Berry Global Group, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q4 2023 Very Global Group, Inc. conference call. At this time, all participants in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Dustin Stilwell, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining Barry's fourth fiscal quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me from the company, I have Barry's new Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Kowalinski, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Miles. Following Kevin and Mark's comments today, we will have a question and answer session. In order to allow everyone the opportunity to participate, we do ask that you limit yourself to one question with a brief follow-up and then fall back into the queue for any additional questions. A few things to note before handing the call over. Now, on our website at barryglobal.com, you can find today's press release and earnings call presentation under our investor relations section. As referenced on slide two during this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings press release and presentation, which were made public earlier this morning. Additionally, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those that may be expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. Some factors that could cause the results or outcomes to differ are in the company's latest 10-K, other SEC filings, and our news releases. And now, I will turn the call over to Barry's CEO, Kevin Kowalinski.

Thank you, Dustin. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for being with us today. I would like to begin this morning by expressing my excitement as I embark in my new role as CEO of Barry. I look forward to working with our customers, suppliers, investors, and our employees to build on this great company that has been growing over many years. I want to congratulate Tom on his retirement. Tom had many accomplishments as CEO over the past six years and was an industry leader around sustainability and the pursuit of a net zero economy. Through my first 50 days here at Barrie, I've been working diligently with our team and board to build upon various value-creating opportunities by bringing new approaches and incremental focus to drive organic growth and process improvement-led productivity gains. I look forward to visiting more of our manufacturing sites around the world to get a better understanding of our vast capabilities and to accelerate the sharing of best practices across our footprint. With a proud 56-year history and a reputation for excellence in the packaging industry, I believe that the future is extremely bright for Barry. My excitement continues to build as I learn more about our opportunities, and I look forward to communicating our strategy, execution plans, and accomplishments with you in the coming weeks and months. This morning, we have several topics to cover with you. including our fourth quarter and fiscal year results, our perspective on the overall market conditions around the world, and our outlook and plan for fiscal 2024. Turning to our key takeaways for the quarter on slide four, FERI delivered solid full-year results for fiscal 2023, exceeding the expectations provided on the last call. We set another record for adjusted earnings per share, and we beat our free cash flow guidance by over $100 million. Additionally, the company returned $728 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Our organization demonstrated its agility through both pricing and cost actions to partially offset the challenging and volatile global market dynamics characterized by ongoing inflation, soft consumer demand, and customer destocking. The company's ability to maintain guidance for the fiscal year and to meet or exceed each metric under these circumstances is a strong example of why I am excited to lead Barry. The teams did an excellent job implementing proactive and decisive actions while pricing to recover inflation and stepping up their intensity and focus on our cost reduction efforts to drive productivity benefits including structural plant closures, labor management, and asset optimization, all the while making strategic investments in high-growth markets such as food service, health and beauty, dispensing, and pharmaceuticals, with a strong focus on sustainability-linked customer projects. As you are aware, in September, we announced that we have initiated a formal process to evaluate strategic alternatives for our health, hygiene, and specialty segment to provide ways to drive long-term value to shareholders, which includes continuously evaluating our portfolio to ensure the company is best positioned to execute our strategic objectives. We will remain a trusted supplier and partner to our customers and colleagues around the world in this segment. While there is no certainty on any formal decision or definitive timetable, we will provide updates if and when appropriate. Next, on slide five, I want to emphasize our substantial levers to drive consistent, dependable, and sustainable organic growth. Barry's combined efforts include our ability to deliver continual cost improvements through scale advantages and innovation capabilities and provide confidence that we will consistently deliver solid earnings growth from our stable portfolio of businesses. Our strategic investments, particularly in key end markets like healthcare, personal care and beauty, and food service, allow very greater differentiation, leading to long-term sustainable growth. These markets also offer higher growth and higher margins, providing positive mixed benefits for our overall portfolio. Our emerging market presence is also expanding, supporting our commitment to global growth. Moreover, we are passionate about innovation and sustainability, utilizing our product design leadership to continuously develop products that meet our customers' needs and expectations. Our European leadership around sustainability gives us a global growth platform for innovative, sustainable-focused products. The summation of these targeted investment areas will support growth in our stable, non-cyclical consumer-focused markets from 70% of our portfolio to our goal of over 80% long-term. And before handing over to Mark, I want to discuss slide six and some of our specific focus investments for growth. Barrie remains deeply invested in both innovation and sustainability, which provides us with a strong competitive advantage. This product differentiation in these specific areas will drive our ability to take share from other substrates. We are investing in several markets and product categories that we expect to drive long-term organic growth, which complements our ongoing efforts of building an increasingly resilient portfolio of products, including a few of those which we have highlighted on the slide. The increasing demand for sustainable packaging solutions aligns with our design capabilities in producing and sourcing recycled resins globally. Our leadership in these areas position us for higher growth opportunities, supporting long-term value creation for our customers and shareholders. Now I will turn the call over to Mark, who will review Barry's financial results. Mark?