The Hershey Company Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Conference

Yeah. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, I think you mentioned it yourself, but we started out the year with some clear objectives of deliver profit restoration, great top line, and invest for the future. So profit restoration, we are ready to deliver that, what we committed to for 2026, and the outlook for 2027 looks good. Top-line growth, the category is performing better than we estimated by about a point. A lot of innovation in the category. We are performing against our top-line expectations again, so it is important that we deliver what we said we were going to deliver from a top-line standpoint.

Then importantly, invest in future growth, and the investment in future growth was in our investment in R&D for the innovation pipeline, which we know is critical to the category, our investment in our brands to create pull around our big brands so that we have our core business running well, plus an innovation pipeline that delivers the growth. So when you think about what we talked about in March at the Investor Day, is each of those platforms are underpinned by capabilities. Those capabilities are speed to market with our innovation, customer excellence with our relationships with our customers, building partner of choice type relationships, and then building the capability across our confection business, our salty business, international, and functional business. We are on track to deliver against that, and we are in a really good place right now.

From what we talked about at the beginning of the year to where we are with four months to go, we are very confident in what we have achieved this year and what we have to achieve for the rest of the year.

Hey, let me let Dave answer that. But before we get to let Dave answer that, I wanted to just say a few things about Dave, if that's okay.

Absolutely. So we welcome a new If that's okay.

Yeah. You don't want me to talk about you?

This is great. This is my opportunity. Dave has been a high impact leader at Hershey for 15 years and has had every aspect of the business. I think this is a perfect example of succession planning and preparing a CFO for the future, and Dave has worked hand in hand with Steve over the years, developing, getting those experiences. I worked with Dave on day one from how we operate the business, our commercial planning, our strategic planning. I'm excited to have Dave lead the future and be a partner to me. I just wanted to say that. I think it's important that we have great succession planning around these key roles like CFO, and we have that, and we're excited to have Dave here today.

Yeah. Thanks for that, Kirk. No pressure. None taken. Hey, maybe before I answer your question, Andrew, just stepping back, I've had the opportunity to partner with Kirk and with Steve to both develop the strategies that went into the 2026 plan and outlook as well as the longer term outlook that we shared at Investor Day, including the capital allocation strategy and priorities. I just want to reiterate what Kirk said. I feel we feel good about where we are with our 2026 outlook and where we head from here. Specific to your question on Q2, the top line over delivery was primarily growth driven, demand driven on the business. Slightly better elasticities as well as strong performance in food service and specialty, which are non-measured channels.

As we look to the remainder of the year from a top-line perspective, we are continuing to be prudent with our macro assumptions as it relates to the consumer, GLP-1, SNAP, gas price pressures, financial pressure on consumers. On EPS, I would say that there was some timing with media investment. That was a big part of the earnings story in the second quarter. That is why you see the impact moderate as we look to the full year outlook. We do have a ramp up in media investment that is programmed around all of our activation, our innovation, and our seasons. We did plus some of that up where we saw opportunities coming out of the strong Q2 performance.