United Natural Foods, Inc.

If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Steve Blumquist, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on UNIFI's first quarter fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release issued this morning. The press release, webcast, and a supplemental slide deck are available under the Investors section of the company's website at www.unfi.com under the Events tab. Joining me for today's call are Steve Spinner, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Howard, our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Testa, President of UNFI, and Eric Dorn, our Chief Operating Officer. Steve, Chris, and John will provide a business update after which we will take your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone the comments made by management during today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include plans, expectations, estimates, and projections that might involve significant risks and uncertainties. These risks are discussed in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward-looking statements. And lastly, I'd like to point out that during today's call, management will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our press release. I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our fiscal 2021 first quarter earnings call. As you saw in this morning's press release, we delivered another quarter of strong financial results. First quarter sales grew 6% and first quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 31%, resulting in a 45 basis point expansion in adjusted EBITDA margin. With the strength we've shown during the last three quarters, the tremendous confidence we have in our company, and our strong commitment to increasing shareholder value, it's clear to us that the best days for UNFI lie ahead. As we continue to build and optimize our DC network, expand our brands, win new business, and migrate our business towards customer solutions and expand our fastest growing segment, e-commerce. We believe the momentum from fiscal 2020 will continue as we grow sales and an adjusted EBITDA in fiscal 2021 above and beyond our results from 2020, which were partially driven by COVID. As a result of COVID-19, many Americans have been working from home, as you know, for the past eight months, and doing so quite effectively. This paradigm shift means more and more meals will continue to be eaten at home with products that have come through UNFI's distribution network. This trend will continue for the next several years as companies' office strategies evolve. At UNFI, our requirements for administrative and support offices will continue to shrink over the next several years as we've increased productivity and associate work flexibility with work from home. We've had and will continue to have great success in monetizing our dark real estate. These factors support our belief that food at home consumption is will remain structurally higher and provide a strong tailwind to our business. The strategic steps we're taking are providing benefits today, and more importantly, they're positioning us for continued success in a post-COVID environment. We're consolidating distribution centers, reshaping our footprint, and investing in automation to drive operating savings. We're completing long-term labor contracts that provide stability and lay the groundwork for future efficiencies. And we're winning new business and focusing on future on higher margin private brands, e-commerce, and retail solutions businesses. All key drivers that help our customers win. COVID has demonstrated how important the local community markets are. And UNFI is uniquely positioned to provide the unparalleled selection, brands, and solutions that will generate sustainable win-win growth for customers and UNFI. The addressable market for UNFI is significant. And Chris will share some specific insights during his commentary. Our new long-term contract with Key Food, signed in October, reflects the critical importance of scale as well as the ease of doing business with UNFI. Key Food is a cooperative of more than 300 stores with a large market share in New York and the surrounding area. And we believe their decision to partner with UNFI is a clear and unambiguous endorsement of our business model and what only UNFI can do for them. As their primary grocery wholesaler, we'll be supplying their stores with branded and private label conventional and natural products across a wide range of categories. We expect our sales to Kifood to total approximately $10 billion over 10 years, or roughly $1 billion annually. To serve Kifood's Northeast stores, we'll open a new highly productive distribution center in Allentown, Pennsylvania next fall. This facility will also serve as our enabler to significantly expand our conventional presence in the important New York City metro market. UNFI is well prepared to grow in this market with general merchandise in an automated Carlisle, Pennsylvania, D.C., large-scale natural D.C. in York, Pennsylvania, large-scale conventional and fresh D.C. in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and now our new DC in Allentown. As to our largest customer, we've begun the process to address our supply contract, which, as a reminder, runs through October of 2025. Since the pandemic broke, we've both been focused on operating our respective businesses and meeting the needs of our customers. efforts that will intensify during and through the holidays. We'll heighten our focus on the contract renewal as we move into calendar 2021 and expect we'll be able to announce a formal extension of our partnership early next calendar year. Finally, we're launching the next round of productivity and efficiency work streams, shifting from integration activities to a series of transformational initiatives that will position UNFI for future sales growth and margin expansion. We began evaluation of this next phase of initiatives, which we're calling Value Path, a year ago. Value Path is a holistic approach to driving more value throughout our business, including across key elements of pricing, procurement, operations, and administrative functions. We believe these initiatives will drive an additional $70 to $100 million by the end of fiscal 2023 and contribute to future bottom line growth, margin expansion, and generate meaningfully incremental free cash flow. Let me now turn the call over to Chris to provide more context on our business performance.