Reynolds Consumer Products Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Reynolds Consumer Products, Inc. First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mark Swartzberg, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may now begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Reynolds Consumer Products' first quarter earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded and webcast on the investor relations section of our corporate website at ReynoldsConsumerProducts.com. Our earnings press release and presentation slides are also available. With me on the call today are Lance Mitchell, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Scott Huckins, our Chief Financial Officer. For our call, Lance will review our business performance and the actions we are taking to continue leading our categories, followed by Scott, who will review our first quarter results and our outlook. Following prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Before we begin, I would like to provide a couple of reminders. First, this morning's discussion may contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations and beliefs. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those described today. Please refer to the risk factor section in our SEC filings, including in our annual report on Form 10-K and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Please note that the company does not intend to update or alter these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after the call. Second, during today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP or adjusted financial measures. Reconciliations of these GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings press release investor presentation deck and form 10Q, copies of which can be found on the investor relations section of our website. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Lance. Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We're off to a strong start in 2024. We continued to lead our categories delivering retail volume at the high end of our guide, which reflects the strength of our integrated brand and store brand business model. We continue to launch a robust line of innovative products and our focus remains steadfast on offering sustainable alternatives across our product categories. We're delivering results from our revolution program and continue to develop further opportunities and we outperformed our first quarter guide delivering strong earnings growth. We have a high level of confidence in our plans and actions that we're taking to lead our categories, drive earnings growth, and continue to increase our financial flexibility. Before I get into the specifics of each business, I'd like to first comment on the consumer environment. When we reported results in February, I spoke to volumes being under pressure across the consumer staples sector. During the quarter, demand was modestly better than expected in some of our categories, and share gains also contributed to our retail performance, reflecting the strength of our integrated business model. However, factors including reduced consumer savings, increasing credit card debt, continued inflationary pressure, and elevated interest rates continue to pressure consumption in our categories. In this context, we're not complacent. We entered the year expecting ongoing consumer pressure and we're taking actions that we planned to drive our categories, our profitability, and additional financial flexibility. Our actions are wide ranging and include the following. As category advisors, we are in ongoing dialogue with our retail partners and constantly evaluating and adjusting our joint plans to meet their needs and the needs of our consumers. We're investing in compelling and impactful omnichannel and multi-product advertising. And we're actively managing proven price, pack, and architecture plans to drive volume in our categories. Our innovation pipeline has been a key contributor to sourcing incremental volume, and it's strong as it's ever been. We have a robust lineup of brand innovation, which recently received top ratings from a third-party review. For our Presto business, we will have more product launches in 2024 than any other year since RCP and Presto came together. And we're on track for offering sustainable solutions in every product line by 2025. We're very excited about the innovations that we're bringing to the market. And we're driving productivity and revolution savings and procurement, manufacturing, supply chain, and other areas of our business as an additional lever for earnings growth and reinvestment back into the business.

I'll now review our performance outlook by business.