Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Lamb Weston fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Debbie Hancock. Please go ahead. Thank you.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for Lamb Weston's fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 earnings call. I'm Debbie Hancock, Lamb Weston's Vice President of Investor Relations. Earlier today, we issued our press release and posted slides that we will use for our discussion today. You will find both on our website at lambweston.com. Please note that during our remarks, we will make forward-looking statements about the company's expected performance that are based on our current expectations. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in our SEC filings for more details on our forward-looking statements. Some of today's remarks include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with our GAAP results. You can find the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations in our earnings release in the appendix to our presentation. Joining me today are Jan Craps, Executive Chair, Mike Smith, President and CEO, and Jim Gray, Chief Financial Officer. Each will provide prepared remarks and then will be available to take your questions. I will now turn the call over to Jan.

Thank you, Debbie, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with you today for my first earnings call at Lamb Weston. I will start with observations for my first month as executive chair, then turn the call over to Mike and Jim for their review of our performance. I will come back at the end of our call with additional remarks about the roadmap ahead before we take your questions. In the next hour, we plan to spend about two-thirds of our time on prepared remarks, and leave about 20 minutes for questions. It's a real pleasure to work with this board, management team and partners. I joined Lemweston in early February after more than 20 years with ABI, most recently as a CEO and co-chair of Budweiser APEC and APEC CEO for ABI. Now let me share what attracted me to Lemweston. First, the company operates in an attractive and growing category. expanding volume, price, mix, and margins over time, largely serving food service customers on multi-year contracts. Second, Lam Weston is a skilled leader with an advantage plant network in this great category, with a strong and growing core North American profit pool, significant cash generation potential, and a meaningful turnaround opportunity and optionality across our international footprint. and third, Lem Weston has a seasoned board making swift and purposeful decisions to drive incremental value for shareholders. My role as executive chair has several key responsibilities. Chairing a deeply engaged board of directors to set a company's priorities and track its progress. Focusing on people through talent development and building a performance culture. leading the next leg of our strategy development, including where to play, how to win, inorganic moves like M&AM partnership or divestitures, and driving a clear growth algorithm. Mentoring Mike and the executive leadership team, providing insights on priority topics like embedding a cost culture, realizing tech and benchmarking opportunities, where my past experience complements the leadership team's expertise. and finally working with Mike as he continues to lead the daily operations of the organization as a CEO, translating our strategic plan into a robust operational plan and driving the execution of our strategy and our teams to deliver results. It's an exciting time to be part of LamBuston. Let me wrap up my opening remarks with observations and reflections from my global onboarding sprint so far. Over my first 100 days, I spent a significant amount of time meeting our teams and getting to know our people. They are passionate about our business. I've engaged with our colleagues at more than 15 plants in the US, in the UK, Europe, China, and Australia, so more than half of our facilities. I've visited farms, customers, and stores, and I've spoken with select analysts, bankers, investors, and industry players. I've been struck by the energy and ideas across our value chain and ecosystem. I'm encouraged that we are rebounding confidently from a period of uneven execution and disrupted market dynamics, controlling the controllables, including rebuilding North American volumes on a more resilient and efficient supply chain. And I see a leadership team that is embracing more strategic clarity and choices, A deeper performance culture and sharper focus on costs, cash flow, and consistency. While the Focus to Win strategy is in its first year, I view it as the right first steps for Lemweston, implemented with an essential customer-first mindset. I view execution of the first phase of Focus to Win as a key step of a broader program to improve performance and returns on capital at Lemweston. I'm encouraged by our team's progress and execution of this first phase. In parallel, we are driving initiatives to expand those efforts more broadly across the organization in subsequent phases of Focus to Win. I will discuss some of these efforts later in our call, and this will culminate in an investor day in early calendar 27. The key message I want you to take from me is that there is focus and alignment in driving this company to achieve its full potential. To that end, and in support of this opportunity, I have made a significant personal investment in Land Weston shares, and my compensation is tied to the stock price. I don't participate in the annual incentive plan. I am rewarded if you, our shareholders, are rewarded. With that, let me hand it over to Mike.

Thank you, Jan. It's great to have you and Jim with us today. I am excited about the work we are doing together to accelerate and build on the foundation we have in place. And good morning to everyone joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year results. The key message I want to leave with you today is that we made meaningful progress as an organization in fiscal 26. I told you a year ago that Lamb Weston was on a journey to rebuild its credibility with both our customers and investors. I believe fiscal 26 was a strong step toward that goal. We delivered for our customers in the way they expect of us. And we delivered on the financial targets and key performance milestones that we shared with you on our July 2025 call. I want to start again this quarter by thanking the Lamb Weston teams around the world for their efforts in executing a new strategy in a challenging and dynamic market. Together, we delivered a solid quarter and year, led by the strength of North America. Throughout fiscal 26, we stabilized our North America business, growing volume, sales, and EBITDA for the full year, and ending with a 26% segment EBITDA margin. Internationally, in the fourth quarter, We faced disruption in shipments and volatile input cost inflation from the Middle East. Jim will speak to our fourth quarter performance shortly. As we've previously discussed, market conditions drove greater competition and pricing pressure, notably in EMEA. We are controlling the controllables and setting a strategic plan to maximize returns across our global footprint, including closing a facility in the Netherlands. We invested effectively. significantly reducing capital expenditures and delivering strong cash flow. And we returned $321 million to shareholders, bringing our total return since going public to greater than $2.2 billion. Today, I'm going to focus on what we accomplished this past year, my first full fiscal year as CEO. Jim will then review the financials and Jan will speak to the strategic work he is leading as executive chair. Within our focus to win strategy, strengthening customer partnerships has been my top priority since taking over as CEO. We have worked to reaffirm our role as a trusted partner. We drove the mantra of customer centricity across the organization. We focused our commercial teams on joint business partnerships and value-added relationships. Our supply chain organization was laser focused on meeting our customers' quality, service and order fill rate requirements. And our marketing and innovation teams ensured we armed our customers with insights and menu items to stand out in the marketplace. These efforts have delivered six consecutive quarters of volume growth. And in Q4, Volume and share grew in North America despite the demand-challenged market, and we grew in opportunity regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America. During the year, we extended several of our largest strategic customers' contracts. We seamlessly supported significant new customer rollouts. We partnered on many innovations, including value-add, higher-margin LTOs. and we facilitated the store and geographic expansions of our customers. In the U.S., where we measure Net Promoter Score, according to proprietary research, our NPS increased over last year and is the highest among major competitors. Our customers value Lam Weston. They trust us. They demand our quality. They rely on our service and our innovation. We are committed to creating value together. Executional excellence is another strategic pillar we significantly advanced this past year. Similar to reaffirming customers' trust, this was another top priority for me. Our increasingly nimble supply chain team facilitated this customer success, meeting the demand in incremental North America volume, while also driving improved operational efficiencies, recurring cost savings, and Dee bottlenecking plants to increase capacity. We are moving in the right direction with the opportunity for improvement as we bring standardization and adopt best practices across our manufacturing network. As we further develop our demand planning systems, we believe that outstanding individual plant operating teams can be even better together. Outside North America, we are optimizing supply chain assets globally to reduce our costs and better meet future customer demand. During fiscal 26, we opened a new state-of-the-art production facility in Mar del Plata, Argentina. This facility provides us with a clear advantage to deliver some of the highest quality and premium product in the region. As we ramped up production, performance and profit improved throughout the year. We closed an older legacy facility and consolidated production into one location. Volume is up. Utilization is better and we have room to grow. In China, our newest facility in Inner Mongolia has a similar trajectory. Opened in 2023, this facility provides us with additional local processing capacity in a growing market. We've grown volume in net sales double digits since opening the facility. These strategic facilities are big bets in important growth regions that take time to build to optimal utilization. Our local presence has led to expansion of our market opportunity and additional customer wins. In Europe, our efforts to meet global customer demand and maintain a competitive advantage have led to the reduction in our footprint. During Q4, we temporarily curtailed a line in the Netherlands, and in early June, we announced our intention to close an older production facility in Broekhuizenvorst, which is also in the Netherlands. That facility represents about 10% of our EMEA production capacity. These actions, while difficult, will rebalance our capacity with demand and build a foundation for more effective network utilization and lower costs. And as it has been reported in the media, the industry has announced some delays to new production. There is significant work being done behind these decisions about where to play and how to win. Jan will speak to this next layer of our strategy work shortly. Another significant deliverable in our Executing with Excellence pillar is lowering costs and improving productivity. The team has done a tremendous job of identifying and successfully executing against opportunities. A year ago, we launched a cost savings program to deliver at least $250 million of annualized run rate savings by the end of fiscal 2028. After year one, we exceeded our first year milestone of $100 million. This is the result of a lot of hard work from everyone at Lamb Weston. Based on the success of the program to date in delivering structural savings to supply chain, reducing our manufacturing cost per pound, and reducing SG&A costs, we will continue to pursue additional opportunities to improve our cost structure and capital efficiency. These savings have offset inflation and allowed us to invest in targeted support for our customers and to offset some mixed headwinds. We believe the investments that we have made in our customers has strengthened our base and will lead to future opportunities to create value together. Our price mix investment is moderated in Q4, and the combination of strong volume demand and cost savings is beginning to show results. as evidenced by our fourth quarter North America EBITDA margin expansion and dollar growth. Finally, disruptive innovation remains a key unlock in our value add for customers and consumers. Innovation drives traffic, unlocks new markets, and anticipates consumers changing taste preferences. In fiscal 2026, we launched new items at retail, including private label innovation and new Alexia seasoned items, and with food service, we introduced operator and distributor innovation as well as lamb west and batter line extensions. Our consistent focus on innovation has increased the percentage of net sales coming from new items, a key KPI in measuring our innovation success. And this month, we launched new items aligned to consumer preferences, expanding our Alexia olive oil product into additional retailers and launching similar products into the food service channel. There is more to come this fall with disruptive innovation launches for both retail and food service. At the core of our success is our people. Throughout the year, we worked to develop a continuous improvement in performance culture. As leaders, my team and I led with transparency and clarity. We ended the year with improved employee engagement scores, and we are building on this going forward. We also added depth to our board and management, with additional global and strategic expertise from Jan, and more recently, the addition of Jim as CFO. Earlier this month, Amit Philip joined us in the new role of Chief Strategy and Technology Officer. Amit brings expertise from a distinguished career spanning consulting, technology, and food manufacturing, including leadership roles at Treehouse Foods and the Hershey Company. In closing, we delivered a solid year driven by sustainable results, including a strong recovery in our North American business, meaningful progress in executing Focus to Win, especially with customers and execution, a greater than anticipated achievement of cost savings, improved capital discipline and strong return of capital to shareholders, and strengthened engagement with our teams and new executive team members. The year was not without its challenges. as the international segment absorbs startup costs associated with our new Argentina plant and an industry slowdown in the AMIA region. And across the business, we faced volatile inflation at year end due to the Middle East conflict. We are addressing these issues head on. I am proud of what we accomplished this year, and we have strong plans to continue driving progress in fiscal 27 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to Jim to review the financials and our outlook.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning to everyone. I've been with Lamb Weston since April, and it has been a pleasure getting to know the team and see our operations in the Basin as well as the Netherlands. We have a great team, and I'm excited about the opportunities to create shareholder value. Let's turn to our performance, which was a solid result fueled by North America. Fourth quarter net sales for the company increased 6%, led by a 7% increase in sales volume and 2% favorable currency impact, partially offset by 3% decline in price mix. It was the sixth consecutive quarter of sales volume growth. On a constant currency basis, net sales were up 4%. As Mike said, our North America segment had a strong Q4. North American net sales increased 9% with sales volume up 11% as momentum continued with customer wins, share gains, and strong retention, as well as the addition of an extra week. Price mix declined only 2%, with price and mix equally impacting the quarter. Modest investment in price and trade and a continued mix shift towards lower price channels, including chain and private label, drove the change. Looking at the underlying market drivers for this quarter, as reported by Cercana Crest, U.S. restaurant traffic was flat. QSR traffic was also flat, led by 3% growth in QSR chicken, largely offset by a 4% decline in QSR burger traffic. In our international segment, net sales declined 2%, led by a sales volume decline of 2%, and Price Mix decline of 4%, partially offset by favorable currency impacts. Sales growth in Asia Pacific and Latin America was more than offset by challenging market conditions in EMEA, including the impact of the Middle East conflict, which began early in our fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. Internationally, QSR traffic in the quarter declined 2% in the UK and France, and 1% in Italy, however, was up slightly in Germany and Spain. Adjusted EBITDA declined $6 million compared to last year as North America adjusted EBITDA dollars grew 17% or $45 million. In Q4, North America's sales volume grew with modest price mix investment and cost savings more than offset inflation. Our international decline was driven by EMEA challenges. We were carrying higher raw potato costs into the quarter, and we experienced higher fixed cost absorption due to slower European demand. Furthermore, we incurred higher incremental freight costs as a result of the Middle East conflict. For the company, inflation in the quarter was up more than we had expected, all inputs other than raw potato prices were up, with a substantial increase in edible oils and transportation costs. Demand for biodiesel has driven up the cost of most edible oils, and while we are hedged against oil, we are seeing spot price inflation. The input cost volatility experienced in Q4 impacted the quarter and also carried into the cost of our finished goods, which we will move through in the first quarter of fiscal 27. Adjusted SG&A increased $16 million in the quarter as cost savings benefits were more than offset by higher incentive compensation. On a full year basis, net sales increased 2%, led by a 7% increase in sales volume and 1% increase in favorable currency impact, partially offset by a 6% decrease in price mix. The North America segment delivered 3% net sales growth for the year, led by a 9% increase in sales volume, partially offset by a 6% price mix decline. This included an $86 million benefit from the 53rd week. International segment net sales increased 1%, led by a 5% favorable currency impact and 2% sales volume growth, notably in Asia Pacific and Latin America. These gains were partially offset by a 6% decline in price mix. On a constant currency basis, net sales were down 4%. In addition, the extra week added $41 million to the full-year results. Full-year adjusted EBITDA was down 9% as international challenges were only partly offset by growth in North America. In North America, higher sales volume, lower manufacturing cost per pound, and the benefit of cost savings more than offset inflation and price mix investments. Internationally, the decline in EBITDA was driven by lower organic sales given the competitive environment, as well as higher manufacturing costs per pound. The higher costs included write-offs of excess potatoes, lower utilization of our international production facilities, and startup expenses for our new plant in Argentina. These were only partially offset by the benefits of cost-savings initiatives. The extra week added $29 million in adjusted EBITDA for the year. Cash generation has improved significantly this year. In fiscal 2026, we generated $943 million of cash from operations, up $75 million versus last year. The increase is largely attributable to $55 million of favorable changes in working capital. Capital expenditures were $410 million in the year, down More than $240 million year-over-year. Our focus on execution and capital discipline has enabled us to deliver $537 million in free cash flow for fiscal 26, a significant increase year-over-year. Our liquidity remains strong, with approximately $1.3 billion available under our revolving credit facility. Net debt was $3.8 billion, and our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 3.4 times on a trailing 12-month basis. For the full year, we have returned $321 million to shareholders, including $208 million in cash dividends and $113 million of stock repurchases, of which $63 million was repurchased in the fourth quarter. In addition, we announced this morning the next quarterly dividend of $0.38 per share to be payable on September 4th. As we look to fiscal 27, our position with customers, lower cost base, improved operating efficiencies, and the lap of one-time items provides us with a view to expect earnings to grow faster than sales in the coming year. In fiscal 27, we expect net sales to be flat to up 1% versus a 52-week adjusted net sales base of $6.5 billion for fiscal 2026. We are focused on sustainable earnings growth. In fiscal 27, our adjusted operating income target is a range of $720 million to $800 million. The benefits of lower raw potato costs incremental supply chain cost savings initiatives, favorable fixed cost absorption from higher utilization, and the lapping of fiscal 2026 potato write-offs and Argentina startup costs is anticipated to be mostly offset by inflation and essentially all other input cost areas. We will continue to drive cost savings in both cost of sales and SG&A. In fiscal 2027, we expect SG&A to decline as a result of these efforts. Equity earnings from our JV in North America is anticipated to grow modestly as we have restarted curtailed bonds. We expect interest rate expense of approximately $190 million, an effective tax rate in the range of 25.5% to 27.5%. We anticipate adjusted EPS to be in the range of $2.95 to $3.25 versus the 52-week fiscal 26 adjusted EPS number of $2.90. We anticipate diluted common shares outstanding to be between $137.5 million and $139 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion versus a comparable $1,128,000,000 over the 52-week period of fiscal 26. In fiscal 27, we anticipate cash used for capital expenditures of approximately $380 to $410 million. This estimate includes carrying amounts from projects started in the prior year. Going forward, on an accrual basis, we anticipate investments of up to $350 million. We are improving capital efficiency through the better pacing of investments, process improvements to deep bottleneck, which also expands capacity, and strong rigor on returns on investment. In addition, our anticipated wastewater-related spin will largely be complete by the end of fiscal 27. Operating cash flow remains strong and is expected to be in the range of $750 to $800 million, as we expect to hold the investment in working capital relatively flat year over year, despite an anticipated increase in net sales. Our company net sales outlook of flat to up 1% assumes flat global restaurant traffic. Our range for EBITDA outcomes on the low slide largely reflects uncertainty around the Middle East impacts on global input cost volatility through the first half of fiscal 27. The upper end of our EBITDA range would assume more favorable net sales from customers, channel and product mix, as well as delivery of cost savings. North America is expected to continue top line sales volume growth and market share gains. Net sales on a comparable week's basis is expected to be flat to up low single digits with low single digit volume growth and low single digit price mix decline. North America EBITDA is anticipated to be flat to up low single digits as modest price mix investments combined with cost inflation are anticipated to be offset by sales volume growth and our ongoing cost savings initiatives. Our international segment top line is anticipated to be down low single digits. Driven by the challenging competitive conditions in EMEA, price mix investment is expected to be low to mid single digits, partially offset by low single digit volume growth. We expect top line growth in the other regions in international. International segment EBITDA is anticipated to improve between 40% and 50% as we lap an incremental $33 million of pre-tax charges for potato write-offs, as well as startup costs from our Argentina facility. Overall segment EBITDA is expected to reflect positive contributions from international regions outside of EMEA, SG&A savings and operating leverage, partially offset by price investments from carryover and a competitive environment. To help with modeling the cadence through the year, in Q1, we expect the carryover effects from the cost of prior year potato crop and edible oil inflation to have a greater impact. For the first quarter, we anticipate net sales to be flat and EBITDA to decline in the low teens before growth ramps through the remainder of the year. Shifting to an update on the potato crop, in North America, The crop year is off to a strong start with favorable weather and crop development slightly ahead of historical timing. Our contracted acreage is modestly higher year over year to support increased sales volume growth. In Europe, the crop year is also off to a favorable start with good growing conditions across key regions. Our expectation is for an average crop, but it is early in the season. Planted acreage is down year over year, with a more pronounced reduction in contracted volumes across the industry, including our own. With that, let me hand it back to Jan.

Thank you, Jim. When I joined Lamb Weston, I decided to invest significant time and energy in a deep onboarding process to get to know the business well and identify the biggest opportunities for these turnarounds. My global onboarding sprint and deep engagement so far with fellow board members, senior leaders, and the broader team and partners have reinforced the reasons I joined Lem Weston and are informing how we unlock additional value in the business rapidly from here. We have a strong foundation, a good start with a focus to win strategy, and an opportunity to be even bolder in our decisions, braver in our performance targets, Thank you very much. So first, people. My top priority is unlocking our greatest assets, our people. Our first initiative within our people strategy is performance culture. In fiscal 26, we added ROIC and free cash flow already to our compensation metrics. To fully achieve the potential of Lam Weston, we are building a performance culture by adding enterprise, entity, and individual targets. We are driving individual accountability and ownership through the tighter use of individual KPIs based on hard quantitative results. We encourage stronger collaboration among our teams through country and region level entity targets for net sales, adjusted EBITDA, and cash generation, a change we have already approved for this fiscal 27. For example, Mike's five individual targets as a CEO are designed to deliver holistic improvements, including net sales growth, big bets innovation growth, targeted growth in some focused regions, as well as ambitious SG&A targets and EBITDA margin improvements. Our second initiative within People's Strategy is Leadership Talents. Here, recent appointments including Jim as CFO and Amit as Chief Strategy and Tech Officer are strengthening our talent bench. We are elevating the talent management process and strengthening our succession planning to ensure we are identifying and developing top-tier talent around the world. Finally, people strategy addresses organization design. We are implementing an organizational design which focuses on simplicity and accountability to enable faster decision making. My second priority is strategy. We kicked off rigorous new strategy work that defines which market clusters or logical groups of countries profitable growth will come from, where to play in this landscape, and how to win in this priority market so we drive sustainable, profitable growth. As Mike and Jim have shared, we have made big progress over the past year, reconfirming our leadership with North American customers. That business has stabilized. It is operating with less volatility and the team delivered a strong year with a healthy profit profile and more efficient operations with more room for growth. As we look beyond North America, we are working to identify new routes to growth and value creation with the right international footprints. We will make choices and allocate different roles to different geographic clusters with sharper resource allocation. We will use M&A partnerships and divestitures together with our organic growth priorities to navigate and execute these outcomes across clusters. This will lead to a renewed growth algorithm. Third is our resources priority. Over the past year with Focus2Win, the company already began implementing a cost program. And we are now taking that further to drive a deeper cost culture in SG&A capital expenditures and working capital, driving immediate impact on the business results. Across the globe, we're creating a culture connected to cost, where costs are reset to zero and justified on current business value rather than historical habits. Spend is connected to strategic outcomes through granular KPIs and savings help rebuild margin and fund high return innovation, market expansion, and organizational resilience. We're also implementing more rigorous plant rankings and adopting best practices to continue to drive supply chain efficiency. Finally, we invest smartly behind clear and simple technology priorities including leveraging the potential of AI to be ever more efficient over time. Looking ahead, we expect to drive outcomes in a business with more durable growth and less volatility than many anticipate. There is a high sense of urgency in the organization to drive change and impact in an accelerated way. I'm energized by our momentum and potential. We see significant opportunities to build a high-performance culture, sharpen our strategic clarity and growth algorithm, and strengthen our cost discipline, supply efficiency, and tech capabilities. And we are undertaking this as a seasoned and aligned board and leadership team. We look forward to sharing more with you in future calls and at our investor day in early calendar 27. We will now take your questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, you may signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, star one for questions. We'll go first to Andrew Lazar with Barclays.

Great. Thanks so much. Good morning, everybody. Morning, Andrew. Great, thanks. Maybe first off, just for you, Jan, I realize management and the board are still working through various possible actions to sort of solve for international profitability. I guess my question is whether there are certain limits to what actions can be taken or are all options on the table regarding where and how the company should compete? Or are there certain maybe structural limitations around what can be done that maybe I'm not aware of?

Thank you, Andrew, and great to connect again. Thank you for your question. Yes, so as I mentioned, we're kind of in the middle of our strategy work now. It's really a fact-based discipline process. And we're really looking at net landed costs, where do the profit pools develop, and what are the clusters of countries that will drive our growth. And then we looked at where to play, how to win, And really, essentially, it sets us up to make choices between these country clusters as we grow, as we build our growth algorithm. And, you know, as a result, we are going to be allocating different roles to different country clusters. You know, where today maybe every country is trying to achieve everything in a certain way, there will be more clarity as to what is the mission of each country cluster. which will also drive sharper resource allocation. So that will then in turn drive any decisions on M&A partnerships and divestitures that will really be a result of this work. And to your point, technically everything is on the table as we look through the different country clusters and their role to drive the growth algorithm. So we're really in the middle of the work right now and we will come back to you with more details at the Investor Day. But the other thing is, you know, the team is not sitting still while we do the strategy work, right? So maybe it's helpful, Andrew, if I hand it over to Mike. And, you know, maybe, Mike, you can talk us through how we're improving the EMEA results in the shorter term as well.

Yeah, thanks, Jan. You know, Andrew, as I think about the work that we're doing right now, as Jim cited, LATAM APAC had a good quarter. And really some of the challenges we're seeing are in EMEA. But, you know, we're not sitting back. We're really trying to control what we can control. I think one thing to remind the group is that, you know, the industry is facing three challenges, really. You know, last season we experienced really high yields. More acres were planted, and that led to a lot of extra potatoes in the marketplace, which then were processed. You know, the second piece was around the fact that there was a lot of excess capacity in the marketplace. Some of that was driven by demand. Part of that was driven by less exports from Europe as new capacity was built in some of those developing markets. And then the third area challenge for Europe is really around the traffic slowdown, similar to what we've seen in other areas around the globe. The thing we're doing in each of those areas is that when you think about the potato crop, it resets every year. And as we shared in prepared remarks, we reduced our acres in EMEA. And, you know, there's some industry reports out there that suggest that acres are down across the EMEA region. You know, we recently announced closing of Brookheisen Forest. We believe that will improve our utilization rates by about 10 points and get us into those high 80s, low 90s. You know, we're also consolidating that Brookheisen Forest and some of the other facilities that we've closed or curtailed into more cost-efficient plants. and I'll tell you by doing some of that, I have a lot of confidence that we're going to be able to serve our customers even better. You know, there's even been some media reports out there that there's been other companies that have delayed some new production. And then the last thing I'd just say is as it relates to some of the pressure around traffic, you know, we are seeing some softer traffic in the area, but in EMEA, we have some clear initiatives and programs in place that are going to help us offset The impact through lower costs. So really proud of what the team's doing and they have plans in each one of our regions around the globe.

Really, really helpful color. Appreciate it. And then just one quick follow up. I know it's probably still early in the process a bit, but I guess where is LAM on sort of negotiations with some of the key sort of customers that come up for contract renewals as we go forward? And I guess I'm trying to get a sense of the visibility you have to sort of pricing in a competitive environment in North America. Thanks so much.

Yeah, so I'd say when it comes to contracting, you know, we're in the very early innings of that, just kicking things off. I think one thing to remind the group about is we have moved to that contracting calendar of about a third of our large QSRs. come due for contracting every year, similar to what we've had the last two years. And so we'll see that for this fiscal year as well. There's nothing, I would say, that sticks out to me as being an anomaly this year. But like I said, we're early in that process and we'll share an update next quarter. As I think about price mix, as you mentioned, Andrew, we have grown volumes and we see a more balanced supply and demand in some of our regions. That allows us to be a bit more thoughtful about how we go after incremental volume. And as you look at our quarter performance, last quarter we had shared that we had recently taken a price increase in our North America business to cover that input cost inflation across all of our categories except potatoes. And as we start to look at The impacts of potential price mix in the future will base the need for pricing changes on that input cost inflation and the margin requirements it takes to invest in our business to be able to support our customers. So, like I said, contracting is just starting off and we'll give an update next quarter. Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Peter Galbo with Bank of America.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe, Mike, just to ask on the back of Andrew's question around kind of the country cluster work as it relates more so to capacity in the manufacturing network. I mean, assuming the U.S. is kind of in a state now that's better and maybe you're not going to do as much there, a lot of the capacity expansion that's happened in the last five or six years has been international. And so a lot of those plants, I would imagine, are relatively new. And so as you go through the process of identifying countries and areas you want to be or don't want to be, just how are you factoring in how new some of this capacity is and how you've spent a lot of capital in some of these markets and to kind of give that up now after, again, these are probably highly efficient plants, just how that's factoring into the decision-making.

Yeah, I think one thing to keep in mind, Peter, is, listen, our company has been around for 75 years, and this industry has been around for a long time, and there are a lot of older facilities around the world. You know, when I think about the capacity out there, you know, a lot of it is kind of driven by new additions in some of those developing markets, and that's reduced that export demand, like I said earlier, out of Europe. You know, when I... When I look at our side of the business, we're closing older facilities that are close to the end of their useful life. We're able to move that volume into more productive, more efficient facilities, which reduces our costs and optimizes our network. As I mentioned in prepared remarks, the media has reported that there are other manufacturers that have curtailed lines or delayed previously announced new capacity. I think the one thing to remember when it comes to these new lines, you know, scaling a modern fry line, it's a pretty significant undertaking. You already know it involves a lot of capital, like you just said, but you really need a reliable source of high-quality raw potatoes. And, you know, then there's some other various complexities that go into that. You know, one that you may not think about is energy, and it takes a lot of Thank you for joining us today. It's about reducing our footprint in some of the older, higher-cost facilities and moving that into more efficient facilities that we recently built.

Got it. Okay. Thanks for that, Mike. And Jan, helpful to get your comments just on overall strategy. I think maybe the one piece that we didn't hear about today is on the pause on the ERP program that was put in place two years ago. That was obviously kind of a core to modernizing the network and probably helping to simplify and improve things. Just where do we stand on that? Is there work being done around restarting that program that was paused? Is it something that Amit needs to come in and be a bit more first before we make a decision? Just help us understand kind of where we stand at this point. Thanks very much.

That's a good question as well. I think we brought Amit in and, of course, one of his priorities is strategy. Another one is technology. And in technology, to your point, you know, one of the reasons that we combine these two areas is that they go very well together, right? So I think on the technology front, there is some clear priorities put in place will have to do with Data governance, indeed the ERP approach, which is more like a lean backbone. And then, of course, things like AI and cybersecurity are quite relevant in that context. And as Amit gets on board, this is for sure one of the elements that he's looking at on how best to organize it. And suffice to say that this company has some learnings on how to do things and what kind of things to avoid and will be sure to take that into account as we progress the agenda.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Tom Palmer with J.P. Morgan.

Good morning and thanks for the questions. First off, I did want to follow up a little bit about North America. I think if we look back over time, There have been periods where maybe innovation, right, coated fries, you know, products that you guys developed that didn't require fryers have been key drivers of winning customers. And I think there have been other times where maybe price is kind of the key determinant in terms of winning certain customers. I mean, where do we stand in North America today kind of within that cycle? And then I guess as we think about The coming year and how you're thinking about price negotiations, maybe a little color in kind of how much the first part of that question guides your assumptions for the back half as you go through these negotiations.

Yeah, maybe, Tom, I'll take us back to what we're doing around Focus to Win, because it has more to do with kind of the team and the execution rather than pricing or maybe to what you're alluding to, you know, buying business. You know, really over this last year, there's been kind of three pillars of that focused win that have stuck out to me. One, we're building those customer partnerships. You know, they're valuing the quality, the consistency, the service, the innovation that we deliver to them. And I think that's proven by the fact we have a strong NPS score with those customers. The second piece is we've been really focused on the cost savings program, and we've identified some additional cost savings above that current program, and it will allow us to offset costs. and some of that price mix. The last piece, as you mentioned, innovation is super important. It drives loyalty, it expands the market, and I think some perfect examples are those that we shared today. We're also seeing some renewed interest from customers around LTOs globally, and that's exciting to see as well. And as you know, Innovation has higher price points, which drives margin accretion. So we feel really good about the progress that we're making in North America, and you can see that in the results in Q4.

Tom, maybe I'd add that, you know, so, you know, as we always think about, well, are there, is the North America customer channel mix sort of, what's its posture towards pricing? You know, what I've noticed is that, you know, if we have freight rate changes, you know, and there's freight pressure, That's almost a separate negotiation, and it can happen almost any time during the year. On some of our multi-year contracts, we have some variability elements that are tied to underlying cost inputs. Maybe edible oil price is changing in the market. Some of our larger customers know that's an element of our cost. And clearly, as we have a two- or three-year contract, that Pricing of that element is always going to be kind of dynamic and passing through. So while you ask the question a little bit like, well, this upcoming fall, contracting for calendar 2027 with a lot of our food service customers is true, I would just say that our customers are also seeing the underlying cost inflation and that there are elements in how we price into the marketplace that are a bit more dynamic as we go through each year.

Great. Thank you for that. And Jim, maybe I could just follow up on that inflation picture. How does it net out? It sounds like it may be a little bit different regionally, but kind of when we think about the two segments, inflation or deflation, I guess, when weighing potatoes versus all these other pieces that are more inflationary?

Yeah, I think, you know, Nat, if you do take in maybe an expectation of more of a decline in the potato cost in Europe, although, you know, let's see what that crop looks like right now, given some of the heat. And then in the U.S., we're about 3% inflation. And so that means other than potato, our inflation is a little bit higher. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Max Gumport with BNP Paribas.

Hey, thanks for the question. On North America, your outlook for sales and EBITDA would suggest margins could be relatively flat for North America in 27. I understand you've got modest price mix investments combined with cost inflation, which are expected to be offset by volume growth and some ongoing cost savings initiatives, but can you talk a bit more about How you're viewing the current segment margin level and whether you see any opportunity to build from here going forward?

Yeah, maybe let me touch on this just quickly. You know, I think, you know, price mix moderated in the back half of fiscal 26, like we had forecasted. I think as you think about fiscal 27, we expect modest price mix investments. And a lot of that's going to be the result of decisions we made in last contracting season that will be carrying over into this calendar year. But at the end of the day, we're winning with customers and growing, and we expect some volume growth, like I said, some modest price mixed investment, and we'll continue to execute against our cost savings program that you talked about to offset that inflation and some of the cost volatility.

Yeah, maybe on just on what would be on the upper end of what we would see in North America, Clearly, if there is some continued inflation or unexpected inflation, maybe it's in edible oils, maybe it's in corrugated or poly bags, or maybe it's in freight, we're going to have to be working with customers on pricing that through. So we'll be very agile in thinking about the timing of that. But we'll also look at, we can get favorable channel mix, and we can get favorable product mix. And what that means is within the food service, Do we generally see our food service operators relying on the attachment rates and relying on the value of French fries as part of the meal offering, whether that's part of a value meal or part of a broader serving to consumers? I think there is potential, at least within the U.S. economy, in terms of where wage growth is and stuff that away from home eating, at least in terms of dollar spend, is still going to be healthy for our customers. And so we very much look at that opportunity. on the upside for North America.

Great. And then just a follow-up on CapEx. So you mentioned how obviously on an accrual basis, CapEx is moving lower in 27. And you mentioned that going forward on an accrual basis, you anticipate investments of up to $350 million. But that's an upper end. Can you talk about whether you see any further opportunity to reduce CapEx even further as you go forward in time?

Yeah, I think what we are using is not just thinking about our approach around zero-based. It doesn't just kind of stop with expenses. It also thinks about our capital investments. And the global team does an amazing job prioritizing opportunities. And so within that, to the extent that we're going to get leaner on some of the existing investments that are currently in our plan that adds up to that accrual of 350, If we can take $10 million or $20 million out of that number, we have a list. And so number five or number six or number seven on that list may offer a high teens type of ROI and pretty quick payback. We're going to choose at that time whether or not to pursue that or if it feels like, hey, maybe some Some of the inflation on those types of capital projects is more expensive than we might pause and deliver a lower accrual amount. But we definitely have a list, and we would like to prioritize what we go after. Okay, great.

Thanks very much, Kelly, by the way.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Scott Marks with Jefferies.

Hey, good morning. Thanks very much for taking our questions. I wanted to just follow up on the North America conversation. Obviously, this past year was pretty solid from a volume perspective. I'm just wondering, as you think about going forward, how do you think about, number one, maintaining those gains, holding the share that you've picked up, but also, as we look to fiscal 27, maybe talk about which channels or opportunities you see as are the most realistic or the most priority for your team.

Yeah, as I think about the business into the future here, into 27, we feel really good about the work that we've done this past year. Like I mentioned, we've delivered some strong results. Our customer MPS scores have improved. We're delivering innovation to the team, and we're having our customers come to us asking for more innovation and talking about LTOs, which is all positive. Like I mentioned, we will be lapping some of the pricing decisions that we made in 26, but I have a little bit of a carryover into 27, but feel really good about our plan for 27 in that North American business.

And we encourage you to go try our olive oil innovation. It's quite tasty, and it sells at a better price point.

Okay, understood. Thank you. And then just a quick follow-up on the CapEx conversation, just to piggyback off of what Max asked. just a moment ago. As we think about this, this accrual rate of $350 million, obviously that's a material step down from what the business was talking about just about a year, year and a half ago. I think it was a $450 million base target previously. So just wondering with that big of a reduction, if I have that correct, how do you think about maintaining The status quo of the business, investing for growth, investing for efficiency with that much coming out of the base investments.

I think our reliability level of spend, just staying in business on the plants, I believe it's less than $350. We still have dollars that we're putting into really optimizing. Sylvia and her team globally have ideas around each of the plants in terms of where we can actually make kind of major production line changes. And when we do that, one, we put in new equipment, which usually runs with better water usage, lower energy costs, and maybe it even expands our capacity because we've de-bottled part of a particular production line. And so we're just thinking about how we pace those investments as we go forward. And so I think there's still a substantial amount of budget left in the 350 amount. I think we should always, as a company, because what management may present to the board may say, hey, we have some really fantastic ideas that lead to payback. And we want to have a little agility on that number. But for right now, for 2027, we're going to accrue to $350 million in new projects.

Thank you. That will conclude our question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Ms. Hancock for any additional or closing remarks.

Thanks. Thank you. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Just a reminder that the replay of the call will be available on our website later this afternoon. Have a great day. That will conclude today's call.

We appreciate your participation.