Good morning, and welcome to the Hormel Foods First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nathan Annis, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to the Hormel Foods conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 2022. We released our results this morning before the market opened, around 6:30 a.m. Eastern. If you did not receive a copy of the release, you can find it on our website at hormelfoods.com under the Investors section. On our call today is Jim Snee, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jacinth Smiley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Jim Snee will provide a review of the company's first quarter results, strategic initiatives and a perspective on the rest of 2022. Jacinth Smiley will provide detailed financial results and further commentary on the first quarter and our outlook. The line will be open for questions following Jacinth's remarks. As a courtesy to the other analysts, please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to get back into the queue. An audio replay of this call will be available beginning at noon today Central Standard Time. The dial-in number is 877-344-7529 and the access code is 3905859. It will also be posted to our website and archived for 1 year. Before we get started, I need to reference the safe harbor statement. Some of the comments made today will be forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by the statements we will be making. Please refer to Pages 5 through 10 in the company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2021. It can be accessed on our website. Additionally, please note the company uses non-GAAP results to provide investors with a better understanding of the company's operating performance. These non-GAAP measures include organic volume and organic sales. Discussion on non-GAAP information is detailed in our press release located on our corporate website. We have also posted supplemental information on the first quarter and outlook. This can be found on our investor website. I will now turn the call over to Jim Snee.

Thank you, Nathan. Good morning, everyone. I want to start off by thanking our dedicated team members around the world for once again achieving strong results in a complex and dynamic environment. The combination of our execution and balanced business model allowed us to deliver strong first quarter results, keeping us on track to achieve our sales and earnings guidance for the year. These results further demonstrate the importance of our strategy, the positive impact of our actions and our team's ability to perform in challenging operating conditions. Our entire team can be proud of our accomplishments this quarter. In the first quarter, our team delivered its fifth consecutive quarter of record sales and achieved high-quality earnings growth. Net sales surpassed $3 billion for the second consecutive quarter, a 24% increase. Operating income also increased significantly, up 19%. Most importantly, demand for our products remained elevated across all our business segments and go-to-market channels. We increased advertising investments during the quarter to sustain our momentum. Our One Supply Chain team once again demonstrated their resiliency and allowed us to deliver organic growth in our domestic value-added businesses for the quarter. From late December through January, our team experienced some of the heaviest operational impacts that we have seen since the start of the pandemic. These impacts stemmed from significant labor shortages due to the Omicron variant, severe upstream and downstream disruptions and industry-wide operational challenges. I want to again thank our One Supply Chain team for their tireless work and their unwavering commitment to employee safety in these challenging times. Fiscal 2022 is an important year as we return to top and bottom line growth. Our path forward, which we detailed at our Virtual Investor Day in October, represents the 6 strategic imperatives that will guide our actions over the…

Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. I want to echo Jim's comments on how proud I am of our entire team and how we collectively rose above the challenges we encountered in the first quarter. During the first quarter, we delivered record sales of $3 billion, a 24% increase. Organic sales increased 13% for the quarter. Gross profit increased $89 million compared to last year, a 20% increase. This improvement was driven by strength in Refrigerated Foods, Jennie-O Turkey Store and the addition of the Planters snack nuts business. Gross profit margin was 17.7% compared to 18.3% last year. Pricing actions across all businesses did not fully offset double-digit increases in freight expenses and continued supply chain disruptions. We are encouraged by the quarter-over-quarter improvement in gross margin as our pricing initiatives catch up with the dramatic inflation we have seen over the past year. We increased advertising investments in all 4 segments to support the Planters, SPAM, Jennie-O and SKIPPY brands as well as the Hormel pepperoni and Hormel chili product line. For the quarter, advertising expense increased by 38% or approximately $0.02 per share. SG&A expenses increased 15% compared to last year due to the addition of the Planters snack nuts business and higher advertising investments for our brands. SG&A as a percent of sales decreased to 7.4% from 8% last year. This speaks to our strong sales growth and disciplined cost management. Operating income increased 19% to $320 million. Operating margins were 10.5% compared to 10.9% last year. Operating margin increased sequentially from 10.4% in the fourth quarter. Interest expense increased $6 million compared to last year, driven by the debt we took out in June to fund the acquisition of the Planters snack nut business. We expect a similar amount of interest expense for each quarter…

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Ken Zaslow of the Bank of Montreal.

Can you talk about elasticity, of where you're seeing it, where you're not seeing it and how you're thinking about it for the next 6 to 12 months?

Yes. I mean really, Ken, we haven't seen any elasticity across any of the portfolio. As we've said, really strong demand across all channels and all categories. And for us right now, I mean, there's just so much noise in distribution and fill rates, demand being strong. And we just haven't seen that elasticity yet. As you would expect, we're continuing to monitor all the various dynamics but just haven't seen it yet, and it's really, really hard, with all that noise, to draw a line and stand to say when we're going to start to see it. You know it's going to come, but it's just really hard to project when that's going to happen given all the other issues I described.

And then my follow-up question is, when you think about your capabilities to supply products and your production supply chain, can you talk about from a time period, so last year, now and now going a year forward, where have you seen the most supply constraints in your production? Where are you now relative to that? And where will you be in a year from that? And how does that change or help your sales and operating profit? And I'll leave it there, and I appreciate it.

Sure. Thanks, Ken. Actually, I'm going to start with the last part. Obviously, a year from now, we expect to be in a much better position. And when we think about not only the continued improvement with labor that we're seeing across the entire supply chain, the added capacity that we've recently completed, projects that we have in the queue that we've talked about and then a lot of other small projects as well as continuing to build out our co-manufacturing network, a year from now, we will be in a much better position. As we progress throughout the balance of this year, we expect to be incrementally better as we go along. And so the biggest driver right now is our ability to continue to add labor to our facilities. I'd say right now, we've got about 1/3 of our plants that are fully staffed and have made progress across all of our plants. If you remember, in our last conversation, I talked about how we have made progress in some select plants, now we've made progress in all of our facilities. And all of that's going to lead us to be in an incrementally better position throughout the year.

The next question is from Tom Palmer of JPMorgan.

Maybe to kick off, I just want to clarify the EBIT margin outlook. I think you said expect it to improve sequentially throughout the year. If I look, though, on EBIT margin, it looks like the second quarter on just kind of a seasonal basis is typically one of the stronger ones of the year and then you see the second half a bit weaker. So is it even, looking past seasonality, you expect to kind of have a linear progression of increases as the year progresses?

Yes. So Tom, it's a great question. And as we've talked about, we're starting to see margins improve quarter-over-quarter. And really, the driver is our pricing, right? And so our pricing is catching up with inflation. But of course, inflation continues to move further and further away from us. And as you think about pricing, there's really, in my mind, 3 ways to think about it. There's the pricing that's fully implemented. There's pricing that we currently have in process. And then there's pricing that's really yet to come. And so that's what's going to drive the margin improvement. And we do, for the rest of the year because of that pricing, strong demand, expect continued quarter-over-quarter improvement.

Okay. And I guess the follow-up would be on kind of the gross margin side. I think a quarter ago, the talk was gross margin expansion for the year. I assume that's still in place, just given the guidance. But maybe for the second quarter, should we look for gross margin to expand year-over-year? Or is that more a second half event?

Yes. So the expectation, Tom, is exactly that, that we'll continue to see that expansion for the second quarter, but also continuing through the rest of the year as well.

The next question is from Peter Galbo of Bank of America.

Jim, in your prepared remarks and in the press release this morning, you spoke pretty positively about Planters. It seems like in some of the Nielsen data though, there's maybe been a bit of a disconnect, and I don't know if that's around service level issues or untracked channels. So I was just hoping, as service levels improve, do you expect to see the scanner data start to get better? Can you just give us a more full picture on exactly what you're seeing at Planters that might be disconnected from the data?

Yes, it's a great question, Peter, and you've hit it right on the head. I mean we are optimistic about the Planters business, and there's a couple of things to consider. The IRI data only covers a portion of the business, albeit a large portion. There's still a significant portion in our foodservice or convenience channel that's really off to a good start as well. But your comment is exactly right is that we have had service level issues in Q1. It's fair to say that we've had a disproportionately amount of lower fill rates across the board. We talked about how we now have this business under our full control as of Q2. And in the first period of Q2, I mean we've already seen improvements in fill rates. And so the team has done a really nice job with Planters and doing what we said we were going to do in terms of how we invest in the advertising. Of course, we had our Super Bowl ad that we ran, the work that we're doing in innovation, introducing a new sweet and spicy flavor, with packaging innovation yet to come. Our sales team, now that they've got their arms around the business, are doing a nice job expanding distribution. And then I mentioned the foodservice channel with convenience stores really have an impact there as well. So that's why we're so optimistic. But your read through in terms of service levels and fill rates in Q1 is exactly the issue in the short term.

Yes. And just to add to that, with all that Jim has just mentioned, we expect Planters to continue to perform at the top end of the guidance that we have given.

Okay. That's helpful. And maybe just on Jennie-O, helpful detail around the SG&A savings for '23. I was just curious though, I think last quarter you had mentioned maybe we'd get a more detailed breakout this quarter on upfront costs related to shutting down the plant and some of the other transitional costs. And then as well on Jennie-O, the comment on feed costs, up 35%, is that inclusive of your hedging? Or is that just what cost to be up if you weren't hedged, I guess?

Yes. So we'll probably tag-team this one, Peter. As we think about what's happened in the Jennie-O operating environment, obviously, it's become an incredibly dynamic this quarter, when you see what's happened with some of the fundamentals, all of which are favorable. And so it's really hard to go through line by line in such a volatile environment. The key takeaway remains so that there's a long-term strategy here that will alter this business to become more demand-oriented. And that's really the most important takeaway in all of this. And so the team has done a lot of great work in terms of how we are going to optimize this business over the long term, how we're going to leverage the strengths of both Jennie-O Turkey Store and the parent company. Obviously, we talked more about the integration of some of the sales and marketing efforts going forward. And I mean, those are the things that are going to get us to the long-term strategy of that demand for key value-added products over the long term. And so that's really the key takeaway. I'll let Jacinth maybe talk a bit more about the grain prices.

Yes. As it relates to the green prices, certainly, the costs that you're seeing and the prices that we're seeing is included in what we have hedged. And so we are more hedged than normal. So we feel good about being able to just cover down some of that headwind from a grain price perspective.

The next question is from Rupesh Parikh of Oppenheimer.

So just given your exposure to both foodservice and retail, I was just curious how you guys think about maybe normalization of food-at-home demand in the coming quarters, especially with COVID cases going down now.

Yes. I mean it's really hard, again, Rupesh, to say when that's going to happen, what behaviors have changed. What we do know is from a foodservice perspective, there is pent-up demand. This has been a bit of a roller coaster ride over the last 2 years in terms of starting and stopping consumers, being able to get out and travel, go on vacation, then actually have to retreat back to the home. And so again, it's hard to project exactly when and how those shifts are going to take place. The important part here is how we've built this portfolio, the balance that we have across the organization, both foodservice and retail. So as that shift occurs, we're going to be well prepared to take advantage of it. But I do think, again, the foodservice business has obviously demonstrated incredible growth and we really don't see any signs of slowing down because of that pent-up demand that I described. In addition to that, it's the great work that our direct sales team is doing to connect with operators who, even though they're seeing improvements in labor, they still have challenges. And so all of that, again, leads us to be very optimistic about the entire portfolio and the intentional balance that we've built across the portfolio over the years.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just one follow-up question. So on MegaMex, I know there's a smaller contribution this quarter due to some of the cost pressures. Do you expect that contribution to improve in the future quarters?

Yes. I mean I do think the avocado situation was a bit out of the ordinary for this time of the year, and so we do expect that business to get better throughout the year.

The next question is from Ben Theurer of Barclays.

I actually wanted to follow up on MegaMex, if I can, one moment. Can you elaborate how the situation has now turned out in terms of the supply of some of the avocados that's coming in? I mean they received some big deduction. Are you having some inventory issues here? And when do you think that is going to be resolved? That would be my first question.

Yes. No, Ben, we don't have any supply issues. Product is -- a lot of the product is actually produced in Mexico. What we are -- I mean what we have is obviously the runoff in the cost of the avocados that's impacted the performance of the business in the short term.

Okay. Perfect. And then if we look into Jennie-O, I mean, obviously, it was a significantly better quarter, and thank you very much for elaborating on that. Now if we look forward and all the strategic initiatives you've talked about, how should we think about the level of profitability for Jennie-O going forward? Is it about to get it back to a more, call it, branded food level, in the low to mid-teens? Or is there still going to be somewhat of volatility just because of the commodity piece you won't be able to get rhythm completely?

Yes, Ben, it's a great question. From our point of view, the work that we're doing is being done to eliminate the volatility in the earnings. And so by doing this, we know that we're going to be able to improve the quality of earnings over time and reduce the volatility. And so really, that's how you should think about it. As we're sitting here today, you've got obviously, breast meat prices at significantly higher prices. You've got corn and soy at very high prices. So there's just a lot of moving parts and a lot of volatility. But the big driver, again, the most important thing to take away is that this is going to be a demand-oriented businesses -- demand-oriented business that will have less volatile earnings over time.

The next question is from Michael Lavery of Piper Sandler.

You mentioned the elasticities and how they're holding up. I just want to come back to that and see if you can elaborate on what your assumptions are going forward in your guidance. Do you expect that to continue? Or do you, at least for modeling purposes and guidance, assume it reverts back to more normal levels or something in between?

Yes. I mean right now, Michael. I mean, we expect it to continue because it really is all about supply. And just it goes back to the point about all the noise that's out there in distribution, fill rates, strong demand. And really, until some of those issues work themselves out, it's going to be hard to prognosticate about elasticities. Do we expect there to never be elasticities? Again, no. But what we do know is that we've got to solve -- continue to solve the supply side of the business, and then we'll have a better view on elasticities over time.

Okay. That's helpful. And just also following up on Planters, I certainly appreciate there's some supply disruptions or service levels, you called that out pretty broadly. But I want to make sure I understand, that would seem to impact your shipments and make those worse than the sales growth we see in the scanner data, but our numbers are showing this kind of high single-digit declines or even slightly more in January. Do you see selectively where some regions or retailers are performing better than that on a sell-through basis that you would point to the supply disruptions as how the business is doing better than you think? Or what are your expectations for this level on the high side and it's coming through where you would have expected?

Yes. It's -- like it's a combination of all those things. I mean, we are seeing some retailers who are continuing to perform better. I referenced the other part of the business in foodservice. And then until we had total control of the business, we were expecting some of these disproportionately lower bill rates and then that came to fruition. So it is, it's a little bit of a rethink. What we do know and what we're so optimistic about is having this business under our control, full control operationally, total supply chain, obviously, the sales part. It just allows us to be able to run the business the way that we want to run the business. And then I talked about C-stores and foodservice, but you've also got the club channel that's not included in the scanner data either. So there are parts that aren't in there. And you add that to the supply chain issues, we feel like we've got it under our control. We're ready to continue to drive this business forward.

The next question is from Robert Moskow of Credit Suisse.

Hi, Jim, Jacinth. A couple of questions. This is more backward looking. But the decision to have a Super Bowl ad probably wasn't yours, it was probably by prior management. But typically, you do those ads when you know that retailers can merchandise aggressively around it, you do it for the retailers. But you did at this time at a time of supply chain challenges. Can you talk about whether this ad created the goodwill with retailers you hoped it would? Or did it cause any issues? And then secondly, regarding the assumption on margins getting progressively better, does that assume that your costs kind of level out as the year goes on? Or have you included an assumption of continued inflation throughout the year?

Yes. Thanks, Rob. You're right on the Super Bowl ad, obviously, we had a -- there was a commitment to that work. But I would say that it didn't build any ill will with retailers. Supply disruptions are so broad-based in today's environment. That wasn't an issue. It did accomplish exactly what we wanted it to do in terms of brand building, making sure that we were getting the impressions in the marketplace that we wanted to get. To your point, we were able to get still a lot of display activity. But we would consider the Super Bowl ad a success. And then in regards to margins, we have built in continued inflation throughout the year. We've also built in some continued pricing. As I said, we've got pricing that's built-in process and pricing that's yet to come. That's going to contribute to that margin improvement.

Okay. And just a follow-up. Does it also assume that your labor issues get sequentially better during the course of the year, too?

Yes. For sure, Rob. Absolutely. We've seen some improvement, but we expect that to continue throughout the year.

The next question is from Ben Bienvenu of Stephens.

I want to ask about the International business, and specific to the M&A strategy that you expect to deploy there. That business has, I know, become a prominent piece of your long-term strategy. Do you expect the opportunity for growth to be driven disproportionately by M&A versus organic growth? And given kind of the debt profile of the business right now and the leverage profile, which is very manageable given the cash flow of the business, how aggressive are you in terms of pursuing M&A in that business at the moment?

Sure, Ben. A couple of questions in there. So we are very optimistic about the international business over the long term. We expect these logistics challenges to be temporary, same with the COVID restrictions that we experienced in China. What we're so optimistic about is the platform that we have built and continue to build across the entire International business. The strongest part of that foundation is in China, where we've been the longest, we've learned a lot about the business, we've added infrastructure and feel like we can continue to leverage what we already have and continue to scale up that business. And not just in China but also throughout Asia Pacific because of what we've done in China. And so we have not backed off at all of our M&A strategy, whether internationally or domestically, to be honest with you. We're continuing to look for those opportunities that fit into the strategic initiatives that I laid out in my prepared remarks. So we know that we have the financial wherewithal. We have the structure in parts of the world where we can do additional M&A. It's all about finding the right opportunity at the right time. And we continue to prospect for those opportunities internationally and domestically.

Okay. Great. Revisiting the repositioning of the JOTS business, you characterized the savings, the $20 million to $30 million of savings, I think, is G&A. But it sounds like the breadth of some of the actions you're taking there might extend beyond just G&A savings. Should we think of that $20 million to $30 million as a baseline and incremental rationalization and supply chain savings stacked on top of that? Or would those broader actions be contained within that $20 million to $30 million that you referenced?

You're thinking about it the right way, that, that would be the baseline and there will be additional opportunities.

The next question is from Adam Samuelson of Goldman Sachs.

Yes. I was hoping to go back to grocery. And obviously, you talked about some of the discrete pressures in that MegaMex and you can kind of see that recent part in the equity earnings line being down year-on-year at the corporate level. But you still have the Planters acquisition contribution in there. So I'm just trying to get a sense on maybe ex MegaMex, ex Planters, there would seem to be a pretty significant year-on-year profit decline implied by the fiscal first quarter results. You talked to especially packaging inflation. But maybe just talk a little bit about the rest of the portfolio, between the canned meats and nut butters and what kind of you're seeing there from a margin perspective and how we should think about that going forward?

Yes. There's a couple of things there, Adam. I mean the first thing is that the demand across the portfolio remains exceptionally strong. And as we've said several times, we cannot fully supply all of that demand. GP had a significant impact in terms of inflation, freight, steel, aluminum, trim, avocado. So it really was across the board and broad-based. The thing that we have done, obviously, is we've taken pricing to offset that. And we've got, again, pricing that's in process and some pricing that we're evaluating that can be yet to come. And so they have had that significant inflationary impact, but the demand across the business remains extremely, extremely strong.

Okay. All right. That's helpful. And then just over in refrigerated, the organic volumes were down on a year-on-year basis. And I imagine there's at least some elements of the new pork supply agreement and having less kind of fresh pork running through that business. But can you help us think about the organic volume trajectory moving forward with some of the new capacity that you have? I'm just trying to think about once we hit a peak on pricing, I mean the way you grow the business, it's got to be volume over time. And I'm just trying to think about how we get there.

Yes. So you're exactly right, Adam. The decline was due to the effect of the new pork agreement. But the biggest driver for us right now is this added capacity. And so we've got our pepperoni capacity that's up and running in Omaha. We've started additional bacon capacity in a number of different locations. We've talked about other projects and building out our co-manufacturing network. And all of those are having a very, very positive impact on Refrigerated Foods because, again, both the retail and foodservice demand remain incredibly, incredibly strong.

The next question is from Eric Larson of Seaport Research Partners.

Yes. So the question -- let me just step back and maybe ask the question on pricing a little differently, Jim. So you were not highlighting specific products that you may or may not have priced. What percentage of maybe grocery revenue still requires further pricing that you may not have taken already? Maybe that's a better way to kind of clarify it.

Yes. I mean -- so look, I just want to make sure I understand the question, Eric. I mean, we've taken pricing on everything. So there's, again, some pricing that's fully implemented. We've got some pricing that's in process. We've got pricing that's yet to come. And then we're still evaluating the need for future pricing. So we're pretty aggressive on the pricing front in GP and Refrigerated Foods.

Okay. Okay. So my follow-up question is, can you give us -- it's a pretty dynamic environment in the meat protein sector with pork. We -- it looks like the USDA is looking for lower hog production this year, maybe 1% to 2%. It looks like maybe you've got really high soy meal costs. So it's farmers -- incentive for farmers to maybe increase production is not as great, at least right now. And maybe some of the Chinese demand might be backing off after a couple of years of really strong demand. So can you kind of give us a feel for how your pork and your hog costs might look for the remainder of the year?

Yes. I mean the biggest thing there, Eric, is they're going to be elevated. For all the reasons that you described, we do expect them to continue to be elevated and we expect them to continue to be volatile. I mean, the other element of this to consider is labor. And we do expect to see continued improvement in labor. But we've talked in the past about raw materials that are impacted by labor and pork trim. And so as we continue to get more labor, we'll be able to do more boning and get more pork trim, but we also know that all the variables you described will have an impact leading us to those higher costs.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Jim Snee for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. I do want to take a moment to recognize Nathan Annis, who is completing his final earnings call as Director of Investor Relations as he transitions into his new role of Vice President of Corporate Development. Nathan has done a great job helping us to evolve our Investor Relations messaging over the last 5-plus years. I know he'll be equally successful in his new role. And replacing Nathan is Dave Dahlstrom, who has been alongside Nathan over the last several years and is well prepared to assume this very important role. I want to personally congratulate both of them as they begin their new assignments. In closing, we remain very optimistic about our business and we are well prepared to navigate the balance of our fiscal 2022. Again, thank you for joining us, and have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.