LOCL

Good morning, and welcome to Local Bounti's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note, today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Jeff Sonnek, investor relations at ICR. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Today's presentation will be hosted by Local Bounti's Executive Chairman, Craig Hurlbert, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kathleen Valiasek, and Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer, Tony Hughes. The comments made during today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

All statements other than statements of historical facts are considered forward-looking statements. Statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Some of these risks and uncertainties are identified and discussed in the company's filings with the SEC and will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures today.

Please refer to the press release, which can be found on our investor relations website, investors.localbounti.com, for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. As I always do, I want to start by recognizing the work the Local Bounti team has put into delivering these results. Excellent execution quarter after quarter across every part of the organization. We told you what we were going to do, and we're doing it. When I spoke with you in March, I described 2025 as a year we did the hard work to position Local Bounti for what comes next. Q1 reinforces that view. Two specific developments this quarter underscore where we're headed. First, in ProTechs, the proprietary technology that underpins our Stack & Flow platform, the same capabilities Kathy will speak to in detail when she walks through our operational progress. Second, the $15 million investment from an existing strategic investor that we discussed last quarter closed during Q1.

That's a partner who has watched this business closely for years and chose to commit additional capital at this stage. Both signals, one technical, one financial, point in the same direction. Local Bounti has earned the right to be selective about its next moves, and that gives me great confidence in the path ahead. With that, I will now turn it over to Kathy.

Thank you, Craig. The theme I'd wrap around Q1 2026 is straightforward, continued progress. The work we did throughout 2025 laid a foundation, and Q1 is the next data point showing how that foundation is producing results. Revenue grew 15% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved 35%, and adjusted G&A came down 30%. Each metric extends the trajectory we showed quarter by quarter through last year, and in several cases shows additional sequential improvement on top of an already strong fourth quarter. We're doing what we said we'd do, and it's showing up in our results. Following the facility optimization work we completed last year, each of our three state-of-the-art facilities continues to operate at full harvestable capacity with our entire run rate capacity committed to customers. I'd characterize our progress through two complementary threads, commercial momentum and operational discipline at scale.

Both continued to advance in Q1. Starting with our commercial progress and ongoing strategic partnership discussions. Those conversations remain active and are central to Local Bounti's long-term growth strategy. The quality and velocity of our engagements continues to build. The market shift we described last quarter is real and it's holding. Retailers and strategic partners who were once cautious about controlled environment agriculture are designing supply chains today that contain CEA as permanent infrastructure.

They are actively seeking the right partners to build with, and that's the position we have been working toward. We remain deliberate in how we approach these opportunities so we can best position Local Bounti to realize durable long-term value. Our commercial strategy continues to focus on the quality of our volume rather than simply adding capacity, specifically on achieving targeted diversification of our channel mix to enhance our margin profile.

The two new retail accounts we announced last quarter have launched. The first is a 6-SKU placement with a large premier retail customer covering more than 250 stores. The second is a large regional retailer. We are also seeing extensions to supply agreements within our existing customer base. In the first and early second quarter of 2026, we were awarded new bids covering supply arrangements that advance these relationships through the first quarter of 2027. These commitments span several of our key product lines, including baby leaf lettuce and organic butter lettuce. The awards underscore the strength of our relationships with blue-chip retail partners and reflect those customers' continued confidence in our ability to deliver consistent, high-quality product movement that has been a core priority moving through 2026.

Our pipeline reflects the strong commercial momentum we've been building. We continue to have visibility to additional distribution opportunities as we move through the year. Our Caesar Romano Salad Kit is another good example of the focused commercial strategy I described last quarter. The product continues to gain traction with consumers. After realizing a 75% increase in its baseline velocity or units sold per store per week during the fourth quarter of 2025, we were awarded an additional distribution center with a national retail customer in the first quarter of 2026 that is set to launch this month. When customers and consumers provide feedback, we listen, and Caesar Romano demonstrates what Local Bounti can deliver when we apply that approach. That same discipline extends to our baby leaf greens portfolio, which remains an area of genuine strength with consistent quality and strong yields across our facilities.

We see significant runway with arugula in particular, where there's a notable supply gap in the market. Our retail customers continue to tell us that the conventional arugula supply is unreliable and falling short of customer needs. We intend to maximize our Stack & Flow capabilities to capture that demand with a more reliable, longer lasting, ready-to-eat greenhouse-grown arugula supply. A message we are actively reinforcing with retail partners throughout 2026. 55 carried directly into Q1. We are seeing continued progress in our service performance, freight lane management, packaging standardization, and labor efficiencies. The same building blocks I walked through in March are compounding. Running at full capacity continues to enable a level of network-wide consistency that translates directly into stronger yields. Our yields remain at their highest levels in our company's history.

The tower upgrades we completed across Georgia, Texas, and Washington, paired with the computer vision and AI-driven growing optimization, are delivering as promised with approximately a 10% increase in run rate yield capacity. Texas continues to benefit from the steady state operational rhythm that comes with running consistent beyond our Stack & Flow facilities.

We are also focused on expanding a number one market position in living butterhead lettuce. In support of this, we are making selective investments in our California facilities to improve operational efficiency in those legacy assets. We believe these investments can improve yields by as much as 20%, resulting in increased throughput and enhanced margins as those projects progress through the year. Running at full capacity is also informing our ongoing cost optimization efforts within each facility, allowing for better visibility into cost drivers and the tools to address them.

That has translated into a more consistent adjusted gross margin profile and meaningful sequential and year-over-year declines in adjusted G&A. The net effect is showing up clearly in our rapidly improving adjusted EBITDA trajectory. Before I turn it over, I'd like to take a moment to introduce Anthony Hughes to those of you joining us today. Tony has served as Local Bounti's Senior VP of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer since June 2022, and was appointed interim CFO in December of last year. Tony has been instrumental in the financial work we have executed over the past several years, and he brings more than 30 years of finance leadership experience to this role. We are fortunate to have him in this seat, and I'm pleased to hand it over to him for the financial review today. Tony?

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. While this is my first earnings call in the interim CFO role, I've had the privilege of working alongside Kathy in various finance and accounting leadership roles for more than a decade across several organizations. I'd like to thank Kathy and the board for this opportunity. The financial trajectory we are reporting on this morning reflects the combination of positive forces that are making a measurable impact in our results, including the great work we've done to improve our capital structure. Now turning to our results. First quarter revenue grew 15% to $13.3 million, reflecting continued sequential and year-over-year growth driven by consistent production improvement across our full network of facilities. On a sequential basis, revenue was up approximately 7% from Q4, which speaks to the underlying production consistency we are now achieving.

Beyond the incremental distribution, we continue to see strong contribution from our focus accounts, including the e-commerce and direct-to-consumer customer relationship we highlighted last quarter, which continued to support year-over-year growth in the first quarter. Adjusted gross margin for the first quarter was approximately 29%, excluding depreciation, stock-based compensation, and other non-core items, in line with the prior year period and consistent with the gross margin profile we delivered throughout 2025. Gross margin stability has been a deliberate part of the story we are telling. Predictable performance at this level becomes the foundation for operating leverage as we scale. Adjusted G&A expense for the first quarter was $4.1 million, down from $5.8 million in Q1 2025 and Q4.

Combined with our COGS-related savings actions, we are now seeing the full benefit of the roughly $10 million reduction in annualized expenses we delivered in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter improved to $5.7 million compared to a loss of $8.8 million in Q1 2025, a 35% year-over-year improvement. Lower adjusted G&A continue to converge to improve adjusted EBITDA performance. This is exactly the operating leverage we said would compound as the network has matured. I'd also like to highlight that our Q1 GAAP net loss was $12.7 million compared to $37.7 million in the prior year period. The improvement reflects both substantially lower interest expense resulting from our 2025 debt restructuring and the operational progress underway.

With respect to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash- $15 million investment we received during the quarter from an existing strategic investor. As Craig noted, this is a meaningful signal. A partner who knows our business and our technology chose to increase their stake. It provides additional financial flexibility as we continue to advance our commercial and strategic priorities. As a reminder on our broader capital structure, we completed a $25 million equity raise and executed a comprehensive debt restructuring in the first quarter of 2025 that canceled approximately $197 million of debt principal and accrued interest and deferred cash repayments until April 2027.

In the third quarter of 2025, we secured an incremental $10 million of working capital through a convertible note investment, which was paired with a corresponding $10 million reduction in our senior secured debt principal. We were also able to secure additional financing through an equipment sale-leaseback arrangement. In the first quarter of 2026, we secured an additional $15 million through a convertible note investment. Combined, these transactions position Local Bounti with the financial flexibility to be strategic about growth and partnership decisions as we advance towards profitability. In terms of our outlook, we expect the trajectory of improvement we demonstrated throughout 2025 and into the first quarter to continue. Revenue growth, gross margin stability, and declining G&A all point toward continued progress against our goal of achieving positive adjusted EBITDA.

There's still work to do to get there, and we want to be clear-eyed about that, but everything we're seeing reinforces our confidence in the path. With that, I'll turn it back to Kathy for closing remarks.

Thank you, Anthony Hughes. In closing, the strategic and commercial environment around us remains favorable, the operational rhythm we built last year is compounding, and the financial trajectory continues to move in the right direction. The cumulative progress we have made will become even more visible as we move through the rest of 2026. I'm grateful to the entire Local Bounti team for their commitment and to our investors and partners for their continued confidence. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Local Bounti.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. We thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, and welcome to Local Bounti's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Please note that today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff Sonnek, Investor Relations at ICR. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Today's presentation will be hosted by Local Bounti's Executive Chairman, Craig Hurlbert, and President and Chief Executive Officer, Kathleen Valiasek. The comments made during today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts are considered forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Some of these risks and uncertainties are identified and discussed in the Company's filings with the SEC. We'll also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures today.

Please refer to the press release, which can be found on our investor relations website, investors.localbounti.com, for reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Craig. Craig?

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. I want to start by expressing my genuine gratitude to the entire Local Bounti team for their exceptional execution this quarter, and frankly, throughout all of 2025. The progress reflected in these results didn't happen by accident. It is the product of disciplined, focused work across every part of the organization, and I couldn't be more proud of what the team has built. As I step back and look at where Local Bounti stands today relative to where we were even a year ago, operationally, commercially, and financially, the trajectory is unmistakable. We have done the hard work necessary to get here, and the external signals are starting to reflect it. The additional $15 million investment from an existing strategic investor is one such signal.

It provides us with meaningful financial flexibility as we advance our priorities in 2026, and it speaks to the conviction building around Local Bounti’s positioning. With that, I’ll now turn it over to Kathy.

Thank you, Craig. The theme I'd wrap around Q4 2025 is simple, a focus on fundamentals, and our fundamentals are working. Both fourth quarter and full year results reflect the company that has been doing the hard work. We've been building commercial momentum, optimizing our operations, tightening our cost structure, and importantly, optimizing the foundation for our next chapter. We are very pleased that each of our three state-of-the-art facilities in our network are now operating at full harvestable capacity. Equally important is that our entire capacity is committed to customers on a run-rate basis. I'd characterize our momentum through two complementary threads. First is our commercial progress and ongoing strategic partnership discussions, and the second is around dialing in our operations at scale. Starting with our commercial progress and ongoing strategic partnership discussions. These conversations remain active and are central to Local Bounti's long-term growth strategy.

The quality and velocity of our engagements continues to build. The market has shifted as retailers and strategic partners who were once cautious about controlled environment agriculture are now designing supply chains that contain CEA as permanent infrastructure, and they are actively seeking the right partners to build with. This is a powerful shift that provides Local Bounti with incredible opportunities to demonstrate how our more capital efficient Stack & Flow Technology can greatly enhance their captive production. We remain deliberate in how we approach these opportunities so that we can best position Local Bounti to realize durable long-term value. Our commercial strategy goes beyond simply adding capacity. Rather, it's optimizing the quality of our volume to maximize value for our shareholders.

Specifically, we are focused on achieving targeted diversification of our channel mix, which is one variable to help us enhance our margin profile, and improving that mix is a core priority as we move through 2026. In fact, on this point, in the fourth quarter, we expanded our retail presence in select southern markets with a new national retailer. I'm also pleased to share that we just secured 2 new retail accounts that we expect to launch in the coming months. The first is for the placement of 6 of our SKUs in a large premier retail customer covering more than 250 stores, and the second is a large regional retailer. These are precisely the sort of outcomes that our commercial team is targeting, and we look forward to demonstrating our exceptional service.

Our pipeline reflects the strong commercial momentum we've been building, and we are excited about our visibility to additional distribution opportunities in the first half of 2026. Our Romano Caesar salad kit is another good example that illustrates our focused commercial strategy. This product has been gaining meaningful traction as velocity metrics have improved significantly on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Our average units per store per week between Q3 and Q4 increased by approximately 75%, validating both consumer demand and our ability to drive repeat purchases. When customers and consumers provide feedback, we listen, and Romano Caesar is a strong product that was developed to meet a need and demonstrates what Local Bounti can deliver moving forward. This extends to our baby leafy greens portfolio as well, an area where we believe we have meaningful differentiation to convert opportunities.

This category is an area of genuine strength for Local Bounti, with consistent quality and strong yields across our facilities. We see significant runway with arugula in particular, where there's a notable supply gap in the market. Our retail customers are speaking up about the conventional arugula supply, which is often unreliable and falling short of the needs of the consumer. We intend to maximize our Stack & Flow capabilities to capture that consumer demand with a more reliable, longer lasting, ready-to-eat, greenhouse-grown arugula supply, a message we will be actively reinforcing with retail partners throughout 2026. Now, I want to take a moment to recognize the strong partnership between our commercial and operations leadership teams, including our GMs, which has continued to strengthen since mid-2025. Together, they have built a more cohesive and cross-functional environment, driving meaningful improvements across the business.

This alignment has led to stronger relationships with key retail partners, helped bring long-standing commercial opportunities to fruition, and improved how our teams operate on a day-to-day basis. From an operational standpoint, we're seeing stronger on time and in full performance, more disciplined and optimized freight lane management, and continued progress on packaging standardization and labor efficiency. This level of coordination is helping build a strong foundation, not just for where we are today, but for our ability to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Shifting over to operations. Q4 is the clearest proof point yet that our execution is generating the results we expected, and in some cases even exceeding them. This is the culmination of the investments we made in upgrading our Texas facility, completing tower upgrades across the network, and optimizing our production systems throughout 2025.

Running at full capacity enables a level of network-wide consistency that we only recently achieved. Consistent throughput means more predictable labor deployment, more stable input costs, and a stable platform for our yield improvement initiatives to compound on. That operational consistency is starting to show up meaningfully in our financial results, which I will cover in a minute. We are also making select investments in our California facilities to improve operational efficiency, which we believe can improve yields by as much as 20% in these legacy facilities, resulting in increased throughput and enhanced margins. Additionally, our yields are at their highest levels ever. The tower upgrades we completed across Georgia, Texas, and Washington, paired with our computer vision and AI-driven growing optimization that has been deployed across our Stack & Flow Technology-enabled facilities are delivering as promised.

Texas is also benefiting from the steady state operational rhythm that comes with running a facility consistently at full capacity. The results are clear for us to see with throughput and labor productivity gains that the new automated harvester was designed to deliver. Running at full capacity is also informing our ongoing cost optimization efforts within each facility, allowing for better visibility into cost drivers and tools to address them. This has resulted in a more consistent adjusted gross margin profile as well as meaningful declines in our adjusted SG&A, reflecting the cost discipline that was a consistent feature of our 2025 story. The net effect of these improvements is showing up in our adjusted EBITDA trajectory. As we look ahead, the culmination of this work harmonizes our supply chain to operate as a national farm network model.

With all of our state-of-the-art facilities now operating at full capacity, our focus shifts from standing up capacity to optimizing how the network performs as a holistic unit to best serve the needs of our customers while simultaneously generating optimized returns for the business. The inherent flexibility in the network model has exceptional value and will be critical to our success in the next chapter of growth. The facilities are the infrastructure. The model is how we extract the most value from them. I want to recognize the team for a recent accomplishment. We are proud to have been issued a U.S. patent titled Optimizing Growing Process in Hybrid Growing Environment Using Computer Vision and AI. This patent protects the proprietary methods that underpin our Stack & Flow technology platform, the same capabilities that are driving the yield improvements and operational consistency we've been discussing.

It's a meaningful milestone and a formal recognition of the technology leadership we've been building toward. Now turning to our results for the quarter. Fourth quarter revenue grew 24% to $12.5 million, reflecting continued sequential and year-over-year growth driven by consistent production improvement across our full network of facilities. Beyond the incremental distribution, we are also seeing growth in focus accounts. For instance, our quarterly sales to a major e-commerce and direct-to-consumer customer accelerated by more than 600% during 2025 and helped drive year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter. Adjusted gross margin for the fourth quarter was approximately 29%, excluding depreciation, stock-based comp, and other non-core items. That compares to approximately 25% in Q4 of last year, representing roughly 400 basis points of year-over-year improvement.

Adjusted SG&A expense for the fourth quarter was $4.3 million, down from $5.3 million in Q4 2024, representing a reduction of approximately 18% year-over-year. Combined with our COGS-related savings actions for the full year 2025, we reduced our total annualized expenses by nearly $10 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the fourth quarter improved to $5.8 million, compared to a loss of $9.3 million in Q4 2024 and a loss of $7.2 million in Q3 2025, a 38% year-over-year and 20% sequential improvement. This is the clearest single quarter demonstration of our operating leverage beginning to work. Growing revenue, improved gross margins, and lower SG&A are converging into significantly better adjusted EBITDA performance. Our Q4 GAAP net loss was $8.7 million, compared to $36.3 million in the prior year period.

The improvement reflects both a substantially lower interest expense resulting from our 2025 debt restructuring and the operational progress underway. With respect to our balance sheet, we ended the year with cash equivalents, and restricted cash of approximately $10.7 million. Subsequent to year-end, we received a $50 million investment from an existing strategic investor. This is a meaningful signal. A partner who knows our business and our technology chose to increase their stake. It provides additional financial flexibility as we advance our commercial and strategic priorities heading into 2026. As a reminder, on our broader capital structure throughout 2025, we completed a $25 million equity raise and comprehensive debt restructuring in Q1 that canceled approximately $197 million of debt principal and interest, deferred cash repayments until April 2027.

In Q3, a $10 million convertible note paired with a corresponding $10 million principal reduction in our senior secured debt and various equipment leasing arrangements. These transactions collectively position Local Bounti with the financial flexibility to be strategic about growth and partnership decisions as we advance toward profitability. As a result of the debt restructuring, we were able to reduce our interest expense for the full year by nearly $27 million or 45%. In terms of our outlook, we expect the trajectory of improvement we demonstrated throughout 2025 to continue. Revenue growth, gross margin stability, and declining SG&A all point toward continued progress toward our goal of achieving positive adjusted EBITDA. In closing, we are doing the work to build a durable, profitable business, and I believe the cumulative progress we've made will become even more visible in 2026.

The strategic and commercial environment around us is increasingly favorable, and we aim to insert Local Bounti at the epicenter. I'm grateful to the entire Local Bounti team for their commitment and to our investors and partners for their continued confidence. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us today and for your continued interest in Local Bounti.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. We thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.