across your portfolio, what rate actions, what trade spend initiatives, or what mixed management opportunities you have is a pretty complex exercise. But we're very committed to it. Most importantly, we're committed to profitable growth, balancing it across volume and price. And I think you'll see us begin to talk a lot more about this in terms of how we take this forward. And again, I didn't talk about it earlier when I talked about growth vectors, but this is another big one. A big one.

Okay. So on the cost side, let's talk about what we're trying to offset. And I think, you know, let's start with 26, your degree of exposure relative to your degree of protection. And then how to at least, you know, help investors at least conceptualize the risks that may be accruing into 27. and how changes in spot prices may move that around? Because I think it's a little misunderstood as to how much flows through how quickly within the Primo P&L.

Yeah, so I think importantly, we, like almost everybody attending this conference, is exposed in some regard. So if it's direct delivery, we're typically exposed more on the input costs of the vehicles themselves. And so we are fortunate where about 41% of our fleet is propane oriented. That market has been largely not affected by events in the Middle East. And then the balance of that is diesel, of which we have had a pretty comprehensive and robust hedging strategy. That hedging strategy always looks out on an event horizon and tries to take down sort of hedges, you know, using very publicly available sort of spot prices and diesel in that regard. So we're pretty well balanced this year. We have hedges in place for next year, not to the degree we would have, obviously, of the current calendar year, but we continue to apply and look at that and sort of take down additional hedges as needed. On the retail side, we're more exposed in that case to resin in which we both come to market through virgin resin and recycled PET and we'll do that on a forward kind of spot buy price with our vendor partners you know in that case you don't really have a natural market you can hedge so you're doing that all through relational type discussions again similar setup here where in the current calendar year and into a portion of next year we have some positions in place or some contracts in place and you know what we can do thereafter is look at the totality of exposure first assess how we as a growing entity can offset that through just better productivity of the system so kind of go back to that analogy of direct delivery and Q1 route count versus Q2 route count and how that incremental volume helps and then secondly looking at it from the lens of all right what's that average basket of exposure and to protect margins or to potentially have incremental margins how would we price product accordingly and that's that RGM lens that Eric talked about and how we would go through that as entire assessment and that wouldn't just be in the retail product it would come all the way down to what's the appropriate refill price you know per gallon for instance to do that so the good news is is that while there are headwinds we have I think a process that works for us it's a process that's not just unique to us it's structural across the industry that's exposed to these commodities. And I think, you know, we have a couple different vectors to attack against that.

I think the thing I would build on David's comments would be, as you think about this, I think first and foremost, the industry has certainly seen this before. I've seen it before. David's seen it before. I think second, it's really important, and it's tough, given the day-to-day reading of the headlines, the level of volatility, uncertainty, to keep coming back to it's temporary. And the fact that the industry is likely to be affected in a similar way, whether you're a branded player or private label player, everybody's got their, as David talked about, hedging and forward buying strategies that are pretty similar. And then the number of levers we have, productivity and price being two of them, But fuel surcharges as well as delivery fee changes are all part of the toolkit if we get to that moment in time.

The nature of your, I guess, to some degree, your hedges, but also, I guess, probably more likely your contractual relationships with key suppliers. To some extent, if commodities, if the prices go higher, stay higher, what the hedges are doing is essentially giving you time to catch up. In a scenario where things remain more elevated for longer, you're therefore layering on more protection and more contractual protection, but then we see a reversal, to what extent are you locked in to those higher prices versus having some flexibility to renegotiate or participate in some of that downside? Does that make sense? It does.

Yeah. I think notably in diesel, while we're largely protected in current year, if there was somehow a Q3 or Q4 event, there is enough exposure in the spot market where we could have some benefit. Obviously that could, you know, go against you in some degree if things go higher from here. But But I think the best thing for an organization like ours, based on the finance team, supply chain and procurement teams, is just having a good level understanding of what we're facing. You know, again, within the last week, we've seen, I think, a spot market change on WTI of over $10. So that's not necessarily stable or easy to predict around. As long as we can get a general quantum of what we're up against, the organization can move into action. Again, whether it's productivity initiatives or through that pricing and the levers available within that. But yes, if things were to relax, there is some benefit. I think on the supplier side, notably in resin, there would also be ways to continue to say, hey, this is a different market than what we talked about. And oh, by the way, we unlikely have taken delivery of the product. So let's talk about how we're going to handle that.

And I would think that just given your scale and size, that if there was one buyer who's going to have that ability, it would probably be you. We'll just talk a little bit about your cash outlook, both for this year and as you bridge to the future. I guess, what drives the next step up in free cash flow for you? And how would you be prioritizing uses of that cash once it comes?

Sure. So this will be the last year of integration related activities. We completed round six in February, round seven in March. We're also going to extinguish sort of what we'll call our integration CapEx, which has been part of the add back cycle within that. We don't anticipate another weather event. So unfortunately, we faced, you know, close to 45 plus million dollars related to that tornado repair. But so all those things start to sunset. And so that allows the capital, the CapEx investment to revert back to more of that normalized 4%. The nice thing within that is, you know, our original guide for the year was 0 to 1%. We delivered a 1.7% Q1. We've since then revised our top line guide to 1 to 3. And in none of those scenarios did it anticipate a 4.5 or a 5% capital to do that. it was a balanced achievement through diverse water portfolio growth across regional spring water, purified and premium, across service growth, and then notably in direct delivery, a rapid or a more rapid improvement in the trajectory of that recovery arc. So we're pretty excited that that doesn't require extraneous capital to sort of generate that change in guide that we've given. Our first priority, again, would be to find projects where those capital investments within the existing sort of amount could generate or stimulate a higher top line. Some examples of that continue to be investments we've made in the premium business, investments we've made in what is adding regional spring water exchange product to our existing footprint in the exchange business next to our purified products, so that's a nice incremental lift, and then most importantly just looking across the portfolio where to play, how to win, and where can some of that capital investment in a growth angle be used to sort of elevate the business most importantly our priority thereafter is to deliver this business so we think we can again start to get a little closer to that three times and in a year from now you know sort of breach through that three times net leverage ratio and that's a really strong position for us to sort of unlock valuation we believe from there again communication of a dividend policy annually and again we don't really believe will be in the share repurchase business unless obviously there was the dislocation we faced in the last year so that all those are things where both the base cash profile the quality of the cash profile the diminishment of the ad backs all those things start to go in and sequentially improve each quarter this year okay we have a couple minutes left you know I almost right from the outset we I've been talking we've been talking about primo as sort of as one entity at work in the grand scheme of things were only you know 18 months removed from what was a very large, you know, transformational integration inside the company.

Is it one primo or is there still, you know, to what extent are we still integrating?

Yeah, I think we've done a lot of work. It's a good question. You know, there's three things you have to get right anytime you bring companies together. Successful integration, a synergy capture, and the culture. And the culture is really the centerpiece of your question. You know, we are one team primo, and we have talked a lot as an executive leadership team, and we've talked a lot about to the senior leadership team. We had to get together with the senior leadership team about a month ago, and my message to them was, you know, I wanted them to change a couple of things. I wanted them to change their place. This is no longer Nestle Water. It's no longer Blue Triton Brands. It's no longer Primo Legacy. See, this is one team primo with one dream. Second, I wanted them to change their pace. We need to be faster, and we need to be more agile in a fast-moving consumer goods category like this. And the third is I wanted them to change their perspective. And what I meant by that is I want them to lay down their functional hat or their line of business hat, and I want them to put on the enterprise hat, and I want them to make sure that while technically and functionally they're very capable, They also view the business through more of a general manager's mindset. And so I think the team has responded really well to that. We'll continue to walk down a path of assessing capability and who can and can't, as well as culturally, who will and won't, and make the necessary changes to make sure we're running the best team on the field. But I think we're in a very good spot relative to one primo team.

Great. And in our final minutes, I mean, I guess we've talked, there's a lot of balls in the air. that we're progressing through. You mentioned early innings a couple of times. So, you know, when we get to the end of the game, I guess what do you want investors to understand about End State Primo and the opportunities that lie ahead?

I would say End State Primo. First and foremost, we want to be known as a great customer service entity. So you'd want to be able to drive great consumer satisfaction and great customer loyalty and in a company that really helps our retail partners build their business I think second we want to be known as a growth company so we want to unlock the growth full potential of this business through the growth flywheel and and that'll be measured in our ability to grow and outgrow the category ultimately and and grow share I think third we want to be known culturally as a company that's a great place to work where you know our associates can come and build a career and and we're known as a both a performance and a recognition culture and then I think you know really important for us is we're trying to get this company into what I would call the virtuous cycle of really solid top-line growth that is complemented with some margin expansion, which drives, you know, good earnings growth and free cash flow that you can reinvest in the business. And ultimately, if we do that, you know, we'll be a great investment for our shareholders. And the thing that I'm really encouraged by is if you take this moment in time, I think the fundamentals are strengthening. I think the reality is, is that the momentum is building and I think you know the path forward allows us a pretty nice path to create value going forward okay we're that we're at time so we'll we'll end it there's play your place to end it thank you both thank you appreciate time thank you all for joining and enjoy the rest of the conference