Energizer Holdings, Inc.

and welcome to the Energizer Holdings Inc. first quarter fiscal year 2021 results 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 then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jackie Burwitz, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Energizer's first quarter fiscal 2021 conference call. Joining me today are Mark Levine, Chief Executive Officer, Tim Gorman, Chief Financial Officer, and John Drabik, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer. A replay of this call will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website, energizerholdings.com. In addition, a slide deck providing detailed financial results for the quarter is also posted on our website. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements about the company's future business and financial performance, among other matters. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risk and uncertainties, including those resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which may cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. We do not undertake to update these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation slides and in the reports we file with the SEC. We also refer in our presentation to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP measures is shown in our press release issued earlier today, which is available on our website. Information concerning our categories and market share discussed on this call relates to markets where we compete and is based on Energizer's internal data. data from industry analysis, and estimates we believe to be reasonable. This quarter, e-commerce data is not included in our category overview due to a restatement of the external database. Unless otherwise noted, all comments regarding the quarter and year pertain to Energizer's fiscal year, and all comparisons to prior year relate to the same period in fiscal 2020. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Mark.

Thanks, Jackie, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to be here this morning to share our first quarter results. which reflects strong performance as elevated demand, expanded distribution, and improved execution led to earnings growth. Our team has moved with speed to address the ongoing challenges of operating in this environment, while continuing to focus on keeping each other healthy and safe. As I will talk about in a moment, while the pandemic-driven demand is the main story, we remain focused on our business strategies to ensure that we are well-positioned as the pandemic subsides. Leading with innovation, operating with excellence, and driving productivity are the keys to our success both now and into the future. Looking at the results for the quarter. We maintained our top-line momentum with strong sales across categories and markets around the world, resulting in organic sales growth of 12.7%, with battery up 11% and auto care up 27% globally. We delivered adjusted gross margin of 40.7% as we were able to meet the demand while incurring lower incremental costs than we did last quarter. This combination of strong top line growth and improving margins resulted in adjusted earnings per share growth of 38% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 17%. We were also able to take advantage of low interest rates to refinance a portion of our debt, which will result in significantly reduced interest expense going forward. We are off to a solid start for the fiscal year. With lower interest expenses due to the refinancing, we are increasing our outlook for the full year adjusted earnings per share to a new range of 310 to 340. In a few minutes, Tim will provide more detail on the results for the quarter as well as our view for the full year. Let me start with category trends where we continue to see strong consumer demand. As Jackie mentioned earlier, our category data this quarter does not include e-commerce due to an external database restatement. Globally, battery category value was up 6.9%, and we continue to see consumers purchasing batteries for immediate use. Consumers have increased the number of devices they own as well as their usage of those devices. With a gain of 2.5 SharePoints, Energizer is growing faster than the category, driven by distribution gains in the U.S. and in international markets, including Canada, France, Korea, and the U.K. With auto care, the U.S. category grew more than 10% as a result of changes in consumer behavior, including an increased focus on cleaning and disinfecting, as well as an increase in do-it-yourself activities. During the quarter, Energizer's auto care share was flat, Of note during the quarter, we did see strong growth in non-measured channels, including e-commerce, home center, and international markets. In auto care, we are meeting the needs of consumers by rolling out innovation and strengthening our product pipeline. We recently launched an Armor All disinfectant, as consumers are more focused than ever on keeping their cars clean and disinfected. We also acquired a small formulations business, which to date has primarily commercialized household disinfectants. The robust portfolio of innovative cleaning, disinfecting, and odor-eliminating formulations we've acquired is an extremely attractive addition to our R&D pipeline and is expected to enhance our leadership in auto care. In looking at e-commerce, while we don't have consumption data this quarter, based on our sales, we continue to see solid e-commerce performance versus prior periods. Our investments and ongoing focus are paying off, and positioning us to lead well into the future. If we take a step back, the pandemic-driven demand in our categories has been and for the foreseeable future will continue to be the main story. And while our priority will be to successfully navigate a very complicated operating environment in order to meet this elevated demand efficiently, we are also undertaking initiatives to emerge from this period poised for growth in the future. As we are nearing completion of our integration efforts, including the recent bolt-on acquisitions, we are also undertaking several initiatives to modernize our core operational capabilities. Let me take a moment to provide an update on these initiatives. Despite the challenges of this past year, our integration activities for the battery and auto care acquisitions have continued and are scheduled for completion by the end of 2021. In the first quarter, we realized $20 million in synergies, and we remain on track to achieve $40 to $45 million in 2021 and to deliver more than $100 million in total synergies. We also closed on the acquisition of an Indonesian battery plant, which contributed significantly to our ability to meet the strong demand during the quarter and will enable further efficiencies in the future. In addition to the integration activities, we have launched several significant projects to modernize our core. As the pandemic-related shifts have shown very clearly, we must become a more digitally advanced organization in order to ensure we can meet the demands of the consumer in a rapidly changing operating environment. We are transforming our global product supply organization by moving to an end-to-end category structure, which will create greater agility within each category and closer connections to customers and consumers. We are also investing in our business planning tools and supply planning analytics to provide more predictive insights which are needed for today's environment. The end result will be a product supply organization that is better equipped to capitalize on opportunities while also enhancing our ability to navigate disruption. These efforts are already paying off as we were able to meet the continued elevated demand, especially in batteries, with lower than expected COVID related costs. This project will continue to be important in the near term to meet demand and in the medium term to take better advantage of opportunities across our business. We are also investing in more advanced data and analytics capabilities, which will enable us to better detect and understand in near real time impacts to the business from shifting consumer behavior and macroeconomic events, such as mixed shifts in markets or products. Armed with the most recent data and insights, our commercial and marketing teams can respond and more effectively connect with consumers and drive growth in our business. These projects, as well as other smaller ones, will enhance our ability to operate more effectively and will also drive out costs from the business. We are committed to the efficient, low-cost operating model you have seen from us in the past, while being equally committed to ensuring we have the flexibility to invest in opportunities to drive future growth. We believe these initiatives will allow us to do both. Before I turn it over to Tim, I also wanted to provide some perspective on how we are thinking about the future. Our strategic priorities of leading with innovation, operating with excellence and driving productivity have served us well as we navigated the pandemic and they will remain critical going forward. However, 2020 also provided significant insight that will enable Energizer to emerge as a stronger, more resilient and dynamic company. The pandemic reminded us that consumers are at the heart of what we do. Fundamentally, it was consumer behavior that drove disruption. As their habits and routines changed, they gravitated to trusted brands and engaged with our categories in new and different ways. They accelerated the changes in how they consume information and ultimately how they shop. Our consumer insights, combined with our powerhouse brands, enable us to create value for our retail partners by ensuring we are there to meet consumers where they are going. Remaining consumer-focused, investing in our brands, and ensuring we can adapt at the speed of the marketplace are the keys to our success in the future. We will leverage the best attributes of a large-scaled organization with the mentality of a startup, where small teams are unleashed to focus on critical initiatives. With that, I will now turn things over to Tim, who will provide more details about our financial performance for the quarter, including our refinancing efforts, capital allocation, and our outlook for the fiscal year. Tim?