Q3 2023 United Natural Foods Inc. Earnings Call

Good morning and welcome to UNFI's third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. Good morning and welcome to UNFI's fourth quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call.

All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.

To ask a question, you'll need to press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Steve Bloomquist, Vice President Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on UNIFI's third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. I now you should have received a copy of the earnings release issued this morning. Press release earnings presentation, which management will speak to, are available under the investor section of the company's website.

at www.unfi.com. We've also included a supplemental disclosure file in Microsoft Excel with key financial information. Joining me for today's call are Sandy Douglas, our Chief Executive Officer, and John Howard, our Chief Financial Officer. Sandy and John will provide a strategy and business update after which we'll take...

These risks are discussed in the company's earnings release and SEC filings.

Actual results may differ materially from the results discussed in these forward-looking statements.

And lastly, I'd like to point out that during today's call, management will refer to certain non- GAAP financial measures.

Definitions and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our press release and at the end of our earnings presentation.

I'd ask you to turn to slide six of our presentation as I turn the call over to Sandy.

Thanks, Stephen. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our third quarter call.

As you saw in our release, we reported a quarter that was below our expectations. Today we're going to address the drivers of these results and our plan to improve profitability in both the short run and in the longer term as we strive to advance our growth and improvement agenda.

Our business performance is driven by revenue growth and margins. The top line is growing, we're making continued progress, adding new customers, and increasing business with existing customers.

While we won't lose our focus on continuing to pursue this proven top line strategy and providing a differentiated customer experience.

Profitability and forecasting are where we have fallen short this year and where a great deal of our attention remains focused.

Before I jump into our quarterly results, I want to step back for a minute to provide some context.

Prior to my arrival as CEO in August 2021, the company had completed the largest acquisition in its history just ahead of the onset of the pandemic.

While it was a massive undertaking to complete this transaction, the UNFI super value combination created an unmatched industry platform and a company with significant potential competitive advantages. There remains significant work to fully capture the full opportunity.