Good morning, everyone. I'm Kelly Bania, Food Retail Analyst at BMO Capital. Happy to have this opportunity to have a fireside chat here with US Foods, the second largest food service distributor in the U.S. We're just going to dive right in, given the short meeting here. But thanks to ICR for hosting another great conference, and thanks for taking the time to meet with everybody. Thank you. So just, obviously, to my left, CEO Dave Flitman and CFO Dirk Locascio. I have a million questions, as usual, but maybe we can start with some opening prepared remarks, if that makes sense. Just a couple of things I wanted to say for maybe those that aren't as familiar with the story. But good morning, Kelly, and thanks for doing this. Look, from a competitive standpoint, we have distinct competitive advantages in our industry. I just wanted to highlight those quickly. First of all, in our space, we're the only pure-play U.S.-only focused distributor, and I think that matters. Our story is a bit simpler than others, but importantly, inside the company, it allows us to focus in a really deep way on the things that are going to matter in broad line distribution. Secondly, we're the only ones that are focused on the three fastest growing and most profitable customer types in the space, that being independent restaurants, health care, and hospitality. And importantly, we've been at those three targeted customer types for a very long time and have a long track record of taking profitable market share, and we expect that will continue. Third, we have been and continue to be the industry leader in digital technology. That's an area we pride ourselves on. And at the heart of why we drive digital is to make it easier for our customers to do business for us. And we also believe there's an increment of sales force productivity and uplift because of that digital technology. Excitingly, ours is very much a self-help story. We've talked a lot about our initiatives in both gross profit, operating expenses, and we expect that work to continue into our new long-range plan. Excited about our new long-range plan. We're excited about the one we're just wrapping up here in 2024. We laid out in June the fastest growth algorithm in the industry, and we've got a lot of confidence in being able to hit that. Importantly, that growth algorithm is underpinned by $4 billion of cash flow that we expect to generate over the next three years, with about $2 billion of that being deployed to share repurchases. We've got a great model. We've been winning. We're excited about the future, and we've got good momentum going into 2025. Great. Maybe just to follow on that, Dave, it's been two years, really, since almost exactly you've been with the company. So just maybe start with a reflection on the progress that you've been able to make in those two years, the receptivity to the changes you're making, just kind of a look back at those first two years. Yeah, I think we've had a great first two years with the organization. I mean, it was everything I hoped when I was contemplating the change two and a half years ago coming in here. We've got an organization that's highly focused on the customer, and that's really important. It matters a lot in distribution. I just reflect back on the long-range plan that we're finishing up here, and we'll talk more about that in a couple of weeks when we have our earnings release. But I had the opportunity to change that and modify that when I came in. And I know there were a lot of questions about whether we could do what the company had said before I joined we were going to do. And I was pretty thoughtful about that over the first six months, and I did not change it. And the reason I didn't change it, there are a couple of reasons. One is we were largely the organization was focused in the right areas. I didn't see a lot of voids and things that the organization should be doing that they weren't. But importantly, I brought an element of focus and a strong bent towards execution since I've gotten here. And to your last question, I think the organization's been really receptive to all that. OK. Maybe to just follow on that, so the three-year outlook you outlined, very detailed plan this summer. I guess as you think about that plan, where do you see the most upside to that? Where do you see the most risk to achieving that, and I think the particular focus maybe on the top line target of that 5%-8% kind of top line over that three-year period. Yeah, so we were very thoughtful, obviously, before we put those targets out there, and as I said earlier, it's the fastest growth algorithm in the industry, and we've got a lot of confidence in being able to hit those targets. A couple of things I would say importantly is, first of all, we've got really good momentum in all areas of the P&L, and we have for quite some time. That obviously informed the targets that we put out there. Secondly, to your concern around case growth, ours is very much a self-help story, first of all, and I think the third quarter, our most recently reported quarter, just underpins. In the quarter that's been the lowest foot traffic in the restaurant space since the COVID recovery, we actually hit the new growth algorithm. And I think that's an important point for people maybe who aren't as confident in our ability to do that. We've done it without any macro tailwind. I think that's an important point, and I want to just emphasize that point. In terms of upside to the plan, I think we're still in the early innings, Kelly, of the self-help work that we've been working on here for the past couple of years. And I think that's going to carry the day. When you think about gross profit, the things that we're doing to drive private label penetration with our customers, importantly, that saves them a bunch of money. And those cases are twice as profitable for us as a manufacturer brand. The work we've been doing for a long time now around strategic vendor management. I just point out that we do that very much in a partnership with our suppliers. It's not a punitive thing. Importantly, those suppliers, those manufacturers are really looking for growth. So our ability to continue to outpace the market growth in those three customer types that we're driving is a really important key to the success that we're having with that work. Then the last point I would make around the case growth, 2024 was some noise in it, given the macro and all that, low foot traffic. But importantly, if you go back to 2023, we hit that 5%-8% in every quarter in 2023. That also informs our confidence to put those targets out there. We feel good about the momentum, and we feel good about the targets. That's a good point. I want to follow up on the restaurant traffic because that gets a lot of attention. Everyone sees the numbers. Others are talking about it. But you have been able to hit your targets despite what is happening at restaurant traffic. So I guess the question is. Importantly, we're not doing anything crazy. We're doing that in a sustainable way for the business. Do you think there's too much focus on that by investors? And how positive could that be if restaurant traffic did start to improve? Would that be kind of an upside? It seems like maybe your plan assumes a very conservative assumption for restaurant traffic is the point I'm trying to get at. Yeah. Obviously, I understand the focus that investors have on it. It's kind of the lifeblood of the industry and the growth. But I'd point out to, since 1970, all but a handful of years, food away from home has outpaced food at home. We expect we don't see anything on the horizon that would change that trend over the long term. But just like in other areas, things ebb and flow. Obviously, I'd like to have a stronger macro. We'd benefit from that. The other point I made in the third quarter, and Dirk and I talk a lot about this, our ability to continue to take market share is extremely important. And we did that in a relatively soft macro environment in the third quarter. And if you recall, we actually accelerated our market share gains from Q2 to Q3. OK, when the macro comes back, we're going to be in an even stronger position with our customers. So we're running our playbook. It's working, and we've got a lot of confidence in our execution. One more kind of on this topic, and then I want to switch gears. But what do you think is the hindrance for better restaurant traffic? And you've seen some of kind of the value players get maybe a little bit more aggressive. Do you think the restaurants need to do more of that? What other pain points are you hearing from your restaurant customers today? I think, obviously, there's been a lot of pain for the consumer. I think that's the driver. But as you look at the operator, just think about pre-COVID and the costs that they've absorbed since then in terms of inflation, labor cost inflation. Interest rates haven't been their friend in terms of lease cost and the thing. So there's been a lot of cost pressure. And that's why it's so important that our playbook gets run effectively for our customers, because a lot of what we do, including our private label brands, helps reduce their cost to operate. The work that we do with MOXē makes it a more efficient and seamless engagement with us. They don't spend the time dealing with that. We talk a lot about our products and the time that it saves them in the kitchen. Our private label brands oftentimes are pre-cooked, pre-packaged, and we're saving them 30-60 minutes per case. That matters in a high labor environment. So I think those challenges just play to our model very well. That makes sense. I guess a couple of questions on market share. So you mentioned the focus areas that the company has been focused on for many years. You have a 10% total market share, but then you have a higher share with independents and health care and hospitality. I think those numbers outlined at the Analyst Day were 18%. So I guess the question that we often get is just about the competitive cycles within those different segments, whether it be independents, which is usually the big focus, health care and hospitality, and then other chains. So how would you rate the competition in each one of those segments, and how does your market share position kind of influence how that plays out? I'll start and ask Dirk to give a little historical color on that. The way I couch our industry in those segments and just broadly with food service distribution, it's a very fragmented industry. It's highly competitive just by nature. We saw that change a little bit during COVID. I think I would couch this as a very normalized competitive environment, which is always highly, highly competitive. Oh, Is that my interference necklace? Give me one to just put it on the inside. Sorry. There you go. That's me. Just getting that right here. But I don't see anything more or less competitive than we have historically. Dirk's got a lot more time with the organization. I don't know if you want to weigh in there? I think that's exactly right. And then the other thing with our focus in those three areas is, so they are typically the three most profitable, the biggest profit pool in the industry, and the area where we think we can differentiate the most. And so whether it's the technology, the service models, and that's what we've continued to double down on in serving those customers more effectively and differentiating. And so from a share perspective, that's why we over-index and why you'll expect us to continue to talk about gaining share, a focus on those three types. Other customer types, such as chains, like we've said, all chains aren't good and aren't bad. We're going to continue to optimize that and serve where it makes sense. But back to the point of the differentiation, that focus in those three customer types is what we're going to continue to double down on. And that market share gain, that's an important part of our self-help story that Dave talked about. It's about self-help on the top line. It's self-help and gross profit and self-help and productivity, all driving that fastest industry algorithm. One of the questions I often get that I thought would be good to address was just with all the advantages that the Big Three have, scale, you guys are definitely kind of positioned as a leader on some of the technology front, but even private label. The question I often get is, why are the Big Three not gaining more share? What are those smaller kind of competitors? What do they do well, and what can you learn from them to kind of incorporate into kind of your strategy as well? Yeah, I think the smaller players have been around a long time. They're typically local or at best regional. They compete in two areas, I think, really well. One is relationship, local relationship, and second is service. You've heard me say a lot that I don't think that anyone has been consistently excellent in service in this industry. We aim to turn that into a competitive weapon through time. That's why we're so excited about the momentum we have on improving our service levels. Just a quick aside on that. When we went into COVID, we started to measure our service to our customers differently. We measured it a success if we were able to satisfy the customer order with substituted products. Going into 2024, we changed that and went back to measuring it the way the customer feels it. They want what they order on time and full every time. When you hear me comment and say that we're reaching historically high service levels in the company, it's that measurement. It's on time and full with exactly what the customer ordered. We've got a lot of work to do, but I feel really good about the momentum we've gotten over the last couple of years in that area. And these venues, we talk a lot about all the things we have on self-help within the P&L. And so to Dave's point, we've also got a similar series of activities going on service, quality, safety that are really around that customer experience since research has shown us over the years that no one is really that differentiated. So improving our experience that we provide to the customer is an important part and another set of things that we're doing to continue to improve. OK. And I guess the key focus for the key KPI, I guess, is always the independent case growth, given the margin structure there. I think you've talked about a 30%-50% leverage on the growth of the sales force and how that results in case growth. So I guess, has anything changed over time with that formula, whether it's MOXē or different tools that you're giving to your sellers, or is that kind of a formula that we should think about going forward once that sales rep gets to maturity? I think that's been a historically valid way to think about it, and I think it'll be the right way to think about it going forward. There's a lot of dynamics that goes into individual sellers' productivity, particularly with the new hires. It depends on their background and whether they've been in the industry a while, what role they've had if they have been, or whether they come from outside the industry. And we hire all of that. And so we've got a mix of talent coming on all the time. But I think it's steady state, that 30%-50% is the right way absolutely to think about it. Okay, and what about the other question we get a lot about is comp structures for that sales force, and there had been some changes. How is that going? What's the feedback from your sales reps, and should we anticipate any more changes? So look, we get this question a lot. I think there's too much made about the tweak we made a year ago. And let me just describe that for you. Predominantly, that change was moving from 70% fixed and 30% variable back to a more balanced 50/50, which is the way the company operated prior to COVID. So we're basically just going back to where we were. We made a couple of other tweaks around making sure we had the right incentives in place for our private label brands, for instance. Largely, that was accepted well by the sales force. We did not thoughtfully make any changes going into 2025, but that doesn't mean we would never change anything going forward. That's something we'll always constantly review and make sure we're hitting the sweet spot and getting the behavior we need out of our sales force, but feel good about where we are right now. OK. That's great. Another question, big topic, obviously. New administration coming in next week. Tariffs has been a big topic. What are you looking at that we've seen so far from this administration that could be impactful to US Foods either way, positive or negative? Dirk, do you want to take that one? Sure. So we're following the broad range of things closely, like a lot of companies. But our expectation is it's probably less of an impact for us in our industry than a lot of others. Two main areas that we focus on. One is you made reference to tariffs. We think it'll be less of an impact for our industry just because the bulk of the product comes from within the U.S. A couple of examples. So produce, for example, sometimes of the year comes from places like Mexico, and you have some non-food products that come in from overseas. But the bulk is within the U.S., so pretty limited impact there. The other place would be around taxes. So for us, being a wholly U.S. company, we probably are not the example of paying our fair share of taxes. We do pay our fair share. There's only so much tax planning you can do. So to the extent there were any reductions in tax rates, we would probably pretty fully benefit from that. So those are the two main areas. But again, our expectation overall for our whole industry would be pretty limited at this point. Good. OK. Makes sense. And then, Dave, you mentioned the work that you're doing with suppliers. And the way that kind of you outlined it on the next three-year plan, it's a pretty significant contributor to that EBITDA growth and that bottom line growth. So maybe can we just talk about that in more detail? You sound like it's really a partnership. You're really working with those vendors that are driving growth. How can you continue to pull this kind of savings for the organization? What should we expect with your SKU count going forward? Just help us understand how you execute a program like this. Yeah. So we've been at it for a long time. Dirk describes this as the third or fourth cycle he's seen in his tenure with the company. But importantly, it is predicated, Kelly, on the growth that we're able to achieve, and that's a consistent performance that our vendors have seen. We very much do that in partnership with our vendors. So as we're able to provide that outsized growth in certain products that they have, they're willing to incent us in a number of ways. That could be a rebate. That could be marketing dollars to market their products or other areas to combined drive growth for the industry. We've been at it for a long time. Our vendors are excited about the future. Importantly, we said recently we would deliver $230 million in the LRP. We're just wrapping up and accelerate that to $260 million. There are a couple of things that we started to do differently in that work in 2024 that helps them form that future target. One of those I'd point to is the tail of our vendors. So think about smaller vendors in size and scale with less products. That's an area the company really historically did not focus on. It's a little more complicated. It's more tedious, just the number of vendors involved. We got after that in an aggressive way in the back half of 2024. And then secondly, historically, it's been at the vendor level that we've thought about it. We started to tweak our approach, still underpinned with that vendor approach, but started to look deeper in the product categories, category by category, to make sure that we're thinking about those categories right in terms of the number of products, the number and types of vendors that we have in those areas, and so I think those couple of areas, on top of the work we've historically done, will help inform the future target. OK. That's very helpful. The other thing that seems to kind of be rolling out very smoothly is the new routing system, which is a big change, I would think, to execute that at a DC level. So I think you're up to maybe almost 50% of the miles maybe by now. But maybe just an update on that, the feedback that you're getting from both sales and operations as you've kind of rolled that out. Sure. Dirk, do you want to? Sure. So you're right on track to be about 50% of miles at this point and expect to largely be done end of 2025, and as we, like with new technologies, again, we went slow in the beginning, and then now we've been in full deployment through there, and overall, we're able to deliver a better service experience to the customer from an on-time perspective. As we've deployed it, what we've done is we've taken advantage of a number of the capabilities, but you haven't fully turned the dials. What we don't want is we don't want sales, operations, customer to feel like their experience is extremely different versus take advantage of some things to slightly improve on time, and then we can continue to improve that experience over time, but we're very pleased. I think the work we did on the front end that we've talked a lot about over the last year and a half on the process side of operations and sales working together really set us up well for the front end work that needed to be done before we rolled out Descartes, and that's really been a key enabler of a successful rollout to date. Just to piggyback on that, that work that Dirk talks about, you can't change routing without impacting the customer. So we've done this in partnership with our customers. When he says that the customer is going to have a better experience, we mean from a service standpoint, hitting the targeted delivery windows every time on time and in full. So we've been able, through this work, to tighten those delivery windows and get them right for the customers. When he said, go slow to go fast, there's a lot of work involved up front before we roll that out in the markets, and we're doing a good job of it. Are you able to, do you have any metrics on service levels in that half that have already had this system deployed versus the other half? Or are you seeing, is there anything you can share on that front? Sure. Without specific numbers, we have seen an improvement in cases per mile in most markets above and beyond. And then the on-time experience, just a better sort of definition of the customer expectation to Dave's point of when they expect the on-time. And then seeing as it gets implemented, see that continue to improve. And our expectation is that will continue. Perfect. And then maybe just, I thought, I think we have two or three minutes left. Maybe just an update on the acquisitions. The past few years, we've had Saladino's, Renzi, IWC. How are integrations going? What have we learned so far? And what are the key priorities going forward as you think about M&A? I'll just hit this quickly and then flip it to Dirk. We're excited about all three of them. They're going extremely well at or better than what we anticipated when we acquired them. Our M&A strategy is very much tuck-ins, and when I say tuck-ins, it's the smaller local acquisitions that we're targeting. I love our footprint. We're in all the major MSAs across the country. The opportunity in what we did with each one of those acquisitions was improve our local market density and get more efficient in how we get our products to the customers. That was really the strategy behind all those, and we're quite pleased with the progress, and Dirk can talk a little bit about the integration work that we've done there. Yeah. And that local density and the integration is an important part that you'll probably continue to hear as we talk about future acquisitions. And what we're focusing on is going to continue to be, as Dave said, the broad line tuck-ins. And it's those where they have a strong mix of independence. They have a strong focus on the customer. We think would be good cultural fits and help us take miles out of the system by being closer to the customers. And each of the one in New York, the one in Nashville are good examples of doing that. And then when we do integrate them, we do bring them onto our systems. But we have a very thoughtful process, again, because we want to make sure that whether it's the local team, the customers, they realize that things aren't changing overnight, that the experience they're used to and the service, we're going to continue that. And we're going to build on with some of the advantages from US Foods, the things we talked about earlier today, the technology, the added product assortment, et cetera. And then over the first typically year, we will then bring them onto our systems as well. OK. We have one minute left. Maybe, Dirk, just for you, one of the different elements about the next three-year plan is really the free cash flow and particularly the free cash flow that's being allocated towards buybacks. So maybe can you comment on just the thought process there? And from my point of view, I don't know if the Street is modeling all of that in. Maybe some are just a little bit more conservative on that front, given it's a multi-year kind of plan there. But just the thought process and how you looked at that allocation of that, I think it's $4 billion over the next three years. That's right. That's right. $4 billion of cash flow as a result of the strong P&L algorithm that we've outlined. We will continue to invest in a very healthy way in the business and CapEx to continue to maintain and expand the business. We don't need much from a debt paydown. We do see leverage, which is already a very healthy place. We finished the third quarter at 2.8 times, well within our two to three times target range. We expect to see that drift down some over the period, but more through earnings growth versus debt paydown. We've spent a lot of energy over the last few years getting our leverage to a very healthy place, and I feel good about our capital structure. And then we'll continue to opportunistically pursue tuck-in M&A. And that leaves the roughly $2 billion towards share repurchases. The combination of looking at what one of our competitors traded at pre-COVID, plus what we would expect a share price to do with the earnings outlook we have, I feel like it's a very good use of capital over the period of time. Happy to deploy it in that way and take advantage of the strong cash flow the business is operating both from and generating from earnings as well from effective working capital management. Perfect. Good. We're just going to dive right in, given the short meeting here. But thanks to ICR for hosting another great conference, and thanks for taking the time to meet with everybody. Thank you. So just obviously to my left, CEO Dave Flitman and CFO Dirk Locascio. I have a million questions as usual, but maybe we can start with some opening prepared remarks, if that makes sense. Just a couple of things I wanted to say for maybe those that aren't as familiar with the story. But good morning, Kelly, and thanks for doing this. Look, from a competitive standpoint, we have distinct competitive advantages in our industry. I just wanted to highlight those quickly. First of all, in our space, we're the only pure- play U.S. only focused distributor. And I think that matters. Our story is a bit simpler than others, but importantly, inside the company, it allows us to focus in a really deep way on the things that are going to matter in broad line distribution. Secondly, we're the only ones that are focused on the three fastest growing and most profitable customer types in the space, that being independent restaurants, health care, and hospitality. And importantly, we've been at those three targeted customer types for a very long time and have a long track record of taking profitable market share, and we expect that will continue. Third, we have been and continue to be the industry leader in digital technology. That's an area we pride ourselves on. And at the heart of why we drive digital is to make it easier for our customers to do business for us. And we also believe there's an increment of sales force productivity and uplift because of that digital technology. Excitingly, ours is very much a self-help story. We've talked a lot about our initiatives in both gross profit, operating expenses, and we expect that work to continue into our new long range plan. Excited about our new long range plan. We're excited about the one we're just wrapping up here in 2024. But we laid out in June the fastest growth algorithm in the industry, and we've got a lot of confidence in being able to hit that. And importantly, that growth algorithm is underpinned by $4 billion of cash flow that we expect to generate over the next three years, with about $2 billion being deployed to share repurchases. So we've got a great model. We've been winning. We're excited about the future, and we've got good momentum going into 2025. Great. Maybe just to follow on that, Dave, it's been two years really since almost exactly you've been with the company. So just maybe start with a reflection on the progress that you've been able to make in those two years, the receptivity to the changes you're making, just kind of a look back at those first two years. Yeah. I think we've had a great first two years with the organization. I mean, it was everything I hoped when I was contemplating the change two and a half years ago coming in here. We've got an organization that's highly focused on the customer, and that's really important. It matters a lot in distribution. I just reflect back on the long range plan that we're finishing up here, and we'll talk more about that in a couple of weeks when we have our earnings release. But I had the opportunity to change that and modify that when I came in. And I know there were a lot of questions about whether we could do what the company had said before I joined we're going to do. And I was pretty thoughtful about that over the first six months, and I did not change it. The reason I didn't change it, there are a couple of reasons. One is we were largely, the organization was focused in the right areas. I didn't see a lot of voids and things that the organization should be doing that they weren't. Importantly, I brought an element of focus and a strong bent towards execution since I've gotten here. To your last question, I think the organization's been really receptive to all that. OK. Maybe to just follow on that, so the three-year outlook you outlined, very detailed plan this summer. I guess as you think about that plan, where do you see the most upside to that? Where do you see the most risk to achieving that? And I think the particular focus maybe on the top line target of that 5%-8% kind of top line over that three-year period. Yeah. So we were very thoughtful, obviously, before we put those targets out there. And as I said earlier, it's the fastest growth algorithm in the industry, and we've got a lot of confidence in being able to hit those targets. A couple of things I would say importantly is, first of all, we've got really good momentum in all areas of the P&L, and we have for quite some time. That obviously informed the targets that we put out there. Secondly, to your concern around case growth, ours is very much a self-help story, first of all. And I think the third quarter, our most recently reported quarter, just underpins, in the quarter that's been the lowest foot traffic in the restaurant space since the COVID recovery, we actually hit the new growth algorithm. And I think that's an important point for people maybe who aren't as confident in our ability to do that. We've done it without any macro tailwind. I think that's an important point, and I want to just emphasize that point. In terms of upside to the plan, I think we're still in the early innings, Kelly, of the self-help work that we've been working on here for the past couple of years. And I think that's going to carry the day. When you think about gross profit, the things that we're doing to drive private label penetration with our customers, importantly, that saves them a bunch of money. And those cases are twice as profitable for us as a manufacturer brand. The work we've been doing for a long time now around strategic vendor management. And I just point out that we do that very much in a partnership with our suppliers. It's not a punitive thing. And importantly, those suppliers, those manufacturers are really looking for growth. So our ability to continue to outpace the market growth in those three customer types that we're driving is a really important key to the success that we're having with that work. And then the last point I would make around the case growth, 2024 was some noise in it, given the macro and all that, low foot traffic. But importantly, if you go back to 2023, we hit that 5%-8% in every quarter in 2023. That also informs our confidence to put those targets out there. So we feel good about the momentum, and we feel good about the targets. That's a good point. I want to follow up on the restaurant traffic because that gets a lot of attention. Everyone sees the numbers. Others are talking about it. But you have been able to hit your targets despite what is happening at restaurant traffic. So I guess the question is. Importantly, we're not doing anything crazy. We're doing that in a sustainable way for the business. Right. Do you think there's too much focus on that by investors? And how positive could that be if restaurant traffic did start to improve? Would that be kind of an upside? It seems like maybe your plan assumes a very conservative assumption for restaurant traffic is the point I'm trying to get at. Yeah. Obviously, I understand the focus that investors have on it. It's kind of the lifeblood of the industry and the growth. But I'd point out too, since 1970, all but a handful of years, food away from home has outpaced food at home. We expect we don't see anything on the horizon that would change that trend over the long term. But just like in other areas, things ebb and flow. Obviously, I'd like to have a stronger macro. We'd benefit from that. The other point I made in the third quarter, and Dirk and I talk a lot about this, our ability to continue to take market share is extremely important. And we did that in a relatively soft macro environment in the third quarter. And if you recall, we actually accelerated our market share gains from Q2 to Q3. OK, when the macro comes back, we're going to be in an even stronger position with our customers. So we're running our playbook. It's working, and we've got a lot of confidence in our execution. One more kind of on this topic, and then I want to switch gears. But what do you think is the hindrance for better restaurant traffic? And you've seen some of kind of the value players get maybe a little bit more aggressive. Do you think the restaurants need to do more of that? What are their pain points? Are Are you hearing from your restaurant customers today? Well, I think obviously there's been a lot of pain for the consumer. I think that's the driver. But as you look at the operator, just think about pre-COVID and the costs that they've absorbed since then in terms of inflation, labor cost inflation. Interest rates haven't been their friend in terms of lease cost and the thing. So there's been a lot of cost pressure. And that's why it's so important that our playbook gets run effectively for our customers because a lot of what we do, including our private label brands, helps reduce their cost to operate. The work that we do with MOXē makes it a more efficient and seamless engagement with us. They don't spend the time dealing with that. We talk a lot about our products and the time that it saves them in the kitchen. Our private label brands oftentimes are pre-cooked, pre-packaged, and we're saving them 30 to 60 minutes per case. That matters in a high labor environment. So I think those challenges just play to our model very well. That makes sense. I guess a couple of questions on market share. So you mentioned the focus areas that the company has been focused on for many years. You have a 10% total market share, but then you have a higher share with independents and health care and hospitality. I think those numbers outlined at the analyst day were 18%. So I guess the question that we often get is just about the competitive cycles within those different segments, whether it be independents, which is usually the big focus, health care and hospitality, and then other chains. So how would you rate the competition in each one of those segments? And how does your market share position kind of influence how that plays out? I'll start and ask Dirk to give a little historical color on that. The way I couch our industry in those segments and just broadly with food service distribution, it's a very fragmented industry. It's highly competitive just by nature. We saw that change a little bit during COVID. I think I would couch this as a very normalized competitive environment, which is always highly, highly competitive. Oh, is that my interference? It's your necklace. Give me one second. Just Just put it on the inside. Sorry. There you go. That's me. Just getting that right here. But I don't see anything more or less competitive than we have historically. Dirk's got a lot more time with the organization. I don't know if you want to weigh in there? I think that's exactly right. And then the other thing with our focus in those three areas is, so they are typically the three most profitable, the biggest profit pool in the industry, and the area where we think we can differentiate the most. And so whether it's the technology, the service models, and that's what we've continued to double down on in serving those customers more effectively and differentiating. And so from a share perspective, that's why we over-index and why you'll expect us to continue to talk about gaining share focus on those three types. Other customer types, such as chains, like we've said, all chains aren't good and aren't bad. We're going to continue to optimize that and serve where it makes sense. But back to the point of the differentiation, that focus in those three customer types is what we're going to continue to double down on. And that market share gain, that's an important part of our self-help story that Dave talked about. It's about self-help on the top line. It's self-help and gross profit and self-help and productivity, all driving that fastest industry algorithm. One of the questions I often get that I thought would be good to address was just with all the advantages that the Big Three have, scale, you guys are definitely kind of positioned as a leader on some of the technology front, but even private label. The question I often get is, why are the Big Three not gaining more share? What are those smaller kind of competitors? What do they do well, and what can you learn from them to kind of incorporate into kind of your strategy as well? Yeah. I think the smaller players have been around a long time. They're typically local or at best regional. They compete in two areas, I think, really well. One is relationship, local relationship, and second is service. You've heard me say a lot that I don't think that anyone has been consistently excellent in service in this industry. We aim to turn that into a competitive weapon through time. That's why we're so excited about the momentum we have on improving our service levels. Just a quick aside on that. When we went into COVID, we started to measure our service to our customers differently. We measured it a success if we're able to satisfy the customer order with substituted products. Going into 2024, we changed that, went back to measuring it the way the customer feels it. They want what they order on time and full every time. When you hear me comment and say that we're reaching historically high service levels in the company, it's that measurement. It's on time and full with exactly what the customer ordered. We've got a lot of work to do, but I feel really good about the momentum we've gotten over the last couple of years in that area. You know, in these venues, we talk a lot about all the things we have on self-help within the P&L. And so to Dave's point, we've also got a similar series of activities going on on service, quality, safety that are really around that customer experience since research has shown us over the years that no one is really that differentiated. So improving our experience that we provide to the customer is an important part and another set of things that we're doing to continue to improve. OK. And I guess the key focus for the key KPI, I guess, is always the independent case growth, given the margin structure there. I think you've talked about a 30%-50% leverage on the growth of the sales force and how that results in case growth. So I guess, has anything changed over time with that formula, whether it's MOXē or different tools that you're giving to your sellers, or is that kind of a formula that we should think about going forward once that sales rep gets to maturity? Yeah. I think that's been a historically valid way to think about it. And I think it'll be the right way to think about it going forward. There's a lot of dynamics that goes into individual sellers' productivity, particularly with the new hires. Depends on their background and whether they've been in the industry a while, what role they've had if they have been, or whether they come from outside the industry. And we hire all of that. And so we've got a mix of talent coming on all the time. But I think at steady state, that 30%-50% is the right way absolutely to think about it. OK. And what about the other question we get a lot about is comp structures for that sales force. And there had been some changes. How is that going? What's the feedback from your sales reps? And should we anticipate any more changes? So look, we get this question a lot. I think there's too much made about the tweak we made a year ago. And let me just describe that for you. Predominantly, that change was moving from 70% fixed and 30% variable back to a more balanced 50/50, which is the way the company operated prior to COVID. So we're basically just going back to where we were. We made a couple of other tweaks around making sure we had the right incentives in place for our private label brands, for instance. Largely, that was accepted well by the sales force. We did not thoughtfully make any changes going into 2025, but that doesn't mean we would never change anything going forward. That's something we'll always constantly review and make sure we're hitting the sweet spot and getting the behavior we need out of our sales force, but feel good about where we are right now. OK. That's great. Another question, big topic, obviously. New administration coming in next week. Tariffs has been a big topic. What are you looking at that we've seen so far from this administration that could be impactful to US Foods either way, positive or negative? Dirk, do you want to take that one? Sure. So we're following the broad range of things closely, like a lot of companies. But our expectation is it's probably less of an impact for us in our industry than a lot of others. Two main areas that we focus on. One is you made reference to tariffs. We think it'll be less of an impact for our industry just because the bulk of the product comes from within the U.S. A couple of examples. So produce, for example, some times of the year comes from places like Mexico, and you have some non-food products that come in from overseas. But the bulk is within the U.S., so pretty limited impact there. The other place would be around taxes. So for us, being a wholly U.S. company, we probably are not the example of paying our fair share of taxes. We do pay our fair share. There's only so much tax planning you can do. So to the extent there were any reductions in tax rates, we would probably pretty fully benefit from that. So those are the two main areas. But again, our expectation overall for our whole industry would be pretty limited at this point. Good. OK. Makes sense. And then, Dave, you mentioned the work that you're doing with suppliers. And the way that kind of you outlined it on the next three-year plan, it's a pretty significant contributor to that EBITDA growth and that bottom line growth. So maybe can we just talk about that in more detail? You sound like it's really a partnership. You're really working with those vendors that are driving growth. How can you continue to pull this kind of savings for the organization? What should we expect with your SKU count going forward? Just help us understand how you execute a program like this. Yeah. So we've been at it for a long time. Dirk describes this as the third or fourth cycle he's seen in his tenure with the company. But importantly, it is predicated, Kelly, on the growth that we're able to achieve. And that's a consistent performance that our vendors have seen. We very much do that in partnership with our vendors. So as we're able to provide that outsized growth in certain products that they have, they're willing to incent us in a number of ways. That could be a rebate. That could be marketing dollars to market their products or other areas to combine to drive growth for the industry. We've been at it for a long time. Our vendors are excited about the future. Importantly, we said recently we would deliver $230 million, and the LRP we're just wrapping up and accelerate that to $260 million. There are a couple of things that we started to do differently in that work in 2024 that helps them form that future target. One of those I'd point to is the tail of our vendors. So think about smaller vendors in size and scale with less products. That's an area the company really historically did not focus on. It's a little more complicated. It's more tedious just with the number of vendors involved. We got after that in an aggressive way in the back half of 2024, and then secondly, historically, it's been at the vendor level that we've thought about it. We started to tweak our approach, still underpinned with that vendor approach, but started to look deeper in the product categories, category by category, to make sure that we're thinking about those categories right in terms of the number of products, the number and types of vendors that we have in those areas, and so I think those couple of areas on top of the work we've historically done will help inform the future target. OK. That's very helpful. The other thing that seems to kind of be rolling out very smoothly is the new routing system, which is a big change, I would think, to execute that at a DC level. So I think you're up to maybe almost 50% of the miles maybe by now. But maybe just an update on that, the feedback that you're getting from both sales and operations as you've kind of rolled that out. Sure. Dirk, do you want to? Sure. So you're right on track to be about 50% of miles at this point and expect to largely be done end of 2025. And as we, like with new technologies, again, we went slow in the beginning, and then now we've been in full deployment through there. And overall, we're able to deliver a better service experience to the customer from an on-time perspective. As we've deployed it, what we've done is we've taken advantage of a number of the capabilities, but you haven't fully turned the dials. What we don't want is we don't want sales, operations, customer to feel like their experience is extremely different versus take advantage of some things to slightly improve on time, and then we can continue to improve that experience over time. But we're very pleased. I think the work we did on the front end that we've talked a lot about over the last year and a half on the process side of operations and sales working together really set us up well for the front-end work that needed to be done before we rolled out Descartes. That's really been a key enabler of a successful rollout to date. And just to piggyback on that, that work that Dirk talks about, you can't change routing without impacting the customer. So we've done this in partnership with our customers. And when he says that the customer is going to have a better experience, we mean from a service standpoint, hitting the targeted delivery windows every time on time and in full. And so we've been able through this work to tighten those delivery windows and get them right for the customers. And that when he said go slow to go fast, there's a lot of work involved up front before we roll that out in the markets. And we're doing a good job of it. Are you able to, do you have any metrics on service levels in that half that have already had this system deployed versus the other half? Or are you seeing, is there anything you can share on that front? Sure. Without specific numbers, we have seen an improvement in cases per mile in those markets above and beyond. And then the on-time experience, just a better sort of definition of the customer expectation to Dave's point of when they expect the on-time. And then seeing as it gets implemented, see that continue to improve. And our expectation is that will continue. Perfect. And then maybe just, I thought, I think we have two or three minutes left. Maybe just an update on the acquisitions. The past few years, we've had Saladino's, Renzi, IWC. How are integrations going? What have we learned so far? And what are the key priorities going forward as you think about M&A? I'll just hit this quickly and then flip it to Dirk. We're excited about all three of them. They're going extremely well at or better than what we anticipated when we acquired them. Our M&A strategy is very much tuck-ins. And when I say tuck-ins, it's the smaller local acquisitions that we're targeting. I love our footprint. We're in all the major MSAs across the country. The opportunity in what we did with each one of those acquisitions was improve our local market density and get more efficient in how we get our products to the customers. That was really the strategy behind all those. And we're quite pleased with the progress. And Dirk can talk a little bit about the integration work that we've done there. Yeah. And that local density and the integration is an important part that you'll probably continue to hear as we talk about future acquisitions. And what we're focusing on is going to continue to be, as Dave said, the broad line tuck-ins. And it's those where they have a strong mix of independents. They have a strong focus on the customer. We think would be good cultural fits and help us take miles out of the system by being closer to the customers. And each of the one in New York, the one in Nashville are good examples of doing that. And then when we do integrate them, we do bring them onto our systems. But we have a very thoughtful process, again, because we want to make sure that whether it's the local team, the customers, they realize that things aren't changing overnight, that the experience they're used to and the service, we're going to continue that. And we're going to build on with some of the advantages from US Foods, the things we talked about earlier today, the technology, the added product assortment, et cetera. And then over the first typically year, we will then bring them onto our systems as well. OK. We have one minute left. Maybe, Dirk, just for you, one of the different elements about the next three-year plan is really the free cash flow and particularly the free cash flow that's being allocated towards buybacks. So maybe can you comment on just the thought process there, and from my point of view, I don't know if the Street is modeling all of that in. Maybe some are just a little bit more conservative on that front, given it's a multi-year kind of plan there, but just the thought process and how you looked at that allocation of that, I think it's $4 billion over the next three years. That's right. $4 billion of cash flow as a result of the strong P&L algorithm that we've outlined. We will continue to invest in a very healthy way in the business and CapEx to continue to maintain and expand the business. We don't need much from a debt paydown. We do see leverage, which is already a very healthy place. We finished the third quarter at 2.8 times, well within our two to three times target range. We expect to see that drift down some over the period, but more through earnings growth versus debt paydown. We've spent a lot of energy over the last few years getting our leverage to a very healthy place, and I feel good about our capital structure, and then we'll continue to opportunistically pursue tuck-in M&A. And that leaves the roughly $2 billion towards share repurchases. The combination of looking at what one of our competitors traded at pre-COVID, plus what we would expect a share price to do with the earnings outlook we have, I feel like it's a very good use of capital over the period of time. Happy to deploy it in that way and take advantage of the strong cash flow the business is operating both from and generating from earnings as well from effective working capital management. Perfect. Well, I think we have to wrap it there. But thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Appreciate it, Kelly. Thanks, Kelly.