PENNSAUKEN, N.J., July 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- J & J Snack Foods Corp. (NASDAQ-JJSF) today announced sales and earnings for the third quarter ended June 27, 2020.

Sales decreased 34% to $214.6 million from $326.7 million in last year’s third quarter. A net loss of $12.6 million in this year’s quarter compared to net earnings of $30.9 million in last year’s quarter.  Net loss per diluted share was $.67 for the third quarter this year and net earnings per diluted share were $1.63 last year. Operating loss of $19.4 in the current quarter compared to operating income of $39.0 million in the year ago quarter.

For the nine months ended June 27, 2020, sales decreased 12% to $769.5 million from $874.6 million in last year’s nine months.  Net earnings decreased to $11.7 million in the nine months from $68.8 million last year.  Earnings per diluted share decreased to $.62 from $3.64 last year.  Operating income decreased 85% to $13.2 million this year from $85.9 million last year.

Operating loss for the third quarter this year and operating income for the nine months include the impact of plant shutdown impairment costs of $5.1 million. 

The Company also said that sales for the last 5 weeks of the third quarter (its fiscal June) improved to being down approximately 24% from a year ago as parts of the economy that impact its operations began to open up.  Approximately 2/3 of the Company’s sales are to venues and locations that have shut down or sharply curtailed their foodservice operations so the Company anticipates COVID-19 will continue to have a negative impact on its business.  As the Company has $270 million of cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet, up from $267 million at March 28, 2020, it does not expect to have any liquidity issues, nor does it anticipate a material amount of its assets would be impaired.   

Dan Fachner,  J & J’s President, commented, “Although we had an operating loss this quarter, we progressed nicely with each month improving from the prior month. Our Retail division was strong as that end of the business continues to outperform the previous year. Much of the Foodservice locations are slow to open but we continue to see improvement during our current quarter.  We are monitoring and making necessary adjustments to operations and expenses both for the short term and for the longer term.”

J&J Snack Foods Corp. is a leader and innovator in the snack food industry, providing nutritional and affordable branded niche snack foods and beverages to foodservice and retail supermarket outlets.  Manufactured and distributed nationwide, our principal products include SUPERPRETZEL, BAVARIAN BAKERY and other soft pretzels, ICEE and SLUSH PUPPIE frozen beverages, LUIGI’S, MINUTE MAID* frozen juice bars and ices, WHOLE FRUIT sorbet and frozen fruit bars, MARY B’S biscuits and dumplings, DADDY RAY’S fig and fruit bars, TIO PEPE’S and CALIFORNIA CHURROS, PATIO Burritos and other handheld sandwiches, THE FUNNEL CAKE FACTORY funnel cakes, and several bakery brands within COUNTRY HOME BAKERS and  HILL & VALLEY. For more information, please visit http://www.jjsnack.com.

*MINUTE MAID is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company

Netsales decreased $112,138,000 or 34% to $214,563,000 for the three months and decreased $105,113,000 or 12% to $769,502,000 for the nine months ended June 27, 2020 compared to the three and nine months ended June 29, 2019, respectively.  Excluding sales from the acquisition of ICEE Distributors in October 2019 and BAMA ICEE in February 2020, sales decreased 35% for the quarter and decreased about 13% for the nine months.

Sales for the last 5 weeks of the third quarter (our fiscal June) improved to being down approximately 24% from a year ago as parts of the economy that impact our operations began to open up.  Approximately 2/3 of the Company’s sales are to venues and locations that have shut down or sharply curtailed their foodservice operations, and therefore we anticipate COVID-19 will continue to have a negative impact on our business.  As we have $270 million of cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet, up from $267 million at March 28, 2020, we do not expect to have any liquidity issues, nor do we anticipate a material amount of our assets would be impaired.   

FOOD SERVICE

Sales to food service customers decreased $76,735,000 or 40% in the third quarter to $116,621,000 and decreased $77,048,000 or 14% to $471,401,000 for the nine months. Soft pretzel sales to the food service market decreased 62% to $21,384,000 in the three months and 24% to $116,985,000 in the nine months. Frozen juices and ices sales decreased 37% to $8,688,000 in the three months and decreased 17% to $25,222,000 in the nine months. Churro sales to food service customers were down 61% in the quarter to $7,321,000 and were down 23% to $38,466,000 in the nine months. Sales of bakery products decreased $20,847,000 or 23% in the third quarter and decreased $13,719,000 or 5% to $255,016,000 for the nine months.  Sales of handhelds decreased $1,102,000 or 13% in the quarter and $3,255,000 or 13% in the nine months. Sales of funnel cake decreased 57%, or $3,181,000, to $2,435,000 in the quarter and $5,311,000, or 29%, to $12,997,000 in the nine months. Sales are down across all product lines as many of the venues and locations where our products are sold have been shut down for some or all of the third quarter due to COVID-19.

Sales of new products in the first twelve months since their introduction were approximately $600,000 in this quarter and $4.7 million in the nine months.      We had an operating loss in the quarter in our Food Service segment of $18,242,000 compared to operating income of $21,030,000 last year and operating income decreased to $7,743,000 from $57,909,000 in the nine months primarily because of lower production and sales volume due to COVID-19.  This year’s three months operating loss and nine months operating income were impacted by plant shutdown impairment costs of $5.1 million for the pending shutdown of one of our manufacturing plants. We expect to reduce manufacturing overhead and distribution costs by about $7-8 million annually as a result of this plant closure.  This year’s quarter and nine months also included approximately $5 million of costs for employee safety and increased COVID-19 compensation.

RETAIL SUPERMARKETS

Sales of products to retail supermarkets increased $15,735,000 or 38% to $57,502,000 in the third quarter and increased $17,286,000 or 16% in the nine months.  Soft pretzel sales for the third quarter were up 74% to $12,716,000 and up 23% to $34,874,000 for the nine months. Sales of frozen juices and ices increased $6,807,000 or 26% to $33,322,000 in the third quarter and increased $7,100,000 or 14% in the nine months.  Handheld sales to retail supermarket customers increased 6% to $3,257,000 in the quarter and 13% to $9,135,000 in the nine months. Biscuit sales for the third quarter were up 56% to $8,151,000 and 12% to $21,759,000 for the nine months. Sales were generally higher for all product lines as sales in the year ago periods were impacted by lost volume and placements due the price increases implemented in last year’s first quarter and because of increased sales to supermarkets generally since mid-March 2020 due to COVID-19.

Sales of new products in the third quarter were approximately $500,000 and were approximately $1.0 million for the nine months. 

Operating income in our Retail Supermarkets segment was $7,910,000 in this year’s third quarter compared to $3,775,000 in last year’s quarter, a 110% increase and increased to $14,464,000 in this year’s nine months compared to $9,025,000 in last year’s nine months primarily due to higher volume. 

FROZEN BEVERAGES     Total frozen beverage segment sales decreased 56% in the three months to $40,440,000 and 21% to $173,602,000 for the nine months. Beverage sales were down 71% to $16,456,000 in the quarter and down 31% to $83,606,000 in the nine months. Excluding sales from the acquisition of ICEE Distributors in October 2019 and BAMA ICEE in February 2020, total frozen beverage segment sales decreased 60% in the quarter and were down 25% for the nine months and beverage sales decreased 78% for the quarter and 39% for the nine months. Gallon sales were down 72% in the quarter and down 36% in the nine months exclusive of ICEE Distributors’ gallons.  Service revenue decreased 23% to $17,259,000 in the third quarter and was down 1% at $61,524,000 in the nine months. Machines revenue (primarily sales of frozen beverage machines) were $6,363,000, a decrease of $5,447,000 in the quarter and $27,254,000, a decrease of $6,621,000, in the nine months, with the decrease due to two significant install projects during the prior fiscal year, as well as the slowdown due to COVID-19. Sales are down across all product lines as many of the venues and locations where our products are sold have been shut down for some or all of the third quarter due to COVID-19.

Our Frozen Beverage segment had an operating loss of $9,088,000 compared to operating income of $14,237,000 in last year’s quarter and an operating loss of $8,942,000 for the nine months compared to operating income of $18,961,000 last year primarily as a result of lower sales volume due to COVID-19. This year’s operating income was also impacted by relocation costs of our ICEE’s headquarters of 2.5 million in the nine months.

CONSOLIDATED

Gross profit as a percentage of sales was 17.34% in the third quarter and 31.02% last year.  Gross profit as a percentage of sales was 23.98% in the nine month period this year and 29.44% last year.  Gross profit percentage decreased for both periods because of lower volume in our food service and frozen beverages segments, higher costs related to production disruptions due to volume mix changes, expenses related to employee safety and increased COVID-19 compensation and reserves of approximately $1.5 million for inventory.

Total operating expenses decreased $5,691,000 in the third quarter and as a percentage of sales increased to 26.4% from 19.1% last year.  For the nine months, operating expenses decreased $330,000 and as a percentage of sales increased to 22.3% from 19.6% last year.   Operating expenses for both periods this year included $5.1 million of plant shutdown impairment costs for the pending shutdown of one of our manufacturing plants. Marketing expenses increased to 10.2% of sales in this year’s quarter from 8.1% last year and were 8.9% in the nine months compared to 8.0% of sales in last year’s nine months.  Distribution expenses were 9.9% of sales in the third quarter and 7.5% of sales in last year’s quarter and were 9.1% in this year’s nine months compared to 8.1% in last year’s nine months. Administrative expenses were 3.9% of sales in the third quarter compared to 3.3% of sales last year in the third quarter and were 3.7% in this year’s nine months compared to 3.4% of sales in last year’s nine months. The percentage increases mentioned above were because of the drop in sales (lower denominators) and our inability to reduce expenses in line with the decrease in sales because of fixed costs that do not fluctuate with sales. 

We had an operating loss of $19,420,000 in the three months and operating income of $13,265,000 in the nine months this year compared to operating income of $39,042,000 and $85,895,000 in last year's three and nine months, respectively.

Investment income decreased to $1,300,000 from $1,953,000 in last year’s quarter due primarily to lower interest rates. Investment income decreased to $2,673,000 from $5,775,000 in the nine month period due to lower interest rates and because of an increase in unrealized losses to $1,708,000 this year from $385,000 last year.     We had a net loss of $12,647,000 in the current three month period compared to net earnings of $30,872,000 last year and net earnings decreased $57,031,000, or 83%, to $11,721,000 for the nine month period this year compared to $68,752,000 for the nine month period last year. 

Net earnings in last year’s nine months benefitted by a reduction of approximately $900,000 in tax as the provision for the one time repatriation tax as a result of the Tax Cuts and Job Act of 2017 was reduced as the amount recorded the year prior was an estimate.  Excluding the reduction in the provision for the one time repatriation tax, our effective tax rate was 27.5% in last year’s nine months.  Our effective tax rate was 26.2% in this year’s nine months.      There are many factors which can impact our net earnings from year to year and in the long run, among which are the supply and cost of raw materials and labor, insurance costs, factors impacting sales as noted above, the continuing consolidation of our customers, our ability to manage our manufacturing, marketing and distribution activities, our ability to make and integrate acquisitions and changes in tax laws and interest rates.

The forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.  Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management’s analysis only as of the date hereof.  The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof.