Post Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Third-quarter results slightly exceeded expectations, primarily due to stronger-than-anticipated foodservice performance. Post maintained the midpoint of its fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance while narrowing the range.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Post repurchased approximately 17% of its shares fiscal year to date, including 4% in the quarter, but expects to prioritize debt reduction over buybacks as refinancing rates rise. Management said it remains comfortable with leverage in the mid-four-times range and retains flexibility for cash-funded M&A.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management’s preliminary fiscal 2027 outlook calls for adjusted EBITDA to be broadly flat with a comparable $1.48 billion base, despite anticipated inflation, ongoing volume pressure, normalized foodservice earnings and the absence of divested businesses. Pricing actions, cost savings and foodservice margin expansion are expected to offset those headwinds, with pricing likely weighted toward the back half of the year.
  • Positive Sentiment: Post sees meaningful cost-reduction potential in pet food as market share stabilizes around 30%–32%, including portfolio simplification, formula harmonization and footprint optimization. It is also closing two peanut-butter plants, with savings expected to affect fiscal 2028.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Foodservice is viewed as having a normalized earnings run rate of about $500 million, with supply, demand and inventories largely rebalanced; however, market egg prices remain below Post’s grain-based procurement costs. Management expects industry capacity to adjust and believes the business can grow from this base in fiscal 2027.
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Earnings Conference Call
Post Q3 2026
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Operator

Welcome to the Post Holdings third quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. So others can hear your questions clearly, we ask that you pick up your handset for best sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Mainer, CFO of Post.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you all for joining us today for Post third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings question-and-answer session. I am joined this morning by Nico Catoggio, our COO. Rob is unable to join us today as he is feeling under the weather, and Daniel is actually with his wife, who is going into labor. Before I turn this call to Nico, though, I want to remind you that this call is being recorded, and an audio replay will be available on our website at postholdings.com. During today's call, we make forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that should be carefully considered by investors, as actual results could differ materially from these statements. These forward-looking statements are current as of the date of this call, and management undertakes no obligation to update those statements.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

The press release and written management remarks that support today's call are posted on our website in the Investors section. This call will discuss certain non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP measure, see our press release issued yesterday and posted on our website. With that, I will turn the call over to Nico.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Thank you, Matt. Good morning. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Our third quarter results were slightly ahead of expectations, driven by stronger than anticipated performance in food service. We are maintaining the midpoint of our fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance while narrowing the range. From a capital allocation standpoint, we repurchased 4% of our outstanding shares, bringing our total fiscal year-to-date reduction to approximately 17% while maintaining leverage within our target range. Looking ahead, we believe it's important to provide early context for fiscal 2027. After adjusting our fiscal 2026 outlook for approximately $80 million of items affecting comparability, we enter fiscal 2027 with a comparable adjusted EBITDA base of approximately $1.48 billion. While our fiscal 2027 budget remains under development, our preliminary outlook is for adjusted EBITDA that is relatively consistent with this level.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Despite normalizing food service earnings, the absence of divested businesses, anticipated inflation, and ongoing volume pressure, we currently expect targeted pricing actions, cost savings, and food service margin rate growth to support fiscal 2027 underlying EBITDA generally flat related to the comparable adjusted EBITDA base of approximately $1.48 billion that I mentioned before. With that, operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. The floor is now open for your questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when posing your questions to provide optimal sound quality. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Andrew Lazar
Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for the question. I think to start off, Nico, you highlight a shift from what's been a very aggressive share repurchase activity to really more of a deleveraging posture. I was hoping you could delve into this decision a bit more. Is it concern about the direction of EBITDA in the near-term and some of the volume pressure, given your 2027 outlook or something else? Does this change your ability or desire to go after cash accretive deals that may make sense?

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Sure. I can take that one, Andrew.

Andrew Lazar
Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Okay Matt.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Really, it's consistent with how we've always thought about capital allocation when it comes to M&A versus debt reduction, and that's less a function of a leverage number and really more a function of what we're seeing in interest rates and refinancing impacts. While we don't have a bond maturity for four years, we factor in the cash flow impacts of refinancing that debt now at higher rates and what would that do to free cash flow. As we see rates continue to rise from a refinancing standpoint, that just weighs more heavily to say, hey, we've got to start allocating more capital to debt reduction to make sure we're bringing down debt, so as we get to refinancing, we're not seeing a deterioration of our free cash flow. Again, we'll still maintain the ability to buy back shares opportunistically.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

It's just in the current interest rate environment, certainly going to be at a slower pace than the last couple of years. I think on the counter, if we see rates somehow return and we're back in a 5% refinancing rate, then our view would change, but that's certainly the big driver and the primary lens how we look at it. Relative to the M&A point, I think another angle we view is where's a comfortable leverage level we could take leverage to and where's a comfortable starting point. That gets us to a similar spot. Hey, mid-4s is somewhere we're comfortable for, but we wouldn't want to see that number rise because that would deteriorate some of the flexibility for cash M&A. I think that's where the preliminary outlook for next year is more of a consideration.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Again, I'd say consistent with how we've always viewed it.

Andrew Lazar
Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Got it. Thanks for that. Then, Post has been obviously very proactive in optimizing its capacity and its assets in categories like ready-to-eat cereal, to sort of stay ahead, so to speak, of the structural decline in category and maintain solid margins and cash flow. Having already closed, I guess, three plants in cereal, given trends in the company's dog food business, and maybe some of the potential elasticity impacts of some of the pricing actions that you're talking about here, I guess are there some similar actions that you can or may need to take in the pet food space around asset optimization, sort of like you've done in cereal the past year or two?

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Thanks, Andrew. It's a good question. Let me start again up. We are constantly assessing those opportunities across every business and in particular PCB. Before I get to pet, and I will answer that one, we also just made the decision to shut down two peanut butter plants. That's, again, to your point, is exactly the same playbook that we used in cereal. That's as we integrated the 8th Avenue business, and we streamlined that business and exited some business that we were literally losing money. We saw the opportunity to shut down two plants. That's in the works. That's going to impact FY 2028. Order of magnitude is similar to what you saw in cereal in the past. That's on peanut butter. On pet, it's a good question.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Let me tell you that beyond footprint, we haven't even scratched the surface in cost in pet, not the way we did it in cereal. That's because we wanted to wait until we had the confidence that we had a stable pet business. We feel that we're getting to that point. We are now at a 30% market share. What we are confident if we can stay in that level, we think we can because some of the initiatives that we pursued to kind of on nutrition are starting to actually show encouraging results. If we can stay at that, call it 30%-32% market share range, now we can actually go after costs aggressively. It's more than just footprint. There are opportunities to simplify the portfolio, harmonize formulas, a lot of the things that we did in cereal.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

When you do that will allow us to actually optimize the footprint. Back to your question, yes, we are assessing those. We are very confident that we have a lot of opportunities in pet, we actually starting to now work on the pipeline of those opportunities.

Andrew Lazar
Andrew Lazar
Analyst at Barclays

Great. All right. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Matt Smith with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Matt Smith
Matt Smith
Analyst at Stifel

Hi, good morning. The narrowed guidance range for this year implies fourth quarter more or less in line with the performance here in the third quarter. You called out food service continuing to move towards the normalized run-rate, suggesting it steps lower on a sequential basis. Can you talk about where the offsets to that food service moving lower, where you see a stronger EBITDA outlook as you look into the fourth quarter here? Thank you.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

The offset to food service pulling back in the quarter?

Matt Smith
Matt Smith
Analyst at Stifel

Yes, as we think about kind of the shape of the P&L in the fourth quarter and look ahead into 2027.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

We saw refrigerated retail pull back a bit more than anticipated out of the Easter benefit in Q2. In terms of results in Q3, we see some improvement in that business in Q4, and really for the rest of the portfolio, pretty flat. We're not talking about significant changes overall.

Matt Smith
Matt Smith
Analyst at Stifel

Thanks for that. Matt, the CapEx range moved a little higher at the low-end for this year. Can you talk about that incremental investment and as you look ahead to 2027, give a view of if CapEx remains relatively stable or moves perhaps even higher as you look at some of the supply chain work you're undertaking. Thank you.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Sure. I think just really a refinement of this year and the pacing we're seeing on the CapEx range just leans us a little bit higher in the range from where we started. It's definitely a bit of a moving target and again, a lot of these capital projects we're trying to work through as fast as we can because they're in the plan for a reason. When you think about next year, a bit too soon to say. I think just to add on to Nico's comments, as you think about potential network optimization, that's an area where if we see clear opportunities, there could be some additional capital spend to clear the way for those.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Outside of that, would expect just continued investment in food service and pursuing growth as we get our plan together for next year and the following year, really more of a maintenance level across the balance of the business.

Matt Smith
Matt Smith
Analyst at Stifel

Appreciate that. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Great. First of all, best to Rob and congratulations to Daniel. Big day.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Good beginning.

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the EBITDA guidance, just what's behind the $1.48 billion for PCB, EBITDA down mid-single-digits. Should we assume that PCB organic sales down the 3%, maybe mid-single-digits down for PCB with that guidance? Is that reasonable?

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

I think we've got kind of a first look in ranges around our businesses, David, and just given the non-recurring things we were saying, we wanted to get some indication out there. I think we're a little cautious to get into details around each business segment until we have a more formalized plan.

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Yeah.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Certainly, we've commented in our release that we see growth in food service next year offsetting some of these pressures we're seeing in terms of inflation and volume pressures. I think fair, there's probably a bit of pullback in overall retail offset by food service, but don't really want to get into the by-segment comments yet.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Yeah. What I would add, without actually too much point getting to the specific segments, it's a comment that applies to all of our retail businesses. We expect, as Matt said, inflation, and it's going to be a year where we'll probably chase inflation. Typically, to be able to price, we need to wait to see the inflation. That's how you have the discussion with the retailers. That's what that kind of initial outlook actually reflects.

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Sort of behind that is I'm looking at the long term here and volume trends for your all-in cereal business, including private label, and volume has been down mid-single-digits basically the last two years now. I wonder—

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Yeah

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

if that's just kind of how you're thinking about that business going forward, as an underlying assumption going forward, i.e., it's not going to get better anytime soon? Or maybe the other, do you see some real tangible reasons why it could get better over the next fiscal year? I'll pass it on.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Again, we still don't know. We don't have all the details of the plans, but what I can tell you is that I would expect the cereal volume to move closer to the category next year. The reason why we've been lagging the category a bit in the last year is a lot of decisions that we made. One is, we talked about it in the last two quarters, we adjusted the assortment to have better performance or efficiency in our promotions. That is worth 1 percentage point of the gap versus the category, so it's significant. It's 50% of the gap versus the category. The rest, as we mentioned, is we lost some distribution in our Malt-O-Meal brand, and it's kind of the tail SKU, the lower velocity SKUs, but we lost distribution. Going forward, the rest of the portfolio is performing really well.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Our premium portfolio, we are gaining market share in our premium portfolio. That is great news. I would anticipate moving closer to the category. Where the category is going to be, we don't know. The good news is it's actually slowly improving quarter-after-quarter. It's getting closer to what we see as the long-term sustainable trend in the category of, call it, -1%to -2%. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer.

David Palmer
David Palmer
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Tom Palmer with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer
Analyst at JPMorgan

Good morning, thanks for the question. Maybe just to follow up on something you touched on earlier in the call related to Andrew's question. The pet business, you made mention that you like the progress that you're starting to see. Could we maybe just get more of an update there on kind of the different brands and where we stand—

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Yeah

Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer
Analyst at JPMorgan

in terms of instituting changes and seeing those on-shelf changes? Thank you.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Yeah, absolutely. Let me start with if you take the year-over-year decline for that business, 60% of that is our value brands, most of that is 9Lives. We mentioned last quarter, we relaunched a third of that brand that we were not making money on. We saw elasticities higher than what we anticipated, at the same time, we like the margins, right? We like the margins more than what we used to like them, I would say. We had to do it. We are actually working as we speak, we are seeing good progress on kind of resetting the value proposition for that. At the same time, the cat segment, because it's where the growth is in the category, has been very active in terms of promotions.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

9Lives, that stands essentially for value in the category, has seen a lot of promotions, competitive promotions, and with two of our main competitor brands actually hitting price points below our brand. We are not going to follow them. We are very disciplined when we think about promotions. We don't see that as something that will kind of remain like that all the time. In the short term, that's a lot of the pressure that 9Lives is under. Nutrish, the

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Let me tell you the good news and the good news is where the brand is fully relaunched and then we actively work our assortment to what we call our core assortment, beef, chicken, and salmon, the brand is performing well. Our larger retailer is a good example of that. We very aggressively manage our assortment. We have what we call our must-have SKUs there on shelf. There the brand went from losing market share year-over-year to now over the last 13 weeks, we are gaining market share. In dry dog, that's what we measure as we feel good. We are seeing in some other retailers where we are actually transitioning, we see a clear inflection point in the performance of the brand. The transition has taken a bit longer than anticipated. It's been a bit more messy.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

The other thing is, there's a clear difference in performance between, again, what we call our core assortment and the flanker SKUs. What we are working on is for the next reset is doing a lot more of what we did in one of the larger retailers, that is working the assortment to actually focus on that core set of SKUs that perform really well. Again, the good news is where we relaunch those, where they are fully transitioned, we are actually seeing a clear inflection point, and those SKUs actually turn in the top third of the category, and that's very encouraging.

Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Thank you for all that detail. I did have one other question on PCB. Just looking back over the past four quarters, a pretty meaningful pullback in marketing A&C activity. As you look forward, since you're going to start lapping that pullback, is there more to do? Given some of these on-shelf changes, especially in pet, does it make sense to maybe invest back a bit? Just kind of curious your views there.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Yeah. I would actually say there are two things behind that. One is we constantly work to improve the return on spend and the effectiveness of spend. Almost 100% of our spend now, it's digital and no linear TV. We improve our returns. That's across the portfolio, but mostly on the cereal side. We haven't pulled support out of the cereal brands. We just got more effective spend. In pet, some of the A&C pullback, it's not necessarily A&C that we're pulling out. We are actually deploying dollars differently. There's more spend on in-store activation or select rollbacks and retailer support. That is, again, dollars that move from A&C to call it trade spend, to reset some of the equations that we talk about. Do we anticipate some support back in some brands? It's brand by brand.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

We feel really good about the returns in our cereal brands. Really good. We're going to be selecting our support in our pet brands.

Tom Palmer
Tom Palmer
Analyst at JPMorgan

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll move on now to Scott Marks with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Scott Marks
Scott Marks
Analyst at Jefferies

Hey, good morning, all. Thanks very much for taking the questions. First thing I wanted to ask about is the food service business, and specifically on the profit side. I think despite the lapping the HPAI pricing adders and price realization being decidedly negative this quarter, you still put up a pretty strong profit number, actually in line with what you did in Q2. Just wondering if you can help us understand the moving pieces there. Why was it so strong? Maybe why shouldn't we believe that the actual annualized run-rate is higher than the $500 million? Thanks.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Sure. Very fair question. I think just to think about the $500 million run-rate, it's really an estimate of what we see the current business earning power is under normalized circumstances. I think you got to define the view of normalized circumstances as really, I'd say three things. It's our business being back in balance from a supply and demand standpoint. Really our inventory is back to normal, and then also underlying market versus grain-based egg pricing. Happy to say the first two, so our internal supply and demand and our inventories, which we continued to build this past quarter, are back to where we'd like to see them and in balance. We're really left with that third piece, which is a bit of imbalance between market and grain-based egg pricing.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

That's really a function, all three were a function of HPAI last year and throwing the industry and our own supply out of whack. Again, I think the third piece we believe will correct itself just when you have a situation of oversupply is where we believe we are from an industry standpoint, that is actually not going to survive long when you've got chickens, the cost to feed them is greater than what you can command on the open market. We expect people will take some actions to bring that in line. I think that collectively is how we really view the underlying run rate and how we view the business heading into 2027. Again, we feel we can fully grow off of that number in 2027, off the $500 million run-rate.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

That's our attempt to try and carve those pieces out and get to what we see on underlying volumes and balance of the business where it's running today.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Scott, one thing that I would add is in Q3, we probably took a bit more advantage of the market conditions than what we anticipated. We exited the quarter with really high inventories. That's part of what is reflected in that number.

Scott Marks
Scott Marks
Analyst at Jefferies

Understood. Appreciate the color there. Then maybe just as a follow-up, since you guys gave preliminary fiscal 2027 guidance, you gave some tailwinds helping you, some of the headwinds that are offsetting. Just wondering if you can share any assumptions in terms of rate of inflation, where that's coming from, just any other building blocks you're willing to share at this point. Thanks.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

I think we're hesitant to get into any broad-based assumptions. We really just wanted to rebase 2026 to make sure we're very clear on food service run-rate, where we're seeing that, and then also the impact of the two divestitures we made. I think beyond that, like I said, we're in the middle stages here and have some first looks and ranges, but really don't want to get into underlying assumptions. I think broad brush, we see those all balancing out, and that's why we're saying a stable flat year to a rebalance 2026, but really not in a position to get into a lot of details around those assumptions. Certainly, as we get to November, we'll be able to walk through much more specifically some of those assumptions.

Scott Marks
Scott Marks
Analyst at Jefferies

Okay, understood. We'll leave it there. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Marc Torrente with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Marc Torrente
Marc Torrente
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Hey, good morning, thank you for the questions. Maybe just asking the last one a bit differently. The sluggish outlook into next year. Are the inflation pressures and volume trends you're seeing consistent with your prior expectations that you sort of walked through on the last call? Where is that mostly flowing through?

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

I can touch on at least. Again, we're still working on the budget. We don't have all the details, but I would actually say volumes are consistent with what we're seeing. Inflation, I mentioned in the last call that we wanted to see, we needed to wait to have a bit more visibility, I think what we're seeing is coming in probably at the higher-end of what we were expecting. It's within the range that we were expecting, but at the higher-end of that range. Again, that's part of what is reflected in that initial outlook.

Marc Torrente
Marc Torrente
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Okay, appreciate that. Then on refrigerated retail, could you maybe help us understand some of the weakness in the quarter? The underlying was down. I think that was mostly due to the pricing lap and holiday timing. Maybe just what does that business look like near-term, and maybe quantify some of the impact from the Crystal Farms sale. Thank you.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Sure. Yes, to your point, year-over-year, the Easter timing was a big factor. Also as a reminder, in Q3 and Q4 of last year, we had pricing adders around HPAI that were beneficial for the business. Those, just like our food service business, were taken off as we got into fiscal 2027. Easter and those pricing adders are the big year-over-year drivers. In addition to that, which is more of the current run-rate of the business, certainly as we've seen across the portfolio, but on a relative size basis, just more impactful for refrigerated retail has been the impact of higher fuel costs and freight costs that we've seen and we talked about on our prior call. The other impact is around eggs. The dynamic there is we're selling on the market.

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

We're a grain-based buyer of eggs, you've got a dynamic where market prices have plummeted. It's a tough situation to try and take pricing in to equalize those when the ordinary markets are suggesting price of eggs from a market standpoint is much lower than what we're procuring at. That's certainly been a dynamic we've seen here in Q3, and that's really maybe the gap to expectations, both internal and external, for Q3.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rob Dickerson with U.S. Bancorp BTIG. Your line is open.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at U.S. Bancorp BTIG

Hey, great. Thanks a lot. You put in a release last night and some commentary this morning on just kind of the ongoing volume weakness, then offsets and part of the offsets would be pricing, you're also saying, be kind of chasing the pricing a little bit because it has to come through first. I guess just to clarify, simplistically, it would seem like if there's a little bit of pricing contribution next year, that'd probably be later in the year, maybe more back half in the year. Secondly, if you could just touch on, broadly speaking at least, kind of where you think you might still see some ongoing volume softness and then where you also might think you might have a higher probability of some of that pricing. Just kind of going through the different segments, at least for purposes of modeling.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at U.S. Bancorp BTIG

Thanks.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

I think you're spot on. Our assumption right now is that pricing will be more towards the end of the year. Right now what we see more of that happening is in PCB. Early on in the process, that's where we see most of the inflation and where we expect some pricing.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

Volumes, I think it's going to be similar to what we're seeing. If you think about the categories, again, we don't know exactly where the category is going to be, cereal, expecting to decline probably 2.5%. We don't know. In pet, as a reminder, two-thirds of our portfolio, 60% of our portfolio is dry dog. That segment is underperforming the category. If you think about dog is underperforming cat, dog is declining. Cat segment is growing, and within dog, dry is underperforming. That's going to be a headwind. That's where we see some volume softness. It's more driven by the category than our brands. We feel that we are going to be moving toward that category average. Considering the mix of our portfolio.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at U.S. Bancorp BTIG

Okay, great. Very helpful. Just quickly, back to the kind of leverage versus buyback perspective right now. I think you said, kind of comfortable in that mid-4% range around there. Also said, don't really have any big maturities coming due. Clearly want to be cognizant of the rate environment and how that impacts interest and cash flow, et cetera. All that said, though, is that what you're saying basically is the cash allocated to buybacks, let's say over the next 18 months, just making it up, will be lower, and then the cash to incremental debt paydown would be higher despite having no maturity coming due? You're going to pay down debt, just not buy back as much stock. Is that basically it?

Matt Mainer
Matt Mainer
CFO at Post Holdings

Yes, I think you summarized it well. That's given our current view, and we'll continue to look at where rates are going and refinance rates. Just in the last quarter as an example, our 10-year refinance rate, which is our benchmark, what we look at, has risen 50 basis points. That certainly goes into the model and the factor. Assuming rates stay elevated over the next year, that's the right way to think about how we're thinking about capital allocation favoring debt reduction over share repurchases. Again, we still have a pool of cash flow that we can deploy against share repurchases. It's just in the balance, it's going to be more on the debt side in this interest rate environment.

Rob Dickerson
Analyst at U.S. Bancorp BTIG

Yeah. Okay, great. All right. Thanks a lot. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Carla Casella with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Carla Casella
Carla Casella
Analyst at JPMorgan

Hi, thanks for taking the question. You mentioned in the prepared remarks about gaining some share in private label in pet, and I'm just wondering how you think about private label in that business. Is that a bigger opportunity or is that something you're just using to fill in space and kind of how you think about private label in general?

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

In general, in pet, you mean?

Carla Casella
Carla Casella
Analyst at JPMorgan

Yeah.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

If you remember, we lost some business 18 months ago. We were confident that we were going to recover some of that's essentially what's happening. We have a fairly unique position in the category. We are a premium private label player. We produce mostly premium products. That's a segment that is growing in the category. We are well-positioned. We see more opportunities of that. The other opportunity is as we continue integrating the footprint, we see more opportunities of actually expanding private label as we leverage the full footprint that we have. We feel good about that. That business is actually performing really well.

Carla Casella
Carla Casella
Analyst at JPMorgan

That's great. I'm just wondering if you have any comments in terms of in pet where you're seeing the pockets of strength. Is it mass, club, pet specialty? Any kind of divergence in trends by type of retailer?

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

It's a good question. The obvious one is e-commerce is growing, outgrowing every other channel. It's both the two pure plays, that you know, and also the retailer.com businesses. All those are outgrowing brick and mortar. Within brick and mortar, pet specialty still as a channel, underperforming relative to mass. Mass is doing probably slightly better than the average of the category. Pet specialty is underperforming and e-commerce is clearly over-performing.

Carla Casella
Carla Casella
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Can you just comment on SNAP impact, either on the quarter and how you're thinking about it for the year, or if there's a timing issue of when you expect the greatest SNAP impact versus when it may normalize?

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

SNAP, I wish I knew exactly the answer for that. Most people see it as a headwind. I personally have had this theory, and I think it's what we're seeing in the category. It's probably considering that it could be a tailwind for categories like cereal because of affordability. Cereal is still one of the cheapest categories for breakfast, and it's definitely the cheapest way to actually have the right nutrients in your breakfast. Longer term, I still see it as an opportunity, but the reality is there's a lot of noise. I would add, it's not only SNAP, there are changes in the WIC program, the Women, Infant, and Children program, that also impact the category because there were changes to the dairy allocation that impacts the category. There's so much noise. I don't have the perfect answer for SNAP.

Nico Catoggio
Nico Catoggio
COO at Post Holdings

I see it as potentially an opportunity for cereal. The reality is, if you think about when SNAP changed, that is in our Q1, that's when we started seeing the category starting to perform a bit better.

Carla Casella
Carla Casella
Analyst at JPMorgan

Okay, great. Thanks for all the answers.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's Post Holdings third quarter 2026 earnings conference call and webcast. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.

Executives
    • Matt Mainer
      Matt Mainer
      CFO
    • Nico Catoggio
      Nico Catoggio
      COO
Analysts
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