Kenneth Gosnell - Campbell Soup Co. Denise M. Morrison - Campbell Soup Co. Anthony P. DiSilvestro - Campbell Soup Co..

Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC Christopher Growe - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc. Bryan D. Spillane - Bank of America Merrill Lynch Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc. Robert Moskow - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Cornell R. Burnette - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. Alexia Jane Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

LLC Michael Lavery - CLSA Americas LLC Rob Dickerson - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc..

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Campbell Soup's Second Quarter 2017 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I'd now like to turn the conference over Ken Gosnell, Vice President-Finance Strategy & Investor Relations. Please go ahead..

Thank you, Candice. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second quarter earnings call for Campbell Soup's fiscal 2017. With me here in New Jersey are Denise Morrison, President and CEO; and Anthony DiSilvestro, CFO. As usual, we've created slides to accompany our earnings presentation.

You will find the slides posted on our website this morning at investor.campbellsoupcompany.com. This call is open to the media who participate in listen-only mode. Today, we'll make forward-looking statements, which reflect our current expectations. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates, which could be inaccurate and are subject to risks.

Please refer to slide 2 or our SEC filings for a list of factors that could cause our actual results to vary materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements. Because we use non-GAAP measures, we have provided a reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, which is included in our appendix.

One final item before we begin our discussion of the quarter, I'd like to cordially invite our interested shareholders, investors and members of the media and consumers to listen to and view our Investor Presentation at CAGNY, which will be video webcast live on Wednesday, February 22, at 10:30 a.m. from Boca Raton.

A replay of the video and copies of the materials will also be available afterward on our website. If you are attending the event, there will be a Campbell-sponsored luncheon immediately after our presentation. And, with that, let me turn it over to Denise..

our continued gross margin expansion, how we strengthened our core business while expanding into faster-growing spaces, the investments we're making in real food as a result of our purpose, how we've diversified our portfolio with innovation and acquisitions, and a leaner more agile and more cost-effective company we've become as a result of our successful cost-savings initiative, I look forward to seeing many of you next week at CAGNY where we will focus on Campbell's long-term strategic growth platforms.

Now let me turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Anthony DiSilvestro..

Bolthouse Farms CPG, which includes beverages and salad dressings, and the fresh soup units, were not affected. Cash flow from operations was $667 million compared to $754 million generated in the first half of last year.

The lower level of cash flow generated reflects higher working capital requirements, primarily driven by changes in accrued liabilities related to taxes and incentive compensation. Capital expenditures declined $34 million to $119 million. We have lowered our CapEx forecast by $25 million to approximately $325 million for fiscal 2017.

The reduction is primarily related to the timing on project in Global Biscuits and Snacks. We paid dividends totaling $207 million, reflecting our increased quarterly dividend rate of $0.35 per share.

In aggregate, we repurchased $234 million of shares, $200 million of which were under our strategic share repurchase program, as we've increased our level of share repurchases. The balance was made to offset dilution from equity-based compensation.

Net debt declined by $357 million compared to year-ago levels as cash from operations over the last four quarters was well in excess of capital expenditures, dividends, and share repurchases. We are very pleased with the progress made on our cost-savings program.

With our new forecast for incremental savings of $85 million in 2017, we now expect to reach our $300 million target by the end of this fiscal year. We have generated savings by reducing layers of management and increasing spends of control.

We have changed our operating model by creating an integrated global services organization and we're implementing a comprehensive zero-based budgeting process, which is delivering savings across many simple and more complex cost categories.

While our current initiatives would generate in excess of $300 million in savings, we believe there are additional areas of opportunity, which in aggregate will get us to our new target of $450 million. First, we will look for opportunities to further optimize our supply chain network, primarily in North America.

Second, we will continue to evolve our operating model to drive efficiencies and focus resources on our most significant growth opportunities. And, lastly, we will more fully integrate our recent acquisitions to generate cost synergies and improve our effectiveness by leveraging both our enterprise scale and capabilities.

Now, I'll review our 2017 guidance, which remains unchanged from what we first announced last September. We expect sales to grow by zero to 1%, adjusted EBIT to grow by 1% to 4%, and adjusted EPS to grow by 2% to 5%. This guidance assumes, based on current exchange rates, that the impact from currency translation will be nominal.

On our cost-savings program, we now project full-year savings of approximately $85 million compared to our prior forecast of $50 million. Additional cost savings and lower than expected cost inflation about 1.5% compared to the prior forecast of about 2% are offsetting incremental investments in marketing and the softness in Campbell Fresh.

We expect our adjusted gross margin percentage to end the year at about 38%, almost a point better than last year. Our EPS guidance reflects an effective tax rate of approximately 32%, which is unchanged, and the favorable impact of anticipated share repurchases over the course of the year.

In terms of timing, we expect the majority of our year-to-go earnings growth to come in the fourth quarter. That concludes my remarks and now I'll turn it back to Ken for the Q&A..

Okay. Thanks, Anthony. We will now start our Q&A session. Since we have limited time, out of fairness to the other callers, please ask only one question at a time.

Okay, Candice?.

And our first question comes from Ken Goldman of JPMorgan. Your line is now open..

Hi, and thanks for the question. One of your competitors in biscuits, obviously, made a fairly major announcement last week. Does that announcement in any way, in terms of distribution, make you rethink your distribution, or is it sort of full steam ahead? Pepperidge has an incredible, obviously, DSD system setup.

Just curious if that made you guys go back, rethink things in any way or if it's too early to tell? Any help there would be very appreciated..

Yeah. I'll take that one. Thanks, Ken. We're very pleased with the performance of Pepperidge Farm. We've had, particularly in the snacks business, some really good growth. And our distribution system – DSD distribution system is different, in that it is a network of independent contractors, so that's really how we've assessed it..

Right.

So, is the takeaway then that because it's different and because you're pleased with it, we on the outside should interpret it as it's unlikely to see major changes at any point in the near term?.

Yeah. I mean, we're continuing to run our play..

Great. Thanks, Denise..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Chris Growe of Stifel. Your line is now open..

Hi. Good morning..

Hi, Chris..

Hi. I just wanted to ask you in relation to the soup business, the Well Yes! soup product looks to be doing quite well and you had some pipeline fill in the quarter.

But did that have an effect on soup sales in the quarter? And if I can ask related to that with the Well Yes! launch, did we see marketing spending go up in relation to that product in the quarter and should we expect that going forward in the second half of the year?.

Yeah, a couple of things. So, it's a good question. So the impact of Well Yes! on soup sales in the quarter was about 2 points, so it didn't have a benefit to our net sales number. And as you can imagine, most of that is, obviously, in retail inventory, some did pull through, but not a lot.

But as we look at the total inventory on soup, there has been some reduction in other areas. So when you put it all together, changes in retailer inventories in soup did not have an impact on our overall soup sales results in the quarter, but there was some puts and takes in there..

Yeah. We're very happy with the introduction of Well Yes! There were great retail support, 75% ACV distribution, displays everywhere, but we won't get a read on the consumer takeaway really until this quarter..

To your second question, this is going to be supported with a fairly comprehensive and robust marketing program, so you can expect, obviously, an increase in marketing behind this in the third quarter..

Okay, great. Thanks for the time..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Bryan Spillane of Bank of America. Your line is now open..

Hi, Bryan..

Hey, good morning, everyone..

Hey, Bryan..

I guess, just a question about the prospective cost-savings going forward and, I guess, as you're thinking about balancing how much reinvestment versus how much you'll use to sort of support earnings growth, not trying to get you to be specific in terms of earnings targets in the out year, but just can you sort of maybe give us some color in terms of how you might be thinking about that balance going forward with this new savings versus maybe the way you approached the $300 million you've achieved so far?.

Yeah. I think, Bryan, the way to think about it is against the incremental $150 million, probably about half will go back in terms of reinvestment, so we've talked about the support before. We need to increase the support behind some of our key brands.

We need to continue to support new product launches like we're doing with Well Yes! and Prego's Farmers' Market and Tim Tam's in the U.S. and Goldfish with the organic wheat. So we need to continue to do that. We'll continue to invest behind our real food initiatives, removing artificial colors and ingredients, removing BPA for our can liners.

We'll also continue to invest in longer-term innovation, things like Habit and the Acre Venture Fund and we'll look to make investments to improve our capabilities in areas like digital and eCommerce. So we have a fairly well-balanced plan in terms of what to do with those cost savings..

Okay. Great. Thank you..

Sure..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Andrew Lazar of Barclays. Your line is now open..

Good morning, everybody..

Hey, Andrew..

Hi. Quick question on C-Fresh. As your commentary was that it seems you're going to be sort of further integrating that division to take advantage, I guess, of the broader scale and scope and capabilities of the larger Campbell organization.

And, I guess, my question is, we've all seen I think a lot of examples over time, whether it be the Kashis of the world where the larger company sort of brings the smaller, more entrepreneurial growthier entity sort of in a bigger way into the sort of the more of the mainstream organization.

And, I guess, we've seen a number of examples where that's led maybe those more entrepreneurial businesses to maybe lose some of that sort of progressive nutrition swagger or some of what made them special and growthier in the first place.

So, I mean, I was just trying to get a sense, it's a little broad but, I guess, how do you guard against taking advantage of what the organization can bring to that and not lose what it is that you bought in those businesses to begin with..

Andrew, it is a key question. And when I talk about getting the best of small and the best of big, I'm really serious about what we have done is really delineated those parts of the business that really need to be separate and differentiated for the consumer and the customer, and that's all of the marketing and the R&D and insights.

And we have this model that we've used very successfully with our Plum organic baby food business by keeping those parts of the business separate that maintains that entrepreneurial culture.

However, being able to leverage the scale of Campbell's, particularly in areas of the supply chain and in operations where we have resources that can be used to make them much more effective and efficient and even more important achieve scale, because these are typically smaller companies that need the chassis to increase scale in the marketplace.

So we've done this very successfully with Plum and Kelsen. We have not done it with the Campbell Fresh business. And so, the situation that we found ourselves in in the last year, we've been able to insert Campbell executives on the leadership team working in conjunction with Bolthouse Farms executives to maintain that best of small and best of big.

So we're really optimistic and we're finding some really great opportunities to put a stronger foundation under the business..

Great. Okay. Thanks for that. And look forward to seeing you next week..

Yeah. See you next week..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Robert Moskow of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open..

Hi. Thank you..

Hi, Rob..

Hi..

Hi, Rob..

Hi. I noticed on the opening remarks that you mentioned competitive pressure more often than usual, I would think. It was definitely in fresh bakery and in broth. And my view going into this year was that the food companies would cut costs and focus on price realization and try to avoid deep discounting.

Do you see any of that kind of price discipline changing around you in your categories, or do you think it's just kind of a pretty typical year in terms of promotional activity?.

Yeah. I think the activity definitely varies by category. And what we've seen in the fresh bakery business is competition in the area of sandwich bread and Swirl bread. We've recently reformulated our Swirl bread and we're out there now with a much-improved product. So that was a very specific situation.

In fresh bakery business, our buns and rolls business continues to rock, so we believe we're all over the issue there.

And then in broth, it was really more of a proliferation of private label during the holiday and that produced more price competition and we have responded with increased marketing and actual trade spending to hold our own in that category. So those were two very specific things that we faced..

Can I ask a follow-up to Ken Goldman's question actually? I think what he was kind of getting at is have you ever considered a model where you go to direct-to-customer shipments through warehouses rather than DSD, not so much using – whether you use independent routes.

Is that a big savings or is it even possible in Pepperidge Farm?.

Yeah. We've been pleased with the DSD system. The independent contractors, what they bring to the business in terms of selling and merchandising and delivery, it's a quality product. It's perishable, so breakage could be an issue. I think when you consider all of it, we're pleased with our DSD system..

Okay. Thank you..

Thank you. And our next question comes from David Driscoll of Citi. Your line is now open..

Hi, David..

Hey, good morning. This is Cornell Burnette in with a few questions for David. I just wanted to start off here with ready-to-serve soup, and one of your major competitors made the announcement that they would be reducing capacity.

Wanted to get your outlook on what that meant for the category kind of over the long term and specifically does that give you an opportunity perhaps to margin up and be maybe less aggressive with promotions and move prices in a higher direction?.

We're very focused on our soup business. We're particularly pleased with the performance of ready-to-serve soup, whether that be Chunky or the introduction of new Well Yes! I think you need to ask the other guy..

Okay. And then on the C-Fresh business, just I know you gave a number of puts and takes of kind of what's going on there this year and some of the things that you're trying to do to get the business back on track.

Will some of these headwinds, especially in carrots and issues surrounding the harvest, kind of linger into perhaps F2018 as well?.

Yeah. So, we've talked about the issues facing us in F2017 and the expectations that the business will decline. We do expect it to turn a bit in the fourth quarter. As we look ahead to F2018, we expect to return to growth on this business both top and bottom line..

Okay. Thank you..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Alexia Howard of Bernstein. Your line is now open..

Hi Alexia..

Hi there..

Hi Alexia..

I guess, a quick question on the commodity cost outlook here is, obviously, you have slightly different mix of input costs, how are things looking? And if the commodity cost environment is getting a little tougher, do you think you'll be able to pass that on in pricing?.

Yeah. So I can comment on the commodity cost environment. So, as we look at the full year, we originally thought cost inflation would be around 2% and now we're thinking it closer to 1.5%. So we've seen some favorability relative to our expectations in a couple of areas that are causing that.

One is wheat, dairy, resins related to plastic packaging as well as poultry. So, overall, we see a bit of a benefit versus our original expectations. But we are seeing a swing, first half to back half.

It was fairly benign when you look at the core ingredients, packaging and energy, and that's starting to tick up in the second half, and there's a couple of areas in particular that we're seeing. One is dairy. The first half of the year we were wrapping avian flu thing, so that's going to go back more toward normal situation.

Vegetable oil is kicking up in the second half and we're beginning to see increases in steel cans as well. I don't know if you follow the steel market, but prices are up fairly significantly on steel. So we've got an overall year, which is going to be okay, but we're seeing an increasing headwind in the back half.

In terms of pricing, I would say we're not ready to talk about any specific pricing actions, but we're right in the midst of starting to formulate our plans for next year, and I'm sure we'll take this into account..

Thank you very much. I'll pass it on..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Lavery of CLSA. Your line is now open..

Good morning..

Hi Michael..

Good morning..

Just back on C-Fresh, you said you had a strategic review and, obviously, that had some changes in your outlook and everything else.

Did that also include a review of just your interest in that business long term? Are you evaluating potential alternatives in terms of whether you might even still be interested in having an agriculture business or is that a given? And then just on the branding, you said you would want to step up those efforts.

Could you give a little better color on what that might be?.

Sure. The strategic review that the new team undertook looked at, once again, the potential for this business, and we verified the consumer trends toward fresh and health and well-being, the fact that these categories are still growing significantly faster than center-store categories, particularly in the categories that we compete in.

So we feel really good about this space strategically. We've had some execution issues this year and some weather issues in the agricultural part. That's been unfortunate, but that does not sway us from our long-term strategic vision to really build a fresh food platform for Campbell's.

And I think the role of the carrots in the business is the authenticity. It's on trend with consumers' desire for fresh produce. Carrots have had a tough go with drought and with heavy rains and some execution issues in the last year, but I do think that that's an important part.

It's also the distribution system and scale in produce for us that makes us more important to the retailer. So I know I'm very committed to the business and we expect big things from it going forward..

Okay. Thanks. And just any thoughts on the branding? You said you wanted to step that up. I know you talked about some of the packaging changes. Garden Fresh, for example, I think it may be the new packaging you're showing.

Is that some of what you're anticipating or is it beyond some of the packaging changes? What's some of the initiatives there?.

Yeah. I think, over time, we have an opportunity to build two very strong brands here with Bolthouse Farms and Garden Fresh Gourmet. We're continuing to invest in digital marketing, as you point out, some new packaging and definitely new product innovation. So we will continue to support these businesses in the marketplace..

Okay. Thank you very much..

Thank you. And our next question comes from Rob Dickerson of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open..

Thank you very much..

Hi, Rob..

Hello. Yeah, just a question around increased brand building potentially over the next, I call it, three to 12 months and in light of, let's say, a competitor who is stepping away from DSD, which could cause some transitional pressure there for them that they've acknowledged upfront.

And then also another competitor who seems to be stepping off a bit promotional activity in the soup category and you're showing some near-term gains there. So, I'm just curious, do you – you're, obviously, aware of what's happening in each of your core categories and you're aware of what your competitors are doing.

Could you foresee the next 12 months potentially being a period of time in which you might have opportunities to actually increase your investment to try to capture share in kind of a period of instability, so to speak, which I think you actually did fairly well with at one point in time in the bread category? Thanks..

Yeah. Well, as you can see from the quarter, we're continuing to invest in marketing and brand building. And Anthony pointed out that as we navigate through our cost-savings initiative, which we just increased, we will be spending back on our businesses to continue to build these brands.

We still need to drive sustainable profitable sales growth and I fundamentally believe that's going to come from investing in the brands and engaging with the consumer. So we will continue on that track..

Okay. Great. Thanks a lot. I'll see you next week..

Thank you..

Thank you. And that concludes our question-and-answer session for today. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Ken Gosnell for closing remarks..

Sure. Thanks, Candice. Thank you, everyone, for joining our second quarter earnings call and webcast. A full replay will be available about two hours after this call by going online or calling 1-404-537-3406. The access code is 40985838.

You have until March 3, at which point, it will move to our – the earnings call strictly to the website at investor.campbellsoupcompany.com. Just click on Recent Webcasts & Presentation. If you have any further questions, please call me at 856-342-6081.

If you're a reporter with questions, please call Carla Burigatto, Director of External Communications, at 856-342-3737. Thank you, everyone..

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Have a great day, everyone..