US Foods - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the US Foods Third Quarter 2023 quarterly earnings call. Today's call is being recorded, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Neese, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Michael Neese (SVP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the US Foods third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. On today's call, we have Dave Flitman, CEO, and Dirk Locascio, our CFO. We will take your questions after our prepared remarks conclude. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our earnings release issued earlier this morning and today's presentation slides can be found on the Investor Relations page at our website at ir.usfoods.com. During today's call, and unless otherwise stated, we're comparing our third quarter results to the same period in fiscal year 2022. In addition to historical information, certain statements made during today's call are considered forward-looking statements.

Please review the risk factors in our 2022 Form 10-K for a detailed discussion of these potential factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in those statements. We are excited to announce that we will host an Investor Day here in the Chicago area on June 5 of next year, where we will outline our strategy and the key drivers of our new long-range plan beyond 2024, along with our cash flow generation and capital deployment plan. More details will be sent in the following months. Lastly, during today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

All reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the schedules on our earnings press release, as well as in the presentation slides posted on our website, except that we are not providing reconciliations to forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dave.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before jumping in to our Q3 highlights, I want to officially welcome Mike Neese as our new Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Mike brings 25 years of investor relations experience to US Foods, including time with Performance Food Group and Builders FirstSource. I am thrilled to team up with him one more time. Additionally, Martha Ha joined US Foods in late September as Executive Vice President and General Counsel. With more than 30 years of experience, Martha is a seasoned business advisor with exceptional expertise in corporate governance, commercial and M&A transactions, and leading high-performing teams. I look forward to Martha's many contributions to the company. And now, let's turn to today's agenda.

I'll start by sharing highlights for the quarter and our progress against our strategy and long-range plan before I hand it over to Dirk to review our financial results and updated fiscal 2023 guidance. In the third quarter, we continued to make significant progress against our long-range plan broadly across the business. We are improving the safety of our associates, growing our independent cases while accelerating market share gains, enhancing our margins, driving increased cash flow, and meaningfully reducing our net leverage. Our strong third quarter and year-to-date performance are a result of our continued growth and market share gains on our target customer types, accelerating operational efficiencies, and the dedication of our 29,000 associates. I am proud of their relentless focus on delivering best-in-class service to our customers and executing strategic initiatives under our long-range plan.

Building on our differentiated team-based selling model, industry-leading digital innovation, and continuing momentum, our team delivered strong case volume growth. Each of our target customer types, independent restaurants, healthcare, and hospitality, had year-over-year market share gains. Importantly, we accelerated our independent share gains and exclusive brand penetration sequentially, resulting in our 10th consecutive quarter of year-over-year share gains in this important customer type. We demonstrated profitable growth and margin expansion during the quarter with meaningful improvement in operating leverage. We delivered Adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% and expanded our Adjusted EBITDA margin by 50 basis points. Finally, we accelerated cash flow generation, allowing us to invest more in the business, pay down debt, repurchase shares, and execute Tuck-in M&A. Turning to slide four, our strategy guides how we operate and what we focus on to win at US Foods under our four pillars of culture, service, growth, and profit.

We continue to reap benefits from the inclusion of our four regional presidents on my executive leadership team. We are communicating better and aligning our teams more effectively to ensure faster execution. One important example is a recent decision I made to further streamline the organization and address feedback from the field by having our local sales teams report into the regional presidents versus a centralized corporate commercial function. Also, Jim Sturgell, our EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, has informed me of his decision to retire effective December first. Jim has been a trusted leader and voice on my executive leadership team. During his more than 31 years with the company, Jim has made countless contributions to propel our company forward. I want to thank him for his steadfast leadership and his many contributions to our company and our people....

After much thought and careful consideration, given Jim's pending retirement, I've decided to not backfill Jim's role. Instead, we have restructured our commercial team to create even greater collaboration, a more streamlined structure, and the platform for accelerated execution of our strategy. As a result, Randy Taylor, our EVP of Field Operations, has taken on additional responsibilities for sales excellence and marketing. In addition, Dave Poe has been promoted to EVP Chief Merchant, reporting to me. Dave is a seasoned food service veteran with more than 25 years of merchandising experience within distribution. In Dave's expanded role, he will continue to be responsible for ensuring the US Foods product value proposition exceeds our customer expectations, that we are competitive on cost of goods, and that we have the right product portfolio through his leadership of our merchandising function.

In addition to the organization changes we are making, we continue to place increased emphasis on accelerating profitable growth, and we want to ensure that we reward our sellers for delivering on that growth. We are currently working on some likely revisions to our Territory Manager sales compensation plan, which will even more closely link their compensation to the key elements of our profitable growth plan. We will share more about any potential modifications during our fourth quarter call. We are also accelerating our investment in our local selling capacity. In fact, we increased our local seller headcount each month in the third quarter. We plan to continue those additions in the low to mid-single digits into 2024 and beyond, which has already been contemplated in our long-range planning.

We will be more focused than ever on profitable growth, with the right tools and support processes to ensure our sales teams are successful. Collectively, these changes will ensure better alignment between the field and corporate teams while reducing handoffs and creating additional organizational efficiencies. Most importantly, they will further propel our company with the right focus on serving and supporting our customers and driving profitable organic growth. Turning to slide five. I'll now briefly discuss our third quarter progress against our culture and service pillars, and then Dirk will talk about the growth and profit pillars a bit later. The safety and well-being of our associates is paramount at US Foods and is critical to our success. Since day one, I have stressed the importance of improving our performance to provide an even safer operating environment for all of our associates.

Our strong results have been driven by our actions to execute more effectively on fewer, but more impactful initiatives, while reinforcing safety as a personal value. One example is our safety leadership training, where we will provide behavior-based safety process training to approximately 1,300 operation leaders by the end of this year. This example, combined with other initiatives, has led to steady improvement in our safety performance. Our results improved in the third quarter compared to both the second quarter of this year as well as the third quarter of last year. In fact, the third quarter was our best safety result since the first quarter of 2021, with our injury and accident frequency rates both better than the prior year by 25%-30%. However, there's more work to be done, and we won't rest until we're at zero accidents and injuries.

Turning to the responsible portion of our cultural pillar, through our recently published Fall Scoop, we rolled out a new climate-conscious product innovation category within our Serve Good portfolio. Serve Good features products that meet our sustainability criteria, including products that are responsibly sourced or contribute to waste reduction. When asked, nearly two-thirds of our customers say that it is important to them to make sustainable choices that limit their impact on the environment. One example is our newly unveiled Monogram Carbon Negative Cutlery that utilizes greenhouse gas-derived biomaterial to create a negative carbon footprint. These climate-conscious, innovative products aim to support our plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're excited to have nearly 1,000 products in our Serve Good portfolio, which spans multiple product categories.

Additionally, we are focused on winning center of the plate, proteins, and fresh produce, and over the last several years, we have upgraded our assortment in these key product categories. Importantly, our fresh produce category is our fastest-growing category year to date, and we estimate we have captured approximately 400 basis points of market share over the last two years within our target customer types of independent restaurants, healthcare, and hospitality. I am proud of our sustainable and healthy offerings that will ensure we continue to meet our customers' current and evolving needs. Moving to slide six, we continue to focus on best-in-class delivery, specifically on-time and in-full service levels to our customers. We continue to improve our customer service levels for product availability, and we are essentially now at pre-COVID levels.

On-time service to customers is also a key focus area for us, and our new routing system pilot, as part of the broader routing optimization work we have had underway, is a prime example of how we can further improve service. We launched the Descartes routing pilot in our first market. We continue to learn from this pilot and intend to pilot a second location before year-end, with national implementation planned for 2024. Our routing improvement initiative, combined with our move to Descartes, will enable us to improve service levels to our customers, while also reducing miles driven and fuel consumption, as highlighted by our third quarter performance, where we delivered the best cases per mile in our company's history.

In addition, our flexible scheduling initiative is making solid progress as we have moved from the pilot phase to broader deployment across our network, and it's now live in 16 locations. We continue to see significant improvements across our network and especially in our pilots, including year-over-year reduction in turnover that is approximately twice the rate of improvement versus our other locations, 30% improvement in safety, and continued improvement in productivity. We remain on track for half of our locations to be live on flex scheduling by year-end. Finally, we also continue to invest in our market-leading, customer-facing digital technology with MOXē. Our agile development has delivered many improvements to make it even faster for customers to place orders and manage their business.

Our deployment to local customers is complete, and we now have 30% of our national customers on MOXē, with full deployment planned in the first half of next year. In terms of the digital customer experience, we believe we continue to lead the industry. Our Net Promoter Score has been strong since our launch and has improved even further recently. From an e-commerce penetration perspective, we're at 84% for the total company, and our locally managed business improved 50 basis points to 73%. MOXē is well on its way to being the premier all-in-one digital toolset for our customers to order, track deliveries, pay bills, and manage inventory. And as we continue to focus on the customer experience, we further expanded Pronto in the quarter, which is our small truck delivery service focused within targeted, dense geographies. Today, Pronto has a presence in 35 markets.

I am pleased with our progress and the return on the investments we are making to provide best-in-class service to our customers. Turning to slide seven, I'll walk through some third quarter highlights, and Dirk will go into a little more detail later. Total case volume growth was 4%, and we drove growth in each of our target customer types again this quarter, with volume increasing nearly 6% for independent restaurants, 8% for healthcare, and 6% for hospitality. Adjusted EBITDA grew double digits and margins further increased. We remain focused on increasing our gross profit per case faster than operating expense per case and accelerating profitable share growth, as we did this quarter. Both healthcare and hospitality continued to deliver strong growth, driven in large part by healthy net new business.

We remain focused on growing in our target customer types and expect to continue that momentum. I've already spoken about several of the good progress points with our customer experience and supply chain, so I won't be repetitive here. Moving on, we continue to strengthen our capital structure and prudently allocate capital to fuel long-term growth. We further reduced our net leverage to 2.9x, and we repurchased more than 700,000 shares for $29 million. We expect to remain below 3x levered for the remainder of the year, with further improvement into next year. Finally, we closed the Renzi acquisition earlier in the third quarter, and this morning we announced the acquisition of Saladino's, our second tuck-in acquisition this year.

Saladino's is an independent food service distributor in Central California with approximately $600 million in annual revenue that will provide additional scale for us in Central California. We expect to close the transaction by year-end. We have strong momentum as we finish out 2023, and we expect that momentum to carry us into 2024. Before I hand it over to Dirk, I would like to acknowledge the brave men and women who have served in the armed forces. On Veterans Day, this Saturday, we will celebrate our 1,500 associates who have so courageously served our country, and you can see some of their faces on slide 8. We are grateful for their service and celebrate them and all veterans on this important day. We are committed to supporting veterans in their transition back to civilian life.

They offer skills that are remarkably competitive and transferable to the work we do in food distribution, including drivers, selectors, supervisors, and corporate roles. We have an employee resource group dedicated to educating our associates on the value of a veteran, recruiting veterans, supporting and recognizing our US Foods veterans, and providing volunteer and community engagement opportunities. I would like to recognize Jennifer Castillo, who is president of the Those Who Serve employee resource group. Jennifer is a senior manager in merchandising excellence, who served in the US Navy and successfully transferred her skills in mass communications to the corporate world. We thank Jennifer for her efforts in leading this valuable employee resource group and all veterans for their service to our country, and we wish all of those who have made personal sacrifices to protect our freedoms a very happy Veterans Day.

With that, I'll hand it over to Dirk to go over our financial performance and guidance in further detail.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Let's turn to slide 10. The execution of our strategy is driving sustainable operating leverage improvement as we deliver strong adjusted EBITDA growth again this quarter. Net sales were $9.1 billion in the third quarter, an increase of 2.1% over the prior year, driven by total case volume growth of 4%, partially offset by year-over-year food cost deflation and product mix impact of 1.9%. Our independent customer case growth was nearly 6% for the quarter. Renzi added approximately 80 basis points of growth for our independents. CHEF'STORE volume negatively impacted our total independent cases by about 80 basis points. The system conversion is largely behind us. We are laser focused on driving volume back into our stores.

We expect CHEF'STORE volume to be flat to modest growth as we exit 2023 and accelerate that growth in 2024. We saw modest year-over-year product cost deflation of approximately 1.3%, which continues to be driven by center of plate, as grocery still showed year-over-year inflation in the quarter. We continue to make progress executing our long-range plan initiatives. Our gross profit per case increased 3.6% during the quarter compared to the prior year. Our adjusted gross profit dollars grew 7.7% from the prior year, driven by an increase in total case volume and cost of goods sold optimization. Adjusted gross profit as a percent of sales was up nearly 90 basis points to 17.3%.

Our adjusted operating expense per case was only up 1.1% for the quarter, which is our best per case year-over-year performance this year. The 5.2% increase in adjusted OpEx dollars was largely driven by increased volume. Adjusted operating expenses as a percent of net sales were up approximately 40 basis points to 12.9%. We are pleased with our gross profit per case growth, exceeding OpEx per case growth as we drive profitability and seek ways to be more efficient. All of this led to 15% adjusted EBITDA growth, and we expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by nearly 50 basis points. Finally, adjusted diluted EPS grew 17% to $0.70 per share.

We have demonstrated strong leverage through the P&L, with operating expense per case growing at about one-third the rate of gross profit per case, and we expect to maintain that operational discipline. Turning to slide 11 for our growth pillar. Our digital capabilities and unique product portfolio are attracting new customers and driving sales. In addition, our differentiated service model and focus on operational excellence is leading to profitable growth. With our solid independent case growth, we are on track to significantly exceed our 1.5x goal for restaurant volume growth for the full year. We drove year-over-year share gains in each of our target customer types, improved our independent private label mix by 140 basis points, and continued to develop and convert a strong healthcare and hospitality new business pipeline.

We are seeing improved mix and margin expansion as we outgrow the industry and focus on more profitable customer types. We are focused on profitable share growth, as evidenced by our third quarter gross margin improvement and our tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year share gains in independence. As we focus on our digital innovations, MOXē has saved our sellers over 50,000 hours with its new self-service capabilities, in addition to the significantly improved customer experience. This frees up hours for our sellers to accelerate growth and help our customers succeed. Next to profit on slide 12. In addition to profitable growth, we continue to make progress on our initiatives to increase EBITDA margins. We drove further progress on initiatives such as cost of goods sold improvements by working jointly with additional vendors.

We remain on track to address a total of 60% of cost of goods by the end of the year. We continue to advance our efforts to drive operational efficiencies as productivity improved year-over-year for both delivery and warehouse. Now, I'll turn to cash flow. Turning to slide 13, we continue to increase our cash flow and expect to build upon this as we grow earnings and effectively manage working capital. Our strong cash flow means we will continue reinvesting for growth and further strengthen our capital structure. Our year-to-date operating cash flow is $935 million. We invested approximately $270 million in CapEx and on fleet leases, including projects to expand fleet, enhance analytic insights, and improve technology in supply chain and sales to enable further organic growth.

Our ongoing CapEx target is approximately 1.3% of net sales. As a rule of thumb, over time, we spend about one-third of CapEx on fleet, one-third for maintenance, and one-third for growth, which includes advancing our technology capabilities. We also paid $142 million for Renzi in the quarter. We will continue to remain opportunistic in selectively pursuing tuck-in M&A, like Saladino's, where it makes sense and at reasonable valuations. In addition, we repurchased 727,000 shares in the third quarter for a total of $29 million. So far in the fourth quarter, we have repurchased an additional $20 million, leaving $237 million remaining on our $500 million share repurchase program.

Moving to slide 14, leveraging our free cash flow and timely debt paydowns, we reduced our leverage from 3.7 to 2.9x over the past 12 months. We are now within our target range of 2.5 to 3x and expect to remain there. In August, we reduced the margin on our term loan to 2028 by 25 basis points. In September, we refinanced the 2025 senior notes by completing a $1 billion offering. The market was constructive for us as we moved $1 billion from secure to unsecured debt and extended our maturities.... Our overall debt structure is in solid shape. We don't have any maturities until 2026. We remain focused on creating value for shareholders and allocating capital prudently against the four parts of our capital allocation strategy. Now turning to guidance on slide 15.

As a result of our solid year-to-date results and outlook for the full year, we are raising our full year Adjusted EBITDA range to $1.54 billion-$1.56 billion, and our Adjusted Diluted EPS range, $2.60-$2.78 per share. We are delivering on our long range plan, and we are growing Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margins. We reduced our leverage to within our target range and are deploying capital to deliver strong returns. We believe we have the right strategies in place to deliver strong profitability this year and into the next several years. I'll now pass it back to Dave for his closing remarks.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thanks, Dirk. The continued improvement in our results reflects our team's hard work over the past few years to build a differentiated platform that positions us to win in any environment. I am pleased with the progress we are making as we execute the four pillars of our strategy, which is driving improved safety, productivity, and profitable growth despite the lack of market tailwinds. We'll continue to be at the forefront of technology with our MOXē platform and our overall digital strategy. Our focus on continuing to improve our customer value proposition has resulted in strong case growth and consistent market share gains, specifically within independent restaurants, healthcare, and hospitality. We are growing our Adjusted EBITDA and enhancing our margins. Our leverage is now below three times. Even with this tremendous progress, we have a long runway of profitable growth and shareholder returns in front of us.

Assuming stable macro backdrop, we believe our long-range plan will lead to further margin expansion over time, and we remain committed to be at or near $1.7 billion of Adjusted EBITDA in 2024. And I want to be very clear, this is not the ceiling for future earnings growth. We have a lot more sales and earnings growth potential in 2024 and beyond, and we look forward to highlighting our exciting future at the upcoming Investor Day on June 5th. We are just getting started, and we will continue to execute our strategy, gain profitable market share within our target customer types, enhance our margins, and strategically deploy capital. We are in a great position today, and we believe we have sustainable competitive advantages to outperform the market well into the future. It's an exciting time at US Foods, and we appreciate your interest.

With that, Lisa, please open up the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question on the phone lines today, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, to remove yourself from the queue, that is star one again. We'll take our first question from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, hey, Dave, let me start, the sales force investment or the investment you're making in sales, right? What, what-

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

How would you parse that out between the various pieces of Team-Based Selling, right? You've got, you've got different, different positions. And then secondly, the org chart, the org change, having those guys report to the regional VPs, what do you think that will do operationally?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Great. Well, let me take the first question that you asked there, John, and good morning. We're excited about the investments we're making in the sales force, and we've been doing that for a while, and we continue to accelerate that investment, and we'll be at that low to mid-single digits for a long time to come. It's mostly TMs, but I'm excited about our team-based selling model, where we have our, our consultants and specialists, as well as our chefs teaming up in front of the customer. We'll make fractional investments in those other two groups relative to TMs, just to continue to make sure they have the support they need in front of the customer. And then in terms of the org changes, really excited about where we're going.

You know, Jim, his retirement just gave me the opportunity to think about differently, how I wanted to think about the organization and efficiencies. As you know, every anytime there's handoffs between corporate and the field, it creates slower decision-making, opportunities for inefficiency, and we just need to continue to move faster. So it was an opportunity for me to rethink it, and moving our local sales organization back into the field where the customer interface is, just made all sorts of sense. So, a small change, but I think it'll prove meaningful through the course of time.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

All right. And then my follow-up, the three target types, how would you parse out the case growth between new accounts and drop size? Right, and my guess is it's different, independent versus healthcare and hospitality, the composition is different. Correct?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah. No, I think, I think that's right. And, you know, on the independent side, let me start with that first. You know, our cases per line are relatively flat, given, you know, what you've heard broadly about some of the foot traffic, but we are continuing to increase our lines for drop up, you know, in the low single digits. So we continue to penetrate those customers, both when we get them initially, but also through the course of time, and that's an exciting opportunity for us to continue to drive in terms of, of growth. And as I mentioned, in hospitality and healthcare, we're generating a lot of net new customers and new business.

And as we talked in the past, we believe we've got a highly differentiated model there, particularly in healthcare, where we've got great technology differentiation to help our customers, not only in their back office from a cost productivity standpoint, but also with their customers and the folks that are seeking the care to help manage their nutritionals, to be efficient in how they bring in inventory and to do that all automatically. No one else has the capability that we have there. And then the same-store sales, I would say, contribute more that growth to healthcare and hospitality relative to independents. So we've got a differentiated model. We're winning in all those places, as we continue to tell you. We're taking share in all of them, and we've got a long runway of growth ahead of us.

I think this really speaks to the power of the differentiated model that we have. We've got all these target customer types that many of our competitors don't have, and I think that'll prove to be a very resilient model for us through the course of time.

John Heinbockel (Senior Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets.

Kelly Bania (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to touch a little bit more on gross margin, obviously, quite strong. Can you just help us break out maybe the inflation, deflation impact? And then also just talk more broadly about Strategic Vendor Management and your cost of goods initiatives, your reduction initiatives there, and what you're learning as you work through this initiative with your suppliers.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, let me start, and I'll ask Dex- Dirk to fill in the details here. But, you know, the point I want to make, Kelly, and appreciate the question, is we've been through periods of large inflation here and now two consecutive quarters of deflation. And what you've seen us continue to do, regardless of what's going on there, is continue to expand our gross margins and, and, and particularly our gross margin per case. And as Dirk highlighted, we're doing that at a much faster rate than our operating expense per case is growing. That's a winning model. We expect that that will continue. Specific to your SVM question, you know, it's a piece of work that the company's been doing for quite some time. As we said, we'd be through about 60% of our COGS by the end of this year.

We're maintaining that, and we're making very good progress. So that element of the gross margin improvement, along with our penetration of exclusive brands, which we said were up 140 basis points in independents this quarter, along with our work to continue to optimize our freight lanes, and improve our mix. You know, that's the winning formula to continue to expand our gross margins. And as we say, you know, we control our own destiny in that regard, and we're doing a nice job of it.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Hi, Kelly. The only thing I would add is just to reinforce Dave's point that inflation, deflation, really a moot point when we think of year-over-year. As he said, it's been, you know, relatively, flat to some modest deflation, but those are in categories that aren't impacting earnings. So the improvement you're seeing is really all back to our point of control, the controllables, the things that we're doing in our four walls, as opposed to the external marketplace.

Kelly Bania (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thanks. And then just wanted to give you an opportunity to maybe touch a little bit more on the 1.7 long range plan target, and just as you get closer to 2024, how those, the different components of that may be working towards reaching that. You know, whether parts of it are ahead or behind, or where there's maybe more opportunity. Just wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of talk through that a little bit more.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, great question, and I'll just say, we'll say more about our guidance for next year on our fourth quarter call, obviously. But, I'm very confident to be at or near that $1.7 billion. And just through the course of time here, in my first 10 months, I've gained nothing but increased confidence, Kelly. And the momentum and what I love about the way we're delivering our results is we've got great balance across the P&L. We're just working in the right target customer types. We're delivering the right amount of growth profitably. We're improving our expense ratios, and importantly, you know, driving the outcomes that our customers need. So there's not one area that's outsized, I would say, in terms of the impact there. We've got great balance. I expect that balance to continue into 2024 and beyond.

Kelly Bania (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Peter Saleh with BTIG.

Peter Saleh (Managing Director of Restaurants and Food Distributors Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking the question, and congrats on the quarter.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Peter Saleh (Managing Director of Restaurants and Food Distributors Analyst)

I wanted to ask maybe first on the independent restaurants. You know, the environment's changing a little bit here. We're starting to see, you know, a couple quarters now of deflation that you guys are seeing. Restaurants have taken a lot of price, and we're seeing some more discounting among the larger chains. Are you seeing any change in behavior among your independent restaurants? Or just help us out in terms of their health and their trajectory going forward.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think the health is very solid. You know, we've had some foot traffic challenges through the course of the third quarter there, particularly with the chains, which continued to see lower foot traffic sequentially, while all results improved. I think the health of the independent is very stable, and as you've heard me say in the past, they're—I believe they're gonna win out in the long run here. And importantly, you know, we continue to have a differentiated model that enables us to continue to take market share and support their businesses, not only with our great products and service with our people, but also our technology. So we think we're differentiated there, and regardless of what's going on in the macro, we're gonna continue to penetrate that healthy customer base.

And importantly, I think, you know, overall there's less restaurants out there than there were pre-pandemic, but we've seen sequentially new openings of restaurants. And I would say our penetration is largely probably equally split between new openings of locations, as well as penetration and taking share from others in the marketplace. So it's a pretty well-balanced approach at this point. I would expect to see continued openings in locations through the course of the next few quarters here. So we're seeing that part of the customer base pretty healthy and stable.

Peter Saleh (Managing Director of Restaurants and Food Distributors Analyst)

Great, very helpful. And then just on the indirect spending, I think you guys had mentioned past couple quarters some cuts that you would be making there. Can you just talk to us a little bit about where the progress is on some of those indirect spending cuts? Is that more of a 2024 event, or have you started cutting some of those expenses? Thanks.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Peter. We have started to see some small savings begin to accrue already. We do expect that to accelerate as we go through 2024, but that's moving along well and really as we planned. So it's good to see some things come to fruition now, but more to come next year.

Peter Saleh (Managing Director of Restaurants and Food Distributors Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Alex Slagle with Jefferies.

Alex Slagle (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks. Congrats. I wanted to follow up. It looks like the gap between the chains and independents slightly narrowed a bit quarter over quarter. I mean, is there any stabilization or relative improvement in the chains that you're seeing? Any more improvements to come, you think?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Well, I think, you know, just broadly in the market, you know, the foot traffic was slightly down sequentially, Q3 to Q2. And as I've said in the past, you know, really the performance is relative to who you have in your portfolio, relative to the winners and the folks who aren't doing as well. You know, we outperformed what was going on with foot traffic this quarter. You know, I think that's relatively stable. We have some things in the pipeline, and I think we'll continue to show improvement through the course of time and into next year, middle of next year. We're targeting, you know, the right chains that we believe are going to win. And as we've said in the past, we'll continue to look for optimization opportunities within our portfolio.

Alex Slagle (Equity Research Analyst)

A question on Pronto. I guess it's grown to cover about 35 markets now. What's the broader TAM of this opportunity, sort of where it can go, and timeline to think about?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, we, we've made aggressive investments in Pronto. You'll continue to see us do that, you know, as an opportunity to serve our customers better. You know, the frequency of deliveries, particularly in these urban areas that are difficult to reach, you know, customers want fresh products delivered more frequently, and that's the great platform for us to do that. So we'll continue to be thoughtful about where we take it, but we see a long runway of opportunity there to continue to penetrate across our portfolio with Pronto. We, we love that model, we're excited about it, and it's getting great traction.

Alex Slagle (Equity Research Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Lauren Silverman with Deutsche Bank.

Lauren Silberman (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, and congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask about capital allocation. So $250 million or so in buybacks year to date, stock trading at a big discount to history, have really strong fundamentals momentum. So can you expand on your willingness to further lean in, how you're thinking about capital deployment and allocation of buybacks versus M&A or debt paydown? And then specific to M&A, just how you, you know, think about the most accretive opportunities for the business.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah. So, let me start to say, we will always invest in organic growth in our company first. We think that's the highest return, and supporting our customers is paramount. We continue to look at expansion opportunities across our network, and we'll be thoughtful about those, but we'll continue to drive that first. And as you heard me say, we don't need to do any acquisitions in this company. I love our footprint. We'll take opportunities like we did with Renzi and the one we announced this morning, to help us with efficiencies, taking miles out of the system and local market density. Now, let me just say a word about Saladino's, since you brought up M&A and the way we think about it. You know, I'm very excited about that acquisition. We said $600 million in revenue.

It gives us an opportunity in the Central Valley, where Saladino's is roughly half chain and half independent, where we don't have a footprint to serve the independent customer in that Central Valley, and really none of our competitors do. So we're excited about it from that standpoint. We're excited about it from the standpoint of helping us optimize the chain business that we have in that Central and Northern California footprint. So we'll take miles out and serve that part of the customer base better. But I guess I would say I'm most excited about the multiple we're paying for that, which is a fraction of what we paid for Renzi and a fraction of our trading multiple.

As we said, we will be thoughtful and disciplined about any acquisitions, and we won't do any that don't make sense, and we won't overpay for them. Saladino's is another great example of that. In terms of your question around share repurchases, we're obviously under trading our potential and hugely undervalued, in my view. You've seen us ramp up our share repurchases. I think we'll be thoughtful about that going forward. Returning capital to shareholders is important. After we do the things we need to make sure we're growing and supporting our customers well, obviously, more to come on that through the course of time, but we've been leaning in hard on share repurchases, and we'll continue to do that.

Lauren Silberman (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you for that. And then just a follow-up, really impressive case growth trends. Can you talk about anything around the cadence of trends you saw throughout the quarter? And to the extent you're willing to provide any color on October, and similarly, anything you can provide on what you saw with inflation throughout the quarter and trends into October. Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, thank you. I think, sequentially through the quarter, we saw things soften a bit in the market, as I said earlier, and that's why I'm so excited that our independent case growth actually accelerated sequentially from Q2 to Q3, and we continued to accelerate our market share gains. So it underscores the importance of the differentiated model and the differentiation that we have actually in the marketplace. And in terms of, the start to the fourth quarter, I think it's largely, in line with what we saw in Q3. I would say October started a little slower for us as we were lapping, a strike from one of our large competitors in the first couple of weeks of October.

We saw that volume bounce back as we would expect in the back half of the quarter, and we expect to be relatively in line with Q3, and importantly, continue to take market share in those target customer types.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

... Hi, Kelly. And on deflation, so we actually saw the year-over-year deflation improve or lessen as we went through the quarter. And in October, we actually saw a modest year-over-year inflation. And the improvements are primarily coming from center of the plate. So as that begins to become modestly inflationary, and then grocery is still very modest, but levels of inflation. So we think that's encouraging.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, guys, very much.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Thanks.

Jeffrey Bernstein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Brian Harbour with Morgan Stanley.

Brian Harbour (Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. Dirk, just on that, on that comment, would you expect that there is now gonna be kind of modest inflation across the business in Q4 and then into early 2024?

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Brian. Well, I'll use P10 as a good indicator that at least it's back into the black for some modest inflation. I think as we see, since it's been more driven by proteins, which can be more volatile, I think that's the part that's harder to predict. But I think what's encouraging is you see the stabilization of proteins. You see still a modest inflation in grocery. And so I think that indicates, you know, more likelihood of some level of inflation here in the quarter. I think that the most important part that I'd come back to is what we talked about earlier, that even with really modest deflation, that our gross profits still remain quite strong.

It just, I think, demonstrates the durability we've talked a lot about and why we are so bullish in our GP being able to stay strong, and an expectation that in future years we continue to expand further.

Brian Harbour (Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yep. Okay. Makes sense. And then, you know, OpEx per case, like you talked about in keeping that in check, what how would you kind of rank the main drivers of that at this point? Do you think it's mostly about just kind of continued improvements in productivity, and, you know, are you seeing much yet from kind of digital expansion, you know, flex scheduling, et cetera? Or, like, how do we think about which of those drivers might become more important as you go into, you know, the subsequent quarters?

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Well, to start with, we're quite pleased with the performance. As I said in my prepared comments, our best year-over-year per case performance that we've had, and that's really driven by distribution, so supply chain costs. And so I think that is a key unlock. You know, I think when you think across other parts, yes, we'll get some leverage. We'll continue to take some actions on productivity, but the, I think all of the things, hopefully what you see when we talk about the improvements as flex scheduling is coming to life, as year-over-year productivity continues to improve for delivery and warehouse, all those are translating into per case improvements. And so that gives us good confidence that we are making traction.

We still have plenty of runway ahead, but ultimately are pleased with that and see a lot of opportunity remaining.

Operator (participant)

All right. We'll take our next question from Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo.

Edward Kelly (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Good morning. Nice quarter.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Good morning.

Edward Kelly (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

DIrk, maybe just a follow-up on OpEx per case. Obviously very, you know, good results, but productivity for, you know, on a worker standpoint, I don't think is back to 2019 levels. You talked about things like, you know, the routing, the flex scheduling. How do we think about the growth in OpEx per case going forward on a sustained basis, in terms of modeling? And then specifically, as you think about Q4, if you look pre-pandemic, you know, OpEx per case doesn't increase very much Q4 versus Q3, which would suggest that it might actually be down year-over-year. I don't know if that's too aggressive an assumption, but, you know, maybe speak to that as well.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

Hi, Ed. So ultimately, I think when with distribution, the productivity. So we actually, for the third quarter, our delivery productivity was above 2019. Warehouse isn't quite there, but it's making progress, so we're pretty encouraged. And, you know, I think the whether it's the flex scheduling, you heard Dave talk about our cases per mile, from the routing work we've done over the best in the company history. And what I think we each like about the work we're doing is, it's not all just about taking cost out, it's about the customer experience, customer service, and things that then are making our company more productive. So it really is a good balance there.

I think the, as you look ahead, to the fourth quarter, you know, whether it's, sort of in line with prior year, you know, a little bit higher, a little lower, I think the encouraging part is that, you know, we're seeing very modest levels of increase in per case. And I think that comes back to what you heard us say from the beginning of this year, is when—if we have inflation, cost inflation of 3%-5% a year, our goal is to offset, as much or all of that as we can. And I think you're seeing that as we make progress, coming more and more to fruition. So our goal remains that from quarter to quarter, that can bounce around a little bit. I'll use an example for, you know, OpEx.

You may end up with a little better performance in the fourth quarter, but we're pleased with the progress we're making.

Edward Kelly (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And then, Dave, just to follow up for you, you know, you're making some adjustments to sales compensation model, hiring salespeople. You know, we're hearing this from competition as well. Obviously, the large players seem to be, you know, a bit more focused on gains with higher-margin customers. My question for you is, you know, can everyone win in that environment, meaning the larger players? And how confident are you in the differentiation of what US Foods is doing that allows you to continue, you know, what we're seeing today in that type of backdrop?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

... Yeah, great question, Ed. I'll take your second part first. I'm highly confident in the differentiation of our model, and it's the winning model, I believe. And we can drive growth effectively and productively with our sales team. But that team-based selling model, as you continue to hear me say, is a real differentiator. I see it working every single day for our customers, and we're gonna continue to drive it hard. And I think that's why you may hear us talk about sales headcount growth at a slightly lower level than you hear from some of our competitors. I think that really is a differentiation in our model, and we'll continue to lean in around that. And the first part of your question, remind me again?

Edward Kelly (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Well, it's just, you know, I guess it really pertains to, you know, the idea if the large three players, you know, are all sort of investing in salespeople and, is there enough opportunity beyond that, you know, that everybody can win? If the market looks at this as, you know, you versus your other publicly traded players, zero-sum game, how inaccurate is that at the end of the day?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

I think, you know, this is still a very highly fragmented market, as you know. You know, the Big Three have, you know, 40% nominally, roughly, ± of share. So that, that's still very highly fragmented. I think you continue to see us take share collectively from some of the smaller players. You know, when I think about our business relative to others, you know, we still have a relatively small share of the independent market space, so the runway is long, I think, for growth. We all have different models. They all have their pluses and minuses, but I think there's room for everybody to continue to win in this market.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

I think, Ed, one other thing just that I'd highlight that I think is a differentiator in our go-to-market and our focus is with our three customer types that we're targeting. I mean, what you see is, it's not just about the independents. We have, we had 8% growth almost in healthcare. We had almost 6% in hospitality, and we've continued to do that. We continue to have excellent new business pipeline in convenience, in healthcare and hospitality. So if you look at how that translates into, in those most attractive, our key customer types, that's led to overall the strongest case growth out of, you know, any of the competitors.

We're pleased that we have, with the model we have, the ability to continue to grow at accelerated and gain share in all three of those types, leading to overall solid case growth.

Edward Kelly (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thanks, Ed.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Jeffrey Bernstein with Barclays.

Jeffrey Bernstein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much. Two questions. The first one, David, I think we've confirmed the industry data and the restaurant commentary showed that there was a slowdown to close maybe the summer, maybe August, September, and I think you confirmed that the chain's foot traffic slowed in the third quarter. The question we've been getting a lot is just why? I think a lot of people immediately jump on the idea that the headwinds on the consumer are finally taking hold. But then many of our restaurants have actually said less of consumer concerns and more just a return to normal historical seasonality in terms of month to month or quarter to quarter. In fact, some have actually said the industry's recovered somewhat in October. So I'm just wondering your thoughts.

One, are you surprised that maybe you're not seeing a similar uptick in October, and do you think there's any credence to the thesis of a return to seasonality? Just wondering your thoughts on whether or not we should be concerned of a broader consumer slowdown or whether the seasonality does hold some water. Then I had a follow-up.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think there probably is something to the seasonality piece, although, you know, we don't spend a lot of time, you know, thinking about that, Jeff, because, you know, relative to our model and the things that we're leaning in around, you know, I keep telling our team to focus on the things we can control and whether there's a broader, you know, slowdown in the market. There's still a lot of cases out there for us to go get. People are still going out to eat. It's gonna ebb and flow, just like it always has. It's been a difficult time to get a handle on things with the rebound since COVID and, you know, restaurants that have gone offline and them coming back. It's really been a little bit helter skelter here, as you know, for the last year or so.

But regardless of all of that, you know, I think what I'm seeing and what I said earlier is stability. I think that's the key right now, is stability, and then our ability to lean in where we want to in those three target customer types, continue to support our customers with share.

Jeffrey Bernstein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, and on that note, seems like you've got strong momentum across your business lines. I'm just wondering, you kind of blessed the at or near $1.7 billion for next year, but what's your greatest concern as we look to 2024? I'm assuming maybe it's more macro versus your internal plans, but what are you looking at to get a gauge for, you know, your outlook for 2024? What's the biggest concern you have or among your team?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think, you know, from a macro standpoint, that would probably be it. But it would have to be a major, you know, significant macro thing to give me a lot of concern. I've got a lot of confidence in our ability to hit that target for next year, given the momentum that we have and, you know, what I can see coming in the future in terms of continued share gains, productivity work that we have underway, and our ability to control that outcome. So yeah, I guess I'd have to point to a macro, but it would have to be more than just a minor slowdown.

Jeffrey Bernstein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. And then just lastly, the M&A, just to follow up, it seems like the discussions maybe are a little bit more productive. You've completed a couple of them. I know peers are talking a little bit more about it. Do you think both sides are coming to more reasonable terms in terms of valuation? How do you think about it in terms of your opportunity? Is it more a geographic opportunity, or is it just a particular line of business that you'd be interested in focusing on? Just trying to get your sense.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, ours have been more geographic focused in both cases, both with Renzi and Saladino's now, where we're, you know, serving those markets in some capacity, but not very efficiently. So there's still ample opportunity for that across our network to strengthen our position in local markets. There may be something that we do product portfolio-wise that's opportunistic. I don't see any major gaps in it, but if the right thing comes along at the right time, we'll certainly take a look at it. But I think you can think about it in similar fashion to what you've seen us do with the two that we've talked about, you know, so far this year. And in terms of valuations, you know, what you heard me say is that, Saladino's was extremely reasonable and a fraction of what we paid in elsewhere.

So we're gonna do the things that make sense, 'cause we don't have to do M&A. We really don't. So it's gonna be thoughtful, it's gonna be the right one for us, solve a problem for us, and it's valuations that make sense for us every time.

Jeffrey Bernstein (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Jake Bartlett with Truist Securities.

Jake Bartlett (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thanks for taking the question. You know, mine was, it pertains to you, but as well as your larger competitors. You're all increasing your sales forces pretty aggressively, and I guess I'm wondering, it seems like there's a disconnect, like the overall market growth, macro pressures are there. It doesn't seem like the market's gotten much bigger than unexpected. So, you know, how should we interpret the wide-scale increase in the sales force, given the macro background that doesn't seem to be better than expected?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think you can interpret, at least... I can only speak for us and how we're, you know, how we're thinking about it, Jake, but I think it speaks to the underlying opportunity that we see in terms of growth. And look, as we continue to take share, we're gonna grow somewhat with the market. You know, that's gonna be very low single digits. We're gonna continue to penetrate the market and take share, and that's gonna drive an increment of growth. And then that low to single digit, low to mid-single digit headcount increase will add another increment of growth on top of that. And so that's the way we're thinking about the algorithm. Given the relatively fractured nature of this market and this industry, there's still ample opportunity for us to take share, regardless of the macro.

Dirk Locascio (EVP and CFO)

I think, Jake, the other thing, you know, keep in mind, if we're growing independents at 6% on a regular basis, as we have for the last number of quarters, you know, you do want us to be adding sales sellers because that's also - we're getting good leverage, as we're adding sellers by growing cases faster than that, but at the same time, making sure that we're reinvesting and reinvesting, especially in those areas where we're growing faster.

Jake Bartlett (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Great. That's really helpful. And then, you know, in the context, and I know it, it doesn't, certainly doesn't seem like it's happening so far, you know, as gross profits per case remain robust and have been robust for your larger competitors as well. But, you know, with a lot of these salespeople coming on, you know, industry-wide and, you know, the macro is still somewhat under pressure, do you expect price competition to increase? It seems like that's still, you know, a risk to the gross profits per case story out there, and hasn't come to fruition. But, you know, how much of a risk do you think that that is? That all these sales guys people hitting the market are gonna you have to start competing a little bit more on price.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think this has always been a competitive industry, and it always will be. You know, and, and things changed during COVID, and I think I would describe the competitiveness out there now? Is it back to pre-COVID levels. It's very fragmented. There's a lot of competitors out there. You know, Jake, that doesn't deter us at all. We've got a differentiated model, and I think it underscores the importance of two things. One is all the initiatives that we have underway, that we control, to continue to drive that improvement in gross profit per case, and then looking at ways to continually get more productive and take cost and waste out of our system. That's why the 3%-5% productivity target is so important to us.

That's why the MOXē penetration is important because it allows our sales team to be much more productive in front of the customer, and not chasing the back office stuff, but selling the value that we bring, selling great products, and importantly, helping our customers solve problems.

Jake Bartlett (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. I appreciate it.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Mark Carden with UBS.

Mark Carden (Director and Equity Research)

Good morning. Thanks so much for taking the questions. So, CHEF'STORE was a bit of a headwind in 3Q to a slightly greater extent than it was in 2Q. Is this simply being driven by residual effects from the systems conversion issue and the need to win back some of these customers? Then how should we think about the impact here over the course of the next few quarters?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think you're hitting it right in the center of the target there, Mark. You know, we-- as we've said, now the systems change is largely behind us, but we've had some lingering effects in terms of lost business through the course of that, you know, which started in the third quarter of last year. Encouragingly, we're seeing month-over-month sequential improvement, and more recently, week-over-week improvement. So I'm encouraged by the ramp-up. As you heard Dirk say, we expect to be in a position of flat to growth by the end of this year, exiting the year with the goal of driving strong top-line growth next year, and I think largely we're on track to do that. So I'm very encouraged by what I see. We continue to invest in the business.

We've opened one new location already in the fourth quarter in Virginia, and we've got a couple more planned in the Carolinas here before the end of the fourth quarter. So progress continues, and I expect that that ramp rate will continue here as we exit 2023.

Mark Carden (Director and Equity Research)

Okay, great. And then on Renzi, I know it's still early, but how has the integration fared relative to your expectations? And then in context with Saladino's, do you think you may have capacity to acquire at a faster pace, while also, of course, understanding that you don't necessarily need to lean on M&A?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah. I think Renzi has gone even better than I could have imagined. It's gone extremely well on the integration front. We put a very strong leader in place there. We've had a great cultural fit. Importantly, we haven't lost any key talent, and it's been very transparent and a non-event for the customers in the market. So we love it.... There's not enough good I can say about how Renzi's gone. It's all very, very positive. And then, the second part of your question again?

Mark Carden (Director and Equity Research)

Just the second part, basically, with, with, you know, your new acquisition, do you guys think that you might have the capacity to acquire at a faster pace? Again, understanding that you don't necessarily have to acquire.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I think, as I said, it, it filled a geographic void for us, particularly on the independent side there, where we were serving that market. You know, it's kind of hard to get to the Central Valley from San Francisco or LA very efficiently, so it solves that problem for us. And importantly, we have plenty of chain business in that part of the country, and, and the, the half of that, that business that we're acquiring that was chain-related will help us serve that segment of the customer base, also more effectively. So we're excited about it from all those angles. It just made sense at the right time, and importantly, as I've said a number of times this morning, a, a, a great, multiple that we paid for it.

Mark Carden (Director and Equity Research)

Great. Thanks so much. Good luck.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, everyone, that is star one to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Andrew Wolf with CL King.

Andrew Wolf (Senior Equity Analyst)

Well, thanks. Good morning.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Good morning.

Andrew Wolf (Senior Equity Analyst)

I'd like to follow up on some of the good morning, the questioning on the labor productivity. And, you know, you're- you have experienced accelerating case growth in the quarter and sort of for the year as well. You know, you're in a tight labor market, so, and you had good results, so that's pretty, you know, impressive. But to what extent can you... Do you have- can you measure or just anecdotally talk about, to what extent, you know, hiring more fresh people, you know, who've obviously come in relatively low in terms of productivity, as you're growing, how much that impacts, you know, the labor productivity metrics that, that we're able to, you know, discern?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Well, I think attracting talent is important, and I would say the inflow of applicants for our jobs has increased to the point where I would say it's relatively the same as it was pre-COVID. It's always been the challenge to retain those folks as through the course of time, and that's why we leaned in so hard around this flex scheduling pilot. While initially, as you start those pilots, you need to add a little bit of headcount, it actually hurts your productivity. What we're seeing is double-digit improvements in turnover. Obviously, that leads to reduced overtime and improved productivity in the long run, and we're seeing that everywhere we've taken that model.

So I think we've got a unique approach that makes a lot of sense for us and will help us retain people, which is the key here to driving productivity over the long haul. And as Dirk said, you know, we're pleased with our driver results, both in terms of turnover and productivity being back to pre-pandemic levels, and we'll continue to drive it improvement from there.

Andrew Wolf (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. And just, regarding the guidance, I think because you mentioned Saladino's is gonna close late in the year, does the guidance update exclude Saladino's, or includes Saladino's?

Dave Flitman (CEO)

It will be a very insignificant amount, for the fourth quarter. So at this point, it really demonstrates the core strength of the overall business.

Andrew Wolf (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you. That's it for me.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from John Ivankoe with J.P. Morgan.

John Ivankoe (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi. Hi, thank you. Yeah, the question is actually on current price competition, if you're seeing any. You know, the current slow restaurant case volume environment, COGS, which obviously has moderated the labor market, cost of distribution, which has moderated. I mean, it would seem that if there was going to be a time for price competition, we would probably already be seeing it. So just wanted to get your comments, anything that you're hearing on a specific market level, to maybe there's been a change in recent times. Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Yeah, I would say that there's been a change, you know, since the pandemic, getting back to pre-pandemic competitiveness. And as I said, it's always competitive. I wouldn't point to any market or geographic area of the country where it's more or less competitive than it was pre-pandemic. It's always competitive. It's a thing we all have to deal with every day, and that's why we work so hard to sell the value that US Foods brings to our customers.

John Ivankoe (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Dave Flitman for any additional or closing remarks.

Dave Flitman (CEO)

Well, thank you all for joining us today. We are excited about the momentum in the business and importantly, the exciting future that we have. We look forward to talking to you again, and importantly, our Investor Day on June fifth. Have a great day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, and that does conclude today's presentation. Thank you for your participation today, and please disconnect.