Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (LW) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:LW) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call January 5, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Dexter Congbalay - VP of IR

Tom Werner - President and CEO

Bernadette Madarieta - SVP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Tom Palmer - JPMorgan

Peter Galbo - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Chris Growe - Stifel

Adam Samuelson - Goldman Sachs

William Reuter - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Lamb Weston Second Quarter Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dexter Congbalay. Please go ahead.

Dexter Congbalay

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Lamb Weston's second quarter 2023 earnings call. This morning, we issued our earnings press release, which is available on our website, lambweston.com.

Please note that during our remarks, we'll make some forward-looking statements about the company's expected performance that are based on how we see things today. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the cautionary statements and risk factors contained in our SEC filings for more details on our forward-looking statements.

Some of today's remarks include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with our GAAP results. You can find the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations in our earnings release.

With me today are Tom Werner, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Bernadette Madarieta, our Chief Financial Officer. Tom will provide an overview of the current operating environment, while Bernadette will provide details on our second quarter results and our updated fiscal 2023 outlook.

With that, let me now turn the call over to Tom.

Tom Werner

Thank you, Dexter. Good morning. Happy New Year and thank you for joining our call today. We're pleased with our financial performance in the second quarter as we continue to drive strong sales and earnings growth across each of our core segments. Our results reflect the successful execution of our strategies to counter the significant input cost inflation over the past couple of years through a combination of pricing actions, improving business and product mix and adapting our manufacturing and supply chain to global challenges.

Specifically, we delivered sales of nearly $1.3 billion, a record high quarter, healthy gross margins in each of our core business segments and strong earnings EBITDA and earnings per share growth. Because of our first half results and confidence in our business momentum, we've increased our sales, gross margin and earnings targets for fiscal 2023. I'm proud of our performance in the first half of the year and how the entire Lamb Weston team continues to focus on serving our customers and driving sustainable, profitable growth.