CONAGRA BRANDS INC. (CAG) Business

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

General Development of Business

Conagra Brands, Inc. (the “Company”, “Conagra Brands”, “we”, “us”, or “our”), headquartered in Chicago, is one of North America’s leading branded food companies. We combine a 100-year history of making quality food with agility and a relentless focus on collaboration and innovation. The company’s portfolio is continuously evolving to satisfy consumers’ ever-changing food preferences. Conagra’s brands include Birds Eye®, Duncan Hines®, Healthy Choice®, Marie Callender’s®, Reddi-wip®, Slim Jim®, Angie’s® BOOMCHICKAPOP®, and many more.

We began as a Midwestern flour-milling company and entered other commodity-based businesses throughout our history. We were initially incorporated as a Nebraska corporation in 1919 and reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in 1976. Over time, we transformed into the branded, pure-play consumer packaged goods food company we are today. Growing our food businesses has also been fueled by innovation, organic growth of our brands, and expansion into adjacent categories, including through acquisitions. We are focused on delivering sustainable, profitable growth with strong and improving returns on our invested capital.

Narrative Description of Business

We compete throughout the food industry and focus on adding value for our customers who operate in the retail food and foodservice channels.

Our operations, including our reporting segments, are described below. Our locations, including manufacturing facilities, within each reporting segment, are described in Item 2, Properties.

Reporting Segments

Our reporting segments are as follows:

Grocery & Snacks

The Grocery & Snacks reporting segment principally includes branded, shelf-stable food products sold in various retail channels in the United States.

Refrigerated & Frozen

The Refrigerated & Frozen reporting segment principally includes branded, temperature-controlled food products sold in various retail channels in the United States.

International

The International reporting segment principally includes branded food products, in various temperature states, sold in various retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States.

Foodservice

The Foodservice reporting segment includes branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and a variety of custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for sale to restaurants and other foodservice establishments primarily in the United States.

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Unconsolidated Equity Investments

We have two unconsolidated equity investments. Our most significant equity method investment is our joint venture with respect to Ardent Mills, a milling business.

General

The following discussion pertains to all of our reporting segments.

Conagra Brands is a branded consumer packaged goods food company that operates in many sectors of the food industry, with a significant focus on the sale of branded, value-added consumer food products, as well as foodservice items and ingredients.

Raw Materials and Packaging

We use many different raw materials, most of which are commodities, to make and package our products. The prices paid for raw materials used in making our food generally reflect factors such as global economic conditions, trade barriers or restrictions, supply and demand, weather, commodity market fluctuations, currency fluctuations, tariffs, and the effects of governmental agricultural programs, and may be impacted by supply chain disruptions including disruptions caused by pandemics, epidemics, and disease, in humans and animals, such as the avian flu. Although the prices of raw materials can be expected to fluctuate as a result of these factors, we believe such raw materials to be in adequate supply and generally available from numerous sources. From time to time, we have faced increased costs for many of our significant raw materials, packaging, and energy inputs. We seek to mitigate higher input costs through productivity and pricing initiatives and the use of derivative instruments to economically hedge a portion of forecasted future consumption.

Competition

We experience intense competition for sales of our food items in our major markets. Our food items compete with widely advertised, well-known, branded food, as well as private branded and customized food items. Some of our competitors are larger and have greater resources than we have. We compete primarily on the basis of quality, product innovation, value, customer service, brand recognition, and brand loyalty.

Seasonality

Demand for certain of our food items may be influenced by holidays, changes in seasons, or other annual events. For example, sales of frozen foods tend to be marginally higher during the winter months, pie sales are highest in November and December due to holidays, and production of certain of our products occurs seasonally, during or immediately following the purchase of agricultural crops.

Trademarks and Intellectual Property

Our intellectual property rights, including our trademarks, licensing agreements, trade secrets, patents, and copyrights are of material importance to our business, and we attempt to protect such rights by pursuing remedies available to us under trademark, copyright, trade secret, and patent laws, as well as entering into licensing, third-party nondisclosure and assignment agreements, and policing of third-party misuses of our intellectual property. Some of our products are sold under licensing arrangements with others, including our licensing arrangement with Dolly Parton and our licenses of the P.F. Chang’s®, Bertolli®, Wendy’s®, and Libby’s® trademarks. We also own certain intellectual property rights that are licensed to third parties, such as the Alexia® and Marie Callender’s® trademarks. While many of these licensing arrangements are perpetual in nature, others must be periodically renegotiated or renewed pursuant to their terms. We also actively develop and maintain a portfolio of patents, although no single patent is considered material to the business as a whole. We have proprietary trade secrets, technology, know-how, processes, and other intellectual property rights that are not registered.

Government Regulation

The manufacture and sale of consumer food is highly regulated. Our operations, our products, and our practices are subject to various federal, state, local, and international laws and regulations and related regulatory oversight by various government agencies, including the United States Department of Agriculture, the Federal Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the

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Department of Labor, and various other federal, state, local, and international authorities (including government authorities in Canada and Mexico). In particular, the processing, packaging, transportation, storage, distribution, advertising, labeling, quality, and safety of food products, the health and safety of our employees, and the protection of the environment are each subject to governmental regulation. Additionally, we are subject to data privacy and security regulations, anticorruption, anti-bribery, trade sanction and export, tax, and securities laws and regulations, accounting and reporting standards, and other financial laws and regulations. We rely on our procedures, policies, and compliance programs, as well as legal advice from in-house and outside counsel, to align our operations, products, and practices with applicable laws and regulations.  We believe that we are in compliance with such laws and regulations in all material respects and do not expect that continued compliance with such regulations will have a material effect upon capital expenditures, earnings, or our competitive position.

Customers

Our products are sold, directly and through distributors, to chain, wholesale, value, cooperative, club, and independent grocery, pharmacy and drug, convenience and other store operators; and foodservice customers, including restaurants and bars, travel and leisure customers, schools, health care facilities, and government customers. Our products are also sold online through various e-commerce platforms and retailers. Our largest customer, Walmart, Inc. and its affiliates, accounted for approximately 29% of consolidated net sales for fiscal 2025 and 28% for fiscal 2024 and 2023.

Human Capital Resources

At Conagra, through our caring and performance-driven culture, we seek to motivate employees to contribute their best and to recognize and reward them based on their achievements and contributions toward our business success.  Leveraging diversity of thought, skills, and lived experiences helps us to maintain a competitive advantage and strengthens our portfolio and capabilities, fueling Conagra’s success today and in the future.  By taking this approach, we achieve a high sense of belonging, where all of our employees feel valued, respected, and supported.

We leverage our six timeless values, which form the framework of our Company culture, to guide our approach to human capital management:

As of May 25, 2025, we had approximately 18,300 employees, primarily in the United States. Approximately 44% of our employees are parties to collective bargaining agreements. We believe our relationships with employees and their representative organizations are good.

Safety and Health

The health and safety of our employees is our top priority. We are focused on maintaining a strong culture of safety, in which all employees strive to protect themselves and their colleagues by being proactive towards risk identification and mitigation for people and our food products. Our health and safety team audits each of our facilities every 2-5 years, depending on risk profile, to review compliance with Conagra’s safety management system. This audit includes examination of leadership, accountability, defect loss identification processes, inspections, training, safety regulation adherence and compliance with corporate policies. The team documents the audit results and tracks corrective actions to ensure progress and create accountability for providing a safe work environment. Any workplace injury, illness, or fatality (an “incident”), including any “significant near miss” or an incident with the potential to have resulted in workplace injury, illness or fatality, requires a thorough investigation to identify and address the root cause.

During fiscal 2025, our Occupational Safety and Health Administration Incident Rate was 1.32 incidents per 100 full-time workers, as compared to 1.40 incidents per 100 full-time workers in fiscal 2024 and 1.58 incidents per 100 full-time workers in fiscal

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2023. There were no incidents of fatalities involving Conagra employees in fiscal 2025, 2024, and 2023. We compare our incident rate to that of the average for companies in the food manufacturing sector, as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In each of the last three fiscal years, our incident rate has been below the industry average.

Human Capital Management

We have implemented key recruitment, development, engagement, and retention strategies and objectives to guide our human capital management approach. These strategies and objectives are advanced through a number of programs, policies, and initiatives.

Recruitment:

We believe Conagra offers one of the most impactful, energized and inclusive cultures in the food industry and provides a comprehensive employee experience for a long and prosperous career. Our team is driven by collaboration, innovation, and a desire to grow and we support our employees with the tools they need to succeed and thrive in their careers.

Conagra has made differential investments in our recruitment tools and our talent acquisition programs to help us continue to attract the right candidates.

Development:

The Conagra Promise to our employees is to provide every employee with tools and programs to help them reach their full potential. By providing employees with growth opportunities, we empower them to build knowledge and skills and make an impact through their work at Conagra. We believe that by enabling employee growth and development, we better position Conagra to meet current and future business needs while driving employee retention.

We leverage a variety of tools and processes to promote a culture of employee learning and development at Conagra:

Employees also have access to coaching, feedback, and leadership support; employees are encouraged to establish mentoring relationships across the enterprise.

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Engagement:

We believe our focus on broad-mindedness, one of our timeless values, fosters a culture of collaboration and engagement. We encourage our employees to engage with leaders, managers, and peers and to share their individual perspectives. We maintain a structured employee survey program to better understand employee engagement and how employees experience our culture.

Our eight employee-led Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) contribute to an engaged and inclusive culture at Conagra. Our ERGs provide our employees with an opportunity to express their views, facilitate learning on cultural and business topics, and support our employees’ personal growth, professional development, and community impact. All of our ERGs are open to all salaried employees in the U.S. and, where indicated below, in Canada and Mexico. As of May 25, 2025, our ERGs and their stated goals consisted of:

Compensation, Benefits, and Wellness:

We offer competitive compensation and benefits to attract and retain the best talent and to support the overall well-being of our employees. Our compensation program, which includes equity-based compensation for our employees at director level and above, aims to align our leaders’ interest with our shareholders and is designed to incentivize strong company and individual performance.

Additionally, through our holistic approach to benefits and wellness, we provide our employees with resources to help them thrive. We offer a wide range of benefits across areas such as health, family, finance, community, and time away, including healthcare and wellness benefits such as employee assistance programs supporting mental health, adoption assistance, family care resources, a 401(k) plan, family leave, and paid time off.

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Information About Our Executive Officers

The names, ages, and positions of our executive officers, as of July 10, 2025, are listed below:

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Sean M. Connolly has served as our President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board since April 6, 2015. Prior to that, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of The Hillshire Brands Company (a branded food products company) from June 2012 to August 2014, Executive Vice President of Sara Lee Corporation (a branded food products company and the predecessor to Hillshire), and Chief Executive Officer, Sara Lee North American Retail and Foodservice, from January 2012 to June 2012. Prior to joining Sara Lee in anticipation of the spin-off of Hillshire, Mr. Connolly served as President of Campbell North America, the largest division of Campbell Soup Company (a branded food products company), from October 2010 to December 2011, President, Campbell USA from 2008 to 2010, and President, North American Foodservice for Campbell from 2007 to 2008. Before joining Campbell in 2002, he served in various marketing and brand management roles at The Procter & Gamble Company (a consumer packaged goods company).

David S. Marberger has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer since August 2016. Prior to joining Conagra Brands, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc. (a provider of over-the-counter healthcare products) from October 2015 until July 2016. Prior to that, Mr. Marberger served as the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Godiva Chocolatier, Inc. (a global manufacturer and supplier of premium chocolates) from 2008 until October 2015. Prior to that, Mr. Marberger served Tasty Baking Company (a manufacturer and supplier of baked goods) as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 2006 to 2008 and as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 2003 to 2006. From 1993 until 2003, he served in various roles at Campbell Soup Company (a branded food products company), where he last held the position of Vice President, Finance, Food and Beverage Division.

Carey L. Bartell has served as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary since June 2022. In this role, Ms. Bartell oversees all legal and governmental affairs activity for the company. Previously, Ms. Bartell served as Vice President and Chief Counsel leading the company’s litigation efforts and compliance programs. Ms. Bartell joined Conagra in 2016. Prior to Conagra, Ms. Bartell worked for eight years at Hospira, Inc., a global pharmaceutical and medical device company, as Senior Counsel and then Vice President, Legal. In this role, she oversaw the company’s litigation, labor, employment, and immigration law, and advised senior management and the board of directors regarding diverse legal and business risks. Ms. Bartell began her career in private practice at a Chicago law firm, first as an Associate and then Partner, where she practiced primarily in the areas of litigation and labor & employment law.

Charisse Brock has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer since November 2015 and previously served as Senior Vice President and Interim Chief Human Resources Officer from August 2015 until November 2015. Prior to serving in these roles, Ms. Brock served as Vice President of Human Resources for the Consumer Foods segment of Conagra Brands from September 2010 until August 2015. Ms. Brock joined Conagra Brands in 2004 as Director of Human Resources, supporting the Refrigerated Foods Group. Prior to joining Conagra Brands, she served for 15 years at The Quaker Oats Company (a branded food products company) (which was acquired by PepsiCo during her tenure) in its Consumer Foods Division.

Alexandre “Ale” O. Eboli has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer for Conagra Brands since August 2021. Mr. Eboli has end-to-end supply chain responsibilities for the company, overseeing the manufacturing, procurement, environment, health and safety, plant quality, logistics, and transportation and warehousing teams. Mr. Eboli joined Conagra Brands with 25 years of experience of global end-to-end supply chain leadership within the consumer packaged goods industry and has held a variety of roles in finance, planning, distribution, logistics and manufacturing. Prior to Conagra, Mr. Eboli served as the Head of Supply Chain, North America for The Unilever Group, where he was responsible for overseeing manufacturing facilities and contract

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manufacturers producing personal care, food and ice cream products as well as the related planning, procurement, manufacturing, engineering, logistics, quality, manufacturing excellence and customer service functions.

Thomas M. McGough has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer since May 2024. He served as the Company’s Executive Vice President and Co-Chief Operating Officer from October 2018 until May 2024; as the Company’s President, Operating Segments from May 2017 until October 2018 and as the Company’s President of Consumer Foods from May 2013 until May 2017. Mr. McGough also served as the Company’s President, Grocery Products from 2011 until May 2013 and as Vice President in the Company’s Consumer Foods organization from 2007 to 2011. Prior to joining the Company, he served in various roles at H.J. Heinz (a food processing company), where he began his career in 1990.

Noelle O’Mara has served as Executive Vice President and President, New Platforms and Acquisitions since May 2024. Prior to joining Conagra, she served as Group President and Chief Marketing Officer at Tyson Foods, from August 2019 to November 2022, where she was responsible for their prepared foods business unit. Prior to joining Tyson in 2016, Ms. O'Mara spent over a decade at Kraft Foods Group leading various brands and portfolios.

William E. Johnson has served as Senior Vice President and Corporate Controller since June 2023. He joined the Company as Assistant Controller in September 2019 and, prior to that, he was Director of Internal Audit at Kiewit Corporation, a North American construction and engineering organization, from June 2018 to August 2019. Mr. Johnson began his career at KPMG, spending more than 12 years in positions of increasing responsibility from 2005 to 2018.

Foreign Operations

Foreign operations information is set forth in Note 20, “Business Segments and Related Information”, to the Consolidated Financial Statements contained in this report.

Available Information

We make available, free of charge through the “Investors—Financial Reports & Filings” link on our website at http://www.conagrabrands.com, our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, as soon as reasonably practicable after such material is electronically filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). We use our website, through the “Investors” link, as a channel for routine distribution of important information, including news releases, presentations, and financial information. The information on our website is not, and will not be deemed to be, a part of this annual report on Form 10-K or incorporated into any of our other filings with the SEC.

We have also posted on our website our (1) Corporate Governance Principles, (2) Code of Conduct, (3) Code of Ethics for Senior Corporate Officers, and (4) Charters for the Audit/Finance Committee, Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and Human Resources Committee. Stockholders may also obtain copies of these items at no charge by writing to: Corporate Secretary, Conagra Brands, Inc., 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, Suite 1300, Chicago, IL, 60654.