Welcome to Post Holdings Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. Hosting the call today from Post are Rob Vitale, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jeff Zadoks, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The dial-in number is 800-585-8367 and the passcode is 9687370. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Jennifer Meyer of Post Holdings for introductions. You may begin.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today for Post's Third Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Call. With me today are Rob Vitale, our President and CEO; and Jeff Zadoks, our CFO. Rob and Jeff will begin with prepared remarks and afterwards, we'll have a brief question-and-answer session. The press release that supports these remarks is posted on our Web site in both the Investor Relations and the SEC Filings sections at postholdings.com. In addition, the release is available on the SECs Web site. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors as actual results could differ materially from these statements. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call and management undertakes no obligation to update these statements. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and an audio replay will be available on our Web site. And finally, this call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our Web site. With that, I will turn the call over to Rob.

Good morning. Thanks, Jennifer and thank you all for joining us. The business executed well this quarter in a challenging environment. Our center store, the refrigerator retail business has had terrific results. Our food service business suffered rapid demand destruction with gradual rebuild. BellRing work through a trade inventory reduction and recovering demand curve through it all, our supply chain performed well and our business functioned at high level. It is most appropriate that we are recognizing ongoing dedication of our employees especially in supply chain who make this happen. Our retail channel business is a Post consumer brand, Weetabix and refrigerated retail performed exceptionally well this quarter. In contrast to Q2 during which surge demand was pulled forward onto pre-established promotions. Q3 was slightly promoted. As a result, we saw attractive profit conversion in each business. This profit level was despite incremental costs around employee safety and incentive compensation at each manufacturing location. Our retail channel business has benefited from the increased demand for in home food consumption. We expect this to continue to a lesser degree through the balance of the fiscal year and into next. Our challenge this quarter was to flex our supply chain to meet this demand. To do so, limited assortment enabling higher manufacturing line productivity and increased output. This was most pronounced in Post consumer brands, which because of its value portfolio, managers have a relatively larger number of SKUs. We are now close to essentially a normal level of manufacturing and are reestablishing our merchandising program. As you all know, the ready to eat cereal category has struggled in recent years. We anticipate that the experience of the last several months will have a positive intermediate to long-term benefit on the trajectory of the category. Above that is Weetabix and Crystal Farms…

Thanks, Rob, and good morning everyone. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $270.9 million. Consolidated net sales of $1.3 billion declined 7.1% year-over-year. Each of our businesses was significantly impacted by consumer and customer behaviors and reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. I will discuss those impacts as we go through the performance of each of our segments. Starting with post consumer brands, net sales and volumes grew 11.4% and 7.5%, respectively, benefiting from increased at home consumption and private label distribution gains. Significantly reduced promotional activity and favorable mix resulting from a temporary reduction in assortment together drove a 3.4% improvement in average net pricing. Gross profit margins meaningfully improved over both the prior year and the second quarter. This outcome resulted from the aforementioned net pricing improvement, manufacturing efficiencies from streamlining assortment, better fixed cost leverage on increased production volume and $6 million in cost savings from implementing our new integrated business planning process. These improvements were only partially offset by increased compensation for manufacturing employees, cost for health screening and personal protective equipment and increased product donations. The growth of net sales volumes and gross profit drove a 35% increase in segment adjusted EBITDA compared to the prior year. Weetabix net sales increased 3.1% over the prior year. This reflects a 4.1% and a 2.6% improvement in volume and average net pricing respectively. Volume growth benefited from increased at home consumption, particularly for cereal biscuits, which was partially offset by declines and on-the-go breakfast drink and bar products. Favorable mix and reduced promotional activity drove improved average net pricing. A weaker British Pound to U.S. dollar exchange rate caused an approximate 400 basis point headwind to the net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth rates. Overall, Weetabix segment adjusted EBITDA increased 14.6%. Our food service business was significantly…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of David Palmer of Evercore ISI.

Question on cereal. I appreciate your comments about it. The category perhaps getting some better footing coming out of COVID. Wondering about your comments around market share, in July, it looks like Post has lost some share to the big two? And I'm wondering if you're foreseeing things getting tougher from a competitive standpoint, given the fact that those two competitors are talking about marketing and reinvestment in the third quarter? And I have a quick follow up.

No. I don't necessarily see it getting more challenging going forward in fact that is more of a leveling. From March to May, we essentially track the category. In June and July, as you point out, we've seen some share softness, there's really three reasons. First, we over index to mass and food has recently gained share vis-à-vis the mass of some of -- some channel shifting, which we don't see as being a particularly persistent trend. Second and third are related to the comments I made about limited assortment and supply chain optimization. So we pulled back our assortment in order to drive productivity which pulled down some of our flanker brands to a point where we kept facing, but lost some of the traditional placements of some of the flavor variants. And then, in order to shape demand, we of course, pulled back merchandising unlike some of the other competitors, we kept that merchandising off really until August. So August is the first month in which we have full assortment and full merchandising engaged. So I think it's nearly a timing shift.

And thank you for that that's helpful. With regard to food service, for those of us that are tracking, Starbucks and Dunkin' trends, I know you have more than just some of the big chains in breakfast, but it feels like some of the decline rate is becoming more stable. We're going to have that tapering off as the morning day part kind of rebuilds. But in other words, perhaps you should be less surprised by what you get from that business over the next year. How are you thinking about the profit deleverage going forward? Obviously, you're going to have less decline rate. But you also have less surprise, can you moderate your costs in a way that we should see? Less deleverage per volume point of decline? Thanks.

Well, absolutely less than the blended average of the quarter. And what I called out on my comments was that we were looking to forecast the last part of the quarter where we had worked through some of the initial, I use the word shock of that demand period when it was down, in the three quarters level or so. And I think you're quite right that we see pretty decent predictability out of the QSR segment as I commented, the visibility gets less clear as you get into the full service and other channels that we also serve. But we feel very good about how the QSR channel seems to be shaping up.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar of Barclays.

I guess first off, Rob, thinking about fiscal 4Q, we kind of have a sense now of the sort of the BellRing sort of guidance piece of it. You mentioned food service was back to profitability in June. And hopefully that some of the less severe deleverage moving forward. So I guess, in thinking about your fourth quarter guidance, it sort of implies if I'm not mistaken, a lot of slowing in the retail businesses. And I'm just trying to get a sense of maybe what's driving that. There's something discrete there. Perhaps maybe there's some conservatism just in all of us not knowing how quickly or not elevated consumption levels kind of slow, depending on second wave and all those sorts of things. Just trying to get a sense for what this means for the retail side really specifically PCB in the 4Q, because it seems like that would suggest a pretty significant slowing. And then, I just got a follow up.

Yes. And to be fair, I think it's an acceleration from last year, but a sequential slowdown, because the third quarter contains a fairly significant portion of the surge buying that leftover in April. So the only difference between the quarters is an assumption that the truly elevated level in the early stages of the crisis will not repeat. It will certainly be elevated vis-à-vis pre-COVID levels. So I'm not in any way suggesting a slowdown of the business vis-à-vis prior years or anything other than the fact that we had surge buying in Q3 that may not be repeated.

Got it. And profitability, obviously, we need to think about that in terms of reinstating some of the merchandising and stuff that you talked about versus let's say fiscal 3Q.

Correct. That's an equally big point is that the volume and the reestablishing promotions.

Got it. Okay. And then, it's interesting, Rob, if we think out a little bit, a bunch of staples companies reporting in the last few weeks, have touched on like the potential for crisis management during the pandemic to really maybe have lasting positive P&L implications. A number of companies have talked about it. I think, the CEO of one of the largest Coke bottlers yesterday said, there'll be no return to the pre-pandemic cost structure. And I know it's probably a bit early to be overly focused on this as you're just kind of keeping operations going and whatnot. But if we think post-crisis, do you think there's an element of this that could maybe benefit Post in a more meaningful way longer term and so sort of what buckets maybe of cost could be impacted? Thank you.

Well, I certainly think the way you think about organizing workflow and productivity is going to be effective. We have now been remarkably effective in a distributed work model for five and a half months or whatever it is. I have really three concerns. One is how do you maintain culture? Two is, how do you onboard people effectively? And three, how do you develop young talent? But if we can solve for those problems, I think it starts to upend the way we think about organizing work and people. And as important as anything else that starts to relieve the geographic constraints of attracting talent. So instead of thinking about our talent pool as those who are willing to relocate to whatever is the appropriate metropolitan area, we recruit from the country or the world and we managed differently and I think that's a fairly profound change in the way we think about talent development. So that's a big one. I think the way we think about manufacturing and the relationship between manufacturing and non-manufacturing is one that is constantly going to be reevaluated because of how essential we realized that function is when we actually put definition to the term, essential worker. And there will be -- I think, a series of profound implications that come out of it. I frankly, think beyond some themes, it's premature to start talking about what that does to margins and what it does to cost because I'm sure we're not through the learnings on this experience. But I would certainly not argue that there will be some profound learnings coming from it.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Growe of Stifel.

I had a question for you, first on, I'm sorry if I missed this if you have said, have you quantified the total COVID costs in the quarter. And I was just curious if you think about that in relation to the fourth quarter, are they more burdensome because of less fixed cost leverage as you will you have more costs weighing down on consumer brands, for example, in Weetabix, others?

We did not quantify it. And we have not publicly disclosed that.

As you might imagine, it's hard to pinpoint what's COVID what's not, especially when you talk about the benefits of leveraging or the negatives of deleveraging. But, the approximate amount of what we could that you put a fence around and say that was COVID-specific incremental costs, like incentives to manufacturing workers or the personal protective equipment, those sorts of things, was an order of magnitude of about $15 million on the quarter. How much of that is going to continue? I don't think it will be at that level because then that number was some of our inventory donations and things of that -- which won't be at the same level. But maybe half that amount might be an ongoing cost until we get back to more normal.

But I would also tell you that as I just commented with Andrew, we learned through this process, so the cost that we incurred in Q4 were crisis costs. So we weren't in a position to bid out providers, we weren't in a position to study the cost of action, we simply needed that. So that's a very high cost way to operate. As this experience dragged on and we start to learn how to operate better and the experience, we will drive that cost down.

Okay. Thank you. And then just one other question would be -- and it shows a difference by business, but just as a general question, you're under shipping demand in many cases. So I'm curious, if there's sort of an inventory rebuild that's either happening or has happened yet or may happen? And then, just understand what condition your production capacity is. And as we exited the quarter, can you meet demand in your businesses today?

Yes. So I think the one you're probably most talking about is the refrigerated retail. And I think that there might be a little confusion in that, the Bob Evans growth rate was very high, but some of the other brands in the portfolio dragged that down. So the actual Bob Evans, consumption to replenishment was much closer to the consumption growth rate, much more close to one-to-one replenishment. So that might be a piece of what you're picking up. Going through each of the answers though, the reason that we held back on promotion in PCB was precisely to be able to answer yes to that question. We want to be able to make sure that our supply chain is operating at a best-in-class level and network. We have customer fill rates where they need to be and they are. So we feel very good about that. Same is true in Weetabix. Same is true in our integrated supply chain with Bob Evans or refrigerated retail and Michael Foods with the nuance that of course, that's deleveraged on the food side and pushing full leverage on the retail side. I think the big question that we have is, will this be a normal holiday season with respect to more holiday oriented products or we'll have the in-home consumption change shape of that demand curve as we approach the holiday season.

And so just one follow on that, Rob, thank you for that. Would be just inventories at retail are those rebuilding or have they rebuilt yet as far as you could tell?

Cereals are rebuilding now as I mentioned, August is the first month with full assortment. So by the end of August, this should be fully rebuilt and the others were largely in balance. And I'm excluding BellRing from that -- [indiscernible] inventory adjustment that we can talk about in greater detail on their call.

Your next question comes more the line of Jason English of Goldman Sachs.

Sorry for the delay there. Two questions. First, high order strategic optionality, the turmoil in the food service vertical, curious if it's [indiscernible] any potentially strategically compelling assets that you could potentially target?

Yes, is the answer. I think there's some interesting opportunities in food service, but not at the crisis level that you would have expected. I think because of some of the government activities. There has been more liquidity to provide support for some companies that otherwise might be in more dire straits, but I think there is some attractive to value that we are obviously taking a look at as we survey that landscape.

And then on core business, like many I was surprised at how robust the profit was from your retail business. I miss some of your prepared comments. But one thing I picked up on consumer brands, I think you mentioned you had about a 3.4% contribution to sales growth related to subdue trade activity and reduced assortment. I think that translates into around $16 million of benefit. Is a) did I capture that right? b) is it fully gone by the time we get to the first quarter of 21? Because it sounds like you're sort of suggested in August [indiscernible] back full emerge, full on assortment my interpretation is that is fully that benefits fully dissipated by then. And is there any other quantum across the other segments something similar you can give us to help us size the potentially transitory benefits that may have hit Weetabix and may have hit the refrigerator retail side.

I think your sizing of PCB is roughly in line. And I think your comment about the timing, lapping into the fourth quarter with some continued margin benefit is also true. In terms of Weetabix, the magnitude is much smaller, because we didn't see the same level of volume surge. We saw the same level of volume surge in March, but it didn't continue into the quarter at the same level as it did in the U.S. So there was much more stability in terms of its supply chain continuity and its ability to maintain more promotional strategies there that were not supply chain driven. So we don't see the same impact in Weetabix. And in Bob Evans, there really wasn't any of the same issues because they don't have the same degree of assortment variability as Post consumer brands does in its manufacturing lines.

Your next question comes more the line of Michael Lavery of Piper Sandler.

Two quick one on refrigerated retail. Just wondering if you could give us a sense within the price mix list. How much it is stickier list pricing versus mix or promo reductions that it can reverse in the fourth quarter? And then the second, you called out on your comments here, they're a little bit of a hit on eggs from deli closures and lower away from home demand. Can you just give us a sense of how to think about how that looks in the fourth quarter and if there's a watch out in terms of how to think about the volume moment there?

So to the first question, the vast majority of the price thing is list pricing. Jeff called out that it was taken pre-COVID towards the middle of our first fiscal quarter. In terms of the deli business, as you can imagine that's largely driven by retailers demand to manage foot traffic. So it's highly sensitive to what's going on in the local markets. And I mean, specifically with respect to the COVID outbreaks. So we expect that recovery curve to follow some of the other institutional channels, but it's highly dependent on the character of the local community.

And you'd mentioned on the list price increase being earlier in the year as we look at your fiscal second quarter, would it have been early in that quarter and that's a decent sort of proxy for the run rate or was it sort of mid-quarter obviously, it's stepped up quite a bit in the third.

Yes. You're going to stretch my memory. I'm going to say that the effective date was around December 1.

Your next question comes from the line of Rob Dickerson of Jefferies.

Two questions. I guess, first, Rob, I know we'll go into a lot more detail around BellRing on the BellRing call, but it's not obviously given kind of where the stock is open and the pressure and the concern that everybody's kind of thinking about on the business overall, and maybe just give kind of a quick 30 second discussion, before that call on the inventory piece and kind of maybe what you saw in July to get to the market confident.

Yes. I think that, it turns out that we were more opaque than we thought we were and trying to communicate that there was a substantial inventory load as we exited the second quarter. And that there was some promotional timing that would push back some volume into the fourth quarter. We specifically did call out in our guidance that the second half plan was back loaded but clearly not precisely enough. So we went into the quarter and you're going to hear more details around what we expect to be roughly 45 to 55 minutes. And that is largely shaping up intact, as evidenced by exceptionally strong July that you'll hear more about. So we are not at all surprised by the cadence of the quarter. Where we made a judgment error was the assumption that the on-the-go consumption that had been reduced by COVID would come back faster than it did. It has now come back, but we were off by roughly a month, there's been some -- a little bit more deterioration in international markets than we expected in the aggregate of those two issues, the on-the-go consumption decline and the international put some pressure on our revenue assumptions for the balance of the year. We were in very good position from an EBITDA perspective. So we're able to protect our EBITDA, I think that point is getting a little bit lost that we are likely to hit an EBITDA number from October in a period of time in which the world change pretty darn dramatically. So I actually feel very confident on BellRing's long-term trajectory and recognize it. We did a less than ideal job of communicating the cadence and frankly, missed an assumption on recovery rate on the consumption piece but, that will prove out in time.

Okay. Fair enough. And then, just quickly in terms of cap allocation and the buyback, it looks like you -- you have bought some stock back at around $88. Right now, your stock $91, $92. So just maybe just kind of quick commentary color on appetite to further increase that activity or ongoing activity. And then, also potentially just kind of general perspective feel from you plus just valuation of your business, given kind of what you've gone through over the past few months. That's it. Thanks so much.

Yes. I hate to do this, but I'm mostly going to dodge that question. I don't like to be the judge evaluation of our stock, or at least to speak about it. We'd rather just let action speak on that one. And I think that you can infer from the action we took were share buyback authorizations that we continue to have some appetite for it. But I don't want to go into how we actually see value.

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Zaslow of Bank of Montreal.

Just a couple of questions. One thing is, last quarter you kind of discussed the cash flow and how that nothing changed. Can you update us on your view on the cash flow, your initiatives on working capital, as well as, again, how you think it's going to play out? Again, I think last quarter, you said that there was no real change to cash flow relative to your initial outlook.

Yes. I think you need to put a little bit more fine point on it but there was a modest change in the aggregate that the composition was different because of what you just mentioned. It's less EBITDA from food service, more working capital recovery, which will then translate into working capital investment in the future as we have the EBITDA recovery. So yes, we were able to maintain cash flow, we actually had an extraordinary cash flow quarter. But a portion of that was working capital recovery.

So there's no change, though in how you're thinking about is going forward.

Not at all.

Okay. Then, the second question I have, what you said was intermediate and long-term benefit on the retail business and then last quarter, you said, look, we think that the food service will be back in 2020 -- will be back to 2019 levels by 2022. So if I put it all together, do you think your structural long-term growth rate is actually enhanced over time given the situation and not to say that you want to capitalize on a pandemic but is that the fair implication of that and how I can kind of frame that or more of a longer term investor perspective.

Yes. I think that's exactly the right question that investors should be asking. And I'm going to give an answer that is intentionally somewhat vague. We have seen experience that has driven extraordinary levels of trial on essentially all of our retail business. And our intuition is that that will have some lingering benefit that that is not going to go from a massive trial to zero stickiness and back to where we were pre -COVID so there will be some benefit to that. Putting a number to that I think is a bit premature. On the other side of the business, I think the most likely outcome is that the business materially reverts to norm or 2022. But the puts and takes are that there will be some percentage of the population that chooses to work from home. And when you lose that person departing from home in the morning and going to work, there will be some transactions that get lost along the way. Now what will happen? Will it shift to a still a mid morning breakfast day part? Or will it be lost? We don't know. But we are planning to adapt to a modestly different mix of people working from home than working in office. So there's puts and takes that we have to work through and I think what we don't want to do is over commit to a trend until we really understand that it is a trend and we're trying to be as adaptable as we can. So we can pivot very rapidly as these things clarify themselves. Hopefully, that's helpful. I recognize vague but vague is where we are.

We have reached the allotted time for questions and answers. That does conclude the Post Holdings Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.

Thank you all.