Hello, and good morning. I'm Steve Strycula. Thank you for coming. Everyone could please take their seats. Today, I have the pleasure to welcome Conagra Brands back to the CAGNY Conference. Please join me in thanking Conagra for sponsoring last night's wonderful reception. Like many in the food industry, Conagra has been impacted by the behavioral shifts as consumers look to stretch their household wallets further, which has elongated the expected volume recovery in the sector.
Against this backdrop, in recent quarters, Conagra has made more targeted investments, surgically putting money back into frozen meals and snacks, which has been nudging the consumer along. We've seen a gradual volume recovery. With us today from Conagra to talk more about their go-forward approach and strategies, President and CEO Sean Connolly, CFO David Marberger, SVP of Demand Science Bob Nolan, and the investor relations team. Sean, all yours.
All right. Thank you, Steve. Appreciate that intro. Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for attending our 2025 CAGNY presentation. Appreciate you being here. Hopefully, for those of you in the room, you had the opportunity to attend our kickoff dinner last night. It was a great chance to catch up on things, but even more importantly, to eat some fantastic culinary creations prepared by our awesome Conagra stable of chefs. This is our legal disclosure regarding forward-looking statements. If you have any questions on this, please go to our website.
All right, let's jump right in. This is our agenda for our presentation today. I'm going to kick us off with a quick reminder on who we are as a company, but also on where things stand for our company and for our industry. Then I'll turn it over to Bob Nolan, our Senior Vice President of Growth Science. Bob has a fantastic presentation in store for you to talk about the bright future in frozen food, but also the evolving landscape in snacks, and finally, our CFO, Dave Marberger, will take you through our financial outlook.
These are the five key messages we want you to take away from our presentation today. First, despite a challenging macro environment, Conagra Brands is well-positioned for future growth, and what's going to drive that future growth is our strong platform in frozen and in snacking. We've invested consistently to return our business to growth, and those investments have yielded consistent results. Cash flow is a major priority for our company, as is debt reduction, and you'll hear a little bit about that as well, and finally, we've updated our guidance to reflect temporary supply chain constraints, the associated higher costs, and FX.
Dave will capture that in just a couple of minutes. Let me give, for folks in the room who are newer to our story, a brief reminder on who we are as a company. We're about $12 billion at net sales, and we're concentrated highly in the United States, with over 90% of our revenue coming in the United States. We compete in very attractive categories with below-average private label development, as you can see in the center of this slide, and we have truly iconic brands.
81% of our revenue comes from brands that are ranked number one or number two in their categories, and you can see many of those iconic brands here, brands that are found in 94% of U.S. households, incredible household penetration across our portfolio. Here's how I want you to think about our portfolio. First, our portfolio is split into three consumer domains, each with a clear strategy. It's a highly focused and scaled portfolio, which gives us an advantaged position with our retail partners. At Conagra, brand building always begins with the food, all about crafting superior food that delivers a superior consumer experience.
And lastly, our portfolio, more today than ever, is increasingly focused on modern health attributes. Let me unpack this a bit more for you. These are the three consumer domains where we compete. The first two, frozen and snacks, represent almost 70% of our retail sales. These are the growth engines for our company. The third domain is staples. Think of staples as a cash generation machine. This business, we need to be reliable and stable on the top line. It puts off a lot of cash, and it funds the innovation work we do at frozen and snacking, not to mention giving us important scale with our retail partners, so it is a scaled portfolio that's highly focused.
I already mentioned over 90% of our sales come in the United States, but about 60% of our sales are concentrated within five retail customers, so we are a much more focused company today than we were, call it, a decade ago, and while we sell a lot of brands and we offer an array of consumer benefits across our portfolio, what's interesting is we really build brands around six technical platforms, so what we make is really concentrated technically into these six platforms: meals, sides, enhancers, protein, salty snacks, and sweet treats, and the last point I'll make here is about our power brands.
Our top 15 brands drive about 75% of our revenue. This is what we call the Conagra way to brand building. It starts with being absolutely relentless around product and packaging innovation every single year. Then we turn to our partnership with retailers to ensure that we get strong distribution in store, but also strong awareness and trial mechanisms so consumers can find our new innovation in the store and on the shelves.
And then finally, we invest in A&P in a highly focused way, mostly in the digital and social realm, where our goal is to drive virality with influencers and real consumers so they can tell the story of how our brands fit into their lives in their own words. Our portfolio is heavily focused on modern health attributes. Let's look at the left-hand side of this slide, where you can see about 80% of the frozen products we sell feature better-for-you attributes. It's all about being minimally processed, having high-quality, authentic ingredients, and then flash-freezing these great products at the peak of freshness and ripeness.
That's what we do in frozen. What I'm showing you here on the left is a Healthy Choice package, and you'll notice in the upper right-hand corner, we have our new On Track badge. Well, that's a badge that's a navigation aid or a wayfinder for consumers who are currently on GLP-1s. We want them to know that this is a portion-controlled product that's high in protein, it's high in fiber, it's GLP-1 friendly. You'll hear more on that in a minute from Bob.
On the right-hand side, you can see that the majority of our snacks portfolio, where we focus on meat sticks, popcorn, seeds, etc., is also all about better-for-you attributes. Here, I'm showing you the latest addition to our portfolio by way of acquisition. It's called the FATTY. It's an ultra-premium clean-label grass-fed beef meat stick. And you may not know this, but meat sticks is the fastest-growing category in food. You'll hear about why when Bob gives his presentation. All of this has resulted in a peer-leading nutrition index. Here on the left, you can see the nutrition index is measured by the Access to Nutrition Initiative, where we're ahead of peers.
And on the right, you can see that 93% of our product portfolio is free from high-fructose corn syrup, and 92% of our product portfolio is free from synthetic dyes. So that's a bit about who we are as a company, but let's talk a bit about where we are and where we are as an industry. The macro environment has obviously proven challenging to the food group, and inflation was the catalyst with over 35% cost of goods inflation within a three-year period. Not surprisingly, that led manufacturers to take price to offset those rising costs. And equally not surprisingly, that led the consumer to become stretched. And as they became stretched, they made some different choices.
They pursued value-seeking behaviors. Volume, predictably, was the victim. You heard Steve talk about elongated volume recovery in the industry. We saw that, and we made a decision. And our decision was to invest, to get back to volume growth as quickly as possible, and nudge consumers back to their previous behaviors. You know what? It worked. You can see on this chart, we've delivered five straight quarters of straight-line volume progress. And our last quarter, which we announced in December, we posted volume growth. We returned the business to growth.
What you can also see on this chart is that the spread versus our peers has widened over the same time. We've seen incredible responsiveness to the investments we've made in our portfolio, particularly our frozen business. And it shows up not only in volume, but it shows up in our market shares. Here you can see we have industry-leading market shares. This is last quarter, 67% of our portfolio grew or held share, and you can see it compares favorably to the peer set. What's even more impressive is the big circle on the right.
Those are our two strategic domains of frozen and snacks, and you can see that 87% of our portfolio held or grew share last quarter. They're an absolutely staggering number, excellent performance. I need to point out to some of you that debt reduction remains a top priority for us. So that means cash flow remains a top priority for us. And here you can see we have industry-leading free cash flow conversion, and we've been able to pay down $600 million of debt over the last four quarters. So that's where things stand. These are the reasons why we are highly confident we are a compelling investment opportunity despite near-term challenges.
Yes, we've had to navigate near-term realities like persistent inflation, FX, and supply constraints, but our underlying demand remains incredibly strong, and our long-term realities are firmly intact, including the bright future of frozen and snacks you're about to hear about, our winning innovation capabilities, our superior free cash flow conversion, our strong dividend, and our belief in smart reshaping of the portfolio for better growth.
All of that makes us quite confident that we are an excellent value and a compelling investment opportunity. With that, I want to turn it over to our Senior Vice President of Growth Science, Bob Nolan, to talk to you about the future of frozen and snacks. Bob, it's over to you.
It's a pleasure to be here today and join everyone. I want to thank the chefs for developing the food last night. My team works very closely with them to really make sure all the trends I'll talk about today really show up in the food, and it was delicious. Thanks to them for all that great effort. I'm going to talk to you a little bit today about our secret sauce on how we look and predict the future and understand consumers.
I'll talk about what we're seeing around the macro forces in food that everybody's wondering about today, and then what does that mean for the future of frozen and snacking, then lastly, I'll show you how Conagra has brought this all to life through our exciting innovation. The science of growth. About eight years ago, we sat down and started talking about the industry and how market research was done. And it hadn't really changed in over 40 years. It relied heavily on things like focus groups and surveys to ask consumers what they want. But the reality eight years ago was most of the items that companies launch, eight out of 10, fail within two years.
So we started to sit back and say, there's got to be a better way to understand and predict consumer behavior. And in a world where every piece of data about what we do, what we watch, what we see is collected, could we synthesize this data together and then really make predictions that were reliable? So we started on our journey to acquiring all this different data. And we quickly found it out when you had all this data, you need specialized skills to manage it.
So we hired a team of data scientists to help us process and understand this and then really synthesize it into understanding what's going on in the world of food today, what do we think the predictions for tomorrow will be, and then as a company, what should our actions be to really satisfy this consumer demand in the marketplace. But in the last two or three years, the amount of data and information has absolutely exploded. More and more purchase data from customers, from different new and emerging channels, from e-commerce is actually overwhelming.
And then when you combine that with all the unstructured data of the conversations people are having on social media, all the images of food they're posting, people love posting pictures about their food and their dinners. And then all the videos that are out there on TikTok where people are actually making recipes and showing people how to consume the food. All this information has become very difficult for humans to process and understand and make these predictions. So we've enlisted AI for the last two years to really help us synthesize this down.
AI doesn't tell us what the decision should be, but it really narrows down our choices and sees the patterns that are invisible to others. And we've used that AI to really help us enhance and enrich our data. We've built a product innovation engine that helps us synthesize this information into new emerging trends, new spaces across the food universe in both retail, food service, and e-commerce, and really helps us design the products all the way through to our graphics. We're using it to replicate all of our digital assets.
So instead of creating something a thousand times and paying agency fees, how do we do it once and have the AI help us get it across all of our channels and customers? And lastly, to optimize our trade in real time. So what are we seeing from all this information? What's going to happen in the future, you might ask? Well, we think there's three large forces that are shaping consumer behavior over the next three to five years. I'll start with the macro shifts in demographics. So first, with an aging population.
Within the next five years, one in five consumers will be of retirement age, and they fall into two distinctive buckets with really different behaviors in their lives and around how they eat and the food they buy. First of all, there's these active adults. They want convenience, t hey want energy to get out there and live an active lifestyle. That's my dream, but unfortunately, there's a second group of folks. They're saying, "Hey, the doctor's giving me some advice saying that, hey, I could do better. Maybe I need to lower my blood sugar. Maybe I've got some issues around weight on there."
So they need support from their food and their diets to help them live a better life. Secondly, the increased diversity of our culture. This has been happening not just recently, but over the last 20 years. There's been a real change in younger generations and what the makeup looks like. A lot of growth's being driven by multi-racial households, Asians and Hispanics. And they have different foods. They have different backgrounds.
They grew up with different experiences in their lives. And it doesn't just affect their behaviors. It's actually impacting their friends, their neighbors, right? They're getting exposed to things that I never imagined growing up as a kid. And then the rise of Gen Z and Millennials. This group already, when you add them together, makes up the largest part of our population. But in the next five years, they'll make up the largest part of our spending around food and beverage. And they eat, because of the previous trends I talked about, really differently.
They eat spice at three times the level of Gen X do across their foods. They eat lots of different forms and ethnic cuisines on there. We know from looking back in the past that consumers, say the Boomers back in the '80s, the behaviors they had then that maybe were unique to them, like eating lots of pizza at home or tacos or even nutritional bars, we know as these groups age and move up, not only does it stay with them going forward, every generation that follows has these same behaviors.
All of this is changing what the households look like. You're seeing lots more non-married, non-traditional families. Single-person households have become the largest demographic group across all the household types. Multi-generational, and that's people living together, whether it's the grandparents all the way down to the grandkids, and they're eating at different times. They have different food likes. They're all in the same household. All of these changes are really shaping how people eat, what they eat, when they eat, and who's there with them at the table. Convenience is always being redefined. It's always been an ante in food.
A lot of packaged food is really about how do we give people delicious, nutritious food easy and quick, but people have more information at their fingertips than they've ever had before. This digital connectivity aids them as they're making all their food decisions, whether they're in the store and they're looking up ratings and reviews on what the hot foods are and what people are recommending, or they're looking for inspiration of what to make at dinner. When my wife and I first got married, one of our gifts was a cookbook, right?
And we had that kind of on the table, and we were out of ideas sometimes. Hey, let's pick out that cookbook and look up for something interesting to make tonight. Well, that's not how it's done today. My kids show me often that their inspiration comes from TikTok, where they not only get the inspiration for the delicious, beautiful food that people are eating, but step-by-step preparation instructions, how to make and acquire that food. And they want it on demand.
Well, a few years ago, two to three-day delivery might have been amazing. I can order something in two or three days that shows up at my house. We don't get things in two or three hours now. We're pretty disappointed as consumers. And health has constantly been evolving. It's one of the largest growing sectors in the industry, growing much faster than total food and actually all consumables. But it's being really powered by technology. I think about every day I have to log my calories to see what I'm bringing in and what I'm eating throughout the day and did I have a good day or a bad day.
But I'm also logging all my burn. So what am I doing if I'm walking tonight, if I'm going to the gym? Consumers are taking these two sets of data and using technology and AI to combine and make personal recommendations on what they should eat, what the recipe should be, the nutrients for them, and they're even tying it back to the health from their doctors. This is all being driven by young folks who view health not just as a physical thing, but also a mental thing, especially coming out of the pandemic.
Everyone in this room has a different view of what their health is. We do some research every few years where we try to understand the latest trending diets to make sure we have the right foods and the right solutions. Every year, the number one response that comes back from consumers is my diet, my diet, the special diet I follow. My diet is a combination of diets I've tried in the past, things that have worked for me, haven't worked for me, what I've seen on social media, what my neighbor has told me. And I build my philosophy around food of all this information. So our job at Conagra is how do we understand all these different behaviors?
How do we make sure we're creating solutions that are relevant for folks that meet their needs? The future doesn't magically appear to us. The future comes in small pockets, different groups and different geographies and different places around the world. We make it our job to really try to understand and synthesize this and see over the horizon of what's gonna happen next. So I'm going to shift gears now to what the bright future of frozen is.
And hopefully, everyone that got one of their snack bags, we put in our second annual publication in every snack bag that has a lot of depth that I'm going to show you just the tip of the iceberg on today about what people are eating, what are the top behaviors, and where do we think the growth's going to come from in the future. So first of all, the frozen category has been growing for over 40 years straight. Makes a lot of sense. As society has changed, as people have dual-working households, there's more time pressures. People seek solutions that are easy and convenient in their families' lives.
But coming out of the pandemic, this has accelerated even more. As convenience has been at a premium, a lot of this growth has been driven by frozen meals. And contrary to popular belief, the growth in frozen is driven by younger generations and older folks. And this makes a lot of sense when you take a step back from it. As we start to have our first jobs coming out of college, we start to have kids, our time pressures in our lives grow. And new generations have less skill around cooking and developing food on their own. And they really turn to solutions that are fast, convenient, everyone in the household will eat, and don't take a lot of time.
Frozen food is perfectly positioned in a world where the headlines are talking about what's in my food, what are the ingredients, what should I be worried about. Frozen food is nature's way of preserving and locking in nutrients, preserving taste and flavor at its peak, keeping the textures delicious and crisp. And at the same time, it's convenient and on-demand so you can make it anytime you have a desire. And there's limited waste that comes from this process versus fresh fruits. All of these forces I've talked about are poised to continue to grow into the future. There's only going to be more time pressure that comes ahead of us.
Consumers are going to keep trying new cuisines as they get exposed to them from their travels or for their friends. There's going to be lots of pressure on how do I eliminate waste and save money. And health concerns are going to continue to evolve in the future. Let's hear directly from consumers of what they think about frozen food in the first video.
The healthiest thing for me to do is not eat out as much as possible. If I'm in a rush, I usually have some frozen things.
I do prefer to buy frozen over fresh because the fresh goes bad and then the frozen, I can just have it anytime I want it.
Buying frozen vegetables is pretty convenient because a lot of times I don't make it through the whole bunch when I buy them not frozen or just refrigerated. It helps me be able to utilize what I've paid for. Still getting a lot of those nutrients because they have them still in that package.
As a busy mom of three who's recently lost over 100 pounds on a GLP-1, I need easy, delicious meals to help keep me on track with my high-protein, high-fiber, and low-calorie diet.
I love spicy and tangy.
The prepackaged gyoza, I love those things.
I want something that I can just throw in the microwave or the oven or just grab without having to put too much effort or thought into it.
So you've heard from consumers talking a little bit about the role frozen plays in their lives and how important it is for them, delivering nutrition and convenience on the go. So I want to pick four of the big trends we think are going to shape the future going forward. So the first one, and no surprise, is global cuisine. Global cuisine has been growing because of the changes I talked about around society. It's growing at about a 9% rate, which is much faster than regular food.
Younger generations are more likely to go out and eat dinner not at the traditional places that maybe some of us grew up eating, but at a Thai restaurant, an Indian restaurant, or even Cajun food. They're looking for levels of spice that are radically different than previous generations. What may have been hot to some of us doesn't even touch the surface of what these folks are looking for, and they're more likely to eat different forms like bao buns or samosas or even empanadas.
Secondly, with the pandemic changing where we've eaten, with more meals being sourced from home, that being very steady after that first year. People have a different expectation of the quality of the food they're eating at home because they've been trying essentially going out to eat or going to restaurants, and they expect the food at home to deliver on high quality and all the cuisines they're used to getting, and they're getting lots of inspiration from this, from online and different trends, and they're relying on celebrities and famous personalities to help guide them in their food journey.
A nd bites and minis have been absolutely booming for the last five years, a growth rate of about 21%. This is really being driven by young families, and bites and minis is kind of the perfect intersection of flexibility around occasion. If I come home from school and I want a quick snack that the kids can make on their own in the microwave, you can have a bite or a mini that only takes two or three minutes to prepare. A lot of young folks will actually combine the bites and minis and make a broader set of meals around those, almost like an appetizer plate for them to share.
And a lot of protein is part of this, but a lot of it's being driven by these new emerging global forms. And modern health. Modern health has been evolving rapidly and has really been in the headlines in the last three years. You think about GLP-1 and the rise of that, and while there's only about 6% of consumers on it today, there's lots of interest. People are searching to find out more. They want to understand how it might play a role in their lives. But they're not the only consumers looking for health. There's other groups that have come off GLP-1 but want to maintain the lifestyle they've created.
There's groups that say that, "Hey, that's maybe not for me, but I still have the same goals." Lots of consumers are looking for more protein in their meals, better fiber, lots of value-added attributes. And we've seen by analyzing the folks that are on GLP-1, what is the food they're buying? How is their behavior changing? And they're actually eating more single-serve meals, more bites and appetizers, and more vegetables because it fits kind of this portion control with great nutrition. And we think the GLP-1 is only going to continue to evolve. You think about people injecting themselves, that's a huge barrier.
Pill formats are about to hit the marketplace across all the major pharma companies. Insurance companies are increasing their coverage because they see benefits beyond just weight loss from these drugs, and there's over 200 other brands in clinical trials today that haven't even hit the marketplace yet. We see even more tailwinds in the future of consumers in this key attribute GLP-1 focus, so you've heard the trends that are driving growth, so I'm here to tell you that Conagra is perfectly positioned to tap into this growth.
We're the largest frozen food manufacturer in North America. We have incredible, iconic brands across all the key advantage spaces, things like Marie Callender's or Birds Eye or even Gardein for plant-based food. We have a track record of delivering insights, consumer-driven innovation that's been successful in the marketplace with, over the last year, $1 billion in our sales coming from recent launches. We're lifting our categories. Our efforts in these categories are actually making our categories grow faster than the competition in other parts of the space. And 90% of our shares in these categories are growing.
You've heard about frozen food and why we think it's so great. Let's shift gears to kind of build on what Sean talked about, the transformation that's going on in the future of snacking. Consumers love snacks. I don't have to convince anybody in the audience that snacks have been on fire for the last 30 years. It's the number one occasion now, passing all the other meals throughout the day. The occasions have continued to grow post-pandemic. So people continue to lean into the space.
But there's some real fundamental shifts that have happened in the last three years about people, how they view their snacks. So first of all, occasions around snacking between meals have been growing. You know that. Another surprising element is actually snacks being consumed at meals. So as a side or a part of a meal or actually as the whole meal with three or four snacks being combined. This is across the entire day parts. So everything from morning to evening, people are eating way more snacks, and young teens and adults are driving this behavior.
So we did an analysis where we took all the raw data across every single snacking category in the store and tried to sort them out, saying, "Hey, what do we think is driving some of the growth in snacking?" And the categories sorted into two big groups, ones that we call more traditional categories that have been lower growth and really changed. These may have been categories that were big in the past or growing fast, and they've really slowed down. There's a whole another bucket of categories like meat snacks, pretzels, trail mixes, bars that are growing much faster than the rest, about 16 points of difference between the two buckets.
So we dug in to understand what are the attributes of these high-growth categories. So first of all, it's a lot about modern health, right? I want a great snack that tastes amazing, but I want to feel better about eating it. I want to make sure it's delicious for my family, but they feel good about their kids eating on there. They want a lot of functional fuel to get through the day. Protein plays a big element in a lot of the growing categories, and there are emerging channels. People want snacks at arm's length.
They want to be able to access them and get them quickly. You're seeing lots of new modern brands like The FATTY emerge in this space, so I've talked to you a little bit about how snacks are evolving. Let's go to the video and hear from consumers some more.
Yeah, when it comes to snacking, their priority is convenience and efficiency.
A great snack to me is something that has a good flavor that I want to come back to, something that is convenient to carry, and something that makes me feel a little healthy, even if it's not the most.
Things that are just easy on the go, I can carry in my bag with me.
It's really good to have portable snacks that are portable because you never know if you kind of miss a meal.
I usually have snacks around the same time every single day. It depends on sometimes I'll change the order of the things I eat, but it's usually the same thing every day just because I don't have to think about it.
When I'm looking at snacks, I like them to have a good balance of nutrition.
I like to have a variety so I can pick out a bunch of different things.
Just small, substantial things that'll keep me going, give me energy throughout the day.
Obviously, snacks play a large role in people's lives. Think about my snack drawer at work. Who doesn't have one of these, right, where I keep a little bit of fuel to get me through the day? I'll give you a pro tip on this. Don't tell the entire team where your snack drawer is because I come back, I'm sure I'll come back from CAGNY and guess what? Snack drawer is wiped out again.
Three large trends are driving the forces behind snacks. So once again, this is the better-for-you one, right? Better-for-you snacking is growing at a rate of about 22%, driven by young folks seeking more protein, more fuel. And they're also looking for all these modern attributes like the high protein, no sugar added, and grass-fed. Convenience has always been relevant in snacks, right? I have to make it easy to eat, no prep involved, and fast to consume.
Having the right solutions for all the different occasions that are growing, whether that's me by myself snacking or that's sharing with my friends, that means large multi-packs for soccer practice or in my pantry for the kids after school. It might mean large multi-serve snacks for me to share with my buddies while we're watching and binging on a show. And snacks is about variety. Consumers don't want the same snack every day. On average, the household will have about 11 items of snacks in their pantry at any one time. And they want these snacks to be interesting. They want it to be new forms that are exciting they haven't seen before, new international flavors.
They want it to be, again, hot and spicy. They're much more likely to try things that have celebrities or endorsers, kind of giving them the permission to try something new. We're seeing all kinds of flavors really take off, whether it's churro or bold and hot, even sour and pickled are driving a lot of the growth in snacking. So once again, we think Conagra is perfectly positioned to tap into these trends for our portfolio. We have about over $3 billion in snacking sales, and we have the number one or two brand in 80% of our categories we participate in.
They're powerhouse brands in all the key spaces that are advantaged, like meat snacks, like popcorn, like seeds, famous brands like Slim Jim, Orville Redenbacher, or DAVID. Our innovation track record has been just as great in snacks as it is in frozen, about $333 million in growth from last year on new items. And we're driving growth. Our categories are advantage versus the broader food universe, and we're growing share in those same categories. So you've heard me talk about what we think the future looks like across these.
Buckle up. I'm about to show you how Conagra is taking advantage and really building solutions for consumers in that future. So first of all, we continue to drive our bowl platform. Consumers don't eat in traditional TV tray meals like they did back in the 1950s. They want modern bowls with modern attributes and flavors. We continue to feed this trend with new flavors and new attributes that I've talked about. Sean showed this image earlier of Healthy Choice.
This item is a whole shelf in my freezer at home. It's 190 calories and 28 g of protein. It's absolutely delicious. The On Track badge is helping connect consumers to our products. They're already buying more if they're coming off GLP-1 or they're concerned about their health. But we want to make it easy for them to find these items and understand the attributes that they're interested in. Marie Callender's is tapping into modern comfort food with all new flavors that are absolutely delicious.
But guess what? Families like to share delicious food also. And no one wants a fight with their kids at the table about, "Hey, I won't want to eat this. This isn't for me." They want everybody to be happy and satisfied at dinner. These items satisfy that need. Banquet Mega is famous for being bold. We've built over a $200 million platform around this in the last few years, and guess what? We're going to be partnering with Mike's Hot Honey to deliver our Fried Chicken Mac and Cheese bowl. Chef Boyardee is moving out of the can and into the skillet with delicious Italian family meals that get prepared in about 15 minutes for the whole family.
The chef said this was the holy grail of items. Can you actually do a plant-based meat fried chicken and have a vegan mac and cheese together? It actually tastes delicious, and I can tell you from my personal experience that this item is absolutely addicting, and happy for my daughter and daughter-in-law who are both vegans. And if you're looking to amp the protein up inside your meals with a plant-based solution, we've got Ultimate Spicy Crumbles or steak tips from Gardein.
Evol is tapping into the global trend in foods by launching a Butter Chicken. Vegans shouldn't have to compromise on the taste and the flavor of the foods they eat, and our Purple Carrot lineup is absolutely delicious first, and guess what? It happens to be vegan also. Udi's is operating at the intersection of both global cuisines with this delicious Mexican dish and gluten-free modern health. Frontera, the leader in premium frozen food and Mexican, is launching now our Beef Enchiladas available in both single serve for those smaller households or in a large family serve size for the whole family to enjoy.
P.F. Chang's is tapping into two different trends here, right? It's another great global cuisine with our famous partnership with the delicious restaurants. These are protein-laden bites and minis, right? Perfect as a snack by themselves or with other Asian-based sides like our fried rice. And then Birds Eye is tapping into global cuisines with a couple of new delicious blends around Mediterranean and Tuscan. These items are vibrant in color and flavor. And what about modern health? So vegetables are already healthy, but guess what? Consumers are looking for more than just the basics on this. They're looking for things that have them get more longevity and better quality of life.
So we're launching our Birds Eye Antioxidant Blends. You save lots of time. Cutting and chopping these would be a lot of work that I don't have the skill to do by myself. And guess what? There's actually absolutely no waste from these items. Holy cow. Who in this room doesn't like cheese? Doesn't like butter? I see the front row with their eyes really opened up right there. These items add more of everybody's favorites to guess what? Vegetables. I want to eat more vegetables, but wouldn't it be amazing if they were absolutely delicious and everyone in the family was begging for more?
Vlasic, our famous pickle brand, is moving into the attractive space of frozen appetizers and we're launching our Fried Pickles, an incredible snack with a pickle halo around it. Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP. See what I did there? I just added an S and that all of a sudden gets a brand that's been very bright, known for modern health and great attributes and delicious taste into the frozen novelty space with a 100-calorie bar item that tastes unbelievable. Our relationship with Dolly Parton has been a smash hit and we're going to continue to grow that and drive that forward with our single serve meals platform and as you would expect, it's Southern-inspired foods.
My favorite on here is the Country Fried Steak. I can't get enough white gravy. I live in Chicago now, and guess what? They don't serve a lot of white gravy. When I lived down South, it was on everything. And Dolly's helping us deliver items that are incredibly delicious and really Southern-inspired. And we've launched some Southern-inspired desserts also. Our cheesecake launch this past year is the number one cheesecake in the frozen category for snacks. And we're launching our Biscuit Batter Peach Cobbler. I'm not a peach fan, to be honest with you guys. Peaches are a little slimy for me.
On there. I've eaten this item four or five times with our chefs. It's incredible. It is so delicious, the combination of the flavors, the crispy texture. I can't wait to bring this home and share this with my whole family. Vlasic Pickle Balls have been a smash hit on the court this year at our launch. Really capitalizing on this cultural moment of pickleball and with the most famous brand in the world around pickles. Guess what? We're taking it up a notch with another ace on the court with our Spicy Pickle Balls. Slim Jim, America's favorite meat stick brand and the fastest growing snack category, is moving into Bites with a resealable bag that gives me portability and on the go.
If I'm taking a trip with the kids this summer, perfect item, or I'm hiding it in that secret drawer. It's not the one on the left side of my desk, by the way. It's the other one. It's perfect for anyone to snack on. I'm proud to announce for the first time our partnership with an iconic, delicious brand that's known for its famous flavors, Buffalo Wild Wings. We're partnering together with them to launch a whole lineup of chicken sticks that taste incredible with all the bold flavor you'd expect from Buffalo Wild Wings. We talked about FATTY earlier. FATTY has a whole lineup of different flavored snacks in all different sizes, whether that's single serves or multi packs, perfect for whatever occasion you need protein.
Andy Capp's, everybody's old favorite brand. We're moving from fries into tots with Fire Tots and Cheesy Tots. Incredible flavor at a great value. And, DAVID has tapped into some of the trends I talked about with our churro-flavored seeds. Seeds is an incredibly fast, advantaged space for consumers that are looking for protein. Guess what? If you want to fire it up a notch, BIGS has a brand new flavor that's hitting the marketplace. Duncan Hines, America's favorite baking brand, is launching Real Fruit Crumbles for all-day occasions, and Angie's is launching a great new globally inspired, really spicy mango habanero popcorn, and of all the launches we've had over the last few years.
Wendy's Chili has been an absolute home run in the center store, but my wife's from Texas, and beans in chili are sacrilege, and I'm happy to tell her now that we're launching a no-beans chili that she can enjoy just as much as me with the original item. That was fast, and that was a lot. To sum this all up, we see lots of growth with our special way of understanding demand with consumers, doing it in modern data-driven, evidence-based tools.
We're tapping into the future of frozen and snacking, which we think is incredibly bright across the industry. And hopefully, you've seen all of this feeds into the amazing innovation we're launching to satisfy consumer needs in an ever-changing marketplace. With that, I'm going to hand it off to our CFO, Dave Marberger.
Thank you, Bob. Good morning, everyone. It's great to be with you. So let me start with a brief overview of our Q2 and first half financial performance. A year ago, we shared our plans to increase our investment to drive top-line growth. Since then, we've seen steady improvement. And in our Q2, we actually delivered positive organic net sales growth. Our profit in Q2 was down slightly due to higher inflation and FX, but the rate of decline in Q2 was improved versus our decline in Q1. Sean showed this chart.
In our second quarter, our domestic retail volume consumption was positive and ahead of our nearest peers. Our investment playbook is working. The key takeaway here is, despite other cost wins that we have right now, we are going to continue to invest all the planned spending we have for the rest of the year to continue to drive consumption. We remain pleased with our productivity progress. At our last investor day, we committed to $1 billion in cost savings from productivity over a three-year period of time.
We are on track to hit that target by the end of fiscal 2025. Now, since COVID, we have steadily increased our cost savings as a percentage of cost of goods sold from productivity, and we are moving towards our ambition. Our ambition is to deliver 4% of cost of goods savings from productivity on an annual basis. We will continue to invest in technology and infrastructure in our supply chain to support this effort, and free cash flow and paying down debt is still a top priority.
As Sean shared, for the 12 months ended our second quarter, our free cash flow conversion was 126%. That's industry-leading, and that demonstrates the cash efficiency of Conagra. We also paid down over $600 million of debt in that same period of time. We continue to be focused on our long-term target of three times leverage ratio, so while we clearly have underlying strength in the business, fiscal 2025 has had its challenges. We've experienced higher-than-expected cost of goods sold inflation and unfavorable FX. Both of those things have negatively impacted our profit.
Yesterday, we announced supply challenges in our frozen meals with chicken and our frozen vegetable platform. As a result of these challenges, we were unable to service all of our demand in the third quarter, which will negatively impact both our sales and profit for fiscal 2025. As of now, we are rebuilding our inventories across these platforms and will continue to do so between now and the end of our fiscal year in May. So as a result, we updated our fiscal 2025 guidance. We now expect organic net sales to approximate -2%. We expect adjusted operating margin to approximate 14.4% and adjusted EPS to approximate $2.35.
And we expect our free cash flow to come in on our original plan, but we expect our net leverage ratio to approximate 3.55 times due to the lower profit. We expect that most of the impact of the sales and profit reduction to impact our third quarter, given the timing of the supply challenges and the additional costs that we've been incurring. And that cost includes the cost premium we're incurring to procure chicken from a third party while we work through getting our plant back up to speed. We also expect both the sales and profit impacts of this to be transitory.
As I mentioned, we are working to rebuild our inventories, and our scheduled modernization of our chicken plant is on schedule to be completed by the end of the f irst quarter of fiscal 2026, which is August. So given all these dynamics, let me give you why I believe, why I'm optimistic about Conagra moving forward. We've talked about it today. We're investing in our brands, and we're driving consumption, and we're driving strong market shares.
And we now have a full year of investment in our base. So as we move into fiscal 2026, we have the opportunity to optimize that investment even further, continuing to look for better ROI investments and shift funds off of that higher investment base. I talked about our productivity, and we continue to improve productivity, and we are moving towards our ambition, which is to save 4% of cost of goods sold in productivity. Let me talk about inflation for a minute. Our cumulative cost of goods sold inflation from the beginning of fiscal 2022 through the end of fiscal 2025 is over 35%. That's $3 billion of real costs that we've had to manage.
Now, historical trends will tell you that that should moderate, especially in areas like animal proteins that tend to be cyclical in nature. And we're not talking about deflation here. We're talking about 4%, which is our inflation this year, getting to a level of 2.5%-3%. Because if we can get our—we have the base of investment. If we can get our productivity towards 4% and cost of goods inflation is more towards 3%, we are in a much better position to improve our margins going forward. The last point is a really important point. The cash flow of this business enables us to invest. We've been investing in our supply chain, both in foundational investment as well as productivity investment.
And we will continue to do that in order to optimize and improve our supply chain to reduce the chances that we will have disruptions moving forward. Our approach to capital allocation remains the same. We invest in the business. We constantly look for portfolio-shaping opportunities that are smart and that can drive shareholder value. We provide attractive returns to shareholders in the form of opportunistic share repurchase and a strong dividend, where we target a 50-55% payout ratio, and as we've talked about, we prioritize debt reduction to strengthen our balance sheet.
This is our long-term algorithm. This has remained unchanged. We are working relentlessly to get this business back on track with this algorithm. We will update you in July with our fourth quarter earnings. To finish, we feel good about our business and our categories, and we believe the future of frozen and snacks is bright. We're investing in the business. That investment is working. Our cash flow is very strong, and we give returns to shareholders with a very strong dividend, so that completes my remarks for today. We're going to go over to Q&A now. Thank you very much.
Let's thank Conagra, and we'll escort them to the breakout session.