Rob Vitale
Analyst · Evercore ISI
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 brands each performed exceptionally well. Again, the financial results are despite incremental costs and safety and incentives. Bob Evans brand grew consumption dollars 29% as we gained new households and continued our high repeat rates. In the U.K., Weetabix grew in both sales and share as consumers turn to this well known brand during the lockdown. In both cases and generally across the business, we expect this consumer trial experience to have lingering benefit. The BellRing call will provide more detail, but I will hit two themes about their business. First, last quarter we previewed a trade inventory drawdown in a back loaded second half. This is developing as anticipated, with very strong July shipments confirming the thesis. Second, RTD on-the-go consumption took longer than we expected to return to pre-COVID growth but it has done so. Despite the on-the-go headwinds, premier shake grew consumption 11%. The change in our expectation of the demand curve caused us to call down revenue. But we reaffirmed the EBITDA guidance for the year. We have no concerns about the long-term trajectory of the business, but we missed the magnitude of some near-term COVID implications on consumption recovery. Like our branded retail channel businesses Eighth Avenue performance is benefiting from the COVID-related demand increases. Earlier this year, we made a small acquisition and the integration is well on track. We remain optimistic about the consolidation opportunities ahead. Our near term challenge remains foodservice. We saw volume recovery in line with expectations and the business was profitable in June. We expect the fourth quarter to continue to June performance, but we certainly have the potential for pandemic-related headline risk or benefits. Last quarter, I described our affected channels, quick service restaurants are coming back reasonably well, full service a bit behind, education is a mixed bag across the country but certainly will not be fully reopened, travel and lodging continues to be weak all largely as expected. Demand in this segment is directly tied to consumer mobility. Therefore, region-by-region, government and consumer responses to the severity of the pandemic shaped the recovery. We do not expect to revisit the quarter lows. Our channels have learned so much more about how to operate during the pandemic. But because it is a challenge to predict the near term shape of the recovery, we have taken a cautious outlook. Longer term, we remain highly confident in the strength of this business. Separately, the correlation between mobility and demand further gives us confidence in our decision to avoid structural cost reduction in favor of supporting the rebuild. While each of our business has executed quite well, I want to particularly commend our food service team. They're magnificently navigating the most extraordinary business climate of our careers. In terms of the fourth quarter, we expect foodservice to materially improve over Q3, but not approach normal and retail channel businesses to perform well, but not at the volume level of the third quarter absent the second wave of surge buying. For BellRing, we anticipate delivery of the results implied in its guidance. On balance, we expect Q4 to be similar in the aggregate to the third quarter, with potentially significant changes in segment composition. Our liquidity remains quite high. You may recall it as a cautionary measure we threw down $500 million on our $750 million revolver in March. We have repaid the full balance of the drawdown and now had approximately 870 million in cash on hand. With respect to capital allocation you can see that we resume share repurchases. We were cautious so that we were assessing potential requirements for liquidity, if one or more of our supply chains became interrupted. Throughout the quarter, we operated with growing confidence in our ability to maintain continuity of supply. As our confidence has grown, so has our desire to be more offensive with our capital. We tempered that inclination with discipline and will not force an opportunity merely to act. It's hard to neatly wrap this quarter up into a singular description, but the best I come up with is resilience. In some ways, this quarter revealed the strength of the construction of our portfolio. The businesses naturally hedged each other. Our results in our expectations give us further confidence in how we manage leverage and liquidity and the delivery of long-term risk appropriate returns. We are admittedly taking a cautious outlook as is our nature and we will continue to do so. But this too is true that while this is a challenging year, it is a year that I continue to be most proud of the business. With that I will turn it over to Jeff.