International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ISS fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the formal question and answer portion of the call. To ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to remove your name from the queue, please press star 2. Participants will be announced by their name and company. In order to give all participants an opportunity to ask their questions, we request a limit of one question per person. I would now like to introduce Michael Bender, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to IFF's fourth quarter and full year 2025 conference call. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a press release announcing our financial results. A copy of the release can be found on our IR website at ir.iff.com. Please note that this call is being recorded live and will be available for replay. During the call, we'll be making forward-looking statements about the company's performance and business outlook. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For additional information concerning the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to our cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our 10-K and press release, both of which can be found on our website. Today's presentation will include non-GAAP financial measures which exclude these items that we believe affect comparability. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the respective GAAP measures is set forth in the press release. Also, please note that all sales and EBITDA growth numbers that we'll be speaking to on the call are all on a comparable currency neutral basis unless otherwise noted. With me on the call today is our CEO, Eric Feerwald, and our CFO, Michael DeVoe. We will begin with prepared remarks and then take questions at the end. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Eric.

Thanks, Mike, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. IFF's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results reflect a continued focus on disciplined execution and improvements across the business to further strengthen our position in the market. I'll start today's call by briefly summarizing the progress we continue to make in executing our strategic priorities, followed by a few highlights of how this translated to our 2025 financial results. I'll then turn the call over to Mike DeVoe, who will provide more details on the fourth quarter, segment performance, and our outlook for 2026. Turning to slide six, in 2025, our team focused on strengthening our ability to drive profitable growth while also strengthening our balance sheet. We continued to reinvest in a disciplined way across our high-value core businesses, increasing R&D, commercial capability, and manufacturing capacity, investments that will pay off for years to come. And we did this while we delivered the full year financial commitments we set out at the beginning of 2025. And while there is a lot more to do, I am proud of how our global team continues to strengthen our ability to serve our customers with leading innovation and deliver productivity, even in a challenging volatile economic environment. Our strength and balance sheet reflects our more disciplined capital allocation strategy with our net debt to credit adjusted EBITDA down to 2.6. Our increased investments in innovation and commercial capabilities and CapEx and productivity initiatives are delivering today and making us stronger for the future. We've also taken strategic action to sharpen our portfolio so we can focus on high value innovation driven businesses. To recap, We completed the divestitures of Pharma Solutions, Nitrocellulose, and Rene Laurent businesses, and also announced an agreement to sell our soy crush, concentrates, and lecithin businesses to Bungee, which we expect to happen by April. And most recently, we officially launched the sale process for our food ingredients business. As we communicated in August, we began exploring strategic options for our food ingredients business as part of our portfolio optimization. And following several months of extensive preparation by our team, we formally launched a disciplined and competitive sale process, and as of two weeks ago, are officially in the market. And I'm very pleased with the progress we've made and believe this is the right next step for both the food ingredients business and for our taste, scent, and health and bioscience divisions. We are very encouraged by the depth and quality of interest from strategic and financial sponsors and are confident in our ability to execute this process thoughtfully and in the best interest of our shareholders. We will provide additional updates as appropriate. We are confident that the strength of our people, strategy, and execution positions us to deliver on our priorities for 2026 and beyond. We have the right leadership team in place, an engaged and supportive board, and an incredibly talented team of IFF colleagues. Now, while macroeconomic uncertainty will continue to persist through 2026, I am pleased how we are entering the year and have strong conviction in our ability to achieve consistent profitable growth and create long-term value for our shareholders. Turning to slide seven, we achieved solid sales growth in 2025 against a strong 6% year ago comparable in a tough macroeconomic environment. Over the last two years, we delivered average sales growth of 4%. Our 2025 performance was led by taste, which grew sales by 4% and grew EBITDA by 10%. In health and biosciences, sales improved 3%, and the team delivered a 7% increase in EBITDA. Since sales grew 3% against a strong year ago comparison of 12%, and increased EBITDA by 2%. The double-digit sales growth in fine fragrance was partially offset by negative growth in fragrance ingredients, where we saw double-digit declines in the commodity ingredients sales. In food ingredients, the team has done a great job continuing to drive margin improvement. And while sales were down, partly due to soft demand and partly due to the strategic exit of low-margin business, we achieved 10% EBITDA growth and 150 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. And on a consolidated basis, our overall profitability improved in 2025 as we delivered 7% EBITDA growth with 100 basis points of margin expansion through volume and productivity gains, as well as favorable net pricing. Now with that, I'll pass the call over to Mike to offer a closer look at this quarter's consolidated results. Mike?