Del Monte Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Del Monte Produce's first quarter 2023 earnings 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 this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn today's call over to Vice President, Corporate Communications with Fresh Del Monte Produce, Claudia Poe. Please go ahead, Ms. Poe.

Thank you, Christy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2023 conference call. As Christy mentioned, I am Claudia Poe, Vice President, Corporate Communications with Fresh Del Monte Produce. Joining me in today's discussion are Mohamed Abu Ghazali, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Monica Vicente, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I hope that 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 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 will be speaking to today includes 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, May 3rd, 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 first quarter 2023 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. Overall, our first quarter results were positive, reflecting our unwavering commitment to profitability through efficiency and optimization of resources. During the first quarter, our gross profit was $97 million and gross margin of 8.6% were stronger than the prior year period, which is reflective of our ongoing strategic efforts to further increase our profitability, despite the continued impact of inflation. We are starting to see more stability in the market by why inflation is moderating while still operating in an inflationary environment. Given our global footprint, foreign exchange rates posed significant headwinds for us this quarter as did the continuing increase in interest rates. We were able to achieve strong results despite the headwinds by remaining focused on optimizing our assets and unwavering commitment to improve profitability. This past quarter, we finalized the sale of three underutilized properties as part of our focus to optimize all corners of our business. We also recently upgraded the cargo capacity of six of our container ships by 10%, allowing us to expand our cargo services to fulfill new and existing customer needs. Additionally, we have solidified several new inland transportation and warehousing partnerships for our Tricom Trucking and Tricom Logistics companies. We are committed to expanding our third-party logistics business by land and sea as we further leverage our asset footprint in Latin America and the United States. Our continued focus on innovation and value-added products has led to a positive outlook and feedback from our customers, particularly our fresh-cut business. Consumers are looking for the convenience and value-added quality that fresh Del Monte provides. We continue to work one-on-one with our top customers in North America to generate mutually beneficial opportunities. We have seen an uptick in orders for bulk-cut produce, a new form of fresh-cut for us, as it is fulfilling a need for major retailers. We continue to innovate fresh-cut fruit and vegetables offering in collaboration with our customers to create win-win revenue scenarios and provide value-added products that meet our customers' and consumers' expectations. And finally, we have been recognized by Newsweek as one of America's most trusted companies of 23 for the second year in a row. We were rated on customer trust, investor trust, and entry trust. We are honored to be recognized once again for our honesty and transparency. As we look to the rest of 23, we will continue to identify places where we can innovate and push the produce industry forward. We will work towards leveraging our strength in agriculture and supply chain to become a technology-driven, sustainable company. Now I will turn the call to Monica to talk about the financial results. Monica.