Conagra Brands Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by AlphaStreet
December 19, 2024
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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Conagra Brands' Second Quarter and First Half Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call.

All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Melissa Napier, Head of Investor Relations for Conagra Brands. Please go ahead.

Melissa Napier
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Conagra Brands

Thanks, Wyatt. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for our live question-and-answer session on today's results. Once again, I'm joined this morning by Sean Connolly, our CEO; Dave Marberger, our CFO; and Matthew Neisius, Senior Director, Investor Relations.

We may be making some forward-looking statements and discussing non-GAAP financial measures during this session. Please see our earnings release, prepared remarks, presentation materials and filings with the SEC, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website, for more information, including descriptions of our risk factors, GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations and information on our comparability items.

Wyatt, please introduce our first question.

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Operator

All right, it looks like our first question comes from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Good morning everyone. Happy Holidays.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Happy Holidays. Good morning.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Sean, we saw I guess during the course of the quarter sort of a little bit of a gap open up between sort of scanner and sort of Conagra shipments. And I'm just curious if you saw any benefit from the Thanksgiving timing change on volume in the quarter that you would expect to reverse in the third quarter just given others with sort of similar fiscal years have kind of discussed this dynamic.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Yeah, good idea, Andrew. Let's get grounded in some of the detailed facts around Thanksgiving because I suspect that this dynamic differs by company. For us, in our Q2, shipments were plus 1% and consumption was plus 0.6%. So they tracked very, very closely. And after the first half our shipments and our consumption are actually equal. And this is an important fact. As we exited Q2, our inventory levels with customers were essentially even with a year ago. So there really was not a Thanksgiving timing effect for our company. Now I can't speak to other company shipping patterns and inventories entering our Q3, but I can tell you that's our situation.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Thanks for that clarity. And then you talk about incremental inflation and FX as the key reasons for some of the back half EPS pressure versus previous expectations. Is incremental Investment, whether consumer or trade part of this as well? And I ask because it would seem you are seeing a return on some of the spending with the volume and share trends that you spoke of in the prepared remarks. And we continue to hear about the consumer being more value seeking for longer than many expected. So I'm just trying to get a sense if that is sort of part of the dynamic around estimate changes for the back half of the year or not. Thanks so much.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Good question, and I think it's very important we clarify this. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the decision to invest to drive the top line back to growth is not a new concept for us. We implemented that strategy in Q2 last year and those investments have always been built into our plan for this fiscal year. And you know, as I said earlier, those investments are obviously working. If you look at our trend lines going back five quarters, it's been consistently going north. So we weren't surprised at all to see it break into positive territory this quarter. Nor am I the slightest bit surprised to see real strength in our Frozen and Snack business. So that's satisfying, but it's good to be back north.

As for the trade component of our investments, mechanically we plan quarterly and then we true up actual spend at the end of each quarter. In Q2, our actual spend came in a bit lower than planned and we've redeployed those funds to Q3 versus cutting them. So I guess you characterize that as a small shift, but I think it's important not to confuse that with us being dissatisfied with top line momentum and scrambling to add adequate support. We've had our support in place for five quarters. It's working and we're going to continue to see it work going forward.

Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Thanks for the clarity.

Operator

And our next question will come from Ken Goldman [Operator Instructions] Ken Goldman, please go ahead.

Ken Goldman
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Hi. In discussing the industry's higher investments in advertising promo, trade and innovation, Sean, you said that consumer response has varied significantly by category and company. I'm hoping to kind of unpack this a bit. From your vantage point, you know, are there any best practices perhaps that can, you know, maybe thoughtfully be applied to the industry as a whole just given some of those, you know, consumer challenges or those value seeking behaviors?

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Sure, Ken. Here's how I think about it. You know, somewhere in maybe Q2 of last fiscal that I first called out a series of behavior shifts that we saw from cutting discretionary spending to more cooking from scratch to more cooking for many instead of meals for one, you know, preserving leftovers as opposed to throwing them in the garbage. We saw those things emerge last year. And what I've said all along is that the benefit of convenience is the one trend that has been most unshakable over the last 50 years. So we saw some impact early on, on frozen single serve meals. I told you that that was not going to last. Consumers don't like to meal plan, they don't like to prep, they don't like to cook, and they don't like to clean up. And that's exactly how it's unfolded.

So my comment before is that really, it's category specific. If a category has the benefits that consumers really long for, they can make a behavioral shift for a little while to make their household balance sheet work. But if those benefits, like convenience are really important, that shift isn't going to last forever. The other area that I'd say is kind of a signal of what's on trend is within snacking. There's obviously been a movement toward protein snacks and healthy snacks and our categories are squarely within that. So a year ago, we saw people were kind of trading out, maybe cutting their buying rate a little bit. But the magnetic pull of convenience and healthfulness and healthy snacking is pretty strong.

So what we've done all along, as we've said many times, is we've nudged the consumer back to those behaviors that we know they're longing for, using a whole battery of investments, from innovation to advertising to high quality trade like NCAPs and sampling in certain channels of trade, things like that. And it's been effective. We don't have a lot of categories where it hasn't been effective. But keep in mind, we've focused a lot of our investments in Frozen and Snacks and we just happen to have brands that are resonating well with consumers in those spaces.

Ken Goldman
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Thanks. Happy holidays.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Thank you.

Operator

Next question will come from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Chris Carey
Analyst at Wells Fargo & Company

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Can you just perhaps expand on your leverage targets for the full year inching up a bit, free cash flow conversion, it looks like it's coming in better. What's driving that? The leverage kicking up a bit, I assume is more about profit as opposed to debt pay down. Can you just update us on, I guess, visibility on free cash flow, how quickly you think you can get to your leverage targets and in general, how you're thinking about cash deployment, maybe over the next year and perhaps over the next several years between the dividend and share repurchases and of course M&A. Thanks.

David Marberger
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Conagra Brands

Hey Chris, it's Dave. Let me take that from the top. So, yes, our forecasted leverage ratio for this year is now 3.4 times versus 3.2 times. As I said in my prepared remarks, that's entirely due to the takedown in our profit. So in terms of our forecasted free cash flow, we're on track with our plan in terms of how much debt we expect to pay down. The free cash flow conversion is now above 100% because that's a metric of free cash flow as related to net income. So with net income coming down, obviously that's going to go up. So -- but the broader point there is we're really pleased with our performance in free cash flow. The company's very focused on it as an organization. And now that we've come out of COVID, we're really making great progress in working capital, particularly with inventory.

Our supply chain organization is doing a fantastic job setting goals to take days of inventory out, you know, things like tax, just other areas of cash. We're just really focused on it. So we're really pleased with the progress and it's going to continue to be a priority for us. So as I also said in my prepared remarks, we still expect to hit our long term leverage target of 3 times by the end of fiscal '26. And so that's where we are, you know, and then we've always talked about a balanced approach to capital allocation. Over the years, you've seen us do a lot of things in terms of, you know, M&A, both acquisitions, divestiture, share repurchase, paying -- levering up and then paying down our debt. We're open to everything and we like the flexibility candidly that we would have. But we are super focused on getting to that 3 times target for leverage by the end of fiscal '26.

Chris Carey
Analyst at Wells Fargo & Company

Okay, thanks so much.

Operator

And the next question will come from Thomas Palmer with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thomas Palmer
Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup

Good morning. Thanks for the question. Wanted to ask, in the presentation, you indicate that the third quarter operating margin is expected to be the lowest of the year. I think this would then imply that 4Q would be the highest of the year. So I just want to make sure I kind of understand the key drivers of this expected inflection come 4Q. I know there is some incremental pricing. Are the investments you noted for the third quarter expected to taper off in the fourth quarter? Just any help on that inflection. Thanks.

David Marberger
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Conagra Brands

Yes. Let me try to give you some perspective on that. So kind of take it from the top. Let me give you a little bit more color on Q3. So we do expect volumes to sequentially improve as we talked about in the third quarter. We did talk about -- and Sean did a nice job of summarizing sort of the dynamic with trade and the shift from Q2 to Q3. So that's in there. We also have a little bit more kind of innovation investment, if you will in slotting that that's going to come in for Q3 that's impacting us there. We did comment that we do believe operating margin will be the lowest of all the quarters for the year. Our A&P and SG&A are going to be in line with a year ago.

So it's basically that, and then from an inflation perspective, obviously we've taken up our forecast to close to 4% for the full year and it will be higher in Q3 than Q4. So that's another kind of dynamic there. So that's just the flow of how Q3 will go.

Thomas Palmer
Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup

Thank you.

Operator

And the next question will come from Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Peter Galbo
Analyst at Bank of America

Hey guys. Good morning. Sean, I just wanted to ask. I know you said there was no Thanksgiving kind of timing benefit to the quarter, but Slide 15, you have the Staples portfolio with several of the brands that were kind of growing double digits. So just wondering if there was any hurricane impact in the quarter, maybe that helped benefit some of the shipments that might not repeat. And if so, if you could just quantify for that for us. Thanks very much.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Pete, there was a -- I would say characterize it as a very small benefit from the hurricane in the G&S segment, but not material to our overall results for the quarter.

Operator

And the next question will come from Robert Moskow with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Robert Moskow
Analyst at TD Cowen

I think the Lamb Weston call took all the energy out of the sell-side. So I'm going to try to -- try to inject a little more into this one. So, Sean, you've raised your inflation guidance just a little bit and it's had a pretty substantial impact to your earnings outlook. Is it more difficult than normal to put through pricing to offset higher costs because of where the consumer is right now? And I know the guidance assumes that these costs come right back down again, but some of them look a little sticky, particularly cocoa. So what happens if those costs stay high into fiscal '26?

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Yeah, let me unpack that for you, Rob. First, taking it from the top. The EPS call down today equates basically identically to the inflation in the back half versus what we had previously expected. That's the majority of it plus FX. So it just, that queues up and that is the reason back to the earlier question around the leverage going from 3.2 to 3.4. It's not -- it's not the need to invest more or any of that and I want to make sure we don't get caught up in that. So it's -- so on a percentage basis, while it looks 3% to 4% on a dollar basis in terms of inflation and the impact on EPS, it just, it ticks and ties. As to what's driving that, it's really -- yes, there's inflation in cocoa and sweeteners and that's very narrow in our portfolio and we will be pricing to offset that. But the bigger driver for us has been protein. It's meats, eggs, things like that.

And we did anticipate that there would be inflation in the second half, but we anticipated that level of inflation will be lower, and we still anticipate that those peak protein costs are going to come down pretty much across the board. But there's a bit of a deferral for that. So then it kind of leaves it as a judgment call for companies like ours, which is, you know, do you -- if you -- if you believe that the forward curves are going to be coming down, do you want to price, start the whole cycle all over again of the lag, the elasticity effect? And right now we think what's in the best interest of the consumer and in the best interest of our shareholder with respect to kind of long term cash flows and value creation is to keep the top line momentum. And that's what we're doing. It's been working very well for us. It was great to get back to positive territory and so obviously there's a margin implication near term but we do see that changing.

Now, you never know. Like we thought the back half was going to be less inflationary if we find ourselves in next fiscal and there's more inflation, we'll deal with that then. But that's just a little color on kind of how we're looking at things now. And I think the headline is we've got really strong brand performance, we've got industry leading share performance. We think the right thing to do is to keep that momentum.

Robert Moskow
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you.

Operator

And the next question will come from Alexia Howard with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Alexia Howard
Analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein

Good morning, everyone.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Morning.

David Marberger
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Conagra Brands

Hi Alexia.

Alexia Howard
Analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein

Just taking a little bit of a different check. You announced your Healthy Choice GLP-1 On Track messaging recently. Can you talk about what insights you've gathered from that segment and plans for maybe expanding that program over time.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Sure. Well, you know, this is an opportunity for me, Alexia, to kind of give a little promotional shout out to our forthcoming CAGNY presentation this year. The centerpiece of our presentation at CAGNY is going to be titled the Future of Frozen and the Future of Snacking. And really the point there is, we think our categories are extremely well positioned in a dynamic macro environment, including a macro environment that has speculation around GLP-1s and regulatory and things like that. And we think brands like Healthy Choice can really benefit in that kind of environment. And we think snacks that are protein centric and fiber centric as well.

With respect to Healthy Choice, we did add what you might think of as a wayfinder on the front of the package for people that are managing their diet proactively, including using GLP-1. So the title of the wayfinder is called On Track, and we use the language GLP-1 friendly on there. And there was an article in the paper last week that kind of talked about that if anybody wants to dig into it more. But obviously it's small right now in terms of the number of people on it. People who do go on it are still dropping off of it. And what's interesting about that is a brand like Healthy Choice we think can be a solution for both somebody who is actively taking a GLP-1 drug and but also somebody who gives it up but then is seeking to maintain the progress that they've made while on GLP-1. Those consumers need a bit of an off ramp and Healthy Choice provides an excellent off ramp for them as well. So we're on trend and we will focus our marketing and our packaging to make sure people know that.

Alexia Howard
Analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein

Great. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

Operator

And the next question will come from Max Gumport with BNP. Please go ahead.

Max Gumport
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Hey, thanks for the question. And this might be stealing the thunder from your upcoming CAGNY presentation, it sounds like. But Sean, you touched on the move within snacking to protein and healthy snacks and really that's the microcosm for what we're seeing in the broader packaged food industry this year. You've got higher protein categories like nutrition shakes, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, all eating on the growth side. And then you've got unhealthy snacking categories that are showing larger declines. In your view, what's driving this trend and how long do you think it can persist? Thanks.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Well, snacking is, you know, how big snacking, you know, it's $80 billion. It's a huge space. And it's a space that has always had a tremendous amount of variety. And depending upon what the hot macro trends are, you'll see some shifting within that space from variety to variety. It just so happens that for a whole host of reasons, things like protein and fiber are super on trend right now. And, you know, who knows how that will change? I don't see any change on the horizon in terms of protein and fiber and low carb really being on trend. And so we are highly concentrated in our snack business in those benefit areas. And what happens when you get on trend like that is the categories grow and retailers add new brands just to satisfy the demand.

So when you think about big categories, you know, in the food industry, you see cookies as an example, you see a lot of variety, and that's needed to satisfy demand. So that's why you see in areas like meat sticks, new brands showing up, because that's textbook. And that's why we acquired the FATTY Smoked Meats business, because it's a new brand, it's playing that role, and it's growing at a super fast rate. So we now have in meat sticks, what we call the trifecta smokehouse between Slim Jim, Duke's and Fatty and we think having a suite of brands there, just like we do in popcorn and seeds, is the best way to continue capitalizing on that growth. But I don't see those trends changing. And I like being protein centric, fiber centric, and I like not being DSD. That's a good combination for snack business.

Max Gumport
Analyst at BNP Paribas

Great, thanks very much.

Operator

The next question will come from Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Great. Thanks. Just a quick, easy question. I might be wrong, but I thought Q2 was supposed to be the highest kind of spend for the year, just in terms of advertising and promotion. But then I also hear maybe there's a little bit more trade going into Q3. And I heard a little time shift. And then also I think you said kind of, you know, total SG&A and ad and promo would be the same in Q3 relative to last year's Q3, right, which implies, you know, Q3 is higher. So was there like anything that just kind of occurred in the quarter where you say, okay, hey, you know, we might have a few new innovations that might have slipped into Q3, so maybe we'll also shift some of that ad and promo, or maybe we want to, you know, promote a little bit more in December to the holidays. Just trying to gauge, you know, kind of the -- I guess it's seasonality to a certain extent on ad and promo, but just kind of how you're thinking about that as we kind of move through Q3.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

You want to hit that?

David Marberger
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Conagra Brands

Yeah, let me take that, Rob. So just kind of take it from the top. You know, from a dollar perspective, we spend the most in Q2 in terms of trade merchandising. Just in terms of absolute dollars. Although Sean talked about it, we were a bit favorable to our forecast and some that shifted to Q3. From an A&P perspective, we are ramping up A&P. So that will continue to ramp up so that by the end of the year, I think our A&P percentage is pretty much in line with the prior year is what we said. And so that would ramp up and that obviously will start in Q3.

I mentioned too that we did have a little bit of innovation investment that was higher that we expect to be higher in Q3 versus what we had forecasted before. Again, not really material, but it is an increase versus what we had forecasted before. So and then SG&A, as you had commented, we're still kind of, our commentary is the same in terms of where we expect SG&A to be. So they're really the dynamics I would say that hopefully answered your question.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Yeah, Rob, most of those events are easy to plan. You know, Thanksgiving and Christmas and Lent, you know, where they fall on the calendar, you can plan around. The ones where you have to stay more agile is support for business like Swiss Miss, where the weather moves around and you want to try to have your investment track with when the weather hits. But I wouldn't say that, you know, that type of variability is material at all in the scheme of our spending.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Okay, perfect. No, that was great. Thank you.

Operator

And the next question will come from Leah Jordan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Leah Jordan
Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Seeing, if you could comment on the competitive environment in Frozen. A large peer has talked about adding capacity in the category and stepping up some investments to support its growth. So just seeing if you have seen any shift in behavior yet and how you think these changes could impact your ability to continue to drive volume improvement going forward.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Well, Frozen is an absolutely awesome space. We've been saying that pretty much exclusively for about 10 years. So I'm glad people are starting to recognize the opportunity in the space because it's a vast domain within the retailer store and we've been really the only ones who have been active in driving that. And as a result, our products are and our innovation machine is well out ahead of our competition. You can see that in extremely strong market share. So we love our model. We're just going to continue to drive it and lead it, and to the degree the retailers continue to appreciate how much upside and innovation space remains in Frozen, the faster the overall category is going to grow. And we're the leaders globally in Frozen and certainly clearly in the US you can see by the share numbers. And we intend to stay that way.

Leah Jordan
Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group

Thanks.

Sean Connolly
President and Chief Executive Officer at Conagra Brands

Thank you.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. And I would like to turn the call over to Matthew Neisius for closing remarks.

Matthew Neisius
Investor Relations at Conagra Brands

Thank you, Wyatt. And thank you all for joining us today. Please reach out to Investor Relations with any additional questions.

Melissa Napier
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Conagra Brands

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Corporate Executives
  • Melissa Napier
    Senior Vice President of Investor Relations
  • Sean Connolly
    President and Chief Executive Officer
  • David Marberger
    Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
  • Matthew Neisius
    Investor Relations
Analysts

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