Greetings, and welcome to McCormick's third quarter 2009 conference call. (Operator Instructions) It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Joyce Brooks, Vice President, Investor Relations for McCormick. Ms. Brooks, you may begin.

Good morning to everyone on today’s call and to those joining us by webcast. The purpose of our call is to review of McCormick's third quarter financial results and outlook. We have posted a set of slides to accompany today’s call at our website, www.ir.mccormick.com. With me are Alan Wilson, Chairman, President, and CEO; Gordon Stetz, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Paul Beard, Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. Following our remarks, we look forward to discussing your questions. As a reminder, our presentation today contains projections and other forward-looking statements and actual results could differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or other factors. In addition, information we present today, which excludes restructuring charges, as well as unusual items recorded in 2008, are not GAAP measures and we present this information for comparative purposes alongside the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures can be found in this morning’s press release and in the presentation slides for our call. It is now my pleasure to turn the discussion over to Gordon for a review of third quarter results.

Thanks Joyce, good morning everyone and welcome to this morning’s call. We are pleased to report another quarter of excellent profit growth. On a comparable basis earnings per share rose 14% with an underlying increase in each of our two segments. On this same basis we achieved an impressive 19% increase in consumer business operating income which was surpassed by a 34% increase in industrial operating income. Together these increases in segment operating income translated to $1.00 increase of more than $20 million in the third quarter. These profit results were driven largely by sales growth, favorable gross profit margin, and operating cost reductions. Let’s take a closer look at sales and then I’ll discuss these other factors. We reported a 1% increase in net sales which in local currency was a 6% increase. As indicated on slide five, about one-half of the increase came from pricing actions and the other half from the combination of volume and product mix. The increase in volume and mix included a 3.5% benefit from our acquisition strategy. This was largely offset by lower sales volume and product mix in the Europe, Middle East and Africa, EMEA region for the quarter. For the consumer segment we reported a third quarter increase of 2%. In local currency we grew consumer sales 6%. As indicated on slide six Lawry’s drove a large part of the increase and we continued to see a benefit from pricing actions taken in late 2008 and early 2009. In the Americas, consumer sales rose 8% and in local currency grew 9%. Volume and product mix added two-thirds of this increase while pricing contributed one-third of the sales growth. Pricing this quarter reflected a general increase taken early in 2009 which was partially offset by a step-up in our coupon activity in…

Thanks Gordon and I’d like to add my welcome to those on today’s call. The environment we are in continues to be challenging and many consumers around the world remain under pressure. We are compelled to remain agile in identifying and pursuing growth opportunities and vigilant in managing our costs. With this backdrop, we were very pleased with our financial performance in the third quarter. As you might expect with our [breadth] of products and customers, there are areas of strong performance as well as parts of our business where improvement is still needed. Our sales and profit in Europe continue to suffer from the difficult economy in our major markets, particularly the United Kingdom. Across most of our global markets, our industrial business has worked with quick service restaurants to grow sales but has seen continued softness in sales to other food service channels and a slowdown in the pace of new product launches with food manufacturers. And our income from unconsolidated operations reduced profit this quarter. Outweighing these challenges was an underlying strength in the business. An important factor in our success this year has been Lawry’s. Taking a look at slide 20, its been one year since we completed this acquisition and with excellent planning and strong execution across our operations, the integration is complete. We’ve had a successful launch of new products and a great start to our marketing campaign. This business has been integrated with very little incremental costs and has boosted both gross profit and operating income margins. We’ve also benefited from lower interest rates on the acquisition debt in the last 12 months. By any number of metrics, Lawry’s has not only been our largest acquisition but one of our most successful. Another factor driving our performance that was evident again this quarter…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Chris Growe - Stifel Nicolaus

I just had two questions for you, the first one just as I was looking at SG&A and it being down so dramatically or so meaningfully this year, at least as a percentage of sales, I wonder if you could speak more about that. I know you have cost savings coming through but as I balance that against the incremental marketing, I was surprised by the degree of the decline in SG&A. And I guess related to that, when you say consumer marketing and some of that going into promotion or things that would be netted against the top line, maybe that’s why I’m not seeing it all come through that line.

The consumer promotion spend that we have, some of it is certainly going to consumer advertising, some of it is going to more value promotion which would be a reduction in net sales. So what you’re seeing with our spend is pretty pure on the SG&A line. Now we have had very good results in terms of managing our costs this year. We also have the leverage of Lawry’s because we added virtually no SG&A as we brought Lawry’s in, other then the incremental advertising.

I’d just like to add, its obviously the Lawry’s impact which we’ve talked about previously, distribution expenses are also a factor that we mentioned. We’ve had some favorability in some employee benefits so all of those factors have contributed to improved SG&A margin.

Okay, and then related to the consumer division in the Americas, with volume down in the quarter, given the at home eating trend, I was surprised by that. I guess, is that something where you see a need to increase your spending as well, whether its promotion or its consumer based marketing. I know you have some new products coming out that look pretty exciting, but just curious how you look at that volume decline in the quarter.

We’re certainly not happy with the volume, what we are seeing is that our overall volume sales are not keeping track with what we’re seeing from a consumer takeaway in the measured channels that we can follow. So that’s why we feel relatively good about our fourth quarter but I would add that last year in the third quarter our volumes were up 4%. Some of that was pipeline fill for sales to a couple of dollar retailers where we increased distribution, which didn’t repeat this year.

And then have you given a cost saving figure for 2010 as well, I don’t recall if you’ve given that or not.

No, we haven’t laid that out yet. We’re still compiling our budgets and putting everything together but we would expect to do that with our fourth quarter call.

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman - JPMorgan

Thanks for the color on both Wal-Mart and pensions, I think just any insight there that you provided will take some overhang away from the stocks and I appreciate that. My question is on discounting, and its not just for you but for food companies in general, I’m curious how you think about that because we’re in a period where list prices haven’t gone down as much as some had feared. But food manufacturers are starting to spend against discounting couponing, whatever the action is. How long do you think that is, how long are you comfortable discounting in general before you’re starting to worry about the brand equity. It hasn’t been that long ago that we’ve seen some other companies in other categories discount too much and hurt the brand equities. So I’m just curious how you balance that out and your strategy when you think about returning some value to the retailer and to the consumer.

What we’re trying to do is make sure that the value gets in the hands of the consumer and then in store respond with merchandising so that there’s kind of a 360 degree to bring consumers to the shelf in a time when there’s a lot of uncertainty. We’ve been doing that for most of this year as we headed into a tough economy. It has been working through the first part of the year. We want to make sure that we continue to provide that value for consumers in the fourth quarter of this year as well as we will into next year. And we’ll keep evaluating the return and how that’s working for us. So I’d say I think its going to be with us for a while especially because unlike some of our other food industry compatriots, we’re competing almost primarily with private label and so what we want to do is make sure that our price gaps as the consumer actually buys them are reasonable, and the consumer doesn’t have a reason to go other places.

Your next question comes from the line of [Eric Sirota] – Consumer Edge [Eric Sirota] – Consumer Edge : Just wanted to follow-up on Chris’ question regarding volume growth in the Americas, it looks like volumes are down about 2% ex Lawry’s, you highlighted that the real weakness was in the gourmet and some of the other premium lines and that things like dry seasoning mixes and Grill Mates were up, I guess my question is given the relative size of the gourmet and some of the premium lines that you called out that were weak, I wouldn’t expect it to have such a pronounced impact on the volume number. So was, how was I guess the mainstream portfolio of core spices and seasonings performing from a volume mix standpoint in the quarter.

Let me start with the one and then we’ll get at it, first off its volume and mix not just pure volume so while our dry seasoning mix is up pretty substantially it doesn’t offset the dollar sales impact of say gourmet spices. Gourmet spices at retail tend to be about $4.00 a unit, whereas dry seasoning mixes tend to be about $0.70 to $0.80. And so while the actual physical volume may be up, it’s the combination of volume mix that is down and something that we are not, that we want to continue to drive. We stated in an earlier quarter we are trying to sell what consumers want to buy and they’re finding the lower price points of dry seasoning mixes to be a value. That’s something we’re going to drive and get in their hands. In terms of the core volumes, its responding not as robustly at in consumer sales as it is in the actual takeaway. So we’re still seeing healthy volume growth at retail, it just hasn’t translated as strongly into what we’re seeing in our overall sales. Although again I’d remind you that we’re heading into our fourth quarter when core spices are by far the largest selling items.

Another factor in that that Alan mentioned earlier is the distribution we had last year into the two new value priced retailers that we’re going up against this year.

And those were all core spices. [Eric Sirota] – Consumer Edge : And to follow-up along those lines, you mentioned that overall consumer takeaway in core spices was above your reported sales numbers which would mean that there was I suppose some [drop down] in retailer inventories. Is that relative to a year ago, is that a fair assumption or is that a fair conclusion and what’s your assumption with respect to retailer inventories as we get into the critical selling season and its very narrow window that retailers have to sell in this very high margin category for them.

I think most retailers have been pretty up front about the fact that they are growing their sales a lot faster then they’re growing their inventories and we’ve seen it in a number of recent reports. The fourth quarter for us is so important, not just for us but for the retailer because again it is very high margin and we’ve tracked our plans and our shipments of the holiday merchandising programs, a lot of the product that we sell in the fourth quarter goes through on displays, and it looks very positive at this point. We have an all out effort on making sure that the retailers have what they need for the consumers when they come to buy their holiday spices. [Eric Sirota] – Consumer Edge : And did you quantify how much pension was up in fiscal, or should be up for all of fiscal 2009.

Its actually a favorable this year, its actually a favorable this year. [Eric Sirota] – Consumer Edge : Right, how much the favorable benefit was this year.

We did not quantify it. That’s disclosed in our Q and its been running, I’d call it maybe roughly a favorability of about $2 million to $2.5 million a quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Katzman - Deustche Bank

I guess my question, let me first touch on the cash flows and the balance sheet, yes you have pension going up next year, but you’ve been taking your cash flow and paying down debt post the Lawry’s deal. My calculation suggests you’re now down to about 2x net debt to EBITDA. Do you see a more aggressive share repurchase program or is the priority on cash flow going to be towards debt pay down.

Our priority is still going to be on debt pay down through next year.

And then in terms of the business, I guess you threw up some slides there on ROI with regard to advertising and I guess with the volume numbers being through this year relative to I think you said double-digit increase in advertising, its not clear to me that you’re getting such a great ROI, at least maybe that’s the difference between the shipments and the off take, but maybe you could go a little bit more into that as to why you’re so comfortable that the ROI is good.

Part of the incremental spend is Lawry’s. So, and we’re just starting to see the impact of that. But based on the marketing mix analysis that we’ve been doing consistently for the last seven or eight years, its still showing that we’re getting the ROI and we’d see that again in the consumer takeaway.

And then on the industrial side of the business, I guess there’s been some mixed signals between companies. Some of them are saying that they’ve seen a stabilization, some are still seeing weakness spreading into QSR, while others have seen maybe even a little bit of a pick up, you have a pretty broad based view there. Can you just talk about the food service component and what you see of late.

We’re not seeing a broad recovery in overall food service. We’re benefiting from some specific wins with customers on some new initiatives that have been very successful. So I wouldn’t necessarily read it that the food service business has 100% recovered based on the fact that we had pretty good sales. Ours were specific products that were impactful for significant customers. Its kind of like the discussion that we’ve had over the last couple of years where if McDonald’s for instance is winning because they’re selling more coffee, it doesn’t necessarily help us. In this case I wouldn’t necessarily translate into overall success in the broad food service industry. But we’ve been successful with some new products that have done very well.

Your next question comes from the line of Mitch Pinheiro - Janney, Montgomery, Scott

On the industrial side, it’s a pass through type of pricing mechanism, what are the expectations for the fourth quarter on the industrial side.

Its going to be a function of our customers’ products and promotions I guess is the best way to describe it. Are you talking in terms of pricing or just—

Pricing.

Commodities have moderated but we’re looking out a little ahead, we’re not as close in so pricing, we’ll be passing through decreased pricing as the coverage rolls off and we replace it with lower cost coverage. On the whole, we’re seeing some decent signs of life again in our overall industrial customer mix but not, its still not as robust as we would like to see. We’ll see some continual pricing downward as commodities go down.

But is this sort of on a lag basis, is that correct. Maybe a three to six month lag.

No its not the lag that it was before, but what you may be seeing is a lag because of coverage positions. We’re actually passing through the actual commodity positions on major commodities that we’re taking with customers.

And then, when you look at the Americas, the volume decline, product mix, how does your dry seasoning mix and the gourmet spices performance compare to the category.

We’ve gained market share in dry seasoning mix, gourmet is down significantly so but I wouldn’t necessarily say we’ve lost share in gourmet spices. We don’t necessarily break out the separate gourmet category. We’ve held share overall in spices, but in gourmet the switch has been more from the premium products to more of the every day products.

And has there been, how has private label done in those two categories.

Private label is largely not playing in the premium category. There certainly some customers who have differentiated private label so there’s a few there and I’d say its not substantial enough to really even talk about. Private label in general has grown this year but what we’ve seen in the last couple of periods is a reduction in the growth rate. They’re still growing and they’re still gaining, private label is still gaining share, but its not as strong as the share gains that we saw early in the year.

Also I would assume its fairly logical and consistent with prior periods, but in terms of channel mix, in terms of where your volumes, are you still, has anything changed there.

Volume growth is still stronger in the unmeasured markets then it is in the measured markets, but still grocery is a significant percentage of our overall US consumer business.

There are no additional questions at this time; I would like to turn it back over to management for any additional or closing comments.

Thank you for joining our call today. If you have any other questions for us, you can call me at 410-771-7244. A replay of the call will be available early this afternoon at our website, www.ir.mccormick.com. Thank you joining us today.