Oil-Dri Corp. of America (NYSE:ODC) Q4 2019 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 2019 Oil-Dri Corporation of America Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Dan Jaffee, President and CEO. Sir, you may begin.

Okay, thank you. Welcome everybody to the fourth quarter and fiscal year end 2019 teleconference. This is Dan Jaffee, I'm the President and CEO, and we're going to introduce everyone and this way you'll know who you can ask questions.

I'm Mike McPherson, I'm the Group Vice President of the B2B area.

Hi, this is Jessica Moskowitz, Vice President and General Manager of the Consumer Products Division.

Hi, Laura Scheland, Vice President and General Counsel.

Good morning. This Susan Kreh, the CFO.

Hi, this is Molly VandenHeuvel, Chief Operating Officer.

Hi, I'm Leslie Garber, Manager of Investor Relations and I will deliver the Safe Harbor statement. On today's call, comments may contain forward-looking statements regarding the Company's performance in future periods. Actual results in those periods may materially differ. In our press release and our SEC filings we highlight a number of important risk factors, trends and uncertainties that may affect our future performance. We ask that you review and consider those factors in evaluating the Company's comments and in evaluating any investment in Oil-Dri stock. Thank you for joining us. Dan?

Yeah. Thank you, Leslie, and before I turn it over to Susan for some play by play, I'm going to put some color on the fiscal year. This really was an incredible fiscal year. I mean, on August 1st, we went live with our new JD Edwards ERP system and from what I've heard, the easier transitions are when you go from one system to another; the hardest transitions are when you go from basically no system to a new system and that's what we had to do, because the legacy software we had was written in the 1960s and punch cards and was just updated, updated, updated and was the part of the thing from an ERP system, it was just really a financial reporting system, every -- the plans in the sales divisions for the most part have to work around the system and have their own packages to try and get the information they need to do their jobs.

So for the first time, we have an integrated real time system and on August 1st, we flipped the switch and it was painful and those of you who have owned the stock through that period know what a tough financial quarter we had just trying to get order shipped and invoices sent out and then collecting the money. So it was a very dynamic beginning to the year.

Additionally, we made a number of very important senior management organizational changes and I'd like to review them with you because