Ingredion Incorporated

good day and thank you for standing by welcome to the q1 2026 ingredient incorporated earnings conference call at this time all participants are in a listen-only mode please be advised that today's conference is being recorded after the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session to ask a question please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced to withdraw your question please press star 1 1 again I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Noah Weiss, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Good morning, and welcome to Ingredient's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Noah Weiss, Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are Jim Zally, our Chairman, President, and CEO, and Jason Payant, our Vice President and Interim CFO. The press release we issued today, as well as the presentation we will reference for our first quarter results, can be found on our website, Ingredion.com, in the Investors section. As a reminder, our comments within the presentation may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and include expectations and assumptions regarding the company's future operations and financial performance. Actual results could differ materially from those estimated in the forward-looking statements, and Ingredion assumes no obligation to update them in the future as or if circumstances change. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed during today's conference call or in this morning's press release can be found in the company's most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. During this call, we also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. including adjusted earnings per share, adjusted operating income, and adjusted effective tax rate, which are reconciled to U.S. GAAP measures in Note 2, non-GAAP information included in the press release and in today's presentation appendix. With that, I will turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, Noah, and good morning, everyone. While we expected a challenging quarter after last year's strong first quarter, results were weaker than anticipated in food and industrial ingredients U.S.-Canada due to operational challenges at our Argo facility. At the same time, performance in our texture and healthful solutions and food and industrial ingredients LATAM segments were in line with our expectations despite an increasingly uncertain macroeconomic environment. Overall, net sales were down 1%, and adjusted operating income was down 22% versus last year, driven by Argo and softer industry volumes in food and industrial ingredients, U.S. Canada and LATAM. As expected, our texture and healthful solution segment delivered a solid quarter, with broad-based volume growth reflecting increased adoption of our expanding solutions portfolio and continued customer demand for clean label offerings. Turning to the next slide, we are pleased that our texture and healthful solution segment posted its eighth straight quarter of volume growth, up 2%, led by clean label and texture solutions in EMEA and Asia-PAC. In food and industrial ingredients LATAM, overall volumes were slightly down for the quarter due to expected weaker consumer demand versus a strong first quarter last year. We saw a modest recovery in Brazil, supported by improved customer demand and early benefits from our Polyol's network optimization completed at the end of last year. Additionally, this morning, we announced plans to cease operations at our Cabo manufacturing facility in northeast Brazil by end of quarter two, as we drive enterprise productivity to deliver operational efficiencies while sharpening customer mix priorities. We expect the actions we have taken in Brazil, both commercially and operationally, to deliver continued benefits throughout the year. In our food and industrial ingredients US-Canada segment, net sales volumes declined 7% in the first quarter, driven primarily by operational issues at our Argo facility, as well as softer demand across certain food, and industrial markets. As noted earlier, food and industrial ingredients US-Canada results were negatively impacted by ARGO in the quarter. Within our February outlook, we expected $10 to $15 million of additional costs to impact the quarter as the facility recovered to normal grind rates. However, additional operational challenges slowed the recovery and negatively impacted saleable inventory. As a result, the actual quarter one impact was much greater than anticipated, coming in at $40 million comprised of higher maintenance spend and the costs associated with elevated levels of rework. Additionally, we incurred higher logistics costs as we sourced products from other facilities in our network to meet customer commitments. In response to challenges in our refinery operations, we took meaningful actions during the quarter to diagnose and remedy the sources of process failures. We assembled a multidisciplinary team of internal and external experts in refinery unit operations and are pleased to say that downstream production returned to normal levels by quarter end. Unfortunately, in the midst of this progress, on April 10th, there was an isolated thermal event in Argo's corn germ processing operations. While the front-end grind and refinery were not impacted, crude oil production went offline. Our teams are working diligently to restore our germ processing capabilities, and we expect to return to normal operations in this unit within the second quarter. Our balance of the year assumptions for food and industrial ingredients, U.S.-Canada, are based on the germ processing recovery timeline that I just outlined, as well as sustaining current levels of production and yield through the refinery operations at Argo. turning to a significant driver of texture and healthful solutions growth in the quarter. Our solution sales continue to outpace overall segment growth. As a reminder, our solutions portfolio is approximately $1 billion, or 40% of this segment's revenue. Clean label remains a major growth driver within our solutions offering. It is noteworthy to point out that even against a challenging volume backdrop, customers continue to seek clean label options. Our industry leading portfolio of functional native starches grew strongly in the quarter, benefiting from sustained customer demand for simpler ingredient panels and increased reformulation support. Examples include customized texturizing systems for dairy and dairy alternative applications, as well as solutions supporting reformulation for healthier bakery and beverage platforms. Solutions growth is coming from more than just clean label ingredients. It also reflects the breadth of our capabilities and how we are partnering with customers through co-development, providing formulation expertise, and differentiated ingredients. This combination is helping us deepen customer engagement and improve mix within texture and healthful solutions. As part of the innovation engine for solutions, we are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence to power the consumer insights and predictive formulation work that are at the heart of our solutions customer briefs. This is helping us accelerate the brief to solution cycle time. Moving to another bright spot in the quarter, our healthful solutions portfolio comprised of clean taste solutions. for sugar reduction and protein fortification continued to grow strongly. Sales of our pea protein isolates, driven by recent new product innovations, grew more than 50% in the quarter. And our clean tasting Stevia-based solutions also demonstrated a solid 6% growth in the quarter. Growth in these categories is broad-based across both branded and private label, reflecting the heightened consumer pull for protein fortified and lower sugar offerings. As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we are actively monitoring and managing both the direct and secondary effects of higher energy prices. The largest impact we foresee is related to increased logistics costs, which we are actively working to offset with in-year price increases. It's important to mention that at this point, we don't foresee major challenges related to sourcing any of our important manufacturing inputs. The work done in recent years to increasingly localize our supply chains should position us well to mitigate disruptions. We are also monitoring the impact higher energy costs are having on packaging inflation and gasoline prices and the effect that together they could have on consumer demand in the second half. At this point, it's too early to estimate the degree to which these inflationary pressures may impact volumes. We are also carefully monitoring fluctuations in the value of the US dollar. The Mexican peso has unexpectedly maintained its strength, and this is presenting a meaningful transactional foreign exchange headwind for F&II LATAM segment. The dynamics brought on by new inflationary headwinds are familiar to us, as we have successfully managed through these periods before. We have the operational experience to react with agility, and we are leveraging our pricing centers of excellence to implement targeted price increases where they are required and where possible. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jason for the financial review.