Post Holdings, Inc.

Welcome to the Post Holdings Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. So others can hear your questions clearly, we ask that you pick up your handset for best sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Mainer, CFO of POST.

Matt Mainer Thank you, and good morning. Thank you all for joining us today for POST's third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings question and answer session. I'm joined this morning by Nico Catoggio, our COO. Rob is unable to join us today as he is feeling under the weather, and Daniel is actually with his wife who is going into labor. Before I turn the call to Nico, though, I want to remind you that this call is being recorded and an audio replay will be available on our website at postholdings.com. During today's call, we make Thank you for joining us today. This call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Nico. Thank you, Matt.

Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Our third quarter results were slightly ahead of expectations, driven by stronger than anticipated performance in food service. and we are maintaining the midpoint of our fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA items while narrowing the range. From a capital allocation standpoint, we will purchase 4% of our outstanding shares, bringing our total fiscal year-to-date reduction to approximately 17% while maintaining leverage within our target range. Looking ahead, we believe it's important to provide early context for fiscal 2027. After adjusting our fiscal 2026 outlook for approximately $80 million of items affecting compatibility, we enter fiscal 2027 with a comparable adjusted EBITDA base of approximately $1.48 billion. While our fiscal 2027 budget remains under development, our preliminary outlook is for adjusted EBITDA that is relatively consistent with this level. Despite normalizing food service earnings, The absence of divested businesses, anticipated inflation, and ongoing volume pressure, we currently expect targeted pricing actions, cost savings, and food service man-rate growth to support fiscal 2027 underlying EBITDA generally flat related to the comparable adjusted EBITDA base of approximately $1.48 billion that I mentioned before. With that, operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Thank you. The floor is now open for your questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing Star 2. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when posing your questions to provide optimal sound quality. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Morning, everybody. Thanks for the question. I think to start off, Nico, you highlight a shift from what's been a very aggressive share or purchase activity to really more of a deleveraging posture. I was hoping you could delve into this decision a bit more. Is it a concern about the direction of EBITDA in the near term and some of the volume pressure, given your 27 outlook or something else? And does this change your ability or desire to go after cash accretive deals that may make sense?

Sure, I can take that one, Andrew. And really, it's consistent with how we've always thought about capital allocation when it comes to M&A versus debt reduction. And that's less a function of a leverage number and really more a function of what we're seeing in interest rates and refinancing impacts. So while we don't have a bond maturity for four years, we factor in the cash flow impact of refinancing that debt now at higher rates. And what would that do to free cash flow? And as we see rates continue to rise from a refinancing standpoint, that just weighs more heavily to say, hey, we've got to start allocating more capital to debt reduction to make sure we're bringing down debt so as we get to refinancing, we're not seeing a deterioration of our free cash flow. Again, we'll still maintain the ability to buy back shares opportunistically. It's just in the current interest rate environment, it's certainly going to be a slower pace than the last couple of years. I think on the counter, if we see rates somehow return and we're back in a 5% refinancing rate, then our view would change. But that's certainly the big driver and the primary lens how we look at it. Relative to the M&A points, I think another angle we view is where's a comfortable leverage level we could take leverage to and where's a comfortable starting point. And that gets us to a similar spot. Hey, mid-4s is somewhere we're comfortable for, but we wouldn't want to see that number rise because that would deteriorate some of the flexibility for cash M&A. So I think that's where the preliminary outlook for next year is more of a consideration. But again, I'd say consistent with how we've always viewed it.

Thanks for that. Post has been obviously very proactive in optimizing its capacity and its assets in categories like ready-to-eat cereal to stay ahead, so to speak, of the structural declining category and maintain solid margins and cash flow. Having already closed, I guess, three plants in cereal, Given trends in the company's dog food business and maybe some of the potential elasticity impacts of some of the pricing actions that you're talking about here, I guess are there some similar actions that you can or may need to take in sort of the pet food space around asset optimization sort of like you've done in cereal the past year or two?

Thanks, Andrew, and it's a good question. So let me start. So we are constantly accessing those opportunities across every business, and in particular, MPCB. So before I get to PET, and I will answer that one, we also just made the decision to shut down two peanut butter plants. And that's, again, to your point, it's exactly the same playbook that we used in CDL. That's as we integrated the 8th Avenue business and we streamlined that business and exited some business that we were literally losing money. We saw the opportunity to shut down Japan. So that's in the works. That's going to impact F28. And all the money is similar to what you saw in the past. So that's been about it. It's a good question. Let me tell you that beyond footprint, we haven't even scratched the surface in cost, in pet, not the way we did it in CDL. And that's because we wanted to wait until we had the confidence that we had a stable pet business. And we feel that we're getting to that point. We are now at a 30% market share, and what we are confident is if we If we can stay in that level, and we think we can because some of the initiatives that we pursue to turn around nutrition are starting to actually show encouraging results. If we can stay in that, call it 3-2 market share range, then now we can actually go after costs Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Matt Smith with Stiefel. Your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. The narrowed guidance range for this year implies fourth quarter more or less in line with the performance here in the third quarter. You called out food service continuing to move towards the normalized run rate, suggesting it steps lower on a sequential basis. Can you talk about where the offset to that food service moving lower, where you see a stronger EBITDA outlook as you look into the fourth quarter here? Thank you.

The offset to food service pulling back in the quarter?

Yes, as we think about kind of the shape of the P&L in the fourth quarter and look ahead into the 27th. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's more of a we saw refrigerated retail pull back a bit more than anticipated out of the quarter. We see some improvement in that business in Q4 and really for the rest of the portfolio pretty flat. So we're not talking about significant changes overall.

Thanks for that. Matt, the CapEx range moved a little higher at the low end for this year. Can you talk about that incremental investment, and as you look ahead to 27, give a view of if CapEx remains relatively stable or moves perhaps even higher as you look at some of the supply chain work you're undertaking? Thank you.

Sure. I think just really a refinement of this year and the pacing we're seeing on the CapEx range just leans a little bit higher in the range from where we started, but it's That's definitely a bit of a moving target. And again, a lot of these capital projects we're trying to work through as fast as we can because they're in the plan for a reason. When you think about next year, a bit too soon to say, I think just to add on to Nika's comments, as you think about Potential network optimization, that's an area where if we see clear opportunities, there could be some additional capital spend to clear the way for those. Outside of that, would expect just continued investment in food service and pursuing growth as we get our plan together for next year and the following year, thoughts, and then really more of a maintenance level across the balance of the business.

Appreciate that. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

David Palmer Great. First of all, best to Rob, and congratulations to Daniel. Big day. I wanted to ask you about the EBITDA guidance, just what's behind the 1.48 Billion for PCB, EBITDA down mid-single digits, assuming, you know, should we assume that PCB organic sales down 3%, maybe mid-single digits down for PCB with that guidance? Is that reasonable?

I think it's, again, I think we've got kind of a first look in ranges around our businesses, David, and just given the non-recurring things we were saying, we wanted to get some indication out there. I think we're a little cautious to get into details around each business segment until we have a more formalized plan. But certainly, we continue to, we've commented in our release that we see growth in food service next year offsetting some of these pressures we're seeing in terms of inflation and volume pressures. So I think there's probably a bit of pullback in overall retail offset by food service, but don't really want to get into the buy segment comments yet.

What I would add, without actually too much point getting into the specific segments, but it's a comment that applies to all of our retail businesses. We expect, as Matt said, inflation, and it's going to be a year where we'll probably chase inflation. Typically, to be able to price, we need to wait to see the inflation. That's how you have the discussion with the retailers. So that's what that kind of initial outlook actually reflects.

Sort of behind that is I'm looking at the long-term here and volume trends for your all-in cereal business, including private label. And volume has been down mid-single digits basically the last two years now. And I wonder if that's just kind of how you're thinking about that business going forward as an underlying trend. and so forth. What is your assumption going forward, i.e., it's not going to get better anytime soon, or maybe the other? You see some real tangible reasons why it could get better over the next fiscal year, and I'll pass it on.

Again, we still don't know. We don't have all the details of the plans, but what I can tell you is that I would expect Daniel O'Rourke, We adjusted the assortment to have better performance or efficiency in our promotions. That is worth one percentage point of the gap versus the carry. So it's significant. It's 50% of the gap versus the carry. And the rest, as we mentioned, is we lost some distribution in our multi-meal brand. And it's kind of the tails can use, the lower velocities can use. But we lost that distribution. Going forward, the rest of the portfolio is performing really well. Our premium portfolio, we are gaining market share in our premium portfolio. That is a great deal. So I would anticipate moving closer to the cutting. Where the cutting is going to be, we don't know. The good news is it's actually slowly improving quarter after quarter. It's getting closer to what we see as the Long-term Sustainable Training Academy of Colleagues, minus 1%, minus 2%. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Tom Palmer with J.P. Morgan. Your line is now open.

Good morning and thanks for the question. Maybe just follow up on something you touched on earlier in the call related to Andrew's question. The pet business, you made mention that you like the progress that you're starting to see. Can we maybe just get more of an update there on kind of the different brands and where we stand in terms of instituting changes and seeing those on self-changes? Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. So if you take the year-over-year decline for that business, 60% of that is our value brands, and most of that is nightlife. And we mentioned last quarter, We relaunched a third of that brand that we were not making money on. We saw elasticities higher than what we anticipated, but at the same time, we like the margins, right? Or we like the margins more than what we used to like them, I would say. So we had to do it. We are actually working as we speak, and we are seeing good progress on kind of resetting the value proposition for that. At the same time, The cat segment, because it's where the growth is in the category, has been very, very active in terms of promotion. So Nine Lives, that stands essentially for value in the category, has seen a lot of promotions, competitive promotions, and with two of our main competitive brands actually hitting price points below our run. We are not going to follow them. We are very disciplined when we think about promotion. So we don't see that as something that we'll kind of remain like that all the time. But in the short term, that's a lot of the pressure that Nine Lives is under. Nutrients, so let me tell you the good news. So the good news is where the brand is fully relaunched and then we actively work our assortment to what we call our core assortment, beef, chicken, and salmon, the brand is performing well. So our largest retailer is a good example of that. We very aggressively manage our assortment. We have what we call our must-haves on shelf. And there, the run went from losing market share year over year to now, over the last 13 weeks, we are gaining market share. So in dry dog, that's what we measure as So we feel good. And we are seeing in some other retailers where we are actually transitioning, we see a clear inflection point in the performance of the brand. Now, the transition has taken a bit longer than anticipated. It's been a bit more messy. And the other thing is there's a clear difference in performance between, again, what we call our copy. Assortment, and the Flanker SKUs. So what we are working on is, for the next three studies, doing a lot more of what we did in one of the larger retailers, that is working the Assortment to actually focus on that core set of SKUs that perform really well. Again, the good news is, where would we launch those, where they are fully transitioned? We are actually seeing a clear inflection point, and those SKUs actually turn in the top third of the category, and that's very encouraging.

Thank you for all that detail. I did have one other question on PCP. Just looking back over the past four quarters, a pretty meaningful pullback in marketing agency activity. As you look forward, since you're going to start lapping that pullback, is there more to do? Or given some of these on-shelf changes, especially in pet, does it make sense to maybe invest back a bit? Just kind of curious your views there.

Yeah, so I would actually say there are two things behind that. One is we constantly work to improve the return on spend and the effectiveness of spend. So almost 100% of our spend now is digital and no linear TV. So we improve our returns. So that's across the portfolio, but mostly on the serial side. So we haven't pulled support out of the serial brands. We just got more effective spend. In PEP, some of the ANC pullback is essentially, it's not necessarily ANC that we're pulling out. We are actually deploying dollars differently. So there's more spend on in-store activation or select rollbacks and support, retail support. That is, again, dollars that move from ANC to call it trade spend to reset some of the equations that we talk about. Do we anticipate some support back in some brands? It's brand by brand. We feel really good about the returns in our cereal brands, really, really good. And we're going to be selecting our support in our pet brands.

Understood. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on now to Scott Marks with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, all. Thanks very much for taking your questions. First thing I wanted to ask about is the food service business, and specifically on the profit side. I think despite the lapping the HPAI pricing adders and price realization being decidedly negative this quarter, you still put up a pretty strong profit number, actually, in line with what you did in Q2. So just wondering if you can help us understand the moving pieces there. Why was it so strong? And maybe why shouldn't we believe that the actual annualized run rate is higher than the $500 million? Thanks.

Sure. Very fair question. I think just to think about the $500 million run rates, really an estimate of what we see the current business earning power is under normalized circumstances. And I think you've got to define the view of normalized circumstances as really I'd say three things. It's our business being back in balance from a supply and demand standpoint. Really, our inventory is back to normal. And then also underlying market versus grain-based egg pricing. Happy to say the first two. So our internal supply and demand and our inventories, which we continue to build this past quarter, are back to where we'd like to see them and in balance. So we're really left with that third piece, which is a bit of imbalance between market and grain-based egg pricing. And that's really a function. All three were a function of HPAI last year and throwing the industry and our own supply out of whack. Again, I think the third piece we believe will correct itself just, you know, when you have a situation of oversupply is where we believe we are from an industry standpoint. That is actually, you know, not going to survive long when you've got chickens. The cost to feed them is greater than what you can command on the open market. We expect people will take some actions to bring that in line. So I think that collectively is how we really view the underlying run rate and how we view the business heading into 27. Again, we feel we can fully grow off of that number in 27 off the $500 million run rate. But that's our attempt to try and carve those pieces out and get to what we see in underlying volumes and balance of the business where it's running today.

And Scott, one thing that I would add is in Q3, we probably took We had a bit more advantage of the market conditions than we anticipated, so we exited the quarter with really high inventories. That's part of what is reflected in that number.

Understood. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe just as a follow-up, since you guys gave kind of preliminary fiscal 27 guidance, you kind of gave some tailwinds helping you, some of the headwinds that are offsetting. Just wondering if you can share any assumptions in terms of rate of inflation, where that's coming from, just any other building blocks you're willing to share at this point. Thanks.

Yeah, I think we're hesitant to get into any broad-based assumptions. We really just wanted to rebase 26 to make sure we're very clear on food service run rate, where we're seeing that, and then also the impact of the two divestitures we made. I think beyond that, like I said, we're in the middle of stages here and have some first looks and ranges, but really don't want to get into underlying assumptions. I think broad brush, we see those all balancing out, and that's why we're saying a stable flat year to a rebalanced 26, but really not in a position to get into a lot of details around those assumptions. Certainly as we get to November, we'll be able to walk through much more specifically some of those assumptions.

Okay, understood. We'll leave it there. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Mark Torrente with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, and thank you for the questions. Maybe just asking the last one a bit differently. The slattish outlook into next year, are the inflation pressures and volume trends you're seeing consistent with your prior expectations that you sort of walked through on the last call? And where is that mostly flowing to?

I can touch on at least. So, again, we're still working on the budget. We don't have all the details, but I would actually say volumes are consistent with what we're seeing. Inflation, I mentioned in the last call that we wanted to see, we needed to wait to have a bit more visibility. And I think what we're seeing is coming in probably at the higher end of what we were expecting. So it's within the range that we were expecting, but at the higher end of that range. And again, that's part of what is reflected in that initial outlook.

Okay, I appreciate that. And then on refrigerated retail, could you maybe help us understand some of the weakness in the quarter? The underlying was down. I think that was mostly due to the pricing lap and holiday timing. But maybe just what does that business look like near term and maybe quantify some of the impact from the Crystal Farm sale? Thank you.

Sure. So, yes, to your point, year over year, the Easter timing was a big factor. And then also, as a reminder, in Q3 and Q4 of last year, we had pricing adders around AI that were beneficial for the business. And those, just like our food service business, were taken off as we got into fiscal 27. So, Easter, and those pricing editors are the big year-over-year drivers. And then in addition to that, which is more of the current run rate of the business, certainly as we've seen across the portfolio, but on a relative size basis, just more impactful for refrigerated retail has been the impact of higher fuel costs and freight costs that we've seen and we talked about on our prior call, and then the other impact is around eggs. The dynamic there is we're selling on the market. We're a grain-based buyer of eggs, and you've got a dynamic where market prices have plummeted So it's a tough situation to try and take pricing in to equalize those when the earn and vary markets are suggesting price of eggs from a market standpoint is much lower than what we're procuring at. So that's certainly been a dynamic we've seen here in Q3, and that's really maybe the gap to expectations, both internal and external, for Q3.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rob Dickerson with U.S. Bancorp BTIG. Your line is open.

Hey, great. Thanks a lot. You know, you put in the release last night and some commentary this morning on just kind of, you know, the ongoing volume weakness, but then offsets and part of the offsets would be pricing. But you're also saying, you know, be kind of chasing the pricing a little bit because it has to come through first. So I guess just to clarify simplistically, it would seem like, you know, if there's a little bit of pricing contribution next year, that'd probably be, you know, later in the year, maybe more back half in the year. and then secondly if you could just touch on you know broadly speaking at least kind of you know where you you think you might still see some ongoing volume softness and then where you also might think you might have a higher probability of some of that pricing just kind of going through the different segments at least for purposes of modeling thanks you know so I think you're spot on so our assumption right now is that pricing will be more toward the end of the year

Right now, where we see more of that happening is in PCE. But again, early on in the process, but that's where we see most of the inflation and where we expect some pricing. Volumes, I think it's going to be similar to what we're seeing. So if you think about the calories, again, we don't know exactly what the calories are going to be, but cereal expected to decline probably 2.5%, but again, we don't know. I mean, and then in that, as a reminder, most of – Two-thirds of our portfolio, 60% of our portfolio is dry dog. That segment is underperforming the category. So if you think about dog is underperforming cat, so dog is declining, cat segment is growing, and within dog, dry is underperforming. So that's going to be a headwind. So that's where we see some volume softness. But again, it's more driven by the category than our brands. We feel that we are are going to be moving toward that added average. But again, considering the mix of our portfolio. Okay, great.

Very helpful. And then just quickly, back to the leverage versus buyback perspective right now. I think you said kind of comfortable in that mid-four range around there also said, You know, don't really have any big maturities, you know, coming due, but, you know, clearly want to be cognizant of the rate environment and how that impacts interest and cash flow, etc. So, you know, kind of all that said, though, is that... What you're saying basically is the cash allocated to buybacks, let's say over the next 18 months, just making it up, will be lower, and then the cash to incremental debt paydown would be higher despite having no maturity coming down. You're going to pay down debt, but it's not buyback as much stock. That's basically it.

Yes, I think you summarized it well. I mean, that's given our current view, and we'll continue to look at where rates are going and refinance rates. But just in the last quarter, as an example, our 10-year refinance rate, which is our benchmark, what we look at, has risen 50 basis points. So that certainly goes into the model and the factor. So assuming rates stay elevated over the next year, that's the right way to think about how we're thinking about capital allocation favoring debt reduction over share repurchases. Again, we still have a pool of cash flow that we can deploy against share repurchases. It's just in the balance. It's going to be more on the debt side in this interest rate environment.

Yeah. Okay, great. All right. Thanks a lot. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Carla Casella with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. You mentioned in the repair remarks about getting some share in private label in pet. And I'm just wondering how you think about private label in that business. Is that a bigger opportunity or is that something you're just using to fill in space and kind of how you think about private label in general?

In general, in pet you mean? Yeah, so if you remember, we lost some business 18 months ago. We were confident that we were going to recover some of that, and that's essentially what's happening. We have a fairly unique position in the academy. We are a premium private label player, so we produce mostly premium products. And that's a segment that is growing in the category. So we are well positioned. So we see more opportunities of that. And then the other opportunity is as we continue integrating the footprint, we see more opportunities of actually expanding private label as we leverage the full footprint that we have. So we feel good about that. That business is actually performing really well.

That's great. And I'm just wondering if you have any comments in terms of like in pet where you're seeing the pockets of strength. Is it mass, club, pet specialty, any kind of divergence in trends by type of retailer?

Yes, it's a good question. So the obvious one is e-commerce is growing, outgrowing every other channel. And it's both the two pure plays so that you know and also the retailer.com businesses so all those are outgrowing brick and mortar within brick and mortar especially still as a channel underperforming relative to mass so their mass is doing probably slightly better than the average of the calories

Okay, great. And then can you comment on SNAP impact, either on the quarter and how you're thinking about it for the year, or if there's like a timing issue of when you expect the greatest SNAP impact versus when it may normalize?

Well, SNAP, I wish I knew exactly the answer for that. So most people see it as the headwind. I personally have had this theory and I think it's what we're seeing in the curry. It's probably consistent with that that it could be a tailwind for curries like cereal because of affordability. Cereal is still one of the cheapest curries for breakfast and it's definitely the cheapest way to actually have the right nutrients in your breakfast. Longer term, I still see it as an opportunity, but the reality is there's a lot of noise. And I would add, it's not only SNAP, there are changes in the WIC program, the Women, Infants, and Children program that also impact the country because there were changes to the dairy allocation that impacts the country. So there's so much noise. So I don't have the perfect answer for SNAP. I see it as potentially an opportunity for CDL, and the reality is if you think about when SNAP changed, that is in our Q1, that's when we started seeing the category starting to perform a bit better.

Okay, great. Thanks for all the answers.

Thank you. This concludes today's Post Holdings Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call-In Webcast. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.