Boston Beer Company, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Boston Beer Company third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Thank you, Mike. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. This is Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Boston Beer Company. I'm pleased to kick off our 2022 third quarter earnings call. Joining the call from Boston Beer are Jim Cook, Founder and Chairman, Dave Berwick, our CEO, and Frank Smalley, our CFO. Before we discuss our business, I'll start with our disclaimer. As we state in our earnings release, Some of the information we discuss and that may come up on this call reflects the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future. Such predictions are forward-looking statements. It's important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's most recent 10Q and 10K. The company does not undertake to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now pass it over to Jim for some introductory comments.

Thanks, Mike. I'll begin my remarks with a few introductory comments and then hand over to Dave, who will provide an overview of our business. Dave will then turn the call over to Frank, who will focus on the financial details of our third quarter results, as well as our updated outlook for the remainder of 2022. Immediately following Frank's comments, we'll open up the line for questions. This quarter, our depletions declined 6%, which is slightly better than our year-to-date trend of down seven. We grew revenue for the second quarter in a row, driven by the continuing growth of Twisted Tea, while improving our wholesaler service levels and reducing out of stocks. Towards the end of the third quarter, we reached our current target wholesaler levels and currently have the best wholesaler service levels since 2000. Declines in the hard seltzer category and truly continue to negatively impact our business. The hard seltzer category in measured off-premise channels is down 15% on a volume basis through the first nine months of 2002, with Truly down 21%. We are working to improve Truly trends through a major product reformulation, including the addition of real fruit juice and sharpening our brand communication and increasing our media investment. Early in the fourth quarter, we launched Truly Vodka Seltzer. An early response from wholesalers, retailers, and drinkers has been positive. With the launch of Truly Vodka Seltzer, along with our award-winning Dogfish Head Canned Cocktails, we believe we are positioned well in the emerging ready-to-drink spirits category, which has been growing 79% in measured off-premise channels through the first nine months of 2022. For the remainder of the year and into next year, our strategy is to gain market share in the beyond beer category. where we are currently a strong number two. Beyond Beer is growing faster than the traditional beer market, and we believe that this trend will continue for the next several years. Our multi-brand strategy plus our long history of innovation have supported our growth over the long term, and we will work hard to capitalize on these strengths going forward. We're thankful to our outstanding coworkers, distributors, and retailers who continue to support our business. I will now pass it over to Dave for a more detailed overview of our business.