Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q1 2020 Spectrum Brands Holding, Inc. earnings conference call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during that session, you will need to press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kevin Kim. Thank you, and please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Chris. Welcome to Spectrum Brands Holdings Fiscal 2020 Q1 earnings conference call and webcast. I'm Kevin Kim, Divisional VP of Investor Relations and moderator for today's call. To help you follow our comments, we've placed a slide presentation on the events calendar page of the Investor Relations section of our website at www.spectrumbrands.com. This document will remain there following our call. Starting with slide two of the presentation, Our call will be led by David Maura, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Jeremy Smeltzer, Chief Financial Officer, and Randy Lewis, our Chief Operating Officer. After their opening remarks, we will conduct a Q&A session. Now, our comments today include forward-looking statements, including our outlook for fiscal 2020 and beyond. These statements are based upon management's current expectations, projections, and assumptions, and are by nature uncertain. Actual results may differ materially. Due to that risk, Spectrum Brands encourages you to review the risk factors and cautionary statements outlined in our press release dated January 30, 2020, and our most recent SEC filings and Spectrum Brands Holdings most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, please note, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Reconciliations on a GAAP basis for these measures are included in today's press release and AK filing, which are both available on our website in the investor relations section. And now, let me turn the call over to David Maura.

Hey, good morning. Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us today for our first quarter conference call. As I stated on our last earnings call at the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, we expected to have a divot in our first quarter performance starting in 2020 and then to regain momentum in the balance of the year. In this quarter, we just reported organic sales were essentially flat with our adjusted EBITDA down 11.4%. The first quarter decline in adjusted EBITDA was in line with our expectations as tariffs exceeded the ramp-up of our productivity improvements. We expect to resume sales growth this quarter, and additionally, our global productivity improvement plan is expected to catch up to our tariff headwinds. On the top line, we did experience organic growth in our home and personal care divisions and in tech. and while timing issues in our home and garden and HHI segments drove us flat overall, we continue to expect net sales, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth in 2020. If I could have you turn to slide seven, we are executing on our strategic plan and delivering full year revenue growth is a top priority for each of our teams. For example, in our home and personal care division, we had an outstanding quarter. This quarter, our appliance unit reported its first quarterly growth in over a year. We're particularly pleased to see this positive inflection point in our appliance business as it fuels our confidence as a management team that the investments that we're making to streamline our businesses, launch new products, invest in innovation, R&D, and marketing are beginning to bear fruit. We experienced top and bottom line growth from home and personal care, demonstrating tremendous progress from the new leadership team there, led by Dave Albert. Additionally, this quarter represents the fifth consecutive quarter of top line growth in our global pet care unit. This was driven by a combination of continued growth in our dog chews and treats category, but more importantly, continued innovation and market share gains. This quarter also represented the third consecutive quarter of bottom-line growth for our global pet care business. We continued to make progress on a number of fronts this quarter. First, we entered into an agreement for the sale of our dog and cat food manufacturing assets in Cagorden in the Netherlands for a price of approximately $33 million U.S., Spectrum will continue to operate the commercial dog and cat food assets with the Iams and Eukanuba brands in Europe for the time being, but this action represents progress against our plan in global pet care to exit non-core assets and focus on our core brands. Secondly, we continue to reward shareholders by executing a $125 million accelerated share repurchase program, and we did repurchase 1.3 million shares of our common stock for approximately $81 million through open market repurchases during the quarter. Third, we made significant progress on our plans to generate over $100 million of run rate savings from our global productivity improvement plan over the next 15 to 18 months. Much of these savings will be redirected to reinvest in our base businesses and to drive future growth. as well as offset additional tariff costs that we're experiencing in fiscal 2020. There's much more work to be done this fiscal year as we execute on our productivity improvement plans and we embrace a more customer-driven mindset, but I'm confident that our best days are ahead of us again as we work to deliver significant long-term value creation and produce sustainable growth going forward. Our Spectrum 2020 guiding principles remain vision, and our vision is to be a strong innovator of great products marketed with excellence and supported by consumer insights. Clarity, which means we're continuing to simplify our businesses by streamlining our go-to-market strategies and becoming a much more productive and efficient company. And focus. Focus is our relentless focus on our best-in-class customer service attributes. This is our pathway to a consumer-driven mindset. Accepting nothing but outstanding quality and service while increasing innovation, marketing investments, etc. behind our brands. These actions are evidenced in our home and personal care business this quarter. We are driving a culture of greater accountability, much quicker decision making. with an experienced and energized leadership team that's been refreshed with new talent and focused on operational excellence as we position our company for improved sales, earnings, and sustainable free cash flow growth. Now you'll hear more from Jeremy on the financials, and Randy will give you an update and some additional business insights from the different business units. Let me turn the call over to Jeremy.