Okay. Thank you for joining us here today. I'm Rob Moskow. I'm a managing director in equity research covering consumer staples. I'm very happy to have members of the Fresh Del Monte management team with us today. Monica and Christine have volunteered to do their own introduction, so maybe if you could, please. Sure. Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I'm Monica Vicente. I'm CFO of Fresh Del Monte. Hi. Christine Cannella, VP of Investor Relations. Been with the company about 26 years. Okay, great. Christine, maybe we start with you. If you could talk about some of the history of Fresh Del Monte, going back to the past 20, 25 years. How has the company evolved, and what's happened most recently? Excellent. Happy to. I like to actually even go back a little bit further and go back to 1996 when our current Chairman and CEO, Mr. Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh, purchased the company. At that time, we were basically just a very small portfolio of products. We actually only had two DCs at the time, hard to believe. Both of them were in the state of Florida. Fast-forward, here we are 40 years later, and we have created a very large global company that provides fresh, value-added, packaged, as well as canned products. Over time, we have intentionally built out a global platform that also today includes over 90,000 acres under production. We've got global distribution and fresh cut facilities, around 32 facilities total. We have six shipping vessels, very large containerized vessels that we do own, and we've got over 400 trucks and trailers. We have a very vast portfolio of products now today, and we sell in over 80 countries. We've clearly moved away from being just a banana commodity company to where today now we are really focused on the innovation and building out product categories, such as our value-added, which includes our fresh cut, as well as our pineapple, where we are a leading marketer of pineapples worldwide. I want to use pineapples as a really good example. With pineapples, we built out that category, and this was all done by innovation, and pineapples take about 18 months to grow, so you can imagine how long this takes when you're doing research and development. Our category now includes such things as the Del Monte Gold. We have the Jet Fresh. We have Honeyglow pineapple. We have the Pinkglow pineapple and the Rubyglow pineapple. Most recently, in 2024, was when we introduced the Rubyglow pineapple, and that pineapple usually runs about $400 a pineapple. What? It is. You have to be on a wait list in order to get that pineapple. There's not too many of them. Yeah, there's not too many of them. That's why there's a wait list. That's not what you sent me as a sample, is it? It is not. No. No. Okay. We're not that generous. I need to declare if it's over $100. Yeah. As Monica said, we're generous, but not that generous. That pineapple is considered, obviously, very much a luxury food item. When you look at the Pinkglow, which is a pineapple... That's what I got. I think most recently, I shared with you. That is a pink flesh pineapple, and that pineapple is sweeter. It's very beautiful to look at the flesh on the inside. It is Instagrammable. It has a very high social media following. It also has outpaced the demand. I should say demand has outpaced the supply. Probably one of the most recent things, hopefully, that you guys have come to know about is here, just in March of 2026, we closed on the acquisition of select Del Monte Foods assets. What that's done is that has shifted us now into being a much larger packaged food company. Even bigger so, I think, Rob, what that's done is it has really reunited the Del Monte brand under a global platform that for us means everything. For our Chairman and CEO, 40 years ago, that was his vision, so it's amazing to see that happen. We're very excited about it. When you look at the Del Monte brand, and if you go back and you study it, that's over 120-year-old brand that's synonymous with quality and with trust. We certainly take that to heart, and it's part of what we do every day. Today, the business is fundamentally different than when our Chairman and CEO first entered our company. We're a more diversified company. We are more integrated, and we're a very much more innovative-driven food product company. For sure. Maybe just give us a little more context. What's the dollar sales of the company? How big is it today? What's the EBITDA post-transaction? What percent of sales are U.S. versus international? Just some numbers. Now with the Del Monte acquisition, which is going to be accretive, about $600 million this year, we should be about $4.7 billion of sales globally. 60% of that is in North America, 40% Europe. And then 10% Middle East and Asia each. What was your other question? EBITDA margins are roughly? EBITDA margin is about 6%. 6%. Up to 6%. Okay. Very good. Monica, how would you describe Fresh Del Monte's strategy today? What are your biggest priorities, and what are the avenues for investing in those areas of growth? I've been with the company 28 years, I've seen a lot of these changes that Christine talked about, and we have really been growing. We've been focusing on growing our fresh and value-added segment, which includes our pineapple, fresh cut avocados, and other products. This is something that we continue to do, and as Christine said, the Pinkglow pineapple, Honeyglow, those have really made a very big difference in our margin profile. When I first started, 60% of our sales were bananas. Now we're down to about 30%. As you know, bananas are more of a commodity, so that's a harder product to really manage as far as pricing. Definitely continue going through and growing our fresh and value-added, now our foods product offering. We're in a low margin business, so we're always looking for efficiencies and cost savings and making sure we manage our business with agility. This is not something you can put on a shelf, so we have to be agile. We have to be looking for new opportunities to use our assets. We are vertically integrated, so we continue to work on that in our global platform, which we sell in over 80 countries. Okay. When you think about the fresh aisle of the store, you talk to any grocer, it's where all the growth is in the store. It's where they put the most effort. They try to differentiate. There's also consumer backdrop that's very favorable with GLP-1s. How would you describe these kind of tailwinds, particularly GLP-1s, for your business? For us, GLP-1, I think, has really increased the demand for healthy, fresh fruit. We see a very big demand for our pineapple. We think partly it's associated with GLP-1 or just people that want to eat healthier. We've always been on the perimeter of the store. Now, obviously, with the Del Monte Foods, we will be in the aisles. We definitely have seen some increased demand of pineapple. Right now, we're actually constrained on our sourcing, just because there's a limited amount of land and production that you can do. Pineapple has really improved in the demand, which also helps our fresh-cut products. About 60% of our fresh-cut has pineapple. Okay. Maybe we can talk about the Del Monte acquisition. You bought the assets at auction, out of bankruptcy, which is kind of a unique way to do things. There's got to be pros and cons of this. The deal closed in March. What have you found in the early stages of integrating the business? What condition are the assets in, and how are you addressing it? We acquired certain assets of Del Monte Foods in, like you say, in bankruptcy. It was an interesting process. We do feel we acquired very important assets. For us, obviously, the most important is the brand. We did acquire some facilities that we felt were the right facilities. We left behind quite a bit of assets that were not fully utilized. We actually acquired people as well. Very good team, very good marketing. They're more consumer-faced marketing than we were in the past, so we want to leverage that opportunity. There are some investments we need to make, just they've been in bankruptcy for a little while, so obviously they were not investing in their warehouses and logistics. We do see good opportunities, and we feel we acquired the right assets. Okay. What about their relationships with retailers? Have retailers kept them on the shelves, or has there been distribution loss? The Del Monte, the vegetable canned product is the biggest sale. The products that we acquired, they are actually the category manager for some of the top retailers. The Del Monte branded vegetable is the top branded vegetable in the store, so the canned vegetable. Very strong brand recognition, very strong relationships w ith the consumers and the retailers primarily, yeah. Private label is the market leader in canned vegetables. I think Seneca. Yeah, they're a co-manufacturer. How would you describe the competitive environment with private label? Can you be a price leader, or are they? Is anyone setting the price? Well, as the number one branded product, we definitely are the price leader. Okay. Obviously, competition is strong. That's why it's important that we continue with their marketing efforts. Like Christine said, they're very strong in online marketing, and we, as Fresh Del Monte, did not have that in the past. We're going to leverage that in our business. We need to make sure we continue that. The people do recognize Del Monte for quality, reliability, consistency, and that's important for the consumer. Okay. You've said that you're going to leverage this a couple of times. What does that mean for you? Does it mean that you want to invest in those capabilities, or do you see opportunity to take those marketing capabilities into the fresh business as well? We think we can do some cross-merchandising. We also acquired some of their fresh fruit cups, which are in the refrigerated aisle, just like our fresh cut products are. I think our Pinkglow pineapple is ripe for some cross-merchandising. We still have to see what's the best way to do it, but definitely, we think there's opportunity. But not the $400 pineapple in the cups. Well- Probably won't make it. We don't have too many of those. Oh, no. no. Okay. Probably not. You're doing a lot of value-added premiumization work in fresh. Have you seen any opportunities for that in canned as well? It must be difficult. In the past, I think they were very innovative. The one before we acquired them. Right now we're looking at integrating them, making sure we look at the SKUs. We actually did some SKU rationalization already. We want to make sure we do the right thing when we're ready. We're looking into packaging, maybe some differentiating packaging. Okay. What were your return expectations on the acquisition and maybe also some details on, is this margin accretive, this deal as well? The acquisition will be accretive to sales, about $600 million this year. It's about nine months. It will be accretive to EBITDA, about $20 million. We do feel that there's improvement there we can make in the next few years, by looking at some of their logistics, investing in some of their labeling facilities. We do believe EBITDA will be accretive, and the margin is actually a margin profile in the mid-teens, which is higher than, let's say, our bananas are. Definitely will be accretive to our margin. Do you think the margins are in the mid-teens now, or? They are now, but they should be higher. It should be higher. Once we invest and integrate them and look at other efficiencies, we should be able to improve that. Right. I should have asked this before, but whenever I think of tariffs, I think of the cans. The steel cans got the brunt of it. Is that still embedded in the cost? It was a big component of the cost of this, is the cans. How are you thinking of the tariff flow-through into those costs? Is there any chance that it could go back the other way, as maybe some of these tariffs go away? Definitely, the tariffs were already built in when we acquired the company. We do see that they were able to pass it through. It's something that everybody in this industry was faced with, so everybody was able to pass through, just as we did into fresh. Okay. Now, we do see that the retailers are a little more resistant to additional cost increases coming up because of fuel, fertilizer, et cetera. Being the number one branded canned vegetable product on the shelf, we do have that leverage. We'll see the negotiations usually happen at the end of the year, we'll see next year. Okay. It's more of a 2027- 2027 thing Impact. Yeah. Okay. You're in a unique position, because now you're in the fresh aisle, you're also in the shelf stable aisle, and I'm under the impression, I think it's correct, that for years fresh has been growing faster than shelf stable. Do you have any internal growth expectations for one side versus the other? Like, how should we be modeling the two? Yeah. As you say, Fresh growing faster than the inner aisles. As far as growth for us, our challenge has always been finding the production. We are focused on growing on our fresh and value-added higher margin product, which is primarily pineapple, avocados, et cetera, which is harder to source. We do like to grow our own pineapple. Primarily, we grow about 70% of our pineapple in Costa Rica, and finding the appropriate land has been a challenge. If we had more volume today, we could be selling a lot more pineapple. Our challenge is the sourcing. Bananas, we could get more bananas from other players that sell in the spot market, but our growth is more on the fresh and value-added. We're looking for other products to add to our portfolio. Okay. Can you dig a little deeper as to what has caused the sourcing to be difficult for pineapples? Are there growing condition issues for pineapples? Is there weather issues, or is it just demand's good and it takes a long time to grow a pineapple? Demand is very strong. You cannot grow a pineapple just anywhere. You have to have the right soil conditions, weather conditions. It's usually in the tropics. We actually grow in Costa Rica, in Kenya, and in the Philippines. In Costa Rica, frankly, there's a limited amount of land. We are expanding about 800 hectares that we already own, so we're expanding on that land. It takes 18 months to get one pineapple out of the ground, and then another 12 months to get the second pineapple out of the ground. It is a long-term investment. It's mostly about finding the right conditions, the right country. You also have to make sure the political stable countries. It's not easy to find, and the demand is growing. What's the number one country, that grower for pineapples? Costa Rica. Costa Rica? Costa Rica, yes. What about number- We started there. We were the ones that brought the Del Monte Gold. What about number 2? What is number 2? I'm not sure if it's Ecuador or maybe Honduras. Yeah, e ither one of those. I'm n ot sure. Okay. Maybe we can take a step back and talk about the financial model, like what really drives it. For Fresh Del Monte, is it really volume? Does everything kind of flow from there? When you think about your financial objectives for the year, what's the most important thing in order to get the free cash flow to work? Sure. Volume for sure is very important. Sourcing the volume is important. We're vertically integrated, we have farms, we have vessels, we have distribution centers, we need to have the volume to make sure we are utilizing our assets. The right volume, right? We'd rather have more pineapples than bananas, getting the right volume mix is important. When you have a pineapple, like the Del Monte Gold or the Honeyglow, we can command a higher pricing without being subject to being a commodity like bananas, where it's more about supply. If there's too much supply, the pricing suffers. Having the right mix is definitely, I would say, number one. Finding the volume and the source for that. Mm-hmm. Okay. It sounds like a very CapEx-intensive business. What percent of your sales is CapEx spending annually, and what percent is maintenance versus growth? Usually in our fresh, our assets have been established for a long time. We spend about $65 million-$95 million on a normal year. It's not that much. It's not as much as you would think. Most of that is maintenance. When we are growing, we definitely increase our CapEx, like in Costa Rica, now that we're expanding. We have acquired, in the past, vessels. Definitely those are the years that it increases. We're very careful with our cash flow, as you can understand, with a business as ours. We're careful with making sure we are spending the right CapEx in the right place. Right. Maybe we'll jump to what do you use the cash for? Did you take on debt to make this transaction? Where's the leverage now, and where do you want it to be? Sure. We definitely took on debt. We paid about $310 million cash for the acquisition, which was really a very good price for the assets we acquired. Our debt is about at $440 million currently, and it's still at 1.4x EBITDA. We always like to have a healthy balance sheet in the industry we're in, since we do deal with external, weather, exchange rates, geopolitical situations, so we are very careful to always have a healthy balance sheet. Right. You mentioned weather and exchange rates. I think there was always a perception for years Fresh Del Monte is more volatile because of weather, hurricanes and shipping volatility. Maybe we could start there, and you have the Iran war. There's been a lot of fuel cost. There's also been difficulty in shipping lanes. How has your company navigated all of that? Definitely impacting us. It started impacting us in Q1, but we really saw the big impact now in starting in Q2, and we feel that the entire year will be impacted. Fuel costs, we have obviously ocean freight, inland freight, fertilizer. We think that's going to start impacting us in Q3 and Q4. We do have sales in the Middle East. We actually were able to switch ports. Instead of going to the ports that are impacted by the war, we're now dropping off in Saudi and trucking across the country. It's important in this business to be agile. Right? Take advantage of situations. Sometimes, if there's a war going on, there's less product coming in, we can increase prices. There's challenges, but there's opportunities as well. Right. Okay. Do you expect to raise prices globally more as a result of this war, or is it really more local prices that would need to go up? We do have in some of our contracts a bunker fuel surcharge. Okay. That would automatically increase the pricing based on a formula. Not every contract has it, and we do have some spot sales i n some products, like the pineapple, where we have more leverage because of the recognition of the quality, et cetera, we can ask for an increase. On the banana side, it depends on the supply and demand. This year we see a lot of supply in the market, so actually banana margins are definitely going to suffer this year. Okay. There's some countries in the Middle East that grow produce, like Israel, but do you compete against what they grow at all? Not really. I imagine they're having trouble exporting right now. Yeah, I think they grow melons and t hey grow certain things like that. I'm not sure they grow bananas and pineapples. Right. Not really. Not the big volumes, yeah. Not your issue. Okay, well maybe you could talk about your first quarter results in more detail. What was the good news, bad news coming out of there? You mentioned higher costs for sure. What about sales? How did those come in? The sales were a little bit lower, just we did have the banana constraints. There was a lot of volume in the market. We did have, unfortunately, the weather impacts us not just in the source, but also in North America, as you experienced in New York. Yeah. There was a lot of bad weather in the Northeast, so it did impact us in our volume somewhat. I stopped buying bananas because of the weather? Or just the shopping? You know what impacted us? Our fresh cut. Oh. I think people stopped- Picnics and things. Buying melons or maybe going out, and just buying things in the store. That impacted us somewhat, but it wasn't terrible. It was a pretty good Q1. Towards the end, we started seeing the impact of the war, the fuel costs just went through the roof. Got it. Okay. Do you provide an outlook for the year? We provide an outlook on sales, total about 13%-15% increase in sales, that's primarily because of the Foods acquisition. Right. Then we do give a range in the margins by product. Bananas, we said 3%-4%. Usually, bananas have a 5%-7% margin. Fresh and value- added, 11%-12%, which usually should've been closer to 14%. We're putting in the impact of the war. The prepared foods, I believe we said 13%-14%. We do have the mix of the Europe. We do have canned pineapple that we sell in Europe that we grow in Kenya, and that one was impacted by lower production. Okay. Do you have any metrics on price elasticity, particularly for U.S. consumers? Pineapple prices must go up and down quite a bit. How do you think about elasticity when we're thinking through those pricing changes? We do see the pineapple having very strong demand, so we have been able to push through price increases because of tariffs and now because of some of the other cost increases, and we have not seen the demand impacted. We think that the price elasticity on the pineapple is quite strong. Banana, like I said, it's actually looked at by the retailers as a loss leader. Right. They keep the pricing flat. Either flat, we've actually seen some anecdotal examples of $0.40 a pound, where maybe a year or two ago, they were $0.69 a pound. They're competing, a lot of the retailers are competing for the customers, and the banana seems to be a loss leader they try to be as low as possible to attract the consumer. Right. Well, that's their margin, not yours. Not good for us. Oh, okay. All right. Maybe we could just talk to the broader investor perception of Fresh Del Monte. You've been public for a very long time. What do you think are the things that investors maybe don't fully appreciate about the Fresh Del Monte story, and then what are your opportunities to change those perceptions? I think it's hard to look at us on a quarter-by-quarter basis. We always tell everybody, "Look at us more on a long-term basis." Even though we may have fluctuations in the quarters, we're definitely steady, strong operating controls, and making sure cost control is one of our main cultures in the company. Steady, good cash flow production. We have been viewed as a commodity company wh ich we are in a way with the bananas, at 30% of our sales. We're definitely growing our value-added offering, which is making us have more control of our future as far as pricing. I think our profile of a commodity company is changing, and that's what we're working towards. We want to give back to the shareholders. We have a strong dividend, about $1.20. It's $1.20 per share per year. Right now, it's about 3.9% dividend yield. We do stock buybacks when it makes sense. We're conscious of giving back to the shareholders. Regarding the integration of the acquired business, what are your immediate steps for the back half of this year? What are you still working through in that integration? Since they were going through a bankruptcy, they did not invest in some of their facilities. We are doing some investments. We're also stabilizing the operations, improving the relationship with the customers. They have a strong relationship, but in some cases, they were falling behind in some of their SLAs with the customers. Just making sure we integrate them. We want to continue with their marketing efforts, and we want to also learn from them. It's important not to think that we know better than them because it's a different business. Learning from them and s ee how we take it forward. Okay. I'm going to ask if anyone in the audience has any questions for the Fresh Del Monte team. If not, I think we could probably end the Q&A. Thank you very much, Monica and Christine, for joining us, and hope you enjoy the conference. Thank you, Rob. Thank you.