Del Monte Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Del Monte Produce's fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2022 conference call. Today's conference 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 the Q&A session, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn today's call over to the Vice President, Corporate Communications with Fresh Del Monte Produce, Claudia Poe. Please go ahead, Ms. Poe.

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2022 conference call. As Regina mentioned, I'm Claudia Poe, Vice President of Corporate Communications with Fresh Del Monte Produce. Joining me in today's discussion are Mohamed Abou Ghazali, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Monica Vicente, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I hope that you had a chance to review the press release that was issued earlier this morning via BusinessWire. You may also visit the company's IR website at investorrelations.freshlamonte.com to access today's earnings materials and 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 and the other required disclosures are 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 Security Law's safe harbor. In today's press release and in our SEC filings, we detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from these forward-looking statements. Our statements are as of today, February 22nd, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statement we may make. During the call, we will provide a business update along with an overview of our fourth quarter and full year 2022 financial results, followed by a question and answer session. With that, I am pleased to turn today's call over to Mohamed.

Thank you, Claudia. Good morning, everyone. Fourth quarter of 2022 has been our best performing fourth quarter in recent history, led by strong net sales and strong margins. Our net sales for the fourth quarter were the strongest since quarter four of 2018. In quarter four, 2022, we had our best margins in the past 10 fourth quarters, now at 8% versus 4% in 2021. And our gross profit for the quarter was the best since fourth quarter of 2016. Overall, for the year, we closed out 2022 in a much stronger position than 2021. We believe this reflects our commitment to remaining flexible and agile, controlling our costs, leveraging our assets, and optimizing new and existing partnerships. It was a challenging microeconomic environment for our business, as costs for packaging, materials, fertilizers, transportation, and labor remained elevated throughout the year. Yet, we focused our efforts on being flexible and mitigating the risks associated where we can. During the year, we sought to control costs and implemented inflation-justified price increase to offset some of the increased costs. And while Fresh Del Monte is most notably known for being a global produce marketer and distributor, it's important to know that we are also a logistic provider. In 2022, we made a conscious effort to leverage our assets wherever we can within our vertically integrated network. Net sales in our other products and services segment, which includes third-party ocean freight services, increased 24% for the quarter, and 45% for the year compared with 2021. We are extremely proud of the expanded partnership between Network Shipping and sister companies, Tricom Tracking and Tricom Logistics, and the work we are doing at various ports. We are helping to further extend the ocean service that Network Shipping has perfected into the inland marketplace. This allows us to offer customers a one-stop shop for the logistic needs within Latin America and the United States. Our customer relationships are also assets to us. In 2022, we focused on optimizing our relationships. We optimized by innovating based on customer needs. We found new ways to work with our top volume customers to make these relationships more efficient, yet profitable. We continue to innovate with our products, focusing on creating more value-added products that meet our customers' and consumers' expectations. While we are confident in our capabilities and services, we are continuously improving and investing in technology, processes, and people to keep our edge. The release of our transportation management systems TMS in 2023 for our inland logistic arm is just the next step in a multi-year plan for continued growth as a technology-driven company. We have dedicated numerous years, including a large part of 22, working to perfect Avocado productability using artificial intelligence and our rich data library. We have reached almost 95% predictability on pricing and we are close to perfecting the technology with supply and demand for avocados. We see this technology as a big step forward for the produce industry and are proud to be the pioneers on this front. We expect to eventually expand this use of AI to our other products. Our focus for 2023 will be continued technology-focused innovation and leadership in the produce industry. We want to stay flexible and agile as we continue to pursue partnerships that will allow us to optimize our assets, which include logistics, warehousing, and distribution. Now I will turn the call to Monica to talk about the financial results. Monica?