Central Garden & Pet Company (CENT) Presents at Bank of America Leveraged Finance Conference Transcript

William Reuter
BofA Securities, Research Division

I appreciate you all for joining us. My name is Bill Reuter. I cover high-yield consumer products at Bank of America. The first initiation report I ever wrote in 2005 was on Central Garden & Pet. Yes. So this was the beginning of my journey, which has now been a pretty long one here. So very happy to have Niko Lahanas, the CEO and Andrew Hovanes, the Treasurer of Central here today. So guys, thank you for joining us. .

Nicholas Lahanas
CEO & Director

Thank you. Thanks for having us. .

William Reuter
BofA Securities, Research Division

I think maybe I’m going to start with some questions. I — at any point, from time to time, ask the audience if you guys have questions. So I’d love for everyone to be as involved as they want to be. The first is on the — let’s start with the pet side. So durables, they’ve been soft. You on the most recent call, said that persists. I feel like there had been so much discussion about replacement cycles and that we should be at the end of one of those, but it doesn’t really seem like that’s coming to fruition. Can you talk a little bit about where you’re seeing the softness, what types of products? What would continue to cause that? And just the general outlook.

Nicholas Lahanas
CEO & Director

Yes. So when we talk about durables, we’re also including live animals. So we have a small live animal distribution business where we distribute fish, small animals, reptile — so we