Berry Global Group, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter 2024 Berry Global Group Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask the 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 your first speaker today, Dustin Starwalt, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to everyone for joining Barry's second fiscal quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me this morning, I have Barry's Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Kowalinski, and Barry's Chief Financial Officer, Mark Miles. Following our prepared remarks 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. 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 and three 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 risk 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, our other SEC filings, and our news releases. And now, I will turn the call over to Barry's CEO, Kevin Kowalinski.

Thank you, Dustin, and thank you to everyone for joining us today to discuss Barry's second quarter results for fiscal 2024. The second quarter came in consistent with our expectations. Our proactive measures around repositioning our portfolio to higher growth markets and reducing our cost structure have allowed us to outperform in a weaker-than-normal macro demand environment. We're excited to share that our team has identified additional opportunities to enhance our competitive position. As a result, we've expanded our cost savings program by an extra $25 million, bringing the total to $165 million. We're on track to achieve these savings by the end of fiscal year 2025. Our confidence is bolstered by steadily improved volumes throughout the year. with an accelerating improvement in April. As a result, we reaffirm our fiscal 2024 guidance, expecting low single-digit volume growth in the second half of the year, aligned with our long-term target. Our outlook for a robust second half of the year remains unchanged, and we're committed to achieving year-end leverage of 3.5 times or lower. With six months in the chair, Having visited dozens of locations and having talked to numerous customers and suppliers, I'm struck by our fantastic opportunity for growth and operational excellence. We are focused on three key efforts. One, optimizing our portfolio to accelerate both growth and deleveraging. Two, implementation of our lean transformation. And three, accelerating growth by improving our commercial excellence approach. With respect to portfolio optimization, we are making substantial progress. We completed two additional divestitures in the quarter, and we have line of sight to much more. Looking forward, we believe cash proceeds could exceed $2 billion from strategic divestitures within the next year. This includes $1 billion from the already announced spinoff merger and another $1 billion from future portfolio optimization opportunities. Not only will these divestitures accelerate the leveraging, they will push us toward our goal of increasing our consumer products focus from over 70% to over 80% of volume. In April, we announced the achievement of a regulatory milestone in the proposed transaction involving the combination of a majority of our health, hygiene, and specialty segments to include its global nonwovens and films business with Glatfelter, with the expiration of the required waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. As previously announced in February, Barry and Glatfelter entered into a definitive agreement under which Barry will spin off and merge its HHNF business with Glatfelter in a reverse Morris Trust transaction. The transaction will create a leading publicly traded company in the specialty materials industry. The transaction is still expected to close in the second half of calendar 2024 and is subject to approval by Glatfelter shareholders and completion of customary closing conditions. Both Glatzelter and Berry HHNF performed in line with our transaction thesis during the quarter, validating our belief that the business cycle has bottomed out for each of these companies. As we prepare for integration, we remain optimistic about substantial upside potential in our base synergy case. Turning to our lean transformations. During the quarter, we made substantial progress in accelerating our continuous improvement focus. With a customer-first approach, we re-engineered our quality and service management process to be directly connected to a new NPS process. During the quarter, we implemented our first cycle of NPS and collected valuable data to confirm our strengths and to focus us on areas of opportunity that will lead to growth. Our operational leadership from North America and Europe recently visited Toyota facilities to observe and learn firsthand about their world class lean production system. We also hired an experienced lean transformation leader who started this week and reports directly to me. This leader has a successful track record in lean practices at companies like Honda, Danaher, and Honeywell. Additionally, we're actively developing a pipeline of opportunities to enhance efficiency by increasing overall equipment effectiveness and improving first pass yield. We're excited to incorporate these initiatives into our 2025 budget planning. Finally, I want to discuss our focus on commercial excellence. Slide six speaks to the substantial levers that empower us to achieve consistent, dependable, and sustainable organic growth. Barry's inherent scale advantages drive both cost leadership and innovation capabilities, instilling confidence that we will consistently deliver robust earnings growth from our stable portfolio of businesses. But these levers need to be executed in the context of a world-class commercial excellence process. And in this aspect, Barrie will become much stronger in the months ahead. With company-wide world-class commercial excellence in mind, during the quarter, we created a beachhead in our core North American rigid consumer packaging business. We have substantial opportunity to win in this space, and we are investing in creating a world-class commercial excellence model and accelerating innovation and technology to increase our strategic product differentiation. To drive commercial excellence, we launched an effort with a top-tier consulting organization to bring best-in-class process and tools to our pipeline identification, management, and delivery. Following full successful implementation, we will take this new commercial excellence model and replicate it across the balance of our businesses. With respect to innovation and technology, we completed the strategic acquisition of F&S Tools to give us access and control of unique tooling intellectual property, allowing for more cost and capital efficient sustainable alternatives to traditional products. F&S brings an incredible culture of entrepreneurial innovation, which will serve to accelerate our organic growth delivery while bringing additional scale to our already substantial, growing, and important tooling and automation capability. Combining superior product and service differentiation enabled by our lean transformation with the strongest innovation engine in the industry and executing in the framework of a world-class commercial excellence engine is allowing Barry to win faster in our markets and achieve our growth objectives in a sustainable way. Now I will turn the call over to Mark, who will review Barry's financial results. Mark?