Matt Farrell
Chief Executive Officer at Church & Dwight
Actually, I got promoted as CEO about seven years ago. But anyway, good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We got a lot to talk about. I'll begin with a review of the Q2 results. And then I'll turn the call over to Rick darker, our CFO and when Rick Stein is done we'll open the call for questions.
So Q2 was a solid quarter for us reported revenue was up 4.2% organic sales grew 3.4% and this was in line with our three to 4% outlook. The adjusted EPS was $0.76. Now this was $0.06 higher than our outlook, but that was due to lower marketing. We grew consumption in 11 of our 17 categories in which we compete, and in some cases on top of big consumption gains last year. Fill rates have improved to 90% in June, and we expect to get back to historical levels by the end of the year. Regarding brand performance, we experienced double-digit consumption growth in 6 of our 17 categories and I'll name them for you. ARM & HAMMER Scent Boosters, ARM & HAMMER Baking Soda, ARM & HAMMER Clumping Litter, BATISTE dry shampoo, ZICAM zinc supplements, and THERABREATH mouthwash. And we gained a share on 8 of our 14 power brands. So that's a good story our shares are healthy.
In Q2 online sales as a percentage of total sales was 16%. Our online sales increased 15% year-over-year, and we continue to expect online sales for the full year to be up above 15% as a percentage of sales. Since early '21, we have announced price increases to combat inflation. And through mid-2022, we have already announced price increases covering 80% of our global portfolio. And we did a second round of price increases in laundry and litter that just hit the shelves. But at the same time cost inflation continues to climb. So since we spoke to you in April, we are now expecting $50 million of new incremental costs inflation. So the cumulative incremental cost inflation is $135 million since we gave our initial full-year outlook, way back in February. Now the incremental $50 million of inflation combined with currency headwinds caused us to lower our full-year EPS outlook. We now expect 6% operating income growth offset by a much higher year-over-year tax rate.
Now I'm going to comment on each business. First up is U.S. consumer business, which grew organic sales by 2.4%. Looking at market shares as I said before, we had good numbers as 8 of our 14 power brands gained share. Looking ahead, we expect even further improvement in our market share positions by year-end, as our fill rates will improve and promotional and marketing spend increases in the back half. Let's look at a few of the important categories. Let's start with laundry. The trade down to value detergent has begun. Give you some numbers, for example, during Q2 the liquid laundry category grew 7%, but value laundry detergent grew 11%, while premium laundry grew 4%.
In litter the category grew 12%, both our black box, which is premium and our yellow box which is value had double-digit consumption growth in Q2. The dry shampoo category was up 18% in Q2, while BATISTE consumption was up 43%. Our growth would have been higher if not for our difficulty in securing aerosol cans and actuators. Over in gummy vitamins, the sequential quarterly growth of the category is slowing down. For the last three quarters, the category growth rate has been 16%, 10% and most recently 5%. We expect the category growth to turn negative in Q3, simply because we are lapping the consumption spike from the delta variant in last year's Q3. And we continue to struggle with fill rates which is hampering our ability to grow.
Our most recent acquisitions are performing well THERABREATH, which we acquired in December of 2021 had a great quarter with 33% consumption growth THERABREATH grew share 3.1 points to 16.4% of the alcohol-free mouthwash category. THERABREATH is the number two non-alcohol mouthwash, and is solidly the number four brand in total mouthwash. ZICAM is our other recent acquisition. ZICAM also delivered strong results this quarter. You may recall we acquired ZICAM in December of 2020. We were hurt in year one of our ownership due to masking and social distancing. ZICAM cold remedy consumption was up 55% in Q2 and is the number one brand in the cold shortening segment with a 75% share. Now looking ahead to the rest of the year. The regular flu season in the U.S. is projected to be more severe than recent years based on what the southern hemisphere is experiencing right now.
Next up is International despite significant disruptions, our International business delivered organic growth of 6.5% in Q2, primarily driven by BATISTE in Europe, vitamins and BATISTE in Canada and growth across the GMG business, which is our export business. In April when we spoke to you we expected flattish growth in Q2 and a continuation of the supply chain woes, we experienced in Q1, such as fill level issues and delivery issues. Those actually prove to be less disruptive in the quarter than we anticipated. However, fill levels and delivery issues will continue to weigh on our global markets group in the near-term.
Next up is specialty products, specialty products business delivered a strong quarter with 6.3% organic growth, driven by both higher price and volume. And I want to spend a couple of minutes discussed discussing our more discretionary brands, since they are having an impact on our full year revenue outlook. We see lower consumption for Water Flossers in the U.S. as consumers trade down to lower price Water Flossers. Also the WATERPIK Asia Pacific flosser consumption has and is expected to decline as a result of lockdowns. Similarly, there is a lower demand for WATERPIK showerhead, and this is due to less do-it-yourself projects, a lot of those got completed during COVID times. WATERPIK is a discretionary purchase and we continue to invest in demand driving activities such as lunch and learns to drive household penetration flossers.
It's fair to say gum health is not gone away and still only 16% of the U.S. population flossers every day. Now this is a business that has average high single-digit growth top-line since we acquired them in 2017. And we're confident that the long-term growth prospects for WATERPIK are sound. The other discretionary brand we have is FLAWLESS, we're experiencing lower consumption, but that is largely due to the absence of our new products in this fast-moving beauty category. China lockdowns have impacted our manufacturing and the new product launches that were planned for the first half have been delayed until the end of '22.
Now I want to spend a few minutes on the health of the consumer, private label trends, innovation and our ability to supply. Our innovation is at a multi-decade high and interest rates are rising to tamp down inflation. And while wages have risen households are getting squeezed and the consumers are making choices to make their dollars go further. And I think back to April during our Q1 call, we called out the strengthening value detergent segment, in the latest four weeks ended July 17th value liquid laundry detergent category is up 8%, deep value is up 1% and premium is down 1%. So we think the trade-down is happening. Here is an early indicator of trade down this time in oral care, we had one major retailer point to the strength of manual toothbrush which is held up well for them in contrast to declines in rechargeable and power toothbrushes. This trend impacts both WATERPIK and SPINBRUSH and here are a few numbers to illustrate the trend. The Flowserve [Phonetic] category was down 7% in Q2 and battery operated toothbrushes the category was down 4%, also in Q2. So, we're keeping an eye on these and other trends. It's important to point out that 40% of our portfolio is value, and we expect to perform well in a difficult economic environment.
Our largest businesses detergent environments are value products and in litter our orange box is also value. So we feel well positioned for what may be coming. Now regarding private label, private label shares are stable in the five categories where we have meaningful exposure to store brands. As you saw in the release, we have a strong lineup of innovation across our personal care and household categories. I want to highlight the early success of ARM & HAMMER Baby laundry detergent, which has already achieved a 10% share of the baby launch of category at Walmart. The other product like to highlight is TROJAN raw, which is the finish condom now in the market, which is already the number 6 out of 400 SKUs sold on Amazon.
Also want to mention our recent launch of a new lightweight litter that we call Hardball, we expect over time this will enable us to get our fair share of the lightweight litter category. For the cat owners on the call today, we named it Hardball because of the hard ultra-compact clumps it's quite a unique consumer experience. Now regarding ability to supply. You may recall we hit bottom in Q1 with the Omicron resurgence when we saw our fill rates dip below 80%. The overall Q2 fill rates improved to 89%. Although recovery in our high margin personal care side of the business is still lagging. We're on track to be near historical fill levels by the end of the year. And the good news is July continues to show improvement.
We have confidence in our revised full-year outlook for several reasons, improving fill rates, trade down to value, healthy new product innovation, and consumption strength in our recent acquisitions. Regarding support, we have key promotional events lined up in the second half and two-third of our full year advertising spend is concentrated in the second half. In closing, we expect our portfolio of brands to do well both in good and bad times and we continue to hunt for new TSR accretive acquisitions.
Next up is Rick to give you more details on Q2.