The Kraft Heinz Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Kraft Heinz Company first quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Chris Jakubik, Head of Global Investor Relations for the Kraft Heinz Company. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and hello, everyone. This is Chris Jakubik, Head of Global Investor Relations at Kraft Heinz Company, and welcome to our Q&A session for our first quarter 2021 business update. As you know, during our remarks today, we will make some forward-looking statements that are based on how we see things today. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties, and these are discussed in our press release and our filings with the SEC. We will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures today during the call, and these non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with GAAP results. And you can find the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within our earnings release. Before we begin, I'm going to hand it over to our CEO, Miguel Patricio, for a few quick opening remarks. Miguel?

Well, thank you, Chris. I just wanted to start our session today with a few overall thoughts. First, that we have had a very, very encouraging start of the year, both top line and bottom line, with our strongest growth in priority platforms and markets, especially in underdeveloped countries with a very strong result. We were able to hold household penetration gains even as markets begin to open, and effectively managing inflation and supply constraints. We are also very encouraged by our progress with initiatives to accelerate our advantage in different areas, like in marketing, being more agile and more creative, in retail and food service joint business plans, in unlocking capacity, in grow and energize platforms and also on bringing efficiencies, gross efficiency gains that we continue tracking to be about $400 million in the year. That said, we feel that it's still too early to change our outlook for the full year. We still expect 2021 financials to be ahead of our strategic plan. and we are expecting mid-single-digit growth in Q2 2021 versus the same period in 2019. At the same time, we should see stronger but manageable inflation beginning in Q2. Finally, we are pleased with additional financial flexibility that we are building. We continue to aggressively reduce debt, on track to further increase flexibility. I will now hand it back to the operator, and we can start the Q&A.