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Thomas Pigott

Thanks, Dave. Overall, the company drove gross margin and operating income growth, despite the topline decline through strong execution on the fundamentals. Third quarter consolidated net sales decreased by 2.9% to $457.8 million, breaking down the revenue performance, lower core volume and product mix drove a 250 basis point decline.
Net pricing was created by approximately 20 basis points. Last year's exit of the perimeter of the store, bakery product lines accounted for 100 basis points of the decline. In addition, the company reported $2.1 million in sales or 40 basis points of growth that resulted from a temporary supply agreement with Windland* Foods, the seller of the Atlanta-based manufacturing facility that we acquired in mid-February.
We entered into this agreement to facilitate the closing of the transaction. These temporary and non-core sales are expected to end by March of 2026. Consolidated gross profit increased by $1.5 million or 1.4% versus the prior year quarter to $106 million and gross margin expanded by 90 basis points.
The gross profit growth was driven by our cost savings initiatives, favorable pricing data commodities as the company held pricing by commodity costs modestly declined and the impact of last year's write down resulting from the product line exits.
These favorable items offset the impact of the revenue declines as well as the startup manufacturing costs at the Atlanta facility. Selling general and administrative expenses decreased by $1.1 million or 2%. The decline reflects reduced compensation and benefit expenditures, some of which is timing related, and lower expenditures for project ascent.
These favor buildings were partially offset by $1.7 million of integration costs related to the acquisition of the Atlanta facility. These costs are primarily comprised of legal and professional fees. Consolidated operating income increased $14.7 million to 41.9%. In the prior year quarter, the company recorded $14.7 million of primarily non-cash expenses as a result of the product line exits.
$12.1 million was recorded in restructuring and impairment and $2.6 million was recorded as an inventory write down and cost of goods sold. In the current year quarter, the company reported $1.7 million of integration costs related to the Atlanta facility acquisition. Excluding these items, operating income growth was driven by the lower C&A cost and the gross margin improvement.
Our tax rate for the quarter was 20.7% versus 23.2% in the prior year quarter. We estimate our tax rate for the remainder of the fiscal '25 to be 22%. Third quarter diluted earnings per share increased $0.46 or 44.7% to $1.49. Incremental SG&A expenses attributed to the integration of the Atlanta facility reduced EPS by $0.05 in the current year quarter.
Last year's restructuring and impairment costs along with the inventory write down reduced EPS by $0.41 per share. The remaining EPS growth was driven by the underlying performance of the business as well as the lower tax rate. With regard to capital expenditures, our payments for property additions totaled $43.7 million for the year-to-date period.
For fiscal 25, we are forecasting total capital expenditures of $65 million. We continue to invest in both cost saving projects and other manufacturing improvements, including the newly acquired Atlanta-based manufacturing facility.
In addition to investing in our business, we also return funds to shareholders. Our quarterly cash dividend of $0.95 per share paid on March 31, represented a 6% increase from the prior year's amount. Our enduring streak of annual dividend increases stands at 62 years.
Our financial position remains strong with the debt-free balance sheet and $124.6 million in cash. The decline in this balance reflects the $78.8 million deployed to acquire the Atlanta-based manufacturing facility.
So to wrap up my commentary, our 3rd quarter results demonstrate strong execution across a number of areas in a more difficult operating environment. In addition, we continue to make investments to support further growth in cost savings. I'll now turn it back over to Dave for his closing remarks. Thank you.

David Ciesinski

Thanks, Tom. As we look ahead, Lancaster Colony will continue to leverage the combined strength of our team, our operating strategy, and our balance sheet in support of the three simple pillars of our growth plan to want to accelerate core business growth, two, simplify our supply chain to reduce our cost, and grow our margins, and three, to expand our core with Focused M&A and strategic license.
Looking ahead to our fiscal quarter, we anticipate some ongoing challenges with the consumer environment, but we are positioned to respond. In the retail segment, we will focus on innovation and incremental distribution of relevant new items.
In the food service segment, our award-winning culinary team will continue to partner with our customers to support their growth through collaboration on new menu items and other opportunities. We project that our retail segment sales will benefit from our licensing program, including expanding distribution for the recently introduced Texas Roadhouse* dinner rolls and the extension of Chick-fil-A sauce into the club channel.
In the food service segment, we anticipate continued growth from select customers to our mix of national chain restaurant accounts. With respect to our input cost in aggregate, we do not anticipate significant impacts from commodity cost inflation or deflation in the coming quarter.
I would now like to comment on a couple of strategic matters for our business. First, you may have noticed as part of our 10 Filing this morning, that we announced the planned closure of our sauce and dressing facility in Milpitas,* California, as part of an ongoing initiative to better optimize our manufacturing network, I can assure you this was a very difficult decision as it impacts 78 of our employees.
I extend my most sincere thanks to all of them for their dedication and commitment to our business during their time with us. Second, we completed the acquisition of the Atlanta-based sauce and dressing facility in mid-February. Strategically, this plant represents a significant addition to our manufacturing network, and I believe we're off to a great start from an integration and operation standpoint.
Through the execution of these two strategic items, we believe our supply chain is better positioned to cost effectively support the growth of our key customers for years to come. Specific to the acquisition, I would like to thank all of the members of our supply chain R&D, HR, and IT teams that worked tirelessly during the acquisition integration phase that began with the transaction signing in mid-November and continued through the startup of production in mid-March.
The execution process for both the integration and production startup was exceptional, thanks to the team's thoughtful planning and tremendous leadership. In addition, I would like to welcome the plant's employees that have joined our Marzetti team. These new teammates have impressed me with their enthusiasm, team first attitude, and strong work ethic. They have demonstrated a firm commitment to the continued growth and future success of our business. I look forward to working with them in the years to come.
Finally, I would like to take a moment to welcome Tanya Berman* as the new President of our retail business. Tanya is a strong addition to our executive leadership team and a great fit to lead our retail business. Her background includes 25 years of general management and marketing with a proven record of driving growth across many categories in the food and consumer packaged goods industries.
Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President at Monddale's leading their US portfolio of cookie and cracker brands. Previously, she held leadership roles at Mars Wrigley,* Buyer Consumer, Care, and Johnson and Johnson Consumer Products.
Based on Tanya's tremendous experience with iconic brands, I'm very confident in her ability to innovate, market, and grow our brands as we continue to deliver on our company's growth strategy.
This concludes our prepared remarks for today, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Operator?

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Jim Salera with Stephens.

Jim Salera

It is, it's good morning. Thanks for taking that question. All right. I wanted to maybe start by just asking on the food service side of the business. Obviously, well documented kind of consumer slowdown, especially across QSR with kind of consumer uncertainty this year. How should we think about your ability to collaborate with your food service partners on the demand generation side? Is there anything we can do to have maybe a little bit more contribution on supporting traffic, or do we really just need to wait for industry traffic to improve to see the food service piece of the business kind of get back to to normal growth?

David Ciesinski

Yeah, so Jim, maybe I'll start by commenting on Q3, and then we'll sort of pivot talk about the outlook. If you pull apart Q3's volume, there are several drivers that were underlying the results. The first was weather, which I think is pretty well documented, as you've heard. Other peer companies or concept operators come out with their results and just maybe to elaborate on that for you, we had a several of our big customers that had stores closed for upwards of a week and on that, the outside 10 days, believe it or not, because of weather. So January was materially impacted by that. More broadly, we are seeing a diminution in traffic.
That's one that we're watching carefully. It was slow through January due to weather and in February, what I would point to though is in March, it looked like it was modestly better as we looked at the NPD crest, the other contributor, and this is a little bit unique to us is that we had several of our concept operators we were working with on sauce programs that pivoted their menus to focus on value in the period.
So you put it all together, it gets you into that sort of zone as we look forward, our outlook is that, unless something materially changes up or down in the economy, we're still looking at a food service volume outlook that is probably down in the low-single digits, low-single digits. Having said that, we see the ability to get price in there because of big inflation. So our view is it's going to remain soft. We're probably going to be doing better than most of our peers, but we're not looking for a material change there.

Jim Salera

Okay, that that's helpful. And then just thinking, over on the retail side, if we look at, kind of the puts and takes with the Chick-fil-A soft distribution and club and the increased distribution the Texas Roadhouse roles, how should we balance that against maybe just some core softness again, more broad based with the consumer and do those -- are those distribution gains enough to kind of more than offset what we see in consumer softness you kind of expect to wash from those too?

David Ciesinski

No, we believe so. So again, if you pull part 23 out, if if you allow me, I'll do the same thing. Let's maybe start with that volume, and if you look at, I think our our reported volume was down 2.6% or 2.2%, and then you pull out flat out and Angelic, which we exited a year ago at this time, that takes us down about 90 basis points on volume.
And then you adjust for Easter and some other trade moves that we've made there. Our business we believe would be growing on volume. If you look at revenue, sort of the same thing holds because we weren't getting much pricing. If you go in and you look at consumption in the period consume sales, our business was actually up 2.2%. In the excuse me, 2% ex-Angelic and flat out the period and our pounds are up actually 50 basis points, and that's slapping Easter in the period. So our view on our retail business, again, not withstanding a material change.
Things inflect down or inflect up, but if things kind of stay the course, we say line of sight to low-single digit volumetric growth on volume and on revenue, and the way that we expect to get there is, as you pointed out contribution on new items, now we have some pipeline built in the period on Chick-fil-A, but we didn't really have any sales in the period on Chick-fil-A Club through consumption and then Texas Roadhouse. Now Texas Roadhouse just recently is expanding into general retail and it's not really going to be until our next fiscal year that we begin to ship that to all outlets. If you sort of pull apart other elements of the business, I think there's some high points there that may be worth mentioning. We continue to grow our Texas toast business.
We grew share and we grew volume in the period. It's performing quite well both on toast and on our breadsticks and on sweet Sister Schubert's sort of hard to look at just because Easter pretty significantly impacts that item in the period. But not withstanding Easter, we believe that business continues to be well positioned. Maybe as a proof point we actually grew share on that item in the period as well. As you move down to our own brands, Marzetti Classics continues to be strong. **
It was improving. Are simply as a bit of a soft point and then our license program in general, Chick-fil-A was up, Buffalo Wild Wings was up, Olive Garden was down, but we're laughing a lot of support in the same time last year, so You put it all together, you allow me to kind of bring it up. Our view is on a volumetric basis, little soften food service, room to grow and retail, volume kind of sets up because of those offsets, probably flattish on a consolidated basis with our revenue being up in the low single-digit range as we go forward.

Jim Salera

Great, I appreciate.
All the call today. Very helpful.

David Ciesinski

Absolutely.

Operator

Thank you. Yeah.
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Marks with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Scott Marks

Hey, good morning guys, thanks so much for for taking our questions here. First question, I guess, as I look at the retail business performance and I kind of break down across the different platforms, it looks like most of the, I guess, weakness in the segment or or where maybe. And below expectations was on the refrigerated dressings and dips side, whereas, frozen breads and shelf stables seem to have held up pretty well. So wondering if you can just kind of speak to that weakness and kind of help us understand what's going on with that part of the business.

David Ciesinski

Yeah, it's a great question, and I would say that was significantly impacted by the timing of Easter. If you look at that, we get a seasonal bump.
Don't have to restate the calendar, but you remember last year's Easter was on March 31st, so all of those shipments and the consumption would have been in the 3rd quarter this year Easter switched to April 20th, and it resulted in a drag on bolt when you look at the cons I'm I'm assuming that you're looking at consumption data inside of there. If you pull those apart now that sort of macro adjustment notwithstanding, I would tell you that our classics continues to be strong. We're picking up. Share Chick-fil-A dressing and refrigerated continues to be strong. It's growing share also are are simply dressed as a platform continues to need work. Maybe the only other thing that I would mention is that if you look at the category, that category was down about 3 points in the corner, which is softer than it had been.
Some with Easter and and some might be just sort of a broader consumer ship.

Scott Marks

Understood.
Thank you for that. And next question for me would be just around kind of The promotional environment at retail, I think we've heard from some other.

David Ciesinski

Before I jump to that, if I may 1 thing that may be worth mentioning, I talked dressings on dips. We did implement a material down weighting of dips in the prior year which we're laughing. So if you're looking at the pounds in there in particular, you're going to see something that overstates what's happening on in terms of units. So again it's Easter timing, but the one unique nuance on that was the down weighting that we did to get some price realization that that we're continuing to cycle.
So back to to trade, finish your question please.

Dale N. Galobsik

Yeah.

Scott Marks

Sure. Thanks for that. Yeah, just in terms of what we're seeing on the promotional environment, I think we've heard from some larger peers of yours about retail performance and maybe the need to invest a little bit more in pricing in some of their brands and categories, wondering what you see from your perspective.

David Ciesinski

So it's a great question. If you remember last year in our Q3, Q4, we took our trade rate up.
Which elevated our year against year fiscal year '25 versus 24 trade rate. We made the decision going into fiscal year '25 that what we wanted to do was sort of level load that trade. So we took the incremental increase that we had in Qs 3 and 4 as we went into this fiscal year and we split that evenly across all four quarters.
As a result, our trade rate was modestly up in Q1 and Q2 and it was modestly down in Q3 and is planned to be modestly down in Q4.
We, as we look at our categories, Scott, we don't think that we have a pricing problem right now. And as we pulled apart where we spent, there were some areas where we felt like we got really strong performance quality support from our retailers and others where we felt like it just wasn't worth the investment. And if you look at that, you can see some of that leverage in our consumption data where you can see actually our consume sales were up more than our pounds. And if you look at it, we call it either a sweat up where you're getting leverage between your gross. Sales and your net sales or sweat down where you're you're losing leverage because of trade. We've chosen at least at this point to be a little bit more careful on trade just because even in this environment, we just don't think that we're getting a financial return on it.

Scott Marks

Understood. Thanks so much. We'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you.
As a reminder to ask a question, press 11 on your telephone keypad.
Your next question comes in the line of Andrew Wolf with CL King. Your line is now open.

Andrew Wolf

I wanted to ask an open-ended question, sort of circa and just competitive dynamic related on.
Items being sold on promotion.
Kind of in your major categories and you know your stance, I mean in the past.
Basically said you don't, I don't put completely put words in your mouth that I don't think you wanted to spend that much promotionally. Maybe it wasn't the most effective way, trade promotions maybe it was better to have end cap placement and some other things like that. I just wanted an update on your what you're seeing competitively and what you're thinking is.

David Ciesinski

Maybe start first, Andrew with a high level view. If you looked at all edibles were were really soft in the period, I would say with some con some categories doing slightly better than others. So I do think in the quarter at a total grocery store, there are a number of categories that are are undergoing some pressure. So you sort of pull in and you look more closely at us. We continue to believe that trade has a role, but for us, a reduced price on the shelf with a yellow tag, for example, just doesn't get the sort of lift that we would need to offset the invest. In trade where we might see a benefit is if we make an investment and we get an in cap, then what we're likely to see is we're we're likely to pick up incremental households or get some pantry load, which in the in in the case of sauces results in expandable consumption and maybe to go a click deeper, I'll run through some of the categories. If you look at our Texas toast, it really is consolidating around. Our brand, where we're picking up share, we were north of 43% and private label and we both are continuing to perform well with some of the other contributors donating share. If you go into the role category, it's us and it's roads. The the newest news in the category is that we're bringing in Texas Roadhouse, but here's what's interesting. That's actually growing the category. It's not cannibalizing the category. We're we're taking, we're bringing consumers from the other parts of the store with other brands, and we're bringing them into frozen to buy that. So private label. Is not really outperforming there. I wouldn't say some of our big retailers have tried to focus on private label items. I won't name their names, but they're not performing particularly well, so we continue to believe that we're set up there to continue to perform refrigerated dressings, private labels really. Been a material contributor and that remains as you cycle through. Lighthouse is doing well behind their large or 20 ounce size. It's a squeeze bottle with some of the other branded players, Maurice Pinera and others losing share with the growth driver being modestly our brand or Classics and Chick-fil-A.
And and are simply is one that's donating some share as well across to to Chick-fil-A and others. But again, private label isn't much of an an item as we look there, as you swing across the license sauce space.
I would say some of our, retailers have looked at introducing private label knockoffs, but again, they haven't performed particularly well and I'm pointing in this case to Chick-fil-A sauce and Buffalo Wild Wings. I think the area where we want to continue to watch is shelf stable dressings, where we have seen some trade down in that category. If you remember we talked at length about a year and a half ago about watching our opening price point on our 16 ounce item. That may be one that we want to watch going forward. And then finally, albeit a smaller piece of our business, rtons is one where we are seeing maybe a little bit larger shift to private label, but as it really plays out for our business.
Pri a label still isn't the biggest, opportunity or or obstacle for us it comes down to relevant new items and executing our plan.

Andrew Wolf

Okay, got it.
Thank you.
And I'm going to just ask one quick question, but that was an excellent overview because.
You don't always get that kind of a competitive overview and a lot of.
You know that's really where at least I want to hear about what's going on right in those categories, just on, the Easter shift, any chance you can quantify that in dollar terms or percentage? I know it's an estimate, but what do you think it impacted the quarter might might aid the current quarterback.

David Ciesinski

Yeah, well, it's at least one point is what we're pegging it at. So if you go back to the adjusted volume, notwithstanding the discontinuation where we were down by 90 basis points, we think it's at least a point marginally better than a point that's in there, so.

Andrew Wolf

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

David Ciesinski

You're welcome.
Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes a line of Alton Stump with Loop Capital. Your line is now open.

Alton Stump

Great, thank you and good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess, first off, on the food service side, I'm glad that you, brought up weather. I think it was in response to the first question here at the Q&A because, sort of weather was absolutely terrible during the first two months of the year, maybe kind of similar to the last question, any way that you kind of quantify how much of an impact you think that had on on your food service volumes for the full quarter, I know you mentioned that things, they get marginally better in.

David Ciesinski

March.
I think all the best I could kind of point to is maybe just macro traffic, if you look at things overall where, traffic in the first couple of months, January and February, were off, 3 points ish or thereabouts, softer than they had been trending. As you swing into March, and again, this is NPD press data traffic improved, still off, but it improved by more than 100 basis points. As we looked at some of our specific customers, again, I don't want to name names, but the weather was particularly hard in let's say the upper Midwest in the Northeast, and we had, one concept that comes to mind with 3,000 restaurants, and they mentioned that they had 200 of the restaurants that were impacted by weather and it ended up being more material than I think even we appreciated as we cycled through that that month. So really hard to put up a peg on it. The best number I can give you is NPD Crest, but it It was a material contributor.

Alton Stump

I thank you, for the color, and then I guess just, on the retail side, obviously, you've got several, major new things coming from a few, standpoint, but with the new sauce, with the new Chick-fil-A sauce going into the club, how big of a deal do you think that could be, not just in its own right but also from a marketing perspective to, sort of introduce that brand to, into a new channel of customers.

David Ciesinski

Yeah, it's a great question, Chick-fil-A is a tremendous brand and I would put it in the same campus mega brands like Heinz ketchup or Hidden Valley Ranch. And if you look at brands like that club as a material part of their overall portfolio and really what it allows you to do is reach consumers oftentimes that are slightly more affluent that have larger families, and they use it as a stock application. And given that the sauce is an expandable consumable, I think it's going to be an important overall contributor. To our business as we go for, so we're thrilled.
We didn't start shipping it till the very end of the quarter. We're starting to see early returns on the scan data at Sam's and at Costco and it's it's exceeding our expectations in both of those channels, so we continue to be very excited by that one.
So, and I think what we've talked about there is, oftentimes if you look at a mix of a mature brand, a Kraft mac and cheese, a ketchup, like I mentioned earlier, club oftentimes might be 15% or so of the overall total of the business. So it's a meaningful channel and we're thrilled that it's there, and I think predicated on its performance, it may open up opportunities for other Chick-fil-A items to move into club also at some point in time. A Texas Roadhouse, that rollout continues to proceed at pace. If you remember, we had it in a test and we expanded and that was Walmart only. We've expanded it now into 4 states that's just starting that started in early April and in August, we're going to be expanding it into full retail, all mass, all retail, and we're already in discussions about maybe moving that item into club at some point. The the exciting thing here is that we've we're able to do this on existing lines. We've just simply had to add labor. We've gone back, we've added that labor, we're building the capacity and we're watching consumption and it continues to be really strong, so, a great new item that we're excited about and a great brand platform.

Alton Stump

Great, thank you so much for all of that detail. I'll hop back in the you.

Dale N. Galobsik

Thank you all.

Operator

Thank you.
If you'd like to ask a question, please press 11 on your telephone keypad.
If there are no further questions, we'd now like to turn the call back to Mr. Susinski for his concluding comments.

David Ciesinski

Thank you, operator, and thank you everybody for joining and maybe I'll just provide a couple of summary comments. I mean, obviously there's a lot of noise today in the macro environment and we believe against this complicated backdrop we're positioned to continue to outperform behind strong brands, both the brands we own and the brands we license, relevant categories, advantage food service customers, and then moving beyond that as you'll look at some of the other. Sources of volatility out there, for example, tariffs and make America healthy. We believe we have modest exposure to both. And then finally we really didn't get into it in the call today, but we've taken actions over the last several months just to continue to strengthen our supply chain network and reduce our overall landed cost, which should allow us line of sight even in this environment to improve our margin structure. So we feel like again I guess a very complicated. Backdrop we're positioned to continue to outperform. We see line of sight to revenue growth and marginal improvements and modest profit improvement.
So again, we look forward to meeting with you in August. If you have additional questions, we look forward to hearing from you. That's all for today.

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's call. You may now disconnect.