Del Monte Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Del Monte's produce third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Today's call is being broadcast live over the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn today's call over to Vice President, Global FP&A and Investor Relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce, Anna Miranda. Please go ahead, Ms. Miranda.

Thank you, Cheryl. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 conference call. As Cheryl mentioned, I am Anna Miranda, Vice President, Global FP&A and Investor Relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce. Joining me in today's discussion are Mohammed Abu Ghazali, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Monica Vicente, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I hope you've had a chance to review the press release that was issued earlier this morning via Business Wire. You may also visit the company's IR website at investorrelations.freshdelmonte.com to access today's earnings materials and to register for future distributions. This conference call is being webcast live on our website and will be available for replay after this call. Please note that our press release and our call today include non-GAAP measures, reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures as set forth in the press release and earnings presentation, which is available on our website. I would like to remind you that much of the information we'll be speaking to today, including the answers we give in response to your questions, may include forward-looking statements within the provisions of the Federal Securities Law's safe harbor. In today's press release and in our SEC filing, we detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from these forward-looking statements. Our statements are as of today, November 2nd, and we have no obligation to update them. Any forward-looking statements we may make. During the call, we'll provide a business update along with an overview of our third quarter 2022 financial results. With that, I'm pleased to turn today's call over to Muhammad.

Thank you, Anna, and good morning, everyone. and thank you for joining our third quarter 2022 conference call. As mentioned, thank you, Anna, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. As per our press release, we delivered another solid quarter with strong performance across our entire operations. We generated strong net sales and profitability despite ongoing macroeconomic headwinds. Our team's efforts enabled us to thrive this quarter in the face of wide range challenges, including persistent inflation, geopolitical risks, and volatility in the fuel market, to name a few. During the third quarter, our net sales increased 5% compared with the prior year period. We saw a continuation of our robust top-line trend, marking six consecutive quarters of growth versus the prior year's periods. We realized adjusted EBITDA of $58 million, representing more than a two-fold increase compared with the prior year's period. As a result, we posted a robust adjusted EBITDA margin of 5.5%. Gross margin in our fresh and value-added segment was 9.2%, the highest level achieved in two years, benefiting from product mix of higher margin products. We accomplished these results while maintaining a healthy balance sheet. Our debt balance remained relatively in line with the same period last year, below $490 million. Our adjusted leverage ratio came in at 2.4 times. We invested $13 million in CapEx with an emphasis on automation, including an optical sorters for our leading snap piece program and process enhancements in our fresh cut facilities. All while maintaining our dividend payout of 15 cents per share as part of our continuing commitment to retain cash to shareholders. In October, we launched exciting new higher margin product offerings in the ready to eat and convenience category. I'm proud of the team's commitment to provide wholesome and convenient offerings based on developing value added products aligned with our deep understanding of consumer insights and trends. In keeping with delivering on diversification and expanded technology solutions during the quarter, We invested in Decopolis, a startup technology company that provides blockchain-driven traceability technology for the food industry. The technology focuses on capturing each stage of production from planting to distribution. We believe this will enable our food-conscious consumer to see a complete log of product information from farm to table. During the quarter, we also finalized an agreement with a tech firm to digitize our network shipping operation, which we believe will make our ocean logistics more attractive to commercial cargo customers. This will allow us to automate manual processes, including scheduling, contract management, and vessel tracking. Year-to-date, our other product and services segment has realized significant top and bottom line growth driven by our commercial cargo services. Although the category is benefiting from transitory logistical pressures due to market conditions, we remain keenly focused on continuing to expand this double digit margin offering. On ESG, we recently published our 2021 sustainability report which shows solid progress toward achieving our 2030 goals, including significant improvement toward the reduction of our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to delivering 95% of our food waste from landfills and having 82% of our global product volume being certified as sustainably grown by third parties. In line with our efforts to evolve and improve, this year marks the first time we are reporting in conformance with the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board within the agricultural products for the food and beverage industry. As we close out the fourth quarter, we expect broad-based cost pressures to continue to impact our results, but at a more stabilized rate. we don't foresee input costs getting worse from current levels. Having said that, fluctuations in exchange rates are expected to continue to go against us in key selling markets in Europe and Asia. We are partially hedged against movements in the Euro and Japanese Yen through the end of the year, helping us mitigate a portion of the impact. I remain confident in our growth path grounded on profitable sales, disciplined expense management, digital transformation, and sustainability, all while remaining true to our core mission of high-quality fresh and fresh-cut fruit and vegetables. Now I will take the call over to Monica to talk about the third quarter financial. Please, Monica.