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Conagra Brands, Inc. (CAG)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Jun 24, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to today's ConAgra Foods fourth quarter earnings conference call. This program is being recorded. My name is Jessica Morgan and I'll be your conference facilitator. All audience lines are currently in a listen-only mode. However, our speakers will address questions at the end of the presentation during the formal question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Gary Rodkin, Chief Executive Officer of ConAgra Foods. Please go ahead, Mr. Rodkin.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning. This is Gary Rodkin. And I'm here with John Gehring, our CFO, and Chris Klinefelter, VP of Investor Relations. Over the next few minutes, John and I will provide our views about the strategic operating and financial aspects of the quarter. But before we get started, Chris will say a few words about housekeeping matters.

Chris Klinefelter

Management

Good morning. During today's remarks, we will make some forward-looking statements. And while we're making these statements in good faith and are confident about our company's direction, we do not have any guarantee about the results that we will achieve. So if you'd like to learn more about the risks and factors that could influence and affect our business, I'll refer you to the documents we filed with the SEC, which include cautionary language. Also, we'll be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures during the call today. And the reconciliations of those measures to the most directly comparable measures for Regulation G compliance can be found in either the earnings press release, the Q&A document, or on our website under the Financial Reports and Filings link, and then choosing Non-GAAP Reconciliations. Now I'll turn it back over to Gary.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris. We had a very good year. As planned, we delivered $0.39 of diluted EPS in the fourth quarter, making the year $1.74, excluding items impacting comparability. That’s just sigh of 15% comparable EPS growth for the year and a high quality performance when you take into consideration the core top and bottom line growth in the Consumer Foods segment, the dollar and unit market share gains for that segment on a full year basis, and the generation of $1.4 billion of operating cash flow through strong earnings and excellent working capital management. Supply chain productivity, innovation, and marketing, all played key roles. That’s part of building a strong base to drive sustainable profitable growth for years to come. I’ll talk about that more in a few minutes. First, here is the overview of how our fourth quarter shaped up. Diluted EPS came in where we planned, at $0.39, excluding items impacting comparability. Comparable operating profit for consumer increased 10%. Excluding the estimated 7% benefit from the extra week last year, sales were up about 3% for Consumer Foods. Our Commercial Foods sales were down 6% and operating profit was down 26%. The extra week a year ago contributed to these declines as well as product cost issues and a cost allocation process change we discussed earlier in the year. Our milling performance was strong, but last year was unusually so creating a tough lap for this year. Net-net, as we indicated to you last quarter, we expected these results. And as we look forward, we’re confident in the underlying operating capabilities of Lamb Weston and ConAgra Mills and expect this segment to deliver overall growth in fiscal 2011. Let me give you some more detail about the segments, starting with Consumer Foods. As I just mentioned, we finished…

John Gehring

CFO

Thank you, Gary. And good morning, everyone. I’m going to touch on five topics this morning. I’ll begin with our fourth quarter performance highlights and then comment on portfolio changes. Next, I’ll address comparability matters; then on to cash flow, capital and balance sheet items; and finally, I will provide some comments on our outlook for fiscal 2011. Starting with our fourth quarter performance, as Gary noted, the fourth quarter was a bit mixed with continued good performance in our Consumer segment and some challenges in our Committee segment, centered on performance at Lamb Weston. For the quarter, we reported fully diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $0.27 versus $0.38 in the year-ago period. Adjusting for items impacting comparability, fully diluted earnings per share from continuing operations were $0.39, in line with our expectations. Earnings from discontinued operations include the operating results of the Gilroy dehydrated vegetable business, which we are in the process of divesting. As a reminder, the sale of this business was not contemplated when we prepared our full year earnings estimate, and therefore the Gilroy operating earnings were included in our previous guidance for fiscal 2010 of EPS approaching $1.73 per share, adjusted for items impacting comparability. Let me touch on a few other operating highlights for the quarter. First, as we’ve noted, the Consumer Foods segment turned in another good quarter, with operating profit up 10% on a comparable basis. This represents the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year performance improvement. We continue to execute well and consistently on each of our fundamentals; innovation, marketing and merchandising, sales performance, and supply chain capabilities. Reported Consumer Foods net sales were down approximately 4%. However, on a 13-week basis, net sales were up approximately 3%. We estimate that the extra week in the prior year contributed…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Now we’d like to get to an important part of today’s call, taking your questions. (Operator instructions) And it looks like our first question comes from David Driscoll with Citi Investment Research. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Great, thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning.

John Gehring

CFO

Good morning. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: I’d just like to start off – I've got a number of questions, some of them are pretty quick. On the cost savings side, you talked about the $275 million just being modestly down from the $300 million in F ’10. But John, in your comments, you talked about net productivity and then you were making comparisons year-over-year. Can you simply just divide these up and tell us where – two clarifications. What is your expectation for the rate of inflation in F ’11? And then how does the $275 million pace throughout the year? It sounds like you were saying something like 60%, 70% of it shows up in the back half.

John Gehring

CFO

First of all, the rate of inflation right now what we are seeing is probably in the range of 4%. In terms of the pace of the cost savings, I guess I don’t have it broken out by quarters. I think it would flow fairly normally, but I think the issue is when you look at what happened in the first half of this fiscal 2010, the gap between cost savings and inflation, partly because inflation was slow in the first half of the year. That gap was just bigger in the first half of fiscal ’10. So we’re lapping that. And you’re just going to see a different spirit throughout the year.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. David, just to amplify John’s point, we’ve really started to see things moderate more in terms of that gap in the back half of last year. So it’s really the comp of first half, second half, not really the rate of anything happening in fiscal ’11.

John Gehring

CFO

Yes. David, just to be clear, I think the cost savings generally are going to flow pretty evenly throughout the year, we think. It won’t be exactly 25% a quarter, but it won’t be radically off that either. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: In this 4% rate of inflation, can you call out what a few of the big hitters are? And then also, the separate question, Gary, can you talk about your expectations for the top-line in Consumer Foods, both price and volume?

John Gehring

CFO

David, I think the two largest items that I’d point to in terms of the inflation trends are probably going to be energy and proteins. There are other pressures across various commodities. Those are probably the two most significant.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. And David, I would say that we are not planning on significant pricing at this point in the year. So our top-line expectation is to be in the neighborhood of about 3%, and most of that would come from volume and mix. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Okay. Final question is just what was the shares at the end of the period? I think most of this repurchase would not have showed up in weighted average shares in the fourth quarter. And then lastly, can you repeat some of your comments about advertising expense growth in the fourth quarter? I think you said it was down quite considerably. But Gary, put this in context of F ’10 overall and how you see F ’11 on advertising.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. In the fourth quarter, it was down because the previous year, the 53rd week allowed us to spend considerably more. So net for the whole year, we were up on A&P at about 6% versus a year ago.

John Gehring

CFO

David, on the shares, I don’t have the quarter-end share count, but I think that’s something we can follow up with. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: I’d appreciate that. Thanks a lot. Great results.

John Gehring

CFO

Thank you.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll move now to Bank of America and Bryan Spillane. Doug Ernst – Bank of America: Hi, guys. This is Doug Ernst for Bryan Spillane. I’m just wondering if you guys could talk a little bit about the pricing or promotional activity in the Consumer Foods segment and how that flowed through in terms of your market share performance in the quarter. André Hawaux: I’ll take that. This is André. I think overall we felt very good. Well, first of all, let me just set some context. This is for Consumer Foods. Fiscal year 2010 was the first year that we’ve gained both dollar share and unit share as an organization for the last years. I think you have to understand that context, which is really important. We feel really good about that. I think what we saw in Q4 overall is the categories in which we competed softened versus Q3, but yet again, on our top 15 categories, we held share in terms of dollars and we gained a slight unit share. Overall, the total portfolio, we declined a little bit in the fourth quarter, but that was a function of a lot of our other categories. But I think net-net we feel very good about where we were. We saw continued pressure in overall pricing and in the category softness across the board in large grocery. Doug Ernst – Bank of America: Okay, great. And then on a separate topic, on share repurchase, we had a few names in the packaged food space due to accelerated share repurchases recently. Just wondering – you have $400 million left on your authorization and over $900 million of cash on the balance sheet. I was wondering if you guys considered an ASR in the near-term.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

At this point, that’s not something that we’ve talked to our Board about. We’ve constantly talked to them about capital allocation. We are well aware of, I think, various investors’ desires around share repurchase, but we will continue to look at that as a strong alternative versus our other capital allocation options. Doug Ernst – Bank of America: All right, great. Thanks, guys. I’ll pass it on.

Operator

Operator

We’ll hear now from Ann Gurkin with Davenport. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Good morning.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Let me ask a little bit about the expansion of Lightlife. You all highlighted this back in February

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: How is it going? Is it meeting expectations –?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

I thought you are going to – I'm sorry, Ann. I apologize. I thought you wanted to ask a question about Lightlife. I didn’t realize – we are currently – some of the things we are doing, as you know, are we’ve launched in the Northeast a test market for our frozen meal offering. That portfolio today is largely refrigerated meat alternatives, and we’re actually launching a vegetarian product that is in frozen. It’s going very well. The things that we are seeing in the marketplace, benchmarking them against our competitive set there give us indications that we’ve hit a very strong product offering for the consumer, and we are going to continue to monitor the test. We have some exit criteria that we will be going through over the next couple of months. And if those criteria continue to hold to where we are today, we believe that we would be prepared for a broader rollout of that product offering. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Okay. And then secondly, what have you incorporated in your outlook for the next fiscal year for competitive pressure or promotions in the frozen food segment?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

What we’ve done there, Ann, is we’ve got a program that we’ve put in place in the back half of this year, Q3 and Q4. We believe that’s what we’ve – we’ve laid out the competitive landscape and the pricing landscape to be pretty consistent with that, and that’s the way we’ve built our plans for next year. As Gary mentioned, we also have some wonderful products on the innovations side, some of which have just been launched already. We talked about the baked item from Marie Callender, the fruit pie from Banquet. We have this wonderful product that we are launching, which is the Lunch Steamer, that will be out in the tail end of our first quarter, which is a place we don’t really play a whole lot. So we’ve got a lot of innovation coming. This American Pie acquisition we’ve announced that provides us some strategic adjacency, which we feel – we figure is going to have a lot of fun with that product with some of the other things we have in our portfolio like Reddi-wip. So we feel really good about what we’ve got going on in frozen. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: That’s great. So you expect promotion level to stay relatively the same for the year?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Absolutely, yes. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Great. And then last – just I’ve got to ask how are sales of Banquet pies going? And are you gaining distribution in, say, like six store outlets?

John Gehring

CFO

We are gaining distribution across the board. We’ve done really well with that product. It’s – we are still getting to – we are wrapping up our HCV distribution. What I would also like to point out to the audience is that for four quarters now in fiscal year 2010, every quarter we have increased our total point of distribution for ConAgra products at retail, which again in this environment where customers are in fact looking at clean assortment of things like that, speaks a lot to what we’ve been able to do as a sales organization as well. So every quarter this year we’ve actually gained total points of distribution. Ann Gurkin – Davenport: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take a question from Barclays Capital and Andrew Lazar. Andrew Lazar – Barclays Capital: Good morning, everyone.

John Gehring

CFO

Good morning

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning. Andrew Lazar – Barclays Capital: It looked as though, I guess, price mix for the Consumer Foods in the quarter was maybe a negative 1% impact to the top-line, if I kind of read that right. And that was a moderation from what we saw in the fiscal third quarter. Is that a reasonable – given the environment, is that a reasonable sort of way to think about the impact of price mix to the sales line in 2011? And if so, are you saying that volume has got to be whatever it is, you know, 4%, to offset [ph] that to get to 3% net on the top-line?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Andrew, we – I think what you are referring to is probably explained through FX. So you are right. There was a little bit of a takedown just barely on price mix. Some of that is in our – or I’d say the majority of that or all of that is in those pass-through categories like oil and spreads. That’s really where the mix comes from. It is a somewhat sluggish environment out there and the customers are trying to drive traffic – food traffic with discounting. We believe we’ve got far better analytics than we’ve ever had before. Our pricing architecture built on price thresholds is very strong. So we believe that we are at the right price points for both us and for the retailer. So we are not really planning on seeing any negative leverage between our volume and our pricing. We see it at about even. Andrew Lazar – Barclays Capital: Got it. It’s very helpful, thanks. And then, do you feel generally that in Consumer Foods, consumption or takeaway has been more or less roughly in line with what we are seeing in terms of your shipments? I guess shipments have held up pretty well, I think, if all things considered, and we don’t have a really very good view at the end of the day on sort of takeaway for your entire sort of business.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I would say, as long as you take a look at it over enough period time, you take it, you smooth out the promotional bumps. So here and there, we could see a gap. But it tends to straighten itself out over the course of a quarter. Andrew Lazar – Barclays Capital: Great. And then very last thing is, you’ve got obviously a good sized private label business, and I’m just curious what you’re seeing there. A number of other players have seen maybe not surprisingly the sales growth slow a little bit as some of the branded players have stepped up on the promotional spending. And now the price gaps a bit. But trying to get a sense of what you are seeing there across your private label business.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

I think across the board, we’d say that it is plenty much flattened out for the reasons that you mentioned. So that would be kind of a macro level. Within our own business, we’ve got some categories where we’ve actually done pretty well. Probably the two to speak of our bar business where we’ve just made that Elan acquisition, it gave us more capacity. That is going very, very well. That’s a very good business for us. And on the Lamb Weston side, our potato business is also quite good. We have a few offsets here and there on some of the less important categories that we plan on the store brand side. So I’d say we are pleased with the priority categories within that segment for ourselves. Overall, macro, about flat. Andrew Lazar – Barclays Capital: Great. Thanks so much.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Sure.

Operator

Operator

We’ll hear now from Vincent Andrews with Morgan Stanley. Vincent Andrews – Morgan Stanley: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just a quick question on your potato and tomato costs, it sounds like they are going to be and some of it is just working through the inventory of yield crop. Do you have complete visibility into those costs yet or you just know that they are going to be down?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

I think it’s – I don’t want to go into a lot of details by category, but certainly the new crop of potatoes will be down. There might be some other commodities in that business that offset a little bit of that. In the tomatoes, we are also looking at probably some favorability there as we come off of this year’s crop. Vincent Andrews – Morgan Stanley: Yes. I just was curious whether the – in particular, on the tomatoes, whether those contracts – last I’ve seen, there were still sort of some back and forth on what the pricing was going to be. So just wondering if there was any – not asking you to give me the numbers, just if you were any closer to certainty on that.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. We’ve got a fair amount of those costs identified for the year in lockdowns. So we are feeling pretty good that the direction I pointed has certainly going to come to fruition. We do want to reiterate again though that those – that the potato crops, that will impact us for most of the first half because the new harvest really doesn’t impact until the middle of the fall. So it’s important to keep that in mind. Vincent Andrews – Morgan Stanley: Okay, fair enough. I’ll pass it along. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Moving on to Deutsche Bank and Eric Katzman. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Hi, good morning, everybody.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Eric. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Gary, I guess kind of following up on Andrew’s question, you’ve been in the industry for a long time, whether it’s beverage or now the food side at ConAgra. I’m just – I just kind of want to get a sense from you in terms of retailer relations, and it just seems that Wal-Mart – maybe you are reluctant to talk about by name, but Wal-Mart has become so much more aggressive of late, and with price points that some of the manufacturers are really discouraged on in terms of their long-term brand equity, and I just want to get a sense from you given you – I think you said they named as you are Supplier of the Year, kind of how you are kind of seeing both pricing as well as what seems to be more of a high-low approach by them.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

I think – first of all, our customer relationships are better than they have ever been before. And our largest customer, Wal-Mart, is clearly is in that camp. So the partnership bond is extremely strong. We have constant ongoing dialog. I would tell you that the award that we received was largely based on our innovation. That was the key driver because we were bringing traffic and volume into the stores, given the innovation. So I do want to reiterate that it’s important to have value-add when you sit down with the customers and that could be in the form of innovation, that can also be in the form of insights that are going to drive more traffic and profit. It is a tough environment. There is no question about it. It’s relatively sluggish. There is pressure to bring more food traffic in. We feel confident because of the mix of our portfolio. We’ve got a value proposition where we can drive a lot of traffic with products like a Banquet or Chef. And we understand those price thresholds quite well, that pricing architecture, and are able to talk that kind of language with our customer partners. And on the other side, we are driving business through the insights in the innovation. So it is more challenging that it’s been previously, but we feel as though we’ve got the right tools, the right partnerships, and the right portfolio to be able to continue to do well even in the tough environment. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay. And then I think you had said that 5% of – I guess was Consumer sales. I assume it’s not consolidated, but 5% of Consumer sales in this past year came from new products. Is that right?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

That’s correct. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: And then so, given that you’ve been on a ramp-up there, I assume that – because of the companies kind of talk about it over three years. So I assume that the percentage is lower, but moving in the right direction. Is that also fair to say?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I would say that that is about the right timeframe definition that we use, yes. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: And then so – I guess most of the companies that I’ve dealt with over the years kind of like it to be more in 10% to 15%. Is that kind of your target? I mean, should we expect much more innovation coming on the Consumer side?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

I don’t know that we have a specific target. We are really about platform innovation. And that is a really, really important point because we are looking at innovation that sticks and grows over time. If you really dissect it across the industry, the batting average on the innovation if not nearly what we would – all of us would like to see, we are kind of going against that grain. So that whole concept of filling up the pipeline with lots of new SKUs and then seeing a good portion of them fail and having to restock that pipeline is not the game that we want to play. So we are happy to see ourselves continue to be where we are and kind of ramp up a bit from there, but it’s really about those platforms and incrementality. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay. And then last question I guess to John, on the EBIT contribution from currency, how was it so much? I mean, I always viewed the company as being pretty limited in terms of its international. I think you said it was 3% of the growth in EBIT.

John Gehring

CFO

Yes, it was 3% of the growth in EBIT. I don’t think there is any step. We still have a fairly small international footprint. So – Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: (inaudible) contributed so much?

John Gehring

CFO

I’m sorry? Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: I mean, which currency contributed – I mean, which currency strengthened against the dollar that –?

John Gehring

CFO

I mean, principally Canada and Mexico were the lion’s share of our international footprint. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Okay. All right. I’ll pass it on. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take a question now from Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: Hi, thanks for taking the call and congrats on the good year.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: I just wanted to know, in your guidance, is there any reason why you don’t include sales growth guidance for fiscal ’11? At CAGNY, you talked about 3% to 4% top-line being the long-term model. Is it just because there is too much commodity elements that are going back and forth to make a call on it?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

No. I did comment, but you may have just missed it because I was covering so much information in such a short period of time. I did comment that we expect our sales growth for next year to be in the range of 3%. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: I thought that was just the Consumer division though.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

No, that’s for whole company. Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: That’s for whole company. Okay. So it will be 3%. Very good. And just a question for André. You mentioned the distribution gains. Do you expect those gains to continue in fiscal ’11, André, with all the innovation you are coming out with? André Hawaux: Yes, Rob, we do expect and they are going to be different by platform obviously, but absolutely. That’s one of the things we have focused top of mind with our sales organization, its point of distribution, its market share and it’s continuing to win with customers based on superior insights, superior innovation, and marketing. So that’s our goal. That’s one of the metrics that we have front and center with (inaudible). Robert Moskow – Credit Suisse: Okay. Thank you very much.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. André Hawaux: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take a question now from Alexia Howard with Sanford Bernstein. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: Good morning, everyone.

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Good morning. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: Quick question around promotional activity again. Consumer prices seem to be coming down at least in the measured channel data that we are looking at, and yet your pricing held fairly steady in the Consumer segment this quarter. Does that mean that it's the retailers that are funding that promotional activity? And are you anticipating any step-up in your promotional spending as we go look out for the next couple of quarters? André Hawaux: Alexia, this is André. I think we have seen retailers again work really hard, to Gary’s point earlier, to drive traffic into their outlets. So we’ve seen them do a lot of things in the marketplace relative to funding some of these things. That said, we’ve also talked about some of our pass-through categories where we have actually taken price declines. But we’ve had – since about the second and third quarter, we’ve had some pretty consistent pricing architecture, goals and price controls, as well as promoted price points that we are really driving. So we see a continuation of that. That’s what we’ve built into our algorithm for next year. And we believe we – we are providing good consumer value, and we believe that’s where our promotions will line up for next year. Alexia Howard – Sanford Bernstein: That’s great. Thank you very much. I’ll pass it on.

Operator

Operator

We’ll hear now from Robert Dickerson with Consumer Edge Research. Robert Dickerson – Consumer Edge Research: Hey, guys. I’m just curious since you have a sizable private label business. Do you think private label in general has an advantage over higher price point products just with respect to the pricing pass-through?

Gary Rodkin

Chief Executive Officer

Well, again, I think we’ve seen things level out. And as you start to see inflation creep up a bit, you need to remember that the cost of goods – the math works in a tougher way on the private label side because of the bigger portion of their overall costs. So I think things have leveled out. There is certainly a place for private label to play. It’s an important contributor for the retailer, but we don’t see dramatic shifts as we go forward. Robert Dickerson – Consumer Edge Research: Okay, great. And then just with respect to the Elan Nutrition acquisition, maybe just give me a little color as to why I guess I mean you obviously see health from the private-label snack and nutrition bar category with – versus another category? André Hawaux: This is André. I think what we like about that business is what we are seeing in our core business that we have. We have a very large store brand bar business. They give additional capabilities, the things that we currently could not offer our customers, especially on the nutrition side that we see as a growing category. So we felt it was complementary to a business that we’ve seen grow very significantly the last several years actually. And these partnerships that we are developing with our customers continue to be bigger and bigger. And they are looking to us to provide more variety in our offering. And this organization provided us the ability to do that. So we feel it’s a really good complement that we are already doing, in a high growth business for us.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll take a follow-up question now from David Driscoll with Citi Investment Research. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Thanks a lot. John, can you comment on the cash flows expected in F ’11? I think you gave guidance of $1.2 billion. Does that number include the expected insurance proceeds and the tax incentives related to the sweet potato plant?

John Gehring

CFO

I think the tax incentives probably would – no, it depends on – those probably are not included in operating cash flow. So what I’m talking about is $1.2 billion of operating cash flows. I don’t know that we’ve got anything in there for the tax incentives, and I don’t believe we would have built in anything additional into that number for the insurance receipts. Keep in mind, David, we have received $85 million of cash to date. I would expect us to obviously receive a sizable portion more, but we just don’t what that is at this point until we get through the settlement process. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: Really my question relates to capital spending, the $525 million guidance for F ’11, that does include spending on a number of items that will actually receive cash, but it’s not in any of the guidance elements that you gave us. So when people do the simple calculation and take $1.2 billion of cash flow from ops minus CapEx, they will get the wrong answer in terms of total cash generation because you will in fact receive significant cash inflows from the two items I just mentioned. Is that correct?

John Gehring

CFO

That’s correct. There will be – certainly the insurance proceeds probably being the most significant one there of incremental cash we will receive. It’s difficult to estimate that at this point. But clearly, the $525 million would be over the amount, net of those receipts that will define as we go through the year. David Driscoll – Citi Investment Research: André, can – I want to follow back up on Eric’s question on new products. I really like this topic for you guys. The incrementality of new products I think is a major key for your company. Can you comment on, just in general, your expectations of the new product incrementality going forward? And I just was curious as to any insights you might have as to how the Mediterranean Steamer launch went. André Hawaux: Okay. I’ll take the second one first. The Mediterranean Steamer line has gone extremely well. We continue to be – I wouldn’t say surprised, but we continue to be flattered by how well we do with steamers and anything we do as we move that platform. We really believe that has really changed the game in frozen foods. So we’ve done very well of that. And we continue to see, again, we are just introducing lunch now, Lunch Steamers, which will go out in the tail end of the first quarter into the second quarter. And that again will bring some things to the lunch offering that – where we have not been strong and where consumers have looked for innovation. So that’s – we are very, very happy with where we’ve gone there. I think the incrementality for us is something that Gary mentioned that we talk about a lot. We are not looking to just produce fuse and line extensions and the flavor of the year or flavor of the quarter. We really are looking to separate ourselves with this notion of platform. So if you think about steaming, what that’s done, that’s a platform. If you think about – in shelf stable, fresh mixers in the Marie offering that we have now, it can be in the meal, has really been a platform. When you think about the acquisition we’ve made relative to Elan, that’s really about a platform on bars and bringing other items there. So we really look at it that way. So we’re not going to be the ones that launch 400 to 500 SKUs. It doesn’t fly with our philosophy of what we are trying to do. It really is around platform. So we believe, as a result of that, our innovation is going to be a whole lot stickier. And the last one we’ve also just recently done is this whole Micro-Rite tray, which provides the cooking capability in your microwave of what would be an oven-like feel, if you will. So those are kind of things that you will see from us that I think our stick rate would be significantly higher than most.

Operator

Operator

We will move to a follow-up question from Deutsche Bank and Eric Katzman. Eric Katzman – Deutsche Bank: Hi, thanks for taking – I just want to be clear. I’m not sure that my notes are fully in order. But the – in fiscal 2010, John, how much of a hit was the Slim Jim to you? And then, is that – and did you include that in the $1.74 as a cost of business, so kind of how we think about the proceeds that you are going to be getting?

John Gehring

CFO

Let me take that in pieces. I think the hit – the impact of that loss business was probably in the range of, I must say, $0.04 to $0.06. There is different ways to look at it. Our $1.74 reflects that negative factor. So we’ve not adjusted that. We’ve just let it flow through $1.74. So, as we look ahead to fiscal 2011, we are still building back the profitability of that business as we get our long-term production capability right. So we won’t be all the way to bright until very late in fiscal ’11. As it relates to the insurance proceeds, I think as I said in my comments, we do expect to have a gain in fiscal 2011 related to the settlement of that insurance claim. However, we have not included any gain in our earnings growth estimate for fiscal 2011.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions. Mr. Klinefelter, I’ll hand the conference back to you for final remarks or closing comments.

Chris Klinefelter

Management

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