Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call January 4, 2024 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Bayle Ellis - Manager of IR

Sean Connolly - CEO

Dave Marberger - CFO

Melissa Napier - SVP, IR

Conference Call Participants

Andrew Lazar - Barclays

Peter Galbo - Bank of America

Robert Moskow - TD Cowen

Pamela Kaufman - Morgan Stanley

Alexia Howard - Bernstein

Nik Modi - RBC Capital Markets

Max Gumport - BNP Paribas

Chris Carey - Wells Fargo

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Conagra Brands Second Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Bayle Ellis, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Bayle Ellis

Good morning, and thanks for joining us for the Conagra Brands second quarter and first-half fiscal 2024 earnings call. Sean Connolly, our CEO; and Dave Marberger, our CFO, will first discuss our business performance, and then, we'll open up the call for Q&A.

We will be making some forward-looking statements today. And while we are making those statements in good faith, we do not have any guarantee about the results we will achieve. Descriptions of our risk factors are included in the documents we filed with the SEC. We will also be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted numbers that exclude items, management believes, impact the comparability for the period referenced. Please see the earnings release and the slides for GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations, and information on our comparability items, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website.

I'll now turn the call over to Sean.

Sean Connolly

Thanks, Bayle. Good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year. Thank you for joining our second quarter fiscal '24 earnings call.

Let's start with the Q2 headlines, shown here on Slide 5. At a macro level, the industry-wide shifts in U.S. consumer behavior, that we discussed on last quarter's call, persisted into the second quarter. These behavior shifts continued to pressure volume and mix. However, while the consumer is still deploying some value-seeking tactics when they shop, we are seeing clear progress when it comes to volume recovery.

In Q2, that progress was most notable in our Refrigerated and Frozen segment, in particular, our Frozen business. This inflection was helped by investments on key brands as we were seeking to understand consumer readiness to revert back to more typical purchase behaviors. We saw outstanding responsiveness that will inform our back-half actions. More on that in a moment.