General Mills, Inc. (GIS) Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference (Transcript)

General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS) Bernstein’s 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference May 29, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jeff Harmening - Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Alexia Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co

Alexia Howard

Okay. Good morning, everybody. My name is Alexia Howard, and I cover the U.S. food sector for Bernstein. And it's my great pleasure to welcome Jeff Harmening, the CEO of General Mills since 2017. Now as we all know, the U.S. food industry seems to be at something of a crossroads with high hope for some improvement in volume trends as the headwinds of 2023 are lapped. General Mills has made a good deal of product in shaping the portfolio over the past several years in a bid to tap into fast growth markets and make the company more defiant in the face of more frequent disruptive change. So very many thanks for joining us today, Jeff.

Jeff Harmening

Thanks for having me here.

Alexia Howard

Great. So you became CEO of General Mills back in 2017. And the industry has certainly seen some pretty tumultuous times since then. What has changed across the sector in your view over the last seven years?

Jeff Harmening

First of all, I want to start by saying I don't take any credit for causing those tumultuous times. I didn't pick the 2017 that it kind of picked me. I think back on where we were then, it's been an interesting time for the whole sector. And in 2016, recall, we were just coming out of what I would call the 3G era, which is really focused on cost cutting and limited brand building and really trying to optimize short-term profitability. And we're just coming out of that kind of getting back to the middle or above, which is what I would call it, say, look, we got to get