Brown Forman Inc

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Brown Form and Fiscal Year 2020 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question and answer session. To ask the question during the session you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you would like to withdraw your question press the pound key. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require further assistance please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Leanne Cunningham, Senior Vice President, Shareholder Relations Officer. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Dorothy. And good morning, everyone. I would like to thank each of you for joining us for Brown Form and Year End earnings call for fiscal 2020. Joining me today are Lawson Whiting, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jay Moreau, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This morning's conference call contains forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. Numerous risks and uncertainties may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or projected in these statements. Many of the factors that will determine future results are beyond the company's ability to control or predict. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements and the company undertakes no obligation to update any of these statements whether due to new information, future events or otherwise. This morning we issued a press release containing our results for the fourth quarter fiscal 2020 in addition to posting presentation materials that Lawson and Jay will walk through momentarily. Both the release and the presentation can be found on our website under section titled Investors, Events and Presentations. In the press release we have listed a number of risk factors that you should consider in conjunction with our forward-looking statements. Other significant risk factors are described in our Form 10-K and Form 10-Q reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this call we will be describing certain non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and the reasons management believes they provide useful information to investors regarding the company's financial conditions and results of operations are contained in the press release and investor presentation. As a reminder before I turn the call over to Lawson and Jay, in the interest of time and fairness we ask that you limit your questions to one per analyst. You are welcome to rejoin the queue and we'll take your follow-up questions as time permits. With that I would like to turn the call over to Lawson.

Thank you Leanne and good morning everyone. Our last investor call when we discussed third-core earnings was on March 4th just before the world went into lockdown. Since that call so much has changed around the world. So today while we will cover our full-year financial results we're really going to focus more of our time updating you on the impact of the pandemic on our business and share how we have and will continue to strategically navigate the volatility and uncertainty that we're facing. But before we do that let me say the events happening across America have highlighted yet again the disturbing and systemic racism that persists in the United States. I'm proud of the work Brown Forman and our employees have been doing in diversity and inclusion for nearly two decades which only accelerated when Ralph de Chavira our Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer joined the company in 2007. While we've been diligent in our diversity and inclusion work we all know that there's so much more to be done. These current events have sparked numerous conversations across the company about how we live our value of respect, about how we identify and eliminate bias within ourselves and how we continue to foster an environment and relationships where we can bring our best selves to work. At Brown Forman we're continually challenging ourselves to be better and to do better as individuals, as leaders and as teams. I do want to highlight a few initiatives at our company that not only promote diversity and inclusion within the company but also address racial inequality in Louisville, Kentucky where we have our corporate headquarters. Last fall we published our 2030 diversity and inclusion strategy where we set quantitative ambitions specifically for people of color and women. We've tied a portion of our executive compensation to make sure we can achieve these ambitions. We're also leading the new Racism and Business Council sponsored by Greater Louisville, Inc. This council will focus on racism and inequality and will lead efforts to cultivate minority businesses and new talent. Another effort is with our largest and most influential brand, Jack Daniels, which is committed to uplifting the important story of its first master distiller, Nearest Green. To help the life and legacy of Nearest, we're forming a partnership with Nearest Green, Inc. that will create developmental opportunities for African American talent, for senior distilling roles and support African American entrepreneurs in distilling startups. More information about this partnership will be shared in the coming weeks. In the California neighborhood, home to our Louisville corporate campus, we're committed to being better neighbors and over the past three years we've made local community investments of more than $6 million including supporting the nearby YMCA and Simmons College. In the coming months we'll commit to providing additional resources for the Invest California initiative. This initiative will focus on improving education, economic development and wealth building for our closest neighbors, the majority of whom are Black. In conclusion, I want to make it clear that we are committed as individuals and as an organization to continue to take action in order to address the racial and ethnic divides and inequalities in our local communities and our industry around the globe. Alright now, turning to the global COVID-19 pandemic. While a business challenge, above it all, we know it's a human tragedy. At Brown Foreman, as we always do, we took a people first approach to this crisis, which means the health and safety of our employees is our number one priority. In support of our colleagues, friends and partners facing hardship and loss, we've produced our own hand sanitizer to protect our workforce and community frontline workers. We've supplied and are continuing to supply high proof alcohol to manufacturers of hand sanitizer, which now is producing over 20,000 gallons per day. We've also donated in communities where we work and live around the world, from supporting bartender communities, restaurants, relief funds and community foundations to providing over 70,000 meals to soup kitchens and homeless shelters in Louisville, as well as countless hours of volunteerism. I really would like to thank all of our 4,800 employees around the world for their exceptional agility and creativity in quickly shifting and adapting to the recent challenges. From our quick and nearly seamless transition to working from home where it's possible, adjusting on how we work in our production facilities to ensure the health and safety of our employees, which resulted in almost no impact to our supply chain. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Jane, who will walk us through how our business has been impacted by COVID-19, the adjustments we have made to the business and the strength of our balance sheet. Afterwards, I'll share our strategic priorities that will continue to guide us through the near term and which I believe will position our brands and our business to be even stronger in the long term. Jane.