Central Garden & Pet Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Central Garden and Pet first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. My name is Paul and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, all participants are to listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require operator assistance during the call, please press star 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 and Corporate Sustainability. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Central's first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. With me on the call today are Beth Springer, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Nicola Hannas, Chief Financial Officer, Joan Hansen, President, Pet Consumer Products, and J.D. Walker, President, Garden Consumer Products. In a moment, Beth will provide our key messages and Nico will discuss these in more detail. After the prepared 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 risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results differ materially from what we share today. We've described the range of risk factors in our annual report, Files with the SEC. 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 period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. If you have further questions after the call or any time during the quarter, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. And with that, I will now turn it over to Beth Springer. Beth?

Thank you, Friederike, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me begin with the three themes I hope you'll take away from our call today. First, the fiscal year is off to a solid start. We delivered earnings per share of one cent and modestly grew net sales. Most importantly, we saw margins improving thanks to our cost management and moderating inflation. Our market shares and total distribution points were up across most of our pet and garden businesses in tract channels. We're particularly pleased to see our continued strong growth in e-commerce. Second, we're making progress on our multi-year journey to simplify our business and improve efficiency across our organization by rationalizing our footprint, optimizing our portfolio, and improving our cost structure. We are intensely focused on this cost and simplicity program and continue to reap benefits from initiatives we implemented previously, as well as kick off new projects. Some examples of recent initiatives are the closure of a live plants facility and the implementation of an enhanced treasury management system. And third, our outlook for the fiscal year is unchanged. The vast majority of our garden season is still in front of us, and we continue to expect a challenging external environment for the balance of the year. Rest assured that all 6,700 members of us on Team Central are working hard to meet or exceed that guidance. Looking beyond the first quarter, We remain confident in our central-to-home strategy, the long-term vibrancy of the pet and garden industries, and the competitive strengths of our business, and we continue to make thoughtful investments for the future. With that, let me turn it over to Nico, who will share with you more details. Nico?