Neogen Corp 2027 Q1 Earnings Call

Bill, please go ahead. Thank you for joining us this afternoon to discuss our fiscal 2027 first quarter results.

Here in attendance with me today are Mike Nassif, our Chief Executive Officer, Bryan Riggsbee, our Chief Financial Officer, and Joe Freels, our Chief Commercial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during today's call, we may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements is contained in the company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, the company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and the company's other filings with the SEC, as well as the press release and presentation issued in connection with today's call. We encourage you to review those documents.

The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. With that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Bill. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Last quarter, we described fiscal 2026 as a year of stabilization and foundation building with a focus on becoming experts in the fundamentals. As we entered fiscal year 2027, our focus shifted to scaling those fundamentals to drive more consistent execution, better outcomes for customers, and profitable growth. The first quarter showed continued progress. Bryan will discuss the results in more detail. From an operating perspective, we saw tangible signs that the changes underway across Neogen are taking hold. We are strengthening commercial execution, rebuilding our innovation engine, and improving how we connect supply, demand, inventory planning, and customer service. We had an encouraging start to fiscal year 2027 with solid core revenue growth in both our food and animal safety segments.

This represents an acceleration from the fourth quarter, and while timing of certain customer orders benefited growth to some extent, it is a positive start to the year. Given these results, we believe that the changes we are making are gaining momentum. We are encouraged by the progress, but we remain focused on the work ahead and the areas where further improvement is needed. We understand the constraints that remain, have clear accountability for our priorities, and are implementing more disciplined operating mechanisms to drive execution. Our objective is to build on this momentum and deliver more consistent growth and margin expansion over the long term. We remain focused on near-term execution while also making targeted investments to strengthen Neogen's long-term leadership position. A key theme of fiscal 2027 is accelerating investment in our future.

We are investing in innovation, technology enterprise systems, and commercial capabilities to better serve customers and widen our competitive advantage in both of our segments. At the same time, we remain focused on profitability. Sustainable margin expansion starts with restoring consistent growth, improving execution, and building scale. As we make progress in those areas, we expect to create additional opportunities for efficiency and margin improvement. Those efforts are centered around three strategic priorities: commercial prowess, high-impact innovation, and operational excellence. I will now provide an update on each. First, commercial prowess. Across our business, we are seeing early evidence that greater focus, a stronger operating cadence, and more targeted customer engagement are translating into improved results. During the quarter, each region benefited from segment-focused initiatives, competitive conversions, and new product promotions.

We also advanced several important strategic account opportunities by working as one global team across commercial, technical, product, and operations functions. To sustain that momentum, we recently enhanced our sales KPI review process across each region. This gives us weekly visibility into performance and allows us to act faster when adjustments are needed. At the same time, we continue rolling out our new sales operating model through global training and capability building. We are making positive progress in building a world-class commercial organization, and the transformation is becoming more tangible. We are moving beyond organizational design and process definition into account level execution, disciplined pipeline management, and competitive wins. These fundamentals are helping us build the commercial foundation needed to support our goal of sustainable, profitable growth over the long term. Second, high-impact innovation. As we have said previously, innovation is the backbone of our growth strategy and our largest area of investment in fiscal year 2027.

We have several discovery projects underway and remain on track against our pipeline objectives for the year. As a category leader, we are focused on solving our customers' most significant problems. These high-priority opportunities are designed to strengthen our technology leadership and deliver faster, easier-to-use solutions for customers. Just as important as the projects themselves is how we are approaching innovation. We are bringing commercial, technical, and product teams together more intentionally around customer needs, opportunity identification, and prioritization. While we believe our biggest opportunity for innovation is within our existing portfolio, our commitment to innovation also extends beyond our own walls. Earlier today, we announced a strategic collaboration with Hinalea, an early leader in hyperspectral imaging.

We see potential applications for this technology across several areas of our food safety business. This collaboration is part of our strategy of applying advanced novel technology in food safety. This allows us to create new solutions that have the potential to simplify customer workflows. This is the first of many potential partnerships in our pursuit of elevating global food safety testing at the point of processing to enable automation and faster decision-making. We are becoming more disciplined in how we identify customer problems, prioritize opportunities, and allocate resources. Over time, we believe this will translate into a customer-focused pipeline, more differentiated solutions, and a sustainable source of growth. Third, operational efficiency. We view operational excellence as much more than a short-term recovery effort. Our objective is to build the processes, capabilities, and culture that can create sustainable value for years to come.

We are encouraged by the progress we are seeing. Across the organization, teams are operating with greater accountability, stronger cross-functional collaboration, and a willingness to challenge legacy approaches in pursuit of better outcomes. Those changes are being reinforced by more disciplined planning and supply chain management. We continue to strengthen our sales and operations planning process to improve visibility across our global network and make progress in inventory optimization. This enables our teams to deliver the right inventory in the right place at the right time while improving efficiency and customer service. We are beginning to see evidence that these efforts are working. We previously mentioned our focus on continuous improvement. Today, Black Belts and dozens of Green Belts are leading projects across the organization. Combined with stronger daily management, operational dashboards, and regular operating reviews, this work is improving visibility, accountability, and execution.

There's still work to do, but we believe a simpler, more scalable, or more resilient operating model will position us to improve customer satisfaction, expand margins, and generate stronger cash flow over time. Another major operational priority, the manufacturing transfer of Petrifilm, remains on track and is expected to begin the planned multi-quarter transfer next month. This represents the last step in the integration of the former 3M food safety business. We have achieved an important milestone with the full validation of our first Petrifilm SKU. Full validation confirms that the product has completed production, quality, and stability testing and has demonstrated equivalent performance to product manufactured by our transition partner. We believe this is a major de-risking milestone for the program. As a reminder, Petrifilm, similar to the overwhelming majority of our products, is not regulated by the FDA.

Our sales of FDA-regulated products totaled less than $10 million in fiscal year 2026, with almost the entirety of that amount being comprised of several animal safety products, including those manufactured by unaffiliated third parties. We continue to approach this transition with a high degree of rigor and discipline. Our objective is a seamless transition for customers, maintaining the supply reliability and product performance they expect from Petrifilm. I'll now turn the call over to Bryan to cover our results.

Thank you, Mike, and thanks to everyone participating in the call today. I am pleased to provide an overview of our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027. We delivered first quarter revenue of $222.8 million, representing core growth of 8.1%. This continued momentum is driven by the positive progress of our focus on commercial excellence. I would like to call out two items which benefited core growth in the first quarter by approximately 300 basis points. During the first quarter, we saw a positive impact from the timing of certain orders, which we had expected in the second quarter. In addition, the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 was negatively impacted by inventory adjustments at two large distributors.