Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hormel Foods Corporation Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Wednesday, September 4, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jess Blomberg. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Welcome to the Hormel Foods' conference call for our third quarter results of fiscal 2024. We released our results this morning before the market opened. A copy of the release can be found on our website, hormelfoods.com under the Investors section. On our call today is Jim Snee, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jacinth Smiley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Deanna Brady, Executive Vice President of the Retail Segment. Jim will review our third quarter results and give a perspective on the rest of fiscal 2024. Jacinth will provide detailed financial results and further commentary on our outlook. Deanna will join Jim and Jacinth for the Q&A portion of the call. The line will be made open for questions following Jacinth's remarks. As a courtesy to the other, please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue. At the conclusion of this morning's call, a webcast replay will be posted to our Investor website and archived for one year. Before we get started this morning, I'd like to reference our Safe Harbor statements. Some of the comments we make 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 our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, which can be accessed at hormelfoods.com under the Investors section. Also, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial results this morning. Management believes that doing so provides investors with a better understanding of the company's underlying operating performance. The presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Further information about our non-GAAP financial measures, including our comparability items and reconciliations are detailed in our press release, which can be accessed from our corporate or investor website. I will now turn the call over to Jim Snee.

Thank you, Jess. Good morning, everyone. We delivered solid third quarter results and another quarter of better than expected earnings. Our core business remains healthy, led by retail takeaway growth, top line growth in our Foodservice business, further recovery in our International business and continued progress on our transform and modernize initiative. Specifically, many of our key retail brands grew during the quarter, outperforming their categories and continuing to resonate with our customers and consumers. Our Foodservice business delivered another quarter of above industry sales growth, highlighting the value of our solutions based portfolio, direct selling team, and diverse customer and operator base. We continued to experience significant recovery in our International segment in the quarter, led by our global brands and we continue to realize growing benefits from our transform and modernize initiative. We remain on a realistic and achievable path to improve our business, deliver on our commitments and execute against our long-term strategic priorities. Going a bit deeper into our performance for the quarter, I'll start with our Foodservice segment. Our Foodservice team delivered another quarter of above industry growth, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year volume growth. We grew volume and net sales despite pockets of industry softness, proving the effectiveness of our differentiated value proposition. As expected, Foodservice segment profit was generally in-line with last year. Foodservice segment profit remains historically strong and healthy, having grown nine out of the last 11 quarters. Our balanced approach, including our portfolio, direct selling team and the diverse channels we operate in, continue to protect our Foodservice segment from many macro headwinds. We continue to see strong demand for our premium and solutions based items, including premium bacon and pepperoni, premium prepared proteins and turkey. Products such as Bacon 1 cooked Bacon, Fire Braised meats, Jennie-O turkey,…

Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. As Jim noted in his opening comments, we delivered another quarter of solid results and better than expected earnings. Volume for the third quarter was 1 billion pounds and net sales were $2.9 billion. Top line growth in Foodservice was more than offset by declines in our international and retail segments. To provide more color on our Retail segment's top line results, approximately three quarters of the net sales declines were related to lower sales of whole bird turkeys, contract manufacturing and Planters. Gross margin was comparable to the prior year period at 16.8% the benefits of our transform and modernize initiative offset headwinds from lower commodity turkey pricing and lower sales of Planters snack nuts. SG&A decreased $31 million in the third quarter due to the lapping of our unfavorable arbitration ruling in the prior year. Adjusted SG&A increased 4%, driven primarily by planned higher employee related expenses. We continue to support our leading brands in the marketplace and expect to increase advertising expenses for the fourth quarter and full year, including an advertising campaign to support our new Planters Nut Duos. Equity and earnings for the third quarter decreased due to lower results from our MegaMex joint venture, partially offset by improvement from our international investments. MegaMex was impacted by higher avocado costs, partially resulting from the temporary suspension of USDA inspections during the quarter. Interest and investment income from the third quarter increased as interest income from favorable market rates offset higher interest expense associated with the recent debt issuance. Earnings before income taxes were $226 million, an increase of 9% compared to the prior year. On an adjusted basis, earnings before income taxes for the third quarter were $256 million. The effective tax rate was 21.7% for the third quarter,…

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Ben Theurer with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Yes. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question, Jim, Jacinth. So, just wanted to start off maybe with the update to the guidance and if you could give us a little bit more clarity and what you're seeing in terms of like the high end versus the low-end? I mean, you took down sales by about $300 million, but there's still a range of about $300 million. So, what are the potential outcomes here as it relates to the top line? And then if you can break this down, why the lower top line has no impact down on the profit line as EPS was essentially just narrowed, but not changed?

Yeah. Good morning, Ben. Thanks for the question. Obviously, there's a lot there. I think it's important for us to start with the third quarter. And the performance in the third quarter on the top line, the decline really is driven by three primary things. We talked about the three quarters of the top line being driven by turkey contract manufacturing Planters. We still have -- the second thing is, we still have some impact in our convenient meals and protein pricing that we've taken. We're seeing the benefit of the pricing, but that is still having some minimal impact. And then the third factor in the quarter is the comparison in our International group, where we're really lapping some high volume, low margin commodity business from last year in the third quarter. So, that's the decline in there for the third quarter. And as we look forward into the fourth quarter, there's a couple of things that are similar, but also some things that are different. From a market perspective, they're high, but they're not as high as we expected. So that will continue to impact us Jacinth and I both talked about the impact of our Suffolk product or plant disruption, that had an impact in third quarter, will continue to have an impact in Q4 as we continue to ramp back up and we get improved fill rates, the continued headwind of our contract manufacturing. And then again, the lapping in HFIC. So, I mean you put all those things together and that's how we get to the range. When we think about what could take us one way or another and why we're able to really keep the bottom line the same is a lot of the declines were high volume, low margins, in some cases negative margins piece of the business. And what we're talking about in terms of improvement on the bottom line, we've got our international business, which continues to rebound and improve off of last year. Our retail business, there's strength in the underlying core business. I mean, we're seeing key retail brands, Bacon, Jennie-O, Skippy, Applegate, SPAM all performed really, really well. We talked about -- we expect Q4 to be -- to continue to build in terms of our transform and modernize initiative and we'll have an opportunity to speak in more detail on the Q4 call. So all of those things, it's a long answer, but when you package all those things, that's what gets us to that top line guide while still being able to maintain the bottom line midpoint and being able to narrow the range.

Okay. Perfect. And then -- thanks for that, very clear. And then I have one quick follow-up on just the foodservice dynamics. I mean we're still seeing volume growth, but not as elevated as at the beginning of the year. So, as you look into the fourth quarter, what are you seeing from your customers in foodservice as it relates to like the momentum in volume?

Yeah. I mean, we still expect solid volume and sales growth from our Foodservice business, that top line growth has been really broad-based, which has been encouraging, not only across our product categories but the different segments within foodservice in which we compete. Foodservice is on track for a record year. So foodservice remains strong and well positioned to drive value for us.

Perfect. I'll pass it on. Thanks.

Yeah.

Your next question comes from Ken Goldman with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning, and thank you. First question, I was unclear, does your guidance include any potential financial impact from the storm damage? And I wanted to get a sense of what -- maybe the range of possibilities to your bottom line was from the storm?

Yeah. Good morning, Ken. So yes, we did have this unfortunate damage from the storm earlier in the quarter and our production is fully back up and running. In addition, we also have redundant capacity as well for our plant. And when we think about impact from a sales perspective, then that doesn't at all impact sales. The cost that we're talking about and calling out is really to repair our facility, so it has no impact at all on our top line.

Okay. I'll follow-up on that one. And then my second question, and maybe this is a little more direct than I intended to be, but why are you selling products for zero or negative margin? Is it mainly to spread fixed overhead over a bigger revenue base? And I guess the broader question there is, how do we think about the potential down the road for maybe incremental supply chain efficiencies that could allow you to reduce your need or desire to sell product from a co-man or commodity perspective that doesn't really help your bottom line directly?

Yeah. Ken, there's a couple of things there. So the first part of it is, we do have, on the pork side and the turkey side, live harvests. And when you're harvesting animals, we sell everything. And so our goal, and we've been very successful at it, is to continue to move up that value added ladder. And so we feel really good about the progress we've made over the decades, but there's still always going to be elements of that, that are more commodity driven. And depending what the market conditions are, we may find ourselves in that situation and so that part isn't going to change. I guess the second part, and it's an important part of the work that we're doing in transform and modernize, is the total portfolio optimization. Because it is exactly what you say is that we don't want to find ourselves in that position, where we're selling non-strategic items at negative margin. And so our team has been hard at work at that over this last year and we'll start to see the effects of that towards the end of this year into '25 and '26. We'll again be able to provide more clarity on the Q4 call, but it is in our minds, two distinct different areas. There's a part of the business that just naturally flows. The second part is a piece that we can and will take action on.

Understood. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Hey, guys. Good morning. I maybe just wanted to start with turkey. I believe previously you had said it was about a $0.15 headwind into the earnings for fiscal '24. So I just wanted to confirm that that's still the number? And then the second part of that question just, Jim, if turkey fundamentals just don't improve from here, let's say they don't get worse, they don't get better, they just kind of flatline. Is there any sense of how much of that $0.15 you can recover next year, simply if the supply demand situation stays the same, but maybe some other inputs or supply chain get better at this point?

Yeah, Peter. Thanks for the question. Peter, the first part of your question, really, there's no change. And that goes back to what we guided on the Q1 call, that everything's played out the way we thought, and that $0.15 is still the number. The second part of your question, obviously, is a lot more nuanced, and it's not to avoid the question, but there really are so many moving parts in terms of what's happening in the marketplace right now. As we start to look into '25, there's still many, many unknowns. I think it's fair to say we've all seen that egg sets are way down. There's always the uncertainty that, of what’s going to happen with any disease. What’s going to happen with the grain markets. So our focus is, as we said, probably two years ago now, as we worked through the JOTS integration was our goal is to become a more demand driven organization. And we've had a lot of success doing that. We're continuing on that journey, both in retail and foodservice. Obviously, there's been some dynamics in '24 that have negatively impacted the whole bird business. But really as we go to '25, it's still a bit too early given all of the moving parts.

Okay. Thanks for that. And then, Jim, if I go back to when the Planters deal was initially announced, I think a lot of the thesis that the management team had was, if we invested more in marketing and this was a business that was kind of starved for capital, that the results could improve pretty dramatically. And I guess there's been an improvement on the marketing side. But just as you've kind of evaluated and now with the recall and the issues at the plant, just what levels of underinvestment were there kind of in the operations or in the facility? As we just think about if this is truly contained at this point from an impact standpoint on the next few quarters? Thanks very much.

Yeah. Thanks. The thesis going back to the -- for the business at the time of acquisition mean, still holds. And I think we just prior to the production disruption, we're demonstrating the value of what we could do for the business and it was hitting on all cylinders. When we think about distribution gains, innovation gains, really connecting with younger different consumers on the retail side, driving the C-store business not only just for the Planters business but having that synergistic effect across our entire food safety portfolio. I mean it was playing out. It is playing out the way that we thought. And when you acquire facilities, obviously, we did significant due diligence and our -- we felt like we were in a good position. But as we took over the business, we were able to implement a lot of our food safety protocols, which were enhanced environmental and product testing since we've owned the business. And that allowed us to find this issue early and be able to address it. So while we could talk about the financial impact and what was right, what was wrong. The fact is our system worked. We found what we needed to find, we addressed it and we're doing the right thing. The plant was down for five weeks. The ramp-up has taken us a little longer than we thought. But as we're ramping back up, obviously, we expect demand to correct and we'll be able to get back on track to really deliver on that original thesis, which was to drive our whole enterprise entertaining and snacking portfolio. So we're still very excited about the business. Obviously, this disruption is never a good thing, but the team has done great work and feel like we'll be able to get back to hitting on all cylinders in the not-too-distant future.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. And Deanna, also congrats on your retirement. Just starting out with volumes. How did volumes play out versus your expectations for the quarter?

The biggest things for us Rupesh in the third quarter was the Planters volume was lower than we expected. We talk about the contract manufacturing piece, that was another part that was significantly lower than we expected. Turkey was a decline year-over-year, but largely in-line with what we did expect.

Great. And then I'm not sure how much you can comment on this. But as we look to the next fiscal year, just any initial puts and takes you can share? Obviously, Planters could be a tailwind as we go into next year. Both want to get a sense of whole bird turkey and just contract manufacturing if we -- maybe those could be a net neutral or even positive as we look out to next year.

Yeah. I mean, it -- I'm going to say that it's early for us to be talking about 2025. But I do think there are some specific areas that as we're starting to look into that timeframe and think about it to the comments I just made, obviously, we expect Planters to be able to rebound and hit again on all cylinders, both retail, foodservice. The continued build-in our transform and modernize initiative, we expect to be able to maintain some of the momentum in our key retail brands. Our international business is really hitting its stride and we expect that to continue to grow. The other part in all of this is to make sure you have the available capacity to grow. And so we have spent a lot of time on that as well to make sure that we have the necessary capacity to support some of our strategic growth areas. And then as I commented on Peter's question, the turkey part just is so dynamic and has so many moving parts that it's really early at this point. But yeah, there's a lot of puts and takes, but there's a lot to like about the work that we've been doing and that's why we're excited about the position we're in, even though we're navigating some of these identified headwinds.

Great. Thank you for all the color.

Your next question comes from Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Good morning. Just one more back on Planters. You mentioned with the additional $0.03 expected impact and stretching into 4Q. But you had said I think the term was commercial impact along with some of the other things you cited. And I just want to make sure I understand exactly what that means. And is that -- does that point to any potential distribution losses you might have to recover? And if so, could that stretch into fiscal '25?

Yeah. Michael, it is, the commercial impact is the sales impact that we're missing out on. At this point, we have not had any distribution losses. Obviously, we've been able to work through inventory. We're ramping up production, supplementing that with co-manufacturing. And although, we're not where we need to be, we're certainly navigating the situation and in constant communication with our customers. The part that we don't want to lose sight of is that Planters is a very, very important brand in this category. And so when we're talking to customers, there is that recognition. They always want us back up and running faster. We want to be back up and running faster. But it's an important part of the category. And we can't tell you today exactly what type of spillover there might be into 2025. But again, we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we're filling those needs.

Okay. Thanks. And just on the CapEx guide that you're holding. It points to a pretty big spend in 4Q. Is that correct? And just what -- maybe what would some of that be? You didn't change it. So I guess it's not the sort of fix-up costs for the storm damage. What's -- any color on just the -- what seems like a big spike up in the -- late in the year in CapEx?

Yeah. Good morning, Michael. So you are correct and this is fairly consistent actually with how it sequences during the year. And so Q4, we typically do see a big spend. And so we're comfortable with achieving that amount, $280 million that we have put out for the year. So, nothing really unusual in terms of the spend this time of the year.

And our engineering team does a really good job of scrubbing the projects and the spend rate throughout the year. So yeah, we feel like we're in a good position.

Okay. Thanks. I'll pass it on.

Your next question comes from Heather Jones with Heather Jones Research. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Thanks for the question. My first question is going back to whole bird turkey and co-man comment. I think you all said they represented roughly three quarters of the net sales declines. But given their lower price points, is it fair to think that they are -- were a bigger chunk of the volume decline? And just wondering when those comparisons will be cycled?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's -- from a volume perspective, it's fairly equal. As we're working through the holiday season for 2024, we'll get better visibility in terms of what the demand is, what the sell through is, what the supply side of the business is. And so, while it would be nice to say that you're going to have a clear read heading into 2025, those read throughs tend to be a bit delayed. So, it will be probably spring of 2025 before we're really able to give a better view of how that cycle looks.

And what about the co-man side? Is that -- you're talking about that as well or just were your comments more on the whole bird side?

That was more on the whole bird side. So I'm sorry, Heather, I missed your co-man question. Could you go-ahead and elaborate on that again?

Well, you were -- you all said that co-man Planters and whole bird were roughly 3/4 of the net sales decline in the quarter. And they're lower-price points. I was assuming they're a bigger chunk of the volume decline. And then I was wondering when you think you'll cycle the co-man softness?

Yeah. So Heather, just what we've said is it's got contract manufacturing and so that is a facility Century Foods that we own. And so we're -- I mean, we're constantly working on that business to drive demand and bring new business into the facility. So that is not a co-manufacturing issue. It's a facility that we own and we refer to it as contract manufacturing.

Okay. And then my second question is going back to your Analyst Day last year and targeting $250 million and EBIT improvement by '26, it seems like this year is likely to be down year-on-year, so implying a greater lift by '26. And just wondering, given what's happened with Planters and whole birds, et cetera, is there anything that changes your view as to that -- the achievability of that?

Good morning, Heather. I -- just in terms of clarity, you mentioned that we're down year-over-year. I'm not sure I'm clear on that piece of it. What I can tell you is that we are tracking really well towards achieving that $250 million by 2026 and we'll definitely give more color in the Q4 call. As we talked about during our investor call, October last year, we called this year as being 2024 a year of investment for sure. And so there will be a pretty good ramp '25 to '26. That being said, we are seeing really meaningful impact to our margins and our bottom line here in 2024, irrespective of that.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Adam.

Maybe kind of following up on Heather's question in a slightly different way. I know you're going to give a bigger discussion of the transform and modernize initiatives on the fourth quarter call, but can you help dimensionalize the amount of savings that you have realized year-to-date from those initiatives. You talked about the fourth quarter being the strongest contributor from those initiatives of the year. So what ballpark are those expected to be on a year-on-year basis as we start to then think about that annualized run rate into 2025.

Yeah. And Adam, we are going to provide a deeper dive in Q4. And so that is going to be the better opportunity for us to talk about what we've been able to achieve financially in '24 and how we're thinking about '25. What I would say is, we talked today in the prepared remarks about planning the business and making the business. But equally important is the work that we're doing on the buy side and we are realizing benefits from our procurement savings, expected logistics supplies from a move perspective, having the analytics across our refrigerated network to enhance our service levels. And just -- I mean, just in general, our processes are really developing and maturing. We'll also have the opportunity to talk about portfolio optimization. And so, we're not in a position to get into the financial part today, but rest assured, we will do that on the Q4 call.

Yeah. No, and I'll just add as well, Adam, you'll see some of the benefits that you see showing up here in terms of the margin expansion in the business is a direct result of those savings that's falling through the bottom line from different places in the P&L, whether that's from a gross margin standpoint or truly to earnings where we're driving that savings and efficiency in our supply chain. So stay tuned here for our call in Q4 for us to really give you a lot more color there.0

Okay. I appreciate that. And if I could just ask a follow-up just on the sales guidance for the fourth quarter kind of implies down 6% to up 4% year-over-year. Just any kind of rough framing on the split there between kind of volume versus price mix and kind of company level by segment for the fourth quarter as you're thinking about it? I know there can be a lot of noise with the commodity turkey whole birds and some of the fresh meat exports and the co-man. So just help clarify kind of where those are going to kind of through the P&L or through the sales line in the different businesses? Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Adam. So as we're thinking about the Q4 outlook, we expect the retail business to be down mid-single digits. A lot of the retail dynamics will be similar. We talked about contract manufacturing, not co-mans, some of the market impact that we had originally thought was going to be there as we continue to work through the Planter situation. But mid-single digits is a good number for retail. We expect food service to be up mid-single digits. International, will be lapping on the volume side, commodity business again, but we do see improved mix that will get sales to low single-digits and it gets us to the range you're describing, which is really low, low single-digits. But I think the takeaway here is we can do that math, but the core business is very healthy for retail, foodservice and International.

Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate the color. I'll pass it on.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Jim Snee for closing remarks.

We are pleased to have delivered another quarter of better-than-expected earnings. While we continue to navigate several identified headwinds, our team remains focused on finishing the year strong and delivering on our commitments. I want to thank all of you for joining us this morning and hope you have a good rest of the week.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.