Good day. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IFF First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the formal question-and-answer portion of the call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce Michael DeVeau, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to IFFs first quarter 2020 conference call. Yesterday evening, we distributed a press release announcing our financial results. A copy of the release can be found on our IR website at ir.iff.com. Please note that this call is being recorded live and will be available for replay.Please take a moment to review our forward-looking statements. During the call, we will be making forward-looking statements about the companys performance, particularly with regard to the outlook for the second quarter and full year 2020. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For additional information concerning the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, please refer to our cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our 10-K filed on March 3, 2020, and in our press release.Today’s presentation will include non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude those items that we believe affect comparability. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their respective GAAP measures is set forth in our press release that we issued yesterday.With me on the call is our Chairman and CEO, Andreas Fibig; and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Rustom Jilla. We will begin with prepared remarks and then take any questions that you may have.With that, I would now like to introduce Andreas.

Thank you, Mike. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. At IFF with global operations in 44 countries and sales into approximately 200 countries, we have seen firsthand how the coronavirus pandemic has touched our world. This is truly a remarkable moment in history. It presents all of us with new challenges, but also revealed the best of best humanity at the same time.On behalf of everyone at IFF, I want to express my sincere sympathy for all those affected by the pandemic. I also want to thank everyone in the global health care community who exemplifies the best of all of us in responding to this crisis with courage and grace. Everyone on the frontlines to continue to keep our society moving towards as our thanks to all the essential workers in the consumer good supply chain of which IFF is proud to play an important role we thank you for responding so quickly and moving swiftly to deliver for consumers around the world.It is very clear that we are still in the early stages of adjusting to the challenges that pandemic poses to our world. As we will review in more detail later, the IFF business is strongly positioned to be resilient through economic cycles given our substantial portfolio delivering needed solutions to vital consumers and markets. The steps we have taken in recent years including diversifying of our customer base and expansion into more categories have only served to further strengthened our ability to be a vital partner to our customers and affirm our ability to be resilient through the cycles.Like many, were seeing uneven impacts on our business due to the pandemic and the resulting economic challenges. While some end markets are seeing increases in demand, others are seeing notable declines. We are fortunate that only about 15%…

Thank you, Andreas. Now to Slide 12, I am taking a more detailed look at our quarterly financial performance. On a currency neutral basis, IFF delivered broad based sales growth of 6% versus 2019 first quarter. Adjusted operating profit margin improved in both Taste and Scent with procurement synergies, volume leverage and productivity initiatives and discipline research, sales and administration or RSA cost containment. And this helped produce our operating expenses as a percentage of sales.I am therefore pleased to say that we also saw solid profit growth in roughly 60 points of currency neutral margin expansion on an adjusted operating profit mix amount basis. COVID-19 did impact our P&L in Q1, but more in terms of sales mix rather than in total dollars and only in the final weeks of the quarter.It did have a modest negative impact on our adjusted operating profit in the quarter causing us to incur extra manufacturing costs, additional freight expenses and higher raw material costs. But most of these went into inventory and will not be in expenses. Our currency neutral earnings per share excluding amortization grew a strong 13% with robust operating profit growth boosted by lower year-over-year interest expenses and a lower effective tax rate.FX adversely impacted our reported numbers pulling sales and adjusted operating profits down a couple of percent. It had a much larger negative impact on other income/expenses in March as a result of currencies collapsing globally against the dollar and the Euro. So on a reported basis, this pulled down year-on-year adjusted EPS growth.Now looking at our Scent division, on Slide 13. In the first quarter, currency neutral Scent sales grew 7% with growth in all regions and nearly all categories. Sales performance was strongest in consumer fragrance with the double digit increase led by robust growth…

Thank you, Rustom. I’m also very pleased that today were introducing the next step in our planned integration process with N&B. As you know, we are extremely excited to combine our two customer focused and consumer led organizations with leading positions in higher value categories. Together, our product portfolio will be among the industry most robust and diverse. We have a coveted R&D program with an industry leading pipeline and most importantly we will be poised to redefine our industry by delivering essential solutions to our customers.Well remain on target to close the transaction in the first quarter of 2021, until then IFF and N&B will remain independent entities and will operate separately. Since we announced our merger in December 2019, our teams have been hard at work bringing this combination to life. We have formed an integration management office, create the U.S. regulatory process, filed for regulatory clearance in Europe and China and filed our initial registration statement.The potential of this combination continues to excite our teams and we are working diligently to make sure we can hit the ground and full sprint on day one. Some of our important highlights over the past four months include completed strategic assessment of the future combined company portfolio, joint cross-function integration program in place and operational, created ideation framework to identify, assess and prioritize synergy opportunities.Today, we took another significant step forward. We have announced our purpose, vision and operating model and executive committee for the future combined company. In short, we are announcing who will be, what we intend to do and who will lead our incredible team once we combine forces with the N&B business in the first quarter of 2021. Our purpose is the why that drives everything we do. The combined companies purpose, applying science and companies…

[Operator Instructions] Well take a question from Mark Astrachan of Stifel. Your line is open.

Thanks and good morning everybody.

Hey. Good morning Mark.

Speaking of promotions, by the way congrats.

Thank you.

Senior Vice President, well-deserved there. So I guess I wanted to talk a bit about just general sales ordering patterns. You basically talk a bit about whatever you can on emerging versus developing markets, anything notable there as well as between multinational, and local and regional customers, especially related to the Frutarom business.And what are you hearing from customers regarding timing new product launches? And how does any change impact that or even just category dynamics? Thanks.

Okay, Mark, I will take it. The emerging markets in the first quarter where particular strong, Latin America by around about 10% and greater Asia by five plus nine. What we see in terms of the different categories in particular the Consumer Fragrance in Latin America in high teens, as well as Flavors high single and Savory Solutions in high teens as well, so really, really good results, probably strongest from the multinationals specifically in the HPC field. In Asia was all about Consumer Fragrance as well. So mid teens, really good, Taste in high single digits, most required to COIVD-19, I would say.And here, in Asia, very much across both multinationals, as well as regional and locals. Frutarom, as we said, is probably around about 4% growth with some benefits of small M&A, but still very, very good performance.I would say country-wise it depends where the COVID-19 wave has started. We have seen the first impact in Asia, particularly in China, then it moved to Europe, then to the U.S. and Latin America. So that’s probably what you can see in the first quarter.In terms of the pipeline, our pipeline remains strong also into the second quarter. But having said all of that, it is really different from customer to customer. I can say, also for us, our creative labs are basically almost all open. They are working on new launches. They are working on, lets say, better, lets say, improvements of some of the products. So all in all, I would say a very strong picture, certainly impact on Fine Fragrance because – and you heard this from our customer base as well, which is not positive, but all the essential products are really going actually very, very strong. Rustom you might comment on that.

Yes. No, I actually agree. There’s not much to add there Andreas, you covered it.

Good.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And once again, that is star one. If you would like to ask a question. Well move next to Mike Sison of Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey guys that you guys all sound happy and a nice start to the year. Andreas, you’ve made some progress on the transaction, getting your operating model leadership team in place. How much can you do before you close the deal to get the integration synergies accelerated? And then – and maybe just talk about how you think about the business, the transaction different now given the current environment.

Let me start probably with the second part of your question first. So combination with the DuPont N&B business is fully on, on track. And if you look at the product portfolio, its now among the industry in particular are in this COVID-19 situation, one of the most robust ones and very diverse. We are in all of the categories, number one and number two in the market. We have a great R&D pipeline with combined spend upon around about $550 million, more than 9,000 patents granted. So I believe very, very robust. And as you have seen the N&B results in the first quarter as well, it shows its an essential business. Probiotics are going gangbusters and many of the other portfolio areas, as well.Coming back to the integration piece, so as you know, we have formed an IMO as an Integration Management Office, we cleared antitrust in the U.S. we filed in Europe and in China. The combined integration planning team can do a lot, which is even in these challenging times and I’m very, very pleased how they work together all over Zoom or Skype. Of course, its very, very interesting. So we really make sure that we are ready for the day one. The next up on the schedule is the shareholder vote in September, then the financing and then the close, hopefully in the first quarter of 2021.So I have to say that this COVID-19 has further solidified our position. Strategic logic is very strong, very resilient business, very great market position. And I believe we’re in a very, very good spot right now.

Well move next to John Roberts of UBS. Your line is open.

Thank you. For the 15% of sales that are impacted by COVID-19, have you had two sequential weeks of stable sales yet or were they still declining at the end of April? And where are those product lines sales in China versus the start of the year?

Good morning. John its Rustom, let me take that. No, we have still had sales decline even as we go through and look at that area. Its Fine Fragrance and Food Services that we really see. But let me just step back for a second. From March onwards know as the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally, we had locked downs, changes in customer order patterns. We are fortunate that most of our revenue comes from the package food and beverage categories, as well as hygiene and disinfection, right. So we have continued strength there.I mean the part that you’re referring to is that the part that we’re not immune is the category is most exposed to retail end markets where stores closed and travel dropped sharply and that hasn’t changed as of now. So that’s Fine Fragrance and Cosmetic Actives as well, right and also the away-from-home channels. So we’re seeing that impact, and we are choosing to be – try to stay resilient, flexible, close to our customers as we possibly can be and always sort of trying to be cognizant of the safety of our employees and wellbeing as we go forward.China, regarding the China part of your question, Fine Fragrance is a very small part of the portfolio. I mean based on category demand, I mean less than 2% of total Fine. And although it was quite strong in Q1, I mean, lets see, China is opening up as well. Now Food Service in China was particularly challenged in Q1 and that’s obviously COVID. And I think that answers your questions John.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Faiza Alwy of Deutsche Bank.

Yes, hi. Thank you. So I also just wanted to hone in on, trends that you’ve seen since the quarter in April and May. And in particular, I was wondering if its possible for you to maybe disaggregate the benefit from potential stockpiling versus underlying demand. And then particularly focus on Consumer Fragrance where you had double digit growth. And I know you mentioned that emerging markets were particularly strong where I don’t think that was much stockpiling. But I was just wondering if you could offer more perspective there and how you’re thinking, what terms you have seen since the end of the quarter and how you’re thinking about the sustainability of growth there as we go through the year? Thanks.

Sure, absolutely Faiza. Let me get started and then I hand it over to Rustom. It is hard to disaggregate the underlying demand versus stockpiling. But when we talk with many of our customers and we believe on the Consumer Fragrance side, certainly, the activity in washing clothes and detergent, the softness – its very much demand, its not so much stockpiling here. I think we see this. We see also all the hygiene products are really used. Its not just that people put it in the pantry. That’s what we see.And also on the food side when you talk to some of our customers, the yogurts are going like there’s no tomorrow, which is probably not a big surprise to all of us because working-from-home, instead of going to the company cafeteria, you go to the fridge and pull yogurt and that’s your lunch. So we see some categories very much its consumption, its moving, but I cant give you all the details.What is for us right now really important is on the consumer insight side. We do all of our studies, we know how the consumer behaves right now, but what is sustainable so that we really can orient ourselves in terms of our R&D and the new product development towards things which might, will come. We believe that everything in terms of sanitizing will stay. We believe also that many of the health products, in particular, fortified with vitamins or probiotics will stay. But there’s more and more to come. So that’s the work we are doing right now. So in many areas the consumption is real. By the way, one last one, potato chips are also going like gangbusters. But Rustom, please comment.

Thanks Andrea. Thank you, good morning Faiza. So yes, look at the raw materials part of your questions. And yes, we’ve had some limitations in raw material sourcing and logistics. And we activated our contingency plans very early to limit the disruption to our customers, right. And the disruptions were from material shortages because of government restriction of various sorts. As Andreas said earlier, Italy, Spain, India were three of them out there.I mean the part of your question – then you also talked about sustainability, right? Sustainability of Consumer Fragrance, we do believe this will continue to be robust, where consumer demand remains high in hygiene and disinfection. And if anyone has been to the store lately, it’s just hard to get those products right. But let me address one aspect, too. I mean that’s same profitability because of specifics and we got to fine right. Same profitability without [indiscernible] will be adversely impacted in Q2.I cant get into spend or can I get into specifics, but based on our largest – what our largest fine fragrance customers are saying publicly, the category is declining double digits. So Id expect the same for IFF and our competitors. And being that it is one of our highest margin categories, well above consolidated average and with these declines, margins will be down. Then you add in additional COVID cost that we’ve had in Q2, a full quarters worth, and that’s just another factor.

So it all depends right now when the economy is opening up and the stores are open. And some of these products can be sold again to our all consumers. I think that’s what we all are waiting. And the big experiment is not so much China because its very small for this category as Rustom said. But what will happen now in Europe, you see Germany is basically open. And we will see next week France is opening again and then Spain and Italy and then we take it from there. So its a very volatile environment, but we are very well prepared for it. I hope it helps Faiza?

Yes, thank you.

Well move next to PJ Juvekar of Citi. Your line is open.

Yes, hi. Good morning.

Good morning PJ.

Andreas quick question for you. We talked about this restocking quite a bit here in the pantries, and so on and so forth. When do you think orders go back to normal level? And then as the economies open up, is there some destocking in the pantries? And related to that, that’s the inventory at the sort of the core household level, but what are the inventory levels that you are applying and in the supply chain? Thank you.

Okay, yes. Its a very, very important point actually. And we are looking at this. I would say in some of the countries we have seen already, normalization because people are back to work and people see that they can buy everything. You might remember at the beginning, toilet paper was a very precious article around the world in many of the supermarkets, but that’s back to normal.So actually we have seen already quite normalization, not because COVID is gone, but people see and feel that they can buy whatever they need. There was not a big disruption in the supply chain. So we believe that the inventory has changed. Its different than pharmaceuticals, for example, where people just keeping the diabetes products better for three or four months instead of one month to make sure that they are covered. But here I think in many cases we are already back to normal.On the plants, its a bit of a different situation because we are managing the supply chain actually almost by the week because India, which is a big country for raw materials in our industry, has some challenges with lockdown as well. So you really had to make sure that we get enough inventory in all the plants around the world to secure supply for our customers. So here you probably will see some elevated inventory levels for quite some time. But again situation is volatile. I expected this actually for the first quarter as well. But we were selling so much, the inventory actually went down. So that’s our plan or basically what we assume for now, but it might change because its very dependent on the demand as well.But Rustom may be you comment.

I mean again, I mean you covered it. I mean PJ, I mean, this is really hard to predict, right, because we’re going into government regulations, consumer psychology and also the possible fear of any wave twos or anything like that. I mean you never know. Its hard to predict. But even after COVID19, I mean, consumers, actual consumers, might maintain higher stockpiles as a common practice. Who knows.

Our next question is from Adam Samuelson of Goldman Sachs.

Hi, guys. Thank you. Good morning everyone.

Hi, Adam.

Hi. I was hoping to get a little bit more on the performance in the first quarter in the Taste segment, specifically around the margins, I’m just trying to think about margins that were essentially flat year-on-year and kind of just thinking about the against pretty healthy top line growth. So how do you construct that in terms of mix, in terms of incremental Frutarom synergies, in terms of COVID related costs? And then just thinking about the balance of the year kind of has the expectation on Frutarom synergies changed? Specifically, kind of, can you do all the facilities closures you were looking for this year given the pandemic?

Hi Adam its Rustom. Let me say that. You actually were triangulating in on exactly what the factors were. So in the – first of all, we are on track with our cost synergies target through Q1 Frutarom I mean. With more than 25% of our $50 million full year savings coming in Q1. And in terms of geography, its about three quarters Taste and the rest in Scent roughly, okay? The Scent synergies showed through. And as you saw Scents performance, there’s leverage. But Taste, where you’re homing in, did benefit some synergies as well. But it also had mix. I mean we went straight there. We also had mid-teens growth in Savory Solutions which is a lower margin business. We had the lot citrus [ph] sales and then we have some added costs, right, manufacturing and procurement, and unit costs head up in the balance sheet and everything. But we also had some bad debt as we increased our bad debt provisions, not actually bad debts, but actual provisions as we did. So there were all offsets in here.

Now as for your, second part of your question, about the ongoing plans that we have, I mean, yes, there will be some delays. There is a little bit of disruption to achieving, in particular, the manufacturing synergies that we expected from Frutarom around, right. And that’s quite simply because we cant – that people are not traveling out to various sites, even we are working from home quite effectively. But as Andreas has mentioned too, we do prioritize the safety of our people. And people are just not traveling out to sites. So there will be some delays in realizing the synergies from Frutarom coming through.And the same thing on procurement, on the procurement end by the way, because with the huge disruption that we’ve seen out there in raw materials and sourcing and all the rest of that, that hasn’t shown up in our P&L, but that’s because our teams have been sort of pulling in really hard yards, making sure that we handled all this without disrupting our customers, right. But something gives and that something has one of those things that have given is pushing through some of those other synergies. Andreas, is there anything you want to add there as well?

Actually just one thing on the closure of the factories, we might have in some cases a delay of maybe two to three months. That’s what we are planning, right now. So we will be done with what we saw in the mid end of third quarter, mid and end of fourth quarter. So that’s the planning right now. I hope Adam that helps.

It does. Thank you.

Well take a question from Lauren Lieberman of Barclays. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. It’d be good to actually just clarify that. So I think in the queue on the food integration, there were risk associated was not being done this year and said it could even extend into not just fiscal 2021, but into 2022. So into 2020 kind of clarify that versus what you had just said about only a three months delay on synergy. And then just more broadly on Frutarom, I was just curious to know kind of what drove the upside in the quarter. Is it sustainable? From what we can see, it looks like Savory was a big part of that. And just is that also – we talked about some mix dynamic, the areas in Frutarom that are coming through maybe a bit better than expected. Is that also another drive on mix? Thank you.

Okay. Let me start with a second piece first. We have seen a couple of elements of the legacy food business which performed very well and we believe its sustainable. So everything which is connected to health, we believe will be sustainable because its an incredible drive for these healthy ingredients. That’s number one. The second one is on food protection, because people really want to increase shelf life and make sure that this works out well so that’s going extremely well double digit. But we believe it will be also sustainable.And then on Savory, we will see the Savory Solutions has made actually extremely progress in terms of bringing it together with the legacy flavors. And we have seen good developments. This is certainly not sustainable in a double digit growth rate, it is more dependent on how quickly the economies open up and how much is in the Food Service area because that’s certainly has more negative impact here as well.On the other hand this is part of this famous butchers business. People in Austria and Germany were eating meat like there’s no tomorrow because all the restaurants were closed. And that helped us with sales as well. So sometimes – these are interesting dynamics. But I hope it helps us as an explanation.And then on the food integration, risk associated was not being done with the integration work before merging with DuPont. It is basically – some wanted to, on our manufacturing plants, we just hold back because we believe with N&B now we have a different way forward where we can use these capacities and can use them for some of the N&B products. So we do now everything, which we have said we are doing. Despite the things where we believe with the N&B combination, we have a better way forward when we have N&B in Board as well. So that’s it. That’s the only thing. And that’s on Tilburg in Holland, but that’s it. We can talk more in detail. I hope it helps.

We are now past the top of the hour. And well now conclude the call. I now want to hand it back to Andreas for closing remarks.

Yes thank you very much for the time. I hope everybody is healthy, and stays healthy. And we certainly have time to speak over the next one or two days. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye.

This does conclude today’s conference. You may now disconnect your lines and everyone have a good day.