The Kraft Heinz Company

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Kraft Heinz Company second quarter 2021 business update call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Jakubik, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and hello, everyone. This is Chris Jakubik, Head of Global Investor Relations at the Kraft Heinz Company, and welcome to our Q&A session for our second quarter 2021 business update. 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 earnings 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 and the supplemental materials posted at ir.krappteinscompany.com. Before we begin, I'm going to hand it over to our CEO, Miguel Patricio, for a few quick opening comments.

Miguel? Thank you, Chris. And thank you, everyone. I'd just like to add or summarize and tell you that we are very optimistic about how we are progressing in our transformation at Kraft Heinz. We've been taking advantage of the scale that we have, and we've been building the agility that we need to build a better business for the future. We posted sustainable top-line and bottom-line gains versus 19, and we are encouraged because the strongest growth comes from priority platforms and markets, what we call the growth platforms, taste elevation, and in emerging markets. And we continue seeing retail very strong, and we are coming back with food service. It's recovering and recovering fast. Transforming Kraft Heinz is what we all have in mind, and we want to do that, maintaining the industry-leading profitability. We are investing more in our brands and better as well, building a much more creative company. We are also on track to deliver the $400 million of gross efficiencies in 2021. and effectively managing the inflation. At the same time, we continue strengthening our portfolio and improving financial flexibility. We are adding capacity to our products to drive growth and energize platforms and in the emerging markets. We, as you know, closed the nuts divestiture, and we expect to close the cheese divestiture in the second half of this year. Recently, we acquired Assam Foods in Turkey. It's a very small operation, but it's a very important step into our strategy because it accelerates taste elevation and is in emerging markets. And we continue to pay down debts and improve our net leverage. We continue to expect to have a very good 2021, actually. to deliver a stronger 2021 than we projected when we provided our initial outlook in February. And that speaks to the strength and potential of our ongoing business. Thank you.