Flowers Foods, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Flower Foods first quarter 2020 results conference call. At this time, our participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, J.T. Rick, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday evening, we released our first quarter results. Our earnings release and quarterly slide presentation are posted on the Investors section of the Flowers Foods website. Our 10-Q is available on the SEC website. Before we begin our discussion, please be aware that it may include forward-looking statements about the company's performance and other matters such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although we believe these statements to be reasonable, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. In addition to the matters we'll discuss during the call, important factors relating to Flowers Foods' business are fully detailed in our FTC filings. Participating on the call this morning are Riles McMullen, Flowers Foods' Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Kinsey, Chief Financial Officer. Riles, I'll turn the call over to you.

Okay. Thanks, JT. Good morning, everybody. I know we're one of your last calls amidst what's been a really hectic earnings season, I'm sure, for all of you. So thanks for joining us today. On behalf of Flowers, I do want to express my hope that you and your family and the ones you care about are staying safe and managing through this as best you can. These are certainly challenging times for everybody, and we've all had to pretty much adjust every aspect of our lives, both at home and at work. Our collective thoughts and prayers are certainly with all those who have been affected by the virus, including members of our own Flowers family. As we've worked to manage through the crisis, we've remained committed to three key priorities. First and foremost, obviously, it's imperative that we maintain a safe workplace and support our employees in every way possible. Second, it's crucial that we fulfill our obligation as a key part of the nation's food supply. And third, as always, we're committed to supporting the communities that we serve. As far as our team goes, it's really difficult to adequately describe how incredibly proud I am to serve them. Across our company, from plant operations to sales, distribution, head office, and support staff, their performance has been flat-out amazing. I firmly believe that our success during the quarter reflects the collective loyalty, commitment, and passion of our team. Our core values of service, integrity, and character have always been and always will be our guiding light, and those values serve us well as we navigated previously uncharted waters. I'm especially grateful for the hard work, dedication, and personal sacrifices of our frontline workers. Last month, we distributed incremental bonuses to our heroes to recognize their extraordinary efforts. Now, our top priority is ensuring the health and safety of the team, and in the early days of the crisis, we established a pandemic steering committee and a task force led by senior Flowers executives. We've carefully followed guidance from health authorities, and we've instituted a number of safeguards for the protection of our employees, including enhanced sanitation, wellness and temperature screenings, travel restrictions, The company provided masks for remote work and, of course, social distancing. We've also enhanced our benefit programs that are enabling our employees affected by the virus to care for themselves and their families. Despite these efforts, we have had some confirmed cases. And while certainly one affected employee is one too many, we have been fortunate in that we've experienced relatively few cases overall. And I think that robust bakery training, guidance, vigilance, constant communications from our pandemic task force are largely responsible for this result. So heartfelt thank you to all the members of the steering committee and the task force, as well as our regional vice presidents, plant general managers, and the broader team for helping us maintain the safe conditions of our facilities. We take very seriously our responsibility to help feed America. And we have an enormous responsibility to ensure our products are readily available to our consumers. Now, because our bakeries are strategically located around the country and close to the markets they serve, we were able to supply the market despite the unprecedented increase in retail demand. During the height of the panic buying in March, we streamlined our product assortment just like we do in advance of a hurricane, but in this case, we did it virtually nationwide. That allowed us to maximize production by focusing on longer runs of our best-selling items. Furthermore, we were able to reallocate some of our food service production to support the growth in the retail channel. Our production teams did an amazing job keeping up with the changing marketplace and ensuring our customers and consumers had the products they needed. For a number of weeks there, they were literally running around the clock. And our independent distributor partners played a key role and continued to faithfully serve their markets despite the personal risk. And finally, we have a deep connection to the many communities we serve, and as always, we're supporting them during this challenging time. That includes donations of food and supplies from our bakeries throughout the country to their local food banks, hospitals, and first responders. Like many companies, this year we're conducting our annual shareholder meeting virtually, and so we made the decision to donate a portion of the funds budgeted for that meeting to Second Harvest of South Georgia in conjunction with Feeding America. Flowers is a Feeding America mission partner, donating more than $10 million worth of baked goods last year, and this most recent gift enables the provision of approximately 450,000 meals for the hungry right here in South Georgia. Some of our bakeries with underutilized food service lines have worked with Feeding America's regional warehouses to provide millions of buns to food kitchens in need. So these three priorities, maintaining a safe workplace, helping to feed America, and supporting our communities, have been our North Star and have helped to guide us through. So later in the call, I'll discuss the current business environment and the steps we're taking to deal with this extraordinary situation. But first, I want to turn it over to Steve to review the details of the quarter and share our current outlook for 2020. Steve?