Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Campbell Soup Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ken Gosnell, Vice President Finance Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Candice. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the fourth quarter earnings call for Campbell Soup’s fiscal 2017. With me here in New Jersey are Denise Morrison, President and CEO; and Anthony DiSilvestro, CFO. As usual, we’ve created slides to accompany our earnings presentation. You will find the slides posted on our website this morning at investor.campbellsoupcompany.com. This call is open to the media who participate in a listen-only mode. Today, we will make forward-looking statements which reflect our current expectations. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates which could be inaccurate and are subject to risks. Please refer to Slide 2 or our SEC filings for a list of factors that could cause our actual results to vary materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements. Because we use non-GAAP measures, we have provided a reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, which is included in our appendix. Lastly, please mark your calendars to our planned fiscal 2018 earnings dates. We plan to release earnings on November 21, 2017, February 16, 2018, May 18, 2018, and August 30, 2018. With that, let me turn the call over to Denise.

Thank you, Ken. Good morning, everyone and welcome to our fourth quarter call. Today, I’ll focus my remarks on the marketplace, our performance, our plans and our outlook for fiscal 2018. As we’ve discussed previously, the operating environment remains challenging across the food industry. While macro economic conditions in the U.S. continue to improve in the quarter, the seismic shifts we’ve described in the past continue to alter the consumer food and retail landscapes. These disruptions include shifting demographics, changing consumer preferences for food with a focus on fresh and health and well-being and increase snacking behavior, a range of socioeconomic forces and technology advancements that are reshaping the consumer shopping experience. Additionally, there is no denying that the retailer landscape is changing dramatically with the emergence of new players, new store formats, and evolving business models. Several variables are at play, including value players expanding their presence in the U.S., the growth of store brands and the explosion of e-commerce and meal delivery services disrupting the market. We expect conditions to remain hypercompetitive for the foreseeable future. In this environment what is Campbell doing to compete differently? First, we’re prioritizing investments, aligning our resources to future growth areas and creating opportunities from the disruptions in the market. To our growth agenda, we’re focusing on four strategic imperatives to strengthen our core business and at the same time expand in the faster growing spaces. Second, we’ve redesigned our retailer selling and support capabilities in June of fiscal 2017. Our new integrated structure aligns our sales and marketing resources to drive growth with existing customers and to pursue business in new channels. We’re rethinking our approach to collaborating with key customers around platform merchandising, such as health and well-being and snacking. We’re enhancing our data-driven shopper insights. And through our strategic…

Thanks, Denise, and good morning. Before reviewing our results, I wanted to give you my perspective on the quarter. Importantly, as you saw in our press release this morning, we finished fiscal 2017 with performance consistent with our most recent guidance. I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made against our $450 million cost saving target by 2020. We ended 2017 with program to-date savings of $325 million. Cost savings together with productivity gains have contributed to another year of gross margin expansion. We are disappointed with the performance of the Campbell Fresh division. As we’ve said, we believe that we have the right strategy for this business. We are addressing the executional issues, and we look forward to returning this business to top and bottom line growth in 2018. We are providing guidance for 2018, which is below our long-term target. As I’ll discuss, we have not been able to reach agreement on the promotional program with a key customer in our U.S. soup business and anticipate this to have a negative impact on sales. In terms of EBIT performance, while we expect to generate incremental cost savings and drive gross margin expansion, we are increasing our level of reinvestment in the business. I’ll discuss the factors impacting the guidance in my remarks. Now I’ll review our results in more detail. For the fourth quarter, as reported net sales declined by 1% to $1.664 billion. Organic sales also declined by 1%, reflecting declines in the Americas Simple Meals and Beverages segment. Adjusted EBIT increased 11% to $282 million, reflecting on an adjusted basis, lower marketing and selling expenses and a higher gross margin percentage, partly offset by the sales decline. Adjusted EPS increased 13%, or $0.06 to $0.52 per share. For the full-year, both as reported and organic net…

Thanks, Anthony. We will now start Q&A session. Since we have limited time, out of fairness to the other callers, please ask only one question at a time.

Okay, Candice.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Andrew Lazar of Barclays. Your line is now open.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning, Andrew.

Good morning, Andrew.

Hi. Denise, I have a question, I guess, on the fiscal 2018 outlook more broadly that that pertains to Campbell, but obviously some other food names too that they have sort of similar fiscal years and have recently provided their own sort of 2018 guidance. I guess, the pattern that has emerged is still some expectation of sales growth that will be below what we all like to see, given the tough environment that you’ve talked about, but still some earnings growth, given the flow through of cost saves and such. And I guess, in Campbell’s case, the company has made some very big bets around growth to your assets within C-Fresh and Snacking. And I guess, I wonder, if you’ve talked about reinvestment this year, but I guess, just in consideration to maybe spending even much more upfront to realize the promise of these growth areas even if it means, let’s say, lower EPS for a year or two in order to revive the top line maybe more sustainably, even I know, that’s not a super pleasant thought process. I guess, my question is really around the concept of reinvestment versus a rebase from an EPS standpoint, just so we don’t run the risk of maybe repeating as a group this sort of scenario over time?

Andrew, you raised a very good point and it’s always a very thoughtful process to balance the performance in the short-term with significant long-term investments. In this environment and for the last several years, we have been acting very decisively and aggressively. When you think about it, we bought five companies in the last five years. If you include the pending acquisition of Pacific, we divested lower performing businesses. We have closed several manufacturing facilities and consolidated assets and giving – give – invested to give us much more flexibility and cost savings in our supply chain. We’ve realized our cost savings program over delivering the $300 million a year early and setting a goal for another $150 million, which we have a line of sight to. And we’ve really amped up new models of innovation going into places that we haven’t gone before. So we haven’t been sitting still for a moment. And this continued stream of investment is on top of all of that activity. And we believe that the investments that we’re making really – are in sufficient support in 2018 to get these ideas jumpstarted and/or continue to invest where we have already been activating. And so I’m comfortable with the fact that, it’s the right level of investment and we’re still able to show some EPS and EBIT growth in the process.

Okay. I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you And our next question comes from Matthew Grainger of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Hi, Matt.

Great. Thanks.. Hi, Denise, good morning. I just – I know this is probably a difficult one to elaborate on. But I wanted to come back to the negotiation issue that you highlighted in the soup category, given the importance of soup to your overall profitability and supply chain. I’m just curious if you can give us any more context on why you felt it was necessary to exercise this level of discipline and really sort of stand on principle here? Is that a function of that particular retailer making unrealistic demands? And how do you think about the risks of that translating into other categories, or potentially a loss of shelf space, or display that’s hard to rectify going forward?

Yes, we don’t necessarily comment on the specifics with a customer, but let me answer the question more in aggregate. Our negotiations with customers for soup season involve joint business planning with plans for spending and merchandising linked to a sales goal. And what we seek are win-win-win solutions, win for the consumer, win for the customer and win for Campbell. And so, in this particular situation, we were not able to achieve that negotiation. And so what I can tell you though is, our programs are strong, our A&C investment is robust and our new products are really unique with the Well Yes! and Chunky Maxx. And they’ve been really well received by customers in general in the marketplace, and we will continue to keep the dialogue open and strive for that win-win-win solution.

Okay, understood. And I’m not sure if these factors are related just a quick follow-up. But is the trade inventory reduction that occurred in Q4 have anything to do with just sort of the lead into to the fall and changes with that same customer, or is that something a bit broader across the retail environment?

Yes, I would say, they’re unrelated, Matt.

Okay, great. Thanks, both.

Thank you. And our next question comes from David Driscoll with Citi. Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you and good morning.

Hi, David.

Hi, David.

I wanted just to go back a little bit, so the Analyst Day I walked away from Analyst Day really thinking that you were quite optimistic about the situation that it was changing Denise in a positive way. So the negative 2% to 0% revenue guidance comping a negative 1% from the year. It’s pretty disappointing. But it doesn’t even seem like it’s all related to this. Anthony, I think, you said the impact from this soup issue is negative 1 percentage point. But – so can you just comment on the fullness of this guidance? Is there something else here, because negative 2% to 0%, it doesn’t seem to flip to some of the stuff that I thought you were saying at Analyst Day about the turnaround in C-Fresh and these opportunities in biscuits. I just feel like we were getting a bit more negative of a figure today and maybe it’s not only related to the soup issue, but would just love for you to elaborate if you can?

Yes. So if I think about it in its components, we – and as Denise said, we do expect to see top line growth in Campbell Fresh in 2018, as we get the capacity for beverage back up to where we need to be. We turn on the promotional program, that’s kind of happening now as we speak, so we do expect growth there. We do expect growth in Global Biscuits and Snacks. The Pepperidge Farm business driven by Goldfish has performed well, so we expect that to continue. Fresh Bakery is a little bit of a drag on that portfolio. Frozen is a little bit of a drag on that portfolio. Arnott’s, we expect a little bit of growth and we expect to turnaround or stabilize our business in Indonesia. So I would say, in Global Biscuits and Snacks a little bit of growth. As you pointed out on Americas Simple Meals and Beverages two negative drivers. One is now the issue on U.S. soup and the other is the expected decline although hopefully to a lesser degree on our V8 Beverage businesses. So, that gets into negative territory in aggregate. And I think the range reflects some expectation and some realization of the environment in which we’re operating. And that’s how we came to a decision to go down to that minus 2 as to the lower end of the range so.

One follow-up on the specific issue. Just to be clear, it’s a promotion problem that you’re having for the soup season. It sounds then that, is this a true statement you’ve not been delisted, you’ve not lost shelf space. You’re just not getting the promotions that you would have otherwise expected to get during the soup season, is that fair?

Yes, that is fair. So it’ll show up in the financials. It will look like a reduction in trade and a lower trade rate that will flow through to lower volumes, which we think will off – or more than offset the trade reduction. So, therefore, lower sales. It will have some negative impacts on EBIT and we’re looking for ways to mitigate the bottom line impact through incremental cost savings and a redeployment of some of that trade elsewhere.

Thank you so much. I’ll pass it along.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Ken Goldman of JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hi, ken.

Hi, thanks so much. Hey, good morning.

Hi, Ken.

If I can just ask a quick one on soup and then a more general follow-up on soup. Just on the timing, thank you for that help in terms of, you mentioned first-half. I’m just curious, does it start to affect your business? I’m just talking the loss of the promotion in the first quarter, or is it more of a second quarter issue? Why doesn’t it affect the third quarter as much? I’m just trying to get a little bit of sense of timing as we sort of model this out? I’ll leave it there and then I’ll go to the follow-up if I can?

Yes, I mean it’s – there’s two things. One is the seasonality of soup. So it is going to impact both the first quarter and then the second quarter. And the reason that you don’t see it’s less so in the back-half is how the in-season and out of season pricing works on soup. So the big delta that you’ll see on shelf prices is really up first-half in-season issue and not so much when we get out of season in the back-half.

Okay. But exclusive of seasonality, we should start modeling this fairly immediately in 1Q. Is that the message we should takeaway, or is it unclear exactly when this sort of?

No, I would agree with that.

Yes, okay. And then just my follow-up is, we’ve heard some of your peers talk about the more challenging negotiating environment with customers in general. One individual said, it’s not like it was 20 years ago where you just send a fax out and announce a price increase, it’s a lot harder than it used to be. I think, that’s apparent. But I’m just questioning or curious rather for this particular issue with the loss promo, do you look at it as a real one-off, I guess, challenge to you, or is this indicative of a more difficult environment out there something that you may have to deal with a little bit longer and more broadly in the future?

Yes. Yes, I think that the – again, as I said, I think the retailer environment right now is hypercompetitive. I mean, you’ve got the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods, the expansion of Leadle and Aldie, creating some new retail formats and some escalated competition in the marketplace. However, I’m optimistic that retail continues to morph. I mean, I remember and I’m going way back when club stores and supercenters were a new format. And the retailer market and companies like ours adjust to that. So we’re really focused on making our brands accessible in multiple channels, and we believe that the new sales design that we have will help us in that effort. So, yes, I do think these are challenging times. And I do think that, as the consumer changes, retailers will change with the consumer and we’ve got to do the same.

Thanks. Have a good holiday.

You too.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Bryan Spillane of Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Hello, Bryan.

Hello, Bryan.

Just a question on snack investments. I think, you had mentioned that it was one of the themes in the Investor Day in July and you’ve referenced it again today on the call. So, Denise, can you just sort of give us a little bit more color in terms of the type of investments? Would it be – are you considering maybe more M&A in the Snacking world? Is it packaging formats, launching new products? Just trying to get a sense for, I guess, what we should look for in terms of being able to identify where you’ve sort of expanded in snacking and what those types of investments would be?

Right. So in the snacking area, I’ll take it in three parts. The first is our internal innovation. And we have real insights about the frequency of consumer snacking and mini meal consumption now five times a day as opposed to only about a third of the population eating three square meals. So we think that’s a very rich space for us to expand with our brands internally. So we have a concerted effort across the enterprise to really look at the – a series of platforms that we’ve identified and bring health and well-being more into the front and center on snacking, starting with mindful kids snacking, which we think is a good base for us. So the investment is really in the people and resources to amp up that internal innovation. The second part of it is partnerships, and we’re continuing to look at partnerships like Chef’d, for example, where we can actually incorporate our brands into new models and accessible channels. And then the third would be, smart M&A. And we continue to be very disciplined about the M&A that we do and this will be no different. But this is an area, where we have an interest, particularly in the better-for-you snacking arena. So it’s really a three-pronged approach, but we do believe that’s a very robust space for us as a company across the enterprise.

If I remember correctly, you’ve set revenue targets over, I guess, maybe the medium-term for each segment to sort of gain incremental revenue from snacking. Is – do you expect that in this fiscal 2018 that there will be some incremental revenue in 2018 from these initiatives?

Yes. I think that’s built into the growth expectations for the Global Biscuits and Snacks Division, and some of the innovations that we will be developing will also be hitting the marketplace in future years.

Okay, great. Thanks. Have a great holiday weekend.

Thank you.

You too, Bryan.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jonathan Feeney of Consumer Edge Research. Your line is now open.

Hi, Jonathan.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Hey, good morning. Thanks very much. You had a little break there. So let me get back to the – just one more follow-up please, on the major customer soup decision here. Is this just a simple, I mean, you said you didn’t lose shelf space. Is this just as simple as a competitive issue that maybe surprised you a little bit, where someone else is selling in promotional aggressively and that’s maybe a little surprising giving some of the recent plant moves that have been made? Is there any truth to that statement?

I’m comfortable that we’ve given you the information that we’re willing to disclose. So, beyond that, I don’t believe we should be talking about the details.

Okay. Let me take it this way then. Your other nine of your top 10 customers where this didn’t happen, what are the factors when you think about the soup season that like what data do you provide them? What are the factors that that you’re very excited about that allow you to maybe keep the kind of promotions you’ve been – you have there? I mean, is it, why wouldn’t – what do you – what data do you share with them that make those negotiations go well?

Yes, we have a very disciplined robust process with our customers in joint business planning, which starts with discovery of opportunities, development of ideas, decisions made and then delivery and execution. And so, we have been working on these joint business plans for many years with many customers. They really involve things like pricing merchandising shelves, performance, consumer activation, customization, packaging, product assortment, they’re very, very comprehensive strategic plans that we co-develop with our customers. And we have very strong programs this year and very robust plans with customers. So I’m optimistic with this other one situation that we will get to a win-win solution.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jason English of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, folks.

Hi, Jason.

Thank you for allowing me to ask a question. Hello, hello, hope I understood you well. I’m going to follow-up on Feeney’s question, because I feel the need. The issue with the soup promotion maybe you’re willing to disclose whether or not it was a retailer choosing to opt into other categories, so no longer showing the same degree of support behind soup. Is that the issue here, or is it kind of Feeney’s question, no, no, it’s just a different brand within soup that they’re going to promote this year?

We’re not experiencing this in other categories.

Yes, I guess, it’s really hard for us to tell you what the retailer’s promotional program it is going to be in the category. We know what it is vis-à-vis our product. It’s hard for us to sit here and say, we know what they’re going to do with respect to the other brands within this category. I will add this situation with this retailer is unique to the soup category and not to the other categories in which we participate even with this retailer. So it is confined to soup, and again, it’s really hard for us to say what that retailer is going to do.

Okay. So the jury is still out on whether or not they’re just pulling back on the category in aggregate, wait and see there. Let me ask you a different question. And kind of taken the other side of Andrew Lazar’s question on, do you need to spend more and ask the question of, are you spending way too much on this portfolio? You’re talking about a big capital investment for services, but arguably there’s ample third-party capacity out there. But you’re going to – you’ll burn a lot of cash to replicate that. And you continue, I mean, you pull back a lot on A&P, but the spend level isn’t necessarily anemic in context of the industry. Denise, given the seismic shifts and the acceleration of these shifts, all the things you’re talking about, why aren’t you making more seismic shifts? Why aren’t pulling back, shoring up more cash to really accelerate this portfolio pivot and transformation outside of just sort of these smaller bolt-on incremental moves that you’ve been pursuing for the last few years?

We believe that we have the right balance of strengthening our core business and at the same time expanding into faster growing spaces. So, again, we believe that we are spending adequately and aggressively in our Global Biscuits and Snacks in our Campbell Fresh business to build those very on-trend categories. Just a reminder, though, the soup business is still a very large and profitable business for us, and we have to keep our brands differentiated and relevant. And so we’ve been really investing very specifically in the real food credentials of our core business to better satisfy consumers and customers and innovation to keep the center store robust, which is definitely needed in today’s environment. We – that said, we have had really good margin expansion in the category and we’re operating as a company very profitably. So, I do think that if there are M&A opportunities out there that we can bolt-on or supplement what we’re doing, we are open to that, but we’re again, very disciplined about our approach to that.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of David Palmer of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hi, David.

Thanks. Good morning.

Hi, David.

Good morning. Just a quick one on, you mentioned in the opening remarks, retailer brands as part of the description of the challenges facing food producers out there. In the past, you talked about retailer brand pushed in broth. Could you just talk about retailer brands and the threat toward the market share shifts that are going on there vis-à-vis broth and particularly as it relates to your fiscal 2018 outlook? Thanks.

Yes. Private label has definitely been around for a long time and has traditionally been below average share in our categories. And acknowledging the fact that we did feel the impact on Swanson broth this year. We believe in a world of private label that the best insulation is brand differentiation and that’s where we’re focused. And so, and the other – the flip side of it is, in the Fresh business, we do participate with store brands in some of our fresh categories. So it’s not a one size fits all on how to work in an environment with private label.

So do you feel like you’ve – with broth, in particularly, you’ve stabilized things versus private label and you have the right programs to make sure that those share trends are, at least, not going to get worse?

Yes, we have specific plans to differentiate broth this year.

Great. Great, thank you.

Thank you. And that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Ken Gosnell for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining our fourth quarter earnings call and webcast. A full replay will be available about two hours after the call concludes by going online or calling 1404-537-3406. The access code is 6692641. You have until September 14 at midnight, at which point we move our earnings call strictly to the website and just click on recent Webcasts and Presentations. If you have any further questions, please call me at 856-342-6081. If you are a reporter with question, please call Carla Burigatto, Director of External Communications at 856-342-3737. Thanks, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.