Q1 2024 United Natural Foods Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Steve Bloomquist; VP, IR; United Natural Foods, Inc.
Sandy Douglas; CEO & President; United Natural Foods, Inc.
John Howard; CFO; United Natural Foods, Inc.
Andrew Wolf; Analyst; C.L. King & Associates
John Heinbockel; Analyst; Guggenheim Partners, LLC
Leah Jordan; Analyst; Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Scott Mushkin; Analyst; R5 Capital LLC
Kelly Bania; Analyst; BMO Capital Markets Corp.
Bill Kirk; Analyst; Roth Capital Partners, LLC
Chuck Cerankosky; Analyst; Northcoast Research Partners, LLC
Presentation
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the UNFI First Quarter Fiscal 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question again, press star one. I will now turn the conference over to Steve Bloomquist, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Steve Bloomquist
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on UNFI's First Quarter Fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release issued this morning the press release and earnings presentation, which management will speak to are available under the Investors section of the Company's website at www.UNFI.com on the Events tab. We've also included a supplemental disclosure file in Microsoft Excel with key financial information. Joining me for today's call are Sandy Douglas, our Chief Executive Officer, and John Howard, our Chief Financial Officer. Cindy and John will provide a strategy and business update, after which we'll take your questions.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that comments made by management during today's call may contain forward looking statements. These forward looking statements include plans, expectations, estimates, and projections that might involve significant risks and uncertainties. These risks are discussed in the Company's earnings release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward-looking statements.
And lastly, I'd like to point out that during today's call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our press release and the end of our earnings presentation. I'd ask you to turn to slide 6 of our presentation. As I turn the call over to Sandy.
Sandy Douglas
Thanks, Steve. We appreciate everyone joining us for our first quarter call. In my remarks this morning, I will provide a brief overview of our results. The operating environment and then an update on the progress we're making resetting and restoring our profitability and enhancing the value we create for our customers, suppliers and in parallel, our shareholders as you saw in our release, our first quarter results exceeded our expectations and reflected a sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA of $24 million. This resulted from improved operational execution and progress on near term value creation initiatives, which helped deliver savings earlier in the year than we previously expected. We accomplished this despite an industry backdrop that continues to be challenging. Inflation rates are declining sequentially, yet consumers continue to endure the impact of structurally higher food prices. We saw inflation declined by over 200 basis points compared to last fiscal year's fourth quarter but it remains modestly above historical levels. To manage these higher prices, consumers continue to buy less and shift their purchases away from the grocery channel. This has led to negative volumes on average across the retail food industry and share gains by mass merchandisers and discounters. These challenges create even greater urgency for us to be successful in both our short term and longer-term transformation efforts so that we can help our retail customers remain as competitive as possible. As the environment continues to evolve, many of our customers are performing well. Even in this environment, but all of them need UNFI and our supplier partners to step up for them. Our revamped leadership team is rising to this challenge, gaining even more UNFI experience and starting to drive tangible operating improvement. We expect this will increasingly benefit our financial performance throughout the remainder of fiscal 2024 and beyond as we manage for the short term and build for the future.
An encouraging area is our progress on shrink. As we've detailed previously, the volatility created by COVID and the post pandemic environment created challenges, managing shrink throughout our supply chain. This weighted significantly on our results as we exited last fiscal year. And while it's still early in fiscal 2024, our strengthening operating performance reduced shrink year over year and sequentially. In fact, we reduced shrink in the quarter by over $7 million more than we had previously planned, and we continue to expect additional improvement as we move through the year, we're beginning to see the benefits of improved management routines and standardized processes that we've implemented over the last few quarters as well as the benefits of more stabilized supply chains and labor force with turnover in our distribution centers near record low. Separately, we're rapidly realizing our near-term value creation initiatives and continue to expect these will deliver about $150 million of operating efficiencies to our fiscal 2024 results. Importantly, some of these initiatives, particularly the wholesale efficiency actions we've taken also helped lay the groundwork for our longer-term transformation aspirations, giving us increased confidence as we move down this path as we've delivered on these near-term goals.
We've also been making early progress on our transformation plan with advancements on network optimization and automation. During the quarter, we finished the consolidation of our Logan township facility into our Allentown distribution center, which brings our fresh and conventional businesses in the region under one roof.
Separately, we also finished the expansion of our automation system to our Carlisle DC, which expands its unit pick capabilities and is expected to support increased capacity and throughput Additionally, we continued to augment our management team by recruiting a new CEO for our retail business and a new Chief Information Officer, both of whom have helped lead successful transformations previously We also completed the onboarding of three new board members during the quarter and held our first Board meeting since they joined us just last week. Their input was proactive and constructive and we strongly believe the perspectives of our new members will add meaningful value.
I also want to thank our three departing directors for their contributions and their years of service to UNFI. While it's still early in the year and in our transformation plan, we're confident that we're headed in the right direction to sustainably create value for our stakeholders, especially our customers suppliers and shareholders. We remain focused on maintaining our operating and transformation momentum as we service our customers throughout the busy holiday season. We will continue to drive operational improvement and transformation as quickly as possible, given the tremendous long-term shareholder value creation opportunity that we see by improving the economics of our business and enhancing the value we bring to customers and suppliers we refuse to be incremental in our approach.
With that, let me now turn the call over to John for his remarks. John?
John Howard
Thank you, Sandy, and good morning, everyone. As you heard from Sandy, our year has started ahead of our expectations, and we're reaffirming our full year outlook for sales, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS and capital and cloud implementation expenditures.
This morning I will provide commentary on first quarter results, our balance sheet and capital structure and some considerations in our fiscal 2024 outlook. With that, let's review our Q1 results. Turning to Slide 8. Net sales increased by 0.3% to $7.6 billion. The largest first quarter sales result in our history. Wholesale growth reflected the benefit of inflation which was nearly offset by a decline in units sold. Sales in our retail business declined by slightly more than 1% as we continued to be impacted by a difficult macro and industry environment. As we announced in late October, we have a new CEO leading retail and remain optimistic that we'll be able to work with our suppliers, franchisees and our associates to sustainably improve performance as we move forward.
Flipping to Slide 9, let's now take a look at our profitability drivers. This quarter. Our gross profit rate prior to the non-cash LIFO charge in both years decreased by about 110 basis points, which was in line with our expectations. As we stated on our year-end call, we will be cycling the elevated procurement gains that benefited last year's gross profit rate until the latter part of this year's second quarter. As a reminder, these gains were driven by substantial supplier price increases that drove last year's Q1 inflation rate to over 10%, which is markedly higher than this quarter's rate of around 3%. Partially offsetting the decline in procurement gains was improvement in shrink, which was the lowest we've experienced in the past seven quarters. Our operating costs as a percentage of sales were flat sequentially compared to the fourth quarter and were up 20 basis points compared with the first quarter of last year. We continue to invest in distribution center and transportation labor and in foundational initiatives, our transformation plan to provide the highest possible service levels for our customers. Importantly, within our distribution centers, the improvements in vacancy rates we've discussed on prior calls helped us finish the quarter with the lowest turnover rate in three years and the highest throughput rate in the past two years. This stability in our supply chain is helping to drive tangible benefits in our operating performance. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $117 million or 1.5% of sales compared to $207 million or 2.7% of sales last year, with the largest difference being the decline in gross profit dollars related to the previously mentioned decline in inflation driven procurement gains within our retail segment. Profitability in the quarter was pressured partially as a result of investments in gross margin intended to drive improvements in store traffic and basket size, which should benefit performance in future periods.
Our GAAP loss was $0.67 per share, which included $0.63 in charges, primarily relating to the pending sale of our Eden Prairie, Minnesota, corporate office business transformation costs and Lifeco. Adjusting for these items, our adjusted EPS totaled a loss of $0.04 compared to income of $1.13 per share last year, with the largest driver of the change being the lower level of adjusted EBITDA.
Moving to Slide 10. We finished the quarter with total outstanding net debt of $2.29 billion, a $336 million increase compared to year end. This reflects the usual first quarter investment in working capital as we add inventory going into the holiday selling season in support of our customers as well as the impact of inflation on product costs. This expected seasonal increase in working capital historically converts to cash in the second and third quarters. We retain significant balance sheet flexibility with ample liquidity and no near-term maturities. Importantly, we have significant optionality embedded in our balance sheet to enable expeditious debt repayment as we drive operational and financial improvement, we will continue to manage our debt structure consistent with optimizing our long-term credit profile.
Turning to Slide 11. As stated in our press release, we're affirming our full year outlook for fiscal 2020 for net sales of $30.9 billion to $31.5 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $450 million to $550 million and adjusted EPS to be in the range of an $0.88 loss to $0.38 of adjusted earnings per share. Our outlook for fiscal '24 capital and cloud implementation expenditures remains at approximately $400 million, including critical investments in our transformation plan with the largest component going towards network optimization and automation. This also includes investments to continue to improve our technology infrastructure as well as drive higher profitability and growth in the future. This reaffirmed outlook also balances our first quarter progress resetting and restoring profitability and our resilient new business pipeline. With a macro economic and industry backdrop that remains challenging. We continue to expect inflation to decline and expect the recovery in unit volume to be somewhat prolonged. Additionally, we've seen some recovery in supplier sponsored promotions, which benefits our ecosystem as we work to implement promotions across our 30,000-plus customer locations, but this activity remains below its pre-pandemic peak.
In terms of the cadence of our results, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be relatively similar to Q1 and our second quarter. This reflects the challenging consumer and industry environment. Incremental distribution network investments, including costs associated with the new DC ahead of its opening tied to our broader network optimization as well as our continued efforts to reset and restore profitability.
In summary, as outlined on slide 12, we're reaffirming our full year guidance for net sales. Adjusted EBITDA adjusted EPS and expect capital and cloud implementation expenditures to remain on pace with the critical investments in our transformation plan necessary to better service our customers and partner with suppliers which in turn will drive shareholder value. We're encouraged with the start to the fiscal year and the improvements we're seeing within our operations, particularly with increased efficiency and effectiveness in our supply chain. We remain assured in the business, our updated management team and Board of Directors' ability to increase shareholder value. While it's still early, we are gaining confidence in our ability to execute our strategy and believe there are still significant improvement opportunities ahead of us. We look forward to updating you on our progress in March. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one again, one moment please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Wolf of CL King. You may proceed.
Andrew Wolf
Thank you, and good morning. My first question here is for Sandy, regarding your statement in the release and you also said on the preamble about not being contained to or however you said it was just incremental progress. Historically, to me that means, you know, some strategic, more strategic changes, whether it's restructurings or divestitures. What have you is that's kind of what you're referencing or is it something else, maybe the speed of process, for example.
Sandy Douglas
Good morning, Andy. Thanks for joining us today. And I'm really speaking about what we see as the opportunity for improvement and the opportunity to create value for our customers, our suppliers and our shareholders. We've talked before about the transformation agenda and the near term profitability opportunities. And we just see significant opportunity to grow this business and to make it a lot more profitable. And so that's that's all we're talking about when we say that and our plan includes a number of near-term actions as well as longer-term actions to capture that opportunity and have you internally, I assume you have sized out that opportunity and have it.
Andrew Wolf
Could you give us a timetable when you might share that with?
Sandy Douglas
Yes, at this stage, we have actually built a longer-term sense of the opportunity we've talked before about the addressable market from a growth perspective. And then from a profitability standpoint, we have milestones that we've set out at this stage. We're focusing on execution and step-by-step progress, and that's the what we've shared publicly. And as we grow our credibility and our execution capability will share more in the future.
Andrew Wolf
Thank you. Got that, John. On the adjusted gross margin contraction, if I look at it sequentially, obviously it improved a lot. Last quarter was about 170 bps. This was one 10, so 60 basis points of your better than expected shrink, I guess was about 10 of that. Could you just unpack a little like what sequentially improved wasn't less of a drag on procurement or what's the absolute block? Just what was in there, if you could? And that's my last question, right?
Sandy Douglas
Yes, no, I appreciate it, Andrew, you hit on the big piece, which is strength is a key driver of that, particularly obviously in our margin. And as we continue to improve our processes et cetera, that Sandy mentioned, we're we're seeing that improvement in our OpEx.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel of Guggenheim. Your line is open.
John Heinbockel
Sir. You want to start with some I know you guys have two buckets of TAM for our existing customers and new. Maybe talk about each of those. I mean, we saw sort of look at the ending was $40 billion of existing is the real low hanging fruit and then kind of the staging going after growth? Right. Doug, you want to be a little more reserved until you get some of the operational issues addressed or your sales guys are trying to get as much businesses they can now in this environment?
John Howard
John, on the the way I described the addressable market is, as you said, it's both new customers and expanding our business with existing customers. And I think I said before, I have a particular passion for expanding business with existing customers because it reflects the health of our execution and our relationships and tends to be more profitable. And I would say that our sales organization is is actively developing opportunities that are both profitable and good for the customers that we're talking with. But our overall priority is improving profitability of the Company and improving our ability to execute, which obviously is a virtuous cycle with gaining customers for the right reasons. So top focus on is execution and profitability and profitable relationships with existing customers and new.
John Heinbockel
Okay. And then maybe a follow-up to that is the automation opportunity is big, right? So we are in the very early stages, right, of Centralia. So how is that progressing? And then do you have a I think the thought was this would be gradual, right? This would take for logistical reasons multiple years. I don't know if it was five years, but a quite a number of years to get rolled out. Is there any additional thought on that and you don't want to be incremental, so you see it. You don't want to prior to COVID, you have baked some approaches to automation?
Sandy Douglas
Sure. So we did talk about our first installation in Centralia, Washington, which is in it is on schedule. And we've talked about the importance of automation to facilitate profitable growth as we go forward.
As we talked about the relationship that we've developed with symbiotic and the five DCs that we've contracted for and I mentioned in my remarks, we're also doing some other automation around each pick. And all of that is being done systematically to take advantage of high return projects that drive a combination of better execution for customers and good financial returns.
The parallel initiative in that strategy is optimizing our DC network, which will obviously drive we have more efficient growth and better returns on capital and the two go hand-in-hand. And as we mentioned, we did see a significant opportunity as those two elements of the supply chain strategy work to drive more profitable growth in the quarter. We actually made some progress with closing down the Logan Township, DC and moving that inventory into Allentown. And we automated the Carlisle DC for each pick. So we're beginning to take steps along the path, and we see it as a significant opportunity to improve profitability and efficient growth going forward.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Carden of UBS. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. This is actually being Brock on for Mark on a couple of questions. First, we've seen M&A start to pick up on the foodservice side of the distribution industry with US Foods and Sysco, both making acquisitions over the past few quarters, how would you expect bolt-on activity to increase in grocery distribution? And does your work on improving some of the fundamentals of the business impact your likelihood of participating in near-term acquisitions?
Sandy Douglas
I think you've answered the question well, and the way you framed it. We're a national company. We have significant scale first, second and third priority is to improve our execution and our profitability. Obviously, we will take opportunities that we might see and evaluate them carefully. But our focus is on our execution and our ability to serve our customers and to do it profitably.
Appreciate it. And the follow-up is on I guess at this stage, how is the promotional environment comparing to what you anticipated when you originally laid out your guidance at the start of the year? And any changes to what you're expecting over the next quarter or two on that front?
Sandy Douglas
Yes, I think promotions are progressing in line with our expectations. They're they have picked up some, but they're still below pre-pandemic levels, and we expect them to continue to increase as we turn the corner into calendar '24.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Leah Jordan of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Leah Jordan
Thank you. Good morning. And I first wanted to talk about inflation. Could you provide an update to your outlook there? Any change to your prior view for low to mid single digits? And have you considered any degree of potential deflation in the '24 outlook? Or how do you think about your ability to improve EBITDA margins in that environment?
Sandy Douglas
Sure. Good morning, Leah. Our outlook on inflation remains fairly consistent. I mean, in disinflation happened a little bit faster than we expected in the first quarter, but we've gone kind of from 11% inflation at the beginning of our fiscal year, and we expect to exit around 3% at the early at 3% in Q1. And then exit the year around 1% come from the we're not seeing deflation in total, but there are some categories that are deflating and there's a range of potential outcomes that will happen as promotional activity comes up during the year. Our strategy here is to do our best from a merchandising standpoint to make sure that our customers are as competitive as they possibly can be.
As far as everyone knows, the consumer is stressed right now, and it's important that they have good value and we see that happening by some of our merchandising programs that get it longer-term price positioning as well as promotions. And we think we've got a plan that will address most of the scenarios that we can possibly see. But we'll have to stay agile from a cost perspective to make sure that we can deal with what happens.
Leah Jordan
Thank you. And then I just had one quick follow-up on volumes. You noted that they sequentially improved improved again this quarter. I'm curious if that's occurring pretty consistently across all segments or are there any notable differences by segment?
Sandy Douglas
Sure. I mean, it's hard to generalize across 32,000 customer locations. As is always the case, we've got customers are doing relatively well and we've got some others that are challenged and it depends a lot on their positioning in the markets that they're where they're operating in. But as a general rule, the retail market is very competitive right now and it's favoring discount position. Retailers who are competing on price. And so my previous answer really is the implication of that, which is we have to work very hard with suppliers to nurture and make sure that our customers who which are very valuable customers for suppliers are as competitive as possible and able to succeed and regardless of their position.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Scott Mushkin of R5 Capital.
Scott Mushkin
Thanks and thanks for letting me ask some questions here. So my first question actually is on wanted to expand on the last one on your just your flexibility or levers you can pull if navigating the year is more difficult if the competitive climate inflation continue to deteriorate looking at how you're trying to transform the business?
Sandy Douglas
Sure, Scott, thanks for the question. As we indicated last year, we have four areas that we're acting on to address near term profitability. And now that was our contracts are a zero-based budgeting process on spans and layers, hum and SKU optimization. All four of those, along with the ParAllele effort to reduce shrink and bring it back into line are significant levers of opportunity. We talked about $150 million is sort of the target for the for the annualized number for this year. All all of those are opportunities that are bigger than that. And we're going to continue to work each of those to make sure that we're taking full advantage of every opportunity to help the company in whatever scenario unfolds.
Scott Mushkin
Perfect. And then my follow-up, and it goes to your your comments about the discounters and math guys are taking share one how should we think about the potential for some of what you're doing on needing to go to your customers? I know there's contracts in place and whatnot, but two, how much do you see how much should we worry as investors that some of what you're doing is going to inevitably have to go to your customers given the shared shared changes that are going on?
Sandy Douglas
Yes, I think I think our customers need the most competitive costs that we can provide them and there's several levers to drive to accomplish that. One is to work better with our suppliers. Suppliers have a vested interest in a healthy independent channel and regional chains as well. And they they see that opportunity. So they don't want to only win in one part of the market. So to the extent that we work effectively with them, they will invest in our customer base and that's a major focus for us.
Secondly, we talked before about our pro services offer. Any chance we can get to save customers money through our pro services helps them. And it helps us too because when we add value we make money as well.
And then the final answer, Scott, is our brands program. A lot of attention is being focused inside UNFI, both from a talent and a strategy and execution standpoint on our brands. Plus, as you know from our release, we're divesting some of the fringe brands and focusing on the top ones and the more value that we can bring there, but it will be very important regardless of the customer's positioning, whether they're natural or conventional or somewhere in between.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line Kelly Bania of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Kelly Bania
Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. I'm curious at all if you can quantify the 150 million of value creation initiative and just how that impacted Q1 in particular and how much of that particularly impacts operating expense? I was just trying to understand really kind of what's the underlying growth rate of operating expenses and wages that you're seeing this year so far?
John Howard
Yes. Kelly, this is John. I appreciate the question. We haven't disclosed that. It's the it's the P & L and multiple places, margin OpEx and what we call SG&A, which is part of our OpEx and our external reporting. So it is spread throughout the P&L and it is ramping up as we move through FY 24 as part of the guidance that we affirmed this morning, but we haven't provided that detailed breakout beyond that.
Kelly Bania
Okay. I mean a couple of more questions. Just in terms of the outperformance of supernatural here and I think you called out motor new business wins there. Can you talk about how you're gaining new business? Is there any contractual visibility that you have into continued new business wins there or just and what's happening there and the potential for that to continue? And then underneath that, can you talk about just catagory performance more in a organic basis, meaning conventional and natural and organics private label. Can you help us just understand categories that are that are working where you're seeing trade down of just what the consumer is gravitating towards today?
Sandy Douglas
Kelly, this Sandy of we wouldn't comment on an individual customer. And obviously, given the way we report channels, it highlights a specific customer. The only thing I would say in general is that we have a very strong relationship with that customer and they're executing well. And we're working hard to help them in every way we possibly can from a channel perspective.
The simplest way that I can describe what we see is that well-positioned retailers are doing well relatively well. There's no specific pattern in conventional versus natural. It really has to do with execution. And if the value proposition is clear and the execution is good, the sales tend to be better from a product category perspective, private brands are obviously strong in this environment. And obviously value propositions to consumer, particularly the mid to low end consumers stretching their food budget and looking for ways to meet their families' needs in the most efficient way possible. But as always, in a situation like this, the upper end of the market is he's buying for different reasons and old. Ultimately, that's where a lot of the growth is as well in our portfolio at least.
Kelly Bania
Okay. And then just another one on the gross margin. So sequentially, the gross margin improved from 13.5% to 13.7%. Clearly, the biggest factor on a year-over-year basis is the lower procurement gains. But can you help quantify the sequential improvement, whether that is shrink promotion, how mix is impacting, but just any any trend to think about how sustainable that 13.7% is or if we should see any more volatility you look at the year?
John Howard
Kelly, I'll start and Sandy can fill in. The sequential piece that you're looking at is why that improvement is largely driven by shrink. So that's the largest contributor that we're seeing others, there's other moving pieces within there, as you might imagine, given the complexity of our margin. But that strength is the biggest one.
Operator
Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Bill KIRK of Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Bill Kirk
And thank you for taking the questions. And so one of your largest competitors is pursuing a more heavy retail ownership strategy. I guess it gives them some new stores in markets where they don't really have scale or they don't really operate in. So if they're successful buying those retail stores, how do you see competitive landscape changing? Or will you be competing against them more if they own if they own those?
Sandy Douglas
Yes, yes. So I guess the way I would say, and I generally don't comment on competitors and their strategies in this one in particular is unfolding. So we'll be watching it as you will. I think our focus is 100% on helping customers succeed and working with suppliers to see our customers so they can invest and grow their business for the benefit of our customers and for their benefit. And obviously, in turn our benefit and obviously, we're committed to our retail business in the Twin Cities and in the Mid-Atlantic. But in general, our focus is not to expand our retail presence, but to help the retailers we serve.
Bill Kirk
And how does how does calendar 2024 maybe rank in terms of amount of customers or I guess the more importantly, potential new customers you have contracts up or contracts for renewal are things you can you don't win in it?
Sandy Douglas
So we talk a fair amount about our robust pipeline. And as you know, the selling cycle is long. It's a very strategic decision for a customer to switch wholesalers. And obviously, it's slow. It's shorter when you're talking about new categories. But now I would still characterize our pipeline is as robust. We don't have anything to announce today in terms of new customers. But I'd also say, and I think it's important strategically is our most important customers, our existing customers, and that's why I'm particularly bullish when we expand our relationships with them because it reflects health stop that's already happening in our supply chain and it gives us an opportunity to profitably grow. But the headline would be our pipeline is robust and our focus on is on our existing customers. And obviously new ones or expanding relationships with existing ones is the top growth priority.
Operator
Thank you, sir. Your final question comes from the line of Chuck or Karl. Sorry, Cerankosky of Northcoast Research. Your line is open.
Chuck Cerankosky
Good morning, everyone and Sandy. As you're looking at this a slow recovery of forward buying opportunities. Could some of this be the CPGs reacting to the volume shift going through what discounters, as you mentioned and even the wholesale clubs that have gained market share and they might be getting better deals or just the CPGs are reluctant to give it to the traditional channel.
Sandy Douglas
As I think obviously, there's a lot in that question and there's a lot going on in the market today. I think the opportunity and having been a CPG executive for a long time, the opportunity to grow in independents is a win-win for CPGs. The challenge for us is to help them see the opportunity and to get their investment to the place that will drive the best value for them. And for the retailers they're investing in. And that's our focus. I think we can do our job and make sure our customers are competitive and we're relentlessly focused on that. So there's obviously a lot going on. Discounters are taking share today because it's very relevant for consumers. And our job is to help our customers compete and suppliers to see opportunities to invest and we're very focused on it.
Chuck Cerankosky
Now part of the another embedded issue and all this is the growing private label share through the conventional channel. Is that another obstacle that the CPGs might see?
Sandy Douglas
Well, it is it could be viewed as an obstacle or it could be viewed as an opportunity or it could be viewed as a threat. It depends on how they see it. But clearly, to the extent that consumer products companies have a strong value proposition and they're investing, they tend to win in the market against our competitors, whether they be private labels or other CPGs. The implication is they need to be sharp. They need to be aggressive. And I think what we at least are seeing and the conversations we're having is that suppliers see that end, we expect their investment levels to continue to increase as we come around to the new year.
Chuck Cerankosky
Thank you and good luck. During fiscal '24.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call over to UNFI CEO, Sandy Douglas, for closing remarks.
Sandy Douglas
Thanks, operator, and thanks to everybody for joining us this morning, our team is building momentum that we've achieved as we exit the first quarter, and we'll look to sustain this as we move into the important holiday season. We remain confident in our multiyear transformation plan and believe we have a tremendous opportunity to create value for our customers, suppliers and shareholders through our scale, enhanced capabilities for efficiency and profitability. We're optimistic we'll build on the progress we made in our first quarter as we move through the year and will continue to execute our transformation strategy. We look forward to updating you on this for our customers and suppliers. We thank you for your continued partnership in the business. We do together for the UNFI associates listening today. Our thanks to each of you for everything that you do for our business, our customers, our communities and each other and for our shareholders. We thank you for the trust you continue to place in us. Thanks. Again for joining us this morning.
Operator
And this concludes today's conference call. You may now.
