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Text: I'll come back at the end to talk more about the progress we're making toward building a company with long-term sustainable growth.
On Slide 3, we've shared the key points that we hope you'll take away from today's call.
In short, we are pleased with our results and our progress.
We were up against a tough comp given the unprecedented pantry loading we saw a year ago as we entered the shelter-in-place.
Against all of that, we delivered a solid first quarter and we drove improved EBITDA margins while keeping adjusted earnings per share roughly flat despite the inflationary headwinds that we're seeing across the industry.
Since I joined TreeHouse roughly three years ago, we have meaningfully improved our operations and strengthened our performance.
I'm really proud of what we've accomplished and how we continue to evolve and position ourselves for the future.
Our investments over the last several years have stabilized our foundation, allowing us to support retailers through the pandemic and differentiate us from private label competition.
We have optimized operations, improved service levels, built a strong centralized commercial organization and realigned our portfolio into two divisions, better aligning our categories with how our customers think about their roles in their stores.
Our move last year to a 2-division structure was timely, and we continue to benefit from having aligned ourselves to how our customers operate.
The new structure has streamlined decision-making, enabled us to compete more effectively and to better serve our retail customers, which has, in turn, deepened our customer partnerships.
All of those changes were important in enabling us to generate strong first quarter results.
And with that strong foundation, we are well positioned to address the macro environment.
As evidence of that, we are maintaining our guidance for the full year.
Bill will talk about how our expectations around the cadence of our results by quarter has changed, but we remain confident in our outlook for the top and bottom line.
As we take actions to navigate the current environment, we are continuing to invest to drive excellence in areas that our customers value most: cost, quality and service.
We are focused on building commercial capabilities to drive organic growth as well as operational capabilities to improve manufacturing cost, efficiency, agility and margins.
We also see opportunities to add depth in advantaged categories through M&A with a primary focus on our growth engine categories to accelerate our top line.
We are confident that we have a number of good options to profitably grow our business.
Turning to Slide 4.
In addition the changes we made to enhance performance, our results reflect the hard work and effort of our teams.
Our first quarter revenue of $1.06 billion declined only 2.5% from last year's sales.
We estimate that last year's first quarter benefited by $66 million as consumers navigated the early days of the pandemic.
In the first quarter, we made solid progress in expanding adjusted EBITDA margins, which improved 20 basis points versus last year.
Adjusted earnings per share of $0.36 was also strong and just shy of last year's first quarter.
As we look to the rest of the year and beyond, let me take a few minutes to talk about our strategy and the environment in the near term.
Turning to Slide 5.
As I shared with you on our last call and at CAGNY, with the benefit of our stronger foundation, we have taken our learnings from our strategy and the pandemic and are focusing on building depth in our growth engine categories.
These categories represent about 40% of our portfolio and are characterized by strong consumer trends, defined pockets of growth and existing depth where we have meaningful opportunities to go further.
We also have a set of cash engine businesses, where our goal is to generate cash that we can reinvest and fuel our high-growth businesses.
The cash engine categories comprised another 40% of our portfolio.
The remaining 20% consists of categories where we are reviewing our opportunities to either revitalize the businesses or to deploy that capital elsewhere.
Later, I'll talk more about the progress we're making in these areas.
But before I get to that, let me address the macro environment as it is shaping how we see the balance of the year unfolds.
Turning to Slide 6.
We provided a look at both at-home and away-from-home consumption.
There are two important takeaways here.
First, the year-over-year comparisons for retail consumption are uneven as consumers started navigating the pandemic last spring.
When you compare March of 2021 to two years ago, or 2019, total edibles grew 14%, and private label grew 13% in measured channels.
If you then consider private label strength in unmeasured channels, we think this demonstrates that takeaway remains healthy.
Second, you can see on the right that the away-from-home sector is recovering as restrictions across geographies begin to ease, which has positive implications for our foodservice business.
While the pandemic is not yet over, the availability and acceptance of vaccines in the U.S. has been supportive of reopening efforts across much of the country.
Beyond the pandemic, Slide seven captures several of the headwinds across the food and beverage landscape, specifically, upward pressure on commodities and, in particular, soybean oil has continued.
On top of that, freight costs are escalating across the entire landscape due to increased demand and the limited availability of drivers.
To a lesser degree, but worth noting, weather headwinds in the first quarter presented challenges.
In our case, several plants were affected, with some, like our San Antonio, Texas plant where we make red sauces and salsa, impacted more extensively than others.
Despite the headwinds that were affecting the entire food and beverage industry, we remain confident in our outlook.
And as I mentioned, we are reaffirming our full year guidance for 2021 today, as seen on Slide 8.
Several factors give me confidence that we can continue to deliver the year.
First, we are a much healthier business today with stronger customer relationships and a pipeline of opportunities.
We've also restored service levels back to the pre-pandemic levels in the 98% range.
Second, while the top line will face tough comparisons in the near term, we are taking actions to address those issues within our control, specifically, additional pricing to offset the incremental commodity inflation that I spoke to earlier.
And third, our retail customers continue to express support for private label.
In recent weeks and months, we've heard several customers publicly address their attentions to further expand their private label programs.
We remain confident that the long-term opportunities for private label remain intact and that we're in a strong position to benefit, particularly as the environment normalizes.
I'll start on Slide nine with our Q1 scorecard.
Steve already hit on the first quarter highlights versus the prior year period.
However, since many of you are interested in a comparison to pre-pandemic results, we've included the change versus 2019 on this chart so that you also have the 2-year comparison.
I think it's worth noting on this slide that our profit improvement over the 2-year period further demonstrates that we are a much healthier company today.
Slide 10 provides our revenue drivers by division.
Meal Prep net sales grew 0.7% versus the first quarter of 2020.
Riviana contributed approximately $40 million, more than offsetting the comparison to last year's COVID-related food demand surge and continued weakness in food-away-from-home consumption.
The away-from-home sector whose business mostly falls in the Meal Prep began a rebound in March, which is encouraging.
Snacking & Beverages declined 7.9% driven by the comparison to the initial wave of pantry stocking in the last few weeks of March and our sale of two in-store bakery plants.
Excluding that impact of that divestiture, which will be behind us in April, revenue declined 3.9%.
Slide 11 walks you through the revenue drivers by channel.
I'll point out a couple of things on this slide.
After excluding the sales associated with the two in-store bakery plants, total sales in the retail channel declined $18 million versus last year.
We also estimate that the net revenue headwind in the quarter related to weather totaled about $4 million, which we do not expect to recover, we are encouraged by the progress as Riviana acquisition and base business growth nearly offset the $66 million related to pantry stocking last year.
Finally, as you can see, our retail sales in unmeasured channels, which include some key club, value and online retailers, continue its trend of outpacing ourselves within measured channels.
Building on Steve's comments around our performance within our growth categories, Slide 12 gives you a look at our results versus private label.
Although the comparisons are unfavorable due to the pantry stocking lap, you can see that we continue to outpace overall private label in Q1.
As we move down the P&L, Slide 13 takes you through our earnings drivers.
Volume and mix, including absorption, were negative $0.15.
Pricing net of commodities, or PNOC, was a $0.28 drag on the quarter as we faced significant inflation across commodity and freight complex.
While our pricing actions are in flight, our expectation is that we won't see the offsetting impact of our P&L to the second half of the year.
Operations added $0.27 in the quarter due primarily to planned performance as well as the benefit of the Riviana Pasta business in the quarter.
As we consider the middle of the P&L, I would note that our COVID expenses in the first quarter did come in below our original expectations as our teams continue to demonstrate agility and flexibility as we adapted this environment and keep our employees safe.
SG&A contributed $0.09 year-over-year due to the timing of lower expenses.
Other income added $0.06 driven by investment gains as we lap the market volatility from last year.
Turning to Slide 14.
As I noted on our February earnings call, we have begun the redemption process of our 2024 notes, calling $200 million.
Following that, we successfully upsized and extended the maturity of our term loans and used the proceeds to redeem the remaining $403 million of our 2024s.
We've included our updated debt structure on the right-hand side of the page, and as you can see, we've been able to lock in some very favorable rates.
For those of you that track our financial leverage ratio, we finished the quarter at 3.6 times.
I will point out, that represents a more straightforward net debt to last 12 months adjusted EBITDA calculation versus our bank covenant leverage ratio, which is more complex.
We continue to target our financial leverage ratio in the range of three to 3.5 times.
Before we move on to guidance, I want to build on Steve's earlier comments on the macro environment on Slide 15.
Like everyone across the packaged food landscape, we are seeing inflation accelerate across nearly all commodities.
In our guidance for the year, we estimated agricultural commodity inflation of between $100 million and $110 million as well as higher freight and labor costs.
As we sit here in May, we are now facing commodity inflation of about $60 million: $40 million which relates to ingredients and another $20 million in freight.
We are working with our customers and we are proceeding with additional pricing actions to offset the more recent increases in soybean oil and freight.
We will also look to our Lean initiatives and drive efficiencies from increased utilization.
While pricing discussions are never easy, our relationships today with our customers are stronger than we last addressed inflation in 2018.
Not only are the teams better equipped and mobilized to engage with our customers, but also today, we're having a much healthier dialogue as customers focus on surety of supply and service levels.
On Slide 16, we shared our detailed full year guidance, reaffirming our ranges of $4.4 billion to $4.6 billion of revenue, $2.80 to $3.20 for adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow of approximately $300 million.
It's important to note that the free cash flow guidance includes investments that we are making in the business, which I'll cover in more detail in a moment.
Our second quarter guidance is laid out on Slide 17, along with several considerations.
First, while our expectation for how the remainder of the year will play out has changed due to the rising commodity and freight costs, we have begun implementing our plans to address the incremental inflation.
As we consider the higher cost environment and the timing for pricing recovery, we have revised our expectations and now anticipate about 20% of our earnings to come in the first half with the remaining 80% in the second half.
This compares to our original expectation for 30-70 first half, second half split.
While this does put a bit more pressure in our second half earnings delivery, I will point out that our 20-80 cadence is not dissimilar to 2018 when we took similar actions to offset inflationary headwinds.
As well, in 2021, we will benefit from the contribution of Riviana and related synergies in the back half, consistent with our original expectations.
Second, we do have higher cost inventory currently on the balance sheet that was produced in the first quarter and will be sold in Q2.
As that inventory is sold, it will pressure gross margins.
This higher cost inventory is a result of not only the inflation I mentioned but also the weather disruptions from the first quarter that caused several temporary plant closures.
Our guidance ranges for the second quarter on the right.
We're anticipating $1.02 billion to $1.07 billion of revenue and $0.20 to $0.30 in adjusted earnings per share as inflationary pressure will not yet be offset by our pricing actions.
I want to close with a few words that build on Steve's comments earlier about investments in our future.
We continue to feel very good about our business and our long-term opportunities ahead.
We've proven the resilience of our business model, our balance sheet is solid and we have financial flexibility.
We also have a unique opportunity to further enable our strategy to build depth in our growth businesses through investments in our commercial and operational capabilities for the future.
In the first quarter, we invested $16 million, and we anticipate these investments to total $75 million in 2021 as we enhance our commercial capabilities and advance our supply chain so that customers view us as their partner of choice.
And we are better positioned to accelerate our top line, grow profits and drive shareholder value.
Bill gave me a nice segue to close today and share our thinking around how we build on our accomplishments to date and continue to invest in our future.
As I mentioned earlier, the learnings we have accumulated from our strategy and the pandemic are shaping how we'll position ourselves for the future, including how we'll invest in the 40% of our portfolio that represents our growth engine businesses and leverage the cash that we generate from our cash engine categories.
Our growth engine businesses include categories like broth, pretzels, crackers, single-serve and powdered beverages and pasta.
These are categories where we have deep market penetration, and we're working to enhance our customer relationships as well as build a pipeline of opportunities to fuel growth.
Our accomplishments around operational and commercial excellence, portfolio optimization and people and talent have laid the foundation for this greater focus on growth and for building depth in categories where we are advantaged.
2021 presents a new chapter for our strategic evolution, supported by the strength of our balance sheet and our financial flexibility, enabling us to deploy capital in a number of value-creating ways.
M&A represents one avenue, and Riviana is a great example of how we build depth in an important category.
We're pleased so far with the impact of Riviana, and our transition team is doing a great job managing the integration.
We'll continue to seek these kinds of accretive and value-creating opportunities that leverage our core strengths and build on our capabilities.
Bill quantified the investments that we're already making behind our commercial organization, business services and supply chain.
These investments will include several work streams.
On the commercial side, we are investing in capabilities to optimize assortment, market digitally and optimize our pricing architecture.
We will also look to further our e-commerce strategy and capabilities.
In addition, on the supply chain side, automation, value engineering and indirect sourcing will be key areas of focus.
And finally, even as we're making these investments for long-term shareholder value creation, we will also return capital to shareholders.
Our plan in 2021 is to continue to buy back shares to offset dilution from stock issuance.
I'll close by reiterating that I'm pleased with our start to the year and our ability to navigate the challenges in front of us.
More importantly, I'm excited about the investments we're making for our future.
As we move forward, we will continue to strive toward having our stock price appropriately reflect the strength of our earnings and the confidence in our outlook.
We remain focused on building a company that delivers long-term sustainable growth and drives shareholder value.
I look forward to continuing to update you along our strategic journey.

user
compname says q1 sales fell 2.5% to $1.057 billion.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $0.36 from continuing operations.
sees fy sales $4.4 billion to $4.6 billion.
q1 sales fell 2.5 percent to $1.057 billion.
reaffirmed fy guidance of $2.80 - $3.20 for adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations and $4.40 to $4.60 billion of reported net sales.
sees q2 sales $1.02 billion to $1.07 billion.
sees q2 adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations of $0.20 to $0.30.

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