Latest news with #JackRoss
BBC News
6 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Hibs icon Gray not feeling the pressure
Hibernian manager David Gray insist he does not feel extra pressure in the job despite his iconic status at the led Hibs to just a third top-three finish this century last season, fighting back from a terrible start to the campaign before embarking on a stunning run of form that saw them go from bottom to achievement came nine years after Gray scored the Scottish Cup winner against Rangers when he captained Hibs to their first triumph in the competition in 114 years."A lot if people spoke about it when I was appointed," Gray told BBC Scotland."I think that was something that, when I applied for the job, it wasn't ever something I thought about personally."People always say that when you do this, you might get sacked so what does that do for you at the club and everything you've done for it?"But I genuinely felt at the time I applied for the job it was about, I believe I'm ready apply for the job officially. If I get it, brilliant, because I felt I could make a difference."Gray also opened up on the moment he realised his playing days at Easter Road were coming to an end while opening the pathway to management."Jack Ross gave me the opportunity when I had at least a year or so left on my playing contract," the 37-year-old added."Jack gave me the opportunity to be his first-team coach. Clearly I wasn't going to be playing many games if he's asking me to be on his coaching staff rather than one of his players."So I had the decision to make at that time and it was about what do I want to do?"I felt that if I wanted to play for another couple of years, I'd have to leave Hibs or the opportunity to go in [to coaching] at such a good level and at a club I know the ins and outs of it. I saw that as a brilliant opportunity to get into coaching."Read more from Gray here and listen to the interview in full on Saturday's Sportsound, BBC Radio Scotland, from 14:00 BST.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q1 2025 Synergy CHC Corp Earnings Call
Greg Robles; Investor Relations; Synergy CHC Corp Jack Ross; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, Secretary; Synergy CHC Corp Jaime Fickett; Chief Financial Officer; Synergy CHC Corp Operator Good morning, everyone and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Synergy CHC Corporation's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025. Joining us today are Synergy CEO Jack Ross; CFO Jaime Fickett; and Greg Robles with Investor Relations. Following the remarks, we'll open the call for analyst questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robles as he reads the company's safe harbor statement. Greg, please go ahead. Greg Robles Thanks Marvin, good morning and thanks for joining our conference call to discuss our first-quarter 2025 financial results. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is available for replay and via a live webcast that will be posted on our investor relations site at The information on this call contains forward-looking statements. These statements are often characterized by terminologies such as believe, hope, may, anticipate, expect, will, and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and the actual results may be materially different from the results implied by forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially from those implied herein include but are not limited to. Those factors disclosed in the company's SEC filings under the caption risk factors. The information on this call speaks only as of today's date, and the company disclaims any duty to update the information provided here. And now I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of Synergy, Jack Ross, Jack? Jack Ross Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Synergy's performance for the first quarter of 2025. We are very pleased to report a 30% growth in earnings per share year over year, marking our ninth consecutive quarter of profitability. Additionally, we have expanded our EBITDA margins significantly to 24.1% compared to 19.7% in the prior period. This performance highlights the strength of our operating model and the ongoing discipline around cost management. Before we get into the results, I want to highlight a few exciting business developments that the team has been working diligently on. First, as an update on our international expansion. We have entered into a three year license agreement for the Focus Factor brand with a company in the United Arab Emirates which allows Focus Factor to expand its global reach. We expect the licensee and their designated territory to begin generating revenue by the fourth quarter. Looking ahead, we plan to expand our global presence by adding new licensees in selected markets where synergy does not currently operate and does not intend to establish a direct footprint. Additionally, we have incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary in Mexico, and we are working on onboarding our manufacturing partners and customers, which includes Costco and Walmart. We expect this initiative to start generating revenue early in the third quarter. We still intend to open Australia and Taiwan markets early in the fourth quarter with Costco being the lead customer for both regions. Second, I would like to provide an update on our RTD beverage progress. We have hired an industry veteran with over 10 years of experience in the beverage and convenience store industry. He is set to join our team on May 26. We expect him to add significant growth to our beverage business starting almost immediately. Since our last call in March, we now have opened more than 400 additional convenience stores in Canada, doing business with Metro, en route, INS Markets, to name a few. Moving forward, we will continue to grow our Canadian and US convenience store business for RTD beverages. We are pleased to report that during the second quarter, we received nearly $1 million of purchase orders from Amazon for our RTD products. These orders represent strong momentum through the second quarter. We expect to be in full rollout mode with Amazon and other major retailers in the back half of the year. Third, we have entered into a long-term supplier agreement for Focus Factor products, which we will have significant cost saving benefits to Synergy. This arrangement has changed our capital needs from Synergy buying and owning the inventory for the Focus Factor brand to the supplier now owning the inventory and shipping directly to our customers. Lastly, we also have entered into two term sheets to refinance our debt that we expect to close as soon as possible, which is expected to accelerate free cash flow in the business in the near term and extend our debt maturity date into 2029. With the terms that are currently being presented, this refinancing will alleviate more than $10 million of principal payments in 2025. Before passing the call over to Jamie, I want to touch base. I want to touch briefly on tariffs as we know this evolving situation is on top of the mind of all investors. Synergy purchases all its products from suppliers in their representative countries, meaning all products sold within a country are produced in that country. While we may see some impact from tariffs on certain ingredients, we do not expect to have any material impact on our business. With those updates, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Thickett. Jamie? Jaime Fickett Thank you, Jack. I'll now review our financial results. For the first quarter of 2025, net revenue was $8.2 million compared to $9.4 million in the year ago quarter, reflecting a 13% decrease year over year. This decline was primarily driven by a one-time sell-in to one customer during 2024 that did not repeat in 2025. Gross margin for the first quarter was 75.4% compared to 72% in the same quarter last year. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by a favorable product mix. Operating expenses for the first quarter were $4.2 million compared to $5 million in the year ago quarter. The decrease of 15% in operating expenses reflects our ongoing focus on managing cost effectively while continuing to invest in key growth initiatives. Income from operations was $1.9 million, an increase of 8% compared to $1.8 million in the first quarter of 2024. Net income for the first-quarter was $876,000 or $0.10 per diluted share compared to $580,000 or $0.08 per diluted share in the year ago quarter. This represents a 30% increase in earnings per share year over year, reflecting the successful execution of our strategic growth initiatives and cost management. EBITDA for the first quarter was $1.98 million compared to $1.85 million in the first quarter of 2024, up 7%. Moving to our balance sheet as of March 31, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents of 177.9,000 compared to 687.9,000 as of December 31, 2024. Inventory was $2.3 million at the end of the first quarter compared to $1.7 million at the end of December 31, 2024. At March 31, 2025, we had $31.3 million in total liabilities, which compares to $33 million in total liabilities at December 31, 2024, which is a decrease of $1.7 million in the first quarter. For the three months ended March 31, 2025. Our cash used in operating activities was $823,000 compared to cash used in operating activities of $858,000 at March 31, 2024. The decrease was primarily attributable to an increase in inventory and a decrease in accounts payable and accrued expenses offset by a decrease in receivables. Now I will turn the call back over to the operator. Operator Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from a line of Sean McGowan of Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. My first question would be on the RTD beverage. So what, how much was in the quarter and kind of what are the plans for the roll out for the for the remainder of the year? Jack Ross Yeah, Sean, thank you for the question. So if you sort of look at Synergy's budget, we didn't have really anything planned for the first quarter. We did $30,000 of RTD revenue in the first quarter. In the second quarter, with what's happened already with Amazon, we expect to do about $2 million. Okay, and in terms of kind of geographic territories and other distribution channels, what's the plan for the balance of the year? Jack Ross For RTDs? Yeah, in terms of, adding new stores and new customers. Yeah, so primarily just in Canada and the US at this point and nothing's changed from, the major customers that we are targeting, meaning convenience stores. Obviously we're going to go back to Costco and the rest of the retailers that we already have in our system that we sell our current bills to. Okay, and then a question on expenses. So the, good job there, they came in below, where I thought, but would you say this G&A level is going to rise through the year or is this, something we should expect to see, consistently through the year? So G&A, we will have a couple of headcount, ads if you will, to G&A, but I think it'll be as a percentage, it will probably be pretty flat. Okay, and then my last question was. What was the licensing revenue that you booked in the first quarter there? Is that something you've talked about before? I thought that was stuff that we would expect later in the year. Jack Ross Yeah, so that's, as mentioned in my dialogue on the call here, we signed a licensee for the United Arab Emirates that we received a fee for $1.5 million for that territory, and we will pursue other territories that way that we don't plan on having a footprint ourselves in, if you will. So expanding our global reach, basically. So in the future then that for at least that particular contract that would be just based on the actual revenue and this is just sort of a startup fee. Jack Ross That's correct. Okay. Jack Ross In the fourth quarter they got a bit of registration timeline to start generating revenue but we expect to generate start generating revenue in the fourth quarter. Okay, thank you. Just one more clarification. Did you mention Australia and Thailand? Were those the two countries you. Jack Ross Expected Taiwan. Taiwan. Okay, thank you. Operator Thank you. (Operator Instructions) At this time I'm showing no questions. I'll now turn the call back over to Mr. Ross for closing remarks. Jack Ross Thank you. We'd like to thank everyone for joining our earnings call, and we look forward to speaking with you, when we report the second quarter results in August. Thank you. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q1 2025 Synergy CHC Corp Earnings Call
Greg Robles; Investor Relations; Synergy CHC Corp Jack Ross; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, Secretary; Synergy CHC Corp Jaime Fickett; Chief Financial Officer; Synergy CHC Corp Operator Good morning, everyone and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Synergy CHC Corporation's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025. Joining us today are Synergy CEO Jack Ross; CFO Jaime Fickett; and Greg Robles with Investor Relations. Following the remarks, we'll open the call for analyst questions. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Robles as he reads the company's safe harbor statement. Greg, please go ahead. Greg Robles Thanks Marvin, good morning and thanks for joining our conference call to discuss our first-quarter 2025 financial results. I'd like to remind everyone that this call is available for replay and via a live webcast that will be posted on our investor relations site at The information on this call contains forward-looking statements. These statements are often characterized by terminologies such as believe, hope, may, anticipate, expect, will, and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and the actual results may be materially different from the results implied by forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially from those implied herein include but are not limited to. Those factors disclosed in the company's SEC filings under the caption risk factors. The information on this call speaks only as of today's date, and the company disclaims any duty to update the information provided here. And now I would like to turn the call over to the CEO of Synergy, Jack Ross, Jack? Jack Ross Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Synergy's performance for the first quarter of 2025. We are very pleased to report a 30% growth in earnings per share year over year, marking our ninth consecutive quarter of profitability. Additionally, we have expanded our EBITDA margins significantly to 24.1% compared to 19.7% in the prior period. This performance highlights the strength of our operating model and the ongoing discipline around cost management. Before we get into the results, I want to highlight a few exciting business developments that the team has been working diligently on. First, as an update on our international expansion. We have entered into a three year license agreement for the Focus Factor brand with a company in the United Arab Emirates which allows Focus Factor to expand its global reach. We expect the licensee and their designated territory to begin generating revenue by the fourth quarter. Looking ahead, we plan to expand our global presence by adding new licensees in selected markets where synergy does not currently operate and does not intend to establish a direct footprint. Additionally, we have incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary in Mexico, and we are working on onboarding our manufacturing partners and customers, which includes Costco and Walmart. We expect this initiative to start generating revenue early in the third quarter. We still intend to open Australia and Taiwan markets early in the fourth quarter with Costco being the lead customer for both regions. Second, I would like to provide an update on our RTD beverage progress. We have hired an industry veteran with over 10 years of experience in the beverage and convenience store industry. He is set to join our team on May 26. We expect him to add significant growth to our beverage business starting almost immediately. Since our last call in March, we now have opened more than 400 additional convenience stores in Canada, doing business with Metro, en route, INS Markets, to name a few. Moving forward, we will continue to grow our Canadian and US convenience store business for RTD beverages. We are pleased to report that during the second quarter, we received nearly $1 million of purchase orders from Amazon for our RTD products. These orders represent strong momentum through the second quarter. We expect to be in full rollout mode with Amazon and other major retailers in the back half of the year. Third, we have entered into a long-term supplier agreement for Focus Factor products, which we will have significant cost saving benefits to Synergy. This arrangement has changed our capital needs from Synergy buying and owning the inventory for the Focus Factor brand to the supplier now owning the inventory and shipping directly to our customers. Lastly, we also have entered into two term sheets to refinance our debt that we expect to close as soon as possible, which is expected to accelerate free cash flow in the business in the near term and extend our debt maturity date into 2029. With the terms that are currently being presented, this refinancing will alleviate more than $10 million of principal payments in 2025. Before passing the call over to Jamie, I want to touch base. I want to touch briefly on tariffs as we know this evolving situation is on top of the mind of all investors. Synergy purchases all its products from suppliers in their representative countries, meaning all products sold within a country are produced in that country. While we may see some impact from tariffs on certain ingredients, we do not expect to have any material impact on our business. With those updates, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Thickett. Jamie? Jaime Fickett Thank you, Jack. I'll now review our financial results. For the first quarter of 2025, net revenue was $8.2 million compared to $9.4 million in the year ago quarter, reflecting a 13% decrease year over year. This decline was primarily driven by a one-time sell-in to one customer during 2024 that did not repeat in 2025. Gross margin for the first quarter was 75.4% compared to 72% in the same quarter last year. The increase in gross margin was primarily driven by a favorable product mix. Operating expenses for the first quarter were $4.2 million compared to $5 million in the year ago quarter. The decrease of 15% in operating expenses reflects our ongoing focus on managing cost effectively while continuing to invest in key growth initiatives. Income from operations was $1.9 million, an increase of 8% compared to $1.8 million in the first quarter of 2024. Net income for the first-quarter was $876,000 or $0.10 per diluted share compared to $580,000 or $0.08 per diluted share in the year ago quarter. This represents a 30% increase in earnings per share year over year, reflecting the successful execution of our strategic growth initiatives and cost management. EBITDA for the first quarter was $1.98 million compared to $1.85 million in the first quarter of 2024, up 7%. Moving to our balance sheet as of March 31, 2025, we had cash and cash equivalents of 177.9,000 compared to 687.9,000 as of December 31, 2024. Inventory was $2.3 million at the end of the first quarter compared to $1.7 million at the end of December 31, 2024. At March 31, 2025, we had $31.3 million in total liabilities, which compares to $33 million in total liabilities at December 31, 2024, which is a decrease of $1.7 million in the first quarter. For the three months ended March 31, 2025. Our cash used in operating activities was $823,000 compared to cash used in operating activities of $858,000 at March 31, 2024. The decrease was primarily attributable to an increase in inventory and a decrease in accounts payable and accrued expenses offset by a decrease in receivables. Now I will turn the call back over to the operator. Operator Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from a line of Sean McGowan of Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. My first question would be on the RTD beverage. So what, how much was in the quarter and kind of what are the plans for the roll out for the for the remainder of the year? Jack Ross Yeah, Sean, thank you for the question. So if you sort of look at Synergy's budget, we didn't have really anything planned for the first quarter. We did $30,000 of RTD revenue in the first quarter. In the second quarter, with what's happened already with Amazon, we expect to do about $2 million. Okay, and in terms of kind of geographic territories and other distribution channels, what's the plan for the balance of the year? Jack Ross For RTDs? Yeah, in terms of, adding new stores and new customers. Yeah, so primarily just in Canada and the US at this point and nothing's changed from, the major customers that we are targeting, meaning convenience stores. Obviously we're going to go back to Costco and the rest of the retailers that we already have in our system that we sell our current bills to. Okay, and then a question on expenses. So the, good job there, they came in below, where I thought, but would you say this G&A level is going to rise through the year or is this, something we should expect to see, consistently through the year? So G&A, we will have a couple of headcount, ads if you will, to G&A, but I think it'll be as a percentage, it will probably be pretty flat. Okay, and then my last question was. What was the licensing revenue that you booked in the first quarter there? Is that something you've talked about before? I thought that was stuff that we would expect later in the year. Jack Ross Yeah, so that's, as mentioned in my dialogue on the call here, we signed a licensee for the United Arab Emirates that we received a fee for $1.5 million for that territory, and we will pursue other territories that way that we don't plan on having a footprint ourselves in, if you will. So expanding our global reach, basically. So in the future then that for at least that particular contract that would be just based on the actual revenue and this is just sort of a startup fee. Jack Ross That's correct. Okay. Jack Ross In the fourth quarter they got a bit of registration timeline to start generating revenue but we expect to generate start generating revenue in the fourth quarter. Okay, thank you. Just one more clarification. Did you mention Australia and Thailand? Were those the two countries you. Jack Ross Expected Taiwan. Taiwan. Okay, thank you. Operator Thank you. (Operator Instructions) At this time I'm showing no questions. I'll now turn the call back over to Mr. Ross for closing remarks. Jack Ross Thank you. We'd like to thank everyone for joining our earnings call, and we look forward to speaking with you, when we report the second quarter results in August. Thank you. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Sign in to access your portfolio
BBC News
14-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
St Mirren clash carries 'bit more magnitude' for Hibs - O'Hora
Hibs defender Warren O'Hora admits Wednesday's Premiership trip to St Mirren carries a "little bit more magnitude" as they attempt to secure a third-place league Easter Road outfit have only achieved that feat three times in the 21st century, under Alex McLeish in 2001, Tony Mowbray in 2005 and Jack Ross in Gray's side are three points clear of Aberdeen in fourth with a vastly superior goal difference, meaning a win in Paisley would effectively secure third spot."It is an exciting game for us to be involved in, it will definitely be a tough game as St Mirren have it all to play for as well," O'Hora said."These are the types of games that players want to play in, especially in this league and at this club."St Mirren have done very well against us this season and have taken a lot of points off us, so we are using that as an incentive."If we were to go over there and beat them then that would be a big moment for us this season. It would mean we have beaten every team in the league this season, I don't know the last time that has happened for Hibs."The end goal is to achieve European football next season so the incentive is there for us. You always want to win every game, but this game definitely has that little bit more magnitude."Even if they fail to finish the job against St Mirren, Hibs will have another opportunity to secure third place against Rangers on Saturday given their goal-difference advantage. "It is all in our hands," said O'Hora. "We are in control of our destiny and our own outcome, that is what every player wants. We will be going into the game knowing that if we win this game, it will put us in a really strong position."We want to finish this season as strongly as possible with two wins. We owe the fans that for the way they have stuck with us this season."To get the job done and secure third would be a big moment for us. We are going into the game with the right mentality."
The Advertiser
24-04-2025
- General
- The Advertiser
When Gen Z joined the army: why young people are signing up to serve
Private Nate Lenz was a toddler when Australia's last surviving World War I digger, Jack Ross, died in a central Victorian nursing home aged 110.
