Boston Beer Company, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Boston Beer Company's first quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during a conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome. This is Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Boston Beer Company. I'm pleased to kick off our 2023 first quarter earnings call. Joining the call from Boston Beer are Jim Cook, our founder and chairman, Dave Berwick, our CEO, and Matt Murphy, our Chief Accounting Officer and Interim 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 10-Q and 10-K. 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 this afternoon 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 Matt, who will focus on the financial details of our first quarter results today. as well as our outlook for the remainder of 2023. Immediately following Matt's comments, we will open the line for questions. As we mentioned on our February call, our plans for 2023 reflected comparatively lower first quarter volume versus the balance of 2023 due to the timing of our Truly marketing plans and lapping our Truly Margarita launch in the first quarter of last year. Our first quarter total company depletions decline of 6% was in line with our expectations. In measured off-premise channels, Twisted Tea continued its strong dollar growth up 34%, which was offset primarily by declines in Truly. Dave will later take you through the details of our second quarter plans for Truly, which we expect to help improve the brand performance starting in the second half of this year. Meanwhile, we are implementing the operational plans we discussed on our last call to adjust to a lower volume environment. This includes simplifying our business to reduce needless complexity and improve margins, as well as adjusting our cost structure to be more closely in sync with our volume expectations. These operational plans are on track and should begin to impact our margins positively in the second half of the year. We are focused on keeping the strong momentum behind Twisted Tea and improving our Trulie trends while continuing to invest broadly across our entire portfolio and in new innovation with the goal of returning our company to long-term sustainable growth. We continue to believe that the Beyond Beer category where we have an advantage portfolio will grow faster than the traditional beer market over the next several years. We expect the operational changes we are making this year, combined with our history of innovation, strong brands, and our top-rated sales force, will help lead us to long-term success. Our strong balance sheet enables us to continue to invest in our brands and has allowed us to repurchase $27 million in stock thus far in 2023. I will now pass it over to Dave for a more detailed overview of our business.