Good day, and welcome to the B&G Foods First Quarter 2017 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. You can access detailed financial information on the quarter and the company's earnings release issued today, which is available at ir.bgfoods.com. Before the company begins its formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of the discussion today includes forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. We refer all of you to the company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact the company's future operating results and financial condition. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The company will also be making references on today's call to the non-GAAP financial measurements, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, adjusted diluted earnings per share, and base business net sales. Reconciliations of these financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measurements are provided in today's earnings release. Amy Chiovari, the company's Interim-Chief Financial Officer, will start the call by discussing the company's financial results for the quarter. After that, Bob Cantwell, the company's Chief Executive Officer, will discuss various factors that affected the company's results, selected business highlights, and his thoughts concerning the remainder of 2017. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Amy Chiovari. Amy, please go ahead. Amy J. Chiovari - B&G Foods, Inc.: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Net sales for the first quarter of 2017 increased 18.4% to $417.9 million, compared to $353 million in the first quarter of 2016. Net sales…

Thank you. We'll take our first question from Farha Aslam with Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Good evening. Amy J. Chiovari - B&G Foods, Inc.: Good evening.

A question about Green Giant, you've now completed that initial November to February increased marketing program, did you get what you wanted out of that marketing program and how should we think about next fall to be different or the same compared to this fall's program? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, certainly, we moved more money, just because we weren't ready last year we moved more money into the first quarter of this year. When we first took over the brand, we didn't have the marketing program set to roll that out in the first quarter of 2016. We are very pleased with the success of the marketing programs; most of it's been aimed at the innovation, yeah, on both Veggie Tots and Riced Veggies. We have seen tremendous growth in both of those, we're certainly out – we're the only Veggie Tot guy and we're outselling in the right veggie category. So, we see a lot of upside to it and we think the campaign really work. The campaign will continue here through the second quarter and we – and then depending on where our sales are coming in and the growth year-over-year will depend on the level of spend we spend in the second half of the year. We plan on spending not quite at the same level in the second half but a lot of the spend last year was due to developing commercials, so a lot of those marketing development and less at the consumer. Now all the money is going against the consumer which we're seeing really make a difference and the brand is growing. The frozen piece of this business has used upside as we roll over against all. The loss distribution in prior years is we really closed the rolling-over against all of it and most of it will be rolled over here against in the second quarter. And we won't have those negative comparisons and all the innovation and all the upside will just be positive to Green Giant as we head through the rest of the year.

That's very helpful. And just as a follow-up on the new ACH acquisition. In IRI, those numbers look really weak. Could you just clarify if IRI is capturing the correct numbers for you and what the trends are in that business? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Trends are very, very positive. What happened before we bought the business, a big chunk of business that sold through a specific customer was moved to their brand and also a combo brand using both – depending on the product, using both names on the label and that changed the UPC number. This – the business is actually up in that customer, so it's all been positive. So all the trends on spices is positive. You're just seeing the old UPC and not seeing the new UPC in those results and that's kind of what's skewing the information and it's – but the products – same products are being sold at the same customer, that didn't change and actually the volume is up very nicely.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Andrew Lazar with Barclays.

Hi, everybody. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Hi. Amy J. Chiovari - B&G Foods, Inc.: Hello.

First off, just on the underlying, I guess, the core of the Green Giant frozen business, that's the piece that I know had been declining and you'd wanted to really get that core piece stabilize such that the innovation can then add on top of that. The data very recently has looked, I think, quite a bit better on that core piece. So do you feel like you're closer to a trough right on that, I guess, the core or base part of the Green Giant frozen business at this point? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Yeah. So pretty much any kind of serious loss distribution that was meaningful, we really on frozen roll over against it here in April. So we're really looking forward to kind of month-over-month results as we go forward because the innovation is really growing at a rapid pace for us. So, as – we believe we've flattened out that core on a go-forward basis. And the only challenge we're having on Green Giant sales today is a little bit more on the can business and us just not wanting to compete at some of the lower, lower prices that some of the competition has put out into the marketplace. We're not seeing that kind of competition in frozen, but we are seeing in the can side. So we are really excited about where the frozen business will go over the rest of the year.

Okay. And then what would you anticipate, I guess, maybe gross margin could look like for the full year. That was down quite a bit more at least in the quarter than I anticipated. And I realize a chunk of that was the change in timing on the trade spend. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Right.

Trying to get a sense of what you think maybe the annual number looks like. And I may have missed this, but the trade spend piece of that, what was the impact on gross margin from that in the quarter? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, the trade spend and slotting was $6.6 million. I mean you have the – we'll check on that while explain the rest, the pure dollars was $6.6 million. So it's a big number on margin on that percent on (25:33) sales. So – but our gross margin, as we look at full year, will be just a little over 30% on the business, with the ACH spices & seasonings and Victoria all rolled up into the total.

Got it. Okay. And then I guess lastly, maybe I may have missed it, what was – I guess what was the change in marketing year-over-year in the quarter? I guess where are you with respect to the incremental marketing that you plan to spend against Green Giant? I guess what was the marketing change in the quarter? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Okay. So we look at those in really two pieces but they're one and the same. So the $6.6 million you talked is part of that change and then also we spent, just on pure consumer marketing, right around $3.5 million more. So the total is basically about $10 million more year-over-year spend than we experienced in first quarter last year on Green Giant and our base business, but most of that spend all relates to Green Giant.

Okay. Thank you very much.

We'll take our next question from David Palmer with RBC Capital Markets.

Hi. How should we think about the two acquisitions Victoria and the ACH acquisitions in terms of sales and EBITDA versus when you acquired them? It looks like the acquired business contribution was rather large in the first quarter, so perhaps you can put that in the context of what you expect from them for the year now. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: So, Victoria that we put when we announced the Victoria acquisition, we said sales a little over, yeah, $40 million – yeah, $41 million, $42 million with EBITDA of around $9 million and we're really tracking to. On Victoria, today, that's where we're tracking to, so no real change there. The real surprise and benefit, not so much a surprise, but a lot of benefit has happened on the spices & seasonings business. What I mentioned earlier about a major customer shipping to joint labels with our brand and their brand and then eventually moving to their brand, they are supporting that line of spices in a big way, and we're way up at that customer, along with other large retailers, too. So the business that we said was around $220 million and $38 million in EBITDA, certainly we did over $63 million in the first quarter. We're going to be well over the $220 million in sales on that business. And the EBITDA – lower EBITDA margin than the rest of our business is around 17%, 18%, but that 17%, 18% on the incremental sales will flow to the bottom line for us. So we'll be in the low- to mid-40s on EBITDA on that business versus $38 million.

Great. Thanks. And cash flow was low this quarter, it looks like working capital was up. Could you talk about the dynamics driving that? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Sure. More than anything it's just timing. There is a big inventory push and inventory build here. Specifically, we are in a transition service co-packing arrangement with the seller of Green Giant. That ends in October. We're moving that production, the majority, to our own facility, some to co-packers, but we're building a very large inventory, so that transition, we have no issues with inventory shortages in the busiest time of the year in the fourth quarter. So inventory by itself, the pure inventory on the Green Giant business was up about $37 million, $38 million year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter. It will actually build a little further more than that through the second quarter and into early part of the third quarter, just to be ready for the large season. And also part of it is the expectation of just larger sales volume in addition to just having enough in the transition. All the innovation is really growing and that's also causing that inventory build. Anything else on the cash flow that's plus or minus from receivables to payables will look very similar to last year-end by the time we get to year-end. So the inventory is the big factor, and it's really just a big build to that transition. So at the end of the year, we'll probably have more inventory than we would've had last year, just because we won't sell it all through by the end of December, but by the end of the first quarter of 2018, it should look closer to normal and everything kind of status quo, but most of it's just because it is inventory build at this time.

Just one last one. I think Pinnacle talked about themselves gaining share in frozen this quarter. You made comments about yourselves gaining share. Maybe not apples-to-apples comparisons in terms of timing, but where do you think your share is coming from? Is it private label? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, we certainly know that our competitor, you know, up the street from us here, has grown share through the Easter timeframe too, and we're growing share too. It's coming from other, right now, which is good for both of us. It's really coming from other lower-end competition and category growth. So part of both of us supporting the category and both of us driving innovation, getting more foot traffic to the category, I think it's a win for everybody. Certainly, we want to be the guy growing share faster than our competitor, but they're doing a great job too. And it's all good for the whole category.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Rob Moskow with Credit Suisse. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Hi. Thank you. Hey, Bob, I just want to make sure I understand the media spending plan. I thought the plan was for $35 million of media this year, with 40% in first quarter. I think the numbers you gave – well, I guess you said consumer marketing was up $3.5 million. Can you help me understand, what the total consumer marketing was in the quarter, and did you have to push anything out? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: No. We didn't push anything out. It's just a mix of – so, we've spent in total – so we spent in total on consumer marketing about $22 million, and that includes coupons, advertising, marketing, and in-store programs. In addition, we've spent a lot of money on slotting. So, that's all part of the marketing budget. So, we're up substantially on slotting, we're up another $1.5 million on slotting year-over-year. We spent a little over $2 million on slotting in the quarter. So, when we think of $35 million, and that's just Green Giant. So, I just gave you our total marketing spend... Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Yeah. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Yeah. And so, Green Giant is about $35 million in total, the rest of what we do is about $27 million. So, that's our total is – is that total – and we've spent between our marketing programs and slotting around $24 million to $25 million in the first quarter. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Okay. So nothing got pushed out? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: No. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: All right.…

Our next question comes from Cornell Burnette with Citi.

Hey, good evening and thanks for the questions Just wanted to start off hearing a little bit of color on the top line. I was wondering, kind of best guess is, to your knowledge – what was the impact of maybe the Easter shift on organic sales for the business in total during the quarter? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: It would be just a gut guess. I mean, there is really two brands, I mean – it effects of a number brands. But two brands in particular that would absolutely effect, because it's about truly the family large eating experience and at the dinner table. And that's Green Giant and Las Palmas on the West Coast, where Las Palmas sales, because that is a large family ingredient enchilada sauce for large family dinners, it's very much oriented to holidays too. Probably, Green Giant by itself, $4 million to $5 million and Las Palmas $1 million, $1.2 million and that was – so...

Okay. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Take this million in total.

Okay... Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: And then, there's a little bit of – there's a little of other brands, that get affected by switch and we pulled in our jams and jellies actually does and other thing. But all much smaller, maybe all that adds up to another $500,000 to $750,000 for that switch.

Okay. So just thinking about the top line off that alone, maybe with – maybe seeing some sales with maybe related to the start of the year, first quarter and then to the second quarter. It would sound like, just based off of that, you would expect maybe some sequential improvement on the top line, in the second quarter, is that kind of the right way to look at it? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Yes. And that's part of us believing our base business, if you – just excluding Green Giant was down 1.7%, I mean, we think that number will trend closer to flat, hopefully, not down much more than 1% for the full-year, so some of that gain is coming in the second quarter, absolutely.

Got you. And then, just one question here, looking at some of the Nielsen takeaway data, it was felt in the quarter that kind of on a base business, so excluding the acquisitions that kind of retail sales and multi-channels down 5%, but you did a little bit better there looking at the numbers. So just wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe some of the growth I guess that you are seeing in unmeasured channel and what that's bringing to maybe the Nielsen data? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well we certainly have a lot more growth in some of the unmeasured channels today. Some of that Nielsen data is skewed for everybody specifically the movement of the Easter holiday into the middle of April. So, there is this – so when you actually look at Nielsen data through the end of April, it starts still not great, but looking better than those numbers. Not wholly offsetting the shore really bad weaknesses in January and February that most categories experienced. So, we're getting – we've become a bigger food service player with our spice & seasonings acquisitions, we're getting more play there, we're getting play in some other channels. So, for a lot of our brands, small wins and other small channels make a real difference. So, we're seeing some benefits there. A lot of our innovation, we've been very aggressive on innovating against the base business in a number of product lines and launching those, those are all helping us, so that's all been positive too. So, we're still not there, because we're still down almost 2% on our base business excluding Green Giant and our goal coming into this year was to flatten that out even in some – even where the categories are declining in total, because of the size of our business, and most of our business is not being totally national in our portfolio, some are. We have a lot of opportunities to just win some distribution points at customers and expand distribution in certain customers, and be able to beat the category dynamics just because we have that ability today, because we're not fully distributed on most of products across the country.

All right. Sounds good. I'll pass it along. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: All right.

Our next question comes from Ken Zaslow with Bank of Montreal.

Hey. Good afternoon, everyone.

Hi.

Just a quick question on the ACH business, can you talk about what your expectations were, if I recall correctly. And then where do you deliver on that, because it seems like you outperformed your expectations on that? Is that a fair assessment? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, we certainly did. So we basically – the business itself is not very seasonal, spices has a little bit of seasonality maybe during like a Thanksgiving holiday, but it's not huge. So it spreads out across 12 months relatively equally. We thought we'd be $220 million in sales, that's about $55 million a quarter, we came in at a little over $63 million. So, certainly, our outlook when we bought the business, and announced that was more toward a $55 million, mid-$50 millions range. As the days went on, even in December, and into January and February, we started seeing some of those wins at existing customers with just better programs and some new distribution at some of those existing customers, and some pricing. Part of spices is it gets – it's commodity driven here, so you're pricing based on cost. So the cost of garlic is way up, so you offset that, you're able to pass pricing through on shelf because your competitor is doing it, everybody's basically paying the same price for the garlic. So we're getting some benefit on price too. Doesn't affect our bottom line because our cost went up pretty much identical. But overall this business in this transition, there's been no negatives. Everything that's news has been positive, so it's either more distribution, locking a customer up longer term, really customer supporting this brand, the brands that we sell in a big way. So, so far, so good and we don't see anything that's going to stop that trend that we saw in the first quarter not continue throughout the rest of the year.

Did it also translate to higher EBITDA or was it passed through in the pricing? It sounds like it should have been higher on EBITDA because of the distribution. It sounds like there was a core increase rather than just the pure pass-through. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Absolutely. So it's probably a little less than half pricing. So it's probably about 40% of the increase was pricing and 60% is just core growing the business and that's dropping to the bottom line. That EBITDA margin of 17%, 18% is absolutely dropping to our bottom line.

And you mentioned a couple times in the press release as well as in the call that you guys are more than ready to do another acquisition. It seems like, and we've heard from different players out there, that the acquisition pipeline is actually, particularly for a guy like you guys, is actually probably accelerating, not decelerating as a lot of the large cap guys keep on segmenting their portfolio. Are you being shown more assets and do you feel like the pipeline is better than it's been or similar or less than, I guess? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: I think in general, the pipeline has been doing this for a long time. The pipeline comes and goes but it's fairly similar. I mean there's certainly a lot of talk and there's been assets, but there's always a lot of talk and assets. And we are certainly ready. We're always looking and when we find the asset that works for us that we can win the price and get – we're going to actively pursue it in a big way. So – and part of I think what we've proven in the last few years, whether people would say pipeline is good or pipeline is slow is we've done a number of acquisitions here and we expect that to continue.

And remind me how big of an acquisition would you do? What would you raise your debt levels to? How would you think about that, just... Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, I think part of our model is I truly believe it's very important to keep our leverage below 5 times, not that we couldn't afford more because interest is still very low. And we would go above 5 times to do the acquisition but most likely come back to the equity markets to raise capital to pay that debt down. And I don't think there's a size restriction for us. We can pretty much finance as big as you can think. But it has to work in our model. It has to – and at the end of the day, it's not about acquisition size. It's about whether it sells through our same sale system. It goes on our trucks. It's more line items on our invoice and we generate cash that's 50% plus of the EBITDA that we bought day one. So if that works, we can buy another Victoria or we can buy something that's twice the size of Green Giant. I mean it's so – it's really about the model has to work and it has to fit in – so, because we're buying brands, and typically we're looking at brands, not large companies. So the brand can be as big as the brand can be. Now, the challenge is as brands get bigger, competition gets greater, and prices have seemed over the years to go up, and that doesn't work in our model. So, our model is what drives us first, certainly the brand that we're buying is also driving that decision. It's got to be high margin, it's got to be a brand we want, and the math has to work in the cash flow. And if all that works and we can buy it at a multiple lower than we're trading at and it is nicely accretive to shareholders, size doesn't totally matter for us at this point. So ...

Great. Thank you. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Okay.

Our next question comes from Jon Andersen with William Blair. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hey, good afternoon. Thank you. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Good afternoon. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Bob, on Green Giant, I know earlier in the year, you talked a little bit about maybe some inventory tightness and some capacity constraints. Can you just update us on where you are with respect to that now, and talk about kind of your service levels, I guess, into the retail trade? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: We're in very good shape now. We have a couple of minor – not minor, but good selling items that we need to make sure we fill some inventory voids, but we're in the 90% plus range and certainly having both the $40 million more in inventory from same time last year in Green Giant says we're pretty well stocked across the board in inventory. Our service levels because of that have improved dramatically. So we're really out of that hole and really making sure we build enough inventory and a real kind of safety stock inventory as we go into the busy season which is kind of October through December, but it kind of starts in September. We're ready and able to service all customers at much higher volumes. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay, great. Pricing in aggregate for the company was, I guess, modestly – it was a modest positive in the quarter, and it had been a bit of a headwind for you over the past two quarters or three quarters. Is that a reflection of maybe – were you anniversarying some of the maple syrup price pressure or – and…

Your next question is from David Cook with Wells Fargo.

Hi. It's Dave on for Brian (55:10). Quickly from us, could you provide some sort of indication on out of stocks or fulfillment rates on the Riced Veggies and the Veggie Tots? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, certainly, they've gotten tremendously better as we headed through the first quarter, both of those items, the demand grew faster than our production capacity. So today, our production capacity can service both of those items. And the out of stock situations have got away at a number of customers and will be like, fully in-stock at all customers here as we head through the month of May. So we're very comfortable at the level of inventories and our level of production on those. My only hesitation is it continues to grow. So we're seeing demand grow pretty rapidly on that, and we have plans to make sure we continue to build production. But, yeah, the numbers, it's a great problem to have and we're certainly outselling everybody else. We have a terrific product and we're really building a real consumer demand for it. And we got more things to come, because we really see this as the new kind of wave of frozen vegetables and really formatting basically vegetables in different formats the way consumers would like to try and eat them today.

Okay. And then based on some of – more recent Nielsen data we've seen, it looks like Del Monte is struggling quite a bit in canned vegetables. Just curious, if you see an opportunity to gain share in that can business? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, part of our incremental spending on trade in the first quarter was more oriented to can versus frozen, so we do see some opportunity. Our biggest challenge, as I said earlier in kind of the beginning of the call, is one of our challenges on cans and we have a very large business on can, and we just got to make the right decisions on it, because the competitors like the one you mentioned are willing to sell sometime because of their challenges they may have at some relatively low prices, and we just don't want to match those prices. So – and we got to work with the right customers, with the right understanding, we're putting a lot of money behind the Green Giant name as we market the brand and you don't always need to – everything doesn't need to be solved low cost. So, we want to make – we make and what we sell is we make very good margin, we do a very good job with the business today, and the prior sellers did a very good job and we just got to be careful, because it's a lot of back them up and sell them at low prices kind of business we just got to pick our spots.

Understood. That's all from us. Thanks.

Our next question comes from Karru Martinson with Jefferies.

Good afternoon. Just following up on the cans with the Easter shift, was that $2.2 million you feel that that will come back here in the next quarter? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Oh, yes, very much so. So certainly frozen sells well during those kind of holidays, but can business picks up huge volume Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Easter being probably less than the other two, but it's still a very important holiday and in our portfolio it's the real meaningful move of sales because of this brand – because of our brand, Green Giant.

Okay. And you guys have been consistent in adhering to your metrics when pursuing M&A, but I was wondering when you look at the brands that are out there, how do you guys think about them as categories, are there ones that are more attractive to you that you would pursue over others, or how should we think about where B&G can grow in the future? Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Well, certainly, our metric for cash flow and cash flow generation and most of all in purchase price is extremely important, but the brand and the category has to work for us too. So we look at a lot of things and believe me we pass on a lot of things very quickly that just doesn't make sense, even if we can make the math work, that doesn't make sense for B&G's portfolio. So we're looking – at the end of the day, if it's high margin category that has sustainability, that's not just going to decline off the map. We're interested and if it's certainly centers for grocery or frozen now, we were interested. And we would look, but it's – our model has to work, the brand has to work and it has to be in a category we want to be in.

Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate it.

This does conclude today's question-and-answer session. Mr. Cantwell, at this time, I would like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks. Robert C. Cantwell - B&G Foods, Inc.: Okay. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening and thank you for your long-term support in B&G. And we look forward to continue positive results as we head through the rest of the year? Thank you.

This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.