Recognizing consumer demand for healthy products, we have made wellness a top strategic priority, one that guides what we make and how we make it. In our U.S. Soup business, for example, we continue to expand our popular lower sodium offerings in both condensed and ready-to-serve soups.

Consistent with our wellness focus, we elevated Healthy Beverages as our third core business category, joining Simple Meals and Baked Snacks. This decision was driven by the continued success of our beverage brands from greater product innovation with V8 vegetable juice and V8 V-Fusion vegetable and fruit juice, expanded distribution through our joint efforts with The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., more effective advertising, and increasing consumer demand for healthy beverages.

Within both our North American and International businesses, we are delivering solid successes in all three categories.

Campbell North America Consumers across North America love Campbell's soups. Nearly 85 percent of U.S. households purchase our soups and we work closely with our customers to ensure that we offer value to these devoted consumers. As we broaden our competitive offerings in the more than $90 billion Simple Meals category, we are unleashing the power of Campbell's soups even further.

Our icon brands, our scale, our range of offerings, our merchandising expertise, our bold advertising, and our innovation capabilities give us a significant competitive advantage.

That said, our product line-up in soup in fiscal 2008 delivered only modest growth on the very solid performance of the four previous years. We believe we can do better in fiscal 2009. Specifically, we are reaffirming our commitment to innovation. Within our U.S. Soup business, sodium reduction remains our top priority. During the past three years, we have made substantial progress in this effort, and fiscal 2009 promises to be another solid year for product offerings at healthy sodium levels. In addition, our U.S. Soup business is well positioned around four growth pillars: wellness, quality, convenience, and value.

Wellness Campbell's portfolio includes plenty of great tasting, lower-calorie offerings, with more than 180 products — better than 45 percent — containing 100 calories or less per serving. Nearly one-third of our soups have half a cup of vegetables or more per serving. Our lower sodium products alone now total nearly $600 million at retail — six times larger than our nearest branded competitor's lower sodium business.

In fiscal 2009, all new Campbell's Select Harvest ready-to-serve soups will be at healthy sodium levels, including nine Light offerings at 80 calories or less per serving. Additionally the launch of Campbell's V8 soups will bring new awareness of vegetable goodness to the soup category.

Quality A perennially strong performer for more than 40 years, our Swanson broth products delivered again in fiscal 2008, this time with a 12 percent increase in sales.3 The introduction of Swanson stocks in fiscal 2009 will add incremental usage occasions for consumers who want a convenient, high-quality base for making simple meals.

Convenience Sales of microwavable soups in bowls and cups now total more than $280 million at retail. In fiscal 2009, we will continue to put major advertising efforts behind these products, which highlight soup as a wholesome choice for portable meals.

Our innovative gravity-feed shelving system for condensed soup, now in its third generation, has been installed in more than 21,000 stores. In fiscal 2008, we began the rollout of this system for both ready-to-serve and convenience soups. This system drives sales by helping consumers quickly identify their favorite varieties on the shelf.

Value Over the years, Campbell's condensed soups have consistently offered solid value, providing excellent taste, high nutritional quality, variety, and convenience. In today's highly inflationary environment, our soups have become even more appealing. While the cost of an average "simple meal" during the past five years has risen by $1.50, a bowl of Campbell's condensed soup has risen by only 9 cents. As more meals are prepared at home, Campbell's condensed cooking soups are poised for enhanced performance as well.

We also have strengthened our marketplace position in Baked Snacks with our Pepperidge Farm brand, delivering strong sales growth for the eighth straight year. This year, all segments — bakery, cookies and crackers, and frozen — had increased sales. Pepperidge Farm Goldfish snack crackers grew sales with young consumers and the launch of Pepperidge Farm Baked Naturals crackers contributed to the strong sales growth in our adult cracker business. Pepperidge Farm's distinctive cookie line also had higher sales. Driven by continued consumer demand for healthy foods and whole grains, Pepperidge Farm's bread business contributed to another year of growth.

Our V8 beverage business delivered its third consecutive year of double-digit sales growth, as we continued to expand with new offerings of our V8 V-Fusion vegetable and fruit juices and additional lower sodium choices of V8 vegetable juice. We also delivered improved performance across our entire portfolio in Canada and Mexico.

Campbell International In Europe, we have substantially realigned our business over the past two years. After divesting our businesses in the U.K. and Ireland in fiscal 2007, our portfolio — heavily focused in soup — is now concentrated in France, Germany, and Belgium. We are confident that this repositioning will provide the foundation for improved performance in future years.

In the Asia Pacific region, our strong soup business in Australia improved its growth profile in fiscal 2008. Our Campbell's Country Ladle brand is the category leader in ready-to-serve soups in Australia. We launched soups with whole grain pasta in fiscal 2008 and will be following up with more wellness products in fiscal 2009.

In the emerging markets of Russia and China, this year we introduced locally customized broth products in lead markets that target specific consumer tastes and cooking habits. Together, these two emerging markets represent an estimated 50 percent of the global consumption of soup. Brand awareness in both markets has risen steadily, and in fiscal 2009 we will expand our presence to additional cities and regions within these two countries.

Our opportunities in Baked Snacks extend internationally as well. Arnott's, the premier biscuit brand in Australia, had another year of growth driven by strong top line performance across our savory biscuits with the Shapes, Vita-Weat, and Jatz brands, where we led the category with innovation on multiple fronts. In the coming year, we will focus even more on the iconic Arnott's brand with new products and refreshed products and packaging.

3. Swanson broth sales growth excluding the benefit of the extra week was 11 percent.