Flowers Foods, Inc.

Good evening, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Flowers Food First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. Please be advised that today's event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your opening speaker today, J.T. Rick, Executive Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Carmen, and good evening. I hope everyone had the opportunity to review our earnings relief. listen to our prepared remarks, and view the slide presentation that were all posted earlier on our investor relations website. After today's Q&A session, we will also post an audio replay of this call. Please note that in this Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements about the company's performance. 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 what you hear in these remarks, important factors relating to Flowers Foods' business are fully detailed in our SEC filings. We also provide non-GAAP financial measures for which disclosure and reconciliations are provided in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation on our website. Joining me today are Riles Van Gullen, Chairman and CEO, and Steve Kinsey, our CFO. Riles, I'll turn it over to you. Okay, thanks JT and good evening everybody. Thanks for joining our first quarter call and we also appreciate everybody's flexibility in accommodating the change in timing for our Q&A session today. Our solid first quarter results reflect the increasing effectiveness of our portfolio strategy driven by investments in marketing and innovation. Our brands gain share despite the challenging consumer environment. Significantly, we also grew branded retail volumes for the first time since 2020. Day's Killer Bread led the way with its second consecutive quarter of 10% unit growth, but we saw encouraging signs across the brand portfolio, and we continue to expand our margins in our away-from-home and private label businesses. We are maintaining our financial outlook for the year, which incorporates continued volume improvement while acknowledging the ongoing economic uncertainty and its potential impact on consumer behavior and the promotional environment. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, if there's one thing I'd like for you to take away from this call is that we're doing exactly what we said we would do. Although progress is not linear, we'll continue to execute our portfolio strategy with the expectation of achieving our long-term financial targets. And I'm extremely confident in our growth potential, and I look forward to continuing our progress throughout 2024. So with that, Carmen, we'll open it up for questions.

Thank you so much. And as a reminder, If you do have a question, press star 11 to get in the queue and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile our first question. And it comes from Steve Powers from Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.