Conference Transcript - MKC 2026-02-17

Operator

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.

Andrew Foust, Analyst — Other

Great. Good afternoon, everybody. And we're thrilled to have the management from McCormick with us here today. Just a reminder, this is our last presentation of the day, so if everyone can remember to please take all their belongings, this room will be locked up because we've got a lot of rehearsals and things like that going on after this ends. Also, please first join me in thanking McCormick for generously sponsoring the reception following this presentation, where I think you'll find lots of flavor creativity throughout all the offerings. McCormick Management will join us out at the reception in lieu of a formal breakout, so just keep that in mind. McCormick's been one of the few large-cap packaged food companies to deliver consistent volume growth in a very challenging broader packaged food environment. But as Chairman, President, and CEO Brendan Foley likes to say, McCormick does not compete for calories, it flavors them. We look forward to hearing more about plans for this fiscal year, as some additional pricing rolls through, more innovation kicks in, and McCormick funds additional A&P and acceleration of ERP spending. Joining Brendan today is CFO Marcos Gabriel. Welcome, gentlemen, and over to you, Brendan.

Brendan M. Foley, Chairman

Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's a pleasure to be back at Cagney. McCormick is a global leader in flavor. Our long-standing tradition of excellence and innovation sets us apart, and today I'm excited to share how we're advancing this differentiation and driving meaningful value creation. The last two years have been defining for McCormick. They demonstrated the strength, resilience, and differentiation of our business. We delivered volume-led organic growth, expanded our operating margins, and continue to invest in our brands, capabilities, and people. Our performance reflects the power of our balanced portfolio, our leadership in flavor, and the agility of our teams around the world. We are executing with focus and discipline on what we can control, and we remain well-positioned to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. Today, we hope you'll take away that we are driving our global flavor leadership, accelerating innovation and digital transformation, and strengthening sustainable profitability. Importantly, we are updating our near-term expectations and reaffirming our long-term objectives. And with our strategies and best-in-class leadership team, we are well-positioned to continue to drive shareholder value. At McCormick, we create and deliver flavors that enhance the taste of food and beverages. For more than 135 years, we've been focused on our purpose to make life more flavorful, guided by our vision to be the most trusted source of flavor across food and beverage. Our portfolio includes leading brands in the flavor industry, household names that consumers trust for their quality and taste, and they are trusted by our customers. In fact, globally, McCormick flavors are enjoyed by nearly a half a billion people every single day. This speaks to the power of our brands, the flavor they deliver, our capabilities, reach, and growth potential. We serve a broad range of customers and operate across every channel, from traditional brick-and-mortar to e-commerce and from food service to CPG customers. We operate in great categories across both of our segments, and they continue to project strong growth. In our consumer segment, we offer products at every price point, from premium to value to meet all needs. Our brands have been part of kitchens and families for generations, and we continue to innovate. We are winning over younger consumers who are shaping new cooking and eating behaviors, and many aligned with health and wellness trends. In Flavor Solutions, we flavor some of the world's iconic brands, as well as fast-growing emerging brands and private label, making us a key part of the innovation that guides the food industry. Our two segments complement each other, and this reinforces what makes McCormick different. The scales, insights, and technologies that are leveraged from both are meaningful and uniquely position us to cater to the entire flavor market and shape its future direction. Given this position, we are differentiated among food and beverage peers, and let me explain how. Others compete for calories every day. We flavor them. While many peer companies compete across multiple categories every day, we are intentionally focused on flavor, enabling us to be present in every consumption opportunity. Our differentiation lies in where and how we compete. As preferences evolve and calories shift, the demand for flavor continues to grow, and McCormick is uniquely positioned to capture that growth. We see the world of food and beverage through the lens of flavor, and we deliver it more broadly and more deeply than anyone else. Putting all these things together, flavor remains an enduring trend. It's essential to food and beverage. Two years ago, you heard me lay out our robust plans to reinvigorate volume growth, and we delivered. We achieved strong and sustainable volume growth, and we expect this momentum to continue into 2026. As top-line performance, our growth, efficiency-focused plans support our confidence in our near-term and long-term objectives.

Operator

Before I cover growth, let's look at why flavor is the heart of everything we do. non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages, plant-based, retail food service meals, and restaurant meals. No matter the trend, taste comes first, because flavor is the most important thing consumers care about. As they seek more balanced, better-for-you options, the need for great taste only grows stronger. That's where McCormick thrives. With an unmatched spread of industry expertise, McCormick makes better tasting, better-for-you food possible across every category. McCormick, making life more flavorful.

Brendan M. Foley, Chairman

As you can see, the global demand for flavor remains strong. It is projected to grow 5% to 7%. Within our current geographic footprint, the market growth is projected to be 3% to 5%, positioning us for sustained, best-in-class, organic top-line performance. This highlights the runway for growth in current and new markets. Flavor remains the top purchase driver across every dish, trend, and occasion. It transcends age, culture, diets, income, and income. Consumers, especially in lower- to middle-income households, are shopping more often, buying fewer items per trip, and choosing more flavor each time. They're stretching their meals further and finding affordable ways to cook at home, particularly as health and wellness trends continue to gain momentum. These habits reinforce the central role of flavor every day in cooking, with herbs and spices leading center store unit growth. Also, convenience and flavor exploration remain areas where consumers are willing to spend, while e-commerce and social commerce are reshaping how they discover and buy new products. The convergence of these trends underscores our advantaged position. Our consumer portfolio meets growing demand for home cooking and healthier meals, while our flavor solutions business partners with customers to deliver innovation and reformulation aligned with these very same needs. We are winning across the industry from small emerging brands to large established players, and our success is not defined by any one single segment or product category. When I stepped into the CEO role, I introduced a set of priorities to guide our path. Since then, I've reflected on our goals, our progress, the rapid pace, and the rapid pace across the industry. With that perspective, I've refined them to position us to deliver on our ambitions. First, we continue to strengthen our leadership and global reach in core categories, with added focus on geographic expansion. Our recent acquisition is a great example. Second, it's advancing our position as the go-to flavor expert. The flavor solution segment is central to our growth and our expertise sets us apart. We are emphasizing this and building on our flavor leadership to make it even stronger globally. Third, we're even more focused on strengthening our competitive edge and innovation. It drives everything we do, from new products to better ways of working, and we're continuously pursuing breakthrough ideas that keep us ahead. We remain focused on accelerating our digital transformation and driving sustainable profitability. And finally, we are focused on developing a future-ready workforce, which I will address shortly. Moving to digital transformation, we're unlocking the power of data and AI to transform how we innovate, operate, and grow. By combining trusted data, responsible AI practices, and a future-ready workforce and an ERP foundation, we are building a stronger, smarter, and more resilient business. Over the past two years, we've taken a proactive approach through establishing AI governance oversight, scaling pilots across the business, and developing our own internal AI chat platform, leveraging best-of-breed capabilities from the industry. Digital transformation is a driver of both our growth and performance across our business, and strengthens our system of competitive advantages. Our business is supported by a unique system of advantages that drive industry-leading growth. Our broad portfolio, global portfolio, and leading brands and heap platforms set us apart in the marketplace. The complementary nature of our segments strengthens our insights, combining learnings from flavor solutions with consumer insights to fuel innovation and stay on trend. Our global sourcing and quality expertise stems from decades of experience sourcing over 17,000 ingredients across 90 countries. We maintain a disciplined approach to acquisitions with a proven record of successful integration. And our power of people culture is at our foundation. We remain focused on strengthening this foundation and the strong culture and values that have always defined McCormick. Our employees drive our success. That's why one of my top priorities and a key area of investment is training our workforce to be future-ready, equipped to thrive in a rapidly evolving environment. Digital tools and AI are reshaping how we plan, collaborate, and deliver results. We are investing in the skills and capabilities our people need to accelerate innovation and improve productivity and enhance decision-making. We are reinventing some of our key work processes, AI-driven forecasting, including end-to-end planning, streamlining processes, and reducing manual touch points. Ultimately, we're investing in digital enablement for our employees to support top-line growth and advancing profitability, positioning us for future success. All these elements together reinforce our conviction in reaffirming our long-term objectives, which remain unchanged. Later in this presentation, Marcos will cover the detailed financial building blocks that outline how we will achieve these objectives beyond 2026. Now let's turn to the plans that will bring those objectives to life across consumer and our flavor solution segments. Starting with consumer, our growth levers remain consistent and through these levers we stay at the forefront of flavor growth, effectively responding to shifting preferences including increased demand for health and wellness, elevated culinary experiences, and value-driven choices. We are strengthening our connection with younger consumers, the generation shaping the future of food, by engaging them through bold flavor innovation, digital first brand experiences, and a commitment to authenticity and quality. It all starts at great brands, loved by consumers. We hold the number one brand position and lead in household penetration globally across spices and seasonings, hot sauce, and mustard. and we have a strong portfolio of leading regional brands enhancing our competitive differentiation this brand strength is an important benefit to retailers as they prioritize our brands and implement our category management recommendations to put this in perspective two-thirds of households across our core markets and nearly every u.s home have a mccormick branded product in their pantry. Let's turn now to our plans and core categories. Starting with spices and seasonings, where we have the leading global position. We are building on this strength through world-class brand marketing, ongoing brand renovation, advancing category management, and insight-driven innovation. Together, these strategic levers are accelerating our growth and reinforcing our leadership. Starting with brand marketing, our focus is to inspire every generation to cook. We are seeing strong momentum across young consumers with millennials and Gen Z driving volume growth and household penetration, demonstrating enduring and expanding brand relevance. Our latest campaign builds on McCormick's iconic flavor leadership, honoring our heritage and driving relevance with today's consumers.

Speaker 6

Both long-time brand advocates and new households are engaging with McCormick in fresh new ways that reinforce our leadership and fuel continued category growth let's take a look we've always been obsessed with flavor then add the best vanilla so you can make every bite do this iconic and this let the feast begin we flavor the world for 135 years so you can flavor yours McCormick, make your best.

Brendan M. Foley, Chairman

We continue to elevate the category with continuous renovation, starting with our McCormick red cap packaging to our grilling portfolio, and most recently, our gourmet line. Our renovated McCormick gourmet collection, highlighted by its countertop-worthy packaging, is now on shelf, and we transitioned the vast majority of the portfolio. Velocities so far have exceeded our expectations, and we anticipate the benefit from this renovation in 2026. In addition, this year we are renovating all of our seasoning blends with a modernized and cohesive packaging, including optimized price pack architecture to enhance the value and drive the impact at the point of purchase. We are leading the category everywhere that consumer shops and accelerating distribution, particularly in spices and seasonings, which are leading distribution growth in the U.S. For the past decade, revenue management has been a key capability and where we have invested in a dedicated team and technology. We were one of the first to invest in price in late 2023, leading to volume improvement. We have done this through a targeted approach, skew by skew, and by leveraging advanced analytical tools and talent. Looking ahead, we are strategically building on our capabilities to execute precise, data-driven pricing in partnership with our customers. Ultimately, all of our efforts are leading to consistent volume growth in share gains and spices and seasonings, both in the U.S. and in our core markets. We expect this performance to be sustained as we continue to execute on this proven strategy. Moving to condiments and sauces. We're positioned to win here with our leading brand, strong loyalty, and sustained relevance with younger consumers. It's pretty incredible that in the U.S., Gen Z and millennials spend more on hot sauce than on ketchup. And they use more hot sauce than any other generation. In fact, Gen Z's spending on Hot Sauce in 2025 has risen significantly compared to the prior year. Our brands have strong loyalty and repeat rates, and Frank's Red Hot has the highest household penetration in the category. In Hot Sauce, we have returned to unit growth and share gains, and we continue to execute on our growth drivers. We launched new brand marketing campaigns for Frank's and Cholula, further driving brand love with passionate consumers. and we continue to innovate with items like Frank's Spicy Maple Wink Sauce and Cholula Chipotle Cremosa Sauce. We are focused on growing share in hot sauce as we expand around the world. Lastly, our hot sauce brands are leading the way in social commerce. We launched Cholula on TikTok Shop and have seen a great response. 72% of TikTok purchasers are Gen Z and millennial and our targeted marketing is strengthening engagement and driving incremental growth in retail. We have robust plans to build on this in 2026 with other brands. Moving to mustard. For the U.S., our largest franchise market, we are focused on volume distribution and brand marketing, which resulted in strong unit growth and share gains. This year, we are launching modernized packaging, enhancing our revenue growth management efforts, and dialing up innovation with new flavors and formats, including hot honey and maple. Outside of the U.S., we continue to see strong performance in Poland with our Camas brand, and we're growing share in dollars and units. Turning to mayonnaise, a high-growth attractive category, we recently strengthened our position in this category by expanding our ownership of McCormick in Mexico, our long-standing joint venture and one of Mexico's most prominent food brands, anchored by its leadership in mayonnaise. Our plan is to accelerate McCormick Mayonnaise's growth in Mexico by driving household penetration through new flavors, formats, and eating occasions. For example, we're launching a series of limited-edition mayonesa glass jars featuring FIFA World Cup imagery as part of our sponsorship of the Mexican Soccer Federation, also known as FUTBALL. The power of the brand combined with our global capabilities supports our growth ambitions in Mexico as well as Latin America. In the U.S., mayonesa has performed well. our plan is to continue to leverage the best-in-class marketing assets from our leadership in Mexico to further drive growth through broader distribution and stronger in-store activation. We are continuing to grow this strong brand and reach even more consumers. Let's move to innovation across our portfolio. Over the last two years, we have doubled our innovation, delivering new products faster and meeting evolving needs. These launches from the second half of 2025 continue to build traction and will contribute to our performance in 2026. We're further building on this momentum by expanding the success of our Finishing Sugars platform with high-impact partnerships like Bridgerton and Harry Potter. Our 2026 Flavor of the Year, Black Current, is launching in both retail and food service, in addition to our 2025 flavor of the year, Aji Amarillo, in a hot sauce format this year. We're also launching our on-trend Frank's wing sauce flavors like pineapple Hawaiian and spicy maple, as well as new seasoning blends including chili, garlic, and Peruvian style. Let me wrap up this section with a focus on brand marketing. We're driving higher returns through precision, using advanced data and algorithms to identify the right consumer at the right time with the right message and product. AI is enabling us to personalize content at scale, creating relevant, engaging experiences that convert more effectively. We are leveraging AI agents to mine data, refine personalization, and enhance targeting to reach the highest propensity of consumers at the lowest cost. Generative AI is accelerating our ability to develop, test, and optimize new creative the concepts faster. We're expanding into emerging high-growth channels like social commerce and preparing for agentic commerce by ensuring our data and tech stack is ready to interact with and influence commerce agents. Importantly, we remain at the forefront of evolving trends, delivering flavor, value, and convenience, and our campaigns bring this to life every day. Now, I want to show you how we're building excitement with Frank's Red Hot, we've had a very successful Super Bowl activations over the last few years, leveraging different celebrities. They all love Franks. This year, we partnered with Ludacris, and this activation has surpassed all previous campaigns, capturing 10.6 billion impressions, and we're going to share it with you.

Speaker 8

When you're cooking up a spread, you can't forget the goat. A homie right there? Nah, Chingy, Franks Red Hot, the greatest of all time.

Brendan M. Foley, Chairman

I put that s*** on everything. the perfect blend of flavor with the right amount of heat frank's red hot's the goat it can't be beat make every dish the greatest eat the goat this is a great example of how our brands frank's in particular are resonating and creating opportunities in consumer and in branded food service we had a highly successful promotion with taco bell behind frank's red hot diablo Crispy. This was on menu at over 7,600 locations, and we had significant media coverage with 11.5 billion impressions. This is a great example of the complementary nature of our segments. Speaking of that, and now moving over to Flavor Solutions, let me start by covering our core product categories within Flavor Solutions, starting with flavors. This is roughly 60% of this segment. We flavor products in a wide range of end-market applications and in every aisle in the grocery store. Branded food service is about 20% of the segment. These are our brands used back-of-house by chefs or sitting on tabletops. Since 2015, we have been successful in advancing the portfolio to these two high-margin categories. We are different from other flavor houses. We're the only major flavor house with 100% focus on flavor. We have a deep culinary and natural food foundation with an expertise in natural ingredients. We focus on four taste competencies savory heat naturally sweet and citrus and fruit we are a global brand leader and we know what it takes to drive brand equity we have more consumer touch points spanning all channels leading to deep insights this distinct positioning sets us apart from the industry we partner with customers across food beverage and consumer health we develop flavors for a wide range of applications ranging from non-alcoholic beverages to better for you snacks to supplements We are present across channels, both in out-of-home, and we have a broad customer base. In the flavors market, we have a significant growth opportunity across various customer types. Regional leaders and high-growth innovators represent a significant portion of the opportunity in our growing at higher rates. In terms of our customers, we have a strong exposure to global consumer packaged goods companies and regional leaders, where we are partnering with them to reformulate by eliminating artificial ingredients, reducing sodium, and improving affordability. Across high-growth categories such as protein, supplements, and beverages. We have a growing exposure with high-growth innovators, helping them to scale and move into adjacent categories. Recently, we've partnered with the Nutritional Bars brand to enter the high-protein chip category, leveraging our expertise in seasonings. Lastly, we are increasing our engagement with private-label customers to help them meet the needs for wellness and affordability, from beverages to pet food. We recently partnered with a major national retailer to launch a new line of affordable premium beverages. We see growth and share gain opportunities across all customers, and we are focused on diversifying across segments to remain resilient against market fluctuations and support balanced growth. While food growth remains soft, our capabilities and reach enable us to grow with our customers in attractive, high-growth and market applications. Within food, various categories, particularly better-for-you ones, which include snacking, continue to have strong growth, and we are focused on flavoring them. Health and wellness is a key focus for consumers, and we have a long history with our 135-year heritage in natural flavors and extracts, complemented by the McCormick Science Institute, which is celebrating this year two decades of supporting scientific research on the health benefits of culinary herbs and spices. We inspire healthy lifestyles by flavoring healthy categories such as supplements, protein shakes, and non-alcoholic beverages. We enable better nutrition by removing ingredients such as sugar and MSG or adding high-demand nutrients like protein and fiber, all without sacrificing taste. We partner with customers to bring to design products, leveraging our insights and technologies. Let me bring this to life through two case studies. In this example, we partnered with a high-growth innovator customer to create a green superfood gummy. The gummy is nutrient-dense, low-carb, and high in fiber with more than 50 ingredients, but with an appealing fruity flavor, as our Optify technology masks off notes from the high concentration of green ingredients. In another example, we partnered with a global CPG company in reformulating their range of meal replacement shakes to optimize a new vegan protein base, to mask off notes and develop preferred natural flavors, including vanilla and chocolate. We were formulated a dozen SKUs in six weeks, showcasing the breadth of our capabilities to deliver speed, value, and superior taste. By combining our data-driven insights from sensory science, preference, and flavor chemistry, we are able to deliver faster consumer-preferred innovations. Let me focus on First and Flavor, which is our trend-led flavor identification model that can pinpoint flavors just before they reach mainstream awareness. We talked about this at Investor Day, and since then we've been leveraging AI to aggregate and analyze data and now able to extract thousands of search trend data points in minutes, compressing hours of manual effort into a near-instant automated process. We are turning these data points into actionable information and innovation, delivering measurable growth across both segments. Moving to branded food service, we are continuing to drive growth despite a challenging environment by increasing innovation, expanding distribution, and diversifying our channel presence. Starting with innovation, we are partnering with operators with limited-time offers to attract consumers and increase their traffic. We relaunched our McCormick for Chefs product line to expand our reach, and performance has been strong. Our new Frank's Red Hot partnership with McDonald's Canada features the brand on seven menu items across 1,500 restaurants. Engagement has been strong. And in terms of channels, we see strong growth in non-commercial sectors, as well as in e-commerce, as we expand our reach to smaller operators. In summary, our branded food service business has been successful as consumers want to find the brands and flavors they love that they are eating when they are eating away from home. Now, let me hand it over to Marcos.

Marcos Gabriel, CFO

Thanks, Brendan, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll focus on our performance and how we are executing with discipline on what we can control while staying agile as we navigate external challenges. Our strategy continues to position McCormick for sustainable long-term value creation. I'll start by covering our historical performance, which highlights the resiliency of our business, discuss our plans to maintain volume momentum and improve profitability. Then I'll discuss our capital allocation strategy and close with an update on near-term goals and reaffirm our long-term objectives. Our priority remains to drive differentiated volume-led sales growth, consistent with our historical performance. We operate in grade and advantage categories and are intentionally focused on investing to sustain volumes and drive long-term profitable growth. Looking back, from 2015 to 2025, we delivered 4% organic sales growth, and our successful M&A contributed 2%. In total, we achieved a 6% compounded annual growth rate, in line with a high end of our long-term objectives. Historically, organic growth was volume-led, and after a period of hyperinflation, we returned to robust volume performance late in 2024. In 2025, we continued the momentum with sequential improvement from 2024 and volume-led growth for the year. This performance was driven by our proven growth levers, including brand marketing, innovation and packaging renovation, category management and our proprietary technologies. Turn to Operated Income. Our disciplined cost management and efficiency initiatives have supported our Operated Income growth and margin expansion for the past three years. 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. And we remain confident in the continued trajectory of our operating margin expansion. turning to the 2026 outlook which we recently discussed on our earnings call and remains consistent let's focus on the top line we expect our consumer business to continue delivering volume growth driven by expanded distribution new products packaging renovation and increased brand market investments in flavor solutions we anticipate volumes to recover from the prior year as we execute on innovation plans across our diverse customer base. Across both segments, we're leveraging our revenue growth management capabilities to partially offset inflationary pressures. We expect pricing to contribute to organic sales growth this year. Lastly, we anticipate strong top-line contributions from McCormick de Mexico. From a bottom-line perspective, we anticipate incremental costs associated with inflation, including tariffs, as well as the rebuild of incentive compensation, continued digital investments, most notably related to our refined ERP plan, and the impact of increased tax rates. We're partially offsetting these pressures with productivity savings supported by our enhanced CCI programs, including SG&A streamlining and surgical pricing. Additionally, we anticipate accretion from the McCormick in the Mexico acquisition. In summary, 2026 Outlook reflects a strong underlying base business performance and growth from acquisitions. Let's review our digital strategy, starting with our refined ERP plan. Our implementation so far has been going very well. Our integrated approach, which reflects continued collaboration between the business and technology teams, have enabled us to execute seven successful deployments with minimal business impact. This gives us the confidence to compress the waves of our upcoming deployment, which minimizes risks. It shortens the period of dual operations between legacy and new systems, minimizing data reconciliation and interface risks. Overall, program costs remain unchanged. However, this refined execution plan shifts more expenses into 2026 than originally planned. We're pleased with our progress. Our ERP foundation enables cybersecurity, AI-ready data, and tech modernization, allowing us to capture value through increased efficiencies. And this becomes a springboard for advancing our digital initiatives. Our digital transformation is a strategic growth engine and driver of cost savings. Consumer and customer sit at the center of everything we do. And to better serve them, we're leveraging data and AI to improve consumer experiences by delivering personalized content, meeting consumers where they are, across channels, at a lower cost. Accelerate product innovation by leveraging our proprietary tools to combine consumer insight in a structured way to fuel faster, more creative new product development. Collaborate with customers by enhancing revenue management with digital simulation tools, ultimately delivering effective pricing, improved execution, and volume growth. And enhance supply chain and operations, using predictive analytics to optimize sourcing, mitigate risk, and improve forecasting. With data and insights across the business, we are unleashing faster decision-making, deeper consumer understanding, and more agile execution across our global footprint. In terms of our cost savings initiatives, our efforts will be enabled by enhanced processes and digital capabilities, with growth aspirations that are best in class. And to fuel growth that matches our aspirations, we remain focused on driving the top line and productivity initiatives across all lines of the P&L. Our CCI program has a well-established track record of success, and we're leveraging its proven methods to drive efficiencies. CCI also includes our SG&A streamlining efforts, and we are making great progress there. These efforts are supported by our Global Business Solutions Organization, or GBS, which delivers scalable, efficient, and digitally-enabled services across key business functions. By standardizing processes, leveraging automation, and driving continuous improvement, GBS enhances operational excellence and enables our teams globally to focus on strategic growth and value creation. We are stepping up total cost savings by about 10% relative to the prior year to fuel growth, offset increased cost headwinds, and contribute to a profit realization. Overall, savings are expected to be driven by procurement initiatives, operational efficiencies, streamlining of processes, reduced indirect spend, and reinventing our ways of working. Importantly, this is all reflected in our 2026 outlook and long-term objectives. Turning to capital allocation, our priorities remain consistent. We expect to drive shareholder value through strong cash flow generation and a balanced use of cash. This means funding investments to drive growth, returning a significant portion to our shareholders, and maintaining a strong and flexible balance sheet. Returning cash to shareholders includes our dividends as well as share repurchases. They remain a key component in our toolkit. 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 have achieved an average return over the past three years of 10%, and we are expecting to build to a 10% to 12% range in the near term. We continue to generate strong operating cash flow and expect robust cash generation to continue in 2026. Growth will be driven by higher net income, fueled by revenue gains, margin expansion, and sustained working capital improvements. Lastly, we continue to expect that, on average, approximately 95% of net income to be converted to free cash flow. We expect capital investments to represent 3% to 4% of net sales. Roughly three quarters of this spend will support capacity, capabilities, and efficiencies, with the remaining quarter focused on IT and digital transformation. We remain committed to returning cash to our shareholders in the form of dividend payments or share repurchases. We are proud to be a dividend aristocrat, and over the long term, we anticipate dividend growth to be in line with earnings per share growth. We have made excellent progress in paying down debt, enabling us to maintain strong balance sheet that gives us flexibility to make future investments. And as always, we remain committed to a strong investment grade rating. Moving to acquisitions, which remain a key growth driver over long-term objectives and are expected to contribute about 2% growth. As you know, we have a proven track record of value-enhancing acquisitions rooted in artillery strategies and financial discipline. Our commitment to these strategies is evident in our transactions, including Cholula, Fona, and most recently our majority ownership stake in McCormick de Mexico, which closed just six weeks ago. Today, we reaffirm our outlook for 2026. It remains the same as we have provided on our fourth quarter earnings call in January. Let me recap the components of our outlook and comment on the first quarter tax rate. Our outlook reflects a strong underlying business performance and growth from acquisitions that is tempered by cost headwinds as well as a higher tax rate. While we are maintaining our full year guide of tax rate of 24%, we now expect first quarter to exceed this level due to the timing of expected tax items. Importantly, we remain on track to sustain our volume momentum and drive strong top-line and bottom-line growth. We're confident in our ability to deliver on our 2026 outlook and in achieving our long-term objectives over time. Before we look ahead, it is important to reflect on the past couple of years and how the effects on the ground have changed. The environment has been more challenging than anticipated, yet our base business remains strong. We continue to drive growth in the consumer segment, and despite industry softness in flavor solutions, we are driving growth with high-growth innovator and QSR customers. We continue to realize benefits from our CCI and H&A streamlining initiatives. Moving to what has changed, health and wellness trends are gaining momentum, sustaining top-line opportunities, cost pressures from tariff rates, and increased tax rate and interest expense have created headwinds. Lastly, the acquisition of majority stake in McCormick de Mexico has provided both top and bottom line benefits. After factoring these variables, including our 2025 results and our outlook for 2026, we anticipate achieving performance in line with our long-term objectives after 2026. Let's summarize the pathway from 2026 to achieving growth in line with our long-term objectives. From a top-line perspective, organic sales expectations remain at 3% to 4%. Our consumer business is strong, and you heard today the plans we have in place to continue this trajectory. In addition, we'll also benefit from the McCormick in the Mexico acquisition. While flavorless solutions growth has been tempered by softness in the industry, we expect improvement to begin in 2026 and to strengthen over time. Operating income margin will be achieved through operating leverage, our cost-efficient savings and efficiency programs, accretion from a McCormick de Mexico acquisition, as well as the ERP tailwind we expect in 2028. This aligns with implied expansion in our long-term objectives of approximately 50 basis points per year. Finally, we anticipate the benefit from operating income to flow through to earnings per share, including the accretion from a Cormac and the Mexico transaction, and to benefit from share repurchases in the absence of acquisitions, ultimately leading to a high single-digit plus earnings per share growth over this period. The leverage from operated income to earnings per share in 2026 and 2027 will be impacted by the elimination of the 25% minority interest in McCormick de Mexico This mechanical impact is near term Once we lap it for a full year, which will be 2028 we don't expect it to impact our ability to drive leverage from operated income to earnings per share Turning to Flavor Solutions Operating Margin, we remain committed to continue the improvement we have achieved since 2023 This will come through volume growth as we expect operating leverage to contribute to margin expansion Portfolio migration to higher margin categories, revenue growth management, and hence cost savings and efficiencies We expect to continue to drive margin expansion while investing for growth To wrap up, we're reaffirming our long-term objectives to drive net sales growth of 4% to 6%, operating income of 7% to 9%, and earnings per share of 9% to 11%. I'm confident in our ability to deliver on these objectives. I will now turn the presentation back to Brendan.

Brendan M. Foley, Chairman

Thanks, Marcos. I hope our presentation offered valuable insight into how we are driving our global flavor leadership, accelerating innovation and digital transformation, and enhancing profitability. We are energized by the opportunities ahead and remain committed to creating long-term value for our shareholders. We're also excited about our reception this evening, which will highlight our flavor forecast through the years. No one knows flavor like McCormick, and our flavor forecast is a great example. It pinpoints emerging flavors and culinary trends, and many of our predictions have stood the test of time, from pumpkin spice to chipotle and many others. We would love for you to join us in the north foyer where we invite you to experience the flavor of McCormick. And I'm not sure if we've had any time to take any questions, but I'll let Andrew be the judge of that.

Andrew Foust, Analyst — Other

Yeah, I think we're out of time here, but McCormick Management will be out in the reception. And please again thank McCormick for being here and sponsoring the reception.