Lancaster Colony Corporation

Good morning. My name is Cheryl, and I will be your conference call facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Lancaster Colony Corporation Fiscal Year 2022 First Quarter Conference Call. Conducting today's call will be Dave Sisinski, President and CEO, and Dave Pica, CFO. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers have completed their prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, then please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad, and questions will be taken in the order that they are received. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. And now to begin the conference call, here is Dave Gnabczyk, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations for Lancaster Colony Corporation.

Good morning and sorry for the delay. Thank you everyone for joining us today for Lancaster Colony's fiscal year 2022 first quarter conference call. Our discussion this morning may include forward-looking statements which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and could cause actual results to differ materially and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements based upon subsequent events. A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Also note that the audio replay of this call will be archived and available at our company's website, LancasterColony.com, later this afternoon. For today's call, Dave Sosinski, our president and CEO, will begin with a business update on highlights for the quarter. Tom Biggett, our CFO, will then provide an overview of the financial results. Dave will then share some comments regarding our current strategy and outlook. At the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we'll be happy to respond to any of your questions. Once again, we appreciate your participation this morning. I'll now turn the call over to Lancaster Colony's President and CEO, Dave Sosinski. Dave?

Thanks, Dale, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you today as we review our first quarter results for fiscal year 2022. I'd like to begin by expressing my sincere and heartfelt thanks to everyone here at Lancaster Colony for their tremendous efforts and ongoing commitment to servicing our customers and growing our business. In our first fiscal quarter, ended September 30th, consolidated net sales grew 12.3% to a record $392 million. Net sales in our retail segment grew 15.6%. while net sales in our food service segment advanced 8.1%. As expected, we experienced significant cost inflation during the quarter that reduced our profit before our pricing initiatives took full effect. The 15.6% growth in retail net sales comes to a strong first quarter last year when retail net sales grew 16.6%. as the impacts of COVID-19 drove increased at-home food consumption. Retail sales growth in this year's first fiscal quarter was driven by our licensing program led by Chick-fil-A Sauces and Buffalo Wild Wing Sauces. The sales for those two product lines combined to account for nearly 13 percentage points of growth for the retail segment in the quarter. IRI scanner data for the 13-week period ending September 26th showed total U.S. food sales of Chick-fil-A sauces at $35.1 million and sales of Buffalo Wild Wings sauces at $13 million. Olive Garden Dressings remains another bright spot in our licensing program as it continues to gain market share in the $2.1 billion shelf-stable dressing category. Per IRI, Olive Garden Dressings grew their category share to 6.3% during the quarter. With respect to our own brands, per IRI data for the 13-week period ending September 26th, highlights included a 450 basis point pickup in market share for our own New York bakery in the frozen garlic bread category. In our food service segment, excluding OmniBaking sales attributed to a temporary supply agreement that ended October 31 last year, net sales increased 10.1%. The increase in net sales was driven by inflationary pricing and volume growth for our branded food service products. Excluding inflationary pricing, sales volumes to our national chain restaurant customers were similar to last year. Food service operators industry-wide are facing the challenges of a tight labor market, product supply issues, and rising costs. NPD crest data for U.S. food service industry shows that weekly transactions for the quarter ending September 30th were pacing ahead of last year through mid-August and then fell slightly below prior year levels for the remainder of the quarter. I'll now turn the call over to Tom Piggott, our CFO, for his commentary on our first quarter financial results. Tom? Thanks, Dave.