Jim Snee
Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer at Hormel Foods
Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone.
Fiscal 2023 was a challenging year for the organization as we navigated an environment that remained volatile, complex and high cost; regardless, our results did not meet our expectations. We still achieved our second consecutive year of net sales in excess of $12 billion, continued to reinvest in the growth of our leading brands, drove strong operating cash flows of $1 billion, returned a record amount of cash to our shareholders in the form of dividends, and achieved the safest year in our company's history. We also made further progress on our evolution as a global branded food company, including the implementation of our Go Forward operating model and the integration of Jennie-O Turkey Store.
As we turn the page to fiscal 2024, there is urgency across the organization to improve our business. And as we outlined at our recent Investor Day, we have identified a clear, realistic and achievable path to return the business to its historical earnings trajectory. Our focus going forward is clear: first, restore sustainable and dependable bottom-line growth from our current business; second, drive savings by minimizing complexity and reducing costs; and third, capture incremental value from our investments. Our first milestone will be our performance in fiscal 2024, which is expected to be an investment year for the company. As with any year, success will be predicated on how we execute against our strategy.
First, we must drive focus and growth in our Retail business, our nearly $8 billion powerhouse of leading brands, talented people and strong capabilities. Our Retail team has made tremendous progress implementing the Go Forward structure, which involved combining seven retail businesses and standing up our Brand Fuel center of excellence. Importantly, the Retail team now operates with a single vision and clear strategic focus. We expect this team to win with our consumers and our customers, better allocate our resources to drive profitable growth and improve the margin structure of the business.
Second, we must continue to expand our leadership position in Foodservice. This business has emerged from the pandemic stronger, and again, delivered excellent results in fiscal 2023. In fiscal 2024, we expect continued growth in Foodservice. We are confident that we can accelerate growth in the key categories of bacon, pepperoni, prepared proteins and turkey. Also, we can establish a digital leadership position in the industry and expand our presence in the C-Store channel.
Third, we must aggressively develop our global presence, which starts with reigniting growth in our international business. Fiscal 2023 was a particularly challenging year for our international business due to softness in China, weak commodity markets and higher-than-expected elasticities on our branded export business. While results in the first quarter of fiscal 2024 are assumed to remain challenged, we anticipate a steady recovery beginning in the second quarter. In fiscal 2024, we expect to benefit from more normalized shipments of SPAM to the Philippines and easing of headwinds in our commodity businesses and recovery in China. As the near-term headwinds abate, we anticipate this business to resume delivering accelerated growth.
Fourth, we must execute our enterprise-wide entertaining and snacking vision by unlocking the power of our brands across the channels where we compete. We are positioned to win in this on-trend category with brands such as Planters, Corn Nuts, Hormel pepperoni, Columbus and Hormel Gatherings. We have been pleased with the momentum we have built in the back half of the year for the Planters business. Data for the latest quarter shows accelerating dollar and unit sales in addition to share, household penetration and distribution gains. Much of this momentum is being driven by innovation.
Our new flavored cashews line is meeting or exceeding expectations in the marketplace, over-indexing with millennial consumers, growing household penetration and introducing new consumers to the category. To capitalize on this success, we are launching another flavored cashew variety in fiscal 2024 in addition to a slate of new to market innovations. We have aggressive plans to keep the momentum going for our Planters snack nuts business in fiscal 2024, led by further innovation, new distribution, brand investments and effective promotional support. We continue to do our part as the category leader to support the Planters and Corn Nuts brands to drive growth for our business, the category, and for our customers.
Fifth, we must future-fit our One Supply Chain, which means reducing costs and minimizing complexity while investing in long-term growth. We recently announced that we are converting the Barron, Wisconsin plant, which currently operates turkey harvest and value-added production lines, into a value-added facility to support growth across our broader portfolio. Harvest operations are expected to cease during the second quarter of fiscal 2024. These actions at the Barron facility are consistent with the goals we laid out in late 2021 when we first announced transformational efforts at Jennie-O Turkey Store.
We are committed to building a more demand-oriented and optimized turkey portfolio that is better aligned to the changing needs of our customers, consumers and operators. The actions at the Barron plant further right-size our turkey supply chain, supporting consistent top-line growth, improved profitability and decreased exposure to commodity volatility. We are also committed to optimizing the Jennie-O Turkey Store System, including freeing up plant space to support growth across the broader Hormel Foods portfolio. The Barron plant is expected to support high demand and high growth product lines across all areas of the organization.
Lastly, we are committed to integrating the turkey business into the broader organization to drive efficiencies and growth. Our Retail, Foodservice and International segments have been directly supporting the turkey business for a year and we anticipate this continued collaboration to drive long-term growth for the Jennie-O brand and across our entire turkey portfolio.
Finally, we must transform and modernize our company, which is a critical piece to our projected growth over the next three years. At our recent Investor Day, we detailed our plans to transform and modernize the organization. Over the next three years, we expect to invest approximately $250 million in implementation, personnel, and project costs, including investments in capital expenditures and technology. We expect around one-third of this investment to be made in fiscal 2024, resulting in a modest benefit to net earnings for the year. Looking to the out-years, we are targeting $200 million-plus in operating income growth by fiscal 2026 from the transformation and modernization initiative across the supply chain and portfolio optimization.
To be clear, we expect a modest benefit to net earnings in 2024, which has been factored into our outlook. We expect benefits to accelerate in fiscal 2025. We expect to achieve our target in fiscal 2026. And we expect this initiative to provide significant residual benefit in fiscal years 2027 and beyond. Through transformational work, we expect to build significant capabilities for the future. This is truly exciting work for the organization.
Before I provide further color on our fiscal 2024 outlook, I want to briefly detail how we finished fiscal 2023. Net sales for the fourth quarter were $3.2 billion, and diluted net earnings per share were $0.36. Excluding the impact of non-cash impairments and investments in transformation and modernization, adjusted diluted net earnings per share were $0.42. As expected, our Foodservice segment finished the year strong, while the risks we identified heading into the quarter, including pricing headwinds in turkey, lower retail volumes and continued pressures in our International business, negatively impacted results. These results were in-line with the low-end of our revenue and adjusted diluted net earnings per share expectations.
Turning to our outlook. For fiscal 2024, we expect to drive modest volume and net sales growth for the full year. This growth is expected to come from our key categories, supported by higher brand investments and innovation. In Retail, we expect higher net sales across many of our verticals, including bacon, convenient meals and proteins, global flavors, emerging brands, and snacking and entertaining. We have embedded in our outlook targeted pricing actions, a step-up in innovation, and higher brand support to drive volume and improved mix. In Foodservice, we are anticipating broad volume growth led by turkey, pepperoni and bacon. In addition to higher volumes, net sales are expected to benefit from higher raw material input markets. In our International business, we expect net sales increases to be driven by the branded export business, led by SPAM and Skippy, and improvement in both the Retail and Foodservice channels in China.
From a bottom-line perspective, we expect growth from the Foodservice and International businesses and expect a decline in our Retail segment. While the Retail segment is expected to benefit from sales growth and improved mix, we do not anticipate this growth to overcome the significant headwind from the rapid decline in the commodity whole turkey market. For context, whole turkey prices began calendar year 2023 at all-time highs and have since fallen below the five-year average. We are closely monitoring sell-through of whole turkeys this holiday season as well as any potential supply impacts from HPAI, which has again affected flocks this fall. These are very unusual market dynamics which has added additional risk and uncertainty to our outlook. Given these factors in turkey, we have included in our outlook meaningfully lower market pricing on our high-volume whole turkey business.
Similar to the dynamics we experienced in the fourth quarter, we expect earnings to decline in the first half of the year due to the impact from lower turkey markets, lower volumes in the Retail segment and continued softness in our China business. We expect these pressures to have the greatest impact in the first quarter. Taking all these factors into account, we expect net sales growth of 1% to 3%, diluted net earnings per share to be $1.43 to $1.57, and adjusted diluted net earnings per share to be $1.51 to $1.65. And we expect a modest benefit to net earnings from our transformation and modernization initiative.
As I alluded to earlier, we have embarked on an initiative to return the business to its historical earnings trajectory and deliver on the commitment we made at our Investor Day. To reiterate the key elements of this initiative, in fiscal 2024, we expect a year of investment, which assumes: underlying growth across many parts of our current business, offset by a significant headwind from turkey; higher salaries and normalized employee-related expenses; the impact from our new labor agreement; and higher support for our leading brands. It also assumes investments into our transformation and modernization initiative resulting in a modest benefit to the year, and it assumes capturing incremental value from Planters, our turkey business integration, Go Forward, and the investments we've made in additional capacity.
In fiscal 2025, we expect to accelerate growth, which assumes strength from the underlying business, significant benefits from supply chain savings and portfolio optimization and further strategic value capture. In fiscal 2026, we expect to deliver at least $250 million in operating income growth. As we begin 2024, we remain focused on our strategic priorities, executing our transformation and modernization initiative, fueling our innovation pipeline, and exiting the year with momentum in our business segments. I remain confident that we have the right brands, strategy, people, and culture to deliver on our commitment to improve our business, and drive long-term shareholder returns and growth.
In closing, I want to recognize all the hard work carried out by our team in what was a challenging year. We successfully completed a very large reorganization, made progress addressing near-term challenges facing the business, and accelerated the transformational work that will better position the company for future success.
At this time, I will turn the call over to Jacinth Smiley to discuss detailed financial information related to fiscal 2023 and added color on key drivers to our outlook.
