The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call September 8, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Rob Quast - Senior Director, Investor Relations

Rodney McMullen - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Gary Millerchip - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Simeon Gutman - Morgan Stanley

Krisztina Katai - Deutsche Bank

Michael Lasser - UBS

John Heinbockel - Guggenheim Partners

Michael Montani - Evercore ISI

Kenneth Goldman - JPMorgan

Edward Kelly - Wells Fargo

Kelly Bania - BMO

Rupesh Parikh - Oppenheimer

Robert Ohmes - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Dean Rosenblum - Bernstein

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Kroger Co. Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Quast, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Rob Quast

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for Kroger's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. I am joined today by Kroger's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rodney McMullen; and Chief Financial Officer, Gary Millerchip.

I want to remind you that today's discussions will include forward-looking statements. We want to caution you that such statements are predictions and actual events or results can differ materially. A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis is contained in our SEC filings. The Kroger Company assumes no obligation to update that information.

After our prepared remarks, we look forward to taking your questions. Given the breadth of information that will be covered on the call and our divestiture announcement earlier this morning, we will extend our Q&A session if needed to ensure that we can cover a broad range of topics from as many of you as we can. We still ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question if necessary.

I will now turn the call over to Rodney.

Rodney McMullen

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to outline the framework for our discussion this morning given that we have several important topics to cover.

I will begin by covering the consumer environment and how the strength of our value creation model is supporting earnings growth and generating strong free cash flow. Then Gary will cover our financial results and highlights as well as provide an update on our nationwide opioid settlement framework.