USFD

Sysco Corporation SYY enters fiscal 2027 with a higher growth target and a clear efficiency mandate. Management is putting artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled productivity projects at the center of a plan designed to lift earnings faster than sales. The question for investors is whether those savings can produce firmer margins while Sysco continues funding sales and distribution capacity and restaurant traffic remains soft. Execution on the $100 million cost program is therefore a key fiscal 2027 marker. Sysco Corporation price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Sysco Corporation Quote Sysco expects fiscal 2027 sales to grow 6-7% to approximately $90 billion. Adjusted EPS is projected to increase 9-11% to $5.02-$5.12 on a 53-week basis. The outlook represents a step-up from fiscal 2026, when sales rose 3.9% and adjusted EPS increased 3.4%. Excluding the extra week, management expects earnings growth at the high end of its long-term growth algorithm. Approximately $100 million of in-year savings is expected from AI-enabled inventory management, better forecasting, coding efficiency, routing optimization and back-office automation. The identified actions amount to about $160 million on a run-rate basis. Management said the $100 million is net of investment, with benefits expected to build through the year and be weighted toward the second half. That makes the pace of implementation as important as the headline savings target. US Foods Holding Corp. USFD, another major foodservice distributor, reported about a 2% improvement in cases per mile after completing a routing-system deployment. Performance Food Group Company PFGC, another large North American distributor, says it is integrating AI into the processes while also flagging implementation risk around new technology. Sysco's fourth-quarter results provide an operating base for the initiative. Adjusted operating income advanced 4.1% to $1.14 billion, while adjusted operating expenses fell 15 basis points as a percentage of sales to 13.5%. Routing improvements also lifted on-time delivery performance by 10 points compared with customer promise windows. Management expects upgraded routing technology and other supply-chain projects to lower the cost to serve while improving service. The plan does not assume a restaurant recovery. Fiscal 2027 guidance is built on an industry traffic environment broadly similar to fiscal 2026, when restaurant foot traffic remained down year over year. The outlook also assumes inflation of roughly 1.5-2%. If inflation runs higher or traffic weakens further, case-volume growth could slow and make Sysco's sales and margin targets harder to reach. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Savings will also have to outrun continued spending. Sysco is investing in sales capacity and distribution infrastructure, costs that can absorb part of the benefit from sourcing, productivity and automation. Fourth-quarter adjusted operating margin was 5.15%, down three basis points year over year. For full-year fiscal 2026, adjusted operating expenses rose 5.1%, faster than gross-profit growth of 4.5%, reinforcing why cost execution matters. The fiscal 2027 setup points to faster earnings growth, but the payoff depends on converting planned AI savings into sustained operating leverage while demand remains subdued. Delivering the targets will require productivity gains to keep pace with investment and pricing pressures. SYY currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), a favorable near-term signal tied to earnings-estimate revisions. Its Value Score of B is supportive for value-focused investors, while the Growth Score of C and VGM Score of C are middling and the Momentum Score of D is weaker. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. The combination leaves a mixed style profile around a favorable Zacks Rank. Investors focused on the AI theme may therefore want to watch evidence of cost savings and margin expansion rather than treating the guidance alone as confirmation of the payoff. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Sysco Corporation (SYY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Performance Food Group Company (PFGC) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

US Foods delivered a positive second quarter, with the market responding strongly to results that exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for both revenue and non-GAAP earnings. Management attributed performance to robust independent restaurant case growth, which reached its highest level since late 2023, and ongoing share gains in healthcare and hospitality. CEO David Flitman highlighted the company’s ability to accelerate net new account generation and deepen penetration with existing customers, citing “healthy new account growth and improved penetration with existing customers” as key contributors to top-line momentum. Additionally, the rollout of the Pronto delivery service and strategic vendor management initiatives supported profitability and cash flow generation. Is now the time to buy USFD? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $10.53 billion vs analyst estimates of $10.47 billion (4.5% year-on-year growth, 0.6% beat) Adjusted EPS: $1.44 vs analyst estimates of $1.36 (5.7% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $604 million vs analyst estimates of $587.2 million (5.7% margin, 2.9% beat) Operating Margin: 4.2%, in line with the same quarter last year Sales Volumes were up 1.9% year on year Market Capitalization: $24 billion While we enjoy listening to the management’s commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls is the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Lauren Silberman (Deutsche Bank) asked how the new sales compensation plan is expected to further accelerate share gains. CEO David Flitman noted, “Early returns are exciting…that will definitely impact our growth going forward,” emphasizing it will take time for the full impact. Alexander Slagle (Jefferies) inquired about Pronto’s market performance and margin sustainability. Flitman and CFO Dirk Locascio explained that thoughtful market expansion is maintaining profitability, and there is a long runway for growth without sacrificing margins. Edward Kelly (Wells Fargo) questioned the scalability of AI and its transformational potential. Flitman described AI as in the “early innings” but expects it to drive both sales productivity and customer engagement, with potential for broader operational transformation over time. John Heinbockel (Guggenheim) probed on customer penetration and whether AI and compensation changes could drive higher local case growth. Flitman confirmed that penetration and lines per customer are improving sequentially, supported by new tools and seller incentives. Kelly Bania (BMO Capital Markets) asked about shifts in independent restaurant demand and the impact of AI on competitive dynamics. Flitman observed stable market conditions but expects AI-driven investments to widen the gap with smaller distributors over time. In the coming quarters, the StockStory team will be monitoring (1) the pace of Pronto’s expansion and its impact on market share, (2) measurable improvements in salesforce productivity and customer penetration resulting from the compensation model shift, and (3) further operational efficiencies and margin gains from AI and automation initiatives. We will also watch how macroeconomic factors such as fuel prices and industry traffic trends affect US Foods’ volume and profitability trajectory. US Foods currently trades at $109.89, up from $100.49 just before the earnings. Is the company at an inflection point that warrants a buy or sell? Find out in our full research report (it’s free for active Edge members). WHILE YOU’RE HERE: Top 9 Market-Beating Stocks. The best stocks don’t just beat the market once. They do it again. And again. Robust revenue growth, rising free cash flow, returns on capital that leave their competition in the dust. The market has already rewarded these businesses. But our AI platform says the party isn’t over. Find out which 9 stocks made the cut this week — FREE. Get Our Top 9 Market-Beating Stocks for Free HERE. Stocks that have made our list include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,460% between June 2020 and June 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-small-cap company Comfort Systems (+1,154% between June 2020 and June 2025). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.

Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. GO reported second-quarter 2026 results, with both top and bottom lines surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate. While net sales increased year over year, adjusted earnings per share declined from the year-ago period. Results reflected sequential improvement in comparable-store sales and customer basket trends, along with continued traction from efforts to strengthen the company’s opportunistic offering and value perception.Management also raised several key components of its fiscal 2026 outlook following second-quarter results that came in ahead of its expectations. The company improved its comparable-store sales forecast and increased the lower ends of its net sales, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings-per-share guidance ranges. Grocery Outlet delivered adjusted earnings of 20 cents a share for the second quarter, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 12 cents by 66.7%. The figure declined from adjusted earnings of 23 cents reported in the year-ago quarter. Net sales increased 1.1% year over year to $1,192.8 million, surpassing the consensus mark of $1,167 million by 2.2%. The improvement was driven by sales from new stores, partially offset by lower sales stemming from store closures under the Optimization Plan and a decline in comparable-store sales.Comparable-store sales declined 0.3% in the quarter, improving from the 1% drop registered in the first quarter. The second-quarter decrease reflected a 2.1% decline in average transaction size, partly offset by a 1.8% increase in the number of transactions. Management highlighted sequential improvement in the basket while traffic remained positive, signaling progress in its efforts to strengthen value perception and restore the core strengths of the business. Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. Quote Gross profit was relatively unchanged year over year at $360.7 million. Gross margin contracted 40 basis points to 30.2% from 30.6% in the prior-year quarter. The contraction primarily reflected product promotions aimed at driving sales and inventory markdowns and write-offs associated with Optimization Plan store closures, partly offset by improvements in inventory management.Selling, general and administrative expenses increased slightly to $339.5 million from $336.8 million in the year-ago period. As a percentage of net sales, SG&A expenses were relatively flat year over year at 28.5%.Adjusted EBITDA declined 3.1% year over year to $65.7 million from $67.7 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 5.5% contracted 20 basis points year over year.    The company posted operating income of $15.8 million, up from $12.8 million in the year-ago quarter. The latest quarter included $5.4 million in net restructuring charges related to the Optimization Plan. Grocery Outlet opened 10 new stores and closed 12 stores during the quarter, including nine closures related to its Optimization Plan, ending the period with 547 stores across 16 states.The company completed the closure of all 36 financially underperforming stores identified under the Optimization Plan during the first half of fiscal 2026. For fiscal 2026, Grocery Outlet continues to expect 30-33 net new store openings, excluding closures related to the Optimization Plan. Grocery Outlet ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $74.2 million compared with $69.6 million at fiscal 2025-end. Long-term debt, net, totaled $490.6 million, while stockholders’ equity stood at $816.6 million.This Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company generated $43.2 million in operating cash flow during the second quarter compared with $73.6 million in the prior-year period. The decline primarily reflected the timing of accrued and other liabilities, lower operating lease liabilities stemming from the Optimization Plan and lower net income after adjusting for non-cash charges.Capital expenditures, net of tenant improvement allowances, were $38.7 million compared with $58.3 million in the year-ago quarter. Management continues to expect fiscal 2026 capital expenditures of about $170 million, net of tenant improvement allowances. Management raised several components of its fiscal 2026 outlook, reflecting improved operating trends and second-quarter results that came in ahead of its expectations.Grocery Outlet now expects net sales of $4.70-$4.72 billion, raising the lower end from the previous guidance of $4.60-$4.72 billion. Comparable-store sales are projected to be between flat and down 0.5%, a substantial narrowing from the previous range of flat to down 2%.The company now anticipates a gross margin of 29.8%-30% compared with the prior forecast of 29.7%-30%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected in the range of $225-$235 million versus the previous $220-$235 million projection.Grocery Outlet also raised its fiscal 2026 adjusted earnings-per-share guidance to 51-55 cents from 45-55 cents previously. The improved outlook follows sequential progress in Grocery Outlet’s comparable-store sales trajectory, with management pointing to a better customer basket and continued positive traffic. The company remains focused on strengthening its opportunistic assortment and value proposition while better supporting independent operators to establish a stronger foundation for sustainable, profitable long-term growth.Shares of Grocery Outlet have rallied 32.6% over the past three months compared with the industry’s rise of 5%. The Vita Coco Company, Inc. COCO, a leading beverage company that develops, markets and distributes coconut water and other plant-based beverages, currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). COCO delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 21.9%, on average. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for The Vita Coco Company’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings calls for growth of 31.6% and 64.7%, respectively, from the year-ago figures.Target Corporation TGT, which operates as a general merchandise retailer, carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present.  TGT delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 8.2%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Target’s current financial-year sales and earnings indicates growth of 3.9% and 10.6%, respectively, from the prior-year reported levels.  US Foods Holding Corp. USFD engages in the marketing, sale and distribution of fresh, frozen and dry food and non-food products to foodservice customers in the United States. USFD currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. US Foods Holding delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 1.5%, on average. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for US Foods Holding’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 5.1% and 16.3%, respectively, from the year-ago figures. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. (GO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Target Corporation (TGT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Vita Coco Company, Inc. (COCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Performance Food Group Company PFGC reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 results, wherein both the top and bottom lines increased year over year. However, both metrics missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.59 per share, up 2.6% from $1.55 in the prior-year quarter. The figure missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.62. Higher fuel expenses and costs associated with the Cheney Brothers facility transition weighed on operating performance. Performance Food Group Company price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Performance Food Group Company Quote Net sales increased 6.4% year over year to $18,028.9 million from $16,938.9 million but missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $18,214 million. Organic independent Foodservice case volume increased 5.8% year over year, reflecting continued gains with independent customers. Gross profit increased 8.3% year over year to $2,168.8 million from $2,002.2 million. Growth reflected favorable case mix, including greater independent-channel business, recent acquisitions and vendor rebates and promotional incentives. Operating expenses increased 6.4% to $1,845 million from $1,734.4 million a year ago. The increase stemmed from recent acquisitions, higher fuel prices and miles driven, increased wages and commissions and greater depreciation and amortization expense. Operating profit climbed 20.9% to $323.8 million from $267.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA rose 7.4% to $587.5 million from $546.9 million in the year-ago quarter. Foodservice net sales increased 6.8% to $9,815.6 million from $9,191.5 million in the prior-year quarter, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $9,856 million. Growth was driven primarily by recent acquisitions, higher selling prices and organic case-volume growth. Independent customers remained an important contributor, with organic independent case volume rising 5.8%. Foodservice adjusted EBITDA increased 2.2% year over year to $395.5 million from $386.9 million. Gross-profit growth was partly offset by higher personnel, acquisition-related, fuel and insurance expenses. Convenience net sales rose 5.7% to $6,805.8 million from $6,436.3 million in the year-ago period. The metric missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $6,887 million. Growth primarily reflected higher case volume from new chain customers and inflation in selling prices, partly offset by a shift from cigarettes toward alternative nicotine products. Convenience adjusted EBITDA increased 10.4% to $132.5 million from $120 million. The improvement reflected higher gross profit from vendor rebates and promotional incentives, case growth and manufacturer distribution income, partly offset by higher operating expenses. Specialty net sales increased 6.6% to $1,336.7 million from $1,253.5 million, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1,300 million. Higher selling prices, increased cases sold and favorable channel mix supported sales. Specialty adjusted EBITDA slipped 0.5% to $92.7 million from $93.2 million as higher operating expenses more than offset gross-profit growth. Corporate & All Other net sales increased 7.8% to $276.9 million from $256.9 million in the prior-year quarter, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $271 million. Corporate & All Other adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $33.2 million compared with $53.2 million a year earlier. For fiscal 2026, operating cash flow increased to $1,413.7 million from $1,210.1 million in fiscal 2025. Capital expenditures decreased to $384.1 million from $506 million in fiscal 2025, helping free cash flow rise to $1,029.6 million from $704.1 million. Cash increased to $92.4 million from $78.5 million, while long-term debt declined to $5,006.8 million from $5,388.8 million. For the fiscal first quarter of 2027, the company expects net sales in the range of $17.9 billion to $18.1 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $510 million to $530 million. EBITDA growth is expected to accelerate through the fiscal year, supported by new business wins, procurement efficiency initiatives and continued progress on cost synergies from M&A activities. For fiscal 2027, the company targets sales of $72.5 billion to $73 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $2.125 billion to $2.225 billion. The outlook includes a 53rd week, expected to benefit results by approximately 2%. At the midpoint, sales and adjusted EBITDA are projected to grow 7.2% and 12.7%, respectively, keeping the company on track toward its fiscal 2028 targets. Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have risen 9.6% over the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 17.5%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Some better-ranked stocks have been discussed below: Darling Ingredients Inc. DAR develops, produces, and sells sustainable natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients in North America, Europe, China, South America, and internationally. DAR currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DAR’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 12.8% and 926.5%, respectively, from the year-ago actuals. DAR delivered a trailing four-quarter negative earnings surprise of 38.9%, on average. The Chef’s Warehouse, Inc. CHEF distributes specialty food and center-of-the-plate products in the United States, the Middle East, and Canada. CHEF currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CHEF’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings indicates growth of 10.6% and 24.7%, respectively, from the year-ago reported figures. CHEF delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 30.4%, on average. US Foods Holding Corporation USFD, together with its subsidiaries, markets, sells and distributes fresh, frozen, and dry food and non-food products to foodservice customers in the United States. USFD currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for US Foods’ current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 5.1% and 16.3%, respectively, from the year-ago actuals. USFD delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 1.5%, on average. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Performance Food Group Company (PFGC) : Free Stock Analysis Report Darling Ingredients Inc. (DAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc. (CHEF) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 at 9 a.m. ET Senior Vice President, Investor Relations - Mike Neese Chair of the Board and CEO - Dave Flitman CFO - Dirk Locascio Operator: Good morning, and welcome to US Foods Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the conference over to Mike Neese, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Michael Neese: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to US Foods Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Earnings Call. On today's call, we have Dave Flitman, Chair of the Board and CEO; and Dirk Locascio, our CFO. We will take your questions after our prepared remarks conclude. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our earnings release issued earlier this morning and today's presentation can be found on the Investor Relations page of our website at ir.usfoods.com. During today's call and unless otherwise stated, we're comparing our second quarter fiscal 2026 results for the same period in fiscal year 2025. In addition to historical information, certain statements made during today's call are considered forward-looking statements. Please review the risk factors in our Form 10-K for a detailed discussion of potential factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in forward-looking statements. Lastly, during today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. All reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are included in the schedules on our earnings press release, as well as in the presentation slides posted on our website. We are not providing reconciliations to forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures. Thank you. I'd like to turn the call over to Dave. David Flitman: Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we begin, our thoughts are with our associates, customers and communities impacted by the devastating wildfires in Spokane, Washington. While our operating facilities were thankfully not impacted, we have 3 associates who tragically lost all or a portion of their homes. The US Foods family is rallying to support them, our customers, the affected communities and the brave firefighters and first responders serving on the front lines. At the same time, we remain focused on the safety of our associates while actively supporting our customers through our business continuity plans. With that, let me turn to our second quarter performance. Starting on Slide 3. We delivered a strong quarter with record adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin and another quarter of double-digit adjusted EPS growth. Importantly, independent restaurant case growth of 5.1% was the strongest since the fourth quarter of 2023 and marks our fifth consecutive quarter of acceleration despite persistent pressure on industry foot traffic. Additionally, health care grew 3.5% and hospitality grew 4.4%. We also gained share with our target customer types, marking our 21st consecutive quarter of share gains with independent restaurants and our 23rd consecutive quarter of share gains with health care. Within independent restaurants, our momentum is strengthening, supported by healthy new account growth and improved penetration with existing customers. This top line momentum translated into strong financial performance. We grew adjusted EBITDA 10% and adjusted diluted EPS 21% through a combination of volume growth and 29 basis points of margin expansion to a record 5.7%. Our strong and accelerating cash flow generation provides substantial financial flexibility. And during the quarter, we invested in key growth initiatives while repurchasing more than $370 million of shares, underscoring our commitment to creating long-term shareholder value. Just as important as our financial results is how we are achieving them. Across the business -- our teams are applying a continuous improvement mindset while leveraging investments in technology, including artificial intelligence to raise customer service levels, improve productivity and create a stronger foundation for sustainable long-term growth. These efforts are strengthening our competitive position and creating additional opportunities to deliver value. I'll provide more details on our AI capabilities a bit later. This quarter represents one of our strongest since I joined US Foods 3.5 years ago. As we navigated a dynamic and volatile environment during the second quarter, our team stayed focused on controlling what we could control while acting decisively in response to what we could not. I am incredibly proud of our team for delivering these results through outstanding execution in what remains a challenging operating environment. As we look to the balance of 2026, we will remain grounded in disciplined execution and focused on the actions that will strengthen our business. We are also committed to further strengthening the competitive advantages that differentiate our business while delivering consistent volume growth, double-digit earnings growth and long-term value creation for our shareholders. I thank our 30,000 associates for their unwavering commitment to delivering excellence in serving our customers and to pursuing our ambition to become the undisputed best in our industry. The strength of our team is what reinforces my confidence in our continued success. I'll now highlight the progress we made in the second quarter under each of our 4 strategic pillars. Dirk will then provide additional detail on our second quarter financial performance and full year guidance. Turning to Slide 4. Our strong culture is a competitive differentiator. We remain focused on keeping our people safe, investing in their development and building an empowered workforce that supports our long-term growth. Safety remains our top priority, and we are making meaningful progress in protecting our associates while strengthening our operations. In fact, we have improved our injury and accident rates by over 50% over the last 3.5 years. Aiding this improvement is the deployment of approximately 2,500 center-ride pallet jacks across our distribution network. Our rollout is now 87% complete, and we anticipate full deployment by the end of this year. This investment is reducing exposure to one of our most serious workplace hazards and reflects our ongoing commitment to providing a safer work environment for our associates. Where we have converted to center-ride pallet jacks, the most serious injuries associated with this type of equipment have essentially been eliminated. Our commitment to building a strong culture also extends to talent acquisition and development. During the second quarter, we launched our VALOR campaign to advance our Mission 2030 goal of hiring 3,000 military veterans by the end of the decade. Through VALOR, we are expanding our veteran recruiting efforts with a dedicated web page, new strategic partnerships and ongoing investments to recognize and support the more than 1,500 and growing number of veteran associates already contributing to our business. Veterans bring proven leadership, a strong work ethic, discipline and teamwork to US Foods, and we are honored to support those who have served while strengthening our workforce for the future. Our focus on people is also reflected in our recently published 2025 sustainability report, which highlights our progress across key focus areas and our commitment to building a stronger and more sustainable business. In 2025, we invested 1.2 million hours in training to build critical skills, develop leaders and equip our teams to execute at a high level. I encourage you to read the report on our website to learn more about our sustainability journey and the initiatives we have underway across the business. Moving to Slide 5 and our service pillar. We strive to deliver a best-in-class customer experience by continuously improving the consistency of our service reliability across our network. A key measure of that progress is Operations Quality Composite or Ops QC, which tracks our ability to deliver accurate error-free orders to customers. In the second quarter, Ops QC improved 13% compared to the prior year. And over the last 2 years, it has improved 37%, reflecting disciplined execution and ongoing improvement work in this important customer experience metric. Additionally, earlier this year, we began testing autonomous inventory scanning robotics in one of our warehouses and the early results have been encouraging. We believe this technology will help to further improve inventory accuracy and warehouse efficiency. Based upon the results of the pilot, we plan to expand testing to 6 additional locations by year-end. Our focus on operating discipline is improving our efficiency and strengthening our customer value proposition by helping us deliver the reliable, consistent service our customers count on and deserve every day. Now let's turn to our growth pillar on Slide 6. We are consistently accelerating profitable growth and gaining market share across our target customer types, highlighting the durability of our model during times of macro uncertainty. I'm very pleased with the progress we've made over the last 5 quarters in accelerating our independent restaurant case volume growth. Pronto, our small truck delivery service is a key enabler of that growth and remains a powerful competitive differentiator. Through Pronto, we provide customers with greater convenience and flexibility, including later cutoff times, smaller order sizes and more frequent deliveries. This opens up our addressable market by enabling us to compete more effectively with local and specialty distributors. We're expanding the reach of Pronto, which is now live in 52 markets. At the same time, Pronto Next Day, which extends the service to our existing independent customers is now live in 35 markets with plans to add an additional 8 markets this year. The overall Pronto program is growing at strong double-digit rates. After delivering $1 billion in sales in 2025, we estimate Pronto will deliver approximately $1.3 billion in sales this year. Based on our recent success, we now believe Pronto can generate more than $1.7 billion in sales in 2027, up from our prior estimate of $1.5 billion. Moving now to our sales compensation change. Our new seller compensation plan successfully went live across the company in June, an important milestone to further align our sales force incentives with our business strategy and long-term growth objectives. Early results are very encouraging, and we are already seeing positive indicators in seller engagement that are consistent with our strategy and key growth priorities. Sellers understand how to maximize their earnings, have confidence in the plan and their leaders and are moving quickly to align their actions and behaviors in ways that will accelerate long-term profitable growth. Year-over-year attrition remains flat, which we believe reflects our robust investment in seller training, sales leader preparation and clear ongoing communication and support over the last year and throughout implementation. As we have previously discussed, we've taken a very thoughtful approach to this transition, and it may take 2 to 3 years for the majority of our local sales force to fully transition to 100% variable compensation. Together, Pronto and our seller compensation change underscore our confidence in our ability to accelerate profitable growth and drive further share gains with independent restaurants. Finally, our health care and hospitality businesses, which represent over 25% of total sales, continue to deliver strong performance. Backed by a strong pipeline and the success of our vitals and signature programs, we see meaningful opportunities to drive growth through the remainder of 2026 and into the years ahead. Now let's move to our profit pillar on Slide 7. Our disciplined execution and self-help initiatives drove another quarter of profitable growth and margin expansion. Adjusted EBITDA grew over 10% to a record $604 million and EBITDA margin expanded by 29 basis points to a record 5.7%. Strategic vendor management remains a key contributor to margin expansion and a clear example of our self-help initiatives delivering measurable value. During the first half of the year, we generated more than $50 million in additional cost of goods savings, and we are highly confident in our ability to deliver more than $300 million over the 3-year long-range plan ending in 2027. We are also driving measurable value from our initiatives in inventory management and indirect spend. For inventory management, we expect to generate an additional $10 million of gross profit benefit in 2026, building on the $35 million realized last year. Importantly, this work is also improving in-stock performance, product quality and service levels for our customers. In the area of indirect spend, we completed the baseline deployment of our new indirect procurement system during the first half of this year, creating a stronger platform to capture additional savings. Year-to-date, we generated more than $20 million in incremental savings, and we expect this initiative to deliver more than $75 million of benefit this year. We remain on track for over $100 million of savings in 2027. Next on Slide 8, I'll highlight the ways we are leveraging AI to further widen our competitive moat. AI is embedded in the way we serve our customers, enable our sales force, optimize our supply chain and manage core enterprise functions. Our approach remains focused on deploying AI against the highest return opportunities and tying those initiatives to measurable business outcomes. A key area of focus is sales force productivity. Visit Assistant insights is an internally developed AI-enabled tool that provides sellers with customer-specific insights to identify priority opportunities, improve sales call preparation and make those visits more productive. By streamlining the preparation work that sellers would otherwise do on their own, Visit Assistant allows them to spend more time engaging with customers. In the first 6 weeks, the tool delivered more than 700,000 actionable insights to our sellers across independent restaurant accounts. As the AI model continues to learn and scale, we expect these insights to become increasingly valuable, supporting stronger sales execution, deeper customer engagement and sustained growth over time. In parallel, we are piloting our AI sales assistant, known internally as [ Su ] AI Assistant, which is a generative AI-powered Chatbot that enables sellers to ask questions and receive real-time answers, insights and recommendations directly within their daily workflow. We are also applying AI across our supply chain. AI-driven product demand forecasting, labor planning and Descartes routing are helping improve service and productivity while reducing working capital. Better forecasting supports stronger in-stock performance and less waste, while more efficient routing enables better delivery execution and fewer miles driven. When we talk about AI, we are talking about practical capabilities embedded in our core business processes that are already improving how we operate. While we are still in the early innings, we see meaningful opportunities to deepen our differentiation, accelerate volume growth and improve our supply chain productivity. Of course, technology and stronger processes only create value when paired with talented associates who bring them to life every day. I saw that firsthand at my third annual CEO Award ceremony where we celebrate associates who ignited excellence across US Foods while exemplifying our cultural beliefs. One of those outstanding associates was Lori Miracle, who is the Manager of Inventory Control in Tampa and received a CEO Award. Lori and her team streamlined South Florida's inventory tracking efforts by getting to the root cause of overshipment occurrences and building a new system for tracking inventory discrepancies that enables real-time selector coaching to stop future errors. Her work optimized product recovery, reduced excess stock and improved receiving accuracy, generating $4 million in annual inventory adjustment savings in her area. Her processes have been scaled company-wide and are now used across all markets. Thank you, Lori, for your commitment to embracing our cultural beliefs of deliver excellence and stop waste to drive meaningful cost savings. With that, let me now turn the call over to Dirk to discuss our second quarter financial performance and 2026 guidance. Dirk Locascio: Thank you, Dave, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter results demonstrate the financial benefits of disciplined execution, continued progress on our self-help initiatives and effective capital allocation. We delivered profitable volume growth, expanded adjusted EBITDA margin to a record level and generated adjusted diluted EPS growth that significantly outpaced adjusted EBITDA growth. Starting on Slide 10 with our financial results. Second quarter net sales increased 4.5% to $10.5 billion from total case volume growth of 1.9% plus food cost inflation and mix impact of 2.6%. Total and independent restaurant case growth both accelerated this quarter. Independent restaurant volume grew 5.1%, while health care increased 3.5% and hospitality grew 4.4%. Chain restaurant volume declined 1.5%, 30 basis points better than industry traffic as reported by Black Box. Turning to profitability. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 10.2% to a record $604 million, driven by volume growth with our target customer types and progress on our continuous improvement efforts to increase gross profit and enhance operational efficiency. Finally, adjusted diluted EPS increased 21% to $1.44, meaningfully outpacing adjusted EBITDA growth. We expect adjusted EPS to grow faster than adjusted EBITDA over time as it has for the past several years, supported by earnings growth and the disciplined deployment of our strong cash flow towards share repurchases. Turning to Slide 11. We again drove operating leverage with adjusted gross profit per case growing faster than adjusted operating expenses per case and resulting in strong adjusted EBITDA per case growth. Adjusted gross profit per case increased $0.41 or 5% compared to the prior year, supported by profitable volume growth and our self-help initiatives, including strategic vendor management and improved inventory management. Adjusted gross profit per case was higher this quarter, primarily due to timing of strategic vendor management gains and higher customer fuel surcharges to offset the higher fuel expense we incurred. Adjusted operating expenses per case increased $0.21 or 3.7%. We continue to offset a portion of operating cost inflation through productivity improvements across the business, including warehouse productivity gains, process standardization, labor planning and disciplined expense management. Our adjusted operating expenses were also higher this quarter, with roughly 1/3 of the increase versus prior year from higher fuel costs, combined with the higher sales cost related to the compensation plan transition. As a result, adjusted EBITDA per case increased $0.21 or 8.3% to $2.73. Importantly, adjusted gross profit per case grew 130 basis points faster than adjusted operating expenses per case, demonstrating our consistent ability to drive operating leverage through profitable growth and disciplined cost management. As you can see on Slide 12, our strong cash flow generation and balance sheet provides significant flexibility and support our balanced capital allocation priorities. Year-to-date, we generated $725 million of operating cash flow from strong earnings and effective working capital management. This performance enables us to invest in the business to drive growth, return capital to shareholders through share repurchases and pursue accretive tuck-in M&A. During the second quarter, we repurchased $374 million of shares, bringing year-to-date repurchases to approximately $500 million. We ended the quarter with net leverage of 2.6x, well within our 2 to 3x target range and our leverage profile remains among the strongest in the industry. Finally, we successfully refinanced our ABL facility during the quarter, extending the maturity to 2031 and modestly increasing the size of the facility to $2.5 billion. Our debt structure is strong, and we have no long-term debt maturities until 2028. Together, our cash flow generation, disciplined capital allocation and industry-leading leverage position demonstrate the financial strength of our business and support further investment in our growth. Now turning to our guidance on Slide 13. Given our year-to-date performance and outlook for the balance of the year, we are reaffirming our fiscal year 2026 guidance. We expect net sales growth of 4% to 6%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 9% to 13% and adjusted EPS growth of 18% to 24%, driven by total case volume growth of 2.5% to 4.5%. As a reminder, our full year guidance includes the impact of a 53rd week, which we expect to add approximately 1% to total case growth and adjusted EBITDA growth. While there is a range of potential outcomes depending on how macro conditions evolve, including restaurant industry traffic, inflation and fuel prices, the midpoint of our guidance represents our best estimate for 2026, and we are confident in our ability to deliver within our reaffirmed guidance range. The business is positioned for consistent double-digit adjusted EPS growth over time as we focus on achieving our long-range plan. With that, I'll now pass it back to Dave for his closing remarks. David Flitman: Thanks, Dirk. Reflecting on the second quarter, I am encouraged by the strength of our performance and the momentum we are building across the business. We are gaining profitable share and strengthening our competitive position because our model is working, supported by greater alignment throughout our sales force, growth initiatives like Pronto and continued productivity improvements, all increasingly enabled through the application of AI. Our strong cash flow and balance sheet provides significant flexibility to invest in growth, return capital to shareholders and pursue accretive tuck-in acquisitions that strengthen our local market presence. I have never been more confident in our ability to deliver our long-range plan and sustain our momentum well beyond next year. That confidence is grounded in the quality of our team and the durable competitive advantages that we continue to strengthen. As a reminder, US Foods maintains a unique position in the industry as the only pure-play U.S.-focused foodservice distributor with national scale. That focus allows us to go deep on broadline distribution and concentrate our resources on the 3 fastest-growing and most profitable customer types in the industry, independent restaurants, health care and hospitality, where our differentiated service model, digital capabilities and track record of share gains position us to win in any environment. We are also the industry leader in digital innovation with an ecosystem increasingly enhanced by AI that makes it easier for customers to do business with us, improve seller productivity and strengthens our supply chain. At the same time, we continue to advance our operational excellence initiatives and see a meaningful opportunity to gain further share, improve productivity and expand margins over the long-term. We are also just beginning to unlock the benefits of AI and automation, which we believe will further enhance the customer experience, drive efficiencies across our operations and support profitable growth for years to come. Let me close with one final point highlighted on Slide 14. Since 2023, we have consistently delivered volume growth and double-digit adjusted EPS growth, creating meaningful shareholder returns through the combination of compounded earnings growth and accretive share repurchases. Importantly, our earnings growth over that period has significantly outpaced our foodservice distribution peers, industrial distributors and consumer staples companies. Yet, we do not believe our current valuation fully recognizes our track record of execution, sustained margin expansion, disciplined capital allocation and the substantial runway we see for continued earnings growth and shareholder value creation. Our strategy is working. Our strong execution is delivering results and our competitive position continues to strengthen. We are building a more differentiated, profitable and durable US Foods, and I am confident in our ability to create compelling long-term value for our associates, customers, suppliers and shareholders. Thank you for your continued interest in US Foods. With that, operator, please open up the line for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our first question is coming from Lauren Silberman with Deutsche Bank. Lauren Silberman: Congrats on the great quarter. I guess I'll just start on the independent case growth, real strong, I think, best in over 2 years. Can you talk about the cadence you saw throughout the quarter? And given traffic has been pretty steady in the industry, it seems like you're accelerating your pace of share gains there. So what's driving that? And as the sales compensation transition happens, do you think you can help further accelerate share gains over the next few years? David Flitman: Lauren, thanks for the question. I think we saw a fairly consistent case growth throughout the quarter. I feel really good, to your point, the strongest since second quarter of 2023, lots of good momentum, consistent with what we've been accelerating over the past 4 or 5 quarters here. So we feel really good about that. At the heart of it is our net new account generation, which has always been the lifeblood of our growth. Our teams have really focused on that over the past couple of years, and you're seeing that continue to gain traction. Really confident that we're going to continue to lean into independents and expect that volume to continue to accelerate. Importantly, the sales comp change will be a long-term growth driver. Really pleased with the start-up here. I think Randy Taylor and the team have been working on that for 1.5 years, did a really good job of leading up to the implementation here in June. Pleased with the start. That will definitely impact our growth going forward. But as I said, it's going to take a while to get everybody up to that full commission rate. Early returns are exciting. Importantly, our turnover remained flat, as I said in the prepared remarks, and we're off to the races and excited about the future. Lauren Silberman: Great. You guys originally guided in Q2 to mid-single to upper single digit, I believe, EBITDA growth. You beat that with 10% despite elevated fuel. What drove the upside relative to your expectations? And Dirk, what are you embedding for fuel costs in the back half of the year? Dirk Locascio: So there's a couple of main things that drove the beat. One is our fuel recovery was higher and better than we expected. So we expected, as we commented before, about a 2% headwind from fuel and ended up being less than half of that. And it really relates to just the discipline and making sure that we were enforcing the surcharges that we have and also with fuel getting to higher levels some of the surcharges for some of our larger customers that don't kick in until higher prices did go into effect. And so our recovery rate instead of our typical 30%, 40% was more like 70% for the quarter. So pleased with the execution of the team there. And then the second piece was some of the strategic vendor management negotiations and outcomes that we expected to be completed in the second half of the year were completed sooner. And so that team delivered some incremental value. Otherwise, the business performed largely as we expected. And our outlook for the year of the range and then my comments in there about the midpoint being our best estimate assumes fuel stays around where it's at currently. So we feel very good about coming out of Q2, where we are and the balance of the year and thus the strong confidence in delivering the guidance. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jacob Aiken-Phillips with Melius Research. Samuel Barton: This is Sam Barton on for Jacob. You described the early results from the new sales compensation plan as encouraging. I was just wondering if you could double-click on that a little bit. What behaviors or results specifically changed, if there's anything results-wise that you could provide for us? And how do you distinguish the early impact of the compensation plan from the independent momentum that was already building before the rollout? David Flitman: Yes. I think it's early to comment on a lot of that. But I would just say that the early behaviors that we've seen around growth, and as you'll recall, we aligned specifically this compensation plan exactly with our strategy. So things around our brands, independent restaurants, growth, importantly, incenting Pronto, we're starting to see some early returns and the focus that we like to see in those areas. It will take a while for that to impact our growth in a big way. But as I said, we just started this a month or so ago, and turnover is flat. Our teams are excited, and we're starting to see good behaviors. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Alex Slagle with Jefferies. Alexander Slagle: I wanted to ask on Pronto, just the progress on the incremental investments you're making in the business this year and clearly seeing results on the top line. I guess curious where you're seeing the most success, if there are certain markets or customer types that really stand out and really like how the team is managing this growth, managing the margins as they continue to accelerate the growth. David Flitman: Alex, thanks for the question. Just as you recall, this is a multiyear journey around Pronto. We did a lot of piloting work. First, as we were applying the new model to just looking for new customers. We spent several years doing that, and it was only a couple of years ago when we actually started to pilot the work to our existing customers. And importantly, there were 2 pieces of work that we went slow to go fast around as we took it to our existing independent customers. That was exactly what you asked about. was will we maintain the margins and the profitability to support the incremental costs of that service. And then secondly, importantly, we just didn't want to cannibalize our existing broadline business and just shift those volumes over to smaller, more inefficient deliveries. And we proved that. We're thoughtful as we take it into new markets to make sure that those 2 key pieces are performing as intended. But what you've seen us do then over the past few quarters is start to accelerate that penetration across our existing markets with our existing customers because we are confident in the model. So as I highlighted there, we're pleased with the performance last year. We're looking at $1.3 billion this year, and we expect that model to continue to drive growth for the future. Dirk Locascio: Just to add, Alex, that -- so as you pointed out, the return on this investment is quite high and quite strong, and we see a long runway, a lot of years of growth here. And we've got a good partnership across my team, Randy's team as we deploy more trucks into markets and being very thoughtful. And like Dave said, speeding up the pace of deployment, but not lose the pragmatic approach we have to achieving such good outcomes on volume growth and margin growth overall. So there's nothing that we see that will slow our pace of investment in Pronto, and we continue to be as excited as ever on that. Alexander Slagle: Great. And a follow-up on the gross profit per case growth, which continues to be really strong, ramping year-over-year, and you explained the OpEx per case bump as well. And I realize going into the third quarter, we're going to be lapping a bump from Food Fanatics. I think that event was last year. Just curious if that's a recurring event that you expect to be able to sort of grow the gross profit per case on top of that and what the OpEx per case might look like if we should expect some sort of moderation? Dirk Locascio: Sure. So the increase last year from the event in the third quarter has been spread throughout this year. So this is not an every year event. So you've seen the gross profit gains and the OpEx happening throughout the different quarters. So you're right, you will see a slowing of increase in gross profit per case and OpEx per case in the third quarter. Our expectation is that we will still grow GP per case meaningfully in the quarter. Just expectation is not as strong as it's been. We feel very good about our ability to grow gross profit per case for the back half of the year and for a number of years to come because of the various initiatives we've talked about, 2 of which were mentioned today in strategic vendor management and the inventory adjustments work. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Edward Kelly with Wells Fargo. Edward Kelly: Great quarter. Dave, I wanted to follow up. You mentioned on independent case volumes that you expect this business to continue to accelerate. Curious specifically what you saw in July. And then your compares do get harder in the back half of the year. So I just want to parse out sort of that comment about acceleration. David Flitman: Yes. Great question. Appreciate it, Ed. So I would say largely, July was consistent with what we saw in the second quarter, so maintained that momentum. And my point around continued expectations, not only for the back half of this year, but going forward, when you combine the differentiation that we bring, the focus that we have on this segment, our continued ability to add high-quality sellers to our team -- and importantly, just the deep focus that we have, not only on generating new business, but also penetrating our existing customers, gives me the confidence that, that momentum will continue. You overlay the sales comp change on top of that. And as I've said before, I believe that's going to be the key unlock for the future in this organization to accelerate growth. I couldn't feel better about the momentum and what the future looks like. Edward Kelly: Great. And just a follow-up on the AI comments. I mean, foodservice seems like a business where you could really generate some large benefits over time. You've been the tech leader, I think specifically as it relates to customer-facing stuff. How much of the opportunity here are you capturing so far? I think you've kind of said you're in the early innings. And then if we zoom out, Dave, you've captured a lot of opportunity and upside from better sort of like operational execution. Is the opportunity with the implementation of AI into the sales force and the supply chain as big as that over time? Just kind of curious as to how you're thinking about sizing like the -- size of the prize long-term here. David Flitman: Yes. I mean we've been working on this for quite some time in very practical applications for the business. And as we talked about there in the prepared remarks, it's touched supply chain, it's touched sales. You think about MOXe and some of the things that we've talked about over the last couple of years, anything from where is my truck to improving product recommendations for customers, did you forget something? Last quarter, I believe we talked about our rollout of Menu IQ, all of these applications are AI-based and very practically oriented around our customer, making it easier to do business with us. And then importantly, also our sales force productivity because to the extent the customers are helping themselves more, it gives our sellers more time to go find the next customer and importantly, drive penetration. And then more recently, things like Visit Assistant that we talked about this morning, all AI-based, helping our salespeople just be more productive. And you think about Descartes, which has AI embedded in it and how we do our routing, the labor planning tools we've developed there, some back-office work that we've got going on. So while I believe that we're in the early innings. I do believe long-term, there will potentially be some transformational opportunities as we apply this more broadly across the business. But I think for the near term, what you can expect us to do is more of the same. And all of this, I would point to helping to support our underlying performance and the strength of both our top line and bottom line growth that you guys have come to expect from us. Dirk Locascio: And I think the other thing and when we talk about the early innings is although I'm quite pleased with the progress that our team has made in the last few years of applying these and measuring the results where it's helped drive whether it's additional case growth, improved working capital management/customer service levels and productivity. And we know the pace of change in the models and the capabilities for AI is rapidly advancing. And as we continue to take advantage of that, that's why we believe there's significant opportunity and that will continue to be across growth in the customer experience as well as productivity. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of John Heinbockel with Guggenheim. John Heinbockel: So Dave, I want to start. I know that account growth, right, is the biggest driver. Where do we stand now on drop size? I think we may be in positive territory, you think about penetration, right, versus cases per line. Maybe talk about that. And this -- between the AI and the change in compensation, can penetration -- we've been sort of waiting for penetration for all you guys really to move. Do you think we're on the cusp of that where that can be the biggest change in local case growth? David Flitman: Yes. I do, John, actually. And as I've commented in the past few quarters, our penetration, while still pressured, has improved sequentially for several quarters in a row, including in the second quarter. That's continuing to show up based on all the good work that our teams are doing and some of the AI support that we've given our sellers. Importantly, lines per customer continues to improve, consistent with that penetration. I think where you see the foot traffic pressure show up in penetration is those cases per line, which are still a little bit pressured and I think more reflective of the foot traffic challenges. But the things that we look at to say whether we're winning or losing continue to move in the right direction, and they have been for several quarters, and I expect that will continue. John Heinbockel: And maybe switching gears. The 3% to 5% productivity target -- so where are we within that? I think last we heard maybe it was between 3% and 4%. Where are we? And how are -- when you think about differences between transportation, right, and the warehouse, are there material differences today between those 2 buckets or no? Dirk Locascio: John, so we're still in that 3% to 4% range. And depending on the year, warehouse or delivery can be a little higher, a little lower. But every year, we have activities and technology enablements that support both of those. And I think that, that will continue to be the case going forward. I think as we think about some of the tools, whether we talk about AI and/or continued just process improvements, that will benefit both of those. One thing that is -- as you were asking about same-store penetration as the market stabilizes and those get back to positive, that will help that just broadly across the network as well. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kelly Bania with BMO Capital Markets. Kelly Bania: Congrats on a great quarter. I was wondering if we could go back to just the independent case growth, obviously quite strong, accelerating you mentioned penetration, but also it sounds like maybe a little bit more from new account growth. Maybe you can clarify that. But I'm curious if there's any behavior changes that you're maybe already starting to see from the sales force in advance of the comp changes or at the start of the comp change that are working to incentivize the behaviors that you'd like and if that's kind of already maybe starting to come through as the sales force has been aware of that and prepared for some of these changes coming through or if you feel like there's just more to come on that front? David Flitman: Yes, I'll take the first question first there. Really excited about the net new account generation. It's continued to accelerate for the past several quarters. In fact, this quarter, Kelly, our net new account generation was as strong as it's been in 3 years. So really good momentum there. It continues to be the lifeblood of our growth. And as I commented earlier, we are starting to see some early green shoots around the reshaping of the comp plan, particularly around independent growth Pronto, which gives us the confidence to put out the forecast that we did this morning around Pronto, importantly, our brand penetration. The things that we talked about previously that we embedded into this comp plan, we're starting to see early returns on that. Again, we're 30, 40 days into this. So a lot more to come in that regard. We'll continue to give color as time goes on. I think for me, we've launched this quite successfully. I give our team a lot of credit, very thoughtful approach. Change management was big. Communication is ongoing. Importantly, we haven't seen an uptick in turnover. We continue to attract new sales talent to the company, feel really, really good, and I think we get an A+ for execution on this one. Kelly Bania: Agreed. Dave, if I could just ask one other one on AI, maybe a little bit different. Obviously, you guys have been ahead on the technology and digital front, and maybe this is empowering that further. But how do you think AI impacts some of the smaller private distributors? As you talk about penetration improving, presumably that's coming at the cost of some of those smaller private regional distributors. And is this something that you think further widens the gap between some of these smaller competitors that may not have this level of technology? David Flitman: I think over time, it can for sure. I think we've commented in the past, Kelly, that the amount of investment that we make in this area of the business, consistent with the larger competitors out there who can afford to do this work at scale like we are. It will be a competitive differentiator over time because I think it becomes increasingly more difficult for the smaller competitors to make those sort of investments over time, not that there's not capability out there that they can't leverage, and I'm sure they are. But I just stay focused on the things that we can control and accelerating independent case growth, the momentum that we've seen here in the past 5 quarters, the team feels really good about, and we expect that will continue over time. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mark Carden with UBS. Mark Carden: So how did headcount growth play out for your sales force in 2Q? Any shifts to how you're approaching this in the back half of the year? And then you talked about continued success in attracting talent to your sales force. Do you guys think that the formal move to the more variable model impacted what you're seeing from a talent pool perspective? David Flitman: Yes. I appreciate the question on headcount. So I'll start with nothing has changed in terms of our expectations around what the right headcount growth number is for us. That's around the mid-single digits. I will tell you, in the second quarter, we're up 8% in seller headcount. As you might expect, in anticipation of any potential turnover uptick that we might have seen, we hired in advance of that. So again, another area that the team was very thoughtful about thinking about all eventualities. I think you'll see that settle out a bit to get right back into the normal range that we expect here as we go into the back half of this year. What was the second part of your question, Mark? Mark Carden: Just in terms of now that you guys have formally moved over to the more variable model, has that impacted what you're seeing from a talent pool perspective with respect to potential sales force candidates? David Flitman: Yes, I think -- and I've commented previously on that. I think it will through the course of time. It's a bit early to haven't seen anything material there. I think that it will attract a different type of seller to the company long-term who has thrived on maybe in other industries or other businesses at 100% commission model. But we'll see. It's early days. Mark Carden: Got you. That's great. And then as my follow-up, just on the independent side of the business, have you seen much of a shift in demand between more value-oriented independent operators and some of the more premium concepts? Did your case growth performance pick up pretty consistently across concepts? Any call outs on that front? David Flitman: Yes, I wouldn't say there's anything material I'd call out in the second quarter where we've seen any significant meaningful shifts. And we've been in this foot traffic challenge for quite some time. I think I wouldn't -- I call the market pressured but stable. I didn't see anything change around that in the second quarter. So I think any of those shifts are already built in, in terms of what we've seen. Dirk Locascio: And just a reminder, as David commented earlier, that a big driver of our growth was the continued acceleration in net new accounts, and that's across the spectrum that we focused on in independents despite sales or penetration did continue to strengthen, but that net new machine continues to accelerate, and we feel very good about that. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Harbour with Morgan Stanley. Brian Harbour: I was curious about health care and hospitality. How much of that is sort of being driven by account wins versus -- like, for example, I think hotels have actually had a pretty healthy run here year-to-date. Could you dig into that a little bit? Dirk Locascio: Sure. It's -- there is some that's same-store penetration, but a big part of it is the continued growth of the pipeline and converting that into new business. And that team has done a really nice job of continuing to have a very robust pipeline, bring our value proposition to life with those customers and bring them on and continue to serve them. So to answer your question, the strength in hospitality has been a contributor, but the net new is still bigger driver. And our expectation is both will continue over time. And within health care and hospitality, the tools, for example, around Vitals and Signature will both continue to be utilized widely, and we expect will help us serve existing customers better and continue to convert the pipeline. Brian Harbour: Okay. Got it. Would you consider moving faster on the compensation change if you've spoken positively about it so far. Would that influence the speed at which you do it? David Flitman: Well, I think -- so the comp change is fully implemented for all sellers. And just a recall here, Brian, there's a click down process that supports that at the individual level. We're having very individualized conversations. There is a time period and expectation around that click down for each individual. I think the team was thoughtful about that, and we'll let that play out as it's been designed. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Peter Saleh with BTIG. Peter Saleh: Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask about the EBITDA margin, really great performance this quarter. I know you guys are getting a lot of help from the cost of sales implementation that you guys have been doing, the indirect cost savings as well. Do you see a cap here on this EBITDA margin? Or maybe asked another way, when you look out, are there parts of the country or regions of the country that are operating at a much higher level than the current system that you can act as a North Star? Dirk Locascio: So we're quite pleased and appreciate the recognition on the continued work around margin expansion, and we think that balance along with volume growth driven by our 3 target types is the right balance over time to profitably grow the business. Because we're doing -- driving that growth through various initiatives, we really don't see a cap. I mean I'm sure maybe there's one out there, but it's going to be long down the road. And year-over-year, that 20 basis points that we're focused on delivering, we expect that we can continue to deliver on. To your question, yes, I mean, we have markets, we have parts of the country that are higher margin than others as far as our facilities and even within customers. So we know that there is further opportunity out there to continue to grow meaningfully, and we don't see a ceiling anytime in the even midterm. Peter Saleh: Great. And then can I just ask on -- have you guys seen anything or any change in behavior, consumer behavior regarding GLP-1s in the most recent quarter? David Flitman: Nothing remarkable here in the quarter. I think that trend will play out long-term. But as we said, almost half of everything we sell is fresh in one way or another. And as those culinary desires shift and portion sizes change, we're supporting our customers around that. We don't think there's a big overhang on the industry here. And certainly, we haven't seen that in terms of our growth trajectory. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Karen Holthouse with Citi. Karen Holthouse: Congrats on a great quarter. How are you thinking about -- there's a comment in prepared remarks or in the slides about a good pipeline for tuck-in M&A. How are you thinking about that contribution to independent case growth in the second half? Dirk Locascio: For the second half, we expect M&A to be a pretty small contribution. We have one very small transaction that's continuing to wrap through the early part of the fourth quarter. And the other ones that are out there depending on timing, again, I don't expect it to have a meaningful impact for the quarter, but it's not for lack of effort with the teams. The team continues to work the pipeline and finding the right transactions to bring within the US Foods network. But overall, in the meantime, we're going to continue to work on accelerating organic growth as we have independents, as Dave said, for the last 5 quarters, and we feel very good about the strength across that and the rest of the overall case volume for the second half of the year. Karen Holthouse: And then just as a follow-up on the inflation side, within the 1.5% combined for inflation and mix, any particular callouts of commodities being outsized contributors to inflation or deflation? Dirk Locascio: But maybe just for context, the -- when you look at Q1 at the 1% year-over-year going up to 2.3% in the second quarter, proteins continued to have strong levels of inflation. We saw produce with inflation in the second quarter. Dairy had less deflation than it had a year ago. So there's some smaller things here and there. Broad grocery continues to be modestly inflationary. So say it continues to be right in that spot that we feel good about managing and passing through and that customers can handle and not all that volatile. Like I said, there's always going to be a category here and there that's moving around, but we have the processes to effectively manage through that. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Danilo Gargiulo with Bernstein. Danilo Gargiulo: Great. You mentioned earlier the dynamics of gross profit margin relative to OpEx margin, specifically for the third quarter. But I'm wondering if you can give color on how should we think strategically about the evolution of this trend in light of the recent puts and takes on the cost management initiatives that you have, but also the portfolio mix that is consistently skewing towards more profitable segments of your business? Dirk Locascio: So overall, our expectation is that we'll continue to grow gross profit dollars 100 to 150 basis points faster than OpEx. And so that really is unchanged in any given quarter. It can be a little more, a little less, but that's how we think about it. And -- it's really because we have the portfolio of initiatives and actions that we're taking across both gross profit and OpEx productivity. So it's unchanged, and we expect that we can do that still for a long time to come. And as you pointed out, our customer mix and product mix, that will continue to be a contributor to those gains as well over time. Danilo Gargiulo: And then I'm wondering if you can give some color on what you're seeing on truck driver availability within your business given the recent regulatory tightening. And perhaps you can share your expectations on the turnover for the rest of the year and the labor cost inflation that you're embedding in the guidance. David Flitman: I would just say we have no challenges with drivers. As I've commented before, and that played out again in the second quarter. Our turnover is very consistent with where it was pre-COVID, and our driver productivity is strong and improving. No real challenges there. I think from a productivity standpoint, both in the warehouse and with our outbound drivers, very, very strong, has improved quite a bit over the past couple of years and again, right on par with where we were pre-COVID. Dirk Locascio: Yes. And I think to Dave's point, the big part of the reason we don't have challenges in hiring and retaining on that customer base is we offer a pretty attractive compensation base, and they do an important role job, and we try to compensate people fairly for that as well. And from an inflation perspective, just like we talk about productivity in the 3% to 5%, cost inflation is in that 3% to 5% as well, the way we think about the outlook. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Margaret-May Binshtok with Wolfe Research. Margaret-May Binshtok: I just wanted to ask, given some of the elevated costs that we've seen, I guess, over the last couple of years that could be impacting your restaurant customers, have you seen operators becoming more willing, I guess, to trade into your exclusive brands private label today perhaps versus a year ago? And is that driving any uptick in penetration? And also just on Menu IQ, is that playing into that at all? David Flitman: Yes. I think importantly, both of those are connected. We feel really good about our private label penetration. And given the challenges these operators have faced really going into COVID and coming out of it that we've talked about, labor, rent, food cost inflation, all of that has really underscored the momentum we've got in our private label brands. And then things like Menu IQ that helps them really look at their menu costs and optimize it in a way that many of them know is there, but really don't know how to get at. really helps them reshape their thinking and also plays to the strength of our private label brands, which are sitting at about 53% with independent restaurants, very strong, and we expect that will continue to grow through the course of time. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Charles with TD Cowen. Andrew Charles: The health care case volumes in 2Q slowed a bit from 1Q in both the 1- and 2-year stack basis. Can you walk us through the dynamics behind that easing? And how do you think about health care case growth for the back half of the year? Dirk Locascio: I think when you talk about still being in that 3.5% or so, that's pretty strong case volume. And from quarter-to-quarter, depending on individual customers, timing of onboards, et cetera. It can move around a little bit. But I think both health care and hospitality being sort of at those same strong points, we feel very good about the growth rate that we generated in the second quarter and have confidence that we can continue to grow both of those at a healthy rate for the balance of the year and for periods well beyond 2026. We have differentiation in each of those, and our team is doing a nice job of bringing that differentiation to customers. David Flitman: And importantly, our pipelines in both are quite strong. Andrew Charles: Great. Okay. And then you talked about how the higher sales force costs drove about 1/3 of the increase in operating expenses. Was that largely onetime? Do you expect that to endure? Dirk Locascio: So 1/3 was fuel-related comments that was there. The sales cost, we do expect to continue to drive some incremental costs for the next couple of quarters. That was largely contemplated in our outlook. As Dave said, that the team was so we're looking ahead as to getting ahead of any potential turnover. This was, we believe, the right choice to hire ahead. And as you said, as that ramps back down to the mid-single digits, then we would expect the headwind to ease. But right now, for the next couple of quarters, we do expect it will result in some elevated selling costs. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Rahul Krotthapalli with JPMorgan. Rahul Krotthapalli: Dave, as we look forward, philosophically, how should we think about reinvesting some of the productivity benefits from the AI and the deployed capabilities versus passing through to the bottom line? And then specifically on the sales force and headcount, where do you think is the ceiling for span of control or adding or managing accounts per salesperson? And will the productivity increase lead you to hiring more sales members to capture share aggressively or less than previously anticipated? And I have a follow-up. David Flitman: Yes. Well, I think, again, I'll take your second question first. I think the mid-single-digit headcount range is the right one for us to consistently onboard, do a high-quality job of bringing those folks up the learning curve with US Foods. I think what you see with the application of AI and all that is improved productivity of our sellers where they're spending their mind share and their time, how they're supporting their customers. To the extent AI helps our customers help themselves more, it frees up that time and resource, that valuable time and resource of our sales force to go drive new growth. And I think about AI in terms of productivity, we've taken a lot of cost out of the business in the past 2 years. In 2024 and '25, we've talked about $150 million of cost out in the business. That was aimed at really decentralizing the organization, putting resources closer to the customer, not AI generated at all. And as we think about AI, and I won't repeat my comments from earlier, but all the things that we're doing is aimed at labor planning, efficiency and productivity. I think all of that factors into the 3% to 5% annual productivity target that we have. And AI is going to be an increasingly important part of that and an enabler to consistently drive that productivity across the business. Dirk Locascio: And year in and year out, we're always looking at reinvesting back in the business. And so when we talk about whether it's cost and productivity or gross profit expansion, we think about, okay, how do we reinvest a portion of that back with customers with advanced capabilities, I mean, with our data science teams for AI, et cetera. So that's not something new and AI would just be another piece that we would think about as we think about reinvestment over time. Rahul Krotthapalli: And then the scanner test expansion to 6 locations is interesting to see. As you start focusing more on the physical or the hardware-focused solutions, are there any purpose-built robotic or automation opportunities in the near term that could make sense for you to test or look at? Dirk Locascio: Specifically, the robotics that we're testing now and moving, as you pointed out, from the 1 to 6, we're seeing good early results from those, helping with better accuracy in the warehouse and sort of much more efficiency. So our other local teams can spend more time on other things and understanding the why and improving process. And that's the main place we've seen right now. We evaluated several providers before we decided on the one that now we are moving ahead. As robotics continues to advance, we continue to evaluate and we'll make that determination over time when there's other uses. Operator: That concludes today's question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Dave Flitman, CEO, for closing comments. David Flitman: Thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. We're more excited about our future than we've ever been. I appreciate your support. Have a great rest of the week. Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect. 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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. US Foods (USFD) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

B&G Foods, Inc. BGS continued to reshape its portfolio in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, with recent divestitures and acquisitions materially changing its sales mix. While revenues declined, improved margins, lower selling, general and administrative expenses and contributions from higher-margin businesses supported profitability.Adjusted earnings were 6 cents per share, up 50% from the year-ago quarter figure. Net sales fell 9.7% year over year to $383.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA increased 4.2% to $60.4 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 15.8% from 13.7%. B&G Foods, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | B&G Foods, Inc. Quote BGS’ second-quarter sales comparison reflected the Green Giant U.S. frozen, Le Sueur U.S. and Don Pepino divestitures. These businesses contributed about $68 million to net sales in the prior-year quarter and were not part of second-quarter fiscal 2026 results.Partially offsetting this impact were $23.9 million in sales from the Green Giant U.S. frozen co-manufacturing agreement and $13.2 million from the acquired College Inn and Kitchen Basics brands. Management stated the portfolio reshaping is aimed at improving growth stability, margins and cash generation.B&G Foods’ base business net sales declined 2.9% year over year to $346.3 million from $356.5 million. Volume reduced sales by 4.3%, while net pricing and product mix provided a 1.4% benefit. Foreign currency added nearly 0.1%. Management noted that the timing of the Fourth of July holiday reduced the quarter by about 1.5 shipping days, affecting net sales by roughly $5 million to $7 million. Adjusted gross profit was $83.7 million in the second quarter compared with $89.1 million a year ago. However, adjusted gross margin expanded to 21.8% from 21.0%, aided by the higher-margin College Inn and Kitchen Basics acquisition, the divestiture of the lower-margin Green Giant U.S. frozen business and tariff refunds.Selling, general and administrative expenses decreased 14% to $40.6 million from $47.2 million. Lower warehousing, general and administrative, consumer marketing and selling expenses more than offset higher acquisition, divestiture-related and non-recurring expenses. SG&A represented 10.6% of sales compared with 11.1% a year ago. Specialty segment net sales declined 4.4% to $128.9 million, while adjusted EBITDA fell 27.3% to $23.7 million. Results were pressured by lower volumes, higher Crisco oil input costs and the Don Pepino divestiture.Meals sales increased 6.2% to $110.5 million, helped by College Inn and Kitchen Basics, pricing and mix. Adjusted EBITDA edged up 0.3% to $25.8 million. Frozen & Vegetables sales fell 47% to $47.2 million because of divestitures, while its adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $1.2 million from $2.7 million.Spices & Flavor Solutions sales increased 0.1% to $96.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA climbed 29% to $31.1 million, supported by pricing, tariff refunds and lower spice input costs. Growth in foodservice and private-label channels helped offset weakness in retail. B&G Foods ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $591.6 million, long-term debt (net of current portion) of $2,008.5 million and total stockholders’ equity of $395.1 million. For the first two quarters of 2026, BGS’ net cash from operating activities amounted to about $58 million. This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company reaffirmed its fiscal 2026 net sales guidance of $1,735 million to $1,775 million. Adjusted EBITDA is still projected at $275 million to $290 million, while adjusted earnings are expected in the range of 57.5-67.5 cents per share.The outlook incorporates completed divestitures, the Green Giant U.S. frozen co-manufacturing agreement and the College Inn and Kitchen Basics acquisition. It excludes the pending Green Giant Canada divestiture, which management expects to close during the third quarter of fiscal 2026.Shares of BGS have tumbled 22.3% over the past three months, against the industry’s growth of 8.6%. Darling Ingredients Inc. DAR, a global developer and producer of sustainable natural ingredients derived from edible and inedible bio-nutrients, currently sports a Zacks Rank of 1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks hereThe Zacks Consensus Estimate for Darling’s current fiscal-year sales calls for 12.8% growth from the prior-year levels. The consensus estimate for current fiscal-year earnings per share (EPS) stands at $6.98, which implies substantial growth from the year-ago period. DAR delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 38.9%, on average.The Vita Coco Company, Inc. COCO, a leading beverage company that develops, markets and distributes coconut water and other plant-based beverages, currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. COCO delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 21.9%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for The Vita Coco Company’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings calls for growth of 31.6% and 64.7%, respectively, from the year-ago figures.US Foods Holding Corp. USFD engages in the marketing, sale and distribution of fresh, frozen and dry food and non-food products to foodservice customers in the United States. USFD currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). US Foods Holding delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 1.5%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for US Foods Holding’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 5.1% and 16.3%, respectively, from the year-ago figures. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report B&G Foods, Inc. (BGS) : Free Stock Analysis Report Vita Coco Company, Inc. (COCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Darling Ingredients Inc. (DAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Interested in US Foods Holding Corp.? Here are five stocks we like better. Record Q2 performance: US Foods reported a 4.5% increase in net sales to $10.5 billion, while adjusted EBITDA rose 10.2% to $604 million and adjusted EPS climbed 21% to $1.44. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to a record 5.7%. Customer growth and Pronto expansion strengthened: Independent restaurant volume grew 5.1%, with healthcare and hospitality volumes also increasing, while Pronto sales are now expected to reach about $1.3 billion in 2026 and more than $1.7 billion in 2027. Outlook reaffirmed: The company maintained its 2026 guidance for 4%–6% sales growth, 9%–13% adjusted EBITDA growth and 18%–24% adjusted EPS growth, supported by productivity savings, share repurchases and solid cash flow. 3 Undervalued Names Too Cheap to Ignore US Foods (NYSE:USFD) reported record second-quarter adjusted EBITDA and margin, supported by accelerating growth with independent restaurants, healthcare and hospitality customers, while reaffirming its full-year 2026 outlook. Net sales rose 4.5% to $10.5 billion in the second quarter, driven by 1.9% total case-volume growth and a 2.6% contribution from food-cost inflation and mix, Chief Financial Officer Dirk Locascio said. Adjusted EBITDA increased 10.2% to a record $604 million, while adjusted diluted earnings per share climbed 21% to $1.44. → No Hangover: Revisiting Microsoft One Week After Earnings Hershey Stock Decline: An Opportunity for Investors to Buy Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 29 basis points to a record 5.7%. The company said adjusted gross profit per case increased 5% to $0.41 higher than the prior year, outpacing a 3.7%, or $0.21, increase in adjusted operating expenses per case. Adjusted EBITDA per case rose 8.3% to $2.73. Independent restaurant case volume grew 5.1%, the strongest result since the fourth quarter of 2023 and the company’s fifth consecutive quarter of acceleration, according to Chair and CEO Dave Flitman. Healthcare case volume increased 3.5%, while hospitality volume grew 4.4%. Chain restaurant volume declined 1.5%, though Locascio said that was 30 basis points better than industry traffic reported by Black Box. → MarketBeat Week in Review – 08/03 - 08/07 Cava Group Serves Up 60% Gain Amid Strong Post-IPO Buying Flitman said the independent restaurant performance was driven primarily by net new account generation, which reached its strongest level in three years. The company also reported its 21st consecutive quarter of independent restaurant share gains and its 23rd consecutive quarter of healthcare share gains. During the question-and-answer session, Flitman said July trends were broadly consistent with the second quarter. He described the restaurant market as “pressured but stable,” citing continued industry foot-traffic challenges, but said the company’s customer acquisition and existing-account penetration efforts continued to improve. → Why the Landlord of the AI Boom Could Outlast the Chipmakers US Foods launched its new seller compensation plan companywide in June. The plan is designed to align incentives with priorities including independent restaurant growth, exclusive-brand penetration and Pronto service adoption. Flitman said early behavior changes have been encouraging, though it will take time for the compensation transition to have a larger effect on growth. Sales-force attrition remained flat year over year, he said. The company continued to expand Pronto, its small-truck delivery service that offers later order cutoff times, smaller order sizes and more frequent delivery options. Pronto is operating in 52 markets, while Pronto Next Day service for existing independent customers is available in 35 markets. US Foods plans to add eight Pronto Next Day markets this year. After generating $1 billion in sales during 2025, US Foods now expects Pronto to produce about $1.3 billion in 2026 sales and more than $1.7 billion in 2027, up from its previous 2027 estimate of $1.5 billion. Flitman said the company has tested the service carefully to ensure it maintains margins and does not simply shift existing broadline volume to smaller, less efficient deliveries. Management also highlighted cost and productivity programs. Strategic Vendor Management generated more than $50 million in additional cost-of-goods savings during the first half, putting the company on track to exceed $300 million in savings under its three-year plan ending in 2027. Inventory management is expected to deliver an additional $10 million in gross-profit benefit during 2026 after generating $35 million last year. US Foods said it generated more than $20 million in year-to-date incremental indirect-spend savings following the baseline deployment of a new indirect procurement system. The company expects that program to provide more than $75 million of benefit this year and more than $100 million in 2027. Flitman said the company is applying artificial intelligence across sales, supply chain and enterprise functions. An internally developed tool called Visit Assistant Insights delivered more than 700,000 customer-specific insights to sellers serving independent restaurant accounts during its first six weeks, he said. The company is also piloting a generative AI sales chatbot called Sue AI Assistant. In supply chain operations, US Foods is using AI-driven demand forecasting, labor planning and Descartes routing tools to improve in-stock performance, delivery execution, productivity and working-capital management. US Foods has begun testing autonomous inventory-scanning robots in one warehouse and plans to extend the test to six additional locations by year-end. The company said early results from the initial pilot have been encouraging. Year-to-date operating cash flow totaled $725 million, supported by earnings growth and working-capital management. US Foods repurchased $374 million of shares during the second quarter, bringing year-to-date buybacks to about $500 million. Net leverage ended the quarter at 2.6 times, within the company’s 2 times to 3 times target range. The company also refinanced its asset-based lending facility, extending its maturity to 2031 and increasing its size to $2.5 billion. Locascio said US Foods has no long-term debt maturities until 2028. US Foods reaffirmed its fiscal 2026 guidance, calling for: Net sales growth of 4% to 6%; Total case-volume growth of 2.5% to 4.5%; Adjusted EBITDA growth of 9% to 13%; and Adjusted EPS growth of 18% to 24%. The outlook includes the expected effect of a 53rd week, which the company estimates will add about 1% to total case-volume and adjusted EBITDA growth. Locascio said the midpoint of the guidance assumes fuel costs remain near current levels, while acknowledging that restaurant traffic, inflation and fuel prices could affect results. US Foods (NYSE: USFD) is a leading foodservice distributor in the United States that supplies a wide range of products and services to professional food operators. The company provides fresh, frozen and dry food items as well as non-food restaurant supplies and kitchen equipment. Its customer base includes independent restaurants, multi-unit chains, healthcare and senior living facilities, hospitality businesses, government and educational institutions, and other foodservice operators. Beyond commodity and branded food products, US Foods offers value-added solutions designed to help customers run their businesses. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "US Foods Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

Post Holdings, Inc. POST reported third-quarter fiscal 2026 results, with both the top and bottom lines declining year over year. The top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate, while the bottom line beat the same. The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.78 per share, down 12.3% from $2.03 in the prior-year quarter. The metric beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.63 per share. Post Holdings, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Post Holdings, Inc. Quote Net sales declined 1.8% year over year to $1,948.0 million from $1,984.3 million and missed the consensus estimate of $2,019 million. Sales included a $141.8 million contribution from 8th Avenue. Gross profit decreased 5% year over year to $566.3 million from $596.2 million. Gross margin contracted to 29.1% from 30.0% in the year-ago quarter. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased 4.5% year over year to $326.1 million from $312.1 million. SG&A expenses, as a percentage of sales, rose to 16.7% from 15.7% in the prior-year period. Operating profit declined 19.3% year over year to $189.3 million from $234.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA declined 5% year over year to $377.3 million from $397.0 million, while adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 19.4% from 20.0%. Management said that quarterly adjusted EBITDA modestly exceeded expectations, primarily driven by stronger-than-anticipated Foodservice performance, partly offset by softer Refrigerated Retail results. The year-over-year decline in adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to the absence of elevated HPAI-related pricing in the cold-chain businesses. Post Consumer Brands generated net sales of $974.2 million, up 6.6% from $914.0 million in the prior-year quarter but below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $990 million. Current-quarter sales included $141.8 million from 8th Avenue. Excluding 8th Avenue, volumes decreased 7.1%, with pet food volumes down 7.8% and cereal and granola volumes falling 5.5%. Segment adjusted EBITDA increased 11.2% to $197.3 million from $177.5 million, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $195 million. Contributions from 8th Avenue and cost reductions more than offset lower volumes, while gross margin excluding 8th Avenue improved year over year. Foodservice net sales declined 6.5% year over year to $652.9 million from $698.5 million and missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $666 million. Volumes increased 4.3% year over year, supported by improved customer service levels and increased production of protein-based shakes. Segment adjusted EBITDA decreased 11.4% year over year to $140.8 million from $159.0 million but surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $128 million. The year-over-year decline reflected comparisons against elevated HPAI-related pricing in the prior-year quarter. Refrigerated Retail sales dropped 21.1% year over year to $184.5 million from $233.9 million and missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $226 million. The decline partly reflected the Crystal Farms divestiture. Excluding Crystal Farms, volumes fell 4.9%, affected by the shift of Easter demand into the second quarter this fiscal year and normalization in egg demand. Segment adjusted EBITDA fell 41.3% year over year to $26.6 million from $45.3 million and missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $35.5 million. The decline primarily reflected the lapping of HPAI-related pricing, the Easter timing shift and the sale of Crystal Farms. Weetabix net sales decreased 0.6% year over year to $137.1 million from $137.9 million in the year-ago quarter and were in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Volumes declined 3.8% year over year, primarily due to lower private-label business, while foreign exchange provided a roughly 40-basis-point tailwind. Segment adjusted EBITDA rose 13.7% year over year to $37.3 million from $32.8 million, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $35.8 million. Favorable pricing and cost savings from plant rationalization supported the increase, partly offset by lower volumes. For the first nine months of fiscal 2026, cash provided by operating activities was $691.3 million compared with $697.0 million in the prior-year period. Capital expenditures declined to $289.8 million from $360.5 million, while free cash flow increased to $401.5 million from $336.5 million. During the third quarter, Post repurchased 2.1 million shares for $198.9 million at an average price of $98.86 per share. As of Aug. 5, 2026, $490.7 million remained under its share repurchase authorization. The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $265.6 million and long-term debt of $7,631.3 million. Management narrowed fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance to $1,560-$1,570 million from $1,550-$1,580 million, while retaining the midpoint of $1,565 million. The company expects fiscal 2026 capital expenditures to be between $370 and $390 million. For fiscal 2027, Post Holdings expects adjusted EBITDA to be generally flat versus a comparable fiscal 2026 base of approximately $1,480 million. Management expects Foodservice growth from its normalized $500 million annual run rate, pricing actions and productivity initiatives to largely offset inflationary pressures and continued volume softness in certain categories. This Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company’s shares have lost 17% over the past three months against the industry’s growth of 5.9%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Some better-ranked stocks have been discussed below: Darling Ingredients Inc. DAR develops, produces, and sells sustainable natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients in North America, Europe, China, South America, and internationally. DAR currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DAR’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 12.8% and 926.5%, respectively, from the year-ago actuals. DAR delivered a trailing four-quarter negative earnings surprise of 38.9%, on average. The Chef’s Warehouse, Inc. CHEF distributes specialty food and center-of-the-plate products in the United States, the Middle East, and Canada. CHEF currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CHEF’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings indicates growth of 10.8 and 24.7%, respectively, from the year-ago reported figures. CHEF delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 30.4%, on average. US Foods Holding Corporation USFD, together with its subsidiaries, markets, sells and distributes fresh, frozen, and dry food and non-food products to foodservice customers in the United States. USFD currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for US Foods’ current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 5.1% and 16.3%, respectively, from the year-ago actuals. USFD delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 1.4%, on average. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Post Holdings, Inc. (POST) : Free Stock Analysis Report Darling Ingredients Inc. (DAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc. (CHEF) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Celsius Holdings, Inc. CELH delivered second-quarter 2026 results, wherein both top and bottom lines fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate. While net sales increased, earnings decreased from the year-ago period’s actuals. Celsius Holdings’ adjusted earnings of 36 cents per share missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 42 cents and were down 23% from the year-ago number. Celsius Holdings Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Celsius Holdings Inc. Quote Total revenues of $817.9 million missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $883 million. However, the top line surged 11% year over year. The quarter reflected strong Alani Nu demand and Rockstar Energy contributions, partly offset by a decline in CELSIUS brand revenues.Alani Nu generated $364.4 million in second-quarter sales, benefiting from strong consumer demand, higher orders from the company’s largest customer during the PepsiCo distribution transition and the limited-time Purple Cotton Candy launch. Rockstar Energy added $66.5 million in revenues. CELSIUS brand revenues decreased 11.7% year over year.Gross profit increased 3.4% year over year to $393.7 million, but gross margin contracted 340 basis points to 48.1%. The decline reflected higher promotional and incentive activity as a percentage of revenues and channel mix, partly offset by acquisition-integration improvements and the absence of prior-year Alani Nu inventory step-up expense.Adjusted SG&A was $233.8 million. As a percentage of net sales, adjusted SG&A expenses increased 50 basis points to 28.6% from 28.1% in the prior-year quarter.Adjusted EBITDA declined 12% to $184.2 million, with the adjusted EBITDA margin falling to 22.5% from 28.4%. North America revenues increased 11% year over year to $790.7 million in the second quarter. International revenues rose 10% to $27.2 million, supported by momentum in established Nordic markets and expansion markets such as Iberia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand and Benelux. Retail sales of the Celsius Holdings portfolio, including CELSIUS, Alani Nu and Rockstar Energy, in U.S. tracked channels increased 31% for the 13 weeks ended June 28, 2026. Celsius Holdings captured a 20.1% dollar share of the U.S. RTD energy category during the period.CELSIUS brand retail sales decreased 2% year over year and held a 9.5% dollar share of the category.Alani Nu retail sales jumped 55.7% and reached an 8.7% dollar share, supported by innovation, wider distribution and consumer adoption. Rockstar Energy retail sales fell 13% and accounted for a 1.9% dollar share. The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $631.2 million, and total stockholders' equity of $1,199.6 million.During the second quarter, the company repurchased approximately $100.4 million of shares. This Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company’s shares have fallen 30.6% in the past three months against the industry’s 6.6% growth. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Darling Ingredients Inc. DAR develops, produces and sells sustainable natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients in North America, Europe, China, South America and internationally. At present, Darling Ingredients sports a Zacks Rank of 1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. The consensus estimate for Darling Ingredients’ current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 12.8% and 926.5%, respectively, from the year-ago figures. DAR delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 38.9%, on average.The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc. CHEF distributes specialty food and center-of-the-plate products in the United States, the Middle East and Canada. At present, CHEF holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Chefs' Warehouse delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 30.4%, on average.The consensus estimate for Chefs' Warehouse’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 10.8% and 24.7%, respectively, from the year-ago reported figures. US Foods Holding Corp. USFD engages in the marketing, sale and distribution of fresh, frozen and dry food and non-food products to foodservice customers in the United States. USFD currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. US Foods Holding delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 1.4%, on average.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for US Foods Holding’s current fiscal-year sales and earnings implies growth of 5.1% and 16.3%, respectively, from the year-ago figures. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Celsius Holdings Inc. (CELH) : Free Stock Analysis Report Darling Ingredients Inc. (DAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Chefs' Warehouse, Inc. (CHEF) : Free Stock Analysis Report US Foods Holding Corp. (USFD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Independent restaurant case growth reached 5.1%, the strongest since Q4 2023, driven by net new account generation and improved penetration despite industry-wide foot traffic pressure. The Pronto small-truck delivery service continues to be a key differentiator, enabling the company to compete with local specialty distributors by offering later cutoff times and smaller order sizes. A new seller compensation plan went live in June, designed to align sales force incentives with long-term growth priorities like private label brands and independent restaurant acquisition. Strategic vendor management and inventory optimization initiatives contributed over $50 million in cost-of-goods savings during the first half of the year. Management is embedding AI across the enterprise, specifically using 'Visit Assistant' to provide sellers with actionable customer insights and 'Descartes' for supply chain routing efficiency. Operational quality improved 13% year-over-year, measured by the Operations Quality Composite, reflecting a disciplined focus on error-free order delivery. Management raised the 2027 sales estimate for the Pronto program to $1.7 billion, up from the previous $1.5 billion target, based on successful market expansion. The transition to 100% variable compensation for the local sales force is expected to take 2 to 3 years to fully implement across the organization. Full-year 2026 guidance assumes a 53rd week will contribute approximately 1% to total case growth and adjusted EBITDA growth. Indirect spend initiatives are projected to deliver over $75 million in benefits for 2026, with a target of over $100 million in savings by 2027. The company plans to expand autonomous inventory scanning robotics to 6 additional locations by year-end following encouraging results from initial pilots. Higher fuel costs and the transition to the new sales compensation plan contributed to a $0.21 increase in adjusted operating expenses per case. Management noted that while industry foot traffic remains 'pressured but stable', the company is successfully gaining market share to offset macro headwinds. The company repurchased $374 million in shares during the quarter, signaling confidence in its valuation and long-term earnings trajectory. Safety investments, including the deployment of center-ride pallet jacks (87% complete), have reduced injury and accident rates by over 50% over the last 3.5 years. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. The EBITDA beat was driven by a higher-than-expected fuel recovery rate of 70% versus the typical 30-40%, due to disciplined surcharge enforcement. Strategic vendor management negotiations were completed earlier than anticipated, providing an incremental boost to the quarter's results. Management reported that seller attrition remained flat despite the shift to variable compensation, which they attribute to robust training and communication. Headcount growth was intentionally elevated to 8% in Q2 to mitigate potential turnover risks during the transition, but is expected to return to mid-single digits. Management expects a slight moderation in the growth rate of gross profit per case in Q3 as they lap a prior-year event, but remains confident in long-term expansion. The goal remains to grow gross profit dollars 100 to 150 basis points faster than operating expenses. Management stated they have seen no remarkable change in consumer behavior related to GLP-1 drugs. They noted that nearly half of their portfolio is 'fresh' products, allowing them to adapt easily to shifting culinary desires or portion size changes.