Hawaii macadamia farm and snack producer Royal Hawaiian Orchards LP recently broadened its lineup of packaged food to include its first chocolate-covered treat, but the company relied more heavily on bulk sales of raw nuts to improve its finances in the third quarter.
Hilo-based Royal Hawaiian reported Monday that it narrowed a net loss to $216,000 in the July-September period from a $1.4 million loss in the same three months last year.
The company, which is the largest grower of mac nuts in the state and farms 5,385 acres on Hawaii island, said it continues advancing its 3-year-old foray into retail snack food sales after decades of producing and selling raw nuts for the wholesale market.
During the third quarter, Royal Hawaiian introduced a line of dark chocolate-covered macadamias with acai, goji and pomegranate fruits.
However, a bigger impact on company finances came from selling raw nuts, according to the report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Royal Hawaiian said in the report that it sold $2.5 million worth of bulk nuts that it had retained for use in its branded product line in the third quarter, up from $469,000 in such sales in the same quarter last year.
The company said strong demand and limited supply on the mainland have pushed up wholesale prices.
“We capitalized on these higher bulk prices while continuing to develop new branded products,” the company said in the report.
Selling more raw inventory in bulk represents a continuation of a move Royal Hawaiian started in the second quarter to improve cash flow.
Still, the company is advancing its packaged snack business. In the third quarter, packaged food sales totaled about $1.1 million, up from about $525,000 a year earlier.
Revenue from packaged food and bulk nut sales are both accounted for within what the company lists as a “branded products” category.
Royal Hawaiian also lists revenue from “orchard” operations that include some bulk nut sales under long-term contracts and revenue from managing and leasing orchards.
Orchard revenue in the third quarter totaled $1.1 million, down from $3.9 million a year ago, reflecting the company’s shift into retail snack production. The company noted that it retained 4 million pounds of mac nuts for branded products inventory during the third quarter.
Total revenue was $4.7 million in the third quarter, down from $4.9 million a year earlier.
Partnership shares in Royal Hawaiian, which typically trade lightly on an over-the-counter exchange and are mainly held by Denver investor and former Quark Software Inc. CEO Farhad “Fred” Ebrahimi, closed Friday at $2.87. Shares over the last 52 weeks have traded between a high of $3.15 on Feb. 17 and a low of $2.72 on April 13.
