Universal Corporation

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Universal Corporation first quarter fiscal year 2027 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Woosh Ma, Vice President and Treasurer. Bush, please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Preston Wigner, our chairman, president, and CEO, and Steve Diel, our chief financial officer. During the course of this call, we will be making forward-looking statements that are based on our current knowledge and some assumptions about the future. These are representative as of today only. Actual results, performance, or achievements could differ materially from the anticipated results, prospects, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. And we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. For information on some of the risks and uncertainties related to these forward-looking statements, please refer to the reports we filed with the ICC and under cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements in our current earnings price radius. Finally, some of the information we have for you today may be based on unaudited allocations and may be subject to reclassification. Our comments today may also include certain non-GAAP financial measures, but details regarding these measures, including reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our current earnings price release and other public materials. This call is being webcast live and will be available for replay on our website through November 6, 2026. This call is copyrighted and may not be used without our permission. Other than the reference replay, we have not authorized and disclaim responsibility for any recording, replay, or distribution of any transcription of this call. I would like to now turn the call over to Preston.

Thank you, Rush. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As we begin fiscal year 2027, our first quarter results reflect the market and operating conditions we anticipated. First quarter results for our leaf tobacco business followed a seasonal pattern more consistent with historical trends than what we experienced in our exceptional first quarter of last year. The flu cure and brewery markets are in an oversupply position, and as expected, customer buying activity has been slower. We have managed through these types of market cycles before, and our global footprint, experienced teams, and longstanding customer relationships give us a strong foundation for doing so again. Our focus is on buying with discipline, anticipating and monitoring green tobacco trends carefully, and maintaining the right inventory position. Against that backdrop, our expected customer demand remains consistent with our fiscal year sales plan. In line with historical patterns, Thank you for joining us. improve facility utilization and increase financial and operational efficiency. I will now turn the call over to Steve to review our financial results, after which I will share a few additional thoughts.