United Natural Foods, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the UNFI second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Today we ask you to limit your questions to one question and one follow up. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Blomquist, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on UNIFI's second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release from this morning. The press release and earnings presentation, which management will speak to, are available under the investor section of the company's website at www.unfi.com. We've also included a supplemental disclosure file in Microsoft Excel with key financial information. Joining me for today's call are Sandy Douglas, our Chief Executive Officer, and Matteo Tardidi, our President and Chief Financial Officer. Sandy and Matteo will provide a business update after which we'll 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. 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 and the end of our earnings presentation. I now ask you to turn to slide six of our presentation as I turn the call over to Sandy.

Thanks, Steve, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, UNFI continued to advance our value creation strategy focused on achieving shared, profitable growth with our customers and suppliers. Through our team's disciplined execution of this strategy, including our accretive optimization actions, profitability and free cash flow are growing ahead of our expectations, enabling us to further strengthen our balance sheet and increase our financial flexibility. During our investor day in December, we outlined the strategic capabilities we're building to add value for our customers and suppliers and to become a more effective and efficient company. These include enhancements in customer stewardship, merchandising and supplier support, professional and digital services, private brands, technology, supply chain, and productivity. With our operational rigor and lean mindset as a foundation, we're executing management and reporting routines against each of these capabilities and are delivering continuous improvement and accountability throughout the organization. Let me take a moment to highlight a few examples from the second quarter. First, as a part of our focus on building a next generation supply chain to serve our partners more effectively and efficiently, We're continuing to expand RELX, an AI-powered supply chain planning platform, across our entire network. Roughly another dozen distribution centers are expected to go live next week, and we expect we will complete our implementation by fiscal year end. As our RELX implementation progresses, it's helping us to improve customer service, fill rates, and inventory management. which is in turn improving our free cash flow. We're also focused on growing our private brands assortment to help our customers differentiate and create value for their shoppers. This fiscal year to date, we've launched nearly 50 new private label SKUs that lean into innovation and emerging shopper trends from health and wellness to value and convenience. While it's still early, we're encouraged by the early adoption of these new products. These new products and thousands more from our broad supplier network were on display at our spring and summer selling shows in Long Beach, California, and in Orlando, Florida, which collectively brought nearly 7,000 customers and suppliers together to plan for the upcoming selling season. At the shows, members of our leadership team and I spent time with our partners, listened to their feedback, sought to understand their roadblocks and discussed how we can help them execute their unique strategies. These discussions help to ensure alignment that we're investing in the right talent and building the appropriate capabilities to support shared profitable growth for our customers, our suppliers, and in turn for UNFI. The progress we're making across our strategic priorities is directly translating into our second quarter results. Overall, our second quarter performance reflects the resilience of our customers, our sharpened focus on a growing $90 billion target addressable market, and the strong execution of our strategy, including the successful completion of our network optimization plans. Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow grew 23% and 26%, respectively. This enabled us to continue deleveraging, with net leverage down one turn from the prior year quarter to 2.7 turns. In line with our strategy, we have been accelerating our optimization initiatives. These efforts benefited our profitability and free cash flow and have temporarily negatively impacted our sales growth by nearly 500 basis points, primarily driven by the consolidation of our Allentown facility completed last quarter. During the second quarter, the large majority of our customer base continued to grow in a dynamic environment, despite some softness in food retail. Excluding the impact of optimization, UNFI's wholesale sales grew in line with our target addressable market's estimated low single-digit growth rate this quarter. Though we will always review opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our network, We've now completed the initial planned customer conversations and are in various stages of implementation. With these plans now realized, coupled with our strong new business pipeline, we expect that the cycling of larger optimization actions in Q1 2027 will allow our business to return to growth in fiscal 2027. We remain confident in our long-term expectation to deliver low single-digit average sales growth for fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028. As we continue to focus on best serving our target addressable market, we expect grocers focused on differentiation to be the primary source of sustained long-term growth within our industry. We believe our heritage in natural, organic, and specialty products, along with the additional capabilities we are building, can help these resilient retailers deliver compelling value, differentiated products, and enhance shopping experiences that will set them apart from mass and discount retailers and support sustainable, profitable growth moving forward. In summary, the strong execution of our strategy is delivering results and has improved profitability and free cash flow ahead of our expectations. We continue to strengthen our balance sheet and enhance our financial flexibility, which in turn supports our ability to invest in growth and create long-term shared value for our stakeholders. This progress is reflected in our updated outlook for the year, which Mateo will discuss shortly. As UNFI marks its 50th anniversary in 2026, our team is poised to build on and accelerate the company's legacy of connecting grocery retailers to food retailing's most innovative products and shopping experiences. We remain laser focused on becoming our industry's most valued partner by helping retailers and suppliers drive profitable growth for themselves and for UNFI. With that, let me turn it over to Matteo for more detail about our second quarter performance and updated financial outlook.