Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE:CAG) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript July 11, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Melissa Napier - SVP of IR
Sean Connolly - CEO
David Marberger - CFO

Operator

Good morning. This is Melissa Napier from Conagra Brands. Thank you for listening to our prepared remarks on Conagra Brand’s Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings. At 9:30 AM eastern this morning, we will hold a separate live question-and-answer session on today's results, which you can access via webcast on our Investor Relations website. Our press release, presentation materials and a transcript of these prepared remarks are also available there.

I'm joined this morning by Sean Connolly, our CEO, and Dave Marberger, our CFO. We will be making some forward-looking statements today. And while we are making these statements in good faith based on current information, we do not have any guarantee about the results we will achieve. Descriptions of our risk factors are included in our filings with the SEC.

We will also be discussing some non-GAAP financial measures. Please see our earnings release and slides for the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations and information on our comparability items, which can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. And I'll now turn the call over to Sean.

Sean Connolly

Thanks Melissa. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter fiscal ‘24 earnings call. I'll begin today's call by sharing some perspective on our fourth quarter and fiscal ‘24 performance, particularly in the context of our broader environment. Then, before I turn it over to Dave, I'll discuss how we're thinking about fiscal ‘25.

Let's get started with the key points we want to convey on Slide 5. Overall, we demonstrated solid progress throughout fiscal ‘24 amidst a challenging consumer environment. In Q4, we continued to see positive impact from our investments to maximize consumer engagement with our brands. This again resulted in sequential volume improvement in our domestic retail business.

We also saw strengthened share, particularly in frozen and snacks where our volume progress has been most meaningful. Even with these significant investments, we reported full year adjusted gross and operating margin expansion supported by productivity improvements across our supply chain. Further, our strong free cash flow enabled us to continue to reduce our net leverage ratio and strengthen our balance sheet consistent with our goals.

Our progress in ‘24 reinforces the strength and resiliency of our business. We expect fiscal ‘25 to be a continued transition toward a normalized operating environment. That means a gradual waning of the challenging industry trends seen throughout fiscal ‘24, as consumers adapt and establish new reference prices. In light of this, we've prudently tempered our fiscal ‘25 outlook. We’ll provide more detail on that shortly.