Good morning. My name is Jackie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Constellation Brands Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Patty Yahn-Urlaub, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jackie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Constellation's Second Quarter Fiscal 2014 Conference Call. I'm here this morning with Rob Sands, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bob Ryder, our Chief Financial Officer. This call complements our news release which has been also been furnished to the SEC. During this call, we may discuss financial information on a GAAP comparable, organic and constant-currency basis, however, discussions will generally focus on comparable financial results. Reconciliations between the most directly comparable GAAP measure and these and other non-GAAP financial measures are included in our news release or otherwise available on the company's website at www.cbrands.com. Please also be aware that we may make forward-looking statements during this call. While those statements represent our best estimates and expectations, actual results could differ materially from our estimates and expectations. For a detailed list of risk factors that may impact the company's estimates, please refer to the news release and Constellation's SEC filings. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Rob.

Thanks, Patty. Good morning, and welcome to our discussion of Constellation's second quarter fiscal 2014 sales and earnings results. The second quarter marks the first time that we are reporting consolidated results for Crown and our new Mexican brewery. And I'm pleased to report that the transition of our new beer business has been successful and seamless. Operations are running smoothly. There has been no disruptions to service or delays in shipment and our beer supply chain is operating efficiently. Most importantly, the Crown commercial business, which by the way had a great quarter, has not been impacted by the transition. Maintaining this high level of performance during the transition is a true testament to the talent and commitment of the Crown team and the Nava employees in Mexico. The Nava brewery is extremely important to us, and we're proud that it is now an integral part of Constellation. As you know, one of our top priorities is expanding the brewery. We've been fully immersed in the initial planning stages of the brewery expansion project, which includes the buildout of the brewhouse, packaging, warehousing and site infrastructure. We have already selected those companies that will support us in these key areas, strategically choosing the ones we believe to be the most experienced business partners. From a project management perspective, we are building the best team as it relates to engineering, supply chain, procurement, quality, finance, HR, legal and IT, doing our best to ensure that every aspect of the brewery integration and expansion will be successful. Closing the beer transaction has also been very important for our wholesalers. No one should underestimate the goodwill that has been created with our Crown distributor network with the assurance that Constellation will be their long-term business partner. As I mentioned, Crown has had…

Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Our comparable basis diluted EPS for Q2 came in at $0.96. This represents a sizable increase versus Q2 last year as we begin to realize the tremendous accretion attributable to the beer business acquisition, which is significantly enhancing our sales, operating profit, operating margin and free cash flow. Our Q2 results also benefited from a lower-than-anticipated tax rate. As a result, we are lowering our full year comparable basis tax rate estimate, which is driving an increase in our fiscal 2014 comparable basis EPS guidance. We'll now look closer at some of the highlights just mentioned as we review Q2 performance in more detail. My comments will generally focus on comparable basis financial results. As you can see from our news release, consolidated net sales in Q2 included $763 million of incremental net sales related to the beer business acquisition as we consolidated 100% of beer sales for all but 6 days of the second quarter. For the full second quarter, the beer segment generated net sales of $815 million, an increase of 3% over the prior year second quarter period. While depletions were strong at 7% for the quarter, Crown faced a tough sales comparison versus Q2 last year when net sales increased 8% as there were some wholesaler buy-in ahead of planned price increases in select markets in the fall of last year. Wine net sales increased 2% while spirits net sales decreased 18% due to the timing of shipments. Wine and spirits net sales on an organic constant-currency basis decreased 1% as an increase in wine shipment volume was more than offset by higher promotion expense and a decrease in spirits volume. As a reminder from time-to-time, we will see fluctuations in growth transfer shipments, depletions and revenue on a quarter-over-quarter basis…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Two questions related to the beer business in the quarter. First, Bob, if you could just talk about, I guess, the cost structure in the quarter to the extent that this is the first quarter you've owned the business, vertically integrated and you're accruing for certain cost for the first time, things like security, I guess, and other sort of items. Just do you think that this quarter was reflective of kind of what you expect in terms of those overhead costs going forward this year? Or was there anything unusual about what you would have accrued or booked for expenses in the quarter?

No, I'd say in general, as Rob said, the brewery transition, I'd say both operationally and financially, has gone very smoothly. I don't think -- well, I know we really haven't seen any surprises coming out of the financial statements or the manufacturing equipment. So no, I'd say it was a pretty smooth quarter. And I wouldn't expect any dramatic changes balance of the year.

Okay, great. And then second question, just in terms of the depletions, beer depletions in the quarter, could you give us some color in terms of how much of that growth in the quarter was driven by new distribution versus just, I guess, velocity or growth off of your existing base? Just trying to get a sense for how much of the growth was just a greater lift because you ran summer promotions this year, which you don't normally do, and how much of it was just truly from new distribution gains?

Yes, good question, Bryan. It was actually -- everything went well this quarter. So Corona actually experienced some of the best growth -- brand Corona, some of the best growth that we've seen since the JV was formed. And as you know, Corona is pretty much fully distributed. There's probably some opportunities on cans. But it's pretty much everywhere you'd want to be. So you'd call that probably like per cap consumption growth for Corona. In addition to that, Modelo Especial continues to grow rather well. And Modelo Especial is not nearly as well distributed as Corona. So I'd say a lot of the Especial growth is from expanded distribution. But we see per cap consumption in Especial as well. So I'd say it was a combination of all of the above.

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Ramey with Davidson. Timothy S. Ramey - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Just another follow-up on beer. Margins there might have been a little less than what I was working within my model and perhaps less than what you had pro forma-ed for 2012. I know that's probably where Bryan was going with his question. But can you shed any light on that, where we should be thinking about that?

Yes, I think the margins were pretty much where we expected, Tim. We had a gross margin in the low 40% range. That's probably kind of the neighborhood we expect until Nava gets up and operating and we save some freight and start producing the beer in a more efficient facility. So I'd say margins were pretty much what we expected. Timothy S. Ramey - D.A. Davidson & Co., Research Division: Okay, sounds good. And in wine, the impact of the harvest really, I guess, won't be felt for another 12 months at least. But can you describe kind of what you see in the tone of the market right now? It seems like it's fairly strong, but I'd love to hear your sort of tone of market comments.

Yes. This is Rob, Tim. I think that over the shorter term, wine consumption or the market has been perhaps a little weaker than we anticipated, sort of in the low single-digits, maybe growing around 2% or so. I think that, that's really being driven largely by the lower end of the market. So value wines, where a lot of pricing has been taken in the marketplace, I think that -- and everything overvalue, premium plus where we play, we continue to see sort of flat pricing, i.e. no pricing, to perhaps a little bit on the upside or some slightly decreased promo. I think consumer takeaway and premium plus continues to be strong certainly in super premium, ultra premium, luxury, et cetera. We still see very strong consumer takeaway, I would say that relative to the harvest, it's going to be another relatively large harvest, 2 large harvests in a row. Sort of the grape undersupply was greatly overstated. If you can put that all together, meaning there isn't much of a grape undersupply, in fact, we see in general bulk wine inventories have rebounded, are pretty strong right now. Prices for grapes have been coming down for the last couple of years ever since the perceived short harvest of, I think, 3 years ago sort of disproportionately affected that harvest because people got a little hysterical over it. And so in general, I would say that we see nothing in the wine business that is really unusual. I think even the slight weakness in consumer takeaway is really nothing odd. I think it's really, as I said, mostly a function of some significant pricing that was taken in basically 5-liter bag-in-the-box and jug wines. So I think it's a little artificial. So that's basically what I would say is the tone of the wine business.

Your next question comes from the line of Judy Hong with Goldman Sachs.

So a couple of questions from my end. First, Bob, just in terms of your guidance, I know you've raised the full year EPS guidance on lower tax rate. But I don't think you gave any update on kind of how you see the wine and the beer businesses unfolding from both top and bottom line perspective. And beer top line clearly seems like it's accelerated a bit more in the second quarter. So just if you can give us an update on how you're thinking about both line items from a guidance perspective for the full year.

Yes, sure. You're right, Judy. The only guidance we changed was for the tax rate. Other than that, I'd say year-to-date, I'd say again you're right. I think beer is probably a little better than we anticipated and wine might be a little bit worse than we anticipated. But we don't think that those changes were material enough to change our guidance, balance of year. So we'll be reassessing it and update everybody on the January call.

Okay. And on the beer side, so I think beginning of the year, you talked about brewery profit being down with some inflation, but Crown's side of the business being up in profit. Does that sort of guidance still kind of hold and you'll reassess how sales kind of play out for the balance of the year?

Yes, I think that's fair. Yes, nothing has changed materially around that.

Okay. And then just on the beer pricing environment, we know that you've announced select price increases in some of the markets. If you could just give a little bit more clarity around kind of the magnitude and your sense of how well those price increases are sticking in the marketplace. We've also been hearing some chatter about price increases by the major guys being rescinded in some of the markets. I'm just wondering if you're seeing any of that kind of playing out in your major markets.

Yes, Judy. In general, I would say that our pricing strategy has not changed at all. Yes, we announced some pricing, and we fully expect that pricing to stick. Our process is really to look at pricing market-by-market strategically and, of course, we watch the price gaps very closely. But obviously, our business is very, very strong. So we don't anticipate any change in our pricing strategy at all relative to what anybody else is doing, so...

Your next question comes from the line of Alice Longley with Buckingham Research.

A couple of questions. One is just more detail on the second quarter wine performance in the U.S. I think you said your depletions for wine in volume terms were up 2%, but you increased promotional activity. So in value terms, how did your wine do in terms of depletion and then also at retail? That's the first question.

Yes, I'd say in value terms, it was probably flattish for the quarter. Remember that wine was overlapping a real peak period last year, where we really were gaining a lot of market share and saw some pretty good top line results. So it was a difficult overlap for the quarter for wine. And we talked about in the spirits business, which is caught up with wine and spirits and those numbers, we also had some odd overlaps year-over-year. And we expect the business for both wine and spirits to pick up quite a bit in Q3 and Q4.

Do you think the promotional activity in wine will lessen in your second half?

It will lessen a little bit. But remember, because the second half has Christmas, and Christmas is a much richer mix of the higher-priced the product that drags more higher promotion spending to it. But yes, I would expect promotion spending to abate in the back half.

At least in the comps.

Correct.

Right, okay. And then my other question is an update on the guidance you've given us for beer margins between now and fiscal '17. I think you said that you aspire to get to the low to mid-30s, but that's a pretty big range from 32% to 36%, I guess. And can you tell us if you're more comfortable in the middle of that range or the low end or the high end?

Well, I'd say it's not really a statistically valid sample at this point because we only had 1 quarter out of a 3-year thing. But there's nothing that we've seen in the beer business that would tell us that we're off materially from those estimates. As we said, the things that are going to drive the big improvement in margins is moving more production to the Nava facility, which is, number one, more efficient than the older breweries from which we're buying the product from InBev now. And in addition, we'll be saving quite a bit of freight because the Nava brewery is closer to its end consumer. They are the 2 big drivers. And nothing we've learned has told us that, that won't be true when the brewery gets built out.

I guess, to be more blunt about it, I think most of us are assuming you'll get nearer the upper end of that guidance for beer margins by the '15 -- fiscal '16 and '17 period rather than the low end. And are we all being overly optimistic?

I would never accuse you of being overly optimistic. But as we look at our data, you're looking at your own data, we don't have enough visibility that far out to kind of put a more aggressive plank in the stand. So we still think the numbers that we've come out with are the best we have. And remember, we're all trying to extrapolate from benchmarks. And the Crown business is a very unique business coming out of one site south of the border, yet distributing throughout the United States higher price points. So it's difficult to get a benchmark with a similar kind of business in the U.S. But I know you guys will keep trying.

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with SunTrust.

On the beer trends, can you just maybe give us an update? I mean, certainly Modelo has done a phenomenal job today, but where we are in terms of ACV if that's the right way to look at it and when Modelo Light will start to -- when we would see that and what inning you think this whole rollout is.

Yes, I'd say on Modelo Especial, distribution of Modelo Especial is probably 30% to 40% less than distribution on Corona, right? And we firmly believe that Modelo Especial is the next Corona. So we still think there's considerable upside both from bottles and cans and draft. We're also extremely underpenetrated in the draft industry. Generally speaking, draft comprises about 10% of the domestic guys' sales. It's less than 2% for us. So we think there's a lot of opportunity, and Modelo Especial on draft is fantastic. So we're probably in the third or fourth inning on Especial.

And Modelo Light, any update there?

Yes, Modelo Light is being tested in one market. And we're still tweaking the product to better align with consumers' desires, mostly right now around the bottle and the label. We think the beer itself is very good, but we're trying to get the package right. So we're still kind of, I'd say, tinkering with it.

Okay. And then just switching back to the comments on both the discontinued distribution of the cider and the changes in Canada, does that have a meaningful impact? Or can you kind of quantify the impact on sales going forward?

No, I mean, the cider was tiny. And the impairment charge has no impact on how you operate the business. It's kind of a theoretical Excel model calculation that, for us, resulted in a noncash charge and has no impact on how we run the business.

So you've already been doing that in Canada, it's just the final charge to follow that up in terms of focus?

Correct. Right.

Our next question comes from the line of Lauren Torres with HSBC.

Just a follow-up on beer and one on wine also. On beer, I understand you're not ready or you don't want to reveal your pricing strategy. But when you mentioned the fact that pricing is sticking, just curious, is this something that you took earlier this year? It wasn't for the summer selling season, I assume. And with that said, now that the summer is over, do you think seeing what your competitors are doing, there is more room for pricing for the next quarter or 2?

First of all, our pricing and pricing in the beer industry is typically taken right about now, right, October-ish. And as is publicly known, we sent out letters to our distributors with regard to our pricing. Generally, it's not that we're not revealing our pricing strategy. We've taken some pricing. We're focused on gaps. And we fully expect that we'll achieve the pricing that we've expected throughout the year.

So there is potential now that we're in October...

We're not going to -- typically, pricing is largely taken once a year in beer. That's the answer to your question.

Okay, fair enough. And if I could ask on wine also with respect to the impairment charge, we've seen some similar charges for some of your other brands, particularly within the value segment. So just curious to get the skew now of value versus premium, if there's the risk of more of these types of charges coming through, where we're kind of at the end of running the risk of more of these impairment charges.

Yes, it has nothing to do with value versus premium. We don't take charges against specific brands. It's against the acquired business in Canada. And no, we don't expect to take any further impairment charges. And as I said, it's really related to our strategy in Canada. And it's about the fact that we have focused on parts of the business, which were not acquired, such as imports, which constitute 70% of the market and are a much higher gross profit margin than our domestic business, and therefore, don't really factor in as materially into the impairment charge versus some of our legacy business, which has been declining and we always anticipated would decline, such as kits, refreshments and some of the value part of the business, which were strategically haven't been focused on -- never been focused on. And basically, since the acquisition in 2006, as you know, we're only focused on our premium businesses in general. So it's really no surprise and not indicative in any way of how the Canadian business is, in fact, performing. It's an accounting artifice, in my opinion.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Swartzberg with Stifel. Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: A couple of questions also on Crown. One is it seems like there's been a favorable disconnect between retail transfer, your portfolio and depletion rates. And of course, we're looking at scanner data that's not capturing channels you're actually selling in. So is that a fair characterization? That's question one. And then question two, on the brand specifically of Corona, can you remind us of how it's structured in terms of seasonality? Summer, I think, remains the most important period. But it's because you've had success expanding the brand in other parts of the year, just give us some flavor for how that seasonality looks and what your plans are to try to sustain the lift in trend for that brand you saw over the summer.

Yes. Mark, in terms of depletions and IRI, there's really not a disconnect. The IRI only constitutes about, I don't know, a little bit less than 50% of the market. It doesn't include the on-premise. The on-premise has been relatively weak in general across all alcoholic beverages. It's about 20% of the beer business. So that's one of the factors. And then I would say that it's really timing. I'd say that, in general, if you really look at it kind of channel-by-channel and figure out the waiting, there is not a disconnect between depletions and IRI. As to shipments, there is a bit of a disconnect, but that's a very -- it's a short-term issue and strictly related to timing of shipments, which you basically can't look at timing of shipments on a month-by-month basis, in that we can have different -- there can be different impacts on inventories and buy-ins and things to that effect in very short periods of time, say, September versus August. So we fully expect the normal taste to occur, which is that shipments and depletions will be equal for the year. So you shouldn't count on anything weird there either. Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Fair enough. And Corona?

What was your question on Corona? Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Well, it's still a comparatively high volume in the summer season. But can you give us the sense of how it mapped out by the year and what your intentions are for sustaining the improvement we saw over the summer?

I'd say -- Mark, this is Bob. The beer business obviously is a summer business. But Christmas period is one of the higher periods for Corona because people tend to get better-quality products for their holiday parties, which tends to suit us. So we've had tremendous momentum in the summer. I wouldn't expect that to continue balance of year. But we think that the marketing that's in the marketplace right now, especially the beer cooler promotion has been incredibly powerful. We plan on rerunning the Feliz Navidad commercial at Christmas, which just year-after-year people just really love. And so we're expecting a pretty good balance of year. You'll be seeing, as Rob said, some Jon Gruden commercials. We'll be advertising with the NFL and with the NBA when they start out, right? But I wouldn't expect the current momentum to continue. It'll probably slow down a little bit, and it's -- I'll say it's in more off-season than the summer. Of course, our peak season starts with Cinco, right? We start a little bit earlier than everybody else and goes right through Labor Day, and then we cool down a little bit and then picks up again at Christmas. Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: And can you -- that's very helpful. Can you comment rate of depletion growth in the month of September, what kind of trends you saw?

No. September, again what we see in September, right, remember we had some distributor unloading at the end of the quarter in August. So they'll start to replenish those inventories as they go into the fall season.

September also had 1 extra selling day. Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Got it. Okay. One final question if I...

So the depletions will be looking good in September. You'd adjust that back by 5% right there. Mark D. Swartzberg - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Sure. One final one if I could. On wine, nice trend we've seen continuing here, the Focus Brands do better than the non-Focus Brands. But of course, that gap implies your non-Focus Brands are declining. You talked a little bit about that. Can you talk a little bit more about why the non-Focus Brands are declining at the rate they are? And when you might actually get to a point, where these non-Focus Brands are getting to just a scale level where the rate of decline is more likely to moderate?

Well, I mean, I think that every large wine business has Focus Brands and non-Focus Brands, as well as the spirits companies have Focus Brands and non-Focus Brands as well. No, they're not going to get to a level where they become so marginalized that they don't make a significant contribution to the business. It's all about sort of balancing, I'll say, how you're utilizing your cash flows and your profits from their non-Focus Brands against building the business and creating growth in your Focus Brand portfolio. So yes, just sort of a normal business state for most of the large beverage alcohol companies actually across all 3 segments is that how we balance that. Crown is the unusual animal in that regard, right, because the Crown business is 100% Focus Brand. It's only got 8 brands in total, all growing, all Focus Brands. So that's very unusual, I mean, compared to anybody else. Basically in the whole beverage alcohol business, the big brewers all have big portfolios as you're well aware of. I'll call them non-Focus Brands or sub premiums, value-type products that they're employing the same kind of strategy against it. I just talked about spirits companies and for that matter, the 2 or 3 other large wine companies.

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein with ISI.

A couple of things. Can you give us an update on your latest thinking in terms of, I don't know, quarter maybe or half year of when you'll be ready to start producing more volume at Piedras Negras?

Yes. Robert, I think what we said was it's 3 years out, right, because the brewery now has 10 million hectoliter capacity. We plan to get it up to 20 million. But that's going to take about 3 years, and it's all going to kind of happen at once.

Okay. And in terms of timing there, obviously no change in that right now?

No change in that, no.

Okay. Second, and I know we've talked about it a lot and I know -- I understand the basic idea between the difference between shipments and depletions and timing differences. But this difference was a pretty big one. And I know last year, you mentioned that 200 to 400 basis points of your shipments last year were pulled in from the third quarter as distributors did a big buy-in ahead of price increases last year. I'm just -- I'm still a little bit puzzled. I mean, you're doing a price increase again this year, why there would be that big a difference and why there wouldn't be the same sort of pull on this year, so you wouldn't have that kind of a difference between shipments and depletions.

Yes. This year, it's a little later, that's all.

So the price increase was later?

So it's not a second quarter, you'll see it more in the third quarter.

The other thing, Robert, is last year, the price increase was really the first Crown had taken in 5 years. So I think there was a bit of newness to it. I think this year, there's -- people are a little bit more practiced at it.

But you'll see it all straighten itself out over the second quarter.

No, I understand that. I'm just trying to get a sense of the pattern. And did you...

It's a little later, that's the point. And there was also some other, I'll say, fluctuations in our purchases and our shipments last year that are different than this year. But again it's going to straighten itself out, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter. You can't get too focused on it. It's something that was going to be strange from the year -- on a year -- throughout the year, I mean, we'd tell you, but there's nothing going on.

Okay. So the price increase this year was just maybe a couple of weeks later?

It wasn't later, but the buy-in was a little later.

Okay. And then in terms -- as you look at the Modelo brands that you can now bring into the U.S., any new thoughts in terms of particular brands? I think there was Leon and a couple of other ones that looked promising. And also just wanted you to comment, the big guys, there's this trend to increase ABV. It would be my guess that you really can't change the ABV of any of your existing brands that are part of the Modelo portfolio. Can you confirm that? And are there any other opportunities for you to introduce brands with higher ABV?

First of all, we can make formula changes to our brands, but we have no intention at the current time of changing the ABV of any of our brands, not because we can't, but because we don't desire to. If you see what's going on with ABV, it's largely new products that are being introduced at a higher ABV; it's not that existing products are changing their ABV. So we wouldn't do that. And we'd be -- as far as new products or line extensions that we might consider some time for the future, different style of products that may or may not have a higher ABV, will certainly be on the table to look at, so...

So let me just -- just so I get this right, you would be allowed to come out with a Corona XX at a 6% if you wanted to?

Absolutely.

Your final question comes from the line of Vivien Azer with Citigroup.

I wanted to circle back, Rob, on your comment about bulk wine in the U.S. Given how much more bulk wine there is this year versus last, as you think about the pricing that you've been seeing in the value wine segment, does that put that pricing at risk, and then in turn put more pressure on your premium business?

I don't think so. Value wines, you're talking about 2 producers, right, that produce most of the 5-liter bag-in-the-box, Gallo and The Wine Group. I mean, I don't think they're being highly influenced by the bulk wine market necessarily. It's probably fundamentally a nonstrategic business for them. But I don't know. And in terms of pricing in general in the wine market, I would say that the fact that supply is not as tight as it's been is interesting, but we don't -- just like the perceived tighter supply and the higher cost of goods sold from a few harvests ago didn't make much of a difference in pricing, I don't think it's going to make much of a difference in pricing going forward in premium plus either. You don't see wine pricing at retail fluctuate with perceived over or undersupply pretty much period in premium plus.

That was our final question. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Rob Sands for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. And needless to say, we are very excited about the fact that we've completed the consolidation of our new brewery in Mexico with our Crown commercial business. And I'm also very proud to have the team as an integral part of Constellation. We have very strong momentum for our beer business as we head into the second half of the year and our wine and spirits business is well positioned for a great holiday selling season. Our next quarterly call is scheduled after the New Year, so be sure to enjoy some of our excellent products during the upcoming holiday season. So thanks again, everyone, for your participation.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.