Robert Vitale
Analyst · Barclays
Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you all for joining us. Despite a challenging environment, we delivered a quarter largely in line with expectations, and we continue to maintain our expectations for the full year. However, as you all know, the degree of uncertainty remains high, and we face variables to lend both risk and upside to our outlook. While our outlook continues to be presented on a basis consolidated with BellRing, respective outlook remains largely unchanged. We will initiate post RemainCo guidance no later than our next earnings call, by which time we expect the separation have been completed. With respect to the separation execution, I have some updates. First, we've been cleared by the SEC to move forward with the transaction. Second, we expect to complete the transaction by the end of March. Third, we expect the amount of cash that will be distributed to BellRing stockholders, including Post to be approximately $400 million. Finally, we will pro rata distribute approximately 78 million of BellRing shares rather than exchange any of them for Post shares. This transaction required and continues to require a considerable effort across both organizations, and I want to thank everyone involved. With respect to near-term business results, each segment had 2 overarching themes. First, cost inflation ran ahead of pricing actions. We have taken the pricing needed to offset our inflation in all segment, but with varying effective dates. Second, each segment had unmet customer demand resulting from shortages and labor inhibiting production and/or shortages in transportation resulting in unshipped orders. In U.S. Cereal, consumption for our branded products continues to run ahead of pre-COVID levels by nearly 2%, and our related market share is just shy of 20%. Pebbles in particular, continues to show strong growth. Last quarter, I mentioned we may have seen an inflection point in the value trade. And so far, that is holding. Our value segment sequentially improved throughout the quarter. A shift to value in the category is margin dilutive to Post, but it's profit-accretive. Foodservice performed as expected, meaning it had a weak profit quarter as this segment was the one most dramatically impacted by costs running ahead of pricing. This refers to non-pass-through prices as pass-through prices automatically reset. We have taken nearly $150 million in annualized pricing with the majority beginning in Q2 but includes pricing occurring into the third quarter. Moreover, labor guests persist in foodservice. However, no plant was worse and several improved. We continue to expect sequential improvement towards recovery to pre-pandemic levels of profit in 2023. During the second quarter, we are experiencing some soft demand resulting from the Omicron COVID variant. Nevertheless, we now understand that the volumes bounce back quickly as variant received, and we expect this softness to be limited to a month or 2. Refrigerator Retail made great strides this quarter. Our staffing levels are much improved, and we saw far greater capacity utilization. Most products remain on allocation so we remain below our potential, but I'm quite pleased with the progress. Weetabix continues to be a rock solid performer, all the factors our U.S. businesses face are present in the key U.K. market. The pricing and mix is pacing favorably. BellRing will have its call shortly. Suffice to say that it continues to performed well in a great category, but the current year results are constrained by insufficient capacity. On balance, I would say we navigated the first quarter effectively. We feel good about how we are managing the controllables, and we're remaining nimble enough to adapt to curve balls as they come our way. In terms of capital allocation, we continue to be an active buyer of our shares, Jeff will provide the details. REIT and M&A is performing to plan with the exception of Almark, which has seen costs accelerate ahead of pricing. We expect pricing action to return to our underwriting case as the volumes are exactly in line with expectations. We continue to actively explore acquisition opportunities both large and small across the business. We will not undertake an acquisition that jeopardizes our execution in a challenging year, but we believe there are opportunities to find value that complements our efforts. I want to close with some comments about our outlook. We expect to see similar aggregate results in Q2 with considerable improvement in foodservice and the expected sequential decline at BellRing. We then expect significant second half acceleration stemming from price realization, improvements in supply chain execution, Foodservice volume recovery and BellRing capacity expansion. As I mentioned, assuming the spin proceeds to plan, we will provide separate stand-alone guidance for the remaining business, no later than our May call. Thank you for your time this morning and your continued support. With that, I will turn the call over to Jeff.