Smithfield Foods, Inc. (SFD) Presents at Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Staples Conference Transcript

Benjamin Theurer Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division Well, good afternoon, and thanks for joining us just after lunch. So next on stage, we have Smithfield Foods, a leading packaged meats company and the largest pork processor in the United States with a very large integrated operation. With us today are Shane Smith, President and CEO; as well as Mark Hall, the company's CFO. Well, Shane, first of all, great to have you here for first conversation in a couple of years after you re-IPO-ed earlier last year. And good to have you back. And maybe just to begin with, I'll hand it over to you for just some general opening remarks, and then we go into questions as it relates to the recent announcements.

Shane Smith President, CEO & Director Yes. Well, thanks, Ben, and thank you all for being here. I was wondering what it would look like if we scheduled this over lunch. And so I think I now have my answer. But it is great to be here, Ben. This has been a great conference. So a little bit about Smithfield. For those of you who don't know us very well, we've been in business -- actually, last week was our 90th anniversary. So we've been in business for a long time. But I would tell you, we are a very different company today than we have ever been in our history. What we've been -- what we have built pre coming back to the U.S. IPO market was a much more durable earnings model, and it's really been built around 3 priorities. So grow our packaged meats business, improve whole hog utilization in our fresh pork business