Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question is from the line of John Heinbockel with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs Research
Couple of things, Steve, can you talk about retailer destocking, how widespread a trend has that been and you would think that at some point here we would get a restocking and you'd start to see your shipments maybe pickup a little abnormally. Have seen that yet or do you think you will see that?
Steven Spinner
We have not seen significant destocking at the retail level at this point, John.
Mark Shamber
Yeah, I think, John it might have been more from a home destocking the pantry than what we saw in the retailers. Many of them, particularly our customers based with the independents don't have large back-office areas where they can afford to store, you know a lot of products. There might have been a small amount of that in October, November but it didn't last very long because, again with the frequency of deliveries and the amount of backroom space they have is just not that much that they can carry.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs Research
What about at Millbrook, or did you see there, same thing very little destocking?
Steven Spinner
Yeah, I mean, again we have the full service model at Millbrook, where... I mean the Specialty division. So we're basically managing a lot of the products that are on the shelves. And so, again we're coordinating on the sales side, so there is not excessive amounts that are in the backroom areas.
Mark Shamber
But to your point John, in the Specialty side and this would obviously make sense the decrease in sales was more dramatic on the Specialty side than it was on the Natural & Organic.
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs Research
I guess what I'm trying to figure is that consumer take away or that's just your shipments because of retailers working inventory down, or both?
Steven Spinner
We don't really think it's the retailers taking inventory down as much as it is the consumer preferences changing. So the behavior of retail has changed, as it relates to...
John Heinbockel - Goldman Sachs Research
Okay. So when you look at on the Organic side, you talked about the 4.5% growth, are we sort of stable at a mid-single digit growth rate in organic ex-Millbrook or we're not sure if we've reached stability yet.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
