Post Holdings, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q2 2024 POST Holdings earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to your speaker today, Daniel O'Rourke, Investor Relations for POST. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for POST's second quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call. I'm joined this morning by Rob Vitale, our president and CEO, Jeff Zadix, our COO, and Matt Maynor, our CFO and treasurer. Rob, Jeff, and Matt will make prepared remarks and afterwards we'll answer your questions. The press release that supports these remarks is posted on both the investors and the SEC filing sections of our website. and is also available on the SEC's website. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and an audio replay will be available on our website at postholdings.com. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call, and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. This call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, please see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Rob.

Thank you, Daniel, and good morning. Our business maintained the momentum we saw in Q1 with a strong Q2. Strong manufacturing performance, disciplined pricing, and solid cost management continue to drive results. With isolated exceptions, volumes generally declined. As we have previously mentioned, SNAP reductions are a meaningful component of the decline. However, there also remains a disconnect between macroeconomic statistics and consumer sentiment. Over time, we expect this to largely impact consumption location and price points rather than volume. We like the balance of our portfolio provides by virtue of the mix of products, price points, and channels. Within our consumer brand segment, grocery and pet continue to perform well. While we have incremental investments to make, our confidence continues to grow regarding the sustainable contribution run rate from our pet acquisition. Cereal remains well positioned in value and is holding its own in premium, with margins improving in both category subsegments. Equally important, the integration of PET into PCB is progressing and remains on track. Our food service business continues to deliver strong results, demonstrating its value proposition to customers through excellent service levels and its value-added product offering. While we saw a bit of a slowdown in restaurant foot traffic this quarter, we believe it is temporary, and our historical algorithm and growth drivers remain intact. Refrigerator retail continues to focus on driving volumes through its vastly improved supply chain, while Weedabix remains resilient in a challenging, albeit improving, environment. As far as capital allocation, we remain opportunistic with our triangular focus on share buybacks, leverage reduction, and M&A. The M&A pipeline has increased, and we continue to look for opportunities, both strategic and tactical. The debt refinancing we completed in February was exquisitely timed and created broader options for each bucket of capital allocation opportunity. Overall, I am very pleased with our performance through the first half of the fiscal year and remain very optimistic for the balance of FY24. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jeff.