Kerry Group plc

Good morning and thank you for standing by. My name is John and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Care Group 3rd Quarter 2026 Results Webcast. All lives 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 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. I would now like to turn the call over to William Lynch, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to our Q3 2026 results update call. I'm joined in the call by our CEO, Edmond Scanlon, and our CFO, Marguerite Larkin. As usual, Edmond will begin with his overview comments before handing over to Marguerite for the Q3 performance review, and Edmond will close out before opening the lines for questions. Before we begin, please take note of the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. Now over to Edmond. Thanks, William, and good morning, everyone.

Beginning with my overview comments in slide four, we're pleased to report a strong performance in the period, reflecting a further step up in volume growth across all three regions in the third quarter, combined with continued strong margin expansion. Firstly, on volume growth, the 4.1% volume growth we achieved in the third quarter reflects continued strong growth in the Americas, A further step up in apnea and good growth in Europe. Growth in the period was led by good innovation activity in the food service channel and continued product renovation activity in the retail channel. And growth was broad-based across a number of end markets, driven by our extensive range of taste and biotechnology-enabled solutions, including savory taste, taste and salt and sugar reduction technologies, Botanicals, Natural Extracts, Case Solutions for High Protein Applications, Biofermentation Based Preservation Systems and Enzymes. So we're pleased with the good volume growth of 4.1% in the third quarter and we're expecting to deliver a similar performance in Q4. Moving to EBITDA margins, we delivered 200 basis points of margin expansion over the past two years. and we're on track to deliver a further 50 basis points of margin expansion in 2026. We recently updated our EBITDA margin target to be in the 20 to 21% range by 2030, so good progress on the top line as well as margin. Before I hand you over to Marguerite to bring you through the results in more detail, I'd like to give you an overview of our investor day on slide five, which we hosted in Beloit, Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago. where we provided further insight into our leading market positions and growth plans aligned to our newly announced 2030 targets. The theme for the day was solving for a complex world and my three key messages were as follows. Firstly, we're operating in a highly dynamic market and despite the current market backdrop, there are significant growth opportunities across both innovation and renovation. and we see these markets being particularly attractive for Kerry. Second, we have the industry's most relevant technology portfolio with our case and biotechnology enabled solutions. This combined with our problem solving business model means we're ideally positioned to meet the ever increasing demands of our customers in today's more complex world. And thirdly, we're in execution mode. Delivering on our strategy and delivering and our financial performance. We held a number of interactive breakout sessions, the first being accelerating innovation through biotechnology, where we showcased a number of our latest innovations along with our next generation innovation in five specific areas, each with a potential opportunity to be over 50 million per carat. The next breakout was on renovation, which has been a key underpin of our consistent End market outperformance. We touched on this in the past on areas like sugar and salt reduction, which have contributed to significant growth for Kerry in areas like snacks. And we see tremendous opportunity right across all food and beverage categories for healthier, cleaner label and better tasting products. While the evolving regulatory landscape is an important factor, renovation activity is being driven first and foremost by the consumer. and all customer types. And it will support significant growth across our addressable markets in the coming years. Moving to the taste breakout, we have a broad taste technology toolbox. But what really sets us apart is how we deploy flavors, food science, biotechnology and our application expertise to deliver next generation solutions. Like our natural fermentation based taste enhancement system our taste and sugar and salt reduction technologies, and our industry-leading protein masking technology. Next to food service, which carries the structural tailwind, thanks to our dedicated business model, and this has supported our consistent long-term track record of mid-single digit plus volume growth. We highlighted a number of examples of how we're working with customers right across the food service channel, from scaling with emerging pairs to transforming established chains. We have a unique positioning in food service, which we feel gives us a sustainable right to win. Finally, onto the digital transformation breakout, where we shared how digital and AI are enabling our business strategy and financial delivery. Having piloted and proven several initiatives across the organization, we're now scaling across commercial, R&D, supply chain, manufacturing and business functions. It's about accelerating value delivery, It's about solving real business challenges better, faster, more efficiently. If you'd like to hear more, you'll find the materials from the day on our website. But for now, I'll hand you over to Marguerite for more details on the Q3 performance.