ConAgra Brands, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the ConAgra Brands Q1 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Q&A Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please note today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the floor over to Matthew Nysas, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Once again, I'm joined this morning by Sean Connolly, our CEO, and Dave Marburger, our CFO. We may be making some forward-looking statements and discussing non-GAAP financial measures during this session. Please see our earnings release, prepare your marks, presentation materials, and filings with the SEC, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website for more information, including descriptions of our risk factors, GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations, and information on our comparability items. I'll now ask the operator to introduce the first question.

And, ladies and gentlemen, at this time, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1. Our first question today comes from Andrew Lazar from Barclays. Please go ahead with your question.

Great. Thanks so much. Sean, ConAgra expects to return to positive organic sales growth in the fiscal second half, but also mentioned recent consumption trends in pointing to a low single-digit decline expected in the second quarter. What's driving the fiscal second half inflection, or is it really just easy year-ago comps? And do recent consumption trends that you mentioned sort of give you any pause, particularly in light of the planned tactical pricing actions that you're taking? And I guess, to what do you attribute the recent consumption weakness?

All right. Good morning, Andrew. Let me tackle that in reverse order. First, I – I wouldn't overly read into any recent consumption trend data. To the degree you saw any softening at the end of Q1, that was tied primarily to the two things I mentioned in my prepared remarks, which is the shift of a major Angie's Boom Chicka Pop promotional event to Q2 and the initial planned elasticity effect of the inflation-justified pricing that we took on Duncan Hines due to COCO costs. So that's kind of a Q1 concept. This quarter in Q2, some of our major frozen events are planned about a month or so later than a year ago based on our supply ramp-up. So pretty consistent with what we would expect in the full year, just a little bit of a shift in timing. So not much else to really discuss there. As for the basis of our expectations for further sales progress in the second half, It will be a combination of volume momentum on frozen, where we wrapped last year's supply constraints, plus continued volume momentum on growing businesses like protein snacks. And then you have to also add what I'll call dollar momentum on inflationary businesses where we're taking price. You know, that combination of factors reflects the horses for courses plan that we built. And what I mean by that is we are investing to drive volume in frozen and snacks while maximizing cash via inflation justified pricing and staples.

Got it. Got it. Thank you for that. And then fiscal first quarter came in ahead of expectations. Fiscal second quarter was moderated a bit in terms of your outlook. Net-net, Do you see fiscal first half as potentially coming in a bit better than originally planned? And then, Dave, how much was the benefit from trade expense timing to organic sales growth in the quarter? Thanks so much. Yeah, Andrew.

So taking the last part first, it was about 50 basis points of benefit in Q1, the trade timing, and then that will flip to Q2. So 50 basis points in terms of sales growth. So in terms of first half, I would say given kind of the flip in timing of that, given the fact that Q1 we had some benefit in inventory where we delayed some of the tariff costs, and now they're going to be coming in in Q2. I would say generally we're still on track with our original plan for the first half. You know, there's kind of different pieces. We talked about in our guidance we're a little favorable in interest expense, but our tax rate's a bit higher. So there's obviously some puts and takes, but I think we're pretty much on our first half plan. Yeah, and I would say, Andrew, that what I was looking for this quarter really were two things. Number one, Can we get the service issues behind us? And getting to 98%, check. I'm feeling good about that. And second, once we did that and could start to resume our merchandising activities and rolling out our innovation, are we getting the consumer takeaway and are we seeing inflection on key businesses? And check, we saw that. So, you know, the consumer is certainly not out of the woods yet. We're still seeing value-seeking behavior. We're still having to deal with inflation and tariffs. But, you know, after a quarter, I think we're feeling good about the setup for the balance of the year. Thanks so much.

Our next question comes from Peter Galbo from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the questions. Sean and Dave, I just wanted to maybe touch on the updated core inflation outlook that you gave. I know you talked about some of the moving pieces within kind of the animal proteins, but maybe you can just remind us, A, kind of how you're bought, for the remainder of the year on some of those items? Are you kind of locked in now for the rest of the year? Just given that some of these, you know, cuts are very volatile and have moved, particularly chicken over the past month has maybe moved more favorably. So just want to understand the flex in that inflation guide as we get in the back half.

Yeah, so Peter, our original guidance, our overall inflation was approximately 7%. That's split 4% kind of core inflation, and then 3% gross tariffs. Then we had mitigation, obviously, on tariffs of about 1% to 1.5% on that. And then we have our productivity, which helps us offset our core inflation. As we've gone through this quarter, we're seeing more pressure on the core inflation. There's been a little bit of movement on the tariffs, but generally, that's so the 3% gross tariffs we estimated at the beginning of the year are about the same. The increase in the overall inflation for the year is really coming from the core inflation, and that's really driven by the animal proteins, and so particularly beef, pork, turkey, and then to some extent eggs relative to our original forecast. To your question about kind of where we are, you know, from a kind of overall coverage perspective, You know, for Q2, we're about 85% covered. You know, certain commodities are fully covered. But then the animal proteins, which has been a pressure point, that's more spot market overall. We do take positions and freeze them, so we have capability. to add coverage through freezing proteins. But generally, that's more market and spot based. And so about 85% covered Q2. And then for the full year, 60% to 65% coverage overall. But again, those proteins were exposed. If there's additional inflation or if the inflation moderates, we'll see a benefit from that.

Great. Thanks for that, Dave. Very, very helpful. I wanted to pivot maybe to the balance sheet and the cash flow. Dave, I know you called out that there would be some debt pay down in the quarter. I've gotten a few questions this morning just on the cash flow generation in the quarter. It was a bit maybe lighter than expectations in some of the inventory builds. So maybe you can unpack both the debt pay down, how we should think about that in 2Q in the remainder of the year, and then just anything around kind of inventory build that happened in the quarter. Thanks very much.

Sure. So let me kind of start from the top. When we gave our guidance, we had forecasted that we would pay down $700 million in debt for fiscal 26. That's from both the proceeds from the divestitures as well as $100 million from cash flow from operations to pay down debt. So we're still on track with that. Actually, we included in our materials the that we're going to have additional favorability from the tax legislation. We are estimating that at $75 million. So we haven't built that into our specific free cash flow forecast yet, but that's clearly going to be a benefit. As it relates to Q1, yeah, we have – and this is just solely timing – We built more inventory in the first quarter because, remember, we were coming off supply disruptions, and so we had to get back to service levels. So that was a priority. We built our inventory. So our normal seasonal build affects Q1. Then we leaned in to make sure we had the right safety stocks on the areas where we had disruptions. And so you normally will see that in Q1. It's a little bit more. So our inventory on hand, we have more days on hand. but that's been planned, that's timing, and we still feel comfortable about our full-year forecast as it relates to inventory. So I would say we are on track, you know, Q1 is the normal build. And in the first quarter, our net debt is down about a little over $400 million versus where we finished at the end of fiscal 25. And as we said in the comments, on a rolling 12th, we've reduced our net debt by $1.1 billion. So feel really good about cash flow generation, both where we are and how we're forecasting it for fiscal 26. Just one other piece of perspective on that inventory bill. You know, several of the peers in Center Store Grocery have really struggled in the last year to generate consumer pull against their brands, even when investing. We have not had that problem. So you may recall – We had six or seven quarters of straight-line, top-line improvement as we invested in the pursuit of volume last year, and we returned to growth in Q2. So we've got clear evidence that the brands and the innovation are working for consumers, but we ran into the supply interruption, and we had to pull a lot of our merchandising. So now that we've got service levels back, you know, armed with that confidence that we can generate consumer pull because of these products, We are absolutely convinced having inventory in place so we don't fall out of stock again and fail to keep up with consumer demand, particularly going into holiday season is absolutely the right thing to do.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Tom Palmer from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question. Mr. Palmer, is it possible your phone is on mute? And just to confirm, the speaker room, are you able to hear me?

Yes, yes.

We can hear you.

Okay. It looks like we've got Palmer number two in the queue, so why don't we go there and we'll come back to Tom in a bit. All right.

Our next question comes from David Palmer from Evercore ISI. Sir, please go ahead with your question.

Okay. Thank you. Good morning. Frozen entrees, obviously it's been a great long-term category for ConAgra. Just looking at the recent recent data, and I know there's reasons for this, maybe some overhangs from some of the past supply chain stuff, but wondering, you know, what is your state of the union with that category? It looks like you guys are losing share and the category is declining. You know, for years you guys were driving the majority growth in a category that was oftentimes growing at least a little bit. So I wonder what your frozen outlook is, frozen entree in particular outlook is, through the rest of the year, and I have a quick follow-up.

All right, David, our outlook is positive. You know, the simple way to think about frozen meals is the category goes as ConAgra goes. That's been the rule for the last seven or so years. When we didn't innovate back in the day, the category didn't grow. When we committed to innovating frozen, the category grew steadily for a long, long time. So including, by the way, in our Q2 last year, I think our frozen business was up in the ballpark of 3%. So we're coming off of a back half of last year where we had major service interruptions in that business. We walked away from major merchandising, and that hands our merchandising to competitors who then get in the plans, customer plans, for a period of time while we're working to get service levels back. That contributed, obviously, to us being a share donator, which is the first time that's happened in years and years and years. But that's obviously a temporary phenomenon tied to our supply interruption. So what you're seeing now is our innovation is rolling into the marketplace. Our service levels are back. to 98%, and we're getting kind of back in the queue on these major events and feel extremely bullish about it. You know, we've got some absolutely fantastic innovations that we rolled out last year that were interrupted. We're rolling out new ones this year, and they're already off to a particularly strong start. I will draw your attention to the new Dolly Parton frozen meals and frozen desserts that are new in the marketplace and performing extremely well. And what's encouraging about that as well is they're not only performing well, that's a premium-priced product. So that's a good mix for us, too. So, you know, I have tremendous confidence in our frozen business. To win in frozen, you've got to have scale and you've got to have an innovation machine and you know, we've got the best in the business. So we're looking forward to continued momentum on that business as we go through the year and wrap some of the weak spots in the last year, second half.

Thank you for that. And just a very general big picture question, you know, you're going to have those easier comparisons in the second half of the year, and you're going to be more on your front foot. I'm wondering, you know, what are some, I don't know if there's exact metrics you can share, but What are the things you're going to be looking for in the second half that will really tell you that you can get back to balanced sales and profit growth in fiscal 27? If that is, you know, the goal here is to get back to it on algo in 27, what would kind of let you know you're there? You know, clearly growing against some of these comparisons may not be enough. So, you know, perhaps give us a sense of what you think would be, quote, good enough in the second half to show us you're really on track again. Thanks.

You know, David, you once had a good piece of wisdom for me and said your hero business has got to be heroes, meaning frozen snacks need to grow. And I think that is well said. I think, you know, for this company, frozen snacks are clear growth categories and It represents about 70% of our retail business. We've had tremendous momentum on both of those businesses leading up to the supply challenges we had last year. And by the time we exit this year, I want to see real momentum and inflection on those businesses. We've already got it within the key strategic snacks businesses. For example, Slim Jim right now is tracking really well. C-Store is coming back. That's very encouraging. And our new innovation on Slim Jim, which is our new Buffalo Wild Wings, Buffalo Chicken Slim Jim is performing really well out of the gates. That's a very positive sign. On Frozen, it's all about getting back in the queue on merchandising events with customers and then making sure that this innovation that we work so hard to build performs, and so far it looks good. So, you know, those businesses with a positive trajectory as we move through the year, I think is a very, very positive sign for next year when we've got some of these margin clawback businesses opportunities in front of us. So that'll be a combination of good looking top line and an improving gross margin line as well. And I'm looking forward to that.

Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Brian Adams from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe just for a quick housekeeping one, following up on David's question there. So 1Q volume performance for refrigerated and frozen came in a lot better than I think maybe scare trends would have suggested. And I think in the prepared remarks you said volumes for frozen itself were up like 3% or so. Was there any like elevated shipments in the 1Q as you were finishing up restoring supply shelf or is this pretty consistent with like the consumption trends that you were seeing?

Hey, Brian, the 3% number, I was referring to Q2 last year when Frozen was back growing strongly in Q2. So, you know, shipments were a little bit ahead in the quarter, which is pretty typical at a time when you've been out of stock and you're kind of replenishing. I wouldn't overthink this because if you look at our company on kind of a rolling four-quarter basis, shipments and consumption are almost always equal. So for us, it doesn't really amount to much change. So I wouldn't overthink that piece. Anything you'd add to that? The only thing I would say, just if you're just convertibly looking shipments to consumption within the quarter for R&F, that Hebrew, obviously, because prior year shipments were really strong. So there's a little bit of benefit, shipment versus consumption related to Hebrew, within Q1 for R&F.

Okay, awesome. Thanks. Yeah, not my best reading comprehension, I guess, there. On the margin callback opportunities that you just actually spoke to, can you kind of just, like, run through those high level for us as we think about 27? Because some of the stuff, you know, like some of the costs you've had this year, like tariffs, like that's not necessarily something you can assume goes away. But then I also know you have some work in process on the chicken, and then I'm not really sure the puts and takes on SG&A. But do you mind just running through those? Sean, do you see them today?

Absolutely. Yeah, I'll tick off five things that I mentioned last quarter that remain intact. It starts with productivity. So in fiscal 26 this year, you know, between core productivity and tariff mitigation, that number is just over 5%, which is very strong. And by the way, Q1 came in right above that level, which is, you know, a super strong quarter. So, you know, that will continue. Supply chain team is doing a nice job. Second, at some point we're going to get inflation relief. Somebody mentioned proteins a little bit ago. You know, hopefully back closer to our typical 2%. If you look back 100 years as we have, anytime we've had these kind of runaway inflation cycles like this, there's always been relief on the other side of the hill. So at some point that will happen. We obviously can't call exactly when. Third, the advancement of our supply chain resiliency investments, including the chicken plants, will enable us to repatriate some of that outsourced production going forward at lower costs. Fourth, we are taking pricing in certain categories. So after you get past the initial lag of inflation hits and you wait 90 days or so to get pricing in, you start to get the benefit of that. And then fifth, I mentioned last quarter we were kicking off an ambitious initiative to reengineer our core work processes, leveraging technology, including AI. We have kicked that work off. to accelerate growth and lower costs. We'll have more to report on that going forward, but that's an exciting possibility. So between those actions and our ongoing efforts to reshape the portfolio for faster growth and better margins, we do expect good margin expansion following fiscal 26. Okay.

Really helpful. Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Dave. We'll pass it on. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Robert Moscow from TD Cali. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, thanks. I have a phasing question about 2Q volume, Dave and Sean. I'm just looking at comparisons versus a year ago on volume, and it would appear that, you know, the volume growth comp would get tougher in 2Q compared to 1Q because of the Hebrew comparison and also because you had a lot of frozen vegetable volume in 2Q. Should I assume that volume growth is – or volume declines are similar in 2Q as in 1Q because of those comps, or is the merchandising activity enough to provide some sequential improvement in volume?

Yeah, Rob, this is Dave. You know, we have obviously a ton of brands, and so there's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of dynamics on merchandising. Generally speaking, the volume that we had in Q1 should be similar in Q2. And, you know, when you net it all together for total company.

In terms of growth. Okay.

In terms of volume.

Thank you very much.

You're on your road. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Yeah, and just for perspective, Rob, on the year-to-go basis, we had strong investment profile in merchandising companies. Last year, we had to pull back on some of that in the second half. We have a very strong investment in merchandising behind this innovation for the year-to-go period as well. And, you know, as I mentioned, some of those innovations which just are getting going now are already performing quite well. So we're looking forward to that. And you saw in the promotion chart I shared in the prepared remarks that while we've We've had some of the merchandising restored in Q1. There is room to go as we move through the back half of the full year. Got it. Thanks, Sean.

Our next question comes from Megan Clapp from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to start with maybe a follow-up, Sean, to Andrew's second question at the beginning, just around how the quarter played out and how you're tracking so far. You know, you made a comment last quarter that you viewed the fiscal 26 guide as prudent, given the operating environment. And you talked about a lot of encouraging things that you saw in one cue. At the same time, consumer sentiment's weak. You talked about value-seeking behavior. Cost inflation's a bit higher. So just putting all those puts and takes together, I guess when you think about the fiscal 26 guide today, you reiterated it. would you still characterize it as prudent and maybe where is the guide in your mind, you know, the most conservative? Thank you.

Well, I think it remains prudent, you know, as I mentioned to somebody this morning that, The two things I was really looking for in this quarter is we got to get service back, right? Because we had a lot of momentum. That momentum was, you know, very materially interrupted in the back half of last year because of service. And, you know, we've got confidence if we get service back, we will get the consumer takeaway. And so we got service back to 98%. That's good. And the fact that the innovation is off to as strong a start this year, actually stronger than what we had last year. So we had a very strong innovation performance last year in terms of not only customer acceptance, but the velocity of that innovation right up to the point where we pulled our merchandising, particularly frozen. And so it's good to see the innovation out of gates this year performing even higher level in terms of units per store per week, velocities, things like that. So that's a positive. And between that and the plans we've got, calendared out for the balance of the year, I think the outlook is prudent and, you know, we're pretty optimistic about building that momentum that I talked about with Dave Palmer a few minutes ago as we move through the year. Specifically, you know, this is a Horses for Courses annual operating plan that we built. There are some businesses where we've planned out the year to invest to drive volume growth, specifically Frozen and Snacks. We're seeing movement in the right direction there. I expect to see more of that as we get to the back half. There are other businesses that we are facing more acute inflation because of things like template tariffs where we're taking more inflation justified pricing. There it's about dollars. So between the volume plans we've got and the dollar plans that we've got, I think it comes together and puts us in a prudent position.

Okay, great. Thanks. And that's a good segue to my follow-up, which is As you think about implementing tariff-related pricing, which I think you said will come on late in the second quarter, have your views on elasticity and the expected elasticity changed at all, just given you're still seeing some value-seeking behavior with the consumer? And if we just think bigger picture around the macro, the consumer is going to be seeing a lot of, it seems like, inflation-driven pricing start to roll in around the same time. Thank you.

Good question. We track elasticities weekly, and we've kind of built in a historical elasticity expectation in categories as we built the plan. Specifically, what we've seen is within our categories, ConAgra's average elasticity is a bit better than our competitors across channels. And then further, at a company level, if you look at just total pricing versus total volume change, you'll also see that our elasticity has been a bit better than most peers over the past year. So I don't feel like we are assuming anything heroic in terms of elasticities going forward, even in the face of the pricing actions that we've got.

Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Max Gumport from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, thanks for the question, Sean.

I'm curious for an update on the value-seeking behavior that you're still seeing. It's been a few years now, so I'm just wondering how you see this cycle playing out and then how you're positioning ConAgra to come out of this cycle in a better place.

Thanks very much. Yeah, I mean, I think you're probably hearing the same thing from just about everybody in consumer packaged goods on this. It is kind of this barbell economy where you've got higher income consumers that are showing more resiliency and they're still spending. You've got lower income consumers across different age groups that are being more discerning. You know, they are absolutely discerning. doing what they've got to do to kind of maximize their household balance sheet. So we've got to deal with that. But clearly there is more value seeking behavior, you know, that is evident in the lower income group. So our job is to give those consumers the value they're seeking. And with the portfolio scope that we have, there are a lot of great value choices. And that's a big part of why, you know, sales are improving and so are shares. So going forward, we'll continue to put that value lens on our innovation and marketing effort because it matters. And, you know, if you weren't seeing this kind of behavior, I think if you look at our innovation slate over the last 10 years, you've probably seen it skewed toward more premiumized products. But when you have a large cohort of consumers that are value-oriented, you take a different lens around your innovation for both price pack architecture and the kinds of innovation that you want to deliver. Why? Because the benefit of superior relative value is a benefit that's going to move the sales line. And so you should imagine that, you know, we not only have a good slate of great value offerings already out there, but it does inform our innovation pipeline going forward to make sure that we've got products that are very provocative, not because of maybe an ultra-premium benefit, but because of a value benefit.

Great. And then as a follow-up, it was nice to see service levels get back to 98%.

and then that enabling a recovery to some degree in quality merchandising and improved volume share performance as well. As we look to the remainder of the year, is there any color or guardrails you could provide on how you expect your promotional levels and your volume share performance to progress from here? Thanks very much. Yeah, I'll point to – some data that I shared last quarter, which is if you look across the group, specifically the near-end kind of center store peers, what you've seen is that promotional levels in terms of percent of total volume sold on promotion has kind of migrated back to just about pre-COVID levels. It's uncanny. It's almost pre-COVID levels company by company. And so we're a little lower than that because we're still recovering from supply interruption, but moving back toward that. But I have not seen promotional levels go above that kind of pre-COVID norm. So that's a positive sign, I think. And then the second metric we track is kind of depth of discount. You know, are we seeing this more broad-based desire to have a return to volume growth now leading to deeper discounts? And the answer is no, we have not seen that. And that's been that way for several quarters running. And I think that's positive because I think what it shows is that it's a rational environment. You know, everybody is to some degree investing margin in the service of volume. And, you know, I think that kind of keeps your feet on the ground here. So, yeah. It's been a rational environment, and I think there's room for us to do more in terms of merch. We moved, you know, back in the right direction, but we're not back to where we were, but obviously do it in a very rational way. So, that's our intent.

And our next question comes from Scott Marks from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, good morning, Sean, Dave. Thanks so much for taking your questions. First thing I wanted to ask about coming back to some of the recovery of the supply chain disruption from earlier this year. You've spoken about, obviously, recovery of your own service levels, rebuilding of your own inventories as well. Wondering how you're seeing it from the retailer side in terms of their inventory levels relative to where they were prior to the disruption on frozen vegetables and some of the chicken products. Thanks.

Good question, Scott. It's probably not a lot of drama in the answer, though. We're not seeing anything particularly noteworthy. So I would say pretty typical and, you know, nothing that I can report that would really be of any real news. Anything you'd add to that, Dick? Yeah, no. When we use the term service levels, they're very specific metrics in terms of where they are with their levels and inventory. And so, you know, customers are kind of back where they need to be, generally speaking.

Got it. Thanks for that. And then a follow-up question just on some of the chicken facility modernizations. I know you made the comment that you're still expecting the baked chicken facility to be completed in Q2. I think you're still working through a fried chicken modernization that's expected a little bit later. How should we be thinking about maybe cadence of recovery of of the margin, let's say. I know you spoke about some benefits in each too, but just trying to gauge, you know, how we should be thinking about the restoration of margin from that perspective. Thanks.

Sure. Well, the baked chicken project, that's the one we kind of started with, so that's farther along. And then the fried chicken is kind of a newer development because the demand for fried chicken has just exploded in the last couple of years, and we had tremendous success last year with our banquet mega filet. So that's an investment that will go on a little bit longer. And in the meantime, it'll be an investment that that moves some of that production out of the house, which has kind of a double whammy in that we lose the absorption of not producing it ourselves, and we pay a tolling fee for that. But that will correct as we go forward as well. So baked comes on first in terms of the benefit, and fried will follow that. I mean, the good news here is we sell a lot of healthy meals in frozen. And these days, the ones that contain protein are the ones that, not surprisingly, people are really buying. Unfortunately, it's also been the inflationary part of the basket. So we've got, you know, that's where we had a decision to make. in terms of what are we after short-term, volume or margin. And we fundamentally believe that the best thing for the future cash flows of our frozen business is to keep that consumer pull strong and keep our market share strong, and that's why we're investing some margin in the short term to really get that volume cranking.

Got it. We'll pass it on. Thanks very much. Thank you.

And our next question comes from Tom Palmer from JP Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.

Hey, thank you. Is round two here? You can hear me? We got you, Tom. All right, a third Palmer on the call. I wanted to just ask on the timing of inflation and kind of how it plays out over the course of the year. I think from the materials, it seems like to start off the year, maybe it was a little bit favorable to that kind of 7% plus. Is 2Q, just given what we're seeing with protein, maybe heightened? Or just, I guess, any help on kind of the cadence over the next three quarters as you see it today?

Yes, Tom, it's Dave. The Q1, the real favorability there was for tariffs and timing on tariffs. The core inflation was kind of where we thought it would be actually a little bit, tad bit higher. So when you kind of look at Q2 through Q4 and you look at overall inflation, it's pretty consistent from a percentage perspective to the full year guide of slightly above 7%.

There's no material change in the year-on-year percentage of the inflation.

Okay. Understood. Thank you for that. And then, Sean, I just wanted to kind of clarify, I guess, one item, and I know it's been asked about already a little bit, but it seems like you are seeing benefits from promotional activity, but at the same time, as you have kind of taken some pricing initially, maybe – you noted a little bit lower elasticity than you might see in the past. I mean, look, I guess some of this is maybe we're talking about different products where these two are applied. But I guess in the current environment, are you guys kind of baking in that one of these two sides shifts a little bit to converge?

I think what we're baking in, Tom, is that as we – roll out our innovation and our marketing support, including our advertising and our major merchandising events quick, we're going to have the kind of consumer pull that we've seen in the past. So that's on the more volume-oriented businesses. And then on the more dollar-oriented businesses, I think we've baked in a – historically accurate elasticity level. Usually that's around a minus one. And we have not seen any elasticities to suggest that that is an overly optimistic point of view at all. So I think in total, the outlook for both sides of, you know, the horses for courses concept is that it's prudent. And I expect, you know, good consumer response in the areas where we're investing to drive volume on frozen snacks as the year progresses. And I expect there will be an elasticity effect on canned goods and some other things that we're taking price on. But they should be fairly predictable effects consistent with history.

Thank you for that.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Matthew Nysus for closing remarks.

Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for joining us today. Please reach out to Investor Relations with any additional questions. Have a great day.

And, ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.