Reynolds Consumer Products Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Reynolds Consumer Products first quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. Should anyone 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 begin.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Reynolds Consumer Products' first quarter earnings conference call. Please note this call is being webcast on the investor relations section of our corporate site at ReynoldsConsumerProducts.com. Our earnings press release and investor deck are also available. With me on the call today are Scott Huckins, our president and chief executive officer, and Nathan Lowe, our chief financial officer. Following prepared remarks, we will open the call for a brief question and answer session. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this morning's discussion will contain forward-looking statements which 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 factors section in our SEC filings. The company does not intend to update or alter these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances arising after the call. 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 10-Q, which can be found on the investor relations section of our website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. We are executing well in a dynamic consumer and retail environment. I am proud of our team for remaining nimble, staying close to our retail partners, and working at pace to manage through this period of heightened uncertainty. We also continue to invest in growth and margin expansion as we are committed to unlocking additional value for our CP and our shareholders. I will review performance and how we were driving our business before passing the call to Nathan to review the financials, our guide, and our plans for capital allocation. As you know, our priorities are to drive growth at or above our categories, expand margins, and invest in a more stable earnings growth model. We made great progress against these priorities during the quarter. We outperformed our categories by two points at retail, capturing share in household foil, waste bags, food bags, and non-foam disposable tableware. And we did so without an increase in promotional spend versus the year-ago quarter, demonstrating our success in driving innovation and net gains in distribution including. hefty press-to-close food bags and the addition of new scents to the growing line of hefty Fabuloso waste bags, the introduction of hefty compostable cutlery, leveraging and commercializing new technology from the Atacama acquisition, introducing new cooking and baking products, including Reynolds Kitchen air fryer cups, building on our success connecting with younger consumers, and the scaling of multiple new store brand products. We delivered our earnings guide in spite of unanticipated retailer to stocking in a very dynamic macro environment. And we employed our strong balance sheet to invest in the high return growth and margin expansion programs I reviewed in February. In other words, the underlying health of our business is strong. We are acting decisively to respond to the changing macro dynamics and we remain focused on progressing our strategic initiatives. We are implementing spring resets and price increases according to plan, gaining shelf space and points of distribution across RCP. In response to the increased cost environment, and for those of you who are new to our business, we have a clear record of fully recovering gross profit through pricing and productivity. These capabilities are rooted in competitive advantages, including our strong brands and associated pricing power, resilient business model and category leadership positions. Some of the insights guiding our work with our retail partners include targeted promotions on more discretionary items, assortment changes to meet certain consumers' increased quest for value, and continued price pack architecture work to deliver the right combination of value and purchase size. That said, tariffs and their resulting impact on consumer sentiment have made for a more dynamic near-term environment, and we have tempered our fiscal 2025 expectations accordingly. We could ultimately benefit from changes in U.S. trade policy given our domestic-oriented supply chain and continue to be guided by the priorities we set for the year. Turning to progress against our core priorities, we are fortunate to have begun scoping growth and margin expansion initiatives in 2024, and we are executing well against the related pillars I reviewed in February. As a reminder, in the growth pillar, our work consists of targeted distribution gains, the prioritizing and resourcing of larger scale innovation, and reallocating promotional spend to higher return opportunities. In the area of margin expansion, we are unpacking our supply chain, reviewing input costs, and identifying opportunities to improve productivity across our network. Many of these opportunities are supported by the deployment of capital with attractive returns, and we remain committed to investing in growth. Our work in each area is progressing well and includes success, identifying impactful innovation and resourcing it accordingly, further opportunities to drive share, including the deployment of our developing revenue growth management capabilities, and favorable early reads on efficiencies and cost savings through additional optimization of our supply chain. I look forward to reporting more on our progress, particularly as we begin to see benefits late this year. And to be clear, the recent tariff announcements and more challenging retail environment have not caused us to alter our strategic direction. If anything, they reinforce the need for us to control our own destiny by driving the top line with innovation and distribution gains while expanding margins through cost-out work. In closing, we are spending even more time in the field with our retail partners, listening to their needs, unlocking shared growth opportunities with insights and products that drive our categories. We are acting with nimbleness and discipline pulling our many levers to drive financial performance in a very dynamic macro environment. And we are investing with discipline across RCP in high return work streams to drive future performance. Nathan, over to you.