Del Monte Corporation

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Del Monte Produce's fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2023 conference call. Today's conference call is being broadcast live over the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one 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 2023 conference call. As Regina mentioned, I'm Claudia Poe, Vice President, Corporate Communications with Fresh Del Monte Produce. Joining me in today's discussion are Muhammad 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 material and to register for future distribution. 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 will 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 filings, we detail risks that may cause our future results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Our statements are as of today, February 26th, 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 2023 financial results, followed by a question and answer session. With that, I am pleased to turn today's call over to Mr. Bugazali.

Thank you, Claudia, and good morning, everyone. As you have read in our press release, our strong gross margins and cash flow enabled us to have strong adjusted earnings per share growth. It allowed us to reduce our loan debt by $140 million and end the year with an adjusted leverage ratio of 1.7 times. And allowed us to continue returning value to shareholders and increased our quarterly dividend by 25% for the second year in a row. In the fall of 2023, we conducted a strategic review and assessed our operational priorities of our North America operations, including man packing. Preliminary findings of this review were finalized in the fourth quarter. As a result of this strategic review and other factors, we recorded a non-cash impairment of $131.2 million in the quarter related to our man packing operation. We are exploring strategic alternatives for this business, all while continuing to focus on our long-term drivers for enhancing shareholder value for 2024. Fresh Del Monte has been leading pineapple innovation since the 1990s, with the debut of the Del Monte Gold Extra Sweet Pineapple, the first of its kind at that time. Since then, our robust pineapple program has released the Pink Glow pineapple, the Honey Glow pineapple, the Del Monte Zero pineapple, and just a few weeks ago, the Ruby Glow pineapple, a new premium hybrid pineapple. In 2023, we saw continued strong demand for our Honey Glow and Pink Glow pineapples, with sales growing by approximately 25%. for these varieties in the year 23 compared with 22. In 2024, we will continue to focus on our pineapple program by working to expand the reach of our existing varieties and our new Ruby Glow variety. During 2023, we made significant progress on our asset optimization program and sold underutilized and non-strategic assets, which generated cash proceeds of $120 million. This included two distribution centers and related assets in Saudi Arabia, an idle production facility in North America, our plastic business subsidiary in South America, idle land assets in South and Central America, and two carrier vessels. This combined with our strong operating cash flow fed into our ability to reduce our long-term debt to 400 million at the end of 23 compared to 450 million at the end of 22. We also raised our quarterly dividend, sorry, 500 million at the end of 22. We also raised our quarterly dividend to 25 cents per share a 25% increase from the previous quarter. Fresh cut fruit is a strength that we are leaning into this year. Our fresh cut fruit top line has grown more than 50% in the past three years. We attribute this to innovating around products, packaging, and forming strategic partnerships with customers and brands. We will focus on further expanding this category in North America. Europe, and Asia, and also by focusing on increasing the mix from the higher margin value-added product in our portfolio. In 2023, we achieved the highest adjusted gross margin since 2016, coming in at 8.2%, which was driven by our ability to control costs, optimize our assets, and focus on profitable growth. We are laser-focused on our vision and strategy, which is rooted in enhancing shareholder value. While our bananas play an important part in generating strong cash flow to fuel our innovation, we believe we will get there by focusing our strength on pineapples. Fresh cut and residues areas, where we have the capability to innovate and be leaders. We see tremendous opportunities for our company to drive growth through innovation. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Monica Vicente, our Chief Financial Officer, who will get into the results. Monica.