Thank you, Britney, and good morning, everyone. We're here this morning with George Holm, PFG's CEO; and Jim Hope, PFG's CFO. We issued a press release regarding our 2021 fiscal fourth quarter and full year results this morning, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our Web site at pfgc.com. During our call today, unless otherwise stated, we are comparing results to the same period in our 2020 fiscal fourth quarter and full year. Additionally, occasionally during our call today, as noted, we are comparing results to the same period in our 2019 fiscal fourth quarter and full year. The results discussed on this call will include GAAP and non-GAAP results adjusted for certain items. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found at the back of the earnings release. Our remarks on this call and in the earnings release contain forward-looking statements and projections of future results. Please review the cautionary forward-looking statements section in today's earnings release and our SEC filings for various factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements and projections. Now I'd like to turn the call over to George.

Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. It is my pleasure to discuss PFG's fourth quarter results with you this morning. Fiscal 2021 was a dynamic year for our industry and company. We started the year with depressed levels of sales and profit as our industry and the country struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic. But I'm thrilled to say that we finished on a high note posting several record sales weeks during the fiscal fourth quarter accompanied by the strong recovery in earnings. This past year has shown that the restaurant industry is resilient and determined to serve everyone a wonderful dining experience. Our customers have pushed ahead, providing a steady path towards a return to better times for us all. We appreciate all the hard work undertaken by our customers and suppliers, as well as the role PFG associates play in our country's food supply chain. On May 18th, we announced our intention to acquire Core-Mark, which will boost our convenience to our capabilities and continue to expand our presence in the food-away-from-home market. After providing more detail on the fourth quarter results, I'd like to spend some time discussing the strategic vision we have for Core-Mark. I will then turn the call over to Jim, who will review our financial performance. As we entered the spring, we had high hopes that a full restaurant recovery was beginning to take hold. From a sales perspective, it is fair to say that our expectations were exceeded as our case volume and dollar sales began hitting record levels soon into the fiscal fourth quarter. The result was over $9.3 billion of net sales in the quarter. Excluding the impact of the 53rd week, we estimate our net sales to be approximately $8.6 billion, well above…

Thank you, George, and good morning, everyone. Before I review our results for the fourth fiscal quarter, I would like to discuss some of the financial items. As George mentioned, our strong recovery continues. While supply chain labor related cost pressures are not unique to our company or sector, they are an area of focus for us to manage. I am extremely pleased with how our organization has stepped up to the challenge and handled the situation, allowing us to deliver strong profit recovery in the fourth quarter despite the cost pressure. We assume that worker shortages, particularly for drivers and warehouse associates will persist. However, we do believe that the market will ultimately stabilize and reach equilibrium. We also closed out the fiscal year with a solid balance sheet position, and this included total liquidity of $2.3 billion, which is an all-time high for Performance Food Group. We believe that our capital structure is in excellent shape. At the close of fiscal 2021, PFG had just over $2.5 billion of total net debt outstanding. Using our trailing 12 month adjusted EBITDA, this means we were approximately 4 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA at the end of the year, achieving the goal we set out at the announcement of the Reinhart transaction, well ahead of schedule despite depressed levels of adjusted EBITDA early in the year due to the impact of COVID. As you know, after the quarter closed, we went to the debt markets to prefinance the Core-Mark transaction and retire $350 million of our outstanding 2024 notes, which had 5.5% coupon rate. Oversubscription of our debt offering allowed us to upsize the issuance to $1 billion at 4.25%. We are very pleased with this rate, which we believe reflects both the strength of the company and it’s…

And we will take our first question from John Heinbockel with Guggenheim Partners.

George, let me start with labor cost, right, in the supply chain. It sounds like it may last longer than you thought a couple of months ago. Is that fair? And is the primary challenge -- is it finding new people because of the growth you've seen or is it existing employees are getting bid away and retaining them is a challenge? And then what do you do about that? Is there anything to mitigate that or you just have to pay market prices for now?

Well, the challenge is, number one, getting new employees and then the second challenge would be churn, people that don't stay very long. They find work to be too physical or something they don't like about them, maybe they don't like the hours. As far as our core of workers, not having issues there. And we don't know who we're losing people to and that's just something that's hard to determine. What we do know is that we were, for a period of time, they're losing drivers to over-the-road jobs and many of those came back, and I think that had to do with just that being out over the road and spending nights away from home, and they found that the additional pay they got for that job was worth the change in lifestyle. But I do think that the employment issues are probably around for a while. We've done the best job that we could do to offer the right incentives to attract people and to retain people, and it's a very localized situation. We have markets where we have been highly affected by a shortage of people and we've had markets where we've benefited tremendously by not having that issue.

And then maybe as a second topic, going back on to C-stores and Core-Mark. How quickly do you think, once this closes, you can begin to get the cross-selling mechanism in place, your guys and theirs? And I guess, is the opportunity more -- I guess, it would be more existing customers, because new ones will have contracts that have to expire or some of them will. So is it more their existing customers doing more on the Foodservice front? And then lastly, do you think the potential is there? When I think about their nontobacco growth, can that exceed performance sort of legacy case growth? Think about it apples-to-apples. Can their growth rate be higher than yours because of the share opportunity?

I'll start with that Foodservice ramp-up. We've got some experience doing this with our involvement with Eby-Brown. Certainly, it was somewhat curtailed by COVID, it was a tough period of time for the Foodservice side of the convenience business. But we've got programs put in place. We're ready to hit the ground running. Certainly, during this period of time, we're not able to do detailed work with Core-Mark, but I can tell you that their senior people are anxious. They understand it. They see the fit between the two businesses. And no, it's not just in the food service area. I would put it broadly in the food area. And I think I would say that Candy is a great opportunity for us as well. As far as what the growth potential there is, certainly, the initial focus will be on the existing customer base because they're experiencing, as I think anybody in distribution, they're experiencing the same labor shortages that we are. But I do think that it won't take long and we'll be pursuing new business. But that's where I believe the opportunities are going to be with their existing customer base. And of course, we'll be early on focused on making sure that we deliver on the synergies. I think that will be a little bit easier to do than it was with Reinhart just because the SKU mixes are so similar. As far as growth, I think in the independent area, that will do well. Eby-Brown has done exceptionally well in that area since we've owned them. But when you get outside of the independent, I think it will come in chunks and that's something that we'll be very transparent about and very communicative about. But it will come in bigger chunks when you get outside of the independent.

And we will take our next question from Alex Slagle with Jefferies.

Just wanted to follow up on the previous question and maybe just thinking about the magnitude, the impact on operating expenses related to the staffing during the fourth quarter, and what you expect into the first quarter sort of just again trying to figure out when you think you kind of hit the peak of these incremental costs and start to see it moderate a bit.

Well, once again, I'm going to say that's a very localized. When you talk to the guys that run our companies, ladies that run our companies, some will tell you that it's as difficult as it's ever been and some will tell you the field over the hump, and some just haven't experienced serious issues. So that's how much it varies by marketplace. So it's kind of hard for us to tell. I think one thing that will help us is as people come back to work and people go back to school, is kind of that contract seating area in the school area are areas that we don't participate very much in. So I think that if we continue to run the increases that we're running over two years ago and prefacing it where we don't get a big surge this time of the year, I think we will improve.

And then on the rebound in the casual dining chain business, just curious how much that sort of recovery is driving your stronger than expected top line and if you think there's opportunity to build some more share in that channel going forward?

Well, once again, I say this often, we don't want to report on how any specific customer is doing. The chain, casual diner has not been a big contributor to our rebound. They have certainly rebounded but not to the extent that our independent business has. And in many ways, that has been the more difficult part of our business to handle through this process.

And we will take our next question from Lauren Silberman with Credit Suisse.

Just first on the Core acquisition. You've talked about the opportunity to expand further foodservice in C-stores. So can you talk about how that relationship currently work? Would you deliver to a customer from the Performance Foodservice division or Eby-Brown? And then as Core is integrated into the business, is Foodservice coming from Performance Foodservice or Core?

Well, once again, we've had experience in that area with Eby. What we have found is that if their foodservice offering goes beyond what we consider to be a certain point where we got from the SKU standpoint, and it's different by distribution center, because they have different sized coolers and freezers. But there is a point at which there's much more logic in delivering it out of Performance Foodservice than there is delivering it out of Core-Mark or Eby. And then we have decisions to make as to where we expand facilities to handle that business. Today, we do more convenience store Foodservice business out of our Performance Foodservice than we do out of Eby significantly more, and we’ll be comparable when we close on the Core-Mark acquisition. So I think it's going to be mixed as we move forward. But certainly, our goal is to expand the food service offering within a Core-Mark and Eby distribution center as much as possible.

On gross margins, looking at the adjusted gross profit margin, excluding the LIFO impact, it looks like it improved sequentially and year-over-year. Seems like foodservice gross margins were flat year-over-year, just are nice improvements despite the inflation. Can you talk about the dynamics of that gross profit margin? I think we've seen just across other peers inflation weighing on the percentage. And then excluding Core, how do we think about that gross margin percentage going forward?

Well, much of our increase in gross margin is a function of the change in mix as our independent business continues to grow at a faster rate. We not only passed it on per case profit but we did it in actual margin as well in spite of the heavy inflation. And I think that a lot of it is attributed to our salespeople and their ability to make sure that they've kind of got that ratio right with the customers to what value they're bringing versus what they charge. And then we've had great success at the higher end of our product line. So we've had better growth than just the increase in inflation, because our business has grown faster in the higher case cost areas, which is even more significant when you consider that we were able to raise the margin as well. And then our chain business has just not been as robust.

And if I could just ask one more related to Core. Within foodservice and then I guess, among independents, we also think about independents having about five to seven distributors, 30% average wallet share or so. How does that compare in the C-store space in terms of average wallet share and how do you see those opportunities in new customers versus gaining wallet shares with the acquisition, or anything on the competitive dynamics different that you can share?

I think I can tell you what I've seen so far, and I don't profess to be an expert at this point in convenience or food service distribution. But I've been out with our people and I've been in a tremendous amount of convenience stores. They typically, for a core supplier, they pick someone. So normally, the core of the store will come all from one person. Now if they have a larger food service offering, they could be buying from a foodservice distributor as well. And then there are multiple DSD players that are in the business. And that can be fairly regional but there's a great deal of them. But as far as like splitting the business, which is so common in food service or having like a main supplier and a backup supplier on those core convenience items, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that. They pick somebody and they go with them.

And we will take our next question from Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo.

I jumped on the call a little bit late so hopefully I didn't miss this, but I don't think you gave any guidance. And you have been giving sort of like an at least number for the out quarter. Any color here that you could provide? And I'm just kind of curious as to why you didn't provide any guidance?

Ed, we gave guidance on a quarter basis for a couple of quarters just to make sure we had good information out there. I think that things are still -- there's still plenty of uncertainty in the market. You heard George's commentary about labor and very difficult to predict when that issue will turn. And of course, there's other unknowns in the marketplace. So you didn't miss anything, we are not providing guidance.

Maybe just a follow up on that. George, you mentioned the average weekly sales in July and August similar to June levels. I think in June, you mentioned you were $100 million a week ahead of 2019. I'm just kind of curious, does that hold? And then does that mean that Q1 sales are kind of running at least like that $9.3 billion range or better?

Well, certainly not $9.3 billion. We don't get a 14-week quarter every quarter. I wish we did. We do have some seasonal differences typically, January and July are kind of the tougher months and our sales held up extremely well in July. We have a little bit of softness just in like the last nine days. It takes some work to figure that out. Last year, we did not have a back-to-school. I think that's had an impact and then we don't know what impact the Delta Variant has had. But when you go back to when we did have a normal back-to-school that slight softening is quite normal for us. So I would say all in all and we're being cautious here because you just don't know what's going to happen out there with restrictions, and that's a good reason for not giving guidance. But all in all, we haven't seen a change as things are kind of rolling along as good as they were in June despite some of the pockets of very difficult labor issues that we're dealing with.

And then maybe just one last one and maybe this is for Jim. But you had $211 million in EBITDA in Q4, excluding the extra week, you're at $196 million. The extra week of $15 million, if you were to take that a quarter, that's around $195 million. I mean those numbers are kind of close. But there's typically seasonality in Q1 but Q4 was kind of ramping, I think. So should we expect to see some of that normal seasonality if all things sort of being equal in Q1? Just any help that you can provide in terms of how we should be thinking about the puts and takes on the EBITDA.

Yes, I know it's tough and it's probably tough for a lot of businesses for you to model because very few folks are providing guidance and we aren't either. I think seasonality is also a tough thing to predict because businesses isn't the way it was in all the years that we knew the industry in the past that things are different right now. So it's hard to use seasonality as a calibration point. I'd just leave it at this. We see good trends coming off of Q4 going into Q1. We're happy with how the business is running. We're pleased with our business results. We couldn't be more proud of how our employees are stepping up and working hard to take care of our customers, and we'll continue that momentum.

Ed, it's hard to say much more than what Jim just said. I think we're just dealing with so many variables. But I will say this, I mean, if you look at a two year stack of our independent growth, it's the best we've ever had for a two year stack. And we had a pretty long history of 6% to 10% case growth and then we disappointed ourselves a little bit, and then we kind of got back on track. And then if you take these last two years, that's the best we've ever been. So we have a lot of confidence but we are really cautious around what kind of statements we make as far as future growth right now.

And we will take our next question from Mark Carden with UBS.

Now that food-away-from-home sales momentum has really picked up, have you seen independent restaurants start to work with more distributors again, or are they still concentrating more of their business with larger players that can provide more consistent service levels?

What I've seen, and this is mostly from conversations with our people, not the accounts, is the whole supply chain has some serious labor issues. I mean we're not trying to downplay that. And our customers are dealing with it as well and we don't see anybody really making changes. We do see people scrambling to get product. And I mean I look at the number of calls we get for people that don't buy from us and I'm sure that our customers are calling other people when we disappoint them. So I don't think that it's a question that could be answered yet. I think we've got to get back into some sense of normalcy and then see what this period of time we've been through, see how that's affected how people look at their purchasing, because I don't think you can do that right now.

And then you noted that inflation has remained elevated. Is it continuing at the peak levels that you saw this past quarter or has it tapered off at all?

Yes, you're right. Inflation has been strong. At some point, it will taper off. And I don't think we see quite the trajectory that we had in the past. I mean at some point, it begins to lap where it was previous year. I can tell you this, I'm really pleased with how the organization is managing inflation, how we're passing inflation through to our customers appropriately and at the right pace. And we'll continue to do that. I guess in summary, I would say that I believe it's reasonable to expect inflation to be temporary, very tough to predict.

And if you go by this that we track our inbound service levels extremely close, daily. And last week, just last week, was the worst that we've experienced in both Foodservice and Vistar. And scarcity brings inflation. It always does. And it's hard to get product today. And with that has come inflation. And if you look at those areas that have had very little problems, those product areas that had very little problems getting product to us, the inflation is nowhere near as much. It's more about their increased fuel prices and maybe some with labor. But as long as we have the scarcity going, I think that we're going to have inflation.

And we will take our next question from John Glass with Morgan Stanley.

This is Brian on for John. Maybe just first question just on the Core-Mark deal. Could you just kind of explain moving forward without kind of full SEC approval -- or FTC, is there any risk they come back and say, there's some divestitures you have to do or anything else they might require? Could you just walk us through that kind of thinking?

I think the only comment we want to make on that is we have what we need and the information we need to be able to move forward, and we're going to do that. We're very comfortable with the situation we're in. I would add that we believe we worked well with the FTC and provided them the information they needed for them to do their job. And now we're moving forward.

Maybe the other question is just on kind of independent case growth. Did you give that number on a 13 week basis? And I guess, just curious more broadly anything differently you're doing there or anything that you think is really kind of working well right now? Obviously, your trends in that segment have been quite strong. But just curious about anything that's changed there recently.

No, it really hasn't changed at all. I think our approach is the same that it's always been. What is pleasing to me is that we were running significant growth in this time last year in pizza and Italian and Hispanic. And as we came up against those big growth numbers, I was concerned that we would have trouble continuing to put out particularly double digit growth, and we have not had trouble. And then the other areas of the business where we're not -- certainly, not over-indexed, we gained share, particularly early in COVID, and we've been able to hold on to that share. So we're just real pleased right now.

We'll take our next question from Joshua Long with Piper Sandler.

Wanted to circle back on the food inflation in the front and can understand that it's difficult to forecast and follow. It doesn't sound like there has been much of a tapering, although, as some of your comments suggest you would expect some of that tapering going forward. Just curious if maybe coming up that question a little bit differently, are there pieces in the basket that reset on a contract pricing basis or things that would move around that benefit that we saw of about almost 8% inflation in 4Q, maybe as we think into 2022?

I think you could tackle that from two angles, one from a customer pricing perspective and one with suppliers. So our supplier pricing is updated pretty frequently. And that information comes to us and of course, we make decisions on what we'll buy and from whom we'll buy on a regular basis. So that's pretty fluid and updated regularly. With our customers we have, our independent customers where pricing is updated on a much more frequent basis than our chain customers, many of our chain customers have more of a monthly price or a twice-a-month price update approach. But all in we feel very comfortable about how we're passing it on. And back to our earlier answer, really not certain exactly when it will dissipate but we're comfortable handling it either way and eventually it will dissipate.

And interesting and great to hear that we're not seeing any sort of slowdown here as we move from 4Q into the early fiscal 1Q period. I'm curious if that stability or that trend is maintained on a cuisine region basis as well, if there's just anything as we dig a little bit further down into those trends, if there were any sort of moving pieces that you'd be willing to share on the just added color basis?

The only thing I would say there would be regionally, and the Northeast has been slower to recover, we have the most labor issues in the Northeast. The Southeast, which we were running nice growth this time last year, our growth isn't as great but continuing to do real well. From a cuisine standpoint, we're not -- I don't think we have the kind of share to comment on a lot of the areas. But certainly, where we have share we see those channels continuing to do real well, particularly the area.

And then thinking about the net leverage target that you had said that you had reached ahead of expectations or ahead of schedule, curious on how you think about balancing that now, if you have other targets that you had worked towards knowing that you're going to maintain some flexibility and you're in a great cash position or liquidity position to hit on some of those strategic initiatives you talked about. So just curious on anything on how to think about net leverage or the balance sheet going forward?

Really, nothing has changed other than we feel confident about any markers or comments that we've made in the past about leverage and how we'll manage our capital structure and the balance sheet in general. Again, we feel very pleased with liquidity that we have. We're very comfortable with the liquidity we have available to us. Very appreciative to the debt and the capital markets and how they responded to our request. I think that we've also, in addition to those things, really done a good job, a strong job of managing working capital, receivables and inventory and payables in the way that we wanted to in the way that fit our business. And I don't see any reason why that would change going forward. So all in, we believe we're positioned really well.

And we have no further questions on the line at this time. I'll turn the program back over to Bill Marshall for any additional or closing remarks.

Thank you for joining our call today. If you have any follow-up questions, please contact us at Investor Relations.

This does concludes today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time and have a wonderful day.