B&G Foods, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the B&G Foods first quarter 2021 earnings call. Today's call, which is being recorded, is scheduled to last about one hour, including remarks by B&G Foods management and the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Sarah Jerome, Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Development for B&G Foods. Sarah? Sarah?

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Dave Wenner, our Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, and Bruce Wacca, our Chief Financial Officer. You can access detailed financial information on the quarter in the earnings release we issued today, which is available at the Investor Relations section of bgfoods.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of the discussion today includes forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer you to B&G Foods' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our company's future operating results and financial conditions. B&G Foods undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. We will also be making references on today's call to the non-GAAP financial measures adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA before COVID-19 expenses, adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and base business net sales. Reconciliations of these financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in today's earnings release. Dave will begin the call with opening remarks and discuss various factors that affected our results, selected business highlights, and his thoughts concerning the outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2021. Bruce will then discuss our financial results for the first quarter, as well as expectations for 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on the first quarter earnings call. Assessing our results for the quarter, my overall comment is that the quarter played out much as we expected. In total, we achieved record first quarter net sales of $505.1 million, a 12.4% increase from Q1 2020. Net sales on our base business, which excludes the Crisco acquisition completed in December, were approximately $447 million, virtually flat versus first quarter 2020 at a modest 0.6% decline. Within that number, U.S. base business net sales were up 2.1%, while international base business net sales were down 31.8%, virtually all of that green giant sales in Canada due to severe allocation of the brands there. Compared to fiscal 2019, our base business net sales, which for purposes of the two-year comparison also exclude Clabergirl and FarmWise net sales, increased $16.6 million, or 4% for the quarter. Our $447 million of base business net sales were supplemented by the $58 million of Crisco net sales, bringing our total net sales up to the $505 million figure. Adjusted EBIT for the quarter also set a first quarter record at $92.9 million, a 15.2% increase, the result of solid base business volume and earnings and a fulsome Crisco benefit in our first few months of ownership. Those are the highlights. I'll turn the call over to Bruce now for more detailed comments on the quarterly performance, after which I will add additional color on our performance. Bruce?