ConAgra Foods, Inc. CAG
Q1 2012 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Good morning and welcome to today's ConAgra Foods First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This program is being recorded. My name is Jessica Morgan, and I will be your conference facilitator. All audience lines are currently in a listen-only mode. However, speakers will address your questions at the end of the presentation during the formal question-and-answer session.

At this time, I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Gary Rodkin, Chief Executive Officer of ConAgra Foods. Please go ahead, Mr. Rodkin.

Gary Rodkin - CEO: Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the call and thanks for joining us. I am Gary Rodkin, and I am here with John Gehring, our CFO, and Chris Klinefelter, VP of Investor Relations. This morning we'll talk about the strategic, operating and financial aspects of the quarter and then take your questions. But before we get started, Chris will say a few words about housekeeping matters.

Chris Klinefelter - VP, IR: Good morning. During today's remarks, we will make some forward-looking statements, and while we're making those statements in good faith and are confident about our Company's direction, we do not have any guarantee about the results that we will achieve. So if you'd like to learn more about the risks and factors that could influence and affect our business, I'll refer you to the documents we filed with the SEC, which include cautionary language.

Also, we'll be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures during the call today, and the reconciliations of those measures to the most directly comparable measures for Regulation G compliance can be found in either the earnings press release, Q&A, or on our website under the Financial Reports and Filings link and then choosing Non-GAAP Reconciliations.

Now, I'll turn it back over to Gary.

Gary Rodkin - CEO: Thanks, Chris. As you can see from the release, EPS from continuing operations was $0.20 as reported and $0.29 on a comparable basis. Last year's comparable amount was $0.34. As we communicated before, we planned for a year-over-year decline this quarter principally due to the timing of pricing and inflation. Our full year guidance remains intact. We expect low to mid-single digit growth in EPS for fiscal 2012 and operating cash flows to exceed $1.2 billion. While we planned for a year-over-year EPS decline, our first quarter was slightly lower than we originally expected due to weak market dynamics in the commercial segment. I’ll start with some segment highlights.

Our Consumer Foods segment grew net sales by 4% with flat volume. That means 4% price mix contribution which grew as the quarter progressed. As we said we would, we took pricing during the quarter, but the environment continues to be very challenging. That means our 4% price mix increase plus our robust cost savings were not enough to overcome 11% COGS inflation. As you’d expect, it’s typical for a lag to occur between price increases and inflation in our industry. Of course that hurts margins in the short-term.

During Q1, we announced net price increases for a number of our brands. We now have increased net prices either through trade or less price increases on most of our portfolio. We feel good about that progress but we need to do more. Overall, our volumes have held in line with our range of expectations at this point in the process, and we're taking further price actions as increases to our input costs warrant. Clearly, this is our focus.