Sysco - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to Sysco's fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. We will begin with opening remarks and introductions. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin Kim, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kevin Kim (VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone, welcome to Sysco's fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings call. On today's call, we have Kevin Hourican, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Kenny Cheung, our Chief Financial Officer, and Neil Russell, our Chief Administrative Officer. Before we begin, please note that statements made during this presentation that state the company's or management's intentions, beliefs, expectations, or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, and actual results could differ in a material manner. Additional information about factors that could cause results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's SEC filings. This includes, but is not limited to, risk factors contained in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended July 2, 2022, subsequent SEC filings, and the news release issued earlier this morning.

A copy of these materials can be found in the investor section at sysco.com. Non-GAAP financial measures are included in our comments today and in our presentation slides. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures is included at the end of the presentation slides and can also be found in the investor section of our website. During the discussion today, unless otherwise stated, all results are compared to the same quarter in the prior year. To ensure we have sufficient time to answer all questions, we'd like to ask each participant to limit their time today to one question and one follow-up. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin Hourican.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining our call today. I would like to cover three topics during my section of our call. First, I'll provide a summary of our Q4 results and our full year performance. Second, I'll convey an update on our Recipe for Growth strategy. Lastly, I'll provide some commentary on the macro conditions we have modeled for fiscal 2024 and how Sysco intends to operate within that environment. Kenny will provide much more detailed components of guidance during his section. Let's get started. We are pleased with the strong finish to the fiscal year. Sysco posted record top line and bottom line results during the fourth quarter. Top line results, as seen on Slide 5, were up 4.1% compared to last year, delivering $19.7 billion in sales.

The strong quarter generated a full-year sales result of $76.3 billion, a record at Sysco. We grew annual sales by 12.5% or $8.6 billion on a constant currency basis. That sales growth is the equivalent of creating a net new Fortune 500 company within Sysco. Turning to volumes, Q4 case volume grew 2.3%, and local case volume grew 0.8% across our U.S. Foodservice business, successfully growing our market share and furthering our number one position in foodservice distribution. We are pleased with our share gains for the quarter and the year, which build on meaningful gains delivered within fiscal year 2022. Importantly, these gains are profitable share gains. We are not growing for the sake of growing, as we have consistently pursued profitable sales growth vectors domestically and internationally. Moving to gross profit.

Our sales and merchandising teams delivered a strong quarter from a GP growth perspective. We grew gross margin rates and GP dollars per case, which is not easy to do in a disinflationary environment. Our teams are doing excellent work in strategic sourcing to reduce costs and further penetrating Sysco Brand cases with our customers. Advancing Sysco Brand helps gross profit and leads to increased customer retention. Lastly, we are growing our higher margin specialty business, which strengthens our overall margin profile. Next in the P&L is operating expense. I am most proud of the quarter from the perspective of the progress that we are making in reducing our expenses. We have been clear with investors that our first half of the year in fiscal 2023 had elevated expenses. This was driven by two factors: investments in our business and a supply chain struggling with new colleague productivity.

In the second half of FY 2023, we made major progress on our expense ratios and greatly accelerated productivity improvement within our supply chain. Retention of colleagues has improved, productivity of our colleagues has improved, and our supply chain initiatives are bearing fruit. All told, we delivered an operating leverage of 370 basis points in Q4, growing GP dollars meaningfully more than expenses. Slide 7 highlights the sequential improvement with OpEx over the course of the last fiscal year. We began the year in our U.S. Foodservice segment with quarterly operating expense growing over 22%, but ended the year with a growth rate of 0.5%. Our focused effort to deliver supply chain efficiencies and broad-based cost reductions drove the sequential improvement across the year. We expect to make further operating expense progress in 2024.

We will be zealot-like focused on ensuring our supply chain is properly staffed, properly trained, and working safely and productively. We have the leadership expertise, supply chain tools, and supply chain infrastructure to lead the industry in this regard, which is one reason why Sysco operates at an EBIT margin over 1.5x higher than our industry distributor average. Record top line and record bottom line performance in Q4 is a direct result of our Recipe for Growth and our focus on excellence in execution and operations. The improvement from first half to second half within fiscal 2023 was notable, enabling Sysco to grow EPS more than 23% for the full year. In addition to delivering a strong P&L in Q4, we achieved a record free cash flow, and we returned approximately $1.5 billion back to shareholders during the year.

We are pleased with the strong financial performance in the quarter, despite rapid disinflation and slower overall industry market volume growth. We believe our success, in spite of those conditions, positions the business to be successful in 2024, which, I will speak to more in a moment. As is my custom, I would like to provide a brief summary of select Recipe for Growth elements of our strategy from our recent quarter. I will start within our supply chain initiative. Our work on strengthening Engineered Labor Standards across our supply chain is paying dividends. As I mentioned a moment ago, we made significant headway in improving our supply chain efficiency. We have recently strengthened our work method standards training within transportation roles, enabling our colleagues to work safely and work more productively. Additionally, we have increased retention rates within our workforce through our improved training programs.

The Driver Academy is national, and the impact of this program is a better-trained workforce. Now, I would like to highlight the progress that we have made on the food, sales, and marketing side of our Recipe for Growth. Last month, we announced an agreement to purchase BIX Produce. BIX Produce is a leading produce specialty distributor based in Minnesota. The acquisition is expected to provide a strategic opportunity for FreshPoint to expand its geographic footprint in an area of the country where it does not currently have operations. BIX has a strong assortment offering, including fresh cut produce, grab-and-go sandwiches, and value-added production capabilities. In addition to our good work in expanding specialty, we also upgraded our digital shopping platform during the quarter. Our shop digital platform is now available in Spanish, and we have deployed more than 100 new feature enhancements.

Some of these enhancements include a new homepage, new category and cuisine pages, improved search and navigation, and lastly, a new deals for you page. These enhancements have driven an increase in product page visits, adding incremental volume through add to cart purchasing. There is no finish line in our digital improvement journey. We will continue to improve our digital tools over time, enabling us to reduce friction in the purchase experience and inspire our customers to buy more from Sysco. Our centralized pricing tool has given us the ability to be what we call right on price at the region, customer, and item level. During the first half of 2023, we experienced rapid inflation, and in the second half of 2023, we experienced rapid disinflation and even deflation towards the end of Q4 within our core USBL business.

Our merchants have been fighting to secure best possible cost, and our pricing tool ensures that the real-time cost fluctuations are built into our pricing strategies. Managing pricing across hundreds of thousands of customers, tens of thousands of products, and approximately 7,500 Sales Reps has never been stronger. This is evidenced by our consistently strong performance in GP dollars growth and adjusted gross margin rate growth of 28 basis points year-over-year in the quarter. We want our Sales Reps focused on customer engagement, relationship building, consultative selling, and solving problems for our customers. Our pricing tool enables our SBS to spend more time on those value-added activities. Lastly, Sysco Your Way is now live in over 400 neighborhoods across five countries, and our loyalty program, Perks, is active with over 12,000 customers. Both programs are continuing to deliver compelling top and bottom-line growth.

The past year has been a heavy lift as we work to get these programs off the ground. In 2024, we can focus on maximizing the impact of these compelling programs with less effort and investment required than in 2023. In summary, our Recipe for Growth is working, enabling Sysco to profitably grow our business and differentiate versus others in our space. Most compelling is that food away from home is a growth sector, as seen on Slides 10 and 11. Sysco has been profitably growing faster than the overall market, delivering record top and bottom-line results. We expect to continue to win market share profitably in the years to come and to do so in a fiscally responsible way. I'd like to wrap up my time this morning with some comments about the operating environment we expect for fiscal 2024, and Sysco's positioning within that environment.

My main message is that scale matters in this industry, and that strong operators are best positioned to succeed, regardless of the environmental conditions. Sysco is a very strong operator with meaningful scale advantages. With that said, in fiscal 2024, we expect the market to grow at a lower rate than 2023. We also expect the rate of inflation for the year to be below historical standards. In the second half of fiscal 2023, we experienced rapid disinflation, followed by deflation within our core U.S. Broadline business towards the end of the fourth quarter. We expect that deflation will continue within U.S. Broadline for the first half of fiscal 2024, followed by muted U.S. Broadline product inflation in the second half. We expect that our international segment will remain inflationary during the coming fiscal year, given unique marketplace conditions in those geographies.

Net-net, for Sysco, we expect an inflation rate that is slightly positive throughout fiscal 2024, below our historical average. We believe the Q4 environment we just exited is largely reflective of the operating environment for the coming year. Importantly, we grew our top and bottom line within that quarter. We're being very prudent in fiscal 2024 in managing our expenses, given the volume and inflation components that I just conveyed. Despite these conditions, Sysco is positioned to succeed, grow faster than the market, and deliver bottom line growth. Our confidence is also based on our structural competitive advantages. First, our international business, which is approximately 18% of sales, continues to outperform, providing a natural hedge as international inflation rates remain elevated and are expected to stay higher than the U.S.

Second, our purchasing scale is the largest in the industry, and our strategic sourcing efforts will enable Sysco to secure improved pricing in a deflationary environment. Third, Sysco has a diversified business with strong sales across 12 major product categories to help buffer the impact of inflation or deflation in any one category. Additionally, our strategic pricing software will enable Sysco to be extremely purposeful on how we manage the impact of disinflation and deflation. Lastly, further advancing Sysco Brand penetration, domestically and internationally, is another lever to pull to deliver GP dollar growth when the environment is deflationary. The exit velocity of fiscal 2023 gives us confidence in delivering strong results in 2024. In summary, here is what we expect for 2024.

Lower rates of overall market volume growth versus 2023, continued market share gains and profitable growth at Sysco, deflation in the U.S. for at least the first half of the year, and muted overall company-wide inflation for the full year. Disciplined expense management. Kenny and I have directed an effort to reduce structural expenses by approximately $100 million. Extremely disciplined return on invested capital, or ROIC focus, continued progress in advancing Sysco Brand penetration and growth within specialty. In total, given all these interworking variables, we are modeling an adjusted EPS range of $4.20-$4.40 for the full year. The midpoint of that guide would generate approximately 7% EPS growth versus fiscal 2023. Now in our third year of Recipe for Growth, we are positioned to press the accelerator on certain proven initiatives.

For example, we can optimize our performance and launch Sysco Your Way neighborhoods, which takes less effort than starting up a neighborhood. Our digital tools are becoming more and more pervasive with our customers. We can optimize the personalization of these interactions to increase yield through each transaction. We have always said that the Recipe for Growth is a wheel, where each initiative fuels the next. Fiscal 2024 is a year of optimizing what we have launched versus kicking off net new efforts. This will enable Sysco to be laser focused on what matters most, executing with excellence against launched programs. This also means we will be able to grow our business with less investment. This was always our plan within the Recipe for Growth. It is coming to reality in fiscal 2024.

In addition, our expanded geography of specialty businesses, like the recently announced BIX acquisition, will increase the impact of our higher growth specialty segment. In fiscal 2024, we are committed to both profitably growing our top line, meaningfully reducing OpEx, and generating a higher rate of return on key initiatives. Given the confidence that we have in our long-range roadmap, we are happy to announce that we have reintroduced ROIC as a long-term compensation metric for our leadership team. In addition, we have increased the weighting of financial metrics within our short-term annual bonus program. As I have said many times before, the best companies in the world are growth companies, and we expect that Sysco will continue to profitably grow faster than the overall market. I am thrilled to have Kenny as my partner on these objectives.

We are committed to maximizing every dollar invested in producing the greatest shareholder value. I'll now turn it over to Kenny, who will provide additional financial details. Kenny, over to you.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start off by thanking our customers, colleagues, and partners around the world for helping us deliver another record quarter. Sysco operates a high volume business, and I'm proud of our efficient response in servicing and delighting our customers. We closed out the fiscal year strong, delivering improvement across the income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. Q4 financials reflect positive sales and volume growth and operating expense leverage. Altogether, these rendered a record quarter of operating income, net income and adjusted EPS. Our results also reflect improvements in operational efficiency through productivity and resource optimization. This elevated performance will enable us to reinvest back into the business and return excess cash back to shareholders, an important theme we expect for FY 2024 and beyond.

Our unique value proposition with the Recipe for Growth at the forefront, is what differentiates us as a growth company. As Kevin stated earlier, we will continue to focus on accelerating programs that have high returns, which is a key priority in my role here at Sysco. Turning to a summary of our reported results for the quarter, starting on Slide 14. For the fourth quarter, our enterprise sales grew 4.1%, with U.S. Foodservice growing 2.5%, international growing 12.2%, and SYGMA growing 1.4%. With respect to volume, total U.S. Foodservice volume increased 2.3%, and local volume increased 0.8%. We produced $3.7 billion in gross profit, up 7% versus prior year.

Adjusted gross margin improved to 18.7%, a sequential increase from the prior quarter and an increase of 28 basis points compared to last year. Our gross profit dollar and margin percentage improvement during the 4th quarter reflected our ability to continue to effectively manage product inflation, which moderated to 2.1% for the total enterprise, consistent with our expectations. The improvement in gross profit was driven by incremental progress from our strategic sourcing efforts, as well as improved penetration rates from Sysco Brands products, which increased by 11 basis points to 37.2% in U.S. Broadline and 64 basis points to 47.3% in U.S. local results. Overall, adjusted operating expenses were $2.7 billion for the quarter, or 13.5% of sales, a 29 basis points improvement from the prior year.

All four operating segments continue to show increases in quarterly profitability, including substantial growth in the international and SYGMA segments. As seen on Slide 22 and 23, Q4 adjusted operating income of $1 billion for the enterprise showed a strong exit rate, growing 25% compared to FY2019. This is the highest adjusted operating income quarter in Sysco's history and is now the fourth consecutive period of record quarterly operating income. For the year, adjusted operating income increased to $3.2 billion, growing 17.3% compared to our prior FY 2019 record, an important signal of the progress being made at Sysco. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased to $1.2 billion, growing 14.4%. We are thrilled with the progress of our international segment, with adjusted operating income growing 58% for the fourth quarter.

As stated earlier, our international business continues to deliver robust growth with positive momentum. I am also particularly pleased with the health of our balance sheet, which further strengthened this quarter. We delivered on our target leverage ratio, another important milestone as we ended the year at 2.5x net debt leverage ratio. This is within our target of 2.5-2.75x, a substantial improvement from 5.1 times just over two years ago. We ended the year with $9.7 billion in net debt, with total liquidity of $3.7 billion and no commercial paper outstanding. Our debt is well laddered without any maturities over $1 billion until FY 2027. Turning to our cash flow.

We generated $2.9 billion in operating cash flow and $2.1 billion in free cash flow, which was a new record. Our conversion rate from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow was 55%, and operating cash flow conversion of 75% shows the company's robust earnings power. Our strong financial position enabled us to return $1.5 billion to shareholders. This was done through $500 million of share repurchases and $996 million of dividends. Despite the changing macroeconomics landscape, we are positioned to grow both top line and bottom line results in FY 2024 and the long term. The guidance we are providing is reflective of the traction our Recipe for Growth initiatives are gaining, in addition to moderate industry growth rates.

Furthermore, we believe our Q4 performance provides significant proof of our ability to drive shareholder value, as several of these macroeconomic and industry dynamics are expected to continue into FY 2024. As Kevin highlighted on Slide 7, we began the year with elevated levels of operating expense growth. As a result, operating expenses were an area of focus for our supply chain teams throughout the year, and we were able to produce sequential improvements. We ended the year with significant operating expense leverage, allowing us to improve margins. This is important progress, and we expect continued improvements going into FY 2024. Let's now turn to the look forward. During FY 2024, we expect top line growth of mid-single digits and positive volume growth, which will move Sysco to approximately $80 billion in annual sales. This will be another record for Sysco.

Importantly, we expect inflation to be slightly positive on an enterprise basis for the full year. Based on our analysis and the exit rate from the fourth quarter, we believe that 1st half globally will be slightly positive and the second half will step up. This includes continued deflation in U.S. Broadline during the first half of the fiscal year, with an expected rebound in the 2nd half of the fiscal year. Based on our structural advantages, Sysco is well positioned to manage our COGS effectively and continue to pass along pricing without impacting demand. It is all about better buying and better selling. Turning to expenses, we expect further improvements in operating expense leverage based on a continuation of the process improvements from this past year.

One month into the new year, we've already executed actions to support $100 million of cost out, which has been factored into the guidance. We will continue finding incremental opportunities to enhance operational efficiency and adapt swiftly to the constant evolving business environment in which we function. We will manage our business with discipline and agility. We have bottled out frontline operations wage growth to be approximately 4.5%-5%. This is higher than our historical average, but much lower than select other industry news, due to the fact that in many instances, our supply chain colleagues are paid above market and our drivers can earn as much as $100,000 per year. We also expect free cash flow to grow further in FY 2024, on top of our record performance in FY 2023.

We wanted to also provide guidance on several other important modeling elements. The tax rate for FY 2024 is expected to step up to approximately 24.5%, compared to 23% in FY 2023. The increase is driven by geographical mix related to strong international growth and increases in state tax rates. We plan to remain in line with our net debt leverage ratio for the year. Related interest expense is expected to step up by about $13 million for the year due to cash uses for growth investments, dividend payments, share repurchases, and anticipated M&A activity. Other expenses is expected to be approximately $30 million for the year, driven primarily by pension expense. All in, we are guiding to adjusted EPS for FY 2024 at $4.20-$4.40.

This reflects adjusted EPS growth of approximately 5%-10%. Our capital allocation strategy will continue to focus on investing in the business. Examples include M&A, maintaining our strong investment grade credit rating, and continuing our return of capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. CapEx should be consistent with prior year at approximately 1% of sales. Returning cash back to shareholders is important, as is our Dividend Aristocrat status, and we plan to step up these efforts in the coming year. In FY 2024, we will have a $0.04 dividend increase, and we expect to complete approximately $750 million of share repurchases as we start the fiscal year with $4 billion in remaining authorization.

Depending on the volume of M&A done in FY 2024, we could increase share repurchases further while continuing to operate within our stated goal of 2.5-2.75x leverage. We will look at each investment through the lens of driving growth and ROIC, and I am pleased to state that our ROIC for FY 2024 is expected to surpass our pre-COVID levels through sales growth, margin expansion, and prudent management of the balance sheet. As a company, ROIC will dynamically guide our operating and investment decisions, which will accrete shareholder value over time as we continue to focus on both margin dollars and percentage growth. Now in my role for a few months, I'm constantly impressed by the size and scale advantages at Sysco. This is a high volume business that runs fast, and any micro adjustments around operational efficiencies are felt quickly.

Our scale advantages are also reflected in our industry-leading margins. Our diversification as the industry leader across customer types, with two-thirds in restaurants and one-third in recession-resistant categories, such as education and healthcare, is also a structural advantage. Our robust industry-leading operating cash flow and strong investment grade rated balance sheet gives us access to capital at attractive rates, so we're able to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. As you can see in our performance results, our international segment is proving to be an advantage, contributing higher rates of growth than our mature U.S. business, and the inflation dynamics in other geographies are helping create a bit of a natural hedge across our business portfolio. We believe that international can continue to be a profitable growth engine for Sysco.

I am even more excited 90 days into this role than I was on day one, and I look forward to our progress ahead. With that, I will turn the call back over to Kevin for closing remarks.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thank you, Kenny. As we conclude, I would like to provide a brief summary on Slide 28. Sysco has a strong record of generating consistent results. In fact, Sysco has grown annual sales in 51 years out of our 54 year history. We expect our positive momentum to continue in 2024. In addition to compelling top line growth, Sysco is the industry leader from an adjusted EBITDA margin perspective, with the strongest balance sheet. We plan to build on that position of strength in fiscal year 2024. We ended our fiscal year 2023 with strong sales, volume and share growth, growing volumes across both our chain and independent business. The result was a 23% adjusted EPS growth for the year, with record top and bottom line contribution.

We have momentum going into the year as our Recipe for Growth transformation, now in its 3rd year, is further building upon and enhancing our competitive scale advantages. Importantly, we have demonstrated our 3rd consecutive quarter of operating leverage, with gross profits outpacing operating expense growth. For fiscal year 2024, our dual focus on core efficiency measures and optimization from proven growth opportunities will deliver another year of top and bottom line growth. There are bright days ahead for the Food Away From Home industry and more specifically, Sysco. I am both excited and proud to be a part of the journey, and as always, I want to thank our 72,000+ Sysco colleagues for their commitment to our customers and our shareholders. Operator, you can now open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star, followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question will come from Edward Kelly at Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Edward Kelly (Managing Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Good morning. Kevin, my question is on, is on the guidance. I mean, obviously, you know, the backdrop for the industry is a little bit tougher than what it would normally be. You know, providing guidance in that backdrop is not, you know, easy. 5%-10% earnings growth, you know, against that, you know, is certainly respectable. Can you talk about, you know, the confidence in that level of growth, the cadence that we could be expecting? If you were to be at the bottom end of the range or worse, what, what would drive that? If you were at the top, you know, the better end of the range, you know, what, what would, what would cause that outcome?

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Okay, good morning, Ed. This is Kevin. I'll start and I'll toss to Kenny for additional comments. You know, I guess I, I'd start with a few points. You know, the guide is based on a continuation of momentum, you know, that the company has been building over the past, you know, six months, most notably tied to our operating expense improvements. We call, you know, our planning process, you know, three big boulders: volume of the market, inflation, projections of the market, and then our expense ratios. We've worked very hard to make sure that we can do the best job possible in, in guiding what these individual three components will be. Let's start with volume. You know, as I said in my prepared remarks, we do expect for the volume growth of the industry to be more muted this coming year.

Uh, we have factored that in, uh, to our guide. Uh, we've triangulated that from supplier partners, from economists, from bankers, and our own data. Uh, we have a treasure trove of data across all of the different business segments, uh, that we serve. So we do expect for volume growth of the market to be more muted. With that said, we're confident that we, Sysco, can grow faster than the market, and we are committed to doing so profitably. Topic two is inflation or, or deflation as it is, as it were. Um, and we have to break that down into individual businesses and individual countries. You know, as I said in my prepared remarks, uh, USBL, we expect to be deflationary for at least the first half of the year....

we do have a natural hedge at Sysco, given the fact that we have an international segment that is still experiencing inflation, due to unique you know, geography considerations and purchasing considerations, within those countries. When you put that all together for the year, I'll use that same term a second time, we expect for muted inflation for the entire year that's below our historical standards. On the positive side, continued logistics efficiency. you know, a chart, you know, on our slide that, you know, we're really pleased with is page seven in our slides that are out there. The progress that was sequentially made throughout the year from quarter-over-quarter on improving our logistics efficiency, we expect to continue. There's some important below-the-line things in the guide that Kenny can talk to about tax and interest.

To answer your question on confidence, Ed, I'll end with, you know, Q4, the environment that we've just exited, and most notably June, we believe to be reasonably consistent with what we expect the overall environmental conditions to be, in fiscal 2024, and we had a solid performance ending the year and a solid performance, in June. When I put all those things together, that's why the guide. You know, what would have to be true to be at the top end? Continued performance on operating cost, efficiency improvement, accelerate our growth versus the market. Those would be the two things directly within our control that could enable us to be at the top.

For us to be at the bottom end of that range, would be, I'd say, you know, if deflation lasted longer or persisted longer or were deeper than had been modeled, that would be a headwind that would put it more towards the bottom end of the range. We focus on what we can control at Sysco. We're gonna drive operating efficiency. Kenny and I, as, as announced today, have issued a $100 million cost out improvement, which is baked into the guidance that we just provided, and we've actually executed already against the major components of that plan. We've got our sales teams focused on driving profitable sales growth. With that, I'm gonna toss to Kenny for any additional comment.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Kevin. I'll talk about 2 things. One, the confidence level around the guidance, and second, as Kevin alluded to, a couple of the below-the-line items that I think needs a bit more color. The first is around the confidence in the guidance. Our confidence in the guidance is based on how we successfully managed Q4. If you think about Q4, we ended the quarter, deflationary in the U.S., and with that, we still managed to expand GP margins by 28 bps and operating margin by 56 bps. Again, we're doing it right now.

The second piece I would say is that if the environment were to change, we have the agility to flex up and down, given the fact that we have a world-class balance sheet, and we have a very agile cost structure, and we have productivity in place, the $100 million that has already been executed and baked in in our guidance. That is around the confidence of the guidance. In terms of the below the line items, there are 2 areas I want to go a bit deeper on. 1 is tax rates. We expect our tax rate to step up from 23%-24.5%. There's 2 pieces to the tax side. First, we are seeing earnings strengthening across our international markets, which is yielding a higher tax charge. This is a good thing.

We are seeing our international arm growing fast. The second piece is, here in the U.S., we are expecting a higher state tax expense due to various factors, including the mix of earnings across the states. This is our current view. We are continuing to evaluate tax planning strategies, we'll report back as appropriate. The second piece is around interest expense. Overall, the rates have risen, and we also plan to raise capital to deploy against high returning accretive initiatives, which includes growth investments, M&A, return excess cash to shareholders. This is driving the higher interest expense. Again, $13 million increase year-over-year. The last bucket is other expenses. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect it to be roughly $30 million related to pension expense.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thanks, guys. Thank you, Ed.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from Joshua Long at Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

Joshua Long (Managing Director, and Research Analyst)

Great, thank you. Hopefully, you might be able to dig into some of the underlying core customer segments. Obviously, we, we were able to see some of the case volume trends there that you provided in the release, and that's helpful. Just, you know, curious if you could tie that together, Kevin, with some of your higher level thoughts on where the consumer's at, how they're choosing to spend their dollars, and maybe how that corresponds with your, you know, customer makeup as we think about the fiscal 2024 guide.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Yeah, Joshua, thank you for the question. I'll start just at the more aggregate level. As you know, we, we serve every segment of the Food Away From Home industry, which is what I meant during the answer to Ed's question about we have a treasure trove of data. You know, we can see macro trends. Our, our national sales team had a banner year this past year. That's on top of a banner year in 2022. I want to be very clear that those growth constructs are profitable growth. That's healthcare, education, travel, hospitality, business, and industry. Those sectors have been continuing to see a tailwind of recovery, and we're winning market share profitably in those sectors.

National restaurants, we are winning large in that regard as well, mostly because those partners, view Sysco as a backbone for them. You know, we're in every state, including Alaska and Hawaii. Not every food distributor is, and it's an easy button for them to be able to partner with someone like Sysco, because we can distribute coast to coast. Many of these restaurants have international doors, and through our international freight group business, we can export their product, overseas, to usually a licensee partner that they use, in those countries. Again, for these national restaurant chains, we are a very attractive option, you know, for them, and, and we've been winning big. Those contracts are multi-year contracts, and as I've mentioned, we've been signing those contracts at above historical, profit margin rates.

On the local side, we've been winning in specialty. As I mentioned, the BIX Produce acquisition, intent, you know, today, that will be a tailwind for us in FY 2024. We're winning with our Italian segment, and we're winning market share in aggregate, you know, as a company. When I think about the end consumer, the rapid rate of inflation increase this past year, put a strain on the American consumer. Specifically beef, at one point, was 35%+ inflationary. You saw portion sizes being reduced at menus. You saw menu price increases, you know, I do think that had an impact, you know, on particularly the independent sector.

As I think about the future, the deflation that we're currently experiencing, and the return to, eventually, what we would say would be normal rates of inflation, which are 2%-3%, will be good for the end consumer. When I talk about our teams internally, think about a graph chart where inflation was well above healthy. Now we're dealing with disinflation into deflation, and now that curve is gonna come back to normal over the next period of time. As we're thinking about fiscal 2025, you would see more normal rates of inflation, and that should drive a tailwind in volume. Those two things together for 2025 would be favorable elements for Sysco. How are we thinking about this to help our customers?

As Kenny said, "Well, we're gonna work our tails off to have best possible purchasing economics so that we can share in value with our consumers." Things like discounts on appetizers, so that, in fact, that can be added to the purchase. Because when that center plate cost goes up, what we tend to see is dessert and app purchases go down, and we wanna help our end consumers and customers be successful by providing them with strong and compelling value through Sysco.

Joshua Long (Managing Director, and Research Analyst)

That's helpful. Thank you. Then one follow-up, if I could. When we think about the $100 million in cost out, that comes on the heels of some other great work over the last year or two, coming out of COVID. Curious if you could, you know, dimensionalize that $100 million a little bit more and, you know, maybe not getting into the specifics of it, but just the visibility you have into maybe the timing or the realization of those. Is that relatively balanced across the year? Do you have, you know, do, do we think about this in terms of just maybe second or third round iterations of initiatives that you've had more experience with in the past, and just as you have more time, you've, you know, found new wins there? Are these entirely new categories?

Just any additional commentary you could provide there as we think about the ability to drive, you know, margins and pull costs out of the system, would be very helpful.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Joshua Long. This is Kenny Cheung. I'll say a couple of things, and I'll go a bit more detail. You know, for, for us, it's all about driving operating leverage in our business. What does that mean? That means our GP growth will be faster than expense growth. Our EBITDA will be faster than sales. Operating leverage in our business. As it relates to the $100 million, to your question directly, yes, it'll be more balanced across the year. Why is that? Because we've started already, right? It started on day one. All the actions have already been executing, meaning it's already baked into our guidance, and all actions are underway. That's point number one. Point number two, this is incremental to the continued productivity gains in supply chain operations and efficiency that Kevin Hourican described earlier.

The last thing I would say is that we're not stopping, right? We will continue to flex in line with market conditions. I know you asked for a bit more detail, detail. Let me give you a tangible example. There are multiple parts to the $100 million, but let me give you an example. We've been able to expand our Global Support Center, GSC, into other markets, most recently in Costa Rica, I was there about one month ago, where we have access to great talent and to further build our scale advantage. As our business grows, we're able to leverage a platform that, that scales accretively and effectively for earnings.

Joshua Long (Managing Director, and Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Josh.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from John Heinbockel at Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director, and Equity Research Analyst)

Kevin, 2 topics. I'll hit them both up front. 1, maybe update on wallet share, right? You know, you, you talked about that in the past. Where's that opportunity today? Obviously, if you drive drop size, right, and that's, that's the most, that's the most efficient thing you can do. You know, where is that? Then 2, I think your overtime is down to zero. Volumes were a little lighter. What lever do you now pull on, right? Because I don't think, I don't think you guys want to, right, you don't wanna furlough folks. Where do you go next if overtime is at zero?

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Thanks, John. I'll, I'll do the second question first, and then your first question second. I wanna be crystal clear on what we meant by overtime at zero. It's excess overtime was taken to zero. The industry runs at a, let's call it, an average rate of overtime, because some overtime is good. Our employees desire some amount of overtime. You know, a truck that leaves the warehouse and doesn't get back for 12 hours because that's the nature of the route, there's gonna be some overtime, et cetera. What we meant by that is that excess overtime and during-

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

... the worst of the supply chain disruption, we had meaningful, meaningful excess over time. We feel really, really good about that. You know, where can additional efficiencies come from? Retention improvement, John. Our, our turnover has dramatically improved, and it can still further improve to get back to historical levels of retention. If you asked me, you know, six months ago, what's the single most important thing that we need to do more effectively, it was improve retention, because that flows through in many different ways. Lower hiring costs, lower training costs, higher productivity, because a two-year veteran is much more productive than a two-day newbie. They're also safer. Fewer accidents occur because they're trained and know how to do their job. Retention improvement would be the number one lever.

The second lever is just improving discipline to what we call Sysco's work standards. You know, the Driver Academy, we have a Selector Academy, and our Engineered Labor Standards keep getting better and stronger. We improve processes through leveraging technology, that's the, the next wave of productivity improvement, is to have better discipline to a standard work process. We still have opportunity to improve. I'm really pleased, most particularly pleased, with the improvement we've made in supply chain, we have factored continued improvement into our 2024 guidance.

On the wallet share side of the business, I guess what excites me the most on our opportunity, and we're not gonna quote a share of wallet percentage today, but Sysco Your Way and Perks are doing what we want and need for them to do, which is further penetrating additional categories of merchandise with existing customers. The Sysco Your Way model is through increased delivery frequency, a dedicated sales rep, a dedicated delivery driver, and our consistent presence in that neighborhood, six days a week with an afternoon recovery delivery. We are seeing what we would expect to see, which is customers in those neighborhoods are adding specialty to the basket, eliminating another distributor from the purchase consideration and rolling up more with us.

Perks essentially does the same thing, but it's for a customer who happens not to be within a Sysco Your Way neighborhood. They could be, you know, 45 mi, you know, from the warehouse, but not within, you know, a current Sysco Your Way neighborhood. By providing them with the Perks service capabilities and dedicated marketing support, we're seeing, you know, incremental purchases. Last but not least, is specialty. We're doing a really good job in our SSMG, which is our meat business and our produce business, and now we have our next you know, specialty business with Italian.

When we put those specialty businesses together, we're making a lot of progress on what we call Total Team Selling, which is bringing that specialist into the account, along with the generalist, the SC generalist, and we're, we're moving the needle on what we call Total Team Selling. It's those three things together, John, that are helping us with share of wallet, which, as you said, is the most profitable case we can put on the truck.

Operator (participant)

Okay, thank you.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thanks, John.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from Kelly Bania at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Kelly Bania (Managing Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking our question. I was wondering if we could talk a little bit more about the centralized pricing tool and the price optimization work that you've been doing, as particularly as we do transition here, it sounds like into some deflation for certain categories. Just how investors should think about modeling your gross margin, as we move forward, given kind of not much disclosure at this point on how much of your business is on a percentage markup versus a dollar markup, or how this centralized pricing tool can change that. And maybe included in that, can you just give us a little color on how the deflation that you're seeing right now is impacting the gross profit dollars?

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Okay, Kelly, thank you for the question. I'll start just with how we leverage the pricing tool, and then I'll toss to Kenny in regards to your questions on GP dollars and %, and he'll handle that in whatever manner he deems appropriate. On the, on the tool, this was what I tried to articulate during our prepared remarks. During a period of rapid inflation, it was extraordinarily helpful because we had discipline in regards to passing through what was an extraordinary increase in cost, especially in Center of Plate. I mean, we had proteins going up 35%, as I mentioned a few moments ago. In the older manual world, it would have been unlikely that all 7,500 Sales Consultants would have passed that through. They would have put too much of a humanistic flair into it and said: "You know what?

I just know that they can't absorb this, and I'm not gonna pass it through." We would have not actually seen the GP dollars per case growth that we experienced past year. I'm gonna call it the discipline to perform within guardrails on the way up. The exact same thing happens on the way down, but it's a different consideration. What I said on the prepared remarks is, we'll be very purposeful about when we are able to secure improved COGS, how we pass that value on to our customers. Our intention is to pass that volume on to our customers, and we need to be thoughtful, disciplined, and pragmatic about how we do that.

We have to be competitive with the market, and we have to understand the volatility of categories that went from 30% up to double digits down in a short period of time. The tool provides structure and discipline and a performance within guardrails. I do want to be very clear about 1 point. It does not replace the importance of an SC and that relationship they have at that local restaurant in being, what I call again, right on price at the local level. If we have a competitive pressure at the local level, our SCs have a process they can follow to ask for an exception. We have a rev man team that manages and adjudicates those decisions with financial discipline. It's a combination of 2 things.

It's a tool that provides guardrails that we operate within, with discipline and predictability, and then we have the ability to respond at the local level through the sales force, when in fact, something unique is happening that the system can't see through data. We're gonna get better and better at that second point. You know, we believe we can make that process faster, more agile, and more efficient to give our SDs the ability to respond in the moment, and that's something that we're working on in fiscal 2024. Kenny, I toss to you for any comments from a financial perspective.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Yep. Thank you, Kevin. A couple of things I, I want to add. Just to recap, in Q4, as I mentioned earlier, we did experience deflationary in our U.S. market. With that, we still expanded both GP dollars per case, GP margins, as well as operating margins, both, all, all three of them. Yes, to directly answer your question, the centralized pricing tool, it does help on the margin side. There, there is quite a few other levers that we have as an enterprise, right, besides pricing. Let me walk you through some of those other things that our enterprise is working on. This includes, 1 is strengthening our international segments, right? This obviously helps on the inflation side. They're currently, right now, international, is close to double-digit right now, the spot on inflation.

The second piece is strategic sourcing. Third, Sysco Brand penetration, which we made immense progress this quarter. Then last is a growing specialty and the likes. All these 4 things I just mentioned, in addition to what you brought up, Kelly, around pricing, drive a higher earnings margin profile for our enterprise going forward.

Kelly Bania (Managing Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I guess, just, in terms of this lower pricing environment, do you expect your restaurant and all your customers to pass on these lower prices to consumers?

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

You know, Kelly, on the national restaurant business side, I would defer to the leaders of those companies to comment. I think they'll all make their own individual choices. You know, I think at the local mom-and-pop independent level, you know, it's an efficient market, and center plate purchase costs will come down for them. Will some of them choose to, you know, lower the price point on the menu? I think some will, and they'll see volume benefit from that. You know, it's, it's fungible. You know, these things are levers that get pulled, but I'll defer to our large customer base to answer that question, especially the national chains.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from John Ivankoe at J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

John Ivankoe (Managing Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you very much. The question is on sales force compensation. I, I know there's been a couple of, you know, changes or enhancements, in, in the past years, maybe, you know, one being in terms of new account generation, market share per account, you know, Sysco Brand, you know, product sales. I think there are a couple of different things, including, I think most recently, the removal of some ceilings that certain sales force, you know, members are actually hitting in terms of total comp. Just wanted to get a sense of, you know, kind of what we should be focused on in 2024, you know, especially in terms of, like, a stable comp plan.

I mean, how it works for both Sysco and the sales force members, and if you can make a comment, in terms of the number of salespeople in the Sysco organization. Does it make sense to add more or give more responsibility to the best? Thank you so much.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Yeah, John, thanks for the question. I, I appreciate it. We are making some improvements to our compensation model this year. What John's referring to, is we're actually in pilot right now, with a improved program. By the way, we like our current program. Our Sales Consultant retention is at all-time highs, and we believe the program we have motivates behavior and motivates our colleagues on the right things. With that said, continuous improvement, you know, you can always make something better and stronger. You know, feedback from our Sales Consultants has been what John just said, which is there is a cap that exists today, and, you know, people that do that type of work don't like caps. Like, you know, more I sell, the more I should earn and the more Sysco can make. We agree with our Sales Consultants on that.

we are piloting a new structure, a new program, which if they profitably grow their business, they continue to earn. by the way, that's good for Sysco, too. it's a big company, it's a big machine, it's a big engine. As I said on, on my call today, it's more than 7,000 Sales Consultants. We need to make sure we get it right. We need to make sure it's clear, simple, and understandable. Therefore, that's why we're doing a pilot. we're pleased with the results of the pilot. we're gonna announce actually in August to our sales force, the details of that compensation change. with professional discretion, I'm gonna choose not to comment on what it will be on this call because we haven't even told our colleagues yet.

In August, we're gonna announce at a, you know, worldwide sales meeting, the change. It will be very well received because it's exactly what they've been asking for and, you know, we're optimistic that that will help us deliver the guidance that we covered today, and to win more share profitably, you know, at the local level. We're pleased with that change. We believe it will motivate even more the right behaviors, and it's good for the colleague, and it's also good for Sysco, and it's good for the shareholder because it's profitable growth.

John Ivankoe (Managing Director, and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thank you, John.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from Alex Slagle at Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Alex Slagle (Senior VP, and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to dive in a little more on the local restaurant business, and you touched on some of this with Kelly's question, but your views on the health of these independent restaurant operators, both, you know, for the Sysco customers and more broadly?

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director, and Equity Research Analyst)

... as you think about the traffic environment being a little bit more difficult, inflation pressures coming down, but, you know, if you're seeing any evidence of stress out there or closures or, you know, erosion in receivables, bad debt that you see on the horizon, for that group of customers?

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Okay, Alex, thanks for the question. I'll start just on sentiment of that very important customer segment of ours, and then I'll toss to Kenny for any comments on receivables and bad debt. You know, from the very beginning of COVID, I've said the following: that local mom-and-pop entrepreneur is just that. They are an entrepreneur. This is their business. They are agile, they're scrappy, they're fighters, and they have dealt with a lot over the last four years. The disinflation to deflation, in aggregate, will be a good thing for them. Think about that curve I was doing. I wish we were on Zoom, and you could see me, right?

Like, the 18% inflation followed by, you know, deflation will come back to a normalized 2%-3% inflation once we've gotten through this transition period. That will be good for the local operator. It will be good because it'll help with volume and, you know, frankly, a little bit of margin, you know, is benefited from a little bit of inflation. The environmental conditions are gonna transition to more favorable for that local operator. As it relates to how we, Sysco, can help them, you know, that is the core of who we are. Drive to the best possible cost for that operator through strategic sourcing. Have a Sales Consultant who's an expert in their craft, who can help them with menu optimization, productivity improvement, Sysco Brand conversion, which Kenny covered very well.

We made tremendous strides in this past year of further penetrating Sysco Brand. We expect for that to continue, to introduce innovation and newness to our customers through cutting-edge solutions. We believe in the independent customer. We believe there's a real reason they exist, which is people like local, they like to eat fresh, those local operators do a wonderful job of buying local product. Again, Sysco buys and sells more local produce than any other distributor, despite our size. You know, when I think about, you know, outlook, you know, for where we head from here, we have the ability to win more of those customers, even if that overall customer base, you know, is going through this transition period.

We serve roughly half of those independent doors, and we have a big opportunity to grow the number of doors we cover and increase share of wallet, going back to John's question, with those customers. So independent customers will be a source of growth for us this coming year, which we've built into our guidance. Kenny, I toss to you for any comment on AR bad debt.

Kenny Cheung (EVP and CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Kevin. With respect to AR and bad debt, we are not seeing any drag on working capital. If anything, it's the opposite. In fiscal year 2023, we actually saw improvement in AR and AP and inventory DSO. All these few factors provided a tailwind for working capital, therefore, driving our record free cash flow and operating cash flow conversion from EBITDA.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director, and Equity Research Analyst)

That's great. Thank you.

Kevin Hourican (President and CEO)

Thanks, Alex.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our allotted time for the question-and-answer session. This will conclude your conference call for this morning. We would like to thank everyone for their participation and ask you to please disconnect your lines.