Freshpet (FRPT) Issues Statement Regarding JANA Partners’ Press Release
Freshpet, Inc. (NASDAQ:) today issued the following statement in response to JANA Partners LLC’s (“JANA”) May 24, 2023 press release.
Over the past nine months since JANA publicly disclosed its potential director nominees, the Company has engaged with JANA extensively to understand their perspectives and address their concerns. The Freshpet Board welcomes constructive ideas, from any source, that will drive shareholder value. Unfortunately, JANA has made clear to us that their sole purpose is to force a sale of the Company without consideration of all potential paths to value creation. Despite the difference of perspectives, the Board has attempted to reach a constructive resolution with JANA but its offers were rejected. We remain hopeful to avoid a distracting proxy fight as the management team continues to focus on driving growth and margin expansion as demonstrated in recent quarterly performance.
The Board and management remain focused on driving shareholder value and building on the significant momentum in our business.
Recent results and guidance demonstrate strong operational momentum and growth.
The Freshpet Board and management are making strong progress executing our strategy. We grew revenue by 27% in Q1 2023 while continuing to improve performance in logistics, quality, and other operational areas of our business. Looking ahead, we expect continued strong revenue growth and adjusted gross margin expansion for full year 2023.
Key ongoing initiatives to create value for shareholders include:
- Executing our operational improvement plan: We are strengthening capabilities in production, quality, engineering, logistics and finance to align long-term growth with prudent capital expenditure, ultimately driving significant margin expansion. Additionally, we recently announced the appointments of Todd Cunfer as CFO, Jay Dahlgren as EVP of Manufacturing, Technology and Supply Chain, and Dirk Martin as VP of Customer Service and Logistics.
- Investing in long-term capacity with new technology to meet demand and enhance efficiencies: The opening of the first phase of our state-of-the art Freshpet Kitchen in Ennis, TX in October is a transformative development for Freshpet and a meaningful value enhancement opportunity. Ennis will help accommodate our growth for the next five years, enabling us to increase net sales to $1.8 billion by 2027, with accelerated margin…
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