Kellanova

Good morning. Welcome to the Kellogg Company's first quarter 2021 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 with the publishing analysts. Please note, this event is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to John Renwick, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Planning for Kellogg Company. Mr. Renwick, you may begin your conference call.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for a review of our first quarter 2021 results, as well as an update regarding our outlook for the full year 2021. I'm joined this morning by Steve Cahillane, our Chairman and CEO, and Amit Banati, our Chief Financial Officer. Slide number three shows our forward-looking statements disclaimer. As you are aware, certain statements made today, such as projections for Kellogg Company's future performance, are forward-looking statements. Actual results could be materially different from those projected. For further information concerning factors that could cause these results to differ, please refer to the third slide of this presentation as well as to our public SEC filings. This is a particular note during the current COVID-19 pandemic when the length and severity of the crisis and resultant economic and business impacts are so difficult to predict. A recording of today's webcast and supporting documents will be archived for at least 90 days on the investor page of KelloggCompany.com. As always, when referring to our results and outlook, unless otherwise noted, we will be referring to them on an organic basis for net sales and on a currency neutral adjusted basis for operating profit and earnings per share. And now I'll turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I hope you and your families are doing well and staying healthy. Here at Kellogg, I'm continuously impressed by the way our organization has remained focused and engaged in executing through what are undeniably challenging circumstances, both at work and at home. Keeping employees safe remains job number one. And in quarter one, we continued to execute safety protocols while following the guidance of local health authorities. Supplying the world with food continued to require agility, including temporary labor and incremental capacity. And of course, we continued to actively support our communities. After all, the pandemic is not behind us. In fact, in some parts of the world, we are seeing it accelerate, and our thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected. Turning to slide number six, our deploy for balanced growth strategy remains as relevant and effective as ever during this pandemic. Its growth boosters continue to do their job. As much as anything else, this pandemic has prompted a shift in eating occasions. Our focus on occasions continued to be evident in the first quarter in our tailored consumer messaging and an innovation geared towards specific occasions. The portfolio that we've shaped toward growth has benefited from balance of convenient meals, snacking that can be done at home, plant-based foods, and sustained growth in emerging markets. Our building of world-class brands has been evident in our commitment to continued equity-building communication, as well as leveraging our data and analytics to devise creative ways to reach new consumers and sustain momentum in the marketplace. And our commitment to perfect service, perfect store, tested by the sudden and sharp rise in demand, has forced us to get creative around ways to increase throughput, even if it meant temporarily holding back on merchandising activity to ensure inventory and incurring incremental logistics costs to get food to our customers. and we continue to grow rapidly in e-commerce, leveraging our enhanced capabilities there. Environmental, social, and governance is not a new area of focus for Kellogg. It's been embedded in our history and strategy for a long, long time. Our ESG-oriented Better Days boosters, always a key element of our strategy, have become more important to our communities, employees, customers, and consumers. At Cagney a few months ago, We discussed our Global Better Days purpose and strategy, and on slide number seven, you can see that we continue to progress in this area, addressing the interconnected issues of health, hunger relief, and climate. On nourishing with our foods, we've continued to innovate and renovate our foods, providing choices across wellness and indulgence, and during the quarter, our Kashi became the first organic cereal to be authorized for the Women, Infants, and Children program in the United States. On feeding people in need, we've remained in an elevated level of donations, making accelerated progress toward our goal of feeding 375 million families. During the first quarter, Pop-Tarts joined with the United Way to raise money for school vegetable gardens. On nurturing our planet, we announced during the first quarter our commitment to achieve over 50% renewable electricity to address Kellogg manufacturing globally by the end of 2022. and we celebrated women farmers as part of International Women's Day. And underliving our founders' values, we launched in the first quarter our new equity, diversity, and inclusion vision and strategy to all employees in all four regions. Aligned with those values, we launched a campaign called A Call for Food Justice in Black Communities in partnership with World Food Program USA, tied to some of our biggest brands, including Special K, Morningstar Farms, Kashi, and Eggo. Our strategy and execution led to another good quarter, as highlighted on slide number eight. At-home demand remained elevated, more than offsetting continued softness in away-from-home channels and on-the-go occasions. Our biggest brands continued to show strong momentum, aided by sustained consumer communication and innovation activity. They're why we gained share in most of our key markets and categories around the world. We continued to bring on our planned capacity increases, which will continue to relieve supply tightness and enable us to return to normal levels of merchandising activity as we get through the first half of the year. Our emerging markets businesses accelerated their growth, proving their mettle in what are challenging conditions. From a financial perspective, we continue to seek and deliver balanced financial results, the kind we achieved in 2020, and that's what we did again in the first quarter. strong net sales growth even despite lapping last year's pandemic-related surge, and we delivered this organic growth across all four regions and all four global category groups for a fifth consecutive quarter. Positive price mix reflecting revenue growth management actions made all the more important by the recent rise in input cost inflation. Gross profit margin improved year on year despite higher costs and faster growth in our emerging markets, including our distributor business in West Africa. Operating profit increased year-on-year despite lapping last year's strong growth ex-investiture, driven by top-line momentum and despite a year-on-year increase in brand investment. Cash flow remained strong, and we were able to accelerate share buybacks into the first quarter. So a very good start to 2021, with the potential to put us a little ahead of where we thought we'd be through the first half and its extremely difficult comparisons. This enables us to raise the full-year guidance we provided for you in February, even amidst what is undeniably an uncertain business environment. So with that, let me turn it over to Amit, who will take you through our financial results and outlook in more detail.