General Mills, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the General Mills Inc. second quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call. 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. And to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Seaman, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. You may begin.

Thank you, Sarah. And hello to everyone. Thanks for joining us today for our Q&A session on our second quarter fiscal 26 results. I hope everyone had time to review our press release, listen to our prepared remarks, and view our presentation materials, which we made available this morning on our investor relations website. Please note that in our Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. Please refer to this morning's press release for factors that could impact forward-looking statements and for reconciliations of non-GAAP information, which may be discussed on today's call. I'm here today with Jeff Harmoning, our Chairman and CEO, Kofi Bruce, our CFO, and Dana McNabb, Group President of North America Retail and North America Pet. Now let me turn it over to Jeff for some opening remarks.

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning, everybody. When we started this year, our primary goal was to increase organic sales, and to do that, in conjunction with continuing to outperform on holistic margin management and our transformation initiatives. And those are all reflected in our three priorities for the year. And as you look at our Q2 results, I'm pleased to say that we're really executing well against all of those. And we continue to see improvement in organic sales and continue to do that very efficiently through our HMM efforts and our transformation efforts. And in particular, I look at North America retail and we said, We would improve our North America retail volumes through the remarkability framework. And that's exactly what we've done. And part of that is pricing. We set strategic based price adjustments on base pricing and to get under price cliffs. And 90 plus percent of what we've done in pricing that we started talking to you about a year ago has worked as well or better than what we had thought. So we're pleased with that. But importantly, the remarkability framework doesn't just stop with pricing actions. And our new product innovation is better. We expect it to be up about 25% this year. We've got a good lineup in the second half. Our product news is really good. Our events have worked harder for us and our media ROIs are up. And so as I think about our North America retail business, it's not really an accident that we're growing pound share in eight of our top 10 categories so far this year. And so I'm really pleased with the way North America has improved its momentum this year, in particular how we've seen improved momentum in the second quarter. Then we, you know, on North America Pet, we said we had to do a couple of things. We need to improve our core business at the same time, incorporate love made fresh. I know there's a lot of emphasis on love made fresh and rightly so, but I'm pleased with our base business performance as I look at As I look at our life protection formula, we back to share growth on that. Our CAC business is growing mid single digits. We're up in pound share on our treats business. We have some more work to do on wilderness, but otherwise, our pet core business has gained a little momentum too, and we're pleased with that. And so as we look at Love Made Fresh, I'm just exceptionally pleased with the way we started on Love Made Fresh. And we're executing very well. We said we'd be in about 5,000 coolers by the year end. I heard yesterday morning that we're in 4,658. So we're well on our way to that 5,000, and we'll get there by the end of January. And our Love Made Fresh launch has reached about 5% market share. in our earliest first wave customers. And so we're pleased with that. We prioritize having plenty of inventory across our business on Love Made Fresh because we know that trial is so important for our business. And even if that trial costs a little bit more because we've got too much inventory in one place or another, it's well worth it to make sure that consumers can try our product. And when they try it, they like it. 4.8 out of five star ratings on our products. We know that is the case. And so we're really pleased with the way we've started. We'll put on additional customers and distribution in the third quarter, as well as launch a new format of the stand-up receivable pouch. And so pleased with Blue Buffalo. And then, you know, as we talk about HMM, we're tracking another 5% of HMM this year. So pleased with that, as well as our our transformation efforts. And so as we look to the second half, the job to do really is to keep the momentum on the top line. And we plan to do that, as well as then turn the corner on profitability. And as we look ahead, you know, we expect top line improvement in the second half, and then profit growth in the fourth quarter, thanks in part to favorable trade timing and the 53rd week. So with that, open it up to questions that you all have. Great, Sarah.