All right. All right. All righty. Welcome back, everybody, and welcome to our fireside chat with B&G Foods. With me today, President and CEO, Casey Keller, CFO, Bruce Wacha. Welcome, gentlemen. Truly great to be back with you in Boston. Good to be here. Yeah. Casey, maybe we start off, and it makes sense to start with a sort of a State of the Union, you know, as you reflect upon your first three years in charge, how the company's transformed since you've taken over, what's top of mind as we sort of finally approach, you know, what appears to be a more normalized or maybe at least more stable operating environment in packaged food? Yeah, absolutely. So if I step back, I've been at the company about three years. Coming in, to me, there were two critical things that we had to deal with. So one was really clarifying what is the portfolio that we're gonna be in? What businesses we wanna be in, what brands, what categories, what makes sense for us? I mean, the company historically had just kind of bought any business across the store, across the grocery store. Not a lot of synergies other than just kind of administrative synergies. So for me, one of the big things we need to do was to say: What businesses do we wanna be in? Where do we wanna, you know, can we get to businesses that we can grow? And can we get to businesses where we can acquire and build on top of them? And so that was the big first step. And part of that was really understanding the economics of what we had in the portfolio, what businesses were really good margin, what businesses weren't, where were we getting, you know, performance, where were we not getting performance, because we were kind of managing the businesses as a big bundle and spreading our resources like peanut butter, not really looking at what was the true profitability of these businesses and which businesses we should be in. So, you know, you've seen us kind of on a journey on that portfolio. So, you know, we made a decision to get out of, cookie cracker, you know, Back to Nature. We divested the canned vegetable business, Green Giant, in the U.S., very capital-intensive, lower margin business. So, we're making some steps on that direction. I'll talk about it in a second, but we've made a, we announced that we have the Green Giant frozen business and the Canadian Green Giant business under strategic review, which I think we're coming to the end of that strategic review shortly, but that would be one of the potential next steps in our portfolio shaping activity. So, you know, where I think we're going from a portfolio standpoint is, and I'll talk about business units in a second, but focused on a few core businesses and categories. So number one, spices and seasonings. So we've got a very nice spice and seasonings business. We're number two to McCormick, distant number two, but strong set of assets, good portfolio, good manufacturing capability. That is a business, I think, longer term, the trend has been positive, you know, in the category, 2%-3%. You're actually seeing a little bit higher growth right now because of the growth of the fresh perimeter. I believe that's a business, an area where we can also acquire in the future, so organic growth plus acquisition, higher margin business. That's one part of the portfolio that I wanna keep driving. Second, you know, we have a meals business, which is really two things. One is a kind of Mexican at-home meal preparation, so Ortega tacos, Las Palmas enchilada sauce, and then a hot breakfast business, which is Cream of Wheat, McCann's Oatmeal, Maple Grove Farms syrup. The Mexican side, I'm really interested in because longer term, we see the Mexican at-home meal preparation trends growing, and I think that's a place we wanna play. We've got two good assets there. Again, organic growth on that business, plus acquisition over time. The third area I would call baking staples, which is, you know, basically Crisco, shortening oil, molasses, Grandma's Molasses, and then Clabber Girl baking powder. So we've got some very good assets in the baking staples. These are not growth assets, but they're very good margin, strong, stable businesses over time that we would manage, you know, for cash, and that's in the spices business unit. This frozen and vegetable area, honestly, I've talked about it a lot, but frozen is not an area where I see us spending our capital or building scale. Right now, our economics are subscale. You know, the margin on our frozen vegetable business unit, as we report in segment reports, results, is about a third of the margin of our, the rest of our business. So I don't think it's a place that we should spend our time and energy. I don't think that's a business that we can necessarily succeed in long term. I don't wanna spend our capital buying more frozen assets to get better economics in the frozen portfolio. I think that business probably belongs in someone else's hands that's gonna be able to drive better economics. We have a third-party, you know, warehousing, transportation, distribution system that's, you know, pretty costly, and I just don't see us spending our time there. I would much rather go build our spices business than build up our frozen portfolio. So that's the portfolio shaping that's going on. The second thing that we've been doing is to reorganize and restructure the company around business units. So part of that is to clarify the portfolio direction, but also a big part of that is to operationally manage the businesses better, to push accountability down, to give people P&L accountability for those businesses, and to drive better financial, P&L, and operating decisions on the businesses, you know, in terms of what lines of business we're in, how are we managing our factories and our cost structure? How do we make better decisions around, you know, productivity and other things? So we push that accountability down. We've got the businesses up and running, and, you know, it's a big transition from where we were in the past, where it was largely a functional silo organization trying to marry into a very complex portfolio. Now we can say, "All right, go optimize your P&L. Go make the right decisions. We're gonna hold you accountable," and I'm seeing real traction in our ability to manage the businesses better, you know, across the portfolio. The The other sort of state of the union to me is also leverage. So we're a company that's historically been very acquisitive, but honestly, when I came in, our leverage was way too high, and it got worse as the inflation, you know, picked up. So the good news is we are down, we're down quite a bit in leverage from where we were. Just, you know, better operating performance, you know, using some of the divestiture proceeds to pay down debt. So now, I think last quarter, we were, like, 6.35. We were way above that, you know, 12-18 months ago. So we're making progress, but we still have more to go. I mean, for me to feel comfortable in this company, I wanna get back in our range of 4.5-5.5 leverage, and we're on a journey. I think this year we can get closer to six organically, with some divestiture proceeds, maybe get down in that five and a half range. But that's where I think we need to be to play our game long term, to create the platforms that we wanna acquire on top of and drive our business and have enough, you know, room and capability to invest back. And we can get. You know, we can pay down debt with excess cash flow, but that's a slower process. I think it's gonna take some divestiture activity for us to accelerate that progress. I mean, the last thing I'll say is, you know, just like the rest of the industry, this has been kind of a tumultuous three years, gone through the pandemic, then the supply crisis, then taking up pricing, and I think now we're normalizing after all that activity. You call it normalizing, but, you know, I think consumers are starting, you know, or have been reacting to these higher prices. They've been sort of moving some of their consumption around. You know, right now, we're seeing, you know, fresh pricing, you know, fresh perimeter pricing coming down a little bit, you know, relative to frozen. That's kind of impacting the frozen business. So I'm hoping that we're gonna get to our long-term algorithm of, you know, 1%-2% growth across our portfolio, next year, but we are still in transition on that. You know, we're still, we sequentially improved between the first and the second quarter in terms of our organic trend, negative, but getting better. And I'm hopeful that, you know, kind of by the fourth quarter, we're seeing some stabilization, and then next year, we can get back into that growth profile. But like the rest of the industry, we're watching this pretty carefully. I could tell you why I think some of this stuff is happening, which I'm sure you'll ask me about later, 'cause everybody asks about that. But that's kind of our journey, where we are and where we're trying to head. Awesome. No, that's great. That's great overview. Thank you. You touched on this a little bit in the answer, but the establishment of the four specific business units, I guess, how has that reorganization, like, specifically benefited the company since it was first implemented? Is it resource allocation and just that, you know, keeping people accountable and whatnot, but a little bit more specificity, 'cause sometimes I think reorganizations like this can go maybe underappreciated in terms of what it can actually do internally. Yeah. Well, I would say, look, the primary benefits are, you know, number one, speed of decision-making. So we were very slow. You know, honestly, when the pricing inflection and inflation hit, we were slow. We were slow to price because we, you know, we were looking at everything kind of in a big basket, a bundle, instead of, like, business by business, saying, "Okay, my costs have gone up here. I got to get pricing down here." So we are much faster at responding to market trends now. We've also built better talent, kind of working on some of our core businesses, and I think resource allocation is much clearer. Like, you know, instead of, like, constant negotiation around who's gonna get what resources or what capital, everything else, you know, we're pretty clear now. Like, okay, you have this amount of money. How do you optimize it? How do you get the best returns? How do you spend it efficiently? We're getting much better at doing that. So... and honestly, I'm seeing, you know, better decisions, you know, in terms of what business lines we're in. You know, in some cases, we were manufacturing some private label or some third-party business that made no sense. Mm-hmm. But once you have a business unit digging in and saying, "This doesn't make sense. We should really be getting out of this business. We're not making money," it's a lot clearer. So I think we're running the business better. I think we'll continue to see the business, you know, improve. We're getting much stronger productivity, and productivity really wasn't on the agenda three years ago. Now, we're getting, like, 2% productivity. I think next year we'll go to 3%, and that's being driven by people in the business making better decisions about, you know, what are the costs or the value-add costs in the product line that we wanna maintain? What do we get rid of? So, I'm seeing a lot of the benefits, a little bit messy because we're coming through this whole normalization period, but I think it's a better way to run the company, and it's gonna also... Honestly, the last thing, and maybe Bruce doesn't wanna hear me say it, but the business units also allow us to kind of plug and play a little bit. Mm-hmm. So if we're gonna take a business out, great, then it isolates and gives us visibility to what, you know, the business, like spice and seasonings, actually delivers. Yep. So it's giving us the management structure that allows us to kind of say, "All right, maybe over time, this business, you know, moves out, or maybe at some point, we wanna realize the value of another business." It gives us the ability to do that more easily, rather than trying to just mash businesses together, and then if you try and take them out, it becomes more difficult. And that's part of where I think our future is, too. Mm-hmm, and you touched on this a little bit, but maybe just to remind the audience, sort of the specific roles you expect for each of the business- Yeah units to play within the portfolio. So I think, you know, spice and seasonings, long term, you know, we think that category is a 2%-3% growth category, and I would expect that from our business. I would expect us to be able to deliver 2%-3% top-line growth flowing to the bottom line. And so that, it's a high-margin business. We wanna grow that business. It is the role of that business also will be to say, how do we, you know, plug in some additional spice and seasonings assets? You know, we've been successful with a couple of licensed brands. We just launched the Four Sixes, you know, which is part of the Yellowstone, you know, franchise, the Four Sixes Ranch seasoning lines, blended seasoning line. That's a business I think, you know, we'll focus on 2%-3% growth. That's where we want to get it. Mm-hmm. The meals business, again, I think, you know, 2%-3%. The category in Mexican is at least that, maybe slightly higher. I expect us to get to organic growth on that business as well. Again, I think there's some, you know, fragmented world out there in terms of Mexican sauces. We'll look at, you know, some inorganic acquisition activity there, but I expect to get growth from that business unit as well. The specialty business unit comprised mostly of the staples and is largely a cash flow-driven, you know, objective. We don't expect growth from that. We expect that business to be kind of stable, good cash flow, good margins, shelf stable, good economic structure, probably kind of flat on the top line, flat on the profitability. That's a business that, you know, if we acquire, we acquire another baking staple that we would build it in, but we would pay the right price for it, and we would manage it for cash flow. Got it. Frozen vegetables, we've talked about. Yep. It's the question mark in the portfolio. Very weak economics. I mean, longer term, the trends in frozen business are good. Right now, I think they're being... You know, they're kind of being hit by the price differential between fresh and frozen getting compressed. But that business, I think, has reasonable long-term prospects. My issue with that business is the economic structure in our portfolio. Yep. And you talked about getting nearing the end of the strategic review. I guess, what are the potential, the various options that are available to you that could come out of this review? Yep. Keep the business. Mm-hmm. Keep the entire business. There's really three parts to this business, by the way. Yep when we call our frozen vegetables, though. Yep. You know, one is the U.S. frozen portfolio, which is largely Green Giant. Mm-hmm. And then in Canada, we are the number one player in both canned vegetables and frozen vegetables. Mm-hmm. So not like the U.S., where, you know, we're number two to Birds Eye. Yep. We are the brand and, you know, the brand and private label is the category up there. So we are the brand of position up there, and then third is Le Sueur canned peas. So we've kept that business. That's a premium, premium priced, good margin business and very differentiated in kind of the canned vegetable category. So it's three businesses. So I would say the options are, we keep all the businesses, continue to run it, which we can do. Mm-hmm. Economics are a little bit tough, so it will still be a drag on our margins. If without that frozen vegetable Green Giant business, we would be a 19%-20% margin business. I mean, Green Giant, I think we said, was like 7.7%. So it's really way below on a segment basis versus our other businesses. The second option would be we sell parts of that business and keep others, and the third is we sell everything. Got it. So, yep. Okay. It's three options. That's the three options. Got it. Mm-hmm. Good to have optionality. One of the key priorities you noted in your second quarter earnings call in August was improving base business net sales trends, you know, the core business, really for that long-term objective of, call it, 1%-2%. What gives you confidence that this is a tenable range, right, for the company, to consistently be able to achieve? And what does the path and timeline to achieving this target look like? And does this target assume any further divestitures, at least from here, in terms of where the portfolio is right now? Yeah, I think so. You know, our long-term objective is to be 1%-2%, and you can see the calculus. If we can get our spices, seasonings business and our meals portfolio grow at 2%-3%, which are very consistent with the long-term trends of those categories, and I think those- Mm-hmm we're coming back to those kind of trends. If we can... then we can hold our specialty business flat, roughly flat, maybe even, you know, like -0.5% to +0.5% over time, we can get to that 1%-2% algorithm. So I'm looking at long-term trends right now. You know, I mean, everybody is sort of projecting, when do they expect the normalization, the stabilization to occur? Like I said, we saw some improvement between the first and second quarter. I think we start to lap some of the promotion intensity that we put back in the business in the fourth quarter, so that becomes less of a drag on our business. I think we're gonna get through this cycle of consumers responding to absolute higher price points. Mm-hmm. You know, that has been probably... You know, you don't see consumers respond on day one of price increase. You kind of see them, you know, a lag effect. So I think we're gonna get through that. But like I said, our expectation, looking at year-over-year trends, looking at promotions, looking at, you know, kind of sequential improvement of business, where things are, that we're gonna be able to get to that 1%-2% at some point next year. Yep with some improvement, particularly in the fourth quarter of this year, as we lap some of those variables. Got it. As Casey said, we've had three, four years of absolute crazy in the packaged- Mm-hmm food industry, and we're lapping that. When we think about some of the category trends that Casey was talking about around spices or around ethnic, those are the long-term trends, right? Those are pre-pandemic. Mm-hmm. We're probably going to revert into a world that has a lot of the same challenges as the pre-pandemic, 2017, 2018 period had. We're probably going back there, but those are categories that we feel over the long term really have some growth, you know, relative to a food company. Yep. Last thing I'll say is, we are already seeing the spice and seasoning business in our portfolio grow. That's like 20% of our company- Mm-hmm growing, you know, between 4% and 5% in the last quarter. We're continuing to see growth, so I'm already feeling like spice and seasoning is there- Yep where we need it to be. The big drag is frozen. Mm-hmm. It's really the frozen business in our portfolio. I'm seeing our Mexican business get back into kind of positive territory now. The specialty business with the baking staples is depressed a little bit because of the Crisco pricing impact, so we've been lowering prices on Crisco as the soybean oil commodity has come down, so that's dragging us a little bit, so what gives me confidence? I'm already seeing spices and seasoning there. I'm seeing improvement in our meals portfolio, particularly in our key Ortega brand. Crisco will lap the pricing largely in the fourth quarter. Okay. And vegetable, frozen vegetables, you know, we have a stronger innovation pipeline this fall. You know, our distribution, I think, is fairly stable, you know, beginning this fall. I still think the category overall is pressured because of the fresh pricing relative to frozen, and you can see it in the whole category in Birds Eye and everybody. So when we're gonna get through that, I'm not sure. But that's what, you know, the three other business units behind frozen vegetable, I feel like we're moving in the right direction. Got it. Closer in on the second quarter call, sales actually came in a bit better than anticipated, yet you lowered the overall full year 2024 sales guidance, and now you're looking for base business net sales growth, I think of -2% to +0.5% year over year in the back half of the year versus -1% to +1% previously. Can you talk a bit about what you were seeing in the market at that time that ultimately led to that shift in the back half sales outlook? Yeah, I mean, I think part one, we had a little bit worse first quarter than we wanted to, and then a little bit better second quarter. Some of that was movement in the food service. But the other part of that is we're looking for an industry-wide recovery and stabilization, and we think that that's happening, but it's a little bit slower than the plan that we laid out back in January, February, when we were first preparing our full year guidance. Got it. That reflects that. Yeah. Um- Obviously, consistent with what we've heard across the industry, of course. Yeah, and by the way, we think as you think about third and fourth quarter, you know, there should be sequential improvement, meaning- Mm-hmm you know, whatever number we're gonna hit, it's probably not gonna be linear third quarter and fourth. It's probably gonna be a little bit more improvement in the fourth quarter- Mm-hmm relative to the third quarter. Got it. I mean, one of the other things that we were kind of hearing also from retailers, which, you know, informed our guidance, was that they were talking about inventory reductions. Mm-hmm. So we just made sure that we were in line with anything that we saw. And we saw a little bit of that in their- July quarters ending July. Got it. So, I mean, I don't know what... You know, I've heard other people talk about this, too, but that, that was a fairly explicit message from a few retailers. Right. And you've talked a lot about spices and seasonings, obviously one of the better growing categories. Yeah. You're seeing some of the benefits of that as well. I think that business was up, or that segment was up mid-single digit for you in the second quarter. And some of the theory is that more consumers look to do a little more scratch cooking, purchase items around the perimeter of the store. They need to flavor what they cook. Is that what you're sort of seeing in driving some of this dynamic right now, or are there other things there at play as well? No, I think, you know, what we hear pretty clearly from consumers is that they are buying. The prices on fresh perimeter, whether it's vegetables, fruit, proteins, those have kind of come down over the last six to 12 months, that, not all categories, but a lot. People are migrating to more fresh at home, and the center store categories that go with those things. Like, we all of our, you know, basically, we're flavoring, seasoning, grilling, you know, proteins. We ride that. We're riding that, and I think you probably heard McCormick talk about that, too. Center store categories that go with that trend are benefiting packaged goods, you know, pre-prepared things in the center store that don't ride that trend. Mm-hmm or not enhancing the fresh perimeter are probably not, you know, coming back as fast. Mm-hmm. So, you know, that's why I think spice and seasoning is a good business. You know, interestingly, on our baking staples, that business has been relatively. Scratch baking has been relatively flat. I don't. It hasn't gone down like maybe some people predicted after the pandemic. I think people learned how to scratch bake in the pandemic, and they're kind of maintaining a certain level of it, not the same, you know, kind of frequency that they were. But so that business has been relatively stable because I think people are still gonna do a little bit of that at home. But, you know, the prepared meal, prepared, you know, prepared foods, packaged foods in the center, you know, it's not riding that fresh perimeter trend right now, so- You mean- In our portfolio. You mentioned earlier, obviously, you're a number two in spice and seasonings to a dominant player, but you've talked about, you do have some interesting sort of brands within spice and seasonings that are sort of differentiated, or almost unique in a way, and don't not necessarily compete with just the core ten basic, you know, sort of spices. Yeah. Maybe you can go through a little of that, because I think that does isolate you a little bit or makes the distant number two share less, you know, less of a significant issue as it might be in another category. Yeah. So, you know, there's really... You can break down that category into two things: A to Z- Mm A to Z spices, right? So the basic spices. We don't really play very hard in that. You know, we have a Spice Islands business, which is a premium A to Z business, but it's a relatively small part of our overall portfolio. Our portfolio, we have a fairly large business with Sam's, where we drive their Member's Mark A to Z, but that's an exclusive arrangement. We also do a lot of the direct fulfillment through our, you know, kind of a sorting operation in our warehouse. So that's a very nice business for us. The rest of the business is, you know, brands like Dash, salt-free, differentiated, you know, seasoning blend, you know, Weber grilling spices, so seasoning blends, you know, not A to Z. Obviously, we do compete with Grill Mates there, but you know, that's been a big, nice business for us with a very long-term agreement with Weber. We have, you know- we've just launched the Four Sixes. We've got, you know, Einstein Bros., you know, Everything Bagel. We've got some interesting businesses that are blends, that are targeted different things than people buying just the, the normal everyday spices. And that's been an active part of the category. Like, new innovation, new ideas, blends, seeds, you know, that area has been kinda growing in that category, and, it's differentiated, and you don't get into this commodity game where you're competing with private label. 'Cause if you're an A to Z, you know, there's premium, there's mainstream, and then the private label, and, you know, you gotta fight for distribution in those all the time, and you also have to be wary about people trading down or private label competition encroaching. Yeah. That's what I like about our portfolio. It's differentiated enough, you know, from McCormick, that I don't feel like we're always competing head-to-head in every segment. Yeah. You also highlighted, I think, in your recent call, that you're expecting less of a drag from price as we move through the year, primarily 'cause you're gonna be lapping some of the Crisco pass-through pricing actions, but maybe outside of that, what are you seeing from sort of a promotional perspective that gives you some confidence that pricing can be less of a drag as you go into the back half of the year? And are there any specific categories where maybe you're seeing, you know, a greater promotional intensity than others, or maybe greater than what you might have, you know, anticipated or hoped to see? I think the big thing is we had a period in 2022 with, like, 18%-20% Mm-hmm input cost inflation. Yeah. Right? And so 2023 was all about addressing that and fixing the P&L, which, you know, for most people, that looked like us, was either at risk of being broken or broken. Late 2023, 2024, you know, it's, it's a little bit more normal, right? And so when we think about our cost pressures, they're not quite the same. Every time we talk... more like 1%-2%. Mm-hmm. So the P&L is a little bit more stable that way. From a promotional environment, promotions kind of went away in two thousand and twenty, right? Retailers were just trying to keep product on the shelves, and manufacturers trying to manufacture product, and there were challenges. And so promotional spend, trade promotions kind of went away, have gradually been increasing, and I think that's the piece that it's been, where it's getting closer and closer to normal. For the most part, it's all pretty reasonable and rational, and nobody's made steps where they're doing anything, like, shocking or putting P&Ls at risk. Got it. We think that that's going to be the trend, but clearly, that's something we wanna watch out. Yeah. I mean, just from our standpoint, so beginning in the fourth quarter of last year, we kinda put promotion levels back to where they were pre-pandemic. Yeah. You know, we had a very fall seasonality portfolio. Mm-hmm. So last year, that's when we kinda put promotion spending back in- Yeah to try and get the right level of merchandising, and it's now where it was pre-pandemic. And we've been kinda going through that, so we lapped that. And then we lapped Crisco. Mm-hmm. The Crisco pricing impact, we expect to be much, much lower in Q4. Yeah. So the big drags in terms of pricing and trade spend in our portfolio kind of stop in Q4. Yeah. On Crisco, I think it's worth just reminding investors about the recent move to alter the pricing structure, right, on that Crisco business. What was the purpose behind it, and how effective have you seen it been since, you know, coming through with that? Sure. And, the big thing is we talk about when we bought Crisco- Mm-hmm ... late 2020, we bought that business, number one brand in vegetable oil, number one brand in vegetable shortening. That, that was even before we had a specialty BU. Mm-hmm. That was a specialty brand, where we just wanna generate cash. The math around that business was about $270 million of net sales, and incremental to B&G, before giving it a share of broader corporate costs, was about $60 million in EBITDA. We always believed that was a brand where we could take price and protect profit, you know, gross profit dollars. Didn't anticipate input costs going from low $0.30 per pound to $0.40-$0.50. Mm-hmm ... 55, 65, 75, 85. But we did, and that's what we saw, so welcome to commodity oil. We just took prices as fast as we could. At a period in time, we began thinking through, like, we wanna manage this business for profit dollars. Input costs, you know, at that point, had doubled from where they were when we bought the business. And there was a recognition on this business, we gotta be a little bit more proactive and not reactive, and manage that business. Put some discipline around our buying, put some discipline around our pricing, and really be upfront with the retailer and say, "We're gonna come back to you pretty regularly- Mm-hmm. and give you an idea, this is where pricing is for us, and this is what we need you to reflect. Mm-hmm. It's probably never perfect on a day-to-day basis, but it's generally worked. The interesting thing is we saw, at the peak, sales probably reach $350 million in net sales. Mm-hmm from the $270 that we bought. Profit dollars, never perfect in any month, but probably still hovering around that $60. $60 million, yeah. Yeah, $60 million. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So you actually saw sales go up. From the outside looking in, looks fantastic. Margins go down. Internally, we see this impacts broader B&G. On the flip side, we're gonna see sales come down, as Casey, you were talking about, as we took pricing down. Sales are coming down. Volume's relatively stable, but dollar sales are down, and our job is to manage that profit dollar to be pretty steady. Got it. Got it. You've highlighted in the past long-term EBIT margin target in that sort of 18%-20% range, which you were able to achieve in 2019 and 2020, with an implied EBITDA margin, I think, of below about 16% this year. Is the 18%-20% range still where you're looking to get back to longer term, and can you do that, even if, let's say, no larger divestiture activity happens, or is that required to sort of get you there? I think what we saw with all of the inflation is some of those margin structures were changed. So we talked about Crisco. You saw that on a smaller scale across the rest of the portfolio, as input costs went up and we protected dollars. For us, our goal very much is to get back to that 18%-20%. I think that works from our strategy of generating cash and being able to support the dividend, reduce leverage, and fund other acquisitions. I think it's gonna be hard for us to get all the way back to that 18%-20% ex M&A, so portfolio reshaping should accelerate that. Got it. I mean, we get back there without Green Giant. We're, we're already there in the rest of the portfolio. So I mean, that's part of the drag but- Yep. Like Bruce said, I think we could, you know, and our costs, frankly, have gone up more in the frozen vegetable and the frozen business. So we will get there very fast with investors, if that happens. But I think we're also making progress. Like, Crisco margins are improving as price comes down. You know, we're starting to institute productivity, which is paying dividends, so I think we can get there. It's just a much speedier path. Yep. So. Maybe last, it's worth talking about, you know, you mentioned at the outset, talk a little bit about your perspective on why, not just for B&G, but the industry, the volume recovery process has taken longer, maybe than most had expected. And I think if you look, you have to squint really hard at the recent data. It's certainly not getting worse, I think, for the industry, and that's a good start. Certainly not getting, you know, better as quickly as we'd like. But what's your rationale for thinking that it's gradual, but that as we move through the back part of the year into the fourth quarter, hopefully, this industry and B&G can get back to a place that's more in line with sort of historical performance? Yeah. Yeah. So I think, like I said before, honestly, I think people have been reacting, consumers have been reacting to the higher prices. Look, food prices are up. I don't know what, you could pick any, whatever category you want, 3%, you know, over the last five years, 50%. People don't respond right away. They sort of alter their habits. I think we're going through that cycle right now, honestly, and I think. Yeah that's a normalization cycle on this crazy pandemic supply pricing inflation. We're still kind of normalizing off of that. Yep. You know, in a lot of cases, you know, volumes have been pressured. We're starting to see our volumes, you know, get a little bit better. Look, in our portfolio, very specifically, it's clear to me, the frozen category, the frozen vegetable category, is all about a change in the differential. Like, frozen business went way up, you know, post-pandemic when supply was tight, fresh prices were skyrocketing. Now that that differential is kind of compressed, you know, for frozen being a huge part of our portfolio, we're just seeing weakness in the category and in the frozen categories. And it doesn't matter what brand and, you know, private label is still struggling there. So- Mm-hmm ... I think we got to get through that, kind of lapping that price differential, to see that part of our business normalize. But that's a big impact, that's probably the biggest drag on our portfolio. Like I said, the other three businesses, I see making the right progress. Got it. So- Good I mean, so the macro view to me is, consumers are still adjusting to the higher price points. We see trade-down behavior, so, like, if people were buying a three-pound can of Crisco, they're now buying a one-pound can. The units are way up. They are coming back faster to buy units, but they're adjusting their purchasing habits based on these really high price points. I don't think they're all the way through that. Basket size more than anything else. I don't think they're all the way through that yet. Micro, it's really about how does frozen start to, you know, stabilize relative to the trend in differential in pricing versus the fresh category? The other part, when we think about that recovery, there's almost two pieces. There's the industry recovery- Mm-hmm consumer behavior, and then there's just, you know, this is price and volume. And we're lapping a period where we had higher price, because we're all promoting a little bit more, kind of- Yeah normalizing that. Yeah. Volume's had sort of stabilized, not downward pressure, but all of the sales drag is not volume, it's price and volume, and we should be lapping that. So there's a structural piece as well. Good. Perfect. All right, so we're gonna leave it there. Please join us if you'd like, over in the breakout session, and join me in thanking Casey and Bruce. Thank you.