International Flavors & Fragrances, Inc.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IFF first quarter 2026 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 first quarter 2026 earnings 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 their respective GAAP measures is set forth in the press release. Also, please note that all the sales and EBITDA growth numbers that we will 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 Fehrwald, 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. Thank you all for joining us today. IFF's first quarter 2026 results reflect our continued focus on execution while serving customers with leading innovations and driving productivity and cash flow. Even amid uncertain market conditions around the world, we're making solid progress on our commitments as we continue to strengthen IFF for long-term success. I'll start today's call by briefly summarizing the first quarter, and then I'll talk about the key strategic progress we have made so far this year. I'll then turn the call over to Mike, who will provide more details on the first quarter results, segment performance, and our outlook for 2026. Turning to slide six, our team delivered a solid start to the year in the first quarter. Across all our businesses, we delivered solid sales growth driven by volume improvements. Our health and biosciences segment led with mid-single digit sales growth, while taste, food, ingredients, and scent all grew low single digits. This growth, combined with our productivity initiatives, resulted in a higher margin. In the first quarter, we also generated a strong free cash flow improvement compared to last year. This reflects a focus on cash, including working capital. Over the past few years, we have made significant progress simplifying our portfolio. This strategic effort is resulting in our being able to focus and reinvest in our core and highest growth businesses while achieving our deleveraging targets. In March, we completed the divestiture of our commodity soy crush, concentrates, and lessons in business to Bungie for $110 million. Looking ahead, the sale process for our food ingredients business continues to make very good progress. While we do not have any additional information to share today, we're pleased by the strong interest in this business, and we will let you know as soon as there is news to share. In the first quarter, we also announced regional production and added innovation capabilities to better support the continued strong growth of our health and biosciences business in Latin America. This includes the startup of our Arellito site in Argentina, our first full fermentation-based enzyme production in the region, and we opened a household care application laboratory at IFS Innovation Center in Brazil. Together, these will improve our speed, reliability, and locally relevant solution for markets, including brewing, animal nutrition, biofuels, and home care. Now, with respect to the macroeconomic environment, including the ongoing Middle East conflict, it is clear that uncertainty and challenges will continue to persist through 2026. But we remain focused on advancing our commercial and innovation pipelines, driving productivity, and working with customers to offset inflation. This, when combined with our solid start to the year, De-risks the balance of the year and gives us the confidence to reaffirm our full year 2026 financial guidance ranges despite this uncertain environment. IFF's diversified portfolio, the essential nature of our business, strong value proposition, and discipline execution position us well to navigate ongoing volatility. In sum, we are doing what we said we would do with discipline and clarity. IFF is laser focused on achieving the strategic goals we clearly laid out two years ago. Our leadership team and our highly dedicated IFFers all around the globe are committed to delivering high value products that anticipate and solve the evolving needs of our customers. While there's more to do, I'm proud of our progress and how our global team keeps strengthening how we serve customers to enable us to deliver on our commitments. And with that, I'll pass the call over to Mike to offer a closer look at this quarter's consolidated results. Mike?