Good morning. This is Joyce Brooks, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining today's call for a discussion of McCormick's first quarter financial results and our current outlook for 2015. We've posted a set of slides to accompany our call at ir.mccormick.com. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow our remarks. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, the conference is being recorded. With me this morning are Alan Wilson, Chairman and CEO; Gordon Stetz, Executive Vice President and CFO; Lawrence Kurzius, Chief Operating Officer and President and Mike Smith, Senior Vice President Finance Capital Markets and CFO North America. During our remarks, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures. These include adjusted operating income and adjusted earnings per share that exclude the impact of special charges as well as information in constant currency which we formerly referred to as local currency. A reconciliation to the GAAP results is included in this morning's press release and the slides. As a reminder, today's presentation contains projections and other forward-looking statements. 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. As seen on Slide 2, our forward-looking statements also provide information on risk factors that could affect our financial results. It's now my pleasure to turn the discussion over to Alan.

Thank you, Joyce. Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us. McCormick’s first quarter results demonstrated progress with our growth strategies and our actions to reduce costs. While sales rose 2%, the growth rate was 6% in constant currency with a mid single digit increase in each of our two segments. These increases were largely driven by volume and product mix. Special charges along with currency had an adverse impact on our operating income results. In fact, we now anticipate a more significant impact from both special charges and currency this year as Gordon will discuss as part of our 2015 outlook. Excluding both of these factors, adjusted operating income rose 1%. We expect this growth rate to improve once our 2015 pricing actions are fully in place and the benefits of our aggressive cost reduction activity begin to build. Earnings per share this quarter were $0.55 and excluding special charges, grew to $0.70 from $0.62 in the year ago period. This was largely the result of a favorable tax rate and higher income from unconsolidated operations. The 2014 success of our joint venture in Mexico continues in 2015 with sales up 7% and increased profit margins. We generated strong cash flow as we kicked off the year and returned cash to shareholders through dividends and through share repurchases that lowered our average shares outstanding by 2% year on year. Based on these results, and our latest 2015 outlook, we’re reaffirming our expected growth rate for sales, adjusted operating income and adjusted earnings-per-share on a constant currency basis. Gordon will share the details of our quarterly results and outlook. I want to comment on each of our business segments. First, our consumer business. We grew sales for this segment 1% and in constant currency by 5%. In the US, we…

Thanks, Alan and good morning everyone. I will begin with a review of our first quarter financial results and then update you on our latest 2015 outlook. We were pleased with our sales and profit performance in the first quarter. However as with many other US-based food companies with international operations, we had a significant headwind from currency this period. On a constant currency basis, the underlying growth in sales was very strong at 6%. Our adjusted operating income excludes special charges and declined 2% but if we also exclude currency, we achieved modest growth of 1%. Let's take a look at these results for each of our two segments. Slide 14 shows that we grew year-on-year consumer business sales 5% in constant currency driven by higher volume and product mix. Sales in the Americas rose 5% in constant currency from the first quarter of 2014 mainly due to higher volume and product mix. As Alan indicated, the growth was in core items such as recipe mixes and Grill Mates. In EMEA, consumer business sales in constant currency grew 2% as a result of growth in volume and product mix. This growth was led by France as well as other smaller markets and more than offset a modest volume decline in the UK where we faced a challenging retail environment. In France, our brand marketing support and innovation drove increased sales both of course spices and seasonings as well as homemade dessert products. In constant currency, we grew consumer business sales in the Asia-Pacific region 10% with a 13% increase in volume and product mix. This was led by sales in China which rose 18% mostly from higher volume and product mix. Constant currency sales in Australia also rose this period while sales in India declined due in part to…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Alexia Howard with Sanford Bernstein.

Can I come back to the US consumer business? I remember last quarter a negative mix effect of what was going on with season at Walmart was troublesome. And also the smaller brands encroachment that started probably a little over a year ago was a problem. It seems as though you might be coming through that a little bit better now; I just wanted to get the latest on what you are seeing on those fronts.

Thanks, Alexia. We are encouraged by the trends that we’re seeing. We still have a lot of work to do. There's still a pretty fragmented category and merchandising support for a number brands continues but we’re encouraged by the progress that we are seeing.

So on both sides of the small brands, and the control brands as well.

Yes. We feel like our stories are gaining some traction but we know it's going to be a fair bit of time to really see all that come through.

And then just switching to China. I seem to remember that you were talking about how you were tapping into – this is the industrial business, you were tapping into local restaurant chains as an avenue for growth, because some of the big American restaurant chains were having so much trouble. Where are you on that and do you see sort of fairly sustainable growth in that area from here?

I am going to ask Lawrence to take that one.

Hi Alexia, we are continuing to make progress with the local Chinese customers but I will say that in this quarter the biggest part of our performance has been new product wins, export from China and progress in the recovery of the Western quick service restaurants, which are beginning to see foot traffic improve.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Chris Growe with Stifel.

So two questions if I could. One of the comments, I think Gordon, in relation to product mix seemed like it was pretty positive across the business. If I heard correctly for the consumer division, I believe you said mix was a negative for profit. I just want to make sure I heard that properly and want to understand the dynamic there if I could please on the consumer division in particular.

I will start with total company. On a total company basis, product mix was neutral to our results. The gross margin impact was driven, as I said, by the increased raw material cost and the timing of our savings programs coming in and our pricing actions. On the consumer division, the raw material cost increase was still the primary story although there was a slight negative product mix as well within consumer but this -- again the bigger story on the quarter for both segments was the raw material cost increases.

And then also just a question if I could on the US consumer side and Alan, you’re discussing the gourmet relaunch and how that’s progressing that it’s allowing you to – I don’t know, to say, this way to box out some of the smaller competitors and try and have a better selling story for the retailers. I guess I want to understand – are you still seeing competitions at lower end of the category and how is gourmet helping sort of address that challenge for the business?

Yes. We’re still seeing competition at the value segment as well. And as we segment consumers there is a gourmet consumer who really cares about the products that they put in their food and understand the difference and origins in spices and so that's what we’re targeting with the gourmet consumers. So it's not necessarily helping on the value end. The work that we’re doing at retail on price thresholds and absolute price points, are where we’re combating value side.

And I guess just to follow on that, the competition from some of the smaller competitors, that’s mostly been on the value side less so on the premium or gourmet side, is that correct?

No, we’ve seen a fair bit of competition on the premium side as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman with JPMorgan.

Alan, I wanted to dig in a little bit into domestic pricing for consumers. If we look at Nielsen data and your price per unit at the retail level has been slipping but it’s the opposite at the wholesale level. You’ve talked about your efforts to convince retailers to sort of get their on-shelf prices right. I will admit I was skeptical if this could be done without I guess wholesale prices dropping first. But it seems to be happening. So can you talk a little bit about first, is that accurate? And second, what’s really making that dynamic, which isn’t easy to pull off successful?

We’re still seeing the dynamic with the mix because of some value products that we continue to supply and we expect that that's going to continue. But what we are doing is showing a category profitability story on key items that – where prices are pretty sensitive and working with the customers on getting those prices right. It is a kind of a store by store and customer by customer negotiation but we have a very compelling category story which is what we’re outselling.

Isn’t the implication that the retailers are giving up some margin which is never an easy thing to get them to do?

Well in some cases it’s making sure that they have the prices right to compete in their marketplace, because their competition with other retailers has them a little bit out of whack. So that’s part of the story. The other is just reapplying some of the trade funds that we already have and getting on to the products that are more price sensitive.

If I can ask a quick follow-up. Consumer Americas organic sales significantly better than what Nielsen would've suggested. I appreciate Nielsen doesn’t capture everything but just as we think about modeling 2Q and beyond, any retail sell-ins of any new product in 1Q or anything we should be aware of that might be considered a nonrecurring event?

I wouldn’t expect any nonrecurring events that is going to move the dial significantly. But remember what you see in Nielsen and we have --I know that the investment community has a real focus on spices and seasonings, we’re growing share and growing the recipe mix category. That is certainly a help. We've got a number of channels that aren’t necessarily captured at their site. So while we want to see the Nielsen, the IRI data in spices and seasonings to improve and we have seen some of that sequentially it doesn't capture the whole picture.

Our next question is from the line of David Driscoll with Citigroup.

This is [Kruno Brunette] in with a question for David. So going back to US consumer, operating margins were down 50 basis points in the quarter following a ‘14 in which they were down 70 basis points and we saw market shares in and spices down about 80 basis points in the quarter. So when we go forward, what do we need in order to get margins going in the right direction? Is it a matter of seeing stabilized market share trends within that spices segment?

It is a couple of things. One is our cost reduction activities are going to start to take hold an impact through the year as we offset the increased cost. We get increase costs early in the year and it takes a while for our cost reduction activities to impact it. So that’s one. Secondly, as we stabilize and start to grow share in our higher-margin items and spices and seasonings, we should start to see recovery in gross margin. Gordon, do you want to add anything to that or Lawrence?

No, that those are the two key items. Obviously this year as we mentioned is the story of raw material price, or cost increases. So the cost reductions are going to be meaningful as we progress through the year and as you’ve seen us talk earlier that we’ve stepped up our game in that respect. So therefore they’re going to have a bigger impact as we progress. And obviously volume growth is key to leveraging our scale and that is a good start to the year as you saw on our results and we would need to continue that momentum.

I think I would echo that Gordon, we’ve been very clear that the cost impact from the higher raw materials impact us immediately from the beginning of the year of the cost reduction activities, the cost improvement activity that we’re highly confident in, phases in as we go through the year. We also emphasize that we took no list price decreases or conducted any extraordinary promotions in this quarter, the change in the margin structure is strictly related to the impact of cost and a minor contribution from product mix.

And then looking at the EMEA consumer business, noticeably no pricing in the quarter but significant headwinds from foreign-currency and it looks like you’re expecting good acceleration in pricing in EMEA going forward. Just was wondering what type of risk do you think that will have to volumes in that EMEA consumer segment given that your cost position may be little bit unfavorable to local competitors, given that you’re dealing with higher raw material costs and FX at the same time?

Yes, the local competitors are going to have the same issue because spices and seasonings are mostly priced in US dollars. So part of what you'll see is the pricing change to reflect the impact of raw materials on currency. We feel pretty good about our ability to execute in the UK and – I am sorry in EMEA.

Our next question is from the line of Rob Dickerson with Consumer Edge.

Just have a pretty simple maintenance question. So I just want to clarify, I think I thought you said – or I know this morning you stated that I guess constant currency EPS growth didn’t change, that’s 6% to 8%. But then I thought, maybe I am misreading this but I thought at the time of Q4, at least in the transcript or some of the call was that constant currency EPS excluding special charges was 7% and 9%. So I just want to make sure there wasn’t a change to constant currency EPS and if there is a change, what's driving that?

There is no change. In the fourth quarter call, we also highlighted pension as another impact that got us to that 7% to 9%. So excluding in constant currency and excluding the impact of the increased benefit costs, EPS growth is – was 7% to 9% and still at 7% to 9%.

And then just kind of a quick follow up then, I guess, the same rationale applies to adjusted operating income which was 4% to 5% including FX, so that was off of the 608, and now we are just including an additional point of FX, I am assuming that that's just very simplistically we’re now just at 3% to 4% off of the 608?

This is Joyce. That's right, in our initial guidance of 4% to 5% growth in adjusted operating income, that had about two percentage points of currency implied in there. So the constant currency growth rate was 6% to 7% which continues to be.

Our next question comes from the line of Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse.

If I go back to what, I was kind of concerned about three months ago, it was my thought that McCormick would have to or was going to reduce sizes on certain SKUs and maintain less prices. So it was kind of like a laid-out strategy in response to higher commodities. And McCormick was doing at a time when competition was intensifying and price gaps seemed to be getting bigger with private-label. So can you just give us kind of an update on that, on where you are in that process and has competition followed or do you feel like your price gaps are getting bigger on any items as result of this?

And obviously because of the fragmented competition that we have, it's a mixed story. But our larger competitors have announced price increases as we’ve gone into the year both on the industrial and the consumer side because they are seeing the same level of commodity cost increases that we are.

Just also a follow-up, you said quick service restaurants in the US kind of weak, I would've thought by now there could be some kind of a pickup here and maybe the industry is saying. So can you give us a reason why, is it one or two retailers or is it all retailers where you’re seeing that weakness in the environment?

Our quick service business in the Americas is pretty broad to a number customers but there are couple of customers that are large enough to have an impact. And those larger customers as they’ve reported have been struggling somewhat with foot traffic and sales and that impacts us as well. We are gaining with some of the smaller quick service restaurants and we feel pretty good about that .But it's not enough to offset the very large chains that are well-publicized and their challenges.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Eric Katzman with Deutsche Bank.

One specific question, Alan, on the cost cutting, I guess, there are now two initiatives to lower SG&A as a percentage of sales. Not to be too I guess specific but when you say fiscal ’16, do you mean by end of fiscal ‘16 that hundred basis point improvement should occur or kind of at the start?

We expect it to be in our guidance for -- not giving early guidance but we expect that to be a full year impact for 2016 because the costs that we’re taking out are coming out now.

So kind of like on a run rate basis but building over this year as well.

That's right.

And then I guess you just opened up this figure for M&A, you’ve done two deals and I think you were quite frank last quarter about saying that the pipeline looked pretty good and you’re kind of reiterating that. So I mean maybe you could go a little bit more into the deals that you're seeing, why is there kind of a pickup in that today?

There is the benefit right now of the low interest rate environment so that is -- and I am assuming that some sellers are anticipating that’s going to change in the not-too-distant future. So it’s an optimum time, if you’ve got a business that’s got good traction that maybe needs and as we've seen with the businesses we have been able to buy that need a little investment for growth because there is growth opportunities, now is pretty good time. They are probably also looking and seeing as we have that multiples are attractive for a seller, a little more challenging for a buyer but as we've always done we’ve been pretty financially disciplined to make sure we get the returns that we expect. But it's a pretty robust environment for the kinds of deals that we like to do right now.

And then my last question is, during, I guess that you seem to be coming out of it but during the depths of the US consumer segment pressure, you not only noted the competition in spice and seasonings but you also mentioned slower growth or missteps in some of the other products whether it was Grill Mates or marinades, spice and rice, and Zatarain’s etc. So I guess one, kind of would you -- those other businesses, are they seeing some better traction in the market and do you see like adding through M&A other kind of niches which has been very successful for the company in the past but we haven't seen much of late?

Yes, we do see adding more adjacencies in our businesses both in consumer and industrial. And so we see these opportunities and we’re little mixed on the smaller brands at least in the quarter. So we had good traction in some of the smaller brands and some that still have some level of challenge. I will say that as we talked about Grill Mates, we are aggressively pursuing an earlier grilling season this year and we feel like we’re getting the kind of traction that we expect. Last year grilling – our grilling promotion started closer to Memorial Day, we’re getting them out a lot earlier this year.

Thank you. Our final question today will be from the line of Akshay Jagdale with KeyBanc.

Good morning. This is actually Luby [ph] on for Akshay. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you’re thinking about the marketing around your new product launches slated for the remainder of the year? And maybe if you could just touch on sort of the rollout plan and in-store merchandising etc. for those new products? And then I have a follow up, thanks.

I will let Lawrence take that one.

Sure. Thank you, Alan. Well, as is always the case, we have a fairly robust launch of new products. Most of them are in our core categories. So they get the benefit of all of our branded advertising and in turn the work that we do on them supports of the growth of our core business as well. We are really quite encouraged by the launch of skillet sauces that we introduced last year and that we’ve continued the introduction this year. We had advertising for those products in the first quarter. So we have new grilling products and new gluten-free products that we launched this year, that we’re also quite excited about.

And then just on the income from unconsolidated operations line, it came in quite a bit better than we were expecting and we were modeling pretty decent growth there. But can you just talk a little bit about what's driving the results there and also do you expect to see sort of the same level of growth for the remainder of the year that we saw here in the 1Q?

This is Gordon. As we mentioned in the call, it’s driven by great performance from our joint venture in Mexico. As we talked in previous calls, there is a new facility that has been ramping up and improving productivity. The sales growth there in the market has been strong and they have been very good in managing their cost positions. So all of that has contributed to some very very strong growth in the first quarter. We don't expect that pace of growth as we continue through the rest of the year and the reason for that is the impact of currency on a go forward basis on that business. So we do expect moderating growth in that area, especially as we get towards the back half of the year where their performance was also very strong and we start to lap that. End of Q&A

Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alan Wilson for closing remarks.

I want to thank you for your questions and for participating in today's call. Consumer demand for flavor is increasing and our categories have strong growth rates. Our geographic presence and product portfolio are expanding and ideally aligned with the move towards healthier eating, fresh ingredients, ethnic cuisine and bold tastes and we’re driving growth through innovation, brand marketing and acquisitions. In 2015, we stepped up our cost reduction activity and we will continue to pursue ways to improve our productivity and profit as we continue to grow. We look forward to reporting to you on our continued progress in the upcoming quarters.