McCormick & Company, Incorporated (MKC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

McCormick would like to remind you that today's discussion will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The nature of those non-GAAP financial measures and the related reconciliations to the GAAP results are included in the company's materials. Additionally, today's presentation contains projections and other forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or other factors.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to McCormick's 2024 Investor Day. We are thrilled to have so many of you with us here at our global headquarters and online through the webcast. I'm Faten Freiha, and I lead Investor Relations here at McCormick. Before we begin our presentations, I'm going to get a few housekeeping items out of the way as we do have a packed agenda. Please first take note of our safe harbor statement. For those of you online, our formal presentation and Q&A session will run from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. We will upload our materials to our website, ir.mccormick.com, once the formal session ends. For those of you in person, after our formal session, we will enjoy a fantastic lunch our culinary team is preparing. After lunch, you'll begin a series of immersive flavor experiences. We'll provide more guidance on these sessions and how you'll navigate them later today. During our formal presentations, you'll hear from many members of our operating committee who will cover our growth strategy, our strong foundation, our growth plans in core categories as well as in emerging markets. We will also address our marketing plans, innovation and our M&A strategy. We will conclude with a review of our financial outlook and capital allocation priorities. And then we will open it up for Q&A with the team. [Operator Instructions] Lastly, I'd like to thank those of you who provided feedback on what you want to hear from us today. We hope the program we have created will be engaging and insightful and allow you to leave with your questions answered and renewed excitement about McCormick. With that, it is now my distinct pleasure to introduce and turn the program over to McCormick's President and CEO, Brendan Foley.

Good morning, everyone. It's an honor to have you all here, both personally and also virtually. McCormick has always been a company driven by a passion for flavor and a commitment to excellence. We're excited to share more about this with you today. Over the past years, the macro environment has presented many challenges, and we've learned through a lot of those experiences, but we've also invested and continued to invest for the long term and made significant accomplishments. We started 2024 with an intentional focus to move quickly with a renewed sense of urgency to drive high-quality growth. We're proud of the results that we've delivered and believe that in our 2024 investments, they've laid a foundation for 2025 and beyond. We continue to advance our leadership and differentiation, and are excited about the opportunities that we have ahead. Our objective today is to share with you our confidence that McCormick's strategy, our growth initiatives, will continue to drive success and build shareholder value. We hope that you leave here today with a greater understanding of our role in flavor, our breadth and our scale, and how we plan to execute on our strategies and deliver long-term value and on our long-term objectives. Overall, we hope that you take away today that we're building on a strong foundation. The demand for flavor remains strong, and we're prioritizing our investments in areas that drive the greatest value. And importantly, we're reaffirming our long-term objectives. With our strategies and best-in-class leadership team, we're well positioned to go on this trajectory. And the last point is we're a growth company. Today, you're going to hear about the strength of our brands, our strategies and our outlook, and all of that is very exciting. But it takes a great organization, a strong culture of growth and a great leadership team to deliver performance. Our leadership team has the deep experience, and each member brings a unique perspective and skills to the leadership table. We have leaders with as many as 30 years with McCormick and some who've joined us just in the last year. The diversity of experience fosters innovation and creativity, enabling us to tackle challenges and seize opportunities with agility and confidence and always with a collaborative spirit. When I started in my role, I chose to expand the operating committee to ensure all the right voices were at the leadership table. This has already enhanced our speed, agility and effectiveness in driving results. Together, we're harnessing the collective expertise of our talented team across the world with a renewed sense of urgency and speed to execute on our strategies and deliver on our priorities. This in turn drives continued long-term sustainable profitable growth, and ensuring that we remain competitive and continue to deliver value to shareholders. You'll meet all of our leaders today. But I urge you to read their bios to fully appreciate the tremendous talent that we have and why I'm so proud they've joined McCormick. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Mike Smith for his more than 30 years of leadership at McCormick. We really wish him well on his upcoming retirement. Now let me cover a brief overview of McCormick and discuss, at a high level, the topics that we're going to cover today. At McCormick, we deliver and create flavors that enhance the taste of food and beverages. We've been a trusted name in flavor for 135 years. Our portfolio includes some of the leading brands in the flavor industry. They're household names that consumers trust for their quality and for their taste. In fact, over half of U.S. consumers will consume a meal or beverage flavored by McCormick on any given day. Think about that. Think about that. It speaks to the power of our brands, the flavor they deliver a opportunity that we have still in front of us. All over the world, people desire great-tasting foods and drinks with rich, authentic flavors. And we deliver flavor across markets, we serve a wide breadth of customers and operate across every channel, from traditional brick and mortar to e-commerce, from foodservice to CPG manufacturers. Simply put, at McCormick, we truly flavor every sip and bite. We often say that we're differentiated among our peers, and let me explain what makes McCormick different. Others compete for calories, we flavor them. While many of our peers compete across several different food categories, we're intentionally focused on flavor, and this effectively allows us to be present in every consumption opportunity. Food and beverage companies compete for those calories every day, but we're different in where and how we compete. Our opportunity continues to grow no matter where calories are shifting, and the demand for flavor continues to be strong. We're differentiated in our view of the world in food and beverage in that would deliver flavor as broadly as we do. Consumers, and I think we can all relate to this, do not compromise on flavor. Flavor is an enduring trend and it's always been a part of our lives. It continues to be vital for consumers regardless of their age, where one might come from, dietary preferences or even income level. It's the lowest cost of a part of a meal, and yet, it has the biggest impact. This trend remains consistent regardless of macroeconomic conditions. We see growth where the consumers are eating at home or away from home because we operate in every channel. Consumers continue to cook more at home, and this aligns with long-term trends. And they are increasingly shopping the perimeter of the store for protein and produce and eating healthier. This increases the demand for flavor and McCormick's categories, like Spices and Seasonings and condiments and sauces. Today, spices and extracts remains #1 in center store growth. In addition, consumers are open to flavor exploration and we are matching that with the right innovation. Gen Z, who are our new and future consumers, are leaning into higher-quality premium flavors, and they're looking to recreate those restaurant-quality meals at home. Our connection with the consumer is important. And we conduct proprietary research and mine social media to better understand and make sure that we're aligned with their sentiment. And then we align and refine our plans accordingly. Our alignment with long-term consumer trends and our connection with the consumer generates a sustained tailwind for long-term growth. We operate in great categories across both of our segments, and they continue to project a strong growth looking forward. In our Consumer segment, we produce products at every price point, from premium to value, to meet all consumer needs. Our products and brands have been part of kitchens and families for generations and we remain in demand as we continue to innovate. In Flavor Solutions, we know the importance of brands to develop flavors that delivers on our customers' brand promise. This segment delivers -- powers the flavor of some of the world's most iconic brands, and makes a part of our daily flavor moments of lives of millions of people all around the world. I'm very passionate about how these 2 segments complement each other, and this reinforces in what differentiates McCormick. The scale, the consumer insights and our technology that are leveraged from both are meaningful and they drive differentiated growth. This uniquely positions us to cater to the entire flavor market. And as a team -- and as our team talks through our core categories today, we're going to bring that synergy to life as you see that come together. When I took on the CEO role, I introduced 5 priorities, and as an organization, we continue to rally behind them. I'm happy to share that we've made significant progress in 2024 and we're on track with where we expected to be. Let me give you 2 examples. We turned the corner in our growing volumes, which was our goal when we first started the year. In addition, this past quarter, volume outperformed private label across our core categories, and we made significant sequential volume improvement on Flavor Solutions. Also, we increased our investment in our core categories, and at the same time, we enhanced profitability and margins. We continually strengthen our plans and are confident in our execution that these will continue as we go into 2025. We have a history of driving long-term growth. Since 2015, we have grown total sales by a 6% CAGR, at the high end of our long-term algorithm. Our results reflect industry-leading organic growth, complemented by compelling acquisitions and an expanded portfolio in attractive categories that are further reinforcing and strengthening our flavor leadership. Prior to the -- importantly, our volume growth is -- our growth has been volume-led, which differentiates us from food peers. Prior to the pandemic, 2/3 of our organic growth was driven by volume. Today, Andrew, Ana and Sumeet will provide a perspective on how we plan to continue to drive that level of growth. 1/3 of our growth was driven by acquisitions, and we have a proven track record in success, in driving value through acquisitions, and are committed to retaining this discipline forward. Our historical performance supports our confidence in our plans. Today, we are reaffirming our long-term objectives. I'm constantly inspired by the high level of energy across the organization, and I'm confident in our ability to deliver on these objectives. We have a track record which includes strong organic growth and contributions from acquisitions, and we have robust plans and increased investments in our core categories that's fueled by our proven cost savings programs. We are in a position of strength. Our 5 principles power our success. These principles have been in place for 14 years. They are the foundation of our strategic road map, and they continue to inspire and drive our growth. Throughout today, including in this afternoon's session, you're going to meet additional members of the McCormick team who will bring these principles to life. I do want to spend a few moments, though, on the Power of People to highlight McCormick's differentiated culture. The Power of People was written by CP McCormick in 1949. It reinforced our commitment to our employees a high performance and a people-first culture, and it's rooted in our shared values in respect for everyone's contributions. As we have grown, we are proud that these beliefs continue to be a cornerstone of our management approach. Our global workforce is strongly committed to growth and to create value on our business and also for the world. In our global employee experience survey, we exceed industry norms for both engagement and enablement. This demonstrates that our global workforce is strongly committed and feel supported to drive performance with their skill set. I'm also -- important to call out is that our employees drive our success, which is why 1 of those 5 priorities that I called out and also another area of investment is to build the next generation of leaders and capabilities. I'm also proud to continue the stability and seamless transition of leadership at McCormick. It's a distinguishing quality about our company. And also, it drives a continuity of growth and it's underpinned by strong talent and succession planning. Now wrapping up my comments. For today's program, we tailored our agenda to address what's on your mind and unpack the building blocks to deliver on our long-term objectives. On the screen, you can see the results of the survey that we completed with you. Your insights and suggestions were very helpful, and we structured our presentation to address these key topics. Thank you for providing them. We want to reinforce that McCormick is end-to-end flavor. We're a growth company, we're operating in 2 complementary segments, and we're uniquely positioned to win with consumers and customers. We're differentiated, our business model is compelling, and our best-in-class management team has the experience to lead and deliver results. Before we hear from Kasey, our Chief Growth Officer, we're going to run a video that will bring to life the enduring importance of flavor and our role in it. Thank you. [Presentation]

Good morning, everyone. I am so excited to be here today and see so many welcoming and familiar faces from my IR days. McCormick is flavor. It is our history, it is our future. Today, you will hear about our plans to drive future growth. We are building on a strong foundation, and I am going to cover 4 points today: One, the global demand for flavor is strong; two, we are intentionally focused on high-growth categories; three, we have a unique system of growth advantages; and four, we are executing on effective strategies. These 4 points combined are meaningful. They create a significant runway for us to continue driving our momentum and long-term profitable growth. I'm responsible for the development of strategies to drive our growth, both organically and through acquisitions. I have been with McCormick for over 30 years. When I started in 1993, the stock price was $5.13 and sales were $1.5 billion, and boy did that seem like a lot then. We've come a long way. And since then, we've divested assets that were noncore, we invested in core categories, we made bigger and broader acquisitions, expanded geographically and increased our profitability. McCormick's sales have grown at a 5% CAGR since I started. And over my last 25 years here, McCormick's total shareholder return has outpaced the S&P 500 by 2.5x. Impressive. I know it's not all because McCormick hired me. But some of you know me and think maybe it was. I do know, though, that it was McCormick's steadfast focus on long-term growth and value creation that drove those results. And I am as thankful to all the past leadership teams, some of which you know in the audience, for being committed to that focus. Today, I am part of an operating committee that you're going to hear from today that shares that same commitment to drive differentiated growth. So now back to our foundation that will enable our growth. Global flavor is projected to grow 5% to 7%, which underscores the demand for flavor remains strong. With McCormick's geographic footprint, that is a projected market growth of 3% to 5% for McCormick. This category growth rate gives us an advantage. It positions us to deliver sustained organic top line growth that is best in class. We continually make strategic decisions to optimize our portfolio. For instance, in the last several years, we've divested 2 businesses that were noncore and we exited low-margin business. It tempered our sales growth, but the high growth of our category enabled us to drive industry-leading top line growth, even with the continual optimization of our portfolio. Importantly, the expected growth rate in flavor highlights McCormick's runway for growth, whether it be in the markets where we are or the ones that are newer opportunities for us. Our decisions to optimize our portfolio were margin-accretive, but they also allow us to concentrate our focus on 4 global categories. In 2015, these categories were 67% of our net sales. Today, they are 77% of our net sales. They are Spices and Seasonings, condiments and sauces, branded foodservice and flavors. We are intentionally focused on these categories as they are critical to driving our profitable sales growth and strengthening our flavored leadership. They drive the greatest value for McCormick, and we are excited about our plans to continue to drive growth in each of them. And you will hear more about that from Andrew and Ana in a few minutes. Now most people are very familiar with the Consumer segment, but there are many that wonder what Flavor Solutions is all about. We have a diverse portfolio, so let me spend a minute to break it down for you. Starting with Flavors. It is roughly 60% of the segment. It is concentrated in the Americas and EMEA. We flavor products in a wide range of end market applications. To help you understand this, think about flavor in every aisle of the grocery store. That is where McCormick is. We are recognized as a global leader in seasonings, which is more than just a blend of ingredients. Many of our seasonings have our flavor technology embedded in them. And while we are known for savory and heat, we span many different flavor profiles. Specialty flavors. These are complex flavor systems which can have up to 40 ingredients in them. Examples of them are flavor encapsulation, flavor modulation or natural extracts. These are the types of products that we gained greater scaling with our FONA and our Giotti acquisitions. The gross margin in flavors range by the product's level of complexity and its technical insulation. Next, moving to branded foodservice. It is about 20% of the segment. It's concentrated in the Americas. The product category is like the Consumer segment. Think larger sizes and think it's being used by chefs in restaurants, hotels, cafeterias, other venues, or it's on the table tops in those places. Significant brand equity drives gross margins in branded foodservice similar to the Consumer segment. And finally, custom condiments is about 10% of the segment and [ coatings ] ingredients is about another 10%. These products are concentrated in APAC and EMEA. They're largely sold to quick service and casual dining restaurants. And they are lower in margin than both flavors and branded foodservice. Across both segments, our breadth and reach ideally positions us to flavor everything consumers eat and drink around the globe. Let's watch a video that highlights this. [Presentation]

Now let me tell you how we are bringing heat to all these consumers with our heat platform. The demand for hot and spicy is strong, which is a significant tailwind to our growth. Gen Z and millennials continue to kick up the demand for heat. They are more experimental. They prefer authentic, bold and spicy flavors, which outpaces all generations. Over 50% of global consumers choose spicy flavors when dining out or making a meal at home. Sauces, seasonings and snacks are the largest categories of chili flavor innovation, and they all have significance to McCormick. Spicy, sweet, savory, these are the most -- the 3 most popular flavor profiles, and we are perfectly positioned to deliver spicy alone or pairing with sweet or savory to meet consumers' demands in nuanced ways. Let's talk the snacking consumer for a minute. 53% are interested in sweet heat, and we've driven innovation in both of our segments to deliver on the sweet heat demand, and we have new products that combine many other flavor profiles as well. Consumers are interested in complex, layered flavor profiles, and we're excited that some of you will have the opportunity to experience these later today. And if you don't know what sweet heat is, the hottest thing you'll taste this afternoon is ice cream. Heat enhances and lifts flavor. It takes you on a journey from flat to high. It's not just a trend, it is a sustainable flavor profile, and we are well positioned to continue capitalizing on the demand for heat. We are uniquely positioned to win and heat with our global iconic brands and our connected capabilities. We've previously talked about our differentiated capabilities and our expertise in heat and acknowledged each of them individually. But it's really important to understand that the power of our platform is not just about one area. It is how they all connect together that creates an even more powerful differentiation and advantages us. The consumer is always at the center of our thinking. We have unmatched insights and we focus on how we can bring heat to our consumers. Now for our capabilities. First, from the farm. We have in-depth sourcing expertise in chilies and peppers, as well as a resilient and extensive supplier base with presence in key areas like India and Mexico. Second, we have industry-leading sensory, analytical and application sciences. Our flavor scientists have a deep understanding of how the origin, the aging, the processing, the cooking and the fermentation of raw materials bring out the nuances of heat and flavor together. Oh, I missed the 2 and no one called me out. Ken, I would have thought you would've. Three, in product development, we have an insulated technology toolbox to deliver differentiated and customized experiences. We can time the delivery of heat to create an optimal consumer experience, whether it's fire at first bite, a gradual build, or maybe just a warn taste at the end. And finally, we manufacture at scale. It is the integration of these capabilities that creates our advantaged global heat platform. Our global heat platform is about 20% of our sales, and it has been growing 3x faster than our non-heat items, and we expect that to continue. Heat is a growth enabler in both of our segments and yet another reason to believe in our long-term objectives. Also underpinning our long-term growth objectives is a unique system of advantages that work together to drive our industry-leading growth. You will hear more about our broad portfolio and global heat platform today, combined with our powerful leading brands that differentiate us in the marketplace. Our consumer insights benefit from the complementary nature of our segments. The insights we gain from collaborating with our Flavor Solutions customers, combined with our own Consumer preference insights, enable us to be more innovative and more on-trend. Our global sourcing capabilities and quality expertise are driven by our long history of sourcing from over 85 countries and almost 45,000 farmers. We have a disciplined approach to acquisitions and an outstanding integration history which I will cover later this morning. And our Power of People culture that Brendan talked about is at our foundation. These advantages, together with the execution of our strategies, are critical to ensuring we deliver on our growth potential. Our strategic road map is built on the pillars of growth, performance and people, with imperatives designed to continue driving our differentiated market leadership and our long-term success. We are committed to the execution of our strategies that have proven to be effective, grow in both sales and profit, and compounding that growth over the years. We believe sustainable top line growth is the most powerful contributor to long-term value creation. And we will now bring our plans that execute on our strategies to drive that growth. Let's welcome Andrew and Ana.

Good morning, I'm Andrew Foust, President of the Americas. I actually just hit my 20th year at McCormick, but my passion for flavor started long before that. I actually grew up in an old farm in Tennessee and I would often help my grandmother make the absolute best apple sauce that I've ever had.

Hello. I'm Ana Sanchez, President of EMEA, and I've been with McCormick for 6 amazing years. And as someone who's half Korean, half Puerto Rican, flavor is in -- is a part of my life and part of my DNA. I love to fuse flavors like Kimchi, Gochujang in my version of sofrito when I cook at home.

So today, we will highlight areas of success that are driving our momentum, what we're continuing to work on, our plans to continue to drive volume and share improvement and the building blocks for long-term growth. We'll cover the 4 categories that drive the greatest value. I'll start with Spices And seasonings. Ana will cover condiments and sauces and then branded foodservice, and I'll wrap with flavors.

Consumer behavior continues to evolve in terms of how they shop and how they flavor their food. Heat continues to trend upwards, and consumers are increasingly focused on maximizing value without compromising flavor. And this ranges from smarter packaging sizes to everyday products with added value, like freshness, convenience as well as more flavor. Not to mention, they're seeking to elevate the every day with premium and differentiated products that stand out not only on their shelf, but on their countertop. And flavor is king, especially for the younger consumers. Gen Z want bold, multicultural cuisines, and millennial families demand a variety of flavors to satisfy the many demands in their home.

As we look at our Spices and Seasoning plans, there are 2 key takeaways. One, we have made positive progress on our initiatives that we've previously outlined. We also have plans to continue that momentum that we'll take you through. It all starts with great brands. One of the great things about working for McCormick for 20 years, you often hear from consumers how much the love our brands or a particular flavor. This brand love translates to the shelf and retailers benefit as they prioritize our brands and implement our category management recommendations. We stated 2024 was an investment year. Our goal was to drive volume and distribution behind investments in category and price gap management, innovation and renovation, and an increase in brand marketing. As we saw success, we plan to continue to invest in these areas as we move forward. I'm proud to say it's working. Year-to-date unit consumption, volume consumption and distribution are all growing. Our #1 objective was to drive volume growth. This chart illustrates the improvement we have seen from a volume share perspective. I'll also say, most notably, we outpaced private label on volume this past quarter, but we're not done and we still have room to grow. And it all starts with driving consumers down the aisle. We're the only spice company to do this with over a 90% share of voice. We increased our spend levels in 2024, and we continue to plan to increase the investments as we move forward. We're also changing our messaging. A recent consumer learning was that we're great on delivering confidence in the kitchen, but not why McCormick? What makes us different from the competition? Moving forward, all of our messaging will highlight this difference. And it starts with the holidays. And if you watch TV, search online for recipes or get inspiration from social media, you will see these ads: When you want to make the best, you choose the best. [Presentation]

Making the best isn't always the holidays though, it's also about elevating the every day. A great example of this is our Ducros ad in France. [Presentation]

Now let's move to the shelf. We're the only end-to-end category solution. We have a portfolio meeting all consumers, all price points and all occasions. We use this during aisle reinvention, understanding deep insights on shopability. And where implemented, we have accelerated both category and McCormick growth rates. This is absolutely working, and we continue to use this as a foundational building block. But let me give you a sense of what that looks like moving forward. How many of us, in the last few days, have had to answer one of the most difficult questions in the world: What's for dinner? Consumers are always looking for inspiration, and we're expanding our set to offer even more, specifically in the trends of heat, flavor exploration, premiumization and value. If I would give you a couple of examples. Consumers are shopping on a budget and seeking value. We're expanding our successful large-sized value offerings to match this need. Consumers are also seeking flavor beyond food, places like drinks, and we're expanding our beverage flavorings. I'm going to talk about this more in a few slides. Having the right price at shelf is also critical. For the past 10 years, we've had a revenue management team, and it's been a key capability of ours. We've invested in a dedicated team and technology beyond most of our peers. In fact, we were one of the first to pull this lever with customers in 2024, leading to our volume improvements. We have done this through a surgical approach, in fact, SKU-by-SKU level, which is critical as the average item has over 400 items in it. We have now implemented this at 80% of our retailers with almost double-digit velocity increases on average and sometimes even more. It's driving 1/3 of our overall growth this year, with the remaining 2/3 coming from advertising and distribution. All 3 are working together. When it comes to innovation, we like to say it must be TikTok-worthy. To deliver this and 1/3 of our growth algorithm from innovation, we created a new innovation plan we titled More and Faster. And it's worked. We've doubled our net sales contribution since 2022. As we move forward, we will continue to launch the highest share of category innovation. Here's how we're going to do it. One, we're launching items in half the time that it has historically taken. We're getting trends to shelf faster through our first in flavor program. You're going to have a chance to experience this later this afternoon. We're using technology to create flavor differentiation. We're testing potential ideas through e-commerce. This gives us real-time data as consumers vote with their wallets. To give you a recent innovation success. Almost a month ago, we launched finishing sugars on mccormick.com. In 24 hours, we garnered 1 billion impressions and it sold out completely online. This all stemmed from one of our developers putting English toffee on our mccormick.com shop. Even though it was just the small batch format, it absolutely took off. We garnered 5-star reviews. We had significant repeat purchases. And consumers were obsessed on it with a way to flavor their coffee. So we created a full line for the holidays, just in time to hit retail stores now. It's already sold 2x our forecast. Actually, we're so thrilled of it, we're going to launch 2 waves next year, 1 for the fall and 1 for the holiday. And we love that it extends McCormick into beverage, crafts and sweets, where we don't have a lot of presence today. Renovation has also been one of our key foundations to win. It started with our Red Cap renovation last year that highlighted freshness and flavor and resulted in a 14% increase in velocity. We've taken these learnings and plan to execute renovation across 100% of our portfolio in the coming years. This includes our new Grill Mates bottle, available in time for next grilling season. It has a more modern look, snap-tight cap for freshness, clear labels to see the quality inside. And it moves the needle on taste, quality and freshness with consumers. I'm also proud to announce today, we're rolling out our new gourmet renovation, which will begin to ship next year and fully be on shelf by 2026. [Presentation]

We have the strongest equity in the gourmet category, and it's important for us to stay ahead of customer and consumer expectations. What we learned was that the younger generation wanted a bottle that was countertop-worthy. And we're bringing this to life through a new vibrant gold cap that seals in the freshness, a more modern look and feel and quality claims that highlights we only use the absolute best raw materials. This renovation drives a 14% increase in purchase interest, and consumers are proud to display it anywhere in their kitchen. In summary, we have robust plans that will continue our momentum and make progress on grow share. We're going to continue to grow distribution as we have more upside. We're going to continue our thorough renovation and innovation plans. We're going to continue to optimize our revenue growth management and category management plans and execution. And we're going to continue to increase A&P as a percentage of net sales. I'll turn it over to Ana.

Thank you, Andrew. So our brands are leading and globally recognized in condiments and sauces. And we have a deep understanding of our consumers and they love our brands, and we know how to grow the category. And with all of those things combined, we're in a position to win. To fuel the growth, we're focused on household penetration across 3 key pillars: Building hot sauce to be the condiment of the next generation, strengthening our mustard leadership and growing our regional powerhouses. It's pretty incredible that in the U.S., Gen Z and millennials use more hot sauce than ketchup, and they use more hot sauce than any other generation. And our brands, Frank's RedHot and Cholula, resonate with the younger consumer and we're advantaged to win. Both our brands have strong loyalty and repeat rates, and Frank's has the highest household penetration in the category. Going forward, we're going to be dialing our efforts on recruiting, innovating and expanding faster internationally. Starting in the U.S., where we have the largest hot sauce market as well as the largest brand with Frank's RedHot. We have underlying health in the business and we're improving market share. This is driven by our focus on volume, distribution of the core and new products and brand marketing investment. And our plans are working. Units are up, distributions up almost 20%, and we're driving sequential unit share improvement overall. And important to mention, in the latest quarter, we're growing unit share on our core original business. But we're getting pressured in Buffalo and flavored wing sauces, and I'm going to share with you shortly how we're going to deal with that area. And as we go into '25, we're going to invest and strengthen our plans further to continue this momentum. To share a bit more about Frank's RedHot, it is powerful and it's a distinctive brand. It's bold, it's fun and it's irreverent. And our famous tagline embodies the Frank's spirit: I put that on s*** on everything. Sorry, I was told no cursing on Investor Day. And while we know flavor is king, for our younger consumers, digital is king. This is why we increased our level of brand marketing in 2024 and doubled our spend on digital. We're creating content that is authentic and personalized and that fits seamlessly into their feeds and also into their lives. I want to give you an example from the U.K. We developed a social and digital-first campaign with Danny Dyer, a very well-known U.K. actor most famous for his role on EastEnders as Mick Carter, a bartender. He's known for his straight talk, no-nonsense personality, and he loves football, and he was the perfect fit for Frank's RedHot. The results were fantastic. The social reach and engagement exceeded anything we'd ever done before in the U.K. Let me show you Danny in action. [Presentation]

And in case you're wondering what a Flager tastes like, you'll soon find out when you join us for happy hour. . We've doubled our innovation pipeline in half the time, and we've launched more on-trend flavors. It's all about more, faster, as you heard from Andrew earlier. Our recent launch of Frank's RedHot Squeeze brings fun and flavor in a squeezable, easy-to-use packaging. It allows consumers to pair Frank's RedHot on dishes more than ever before. Initial results are strong and exceeding our expectations on distribution and repeat rates. For our wings platform, we will fuel this part of the business with innovation and give consumers something exciting and must-try flavor. A good example is Mango Habanero. You heard from Kasey earlier about sweet heat. Well, this is one of the fastest-growing flavors on restaurant menus, and our Mango Habanero flavor was most preferred by consumers. We'll be launching this flavor in retail and in branded foodservice at the same time to amplify the effect. Sometimes the best things in life really do come in small packages. In June, we launched a new range of mini hot sauces at a hot entry price point of $1, and it's proving to be an early success and helping us drive unit share. What's really exciting is it's 82% incremental to our brand, and we expect to trade consumers up to larger sizes in our portfolio, given Frank's RedHot repeat and loyalty rates. And Cholula, it's all about authentic Mexican. And it's the #1 Mexican hot sauce globally, but it's in only a fraction of the households. So we have significant upside to go after in this area. Gen Z and millennials are the first generations to prefer Mexican over Italian and Chinese. And today, I'm excited to announce the launch of Cholula Extra Hot. It will drive incrementality and distribution and give consumers more of what they want: More heat. My colleague, Tabata will bring to life how we're executing on the launch and how we're leveraging digital and AI for deeper engagement and authentic engagement. And while Cholula was born a hot sauce, the brand has shown potential to stretch beyond. The launch into salsas and taco recipe mixes has done really well. Actually, it's one of the largest and most successful launches in the U.S., and it's been incremental to the category. Impressively, around 80% of the buyers are new to the Cholula brand. And this isn't just a U.S. story. The international opportunity is significant. Heat and hot sauce have global appeal. And in many markets, the category is fast growing, but underdeveloped. We have more than doubled the sales of Frank's RedHot and Cholula internationally since acquisition, and it's got now a higher -- it now represents a higher percent of net sales. We plan to continue to develop the category in our top existing markets while launching into new ones. And France is one of those markets. Some may say that the French only love French food and nothing too spicy, but that's absolutely not true. They love Cholula and they love Mexican food. We launched Cholula this summer as the sauce of sauces, and it was a complete brand and food experience for our consumers and customers at every touch point. It included placement in a restaurant chain, Léon, across tabletops and on menus. It was also supported by Juan Arbelaez, chef influencer, along with significant digital and out-of-home placement. We're off to a strong start with 65% distribution already and 6% market share. And while hot sauce is hot, so is mustard. For the U.S., our largest French's market, we are focused on volume, distribution and brand marketing, and our plans are working. We have improved performance with over 1 point of unit share growth in the latest quarter. And as we go into 2025, we will launch a new creative campaign that celebrates French's as the official flavor of the summer. We'll dial up innovation behind new flavors, leading ahead of the trends like we did before on Creamy Dill Pickle Mustard. And continuing to invest in category management to drive units. And our opportunity for growth internally is also true for mustard. In the U.K., French's is the #1 SKU in the entire McCormick U.K. portfolio. Americana flavors and themes resonate with younger consumers, and it's those consumers that are driving the category. This is what gives Frank's the permission and the opportunity, more than any other brand, for exclusive placement at key retailers like this amazing display shown here. And in Poland, mustard also matters. We have the leading brand with Kamis, and it's outperforming in the marketplace with almost 2 points of market share growth. And as we go into '25, we will remain focused on driving volume, household penetration with increased brand marketing and category management. And our strength goes beyond hot sauce and mustard. We are leaders across markets with a broad portfolio of brands. And I just want to give a little attention to McCormick Mayonesa. This is a real gem in our portfolio that has significant potential. It's the #1 brand in Mexico with 80% household penetration and the #1 flavored mayo in the U.S. Our significant growth in the U.S. is driven by the Hispanic consumer, where Mayonesa overindexes more than any other brand. And in 2025, we're increasing our investment here as well. So I hope you're as excited about this category as we are. Condiments and sauces is a growth engine around the world with top brands that consumers love. Our plans are working, we're winning with the younger consumers and we're scaling and growing globally. Now let's move on to another exciting part of our business, branded foodservice. Our brands are paving the way for success across the industry. We have broad reach and presence in every segment, and we seamlessly connect our branded foodservice and Consumer business, each fueling each other. Consumers want to find the brands and flavors they love when they're eating away from home. And operators know, when they feature our brands in their restaurant or on the menu, it complements and elevates their offering. And McCormick has been outperforming the industry even as foot traffic has slowed in the away-from-home channel. This is driven by the power of our brands, the strong partnership we have with our operators and the marketing and innovation we offer. And only McCormick can partner in a way that drives this level of excitement and appeal with consumers and operators. To continue this momentum, we're going to be investing across 3 key areas: Innovation and renovation, reaching consumers and operators with brand marketing, and expanding our channel presence. We are the best at bringing flavor and packaging innovation for our operators, whether it's on menu collaboration, solving pain points or helping with operational efficiency. Overall, we have stepped up the pace of innovation here. It's all about more faster, similar approach. We've launched new flavors like McCormick Culinary Gochujang seasoning, which was identified in the 2023 flavor forecast. And through packaging innovation, we have significantly removed pain points and introduced new benefits for an improved user experience. A great example of this is our new condiments bulk dispenser, which you can see on the left on the display there. They are easier to use and clean with less waste, solving a major pain point for both the consumer and for our operators. We are also leveraging the iconic power of our brands to reach consumers away from home. Year-to-date, we've driven over 30% increase of branded menu placements in new locations behind our leading brands, such as Frank's RedHot and Cholula. We have some great examples, including Qdoba, where we have rotating Cholula branded menu items to keep it exciting, 2 bottles of Cholula at every tabletop, as well as joint marketing. And through the increased investment, we're reaching 70% of our operators with messaging that educates, inspires menu ideas and demonstrates our product benefits as well as targets new operators. For example, we have a McCormick Seasoning campaign that is live now called Your Skills, Our Spices. It highlights the quality of our ingredients and the expertise that goes into every seasoning we make, but emphasizes the skill of the chef that truly brings the dish to life. Ultimately, we're driving opportunities for our brands on menus and in restaurants while also attracting new operators. The real power of branded foodservice, which you heard earlier, is when it joins forces with the Consumer business. I want to show you an example of how we accelerate trial and amplified engagement across all touch points with a recent product launch. This summer, we launched new OLD BAY Malt Vinegar Seasoning, and we partner with a local restaurant, Jimmy's Seafood, to amplify it. We created co-branded menu items, placed it on tabletops, launched joint branding, drop sampling. We even had a signature menu item at Raven Stadium Football. You couldn't step into Baltimore or into the stadium without seeing OLD BAY Malt Vinegar. This is just a very small example of what we mean when we say that the businesses fuel each other. We're also continuing to expand our channel presence in 3 key areas. You heard Brendan talk about this. In retail foodservice, more and more consumers are shopping the perimeter, looking for prepared meals that are convenient, value-added and great tasting. And that's where our brands come in. To bring this to life, we partnered with a large retailer for their Deli Wings offering, and they now serve Frank's-branded wings, which has taken the entire consumer experience to the next level. For the Hispanic base foodservice outlet, especially in authentic Mexican, we have a very perfect and unique opportunity to leverage brands like McCormick Mayonesa. We launched the siding item in foodservice in August and this has been a gateway into a channel with significant growth opportunities. Another growing channel where we already have -- we already play a critical role, it's in the noncommercial sector. This is comprised of travel, hotels, colleges, universities. Think about it like your office cafeteria. We have found that our brands, no matter the setting or channel, elevates the entire food experience. So in summary, consumer love our brands, and we're leading the way. We're encouraged by the results we've seen so far. Our plans are delivering. Spices and Seasonings will continue to win. Condiments and sauces will drive continuous growth. And branded foodservice extending our reach and impact. Now I'll hand it over to Andrew to talk about flavors.

Thank you, Ana. So I'm excited to close with our flavors business, which makes up 60% of our total Flavor Solutions sales as Kasey highlighted. I'll cover the industry, our positioning, and then I'll go to areas of our focus and growth plans. But first, I probably have one of the most unique challenges of the day. How do I tell you about a business when I can't tell you who our customers are or what products we actually flavor? I like to say we create global icons. We're the secret behind many global icons today and many future icons of tomorrow, whether it's a sauce on your favorite fast food chicken sandwich, the seasoning on your favorite chip, or the taste of a new alcoholic cocktail that's you go-to, we're the ones customers call when they want to achieve iconic status. It's also an attractive industry. Frankly, it's everywhere. Think about people all over the world, 3 meals a day, snacking and drinking in between, and all it needs is flavor. That's our opportunity. It's technically insulated and the margin profile is attractive. Flavor is the #1 thing that will determine the success for our customers, if the consumer likes the taste or not, but it's only a small fraction of the cost. And with consumer trends, industry regulations and sustainability goals always evolving, opportunities will continue to fuel the industry. Within McCormick, it's our second-largest category. It's also one of the fastest-growing in our entire portfolio. We've outpaced the rest of the flavor industry when it comes to organic growth. We also flavor 9 out of the top 10 CPGs, but also have thousands of regional and local customers as we continue to grow our customer base. We do this across a diverse set of end market applications. In fact, if you look back in the corner that we've got highlighted, this is our product showcase. This will give you a sense of all the different end market applications that we have. From a sales perspective, it also might surprise you, we are the #1 flavor house in North America with runway for continued growth. As we expand into other McCormick markets, we'll leverage this North American expertise. We're also different than other flavor houses. It starts with 100% focus and passion on flavor. We have a deep culinary foundation and a natural food heritage, and we're the only ones who are also a global consumer brand leader. We know what it takes to drive brand equity and interact with consumers. Because of this, we have more touch points across all channels, leading to deeper consumer insights. This distinct positioning sets us apart as we think about our growth plans. Our focus is to be the partner of choice across 4 taste competencies, savory heat, naturally sweet and citrus and fruit. Before I jump into each one of those, let me explain what I mean when I say taste competency. First, its expertise that is end-to-end. It's our naturally advantaged and integrated sourcing of raw materials, the insights we have on a specific flavor profile from both of our segments, the investments in our technologies to drive the ultimate eating and drinking experience, and our R&D and commercial team's customer-centric mindset and flavor expertise. In summary, to when a taste competency, we must have the talent, expertise, integrated supply chain and capabilities across the organization for us to be the partner of choice. We have the clear right to win in savory and heat. We're already well established as market leaders. We have sourcing advantages due to our scale, and natural heritage and culinary expertise, particularly in seasonings development and heat application. Our customers and even their pets are McCormick brand consumers, too. And they see us as experts in these taste competencies given our strong brand recognition. Heat is particularly exciting as it's a fast-growing flavor profile. Kasey covered our capabilities which we began building long before this was a hot trend. In naturally sweet and citrus and fruit, we have regional expertise, primarily in the Americas and EMEA, but we're building that globally. For naturally sweet, we have a unique sourcing advantages, most notably sustainable vanilla, and warm spices like cinnamon. In the past year, we have focused on high-end growth markets like performance nutrition and beverage with a lot of success. For citrus and fruit, we have strong technical capabilities thorough Giotti and FONA acquisitions, which can be used at a wide range of applications. We see additional growth ahead, and we plan to increase our global presence, both through organic investments and potential partnerships. Overall, our taste competencies define our strengths within the flavor industry and represent large addressable segments with strong growth rates. In terms of product offerings, we have 2 different types: Seasonings and specialty flavors. Each play a different role in our portfolio and in our growth strategy. I'm going to start with seasonings first because that's where we have more scale today. We like to talk about seasonings as the tip of our spear. We use it as a new way to enter customers and market. And the global snacks market is large and fast-growing, meaning a great opportunity for us to capitalize on. We have significant capabilities and expertise in snacks, particularly application science. Heat expertise also further enables our growth, particularly through innovation. Because of this, we're well positioned to support key consumer trends. We talk a lot about the growth of heat, but also applying it to other trends like health. In fact, we have found heat is a great solution for customers looking to reduce their sodium without losing flavor, and we have recently implemented this with several key customers. In specialty flavors, we plan to amplify our positions in the Americas and EMEA. While in APAC, specialty flavors will be embedded into our seasonings. The combination of McCormick, Giotti and FONA has been powerful in creating scale, increasing our footprint and driving speed and agility to partner with a wide range of customers, both existing and new. Whether it's the chocolate flavor for a new protein shake, the lemon flavor for a popular seltzer, strawberry flavor for a fiber gummy, we flavor them all. Talent is also a critical enabler for us, and we continue to bring in great external hires. But also, we're driving internal development, most notably through our Flavorist-in-Training program that provides a multiyear career path at McCormick. Finally, we continue to invest in proprietary technologies to support all of our taste competencies, and you're going to hear more about this from Anju in a bit. Wrapping up on flavors. We're focusing on the 4 taste competencies where we have a right to win. We're maximizing our strong positions in the Americas and EMEA. We're further developing and building our position in APAC, and seasonings will be the lead in all regions. We'll continue to expand our specialty flavors portfolio. Our strength and go-to-market approach differentiates us from other flavor houses and provide significant opportunities to drive continued growth for McCormick. Thank you. Now that we've taken you through our winning proposition across our core categories, I would like to welcome Sumeet to the stage, who will take you through APAC.

Good morning. Now that Andrew and Ana have shared growth plans related to core categories, I'm going to talk about how we can further leverage opportunities in emerging markets. Specifically, I will address markets within Asia Pacific, or APAC; and Latin America, or Lat Am, because that is where we see most of the growth potential. Let me start with some of my background. I'm Sumeet Vohra, and I'm the President for McCormick APAC. I joined McCormick over 1 year ago and have worked in consumer goods industry for more than 32 years, all in Asia. This includes having lived and worked in China, India, The Philippines and Singapore. My formative years was spent in different regions of India and exploring the diversity of spices and flavors that the country has to offer, particularly hot and spicy. I plan to leave you today with the following 3 key takeaways: APAC and Latin America are attractive markets and will be growth accelerators for McCormick. We have a successful history in China, and we are restoring China to stronger growth. McCormick is building leadership and capabilities to support growth plans in these markets. Let me get started with the growth potential of APAC. You probably know that APAC is home to 4 billion people or 56% of the world's population. The APAC GDP is growing 4.4%, which is faster than the global average of 3.2%. APAC is also a priority region for several of our key global customers. And consumers in APAC are embracing international flavors and heat-based flavors, providing McCormick with more growth opportunities. In APAC, we continue to build scale and are investing in strong leadership. For example, our new VP for R&D has 24 years of experience, with extensive work in the flavor industry. Earlier this year, we hired a new Managing Director for China. He has 25 years of experience, mostly with multinational companies, and he most recently led a listed Chinese savory snack manufacturer. Our leadership team has an average of 27 years of industry experience with 9 years in McCormick. We have evolved and strengthened our leadership structure in order to better cater to the needs of our consumers and our customers. Our portfolio is 60% Consumer segment and 40% Flavor Solutions. We have scale in our largest market, which is China. We have brands that are in #1 or #2 position in several categories and market combinations. And we have a well-established distribution network in several of our key markets. McCormick has been present in APAC for nearly 60 years, starting with Australia. Today, we have manufacturing and R&D centers in China, India, Thailand, Japan, The Philippines and Australia. This is a broad and dispersed supply network to support our growth plans. We are headquartered in Singapore, and we have joint ventures in The Philippines, in Japan, and an export-oriented joint venture in India that have all been operating successfully for more than 30 years. We have been present in China for 35 years. We began with a joint venture in Shanghai and partnered with our global Flavor Solutions customers by supplying them seasonings and custom condiments. We then grew the Consumer business, which includes branded foodservice, and built sales of the McCormick brand organically. In 2013, we made our first acquisition in China, adding the DaQiao brand, a leading bouillon brand in Central China small catering. This step-changed our business and further helped us accelerate growth. The McCormick brand has been familiar to Chinese consumers for the last 30 years. And today, McCormick is the #1 brand in terms of aided awareness in the herbs and spices category. The McCormick brand, which is known as Wei Hao Mei in Chinese, which literally means tastes great, is a well-known and trusted household brand in China. In the 3 years leading up to the pandemic, we drove high single-digit sales growth in China. This slowed down to an average of low single digits over the last 4 years as we were impacted by the disruption due to COVID and the macroeconomic slowdown. China still offers great long-term potential, and we remain committed to this market. We expect that by leveraging our scale and the investments that we've already made in China, we will build a mid-single-digit growth over the next few years. Turning to our growth plans. Our categories are projected to grow and our plans for China reflect the change in consumer trends that we've been seeing for the last 1 to 2 years. There is increasing urbanization with fast growth in Tier 1 cities. These cities are quite sizable at about 210 million consumers. The Chinese consumer is also shifting to fast-growing channels, this includes mini markets, club channels and social commerce. For example, mini markets, which are similar to the U.S. convenience store format, are growing double digits as consumers substitute trips from hypermarkets. We have been building new distribution in these growing areas and we will continue to do so in 2025. Additionally, we plan to grow our DaQiao bouillon business by increasing penetration in the small catering segment and expanding to new chain stores and emerging centralized food kitchens. Importantly, there is a growing preference for local brands among Chinese consumers, and DaQiao is the leading bouillon brand in Central China small catering. We will also continue to capitalize on opportunities in the Flavor Solutions segment. We will leverage our strength with global quick service restaurants, or QSRs, to drive growth. Two major ones have plans to increase the number of stores significantly over the next 3 years. Combined, that will be an additional 9,000 stores in China. We also have plans to expand our business with fast-growing local QSRs as well as protein processors. We are partnering with protein processors to create convenient meal solutions that are sold into retail. For example, we recently collaborated with one of our customers to develop an Indian-flavored for chicken to be sold into retail in China. India is one of the markets where we'll be planting seeds for the next decade. As you know, India is a fast-growing market with strong long-term potential. And this may not be a surprise, but India is the fastest-growing market for heat-related products in the world. We've already had a presence in the Indian market for more than 30 years and already have an asset base for -- and capabilities that include manufacturing, raw material processing as well as R&D. McCormick is widely respected in India for our capabilities, particularly in heat and in seasonings. India can be a difficult market, and we have learned from our past experiences. As we build plans for the long term, we will initially focus on our global seasonings customers in Flavor Solutions. And we will address other opportunities in profitable core categories and customers over time. We took a similar approach when we entered China. We know India requires patients, and we are taking a measured approach to drive our long-term success. Now let's turn to LatAm. This market represents 8% of the world's population and is the largest international region for several of our customers across both the Consumer and Flavor Solutions segment. The region has a diverse and dynamic food and flavor culture, and it's one of the fastest-growing markets for heat. In fact, second just behind India. Similar to APAC, we have invested in strong leadership in the region. Over the last 4 years, we have built a leadership team with extensive multinational as well as regional operating experience. The team has an average of 9 years of McCormick and 28 years of industry experience. Our portfolio is 80% Flavor Solutions and 20% Consumer segment. With 30 years of Flavor Solutions presence in the market, we have already established deep customer relationships. We have strong brand equity, including McCormick Mayonesa, which is a top 5 grocery item in the region. McCormick de Mexico is our longest-standing and largest joint venture. In a region with so many opportunities, we are taking a deliberate and measured approach on capitalizing on them. Our opportunity will be led by Flavor Solutions in which we have been driving high single-digit growth in recent years on average. We will follow the go-to-market approach that Andrew has just discussed. Seasonings will be our lead, starting with savory, and then heat. And we will focus on the Mexican and Brazilian markets. We will leverage our global customer relationships to extend into new end market applications, such as beverages, bakery and meat. And we plan to expand our customer base in snack seasonings. In our Consumer segment, we have been averaging low double-digit growth in recent years and have gained significant momentum by investing in marketing, new products and extending distribution. We plan to continue to drive momentum in El Salvador and Honduras, which are markets where we are most mature. We are also expanding our Spices and Seasonings and condiments and sauces business and presence in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia. We have already seen early success and high growth rates in these markets. Across both segments in LatAm, we have invested in capacity, capabilities and talent to be well positioned for success. In summary, APAC and LatAm will be growth accelerators. We already have foundational capabilities and a track record of success. We will be restoring China to stronger growth, leveraging the capabilities and the investment that we have made over the years. Additionally, we will be planting seeds for long-term growth in select markets. We are building stronger capability and leadership presence to support our growth plans. We look forward to APAC and LatAm being growth accelerators for McCormick. Thank you. I would like to now welcome Faten.

Okay. So we've covered a lot of ground this morning. We are going to be taking a short break and return to our program at around 10 after 10. We do have some refreshments and snacks for you in the back. And we will resume again at 10 after 10. Thank you. [Break]

All right. So please help me welcome our Chief Marketing Officer, Tabata Gomez.

Good morning. My name is Tabata Gomez, and I'm the Chief Marketing Officer here at McCormick. I have a 21-year career in marketing and P&L management, and I'm known for my transformative approach to brands and businesses. That is why I chose to join McCormick 1 year ago because I saw the opportunity to grow this amazing brands through marketing and digital transformation. And that's what we're going to talk about today. In fact, I am going to show you how we're evolving the way we do marketing in order to drive sales and accelerate brand growth. But before I get started and show you an example of how we are doing this, let me take a step back. At McCormick, we market to 3 distinct audiences: consumers, restaurant operators and customers. For today's presentation, I am going to focus on consumers. But I am going to show you some elements of how we leverage restaurant operators to drive trial for our brands. We all know technology continues to change the way consumers behave. This has led to consumers being hyper-connected. They are consuming content everywhere, sometimes with 2 or 3 screens at the same time. And to win, we need to meet consumers where they are with the right content for the right person in the right place at the right time. And because accessibility and convenience have become paramount, our products need to be available wherever consumers want to buy them, whether it's in the store, online or through a hybrid approach. E-commerce has become a growth catalyst for us, with over 13% of our sales happening on this channel. That is 30% higher than the average food and bev industry in the U.S. And we know how to manage this well. We leverage data and analytics to ensure we have the right assortment, the right content, the right experiences. And because consumer and media behaviors are dynamic, we like to offer what I'd like to call a buffet of media, so we can reach them wherever they are. That is why we created the Impact Flywheel, where we put the consumer at the center and we surround them with all the relevant touch points in their path to purchase. Whether they're searching for something on Google or watching a video on YouTube or browsing through content on social media or going to a store or to a restaurant, the Impact Flywheel ensures that we have an integrated approach with our brands throughout all these different channels. And then we activate the Impact Flywheel with an efficient and an effective A&P strategy. A couple of highlights here. At McCormick, we have the highest share of voice in the categories that we play in. And we continue to invest in working media to drive incremental brand growth. Digital is 77% of our spend. That's why our continued focus on digital transformation is paramount. And we have best-in-class marketing mix modeling, ensuring that we can optimize over 80% of our global A&P. This allows us to optimize our spend on the go, ensuring that our ROIs consistently beat industry benchmarks. And we're also modernizing our brands to appeal to the consumers of today. For example, as you saw in Andrew's presentation or you can see on the slide right here, we're leveraging our Impact Flywheel to modernize the McCormick brand, ensuring that it stays relevant with our high-value households, like millennials, Gen Z and Hispanics. Now I am going to show you how we bring all of this to life using Cholula in the U.S. as an example. Cholula is the #1 Mexican hot sauce with tremendous growth potential. To continue to grow this brand, we need to drive awareness and trial with millennials and with Gen Zs. So we built a Cholula Impact Flywheel with the right touch points for this audience. And now let's take a look at some of these touch points. First, we leveraged search online to mine for insights. Here is where we discovered that heat is a subculture for this audience of Gen Z and millennials. We also start looking at all the content, all the recipes, all the keywords consumers are looking for online. And then based on that, we build our paid search and our content strategy. For Cholula, a 35% increase in search has driven to a 400% increase in brand impressions and a 60% increase on on-site visits just in 1 year. And our cost per click has decreased 17% year-over-year. This shows that this is very efficient for us. Second, we leverage media to reach consumers with dynamic experiences. We use paid social on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. For example, our Huevos Rancheros content alone got over 2 million consumers to engage with our brand. That's a lot. And then we also use ad placements on sites like allrecipes.com, on food blogs, and other sites where consumers are browsing for content, and then we leverage streaming TV. Let's take a look. [Presentation]

The third element on our flywheel is how we leverage our own digital properties like organic social to engage and inform consumers and e-mail to drive one-to-one marketing. We also leverage influencers to drive awareness, inspiration and purchase. When it comes to millennials and to Gen Z, 42% of their purchases are inspired by an influencer. On the screen, you can see a couple of our Cholula influencer videos and how this drives engagement and purchase. Like Hugh over here saying, "I just bought and tried the green this morning. Loving it." Well, we also use gen AI to search for what consumers are saying on social. And then we act on it. Like Omar over here, who said, "Chili lime is my favorite Cholula. To be honest, Cholula isn't hot for me, regardless." Well, guess what, Omar? Just like Ana said, next year in January, we're going to be launching Cholula Extra Hot, which is 2x hotter than the original, and the data has shown us that it's going to be highly incremental to our brand. This is an example of how we leverage digital and move fast with innovation. The next element on the flywheel is our digital shelf. Our digital shelf is the equivalent of our physical shelf, but online. It's all the images and all the videos that are available when somebody is trying to buy a product online. 46% of consumers will not purchase a product if the information is not right. And 70% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product if the information is relevant. This tells you that the digital shelf has power. It drives sales. On the screen, you can see the Cholula digital shelf that is currently being rolled out. But what's most important is that we're doing this for the rest of the brands in our portfolio. The next element on our flywheel is retail media. Retail media is how we market to the consumer at the online point of purchase. First, we use display ads to drive consumers to our retailer site. We also use search to do that. While they're on the retailer sites, like an Instacart or a walmart.com, we use search to ensure that our products show up at the top of the page. And then we use display ads to remind them of our products. And sometimes, we might close a sale with a promotion. We're very good at doing this. For example, we know that there's a high correlation between avocado purchasers and Cholula lovers. So when people are buying avocados online and we have an active campaign on Cholula, we serve them with Cholula ads, and we sell more. Overall, in the U.S., we have a 7:1 payout on retail media across the McCormick suite of brands, which is double the grocery industry standard. And let's talk about direct-to-consumer and how we leverage this to drive trial and test and learn. The data showed us that millennials and Gen Zs like to experiment. They like to try different flavors. And Cholula has many flavors, but these are not available everywhere yet. So we ran a direct-to-consumer pilot, where we offer Cholula kits, and coupled that with an influencer campaign. In just 7 days, we sold 2,000 kits of 7 bottles of Cholula each. For perspective, it takes consumers 2 years to buy 7 bottles of Cholula and we were selling them with just one click. Feel free to check this out at shopmccormick.com. If you're in the room, you have a Cholula bottle in front of you with a little QR code for easy access to our store. Well, the data not only proved that consumers are loving the different flavors of Cholula, but it also gave us data of sales by state. We are now using all of this data to have conversations with our customers to get incremental distribution for our entire Cholula lineup. And because 40% of consumers that are Gen Zs start their shopping journey on TikTok, we're making Cholula available soon at the TikTok Shop. Now the last element of the flywheel I will highlight is how we drive trial using Cholula by leveraging our restaurant partnerships where millennials and Gen Zers are. At restaurants like Qdoba, we have Cholula branded meals. At places like Wendy's, when you buy a burrito, you get a couple of Cholula packets with your breakfast. And we're making sure that chefs at the back of house in kitchens at restaurants at universities and hotels are cooking with Cholula. And we continue to expand our tabletop presence, as you saw on Ana's presentation earlier. We are going to continue to build brand love for Cholula because this drives sales. Millennials and Gen Zs love this brand. They get tattoos. They buy branded T-shirts. They even designed little carriers that they sell on Amazon, so you can carry your mini Cholula bottles around. You each have one of these at your table. And we're going to continue to build this brand through experiences, like the Cholula Taco Truck, which we'll be launching next year, and by supporting our entire portfolio. But just like we're doing this for Cholula, we're doing this for the rest of the brands in our portfolio, and that's what's important. Let me show you a video that illustrates this. [Presentation]

I'll close by saying that at McCormick, we are evolving the way we do marketing to drive sales and accelerate brand growth. And as you saw in our most recent results, this is working. But what I'm most excited about is that we're just getting started. With that, I'll turn it over to Anju. Thank you.

Thank you, Tabata. Hello, everyone. I'm Anju Rao, McCormick's Chief Science Officer, a passionate flavor enthusiast on a mission to elevate our culinary experiences. My journey has taken me from the many spice markets that I grew up in India to the labs and kitchens around the world, where I've been experimenting with food and beverage. I've been a long-time consumer and user of OLD BAY and McCormick [ Manila ]. And over the course of the last 2 decades of CPG and retail, I've had many opportunities to work with the Flavor Solutions R&D team here at McCormick, designing products at my prior companies. Driven to innovate is one of our core key principles that Brendan and the rest of my peers alluded to earlier today. At McCormick, we pride ourselves in cultivating a culture that prioritizes innovation to capitalize on new opportunities and strengthen our customer value proposition. For us at McCormick, innovation is everyone's responsibility. We embrace breakthrough ideas to further differentiate our brands, drive growth and strengthen our flavor leadership, all of which is necessary and critical. Our talent and expertise is at the heart of our innovation agenda. We operate in high-growth categories. And to sustain momentum, we must challenge the status quo. Our R&D and quality teams play a crucial role in defining and executing our strategy to deliver innovation associated with our long-term plans. While there are many events, I'd like to highlight a company-wide annual summit that is held regularly every year, and we just had ours in September. An example of this is the mini Cholula bottle, which was an idea that was conceived at prior's innovation summit. This creates an opportunity for all of us at the company to come together, collaborate and nurture out-of-box thinking. Flavors and Consumer products are unique, iconic and global. Our technical innovation centers, therefore, should naturally be global too. We are proud of our 30 innovation centers, where our teams are sharing information and insights to affect product design. We are home to approximately 600 food, sensory, data and analytical scientists, flavorists, chefs, product developers and engineers around the globe. The diverse skills of our team fosters collaboration in ways that are greater than the sum of each individual part. Across both of our segments, Consumer and Flavor Solutions, we anticipate future needs and create flavor experiences that meet market demands. In short, we are setting new standards for excellence. Most companies operate either as consumer packaged goods or as flavor. We at McCormick are different in that we operate in both business segments. We work with at-home and away-from-home customers as well as our consumer teams around the world, leveraging our differentiated capabilities contributing to consumer-preferred innovation. Our innovation is informed by anticipating trends, our unmatched insights and multiple iterations, all with speed, resulting in market-winning attributes and products. Inspired by the passion to flavor and delivering the taste that you trust, there are 3 things that I'd like to draw your attention to. One, we leverage our rich culinary heritage. Two, our cutting-edge sensory science. And finally, our innovative technology to drive sustainable, long-term growth. By drawing on our culinary roots, we celebrate flavors and experiences that have recreated the food culture. For example, pumpkin spice, the crunch of fried food or simply the aroma of roasting vegetables. Our expertise in sensory science allows us to decode consumer preferences and create signature experiences that are memorable. Our foundation and investments in technology allows us to develop products that are inspiring. I'd like to now spend a few minutes walking you through some of the details in each one of these pillars. We blend the art of cooking with the precision of science, transforming how we create and experience food. We celebrate the vibrant flavors and cultural heritage that inspire our creativity when our flavorists work in tandem with chefs. Sensory science allows us to analyze and understand how consumers perceive flavors, aromas, textures and overall eating experiences. We have access to a vast network of consumers. This helps us to engage directly and gain deep insights into their preferences and behaviors. This extensive reach allows us to stay tuned into the emerging trends and shifts in consumer tastes informing our product development. Studying new ways to measure consumer experience is essential for us to stay competitive and relevant. Sensory science is a competency where we continually provide industry thought leadership and research. For example, we published a paper on measuring emotions associated with food and beverage consumption, which even to this day, is relevant in our industry. McCormick Flavor Forecasts serves as a platform for creativity and exploration. This forecast delves into the relevant culinary trends shaping the way that millions of consumers enjoy food and flavor. It's more than just a prediction. It is an integral way of working amongst our technical and sales teams and results in customer intimacy that is distinctly McCormick. It is a celebration of the dynamic interplay between consumers, flavors and the culinary arts, informing our vision for the future. We have been leading this for 25 years, and our customers look to us to incorporate these trends into their product design. Our cutting-edge patented technologies elevate the consumer experience of our existing and new product launches, as referenced by Andrew and Ana earlier today. Our tools span unique building blocks to complex flavoring systems. For example, we used our technology to create the finishing sugars that sold out within a few hours when they were available for purchase online, and you will get to taste them a little later on this afternoon. We are very proud of our distinctive proprietary technologies that serve as a foundation to deliver on the taste competencies of savory, heat, naturally sweet, citrus and fruit that you heard in Andrew's presentation earlier today. While there are many, I'm choosing to highlight 3 specific ones: natural flavor, controlled release and encapsulation. Our natural flavor platform allows us to isolate key attributes and deliver complex extracts, resulting in clean product labels that both consumers and customers want. Taste modification is often used to enhance texture and mouth feel when formulating with natural healthy ingredients, which sometimes would otherwise have an off taste. But best of all is our proprietary encapsulation technology that enables customizable flavor delivery, when, where and how you'd like to experience flavor. We can time-release that ideal customer experience, an intense quick release or a gradual lingering build or a subtle sensation at the end. Our passion for flavor, expertise and use of our technologies enables us to make delicious healthier products, particularly when reducing salt, sugar and fat, which continue to be focus areas for our customers and consumers. We're excited for you all to experience some of these technologies later on this afternoon in our showcase. The use of machine learning is not new at McCormick. This has been a game-changer in creating fresh new flavors faster that are scoring higher in consumer preference tastes and lasting longer in the market for our customers. Utilizing data to track trends, preferences and feedback enables us to make informed decisions in our creative process that's unique to each of our customers. This not only speeds up our innovation time lines, but it maintains quality and flavor integrity. Utilization of our smart, agile growth enabler, which we formally call the McCormick Sage, is a competitive advantage for us. As our customers strive for speed to market, we have been using it for years and it has lived up to its name. The more we use it, the more it learns, and the smarter we get and the more growth we can drive. Our Flavor University Program educates the broader food and beverage industry on the creation and use of flavors and showcases McCormick's technical strength. Since its inception 28 years ago, this program has had 10,000 attendees. Just this past year, we hosted 19 sessions where our customers continue to appreciate the knowledge and insights in making complex flavor easily understandable. This program is open to anyone in the industry, and we have a high conversion rate of participants becoming new customers. So as I wrap up, our one-of-a-kind recipe that includes culinary creativity, combined with our competency in sensory science, powered by our breakthrough innovative technologies, is the foundation on which we have, we will continue to successfully deliver a long-term algorithm with confidence. Our foundational stance will remain relevant and timeless as we continually make investments in our technologies, our talent and tools, driving differentiated growth across both of our businesses, Consumer and Flavor Solutions. Flavor is best experienced first hand. I invite you to go on a flavor exploration journey with me. In front of you is a little snack box, which hopefully you didn't open it up until now. But yes, I see you all. Go ahead and open it up. In it, you will see 2 samples. Sample A is an extruded corn puff. Sample B is that same puff that delivers an eating experience that is distinctively tomato basil, flavorful and memorable. This is possible only because of the artful use of culinary ingredients that have been extracted, encapsulated for the most delicious flavor experience that I hope you'll enjoy. Thank you. With that, I'd like to welcome Kasey Jenkins, our Chief Growth Officer, back to the stage.

Thank you, Anju. You have heard this morning about strengthening our flavor leadership through organic sales growth. Now I will cover it through the lens of acquisitions, a core strength of McCormick. Acquisitions are an important part of our long-term growth objectives and have significantly contributed to our industry-leading growth. We expect the initial impact of acquisitions to contribute 1/3 of our growth as it has since 2015. We have made wise choices in the past and the market has acknowledged they created value. It is critical that we have a strong pipeline. We identify and evaluate potential targets using our internal processes as well as meeting with external advisers. Investment bankers I found are very eager to meet with me to review potential targets. In one discussion recently, a banker said to me, "When the time comes for me to pitch an asset to McCormick, what is it that you want to hear?" My answer was very simple, but I'm not going to tell you right now. So before I do, I'm going to touch on our disciplined approach and our historical success. One of the reasons McCormick is so successful is because of our disciplined approach to identify and assess potential acquisitions using our pipeline strategy, as you see on this slide. We continuously monitor a range of targets. The key to building our pipeline is cultivating relationships, which could span over several years. And relationships are important for 2 reasons. Number one, when an owner decides to sell and they pick up that phone, we want McCormick to be the first call they make. Number two, our relationships help us understand the culture of a target, and that is an important factor in our decision-making. Developing relationships has proved to be effective in the past. They have helped to secure assets that we wanted, and they've also informed us to walk away from some that we found we didn't want. We are very pleased with our current portfolio and are confident in the growth it will continue to deliver. We actively evaluate assets in the market, and we are excited to add great strategic assets that will complement our portfolio and enhance our ongoing growth just as we have done in the past. We expect an acquisition to drive greater shareholder value. An acquisition must fit our strategic vision of being a leading flavor company. We want a flavor asset that benefits from the strength of our portfolio across both of our segments. It is not just about creating value in one segment. The complementary nature of our segments is important and a significant factor in acquisitions as well. A strong brand can span at-home and away-from-home channels, or it could be co-branded with one of the products of a flavor customer. And a business that advances our leadership in global flavors can give us new innovation capabilities in our Consumer segment. We focus on a specific McCormick value proposition. What unique value does McCormick provide as the owner of an asset? And conversely, what value does the brand or business bring to McCormick? Now the answer to the banker's question, when the time comes for me to pitch an asset to McCormick, what would you like to hear? My answer is simple, tell me why McCormick is the right owner for the asset. We have a remarkable history of acquiring attractive brands in great categories and unlocking growth across both of our segments. Our discipline on approach and price sets us up for success, but what truly stands out and drives our success is our outstanding integration. We have a uniquely strong track record of integrating acquisitions because of our focus on growth. That means we tailor our integration plans to each asset. We focus on maximizing its sustainable profitable growth rather than prioritizing a specific integration approach. It has proven to be effective. Cholula and FONA were acquired within 30 days of each other. And for each of them, the integration objective and execution was quite different, but they were both very successful. An acquisition's impact is amplified when it can benefit from being part of our portfolio, and it also strengthens our flavor leadership. We've enhanced the performance of our acquired assets. It is clear we are the right owners for them. Their contribution was sizable in year 1. But what's even more exciting is what happened after that. We've accelerated their growth, they are thriving as part of our portfolio, and our flavor leadership is stronger. Let's take a look at our most recent acquisitions. Starting with Frank's and French's. We advanced our leadership position in condiments. And by leveraging our capabilities, we have driven the growth of these brands. We increased Frank's brand support. We expanded product lines into different categories. We extended points of distribution. We have grown Frank's repeat and buy rates. We have returned French's Mustard to growth. And for both brands, we're gaining momentum internationally. Turning to FONA. This is a target we built a relationship long before we actually acquired it. We continue to realize the benefits of combining FONA and McCormick's capabilities as well as leveraging our global footprint and expanding our capacity. We have grown sales by cross-selling and providing a more comprehensive offering. FONA has achieved record new product wins since the acquisition. And our Consumer segment is benefiting from FONA's technology. Later today, you will taste one of our Grill Mate marinades, Garlic, Herb and Wine. This combines FONA's TrueTaste technology and a McCormick clean flavor capability to replace an ingredient from an external supplier. The result, it's a better-tasting product and at a lower cost. And finally, Cholula. We've continued to unlock this brand's potential by leveraging our operational and category expertise. Since acquiring Cholula, we've increased household and menu penetration. We've expanded distribution in retail and branded foodservice, and we've grown the repeat and buy rates. Our recent expansion into the U.S. Mexican aisle with new formats is exceeding our expectations. And notably, we advanced Cholula to the #2 U.S. hot sauce brand behind Frank's. Frank's, French's, FONA and Cholula, they have done more than just contribute to meeting our year 1 acquisition growth objective. They have been a significant contributor to our underlying growth after year 1 as well. Our disciplined approach has consistently driven value and these acquisitions added to our history. We have a proven record and expect future assets will add to that record, supporting differentiated growth and enhancing our value creation. It is worth noting we have built relationships with potential targets who have recognized the successes in our acquisitions, and they have told us that they want the same for their brands and their people one day. So when we announce our next acquisition, hold us accountable. Ask us the question, why is McCormick the right owner for this asset? Thank you very much, and now let's welcome Marcos and Mike.

Thanks, Kasey, and good morning, everyone. Before I kick off my presentation, I'd like to say that I'm grateful for my 33-plus years at McCormick, including the last 8 as CFO. I've really enjoyed telling McCormick's great story to The Street, both the analysts and investors, and appreciate your time and engagement over the years. I'm especially happy today that you're hearing it directly from this passionate team. You can tell they're really focused and they're telling a great story. Going forward, I'm confident they will continue to advance our leadership and differentiation, build our next generation of leaders and capabilities, and ensure McCormick remains a great place to work, and most importantly, a great investment. Now on to our presentation. First, I'm going to kick off with a discussion of our historical performance. Then I'll turn it over to Marcos, who will review our long-term objectives and capital allocation strategy. Our top priority remains to drive differentiated volume-led sales growth, consistent with our historical net sales performance as seen on this slide. Turning to operating income. After a challenging '22, where our results were impacted by the macro environment and higher-than-expected escalation of cost inflation, we met our cost recovery plans and delivered margin expansion in 2023. In 2024, we are focused on investing back in our business to drive volume, while also continuing to grow our operating income and expand our margins. As we said, our investments are yielding results, and we expect our volume and operating income improvement to continue into the future. As you heard today, we operate in great and advantaged categories and are intentionally focused on investing to drive growth. From 2015 to 2023, we delivered 4% organic sales growth. In addition, our successful M&A contributed 2% to our growth over that time period. In total, we delivered a 6% compounded annual growth rate, in line with the high end of our long-term objectives. Historically, we have driven our organic growth through volume, both before and during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, from 2015 to 2019, our organic growth included a 2% contribution from volume and 1% from price on average. In 2022 and 2023, pricing led growth as volume was pressured given the level of our pricing actions to offset cost increases. Importantly, in 2024, we made significant progress in sequentially improving our volumes and delivered positive volume growth in the third quarter. This performance was driven by our proven growth levers, including brand marketing, new products and packaging innovation, category management and our proprietary technologies. We have a track record of investing for long-term growth, leveraging our growth flywheel of margin expansion to fund investments and continue to drive strong top line results. This is foundational to McCormick and has enabled us to deliver long-term profitable growth. In 2023, we expanded our gross margin by 180 basis points. We recovered the costs our pricing lagged over the past 2 years and realized favorable product mix as we targeted investments and optimized our portfolio. And we delivered on our comprehensive continuous improvement or CCI commitments. In 2024, we continue to expect gross margin expansion of 50 to 100 basis points as we benefit from improved product mix and CCI savings. We expect this gross margin expansion to be the primary driver behind our operating margin expansion for the year. Going forward, our business fundamentals are strong and position us well for continued success. With that, I will hand it over to Marcos.

Thanks, Mike, and thanks for everything you have done for McCormick, Mike, over the last 30 years. You have been a great mentor to me and to many others. Really appreciate it. As I take on the role of CFO, I'm looking forward to working with his entire team to deliver on our long-term objectives. I'm also looking forward to engaging with everyone here and on the call. So now on to my presentation. The focus of my remarks today will be on our long-term objectives. I'm going to unpack each of the components, breaking down the contribution by segment, and we'll bring together what you heard today from our leadership team. We'll also discuss our prioritized investments, including our digital transformation and our capital allocation priorities. I'd like to start off by reaffirming our sustainable long-term objectives: net sales of 4% to 6%, operating income of 7% to 9%, and earnings per share of 9% to 11%. As Mike mentioned, McCormick has a history of reliable growth, and we believe we have the right plans in place to consistently deliver these results over the long term. Starting with net sales, our long-term objective is still to drive 4% to 6% growth. This growth will be driven by similar contributions from the base business, new products and acquisitions. You've heard today about our investments and plans. I'm confident in our approach because we're seeing returns from these efforts. Our top priority is still to drive consistent, volume-led sales growth. Pricing is a lever we have used in the past to cover inflation. We expect to continue to leverage our data and analytics to implement pricing as needed in the future. Innovation is critical for us. It drives 1/3 of our long-term objectives, and we expect it to drive strong performance in the future. As a leadership team, we discuss the latest trends and insights and how those might translate into innovation in both segments. The contribution to our long-term sales objectives has historically included the benefit of acquisitions. As you heard today, we're committed to retaining the discipline we have historically demonstrated in this area, which I'll discuss shortly. But first, let's discuss the components of organic sales growth objectives. Our objectives imply organic sales growth rate of 3% to 4%, of which approximately 1% is price, consistent with pre-pandemic historical trends. As we look ahead to 2028 or the upcoming 5-year period, we expect to drive organic growth at the high end of that range or about 4% CAGR, leading to approximately $8 billion by 2028. And we expect this growth to be driven by equal contributions from our Consumer and Flavor Solutions segments. As you heard today, we expect our investments behind our high-growth categories to fuel our sales performance. Now I'm going to summarize some of the growth drivers you heard today. In the Consumer, starting with Americas, we'll continue to invest in brand marketing to support our plans. As Andrew and Ana explained, we expect to improve market share by expanding distribution, launching new packaging and innovating. In addition, we remain committed to our revenue growth management initiatives. Our plans are similar in EMEA, where we're looking to continue to drive growth through our global brands, including Frank's and Cholula, as well as our regional brands such as Ducros in France and Schwartz in the U.K. We plan to continue to expand across various channels. In APAC, our expansion in the region will accelerate our growth in the Consumer segment and as we focus on restoring growth from China. Looking at Flavor Solutions in the Americas. We continue to focus on growing our flavors and branded foodservice business. In EMEA and APAC, we're focused on further expanding flavors as well as through collaborations with our QSR customers and further building on these relationships through innovation. Lastly, our plans to expand in Latin America will contribute to growth in both segments. Let's move to acquisitions, which remain a key growth driver of our long-term objectives and are expected to contribute about 2% growth. As you know, we have a proven track record of creating value through acquisitions that is rooted in our tailored strategies and financial discipline, with future opportunities to ensure they fit our vision of being the leading flavor company, meet our financial thresholds and deliver shareholder value. We focus on assets that are accretive to our sales growth rates, our margins and our earnings and contribute to our operational capabilities. All of our capital investments, including M&A, are viewed with an EVA and ROIC lens. We're committed to retaining the discipline that we have historically demonstrated, ensuring that we had successful history of acquisitions. As Kasey noted, we're pleased with our current portfolio and confident in the organic growth it will deliver. Additionally, as we actively evaluate assets in the market, we're excited about the possibilities to add great acquisitions that complement our portfolio, enhance organic growth, as we have successfully done in the past. Our long-term operating income objective remains at 7% to 9% growth, fueled by top line growth and our cost savings and efficiency initiatives. This range includes acquisitions. Acquisitions have always been included in our long-term algorithm, as they are an important element of our growth strategy. It is difficult for us to break out the future impact of acquisitions on our operating income line, as each deal is unique. In addition, benefits to operating income can differ in year 1 and post integration. Our operating income growth will be driven by higher-quality, volume-led top line, our product mix and the benefit of our CCI initiatives. These benefits will be partially offset by inflation and our investments back into the business. In terms of investments, we expect brand marketing to represent at least 6% of total Consumer net sales over the next 5 years. In addition, we'll continue to invest in R&D to support our innovation plans as well as our digital acceleration program, which I will cover later. As our operating income growth ramps in 2025 closer to our long-term objectives, we expect by 2028 to drive at least 7% operating income CAGR. We are committed to driving profitable growth and higher returns on investments. But importantly, we're doing so in a measured way. Our expectations through 2028 imply about 40 basis points improvement in operating margin each year. We expect the majority of margin improvement to be driven by top line and expect cost savings, net of investments and inflation, to contribute as well. We have a track record of delivering on our cost savings targets. Since we launched CCI in 2009, about 15 years ago, it has been instrumental for McCormick, allowing us to invest in the business and expand our margins. In 2024, we increased the level of investments and expect to drive solid margin expansion for the year. Over the long term, CCI remains a key driver for margin expansion. We continue to evaluate the program and enhance it to drive greater efficiencies. We have opportunities to continue to improve by leveraging technology in our global business services organization. Both Consumer and Flavor Solutions segments are expected to contribute to our improved operating margin, anticipated to be up approximately 200 basis points from our 15.4% in 2023 with greater expansion coming from our Flavor Solutions business. In terms of Flavor Solutions, we expect margins to expand by approximately 400 basis points by 2028 or 80 basis points per year at about double the average for McCormick. This improvement will come through four different levers: volume growth, as we expect operating leverage to contribute to margin expansion; portfolio migration, as we continue to shift to higher-margin categories such as flavors and branded foodservice; robust cost savings and efficiencies program; and we're exiting low-margin businesses as we continue to optimize our portfolio. In addition, it is important to note that we continue to invest to further drive growth and differentiation. So this is not only a margin play. It is a top line plus margin expansion coming together. Turning to our earnings per share, where long-term objectives are growth of 9% to 11% and includes acquisitions, similar to operating income. Our earnings per share ramps in 2025 closer to our long-term objectives, and we expect by 2028 to drive at least 9% earnings per share CAGR. This growth is supported by our operating income growth and contributions from our joint ventures. In the absence of M&A and any associated deleveraging priorities, share repurchases will contribute to EPS growth. We expect tax rates and interest expenses to be neutral to our growth rates during the period, absent any regulatory changes. So to summarize, we remain committed to our long-term objectives. Our confidence is supported by our proven track record, broad and advantaged portfolio and robust growth plans. We are prioritizing our investments to drive impactful results to continue to deliver differentiated and sustainable volume-led growth. We remain confident in the underlying fundamentals of our business and believe we're well positioned for continued success and our focus on creating long-term shareholder value. Now let's move to capital allocation. As it relates to capital allocation, our priorities remain consistent. We expect to drive shareholder value through strong cash flow generation and a balanced use of cash, funding investments to drive growth, returning a significant portion to our shareholders and maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet. Our balance sheet puts us in a position of strength and gives us the flexibility to continue to invest in the business, organically and inorganically to support our growth. As we think about ROIC, we are expecting a 10% to 12% range in the near term. Our operation cash flow remains strong. We expect to continue to drive robust cash flow through 2028. Our growth will be driven by higher net income from revenue growth and margin improvement as well as our focus on working capital improvements. Importantly, we continue to make excellent progress in reducing our cash conversion cycle and expect continued improvement through 2028, as you can see in the chart. We have a structured program in place covering all levers of working capital. We've made great progress, especially in optimized inventory levels through improved integrated business planning processes and the use of technology. Lastly, we continue to expect that more than 95% of net income will be converted to free cash flow. We expect capital investments to be at 3.5% to 4% of net sales. Approximately 3/4 will be in capacity, capabilities and efficiencies and about 1/4 will be dedicated to IT and digital transformation. We're investing in capacity manufacturing capabilities to support our robust plans, including our heat platform and to drive growth in our core categories. We're disciplined in measuring returns on these investments. We track our performance regularly to help ensure we are delivering in line or ahead of our expectations. We're also accelerating investments in digital transformation to enhance how we serve consumer and customers, to work faster and more efficiently and to strengthen decision-making by further leveraging data and insights. We expect these investments to be key enablers of our future growth plans. Let me spend a few minutes on digital transformation. Our digital transformation priorities span the growth, performance and people pillars of our strategic road map. Focusing on growth, we continue to digitize the end-to-end consumer experience with investments in digital marketing transformation. We are tailoring content, product recommendations and experiences based on individual consumer preferences. From a performance perspective, we're building operational efficiency and resiliency and improving demand planning predictability across the supply chain with improved tools. Also, we're enhancing our shop floor automation, leveraging AI and other capabilities to improve procurement analytics. Turning to people. We're enhancing our ways of working through automated global solutions to enable faster decision and real-time data. And underpinning these priorities is our enterprise digital foundation, which includes our S/4HANA implementation that is well underway in the Americas and advancing our data strategy and foundation, among other foundational elements. And finally, our global business services organization, or GBS, is an important enabler of this strategic priority as we continue to standardize processes globally as well as hosting our data and analytics center of excellence to drive faster usage of AI and machine learning technologies across the company. We remain committed to returning cash to shareholders in the form of dividend payments or share repurchases. We've paid dividends for the last 100 years since 1925 and expect dividend growth to be in line with earnings per share growth. And we have increased our dividend for 38 consecutive years. We are proud to be a dividend aristocrat. In the absence of acquisitions or debt paydown, we'll return cash to shareholders also by repurchasing shares. With our balanced use of cash approach, we're committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet to give us the flexibility to make future investments. Over the last few years, following our acquisitions of Cholula and FONA, we focused our efforts on paying down debt and delevered. We remain committed to a strong investment-grade rating and have made excellent progress in paying down our debt. We expect our leverage ratio to be below 3x for 2024 with another year of strong cash flow driven by profit and working capital initiatives I just mentioned. And looking beyond 2024, we expect our leverage ratio to continue to improve, providing us the flexibility to either pursue acquisitions or return capital to shareholders. Okay. Now turning to the outlook. As it relates to our 2024 outlook, we are reaffirming all components we just discussed on our October 1 earnings call. The only two callouts are for net sales, where we anticipate our results will be at the mid to high end of our guidance range; and for adjusted earnings per share, we anticipate our results will be close to the high end of the range. And finally, before we go to your questions, we wanted to provide some color on expectations for 2025. As a reminder, we'll provide our full year 2025 outlook during our fourth quarter earnings call in January, consistent with prior years. We told you 2024 was the year of investments, and we believe 2025 will be the year of continued momentum. Our investments are working and yielding results. This is why for 2025, we expect to drive volume-led top line growth with minimal contribution from pricing and with volume growth in line with our organic long-term growth objectives. As we continue to invest in the business and leverage our cost savings program, we expect our margins to improve and profitability growth rates to be closer to our long-term objectives. And in terms of cash flow, we expect to generate strong cash flow in 2025, consistent with 2024. Thanks very much for your attention today. I would now like to turn the program back to Faten to kick off our Q&A session.

Thank you, Marcos. We're about to begin our Q&A session. Please give us a couple of minutes to set the stage. We will be taking questions in the room and from the webcast. [Operator Instructions] I'd like to welcome our presenters back to the stage, please. [Operator Instructions] And Brendan will start each question and pass it on to the appropriate presenter. And so with that, we can start taking your questions. Ken? Yes, it's coming your way.

I wanted to -- Ken Goldman, JPMorgan. I wanted to ask quickly, there was a comment about 2025 that the improving -- there'll be improving profit growth, the rate, and it will be "closer" to the longer-term objectives. And then there was another comment earlier about ramping over the next few years to get to that level. I just wanted to ask, as we think about 2025, I realize you're not in a position to talk about specific numbers, but is the messaging that it's maybe a year that we should think about as not an investment year but not quite back to full steam ahead?

Yes, Ken. I think it's great to kind of take that question right after Marcos just presented everything. And so I'll ask Marcos maybe to speak to that a little bit further. But we are trying to at least provide the room and everyone on the call, some idea of how we're thinking about '25 without providing specific guidance at this point in time. So Marcos, would you like to take that?

Yes, that's right, Ken. What we're trying to do is to give some color about 2025. Obviously, our guidance will come out in January as long as with the Q4 earnings call. We're going to provide the full detail about our 2025 guidance. But what we wanted to do today was really to provide some color about where we think we're landing in terms of top line and bottom line. So in terms of bottom line, we see that on profit side, we believe that we're going to be making improvements versus 2024, that's the objective. And -- but not quite there yet in terms of the long-term objectives in 2025, because we want to continue to invest the business behind the momentum that we have right now as we had sequential improvement in terms of volume over the last couple of quarters. And going into Q4, we want to continue that momentum going. So what we're saying is that we are going to drive the top line, the volume piece of the top line. If you remember what I showed, organic sales growth about 3% to 4% and about 1% is pricing historically. So we're thinking about pricing is going to be essentially minimum or flattish for next year. So we're saying that the volume piece of that component, we are thinking we're going to be hitting next year. And in terms of profitability, we're going to continue to invest in the business, but yet, we're going to make progress versus 2024.

Alexia?

Great. Alexia Howard from Bernstein. I think you've said in the past that you're looking to diversify the number of accounts that you've been approved for in the Flavor Solutions business to be able to go after that high-margin Flavor Solutions opportunities with request for proposal. How do you decide how many new customers to bring on, how to target them, how to mitigate risk because some of them might peak and then die off over time? What's the strategy in there to bring those new accounts online?

Well, thank you for the question, Alexia. And I'll kick it off with some context and perspective, and I'll hand it over to Andrew to kind of add to that. When we think about targeting new business, new customers, as we think about that, we're thinking both global customers who operate at a global level, but also looking at fast-growing regional, local customers that sometimes have that really emerging innovation that could really take off and be a part. We see a couple of those in our portfolio today where we started young with them, and then we stuck with them and they really grew and became significant brands in the marketplace. So we see both really playing a role. Why would we target one particular company over another? It has a lot to do with where we see our taste competencies and our expertise. When we brought in FONA, and we joined it with legacy McCormick, we saw a lot of cross-selling opportunities in which we could start to break into -- to be part of that customer list or that flavor house list for many of those customers. And that's enabled us to grow as we think about that. But that cross-selling opportunity created an ability to kind of target those areas. So we see it happening through that. But I would go back to the presentation that Andrew gave on taste competencies and really leaning into where we see our strengths. Andrew?

Yes. I think one of the things that maybe would have noticed a difference versus last year, for example, we talked a lot about end markets. For example, we'd say we're going after Performance Nutrition. When you do that, you have to be all things within Performance Nutrition, right? So you spread yourself a bit more thin versus the flip here that Brendan just highlighted, are being around taste competencies. That's our expertise. That's where we know we're best, where we can win. We're going to have a lot of success. So it is a subtle shift in the strategy, but I think it's a really great one. And we still see plenty of runway even with that shift.

Andrew?

Within Flavor Solutions, you talked about flavors being sort of 60% of that business. And within that, it's seasonings and specialty flavors. And I'm just trying to get a sense of like what percentage of that, call it, 60% leverages what you'd call sort of proprietary technology? Because I know it's -- I assume specialty flavors does, but what percent of the 60% is that? And then how much of seasonings is truly proprietary versus just more basic flavorings to other CPG manufacturers? That's the part I'm still trying to get a little bit more clarity on.

Let me kick that off again, and I'll toss it to our other members of our team. Thinking about where our technology is embedded from a seasonings perspective, I don't have a specific percentage to share with you right now. But what I would say is the great majority of all the seasonings that we sell have some form of our technology built in. It could be various forms of our technology. But largely, a lot of it is very strongly technically insulated. It isn't just simply a blending of a bunch of spices. It's really a lot more complicated than that. And so I would say a great majority of that, if not all. And then Andrew, you want to take the rest of the question on the percentage of our business that is seasonings and specialty?

Well, we -- as I stated, we are -- if you look at between the two, the majority does sit with seasonings overall. I will say, though, that mix will continue to change. They're both -- the margin profiles on both are terrific. I don't want to get a sense that the weighting is dramatically different. So we feel great about growing in both. But I think we're going to continue to grow specialty flavors even more, especially as we penetrate new markets with seasonings.

Peter?