Central Garden & Pet Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the central garden and pet fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 earnings call. My name is Shamali and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the call, please press star followed by zero on your touch tone phone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Frederic Edelman, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Central's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 earnings call. With me on the call today are Beth Springer, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Lead Director, Nicola Hannas, Chief Financial Officer, JD Walker, President, Garden Consumer Products, and John Hansen, President, Pet Consumer Products. In a moment, Beth will provide our key takeaways from the fiscal year, and Nico will discuss our financial results, our cost and simplicity program, as well as our outlook in more detail. After the previous remarks, JD and John will join us for the Q&A. Before they begin, I would like to remind you that all forward-looking statements made during this call are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from what we share today. We describe the range of risk factors in our annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Central undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent events, or otherwise. Our press release and related materials are available at ir.central.com and contain the gap reconciliation for the non-gap measures discussed on this call. Lastly, all growth comparisons made during this call are against the same payers in the prior year unless otherwise stated. For further discussion after the call, please reach out to me. And with that, I will turn it over to Beth.

Thanks, Frederic, and good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for joining our call today. Let's start with the three themes I'd like you to take away from this call. First, our fiscal year 2023 achievements. We are proud of what Team Central was able to achieve in light of a challenging environment, an environment characterized by unfavorable consumer behavior, unfavorable retail dynamics, high inflation, and some extreme weather. Most notably, we delivered fiscal year 2023 non-GAAP EPS within our revised guidance, generated record cash flow, and grew market shares broadly across pet and garden. We're grateful to our 6,700 associates for their hard work driving these results. Second, I want to speak to the strides we're making on our cost and simplicity program. As we've shared on prior calls, we've embarked on a journey to simplify our business and improve efficiency across our organization. We are doing this by rationalizing our footprint optimizing our portfolio, and improving our cost structure. Today, we'll share some of the proof points we've accomplished in fiscal year 23, including the closure of our dog bed manufacturing and distribution facility in Texas as a result of exiting certain low-margin private label pet bed product lines, and the successful sale of our distribution business to the fragmented independent garden center channel, a complex channel to serve that was diluted to our garden operating margin. We'll also provide more color around our recently announced acquisition of TDBBS, a provider of premium natural dog chews and treats. The TDBBS acquisition adds scale and e-commerce capabilities to our fast-growing dog and cat platform. And third, Fiscal year 24 guidance. We remain committed to our long-term central-to-home strategy. We are intensely focused on executing our cost and cash agenda and making thoughtful investments to fortify our foundation and to drive growth. We expect to continue to face a challenging external environment in fiscal year 24 and guide to non-GAAP APS of $2.50 or better. Importantly, we remain confident in the health of our business and our categories and are particularly encouraged by data showing younger households spending more money on their pets and enjoying their time gardening. Before I turn it over to Nico, I want to reiterate that our FY23 achievements underscore our ability to execute in challenging times and the fundamental strength of Central Garden and Pet. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Nico.