Universal Corporation

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Universal Corporation second 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 Wu Shima, Vice President and Treasurer.

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, These refer to the reports we filed with ICC and under cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements in our current earnings price release. 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. For details regarding these measures, including reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, Please refer to our current earnings press release and other public materials. This call is being webcast live and will be available for replay on our website through February 5th, 2027. This call is copyrighted and may not be used without our permission. Other than the reference and 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, Woosh. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our century of experience and market leadership have prepared us well to navigate the current tobacco market cycle. And we enter the second half of fiscal year 2027, encouraged by where our tobacco business stands. Our second quarter and first half results reflect the slower timing of tobacco shipments within the delayed oversupply cycle. During the quarter, we worked closely with our customers, stayed focused on tobacco quality and operational excellence, and demonstrated the resilience of our company through challenging market cycles. As a result, our customer commitments remain in line with our four-year sales plan. And as of September 30th, uncommitted inventory declined to 19% within our target range. We continue to expect shipments and financial results to be heavily weighted to the second half of our fiscal year, consistent with historical patterns. We also expect uncommitted inventories to reduce further during that period. At the same time, we are seeing emerging customer interest in additional volumes, driven in part by El Nino weather concerns. Together, these factors give us confidence in our outlook for the balance of the year. Turning to ingredients, our second quarter results continue to reflect market and cost challenges while we took decisive steps to build the business for the long-term success. We aligned the business and leadership around fruit, dry, and taste solutions, which sharpens our commercial focus and supports efforts to improve facility utilization and operating efficiency. Our actions prioritize execution and support continued progress. We remain committed to this work as we manage the marketing cost pressures that persist. We are confident in our strategy and we believe the actions underway will strengthen the business and its contribution to Universal over time. I'll now turn the call over to Steve to review our financial results, after which I'll share a few additional thoughts.