Lancaster Colony Corp. (NASDAQ:LANC) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 25, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Dave Ciesinski - President & CEO

Tom Pigott - VP & CFO

Dale Ganobsik - VP, IR & Treasurer

Conference Call Participants

Brian Holland - Cowen & Co.

Todd Brooks - The Benchmark Company

Andrew Wolf - C.L. King & Associates

Connor Rattigan - Consumer Edge Research

Operator

Good morning. My name is Sarah, and I will be your conference call facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Lancaster Colony Corporation's Fiscal Year 2022 Fourth Quarter Conference Call. Conducting today's call will be Dave Ciesinski, President and CEO; and Tom Pigott, CFO. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

And now to begin the conference call, here is Dale Ganobsik, Vice President of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations for Lancaster Colony Corporation.

Dale Ganobsik

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Lancaster Colony's fiscal year 2022 fourth quarter conference call. Our discussion this morning may include forward-looking statements which are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements based upon subsequent events. A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company's filings with the SEC. Also note that the audio replay of this call will be archived and available on our company's website, lancastercolony.com later this afternoon.

For today's call, Dave Ciesinski, our President and CEO, will begin with the business update and highlights for the quarter. Tom Pigott, our CFO, will then provide an overview of the financial results. Dave will then share some comments regarding our current strategy and outlook. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to respond to any of your questions. Once again, we appreciate your participation this morning.

I'll now turn the call over to Lancaster Colony's President and CEO, Dave Ciesinski. Dave?

Dave Ciesinski

Thanks, Dale, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you today as we review our fourth quarter results for fiscal year 2022, and look forward to fiscal year 2023. Before I cover our results, I'd like to provide you with a brief update on our ERP initiative, Project Ascent. As planned, on July 1st, we executed the first wave of Project Ascent, the implementation of our new SAP S/4 HANA ERP system. I'm happy to share that the cutover went very well and in line with our expectations. For context, wave one was the most complex wave of Project Ascent, encompassing all financial transactions and all customer and supplier-facing business processes. This included order to cash, trade promotion management, procure to pay, the general ledger, and an EDI re-platform. Wave one also converted two of our manufacturing plants, one large distribution center, and all of our third-party warehouses, onto the new ERP system. Customer fulfillment levels remain strong before and after the system cutover, with no unplanned disruptions in receiving orders, producing products, shipping orders, or receiving payments. I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to our teammates who put forth a tremendous effort to reach this important project and company milestone. I'll have more to say about the strategic importance of this later in my comments.