If we could just find our seats, we will kick off our next fireside chat. So welcome back, everybody, to our fireside chat with TreeHouse Foods. With me today are CEO Steve Oakland, CFO Pat O'Donnell. Welcome, gentlemen, and it's great to have you back in Boston. Andrew, thank you. Great to be here. Sure. I'd say it's great to see everyone, but they have the lights in our face, so we can't exactly do that. It's a packed house, Steve. Trust me. Maybe we start off where, you know, recently you held an Investor Day, and you discussed having successfully executed quite a transformation to create a stronger TreeHouse. I think a good place to start would be a discussion of this transition, and what was initially more of a private label, sort of brand aggregator strategy to maybe where TreeHouse is today, and why you feel it sets the company up better for future growth. Sure. Thank you. And, and it is great to be here and great to see you all. I would say, if you think back to TreeHouse and that brand aggregator strategy started, like, well over 20 years ago, right? The founders of TreeHouse saw this opportunity for private label in North America. We all know how underpenetrated it is. And, you know, they saw that the industry was fragmented, it was subscale in many cases, those kinds of things. And so they went on to build the company that you see today, and they did that through building breadth with M&A. Okay? Over that same 20 years, you've seen a big change. I mean, think of the changes that have happened in 20 years, right? If you think about the consumer and the millennial generation coming of age in that period of time, and their demands for quality and flavor, right, and premiumization, so the consumer demographics changed dramatically since that strategy started. At the same time, the retailer was dealing with e-commerce and trying to use private label as a way to build customer loyalty and requiring a lot more from a vendor. And then I'd say the financial community, if you think about the folks in this room and think about how important growth is to valuation today, right? Yeah. So we had a chance to build the new TreeHouse, right? To look at the portfolio that we had, and the one thing I would tell you is categories matter. I mean, we all know that, but categories matter, right? So we were able to purposefully position the company, and those that were at our investor day heard me say this: We purposefully positioned it at the crossroads of two powerful consumer trends, big macro trends, right? The growth of private label in grocery and the snackification, or the growth of snacking in North America, right? And so we thought we could build a business that really responds to those demands of the retailer, that responds to those consumer demands, and provides a faster growing, more profitable company to the financial markets. Got it. That's what we think we've done. Good. Great, great. By the way, if we could just start the timer just so we have a sense of time. Perfect. Thank you. Maybe continuing along with the same theme, you recently completed the acquisition of a coffee facility in Texas, and earlier in the year, you acquired a flavored pretzel facility as well. I guess, how do these acquisitions coincide with TreeHouse's new strategic approach, and are those the type of transactions that we can expect to see more of, as opposed to, let's say, more transformational deals? Sure. You know, those two transactions are really our strategy in action, right? It's a clear view of the opportunity for us in these new, better categories, right? So we've been in the single-serve coffee business, I mean, since moments after the patents expired, right? We were the first mover in that. And, you know, years ago, the packed value coffee pods was a great way to serve the customer. The customer expects a lot more from us in that category. That's an experiential category. You know, we think the Farmer Brothers acquisition gave us the most modern assets. It gave us capabilities in sourcing and formulation and flavoring, you know, that would have taken us years to build on our own, right? So that's a great example of how we're gonna go deeper in categories and be that vendor that, that didn't exist, quite frankly, in private label for the, for the retailer. Now, Koops is another story. I mean, we talked earlier, you know, before we started this, about the seasoned pretzels across the retailer landscape. And, you know, flavor in salty snacks is key. You know, it, it amazes us all that it took so long for pretzels to be part of that phenomena. But, but that was really an opportunity for us to just accelerate pace. We actually had that same equipment on order. We had a chance to buy it and accelerate the pace by a year. You know, it's a great example of what a strong balance sheet can do if you've got great opportunities in your categories, because we're in a position where we can make those, those investments quickly when they come about and serve the customer with it. Koops is off to a running start, quite frankly, and the Farmer Brothers thing, well, we're in the middle of integrating systems, and I think it'll be early next year before you see a lot of impact of that. We need to get our systems in there so we can run the business the way we run it. Those are more about sort of capabilities, to your point. Yeah. You know, increasing depth in areas where you already operate versus, let's say, like you said, going into other, just other categories, just to be in other categories from a private label standpoint. Yeah, and the retailer today needs more than just a value price in a category, right? The retailer wants depth. They want to build a relationship with the consumer that makes... that builds loyalty, right? And private label is a way to build loyalty, and that requires so much more capability, right? Whether that be flavoring, whether that be quality, whether that be breadth of assortment, you know. So that's our strategy. We picked categories that are big enough that those investments will pay off, right? Look how big the coffee category is, right? And the private label does really well there. Our cracker business is the same way. We think the pretzel, the salty snacks business, is the same way. So we've got a lot of big categories with opportunity for us to grow in the category. There's a lot less risk in that- Yeah. -than new, right? Yeah. A lot less SG&A and a lot less working capital, et cetera. Yeah. Maybe turning a bit to the broader private label environment. You know, I think a lot of folks were surprised maybe to hear on your last earnings call that, you know, overall private label volumes, not necessarily in your category specifically, you know, were down a bit year-over-year. Especially given the preceding year call, a lot of branded counterparts also showed some pretty large volume declines. And I think the assumption from many was that private label, you know, might have been the beneficiary of that. And as we sit here today, I guess, what's your view of the overall state of private label today? What have you, you know, view as the biggest opportunities for private label growth in the current environment? Sure. It's been a bit of a puzzle, I think, for a lot of branded companies to sort of figure out what's actually driving, you know, some of these volume declines. It doesn't seem like there's been this mass move to away from home eating, to your point. We haven't yet seen this mass sort of trade down necessarily. Maybe as people are traveling more in the summer, it's just everyone has a lot of different reasons. Sure. Consumers are hunkering down, what have you, but would love your thoughts on that as well. Sure. Well, first of all, I'd say, look, it took a global pandemic and about $1 trillion in government stimulus to stop private label's momentum, right? We've had 20 years of straight, very slow, steady private label growth and share across North America. When we released our second quarter earnings, you know, weeks ago, you know, we talked about the second quarter had the highest share for private label in our categories in our history, okay? So most of us look at share as a measure of health of businesses. And we've had, I think, with today's report, 84 straight weeks of share growth. So I think private labels is alive and well, and I think share is a great way to look at it. More recently, I'm encouraged, we actually had a couple of weeks in August where the IRI data, you know, has turned positive. Now it's only a couple of weeks, right? And I wouldn't claim victory there, but I think we've all expected a faster shift trade down from the consumer. Mm-hmm. We've yet to see it. I would tell you private label is performing better than my branded counterparts, right? We're down a point or two, they're down, you know, significantly more than that. Yeah. Right? So the consumer is struggling. They're clearly buying different mix. They're clearly buying different channels. If you look at, you know, traditional grocery versus the value channels or mass, some of those folks are winning share. Now, private label does well in those environments, and so we're partnered with those customers. So, you know, our business is solid. We think, a year ago, and we talked about this on our call, you know, the peak of some of the disruption was in the fourth quarter of last year. So our current service levels are gonna allow us to bring more, to serve much more of that demand than we did a year ago. Yeah. So we're encouraged as we go forward. And we think the share gains we've made in private label will, are gonna feed us for, for a generation, right? We're gonna, we're gonna live on that as we grow. Now, one thing I would say that I'm most encouraged about, why do I think it's gonna continue to happen, is the things that are happening today that haven't happened for two years. We're doing innovation, we're doing new products, we're doing work with retailers that, that we're not gonna ship in this calendar year, that's gonna ship sometime next year, given the innovation cycle. But we now see that flywheel's turning again on those things that build the business as we go forward, right? And so I think this will settle out, the consumer will settle out, but the retailer right now is working on product for next year, and that's encouraging me because we haven't done that for two years. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. You know, at your Investor Day, you issued a new sales growth algorithm that calls for 3%-5% year-over-year top line growth over the next three years. How much of that is based on the assumption of simply growing in line with the categories you play in, versus your expectation that TreeHouse could outgrow and take share within those categories? Yeah, I can take that. So, you know, we thought we could grow 3%-5%, and we see three drivers for the growth. The first would be core growth. And really, this is about leveraging our leadership and depth that we just talked about. And so maybe to bring that to life in an area like pretzels, where we made an investment in depth, where we now have a great traditional business. We have a filled pretzel business, and we've got a seasoned pretzel business. We bring the full assortment to our customers, and so the opportunity there is, where we've got great depth, we do much better when we bring that full assortment. So it's the opportunity. You know, the pretzel season probably needs a little innovation and a little bit of bringing that full assortment and core growth, but we have the opportunity to go bring that full core growth. I think crackers is very similar. We have a great assortment. We're very competitive in that space, and so when we have that depth and capability, we're able to grow the core. And that core growth comes both from winning distribution within private label, as well as the broader private label gaining share as a whole trend as well. So we think it's a little bit of both in the core growth. The next area, which is capacity, that we think there are certain categories in our network where we're capacity constrained today. Crackers is a great example. You know, we will look to add capacity through the TMOS activities that we have underway. We saw a great example of being able to add 8 million lbs to our Princeton plant, which is in a capacity-constrained category today. We'll also look to add CapEx to grow, and so crackers would be an area where we'd look to add some CapEx in our space there, where we can add capacity to sell more graham crackers, as an example, which has been a capacity-constrained category. And then last, we talked a little bit just now about innovation, but, you know, we're we don't tend to do new-to-the-world innovation, but we'll be fast followers from an innovation standpoint. I think seasoned pretzel is a great example of that fast follow. You know, we also have existing technology today. You know, we have aseptic technology, where we have a lot of broth that we're able to make, and that, that technology can also be leveraged into other areas like plant-based milks and creamers, which we do a little bit of today, and we have the opportunity to grow into over time. And so I think some of that is a little bit of, you know, market share gain, and I think some of it is growing with the categories, because we've seen our categories grow over time, and there's, and there's paths and avenues for us to be able to capture that. You mentioned this a little earlier. TreeHouse has developed what it calls its, its TreeHouse Management Operating System, or TMOS. What's differentiated about this approach? Can you provide any examples of maybe some of the outcomes that the system has helped pave so far? Sure, maybe I'll take that one. You know, you've heard the acronyms of these things across all these different companies, right? We all have a continuous improvement system, right? Ours is modeled after Procter & Gamble's system, quite frankly. You've probably heard of that for years, right? Their Integrated Work System. And in my prior professional life, I had the blessing of being able to see that in action, right? We made some large acquisitions of Procter & Gamble businesses, and I got to see the impact of that culture, that work system coming into, you know, a company that didn't have that before. And, you know, we're actually blessed to have the team, much of the team that implemented that in my prior life, doing it now at TreeHouse. So I've seen that system work. And it's more than just a lean system, right? It's about total employee involvement, right? And it makes the work much more satisfying. It makes it more rewarding to the employee. So I actually think we have a bigger opportunity than we used to have with those systems. Those used systems just to drive cost out, eliminate waste, is what you'll hear them talk about. I think now it makes the job more rewarding. And one of the toughest battles we fight isn't market share or consumer growth or those things. It's manufacturing employees on a third shift in a rural market in America, and so we need to be that employer of choice. So I think our work system will drive cost, and we can talk about that if we like, you know, but it will also drive, reliability, and it will drive engagement in our factories. And we're getting the cost out, we know that. I think the reliability and the engagement is gonna be the big win going forward. It's, you know, you've set out a pretty robust multi-year productivity target of $250 million in cost savings from 2024 - 2027. Can you speak a bit to the sort of visibility you have in achieving the target? What some of the main focus areas are, where you think the company is well positioned to operate, you know, more efficiently than it does today? Sure. Yeah, I can start on that. So, you know, we think there's three main areas that drive the productivity targets for us. The first is the TMOS activities that we talked about. So we think that delivers $125 million of gross cost savings over the 2024 - 2027 period. And, you know, we've seen really nice success where we've deployed TMOS. I think on our second quarter earnings call, we tried to talk about the fact that in those plants and those lines where we've deployed TMOS, we've seen 5%-15% efficiency improvement in those lines. And so that's cost efficiency, that's getting more product out the door, that's improving levels of service. And so we're encouraged by the progress that we've made. You know, in the Princeton plant, we not only created production capacity of 8 million lbs, but we also eliminated $2 million of waste that was in the system. And so those are just good snippets of how does that, how does that program work, and what are some of the benefits that's driving. And we continue to see really great opportunity across the other plants in which we operate, to drive similar type results in those plants. You know, the second area of cost savings that we think about a lot is procurement cost savings, and that's worth about $100 million in our mind. And so, you know, over the last several years, given the environment in which we operated, it wasn't a prudent time to go undertake cost savings and procurement exercise. We now think, given the stability of the broader marketplace, we have a better opportunity at this point to go do that, given the stability of the supply chain. And so, you know, we'll work with our vendors. We've started scoping that out here in the fourth quarter. We'll start to take action into the early part of 2024. So we think as we ramp in 2024, there's the opportunity to start to realize some of those savings. And then I think the last area that we highlighted has to do with our freight and our network consolidation. You know, post the meal prep divestiture, we obviously had a lot of distribution points. We continued to operate on a TSA. We recently hit a major milestone for us, which was that we were able to separate our distribution networks, at least for now. We're still operating systems and things in the background, but that allows us to go optimize our own distribution network. So we have the opportunity to go take our inventory, put it through the customer, operate with less distribution points, use less lanes, drive less miles overall. And so we think, you know, we have line of sight. This is a multi-phase project. We're well underway on that, and we think we'll start to see about $25 million of those savings that'll start to accumulate in 2024 from a top-line perspective. I think overall, we've got pretty good line of sight into where to go to deliver the $250 million, and we've got action plans in place that'll start to deliver those savings in 2024 and help us on our 8%-10% EBIT improvement, which mostly will be driven through margin. Maybe pivoting to a couple of near-term-oriented questions. You know, volumes in the most recent second quarter were down about 7% year-over-year. And it was a combination of a shift in timing of shipments that helped your company over-deliver in the first quarter, the lapping of prior exits of low-margin business, some distribution losses, poor performance in the sort of 10%-15% of the business that's more co-manufacturing and supports more premium brands, and then perhaps some, you know, we described it a little bit as the general sort of slowdown in the industry as a whole. I guess despite this, you sounded increasingly confident, right on the call, that TreeHouse should be able to deliver volume growth in your second half. I guess, is that still the expectation? And if so, what assumptions are driving the expectations? Yeah, I can talk about that. So this is a question we've gotten once or twice on the follow-up since the call. 400 times. 400 times, yeah, roughly. You know, so, as we thought about the first half of the year, and maybe just to go back, as we guided the year, we expected the first half of the year to be largely driven by pricing. So when you take that H1 performance, which I think eliminates some of the timing noise, and that's a better comparison, you know, we had 14% pricing, and then -4% volume growth. So the volume was driven by some of the things that you described. I mean, we intentionally exited a business, and they're roughly equal in terms of magnitude on that 4%. We exited some low-margin business. We will sunset that now after the second quarter, so that's no longer a headwind for us as we head into the back half of the year. You know, some of the co-manufacturing business, we expect that will continue to be somewhat challenged. We sort of expected that would be a part of the math as we entered the year because of the pressure we were seeing on branded volumes and where consumers were really stretching their dollar. They were spending less on premium brands. And then, you know, certainly the consumption was down. And so as we think about the back half of the year, you know, we are lapping what were some of our lowest levels of service in 2022. We're in Q3 and Q4. So you have 93%-94% service. So we've got a tailwind now of four to five points, depending on the quarter of improved service, where, whatever demand is available to us, we will be able to go service in the back half of the year, which is a different position than we were in last year. As we contemplate that, and if there continues to be some consumer softness, you know, we saw, you know, roughly flat in Q1 and down 1%-2% in Q2. You know, at that level, you know, we think the math still suggests that, you know, we, we could drive volume growth in the back half of the year. So you're really lapping these business exits. You've got improved service to service all the demand. If that demand is slightly softer than what you might have anticipated, we still think that equals volume growth, given the volumes that we'd be able to process. Great. You're guiding for, I think, both sequential and year-over-year gross margin improvement in the second half of the year. I guess, what gives you confidence that this can be achieved? And I guess more importantly, how do investors think about the margin potential of the business beyond 2023? Yeah, I can take that one as well. So as we think about the margin potential for the business, you know, as a lot of what I described from a cost savings initiative a minute ago is all coming through margin. And so the things that we talked about from a procurement where we've got line of sight, our TMOS activities, we're really excited about, given some of the early progress that we've seen in the plants where we've deployed, and we know that there continues to be great opportunities. So I think the thing that gives us confidence is we're now operating in a more stabilized supply chain environment, where we can get after the things that we weren't able to do in the... You know, a couple of years ago in terms of procurement, even just having our labor force focused on those things and not chasing ingredients or components or deliveries, and spending their time on those types of things. And so you're in a more stabilized environment where we've got service that is now back to target levels, and so that creates better opportunities for us to go continue to go drive those, you know, supply chain savings that we think drive a lot of it. And so when you think about our margin potential over the next few years, we think we're exiting this year at a EBITDA run rate of about $400 million. And so a lot of that is coming through our supply chain savings as we exit the year, and then we've got line of sight for next year. And so as we move into next year, we think we're in a good spot where we've eliminated a lot of what was the disruption over the last few years, and that gives us better confidence to be able to execute in terms of where we're at. TreeHouse has done a great job at working down leverage, right, to the low end of the company's long-term target of three to 3.5 times. And you noted at the beginning of Investor Day, you expect to generate upwards of $800 million in free cash flow between 2024 and 2027. How are you thinking about capital allocation priorities over the next couple of years? Yeah. So as we think about capital allocation, I think we recognize our ability to deliver on our near-term and medium-term financial commitments is gonna be predicated on a very disciplined capital allocation approach. And so, you know, the board and the management team are very focused on selecting those investments that we think deliver the highest return to shareholders. And we think that will come through a couple of areas. We, we think the number one priority continues to be investing back in the business. And so that'll come in a couple of forms. It'll be some of the capability build that we just talked about in terms of the coffee acquisition or the seasoned pretzel capability acquisition. Those are opportunities for us to continue to invest in the business. But we, we do intend to continue to invest from a capital perspective as well. We anticipate spending 3%-3.5% of revenue on CapEx. You know, in the near term, that's probably 50/50 split between growth capital, which would be some of those things that I described earlier in terms of cracker capacity expansion, seasoned pretzel equipment, and the like, that we think provides us a nice growth pipeline. And then it'll also be split to maintenance, where over the last several years, we've not been able to get OEM manufacturers into our plants during some of the disruption on the supply chain. And so we have the opportunity to go ensure the reliability of our equipment to actually be able to deliver the volumes that we think we can deliver from that perspective. And so investing in the business will continue to be the number one priority. Now, we won't invest in a way that will weaken our balance sheet, and so we'll look to continue to maintain a leverage ratio of three to 3.5 times on a covenant basis. We're at the low end of that today, and so we think we're in a good spot from a leverage perspective. And then last but not least, you know, we will look to opportunistically return capital to shareholders. You know, with the recent change in our share price, we were able to go do that in the market over the last few weeks, and so we repurchased about $50 million worth of shares over the last several weeks in order to return capital to shareholders because we felt like that was an opportunistic time to go do some return capital to shareholders. Thank you. Steve, with private label in general, it's a little bit more of a black box for us as investors, right, in the external world, because we don't get data by TreeHouse specific. But we can track private label trends, whatnot, but it's a lot harder to track what you're doing with specific customers, you know, specific customer wins, losses, all of those sorts of things. So if there's something that you think, investors maybe are missing or aren't maybe appreciating enough in terms of what you're seeing specifically in your business, that we can't track as easily from the external data now that this big divestiture of some of the meal prep business is behind you, some of the supply chain or a lot of the supply chain issues are now behind you. I guess, what are we maybe not appreciating as much? Because the valuation certainly suggests there's not as much of an appreciation. And what do you most look forward to, you touched on it a little bit earlier, now that you can go after maybe some of this business in a much more front-footed way? Yeah, supply chain issue behind you. Well, you know, I think we built this... We chose the categories we're in. We did this purposefully, right? The demand for our categories, you know, because they're growing consumer-friendly categories, right? So the relationship with the retailer on the businesses that we go- to- market with today is dramatically different than what we had before, right? We view bid cycles as opportunities. We don't view them as risk, right? We view this as if we're excited about the coffee bids that'll come to market next year, right? Those are all new opportunities for TreeHouse. So we think there's more opportunity for the company than ever before. We think we have a balance sheet and a capital structure, you know, and our debt structure is really favorable right now. So we're in a position where we can make quick, opportunistic things like we did with Farmer Brothers, like we did with you know, Koops Pretzels. So we have opportunities to invest, to accelerate the pace of that. And then the one other, the question you asked, you know, about the one other change and the investments in our business. The good news about the savings dollars that we've committed to the marketplace, we can drive our our margin returns inside the buildings. We don't have to go get it from the customer. We don't have to go to battle for higher prices or for those kinds of things. We see a line of sight to the cost savings to drive our EBITDA growth inside our buildings, so those are under our control. That's a very different place than where we were just a couple of years ago. So, you know, look, we thought our stock price dislocated after the last quarter, quite frankly, right? And we bought $50 million in the stock, which was a great buy, all right? This is webcast, so we can now just say that, right? And what we- We want you to write that down. No, you can write it down. It's webcast. But so the beauty of that is that we now have flexibility to really implement a growth strategy, to do our capital allocation strategy, and we are in categories where those opportunities exist. So we're gonna go prove it to you. I mean, the market, I think, is saying, "Prove it to me. Mm-hmm. And so we have a team of people dedicated to do that, and we got to do it. We thought we did it last quarter quite frankly. We thought we did it the quarter before. We'll continue to do it, you know, over the next couple of quarters, and hopefully, we'll have different results. With your optimized, you know, portfolio, is it only optimistic to suggest that maybe the percentage of your business that now has more frequent RFPs has come in? Or looking at it the other way, do you have more multi-year contracts maybe than you might have had before? Because now you're in a much more reliable, valuable partner- Yeah. with deeper capabilities in the categories in which you've chosen to play as a private label supplier. Yeah. I think also the pandemic changed the way the retailer looks at the supply chain, right? And I mean, they recognize the importance of a well-capitalized partner. Mm-hmm. Okay? So I think the work we've done to capitalize ourselves to deliver, I think our service level stood tall. Now, nobody was perfect. We were not perfect, but our service levels comparatively stood up tall through the pandemic in most of our categories. So I think that relationship is as strong as it's ever been. I just—I was on a top to top last week with one of our strategic customers. They're excited about the investments we're making in crackers. They were excited about our coffee, and they, they're a customer of that business. They're excited about us owning it, right? Yeah. And so that tells me that the retailer sees us very differently than they used to. Right. In terms of tracking or thinking forward about potential consumer behavior, you know, you mentioned a lot of the work you're doing now on innovation, really benefits ultimately next year. Yeah. In seeing where your key retail partners wanna go with their private label business, maybe in the back half of this year and in 2024, as almost as a leading indicator, are you seeing a stepped-up level of sort of focus by key retail partners about what they expect to do with private label maybe next year, versus what might have been the case, you know, a year and a half or two years ago? Sure. Sure. The new items you see in private label are a victim of the last couple of years, right? The lack of new items, I should say. So the things you'll see, you know, you'll see the work we're doing today. You'll see it six, nine months from now, right? You'll see that level. So yes, I would say that innovation cycle was started with Innovation Center in Downers Grove, Illinois, and we've had more meetings there than we've had in years, right? So we're starting that cycle again. I also think they're interested in seasonals. We're gonna have merchandising this fall, we haven't had for a number of years. So they're excited, you know, probably more important for all of the reasons I talked earlier, really to build that relationship and loyalty. But also, in these tough times, they wanna show value. They want a value alternative on one of the end caps. And so having the opportunity to put private label back on an end cap in a retail store is a big deal to them. So I think we'll see that as we go into the fall. Merchandised categories that haven't been merchandised in years. There'll be a lot of merchandising, as we know, but it's all merchandised. We're used to that happening, but private will be back in the game this fall. So that's exciting. And the innovation pipeline has started to roll again. That gives us faith, you know, going into the next couple of years. I assume with the portfolio, the way it's shaped today, innovation in the categories in which you've chosen to play matter more in private label than maybe with some of the, let's say, more commoditized categories where it might not have mattered as much. Is that a fair? Oh, I think so. I mean, I think you think about coffee, right? The coffee in a retailer, most retailers' coffee brand is a brand, right? It's an experiential thing. Some of them have roasters and have coffee shops in their stores. And so if you think about that, that's a really important experiential element to the retailer. Cookies and crackers are that way, snack food is that way. So yeah, I think it's gonna be a very interesting near term. And you look at the mass retail, you look at all the different channels that are leaning in, the value, the number of hard discount stores being built right now, right, by those two big, you know, European vendors or European retailers. So, I think we'll see a lot going on over the next—I mean, and, and we're part of that, so we're in the middle of it. It's fun. I can tell you the meetings are a lot more fun than they were the last couple of years, right? The last couple of years were about recovering commodity costs and trying to get service. Today, they're about how to build the future and how to build brands. So price gaps matter, you know, when it comes to the private label vis-a-vis brands. I guess, what are you seeing currently in price gaps, and how would you anticipate that unfolds, you know, as we start to lap a lot of the pricing, and, you know, would hope that, you know, if inflation stays at just a more modest level of inflation, not outright deflation, how does that price gap tend to work in that kind of environment? Yeah, I can start there. So you know, I think we've seen price gaps narrow slightly in 2023 as compared to 2022, when they were an all-time high. But I would say they're still elevated relative to history, and if I call 2019 sort of normal history or reference point, you know, we're still well above that. I, I think some of the, the contraction of the price gaps have to do with, just, you know, some of the, the trade activity we're seeing from some of the branded competitors are shrinking those price gaps, but we're seeing more promotion, from the brands. Yet still at an elevated level, you know, not at the levels they were in 2019. And so I, I think the price gaps are interesting, and you stare at them at a percent basis, but when you're a consumer in a retail grocery shop staring at an aisle, those price gaps as a whole dollar amount are very significant when you're choosing your basket of goods, particularly when you have a, a limited budget and you're trying to fill your, your shopping cart. And so I think the retailers recognize private label is a very unique offering to drive value and to drive loyalty in their stores, and it's been a very good option. And so I, I would say we're not sort of threatened by the, the narrowing of the price gaps because we, private label, continue to gain share even in history in 2019, when those price gaps were narrower than they are today. But certainly, it provides an interesting opportunity in the short term, that provides a whole dollar savings that's very meaningful given the level of inflation. I think the last, Steve, are there any relatively large potential customers that TreeHouse doesn't serve right now in terms of private label that could be, you know, incremental customers? Or is it more a matter of saying, "Look, we're operating with a customer that really value, you know, high quality private label option, and there's just way more ground to cover with them rather than incremental customers as a whole," or maybe it's both? You know, I, I think we serve most of those opportunities—of, of those customers you would call those high-value opportunities in some categories. But we have categories like our coffee business will be transformed now, right? And so there's a lot of opportunity across our business with, with retailers that we would all cherish their business, right? And so I think there are big opportunities for us. There are big opportunities in snacking for us. There's, there's opportunities in, in our cracker business. So across each individual category, we have large opportunities. And the good news is we serve all those customers, and so it's not a logistics challenge, it's a logistics opportunity. It's not a... You know what I mean? It allows us to leverage our scale against those different customers by bringing them another opportunity. So, there's plenty of opportunity in the categories we participate in today. There's some segments we don't quite serve that we're working really hard on, and we'll share those as we go forward. We're excited about them. Good. All right, it's a good place to cut it off. Why don't we head over to the breakout and thank you, Steve and Pat, for being here. Great. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Thank you.