Kerry Group plc

Good day and welcome to the Kerry Group third quarter 2022 call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome William Lynch, Head of Investor Relations, to begin the conference. William, over to you.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to Kerry's Q3 2022 results call. I'm joined on our call by CEO Edmund Scanlon and our CFO Marguerite Larkin. Edmund and Marguerite will take you through a brief presentation and we will then open the lines for your questions. Before we begin, please note the usual disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. I will now hand over to Edmund.

Thanks, William, and good morning, everyone. So moving to slide three and my overview comments on our year-to-date results. Overall, we are pleased to report that we continue to deliver strong business growth in what remains a highly dynamic marketplace. First, the volumes in case of nutrition are up 8.5% year-to-date, And this growth was broad-based across each of our regions and our markets, and was led by excellent performances in snacks, beverage, and meat, and bakery in particular. Overall growth in the retail channel remained strong, while food service continued to deliver double-digit growth through the third quarter. Moving to pricing, which was up 7.5% in case nutrition for the period, and a little higher at group level. And as you can see from the slide, pricing has increased through the year as we continue to manage through this unprecedented inflationary environment very much in collaboration with our customers. The resilience of supply chains remains a key focus across our industry as a result of the inflationary pressures and the geopolitical volatility in places. However, we continue to see good levels of innovation activity with our customers and we're working very closely to support them in developing their offerings. And also to help them to meet the needs of their consumers in areas such as new taste experiences and cleaner and healthier labels, while also evolving their offerings to meet a more value conscious consumer. So while our industry remains highly dynamic, with many challenges to navigate, the excellent performance we've shown this year, combined with our strong positioning with our customers, gives us confidence that we would continue to outperform and meet the opportunities in our marketplace. So with that, I hand you over to Marguerite for the financial overview.