Thank you all for joining. I would like to welcome you all to the Premier Foods Q3 trading update. My name is Brica. I will be your event specialist operating today's call. To ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you change your mind, please press star two. For operator assistance at any point, it's star zero. Thank you. I would now like to hand the call over to our host for today, Alex Whitehouse and Duncan Leggett. You may begin your conference. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining this, our quarter three trading update call. Of course, covers 13 weeks to the 31st of December of 2022. I'm also joined on the call this morning by Duncan Leggett, our Chief Financial Officer. I'll just give an overview of the third quarter trading before handing over to Duncan to provide an update on our manufacturing footprint, and then we'll open the call as usual for questions. The headlines today is that we've had a very strong quarter three in what is, of course, our most important trading quarter, and that's building on the trading momentum that we've delivered already so far this year. The performance is particularly evident in our grocery business and with all of our major brands delivering excellent sales growth compared to last year. With this strong quarter now behind us, we're well on track to deliver on expectations for the full year. If we now move on to look at some of the key figures that make up this morning's statement. Q3 group sales increased by 12% compared to last year. Year to date now, group sales are ahead by 8.6%. Q3 was therefore obviously stronger than the performance that we reported on in the first half of the year. Now, just to note that these figures exclude the impact of The Spice Tailor, and I will come back to The Spice Tailor shortly. If you include The Spice Tailor, group sales growth was 13.3%. Of course, building and growing brands is core to our business model, importantly, our brands grew by 8.8% in the quarter compared to last year, which means that they're now up 5.9% year- to- date. I think this demonstrates the strength and continued relevance of our brands to consumers in the current economic environment. Of course, that great brand performance continues to be underpinned by our branded growth strategy. Leveraging our great market-leading brands and bringing highly relevant new product innovation to market that's based on our in-depth understanding of consumer needs and consumer trends. Then of course, we also support our major brands with engaging and meaningful advertising and marketing campaigns, and that keeps demands relevant and top of mind for our consumers. Then we deliver excellent in-store execution through our strong retail partnerships. Whilst that's always important, it's especially the case in quarter three, which as I said, is our key quarter in terms of sales. If you were out and about and got a chance to look in any stores on the run up to Christmas, you'll have seen that many of our products being displayed around the store. Yet again, we've invested behind many of our brands in the quarter with Bisto, Oxo, Mr Kipling, Batchelors and Ambrosia all benefiting from TV advertising in the run up to Christmas. During the quarter, we brought to market several new products, a number of which were geared towards people enjoying Christmas lunch, and this included ranges such as Bisto Pigs in Blankets Flavour Gravy, OXO Turkey Stock Cubes, Paxo Turkey & Bacon Flavour Stuffing, and a Bisto roast potato seasoning. We also introduced a new low salt version of Paxo stuffing. Additionally, we recently launched further new products focused on healthier and also plant-based eating, and that includes Plantastic Millionaire Flapjacks, Plantastic Protein Boost pots, Batchelors meat-free pots, Sharwood's reduced salt poppadoms, and Paxo Meat Free Mixes. I should point out that this marks a change in our approach to Plantastic, and that's based on all our learnings from consumers so far with the brand. This new generation of Plantastic products are designed to be delicious, first and foremost, and then they happen to be plant-based. There's no taste compromise for the consumer by eating a plant-based product. In fact, you know, personally, I think new Millionaire Flapjacks are one of the best cakes we make, full stop, plant-based or not. In terms of market share, our grocery brands continued to take a healthy amount of incremental share, at an overall level, so up 66 basis points over the 12 weeks to the 31st of December. As I've said before, we see this as a significant outperformance that reflects the strength of our brands, our proven branded growth model, and the strength and depth of our customer relationships. In this tough environment where consumers are continually seeking value, this share performance is a strong indicator of our brand's resilience and how well they're positioned for future growth. If we now look into the detail of some of the brands that have driven what was such a good quarter for us, the first thing to mention is this, and this is particularly the case in the grocery business, that the growth we're seeing is broad-based across the brands. Now obviously pricing has played a significant role in that growth. One thing that we did see this year was a particularly strong run up in the week before Christmas, as we sense that many shoppers left their food shopping to that week before. All of our major grocery brands increased their sales, either high single-digit or in double-digits for the quarter. Many of our product ranges are very popular as part of preparing Christmas lunches, so Bisto gravy, Oxo stock, Paxo stuffing, and Ambrosia custard. This year was no exception, as all of these delivered strong growth for us. Not only did the established seasonal favorites do well, but we also launched new products to accompany Christmas dinners such as our Bisto Pigs in Blankets Flavour Gravy Granules type I mentioned earlier, which proved popular with consumers. Not only did those brands and product ranges perform well for us, but Sharwood's and Moy Park cooking sources and accompaniments also had an excellent quarter, supported by our Best Restaurant in Town media campaign, which provides tasty and affordable meal ideas for consumers. This campaign has proven to be very successful, and so much so we'll be extending the reach of this campaign in quarter four by moving it from a digital only campaign and onto mainstream TV. Yet again, Nissin Soba and Cup Noodles continued their remarkable growth trend, and as we've said before, these products deliver incredibly well on authentic product quality. It's this which drives the strong repeat purchase rates that's translated into exceptional sales growth. Sales grew by almost 50% in the quarter, and the brand continues to increase its market share in the category and extend its leadership in the authentic noodles market. The Spice Tailor is performing well, exactly as we expected, in fact, and sales grew double digits compared to last year. The integration is well on track. Now turning to our sweet treats business, which you'll remember has grown consistently well over recent years, sales were actually 0.9% lower in the quarter, with non-branded up 22.7% and branded down 10.8%. There's a very specific one-off reason for that, which I'll come back to in a moment. Mr. Kipling, in fact, increased its sales in the quarter, as the established core slices range, both in its flat pack format and also in the snack pack format, both delivered good growth. The launch of our non-HFSS version of mince pies, which we call Deliciously Good Festive Pies, helped deliver market share gains in the mince pie category in the quarter. The Cadbury sales, however, were heavily impacted by some unscheduled maintenance on one of our Mini Rolls manufacturing lines, which resulted in a few weeks of lost production. I'm glad to say that work's now been completed and production did restart just before Christmas, and normal service to customers has now resumed. As I say, a specific, one-off issue. In non-branded, the strong trends that we've seen in the first two quarters of the year continued into quarter three. Grocery non-branded sales increased by 29.3%, while sweet treats non-branded grew by 22.7%. Revenue in grocery non-branded has continued to see the benefits of a recovery in out-of-home hospitality volumes in the third quarter compared to prior year, and also pricing benefits from retailer own label contracts. A combination of new contracts in pies and tarts and price benefits delivered strong revenue growth in non-branded sweet treats as well. Therefore, on a year to date basis, grocery and sweet treats non-branded have grown by 23% and 24% respectively. If we move on to talk a little bit about our overseas business, excuse me, I'm pleased to say that we continue to make good progress on what is, as a reminder, one of our five strategic growth pillars. Sales in Q3 increased by 10% for constant currency and on a year-to-date basis, we're also at the same level. Consistent strong progress this year, and great to see from our international team. We've said that we've got three key brands now, which are the strategic focus for us overseas, and they're Mr Kipling, Sharwood's, and now of course The Spice Tailor. Our future international expansion will continue to be focused on these three brands. Sharwood's delivered very strong growth in Canada, thanks to increased distribution of cooking sources in Walmart. In Europe, growth was led by Germany, Cyprus and Malta. In Australia, Mr. Kipling continued to deliver great progress with further strong increases in sales, growing market share, which incidentally, came at the expense of own label, and household penetration gains. Lemon Bakewells, which we launched there just a few months ago, are doing particularly well, and they contribute a fairly significant amount to that growth. In the USA, as you know, we've been testing our cake proposition, and it's performing very well with all the flavors that we've launched performing in the top two quartiles when you bank all the cake sales that are sold in Target. Now we're looking to expand our distribution to additional new customers. I'm going to hand you over to our CFO, Duncan. He's going to provide a brief summary on the proposed closure of our Knighton manufacturing site and also briefly on pensions. Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everyone. Those of you who follow us closely will know that we're focused on growing the leading brands we have in our portfolio. Just a reminder, over 85% of our annual sales come from our branded portfolio. It's really growing our brands through our established and proven branded growth model, which is how we deliver progress and generate value. Our Knighton site manufactures predominantly non-branded products, which attracts much lower margins than the rest of the business. The site underutilized and is marginally unprofitable at Trading profit. As you can see, this really doesn't have a strong fit with our growth strategy. After careful consideration and subject to colleague and employee consultation, we're proposing to close the Knighton site. We know this will of course result in much uncertainty for colleagues at Knighton, and we'll support them as much as we can through this process. In terms of strategic rationale, we're increasingly focused on driving our branded business and investing behind and growing these brands. That's why, for example, we bought The Spice Tailor last year. This is a perfect example of a growing brand with further great potential that aligns very strongly with our five-pillar growth strategy. In terms of the existing business, which is manufactured at Knighton, the branded products will be transferred to other sites in the group, and most of the non-branded products will be carefully managed through exit in discussion with respective customer partners. Changes are expected to take place until the middle of this calendar year. What does this mean from a financial perspective? Subject to the outcome of the consultation, there'll be some restructuring and redundancy cash costs of approximately GBP 10 million, which will be incurred next year in FY23/24. Ongoing, there'll be a small benefit to trading profit. This is really from sort of FY25 because of the phasing of the closure next year. This is margin accretive to the group, although we of course will use this where we think appropriate to continue to invest back into the business to grow our brands. In terms of the quantum of the sales we expect to exit, this is about GBP 27 million. Because of the exit of the non-branded sales, this will have a positive benefit on our branded mix, which we estimate to be an increase of about 270 basis points to just under 89%. Just for clarity, all the sales we're talking about are currently reported on our grocery non-branded in our sales segment disclosures. Finally for me, just to confirm, as at the 2022 pensions valuation remain ongoing, and we'll update in due course. With that brief overview of Knighton and pensions, I'll hand you back to Alex. Thank you, Duncan. I just want to recap on our five-pillar growth strategy, which is what we're focusing on to build the business over the medium term. Firstly, continuing to drive growth in the core U.K. business using our branded growth model, which we know works so well for us. As you'd expect, we've got a full pipeline of new products for next year, which we're already working through the plans for launch over the coming months. Secondly, investing in our supply chain infrastructure to increase productivity and efficiency. As you might recall, we've got plenty of capital projects in the pipeline, which have attractive payback periods. The third pillar is then expanding into new categories in the U.K., and again, deploying our proven branded growth model, but over a broader range of categories. There's several examples of initiatives we're experimenting with here, and they include things like the cake crumbs and spice range, ice cream under Ambrosia and Mr. Kipling brands, and Ambrosia ready-to-eat porridge pots, which by the way has now reached GBP 1 million of sales so far this year. Lots of activity going on in that area. Then the fourth pillar is building our international business, of course, towards critical mass. As you've seen today, the overseas business continues to progress well, and we're very happy with that progress. Then the fifth lever in the strategy is looking for further modest bolt-on acquisitions to broaden our portfolio, and that's following on from last year's acquisition of The Spice Tailor, which was the first for 15 years. Just as a wrap up from me then, so look, we've had a strong quarter three. I'm gonna call out in particular our grocery brands, which performed particularly well, and we've grown faster than our grocery categories, so that's increasing our market share by 66 basis points. Our brands are demonstrating strength and resilience against the backdrop of a tough consumer environment, and that's underpinned, of course, by our branded growth model. We're still seeing input cost inflation, and as previously commented, we'll continue to deploy a range of measures to deal with that. But in summary, we're well on track to deliver on expectations for this financial year. All in all, I think we're in good shape for the rest of this year, but also now as we look forwards into next year as well. With that, I'd like to thank everybody for your time, and I'll stop there. We'll pass back to the operator, and we'll be very happy to take any questions. Thank you. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. We have the first question on the phone lines from Andrew Ford with Peel Hunt. Please go ahead when you're ready. Hey, Alex. Morning, Duncan. Well done. Really good performance. Just on the growth this year, so you rounded up really strongly and a bit more interestingly taking market share. What do you think the main driver for your performance versus the competition was this year? Sort of better promotions or holding price better or was it sort of outperformance of those new products you mentioned? Just one more. In the US, you mentioned a successful test in Target. How successful are we talking? And what can we expect from that relationship going forward? They're very interesting. Thanks. Well, Andrew, thanks for that. Yeah, drivers of growth. I mean, there's nothing particularly, you know, new or different here. I think what we've done is executed our model, very well. It's a combination of the fact that we, you know, we've been launching a series of new products through the year. We supported our brands very strongly with media campaigns during the course from the run-up to Christmas. We did have a new range of products that were specifically targeted at the kind of meals that people cook at Christmas as well, and that helped. ThenAs I said, if you were out in store, the number of displays and the execution we had in store this year, I think was particularly strong. You know, there's no magic here other than just, I think, really great execution of our branded growth model, which we've talked about a lot. In terms of targets, how successful are we talking about? Well, I think, you know, probably the way to think about this is what we do is we look very closely at how well the products sell in an average store. We look at something we call units per store per week, which is the average number of units sold by an average store in a week. We rank that compared to all the other cakes that Target are selling in those same stores. What we're looking for is to be, you know, in the top half of that ranking. You know, where we got to is a point where all four of the flavors we were selling were in the top 50% of Target's cake rankings. As a fact, in the more recent weeks, two of the flavors have actually crept into the top quarter. We're pretty pleased with that. You know, that's pretty successful. I think, whilst there's some learnings and some tweaks that we will make to the proposition, we're certainly at a point now where we can start to look at rolling that out across other customers. I think the thing to bear in mind with Target is those 200 stores are their stores with grocery, you know, a decent-sized grocery unit within it. The 2,000-ish stores that Target have got are largely general merchant stores. I don't necessarily think it means that we'll extend to 2,000 Target stores. What it does mean is that we'll start talking to other customers now, with a view to a rollout. I think speed of that rollout will be quite different from what you see in the U.K. Obviously, in the U.K., we've got quite a concentrated trade, and we're talking about a handful of customers make up a large proportion of the distribution. The U.S., for those that are familiar with it, is much more fragmented, with many, many, many kinds of stores. It'll be a process, let's say, to get around and talk to all those and convince them to list, but we'll embark on that journey in the next weeks. Great. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. We now have the next question from Martin Deboo of Jefferies. Your line is now open. You may proceed. Yeah. Morning, everybody. Can you hear me? I'm on a headset. Just wanna make sure you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you fine, Martin. Good. Okay, good morning. Just want to sort of build on Andrew's question. I wanna sort of try and reconcile in my mind the sort of strong Q3 with the guidance statement, which while clearly more confident, isn't actually an upgrade to expectations. And just sort of understand what's creating the relative caution there. To come at it from the way I'm looking at it, gents, you know, branded grocery in Q3, 15.5, you know, is a very strong number, and it compares to, you know, read across from around from Tesco and Sainsbury's updates and Kantar of, you know, the suggestion seems to be that UK grocery as a whole grew 5%- 6% in calendar Q4. You're taking 66 basis points of share, which sort of feels to me like you're outperforming the market by 1%- 2%. I can sort of get to sort of 7%-8% growth in Q3, but not to 15. I think questions on my mind are, has there been any bring forward of sales out of Q4 into Q3? Is that something we need to think about? Are you worried about, you know, putting new pricing into the market in your Q4, calendar Q1, and potential some under recovery that you wanna build a sort of safety margin into? Or are you thinking that, you know, rather than return the sort of bumper Q3 into trading profit, you wanna reinvest that in marketing, which I would completely understand. You sort of sense what's in my head. How do I bridge the very strong Q3 with the sort of maintained on paper guidance for the full year? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Martin. Let's say so, look, you know, you know, there's no bring forward of any sales here into Q4, that we're aware of. We look at retailer stock levels. We monitor that pretty closely. Our exit stock levels at the end of the quarter were pretty much where we'd expect them to be. You know, not seeing an issue there. I think, you know, we're certainly very pleased with what was obviously a very strong quarter. I think, you know, does that increase our confidence for the full year? Yes, it absolutely does. Why are we not giving an upgrade today? Well, I think there's still, you know, a few months left to run. Also you'll remember that quarter four is when we do our annual price increase. That's in progress now. I think, you know, once we've got that behind us, things will be a bit clearer. Okay. That's very useful to hear. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Clive Black of Shore Capital Markets. Your line is now open, Clive. Thank you. Morning, gentlemen. Yeah, to replicate the others, well done. Thanks for the call. A couple from me, please. Could you give a feel for the level or quantity of marketing activity year-on-year, Alex, and its contribution maybe that you think to this very strong share gain really? I just wonder whether we should be anticipating, again, given the very strong performance of non-branded, whether that should feature a little bit more in FY24 than we would ordinarily anticipate. Noting that you've underscored a lot of non-branded activity, annual contracts. That'll be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Clive. Morning. Marketing year- on- year, you know, is up. You know, that's part of what we've talked about before, which is our sort of long-term commitment to continue to increase investment behind the brands, which, you know, ordinarily we fund through margin expansion, as well as top line growth. We're continuing on that journey this year, and we've increased investment as you would expect, and including this year, of course, investing in that Best Restaurant in Town campaign, which is, you know, a slight departure from our normal advertising, you know, based on the current environment. As I say, that's worked very well for us, and so we're gonna be putting more investment behind that in Q4. That, as I say, will move on to mainstream TV. We, you know, we continue to increase and we'll, you know, almost certainly do the same again next year as well. Cool. In terms of non-branded, I mean, you've got a number of factors in there, haven't you? We've got some new contracts that we won, in, on the cake side of the business. Obviously they will then anniversary themselves as we get into next year. We can, you know, factor that in. We've got that return to out of home eating on some of the non-branded stuff, which to be fair, some of that comes out of Knighton. And again, I expect that to phase out. Of course, you know, eventually we'll get to a point where it phases out altogether. What we've got also in there as a key driver is price. I think as we go through next year, you know, the pricing that we take to market in quarter four now as part of our annual price increase will still flow through next year. You know, for the avoidance of doubt, our strategic focus is absolutely on our branded business. There's no change in that. Despite the high level of growth we are incidentally getting from non-branded, and that will continue to be the case. Just by way of follow-up to Martin. Thank you for that. Sorry. Just by way of follow-up to Martin's observations, given supermarkets also talk about a material increase in private label participation across the aisles, it suggests that your share gains have been particularly noticeable. That's an understatement, maybe. Just wondering what you felt about that, given the very clear narrative from a wide range of mainstream supermarkets that private label has gained material share. Yes. I, you know, I'd be lying if I didn't say that we're delighted by the market share gains. We see that as one of the strongest numbers in this in this set of results today, because in the current environment, I think it tells us two things. It tells us how resilient our brands are in the current environment and also how well our branded growth model is still working. We're really pleased with that. What we do see in some of our categories is you see private label increasing its share and our brands increasing their share, consequently there are other brands in the mix there that are clearly losing quite a lot. Do you want to give any color on which categories they would be? One or two, maybe. I mean, to be fair, Clive, you know, share gain was pretty broad across the grocery business, if I'm honest with you. It's not particularly helpful to point out a particularly strong gain I would probably suggest in desserts. You know, other than that, it's pretty strong across the board. Thank you. Appreciate that. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask any more questions, hit star followed by one. We now have another question on the line from Barney [inaudible] Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thanks. Yeah, just a quick question really, Alex, on input inflation. I think at the beginning of the year you were talking sort of 8%-10%, you know, that you saw. This is probably going back to March last year. I just wonder where that is currently sitting and whether you obviously talked about sort of price rises which you're in discussion with, but are we seeing any signs of that input inflation easing, or are we still talking similar sorts of levels? Any sort of guidance on where it currently sits at a spot basis, but also where you're pursuing it into next year would be quite helpful. Yeah, sure. Morning, Barney. Probably to put it in context, we're still seeing some pretty significant price inflation coming through. A lot of that is still driven by energy, but also various different, you know, raw materials, whether it's cardboard or milk or whatever it is. It's pretty broad across the piece. You know, the input cost inflation we're looking at the moment casting forward, is still double digit. You know, less what we've been able to offset through procurement strategy, less what we've been able to offset through efficiencies and savings, is what essentially manifests itself in our quarter four price increase that we're currently talking through with customers now. No immediate letup. I mean, you know, optimistically one might hope that things sort of calm down as we go through next year. You know, I'll probably believe that when I see it. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. We have no current questions on the line. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I can confirm we have no more questions, so I'd like to hand it back to the management team to close. Well, thank you everybody for dialing in. As I hope you can see, we've had a really strong quarter in, and as I say, our key quarter for the year. That market share gain, as I said, is particularly encouraging. With that, you know, we're well on track and I think in good shape for the year and also feeling pretty good about next year as we start to look forward to that as well. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining. That does conclude today's call. Please have a lovely day, and you may now disconnect your lines.