Church & Dwight Q4 & Investor Day 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
January 31, 2025

There are 18 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for coming today. This is the 2025 Analyst Day for Church and Dwight. We've got a big crowd with us today. We've got the entire management team.

Operator

We've got a couple of casualties due to the flu that's going around. So let's begin with the Safe Harbor statement. I encourage everybody to read that after class. And here's a list of the people who are going to be here today, all the presenters. We've got Shatish Chhabha from SBD.

Operator

We've got Mike Reed from International. We've got Sarebhi Pokrale for our Chief Digital Officer. It's the Rick and Matt show as usual. We've got Stacy Ramstead, who's our CMO, and Carlos Linares. You haven't heard from Carlos in the past.

Operator

He leads R and D and Innovation for the company. All right. Long agenda here. I won't read it to you. So let's kind of jump right in.

Operator

But I'm going to start with 2025 is the 30 1st anniversary, 35th anniversary of Church and Dwight being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And you can see the chart there, if you adjust for stock splits, it was a buck a share back in 1990, and you can see we're well over $100 today. Here's kind of a fun fact. So if you invested $1,000 in Church and Dwight in 19.90 when it was first listed, it'd be worth $114,000 today. So that's kind of a mark of a consistent company.

Operator

And the fellow on the lower left is Dwight Minton. And Dwight Minton became the CEO, I think, in 1969. And he is a descendant of Austin Church, of the Church and Dwight fame. So he's the last family member of the company to be a CEO. And he succeeded his dad who was CEO before him.

Operator

So I'm the 3rd non family member who is CEO of Church and Dwight, and Rick will be the 4th, so fun fact. So let's look back at 2024. As you all know if you've been following our story, organic sales growth, we beat our algorithm all three businesses, U. S, international and SPD. We have 7 power brands represent 70% of our revenues and profits and 5 of 7 increased their market share.

Operator

Our algorithm for our marketing spend is spend about 11% annually and we spent over 11% in 2024. Innovation is a big number for us this past year. So if we grew our organic growth 4% on a full year basis, half of that came from new products that we launched in 2024 and that's incremental growth year over year came from new products. And then online sales, you know we've been a bit of a stand out among CPG companies for quite a few years. Our online sales is over 21%.

Operator

It's 21.4% for total company. What that translates to is if you have $6,000,000,000 in sales, we got $1,300,000,000 of that is ordered online. A few more things, we bought Hero a couple of years ago. That's been a great brand for us. We've expanded that.

Operator

It's now launched in 40 countries. And now our job is to grow that brand in those 40 countries around the world. Japan is a big market, over 100,000,000 consumers. We acquired a terrific distributor of ours in Japan. It's a distributor that drove OxiClean to the number one pre wash additive and powder in Japan.

Operator

SPD, you're going to hear from Shatish Chaba today, and that's now a perennial grower for us. I'm going to hear more about that. We generate a lot of cash as a company, and we're $1,100,000,000 for 2024. And we got a lot of dough on the balance sheet, almost $1,000,000,000 of cash at year end. And we're all dressed up to buy some businesses going forward.

Operator

All right, strong performance. This is the 1, 2, 3, 5 10 year chart for us. And just to give you an idea of the consistency of this company for many, many years, and it's really attributed to the culture and to the management team of Church and Dwight. All right. Now who we are, many of you are long term holders, people who are here today are listening on the phone.

Operator

So I'm going to run through things that should be very familiar to you. So the way we're split is 77% domestic, 18% international. For a long time, that international number was 17%, almost since I joined the company. So we're starting to grow that one a little faster. 7 power brands that make up 70% of our revenues and profits.

Operator

And you know we have an evergreen model. So this evergreen model is something that guides our view long term, not just for the coming year, but 3 years, 5 years, 10 years. This is what we try to drive how we try to drive TSR for our shareholders. So you see the 4% organic sales growth, it's 3.85%, domestic, international, SPD, our gross margin 25 to 50 basis points. The bright line for marketing is around 11% of sales.

Operator

We try to get leverage on SG and A, we try to grow the top line faster than SG and A grows. And we're trying to expand our operating margins 50 basis points annually, and that translates into 8% EPS growth. So here's the formula. Five things I'm going to cover. 1, we got a balanced and diversified portfolio, right.

Operator

So we got pretty much balance between household and personal care and SPD is essentially the foundational business for the company. It's where the ARMOUR and HAMMER brand first arose. Okay. We're split pretty much sixty-forty or I should say 2 thirds, 1 thirds between premium and value. Why is that important?

Operator

It's what's important because we perform well in just about any economic environment. We don't have a lot of exposure to private label. You can see that a little bit over 10%. That's been true for many, many years. And e commerce has been a great story for us.

Operator

We were probably 4th quartile back in 2016 and now we're 1st quartile with respect to our performance online. And as I said earlier, half of our growth, our organic growth in 2024 came from new products. And of course, that is so important to the equity of your brands is new innovation. So that speaks really well for the company. And we got a lot more coming in 2025.

Operator

As far as acquisitions go, we're pretty strict about what we're going to buy, got to be a number 1 or number 2 brand. It has to be a gross margin that's at or above the gross margins for the company. We like businesses that are asset light. Prefer to buy a business that is co manufactured, that we don't necessarily have to buy a plant. Number 4 would be can we get synergies.

Operator

We have got a very, very sophisticated supply chain to make damn near anything. So consequently, we try to get leverage in manufacturing or logistics. And then finally, it's got to have a long term competitive advantage, meaning we don't buy something that's just going to be successful for the next 2 or 3 years. It's going to be successful 5 years, 10 years out. All right, long history of growth through acquisitions.

Operator

So if you look at 2,004, we were a $1,500,000,000 company. You can see almost every year we've acquired a business. We don't have every year up there, but just about every year we've acquired something. 2023 2024, bit of a drought. I'd say if you say when did have you had a drought before?

Operator

If you look at 2,008, we acquired Orgel. 2012, we acquired the Vitamin business. Between then, we bought some small businesses, but I would say that was the time last time we had a drought of a couple of years, not for lack of trying though. So now Rick is going to come up and take you through a few more details.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you, Matt. So this is probably one of the last times I'm going to go through detailed financials with you guys, okay? Q4 2024, we ended the year with momentum, right? We had 3.5% reported sales growth.

Speaker 1

Our outlook was 1.5% to 2.5%. It came in better than we expected. Our share gains for the quarter, 5.07 or for the year, 5% of 7% of our brands per share, right? Those are the important brands that are driving the company. 4.2% organic came in better than we thought, too.

Speaker 1

2% to 3% was our outlook. Gross margin came right where we thought it was. We called 110 basis points for the full year, and that implied flat for the quarter. And then for EPS, we were up almost 19%, so just really strong ending to the year in the quarter. So for the full year, 4% net sales growth, 4.5 percent organic sales growth, 3.5% for domestic, 9% for international and 7% for SPD.

Speaker 1

So just really broad based growth across the company, across the divisions, back to 110 basis points of gross margin. You're going to see in a minute, we're back to 2019 levels, which is fantastic. Marketing, this is where we spent incrementally. We ended up at 11.4%. So we spent significantly more than we originally thought.

Speaker 1

And this is really just again to have momentum as we entered in 2025. And then 8.5% EPS growth, and we generated $1,160,000,000 of cash. You're going to see in a minute, 2025, we think we're going to be right around the same number. So just generating a lot of cash. Our free cash flow conversion is around 115%, and that gives us a lot of optionality.

Speaker 1

So look ahead. Matt did a great job of saying where we have been and where we are, a lot of things that are great about this company. We have confidence in our future, okay? This is really the outlook for the Evergreen model over the years to come. Matt walked through why that's healthy, why that's doing well.

Speaker 1

I'm going to walk through in a few minutes how household penetration is a huge opportunity for us in the U. S, right, TheraBreath Hero, of course, these fast growing businesses. But litter and laundry are doing well and some other brands are driving growth as well. Mike will come up. He'll talk about the high growth rate the international business has.

Speaker 1

8% clip is very impressive. We have high aspirations for that business over the foreseeable future. Innovation, Carlos will come up and he'll talk about how we innovate. We've totally transformed over the last 5 or 10 years how we innovate, going from one vector to more like 4 or 5 different vectors. And then Stacy is going to come talk about what we've innovated.

Speaker 1

And so the new products we have, very excited about many of those, year 2 as well for some of the big launches we had last year. And then Surabhi will talk about our e commerce growth and being digitally savvy. I know our e com growth, you saw the chart that Matt provided, 2% going to 21%. This is an advantage for us, and we're going to continue to drive that forward, not just domestically, but globally. Focus on domestic and international M and A.

Speaker 1

M and A is a huge part of this company. So here's a new slide. This is back in the year 2000 and 1 or 2000, we had one power brand. It was ARM and HAMMER. We were a $1,000,000,000 business.

Speaker 1

Fast forward 24 years and we're ARM and HAMMER is around a $2,000,000,000 business, right, mid single digit CAGR over 20 years plus. That brand is known and loved by consumers across many categories. It's rare to have a brand that can play in so many different categories. And then that means we have $4,000,000,000 of businesses and brands that are not ARM and HAMMER. And that ability to identify, acquire, integrate and grow brands and businesses is a competitive advantage for us.

Speaker 1

And we're going to keep that and hold that dear, and we're going to continue to do that as well. Okay. Moving to the U. S. Story.

Speaker 1

We are hiring a new U. S. President and a new CFO, but today, I am the U. S. President as well.

Speaker 1

So domestically, our algorithm is 3%, right? The company is 4%, we do 3%, 8% and 5%, okay? We have a long track record of growth organically in the U. S, and we have a lot of confidence in our future. 3.5% this year, why do we have confidence in our future?

Speaker 1

We're leaders in growing categories. You'll see in a second, our categories are largely green. We thrive in difficult environments. Why? Private low exposure to private label, but also household and personal care are balanced.

Speaker 1

And then our acquisitions have room to run. Our 7 power brands fuel our growth. Matt showed a slide that said 70% of our sales and profits from those 7 brands in those 8 categories. In 2025, it's closer to 75%. So these brands are driving the company.

Speaker 1

Here's the snapshot and report card on the categories. So again, we're in the right categories. This isn't happenstance. We acquire businesses that get us into categories that we like the attributes of. Weighted average, 2.7 percent growth, largely green in 2024.

Speaker 1

That's fantastic. And then we're one of very few companies that do this, but here's the scorecard from our brands. This is our share growth. And again, 5 of 7 grew in 2024. So let's go to the individual businesses.

Speaker 1

Fabricare, our laundry business is growing at or above category averages, which is great, gaining share. In fact, we're at all time share highs. You look at the left side of the page, we're at 5% 18 years ago, and today we're at 14.5%. And why is that? Well, one thing that's working really well is our good, better, best strategy for ARM and HAMMER Laundry detergent.

Speaker 1

Orange Bottle is our value brand. ARM and HAMMER with Oxy is in the middle, which is our better offering. And then Deep Clean is our best offering, right? Consumers are picking up Deep Clean and they're sticking to it. The incrementality rate on Deep Clean is very impressive.

Speaker 1

Stacy is going to talk a little bit more about new products around Deep Clean, so stay tuned for that. Cat litter. Cat litter is same. We're growing at or above category rates. This is actually doubly impressive because a competitor was out of stock last year.

Speaker 1

And so we maintained largely maintained our share despite that, which is a great result. Hardball is a big opportunity. This is lightweight litter. And a year ago, we were around a 4 share. Today, we're around an 8 share, 7.5 share.

Speaker 1

If we get our fair share of the clumping litter category, that's about $100,000,000 opportunity. And so we're really encouraged by the progress we've made already on lightweight litter category. Hero and TheraBreath. So Hero is first up. Hero consumption is off the charts.

Speaker 1

It's 40% growth. It's driving the category. And we're not just talking about the Patch, we're talking about total acne. So we have the number one share in Patch, but we have the number one share in acne as a larger category. And we have a lot of room to run.

Speaker 1

Distribution has been fantastic. We have lots of distribution gains. We think there's more as we spread out on shelf. Our TDPs will continue to go up. But more importantly, it's household penetration.

Speaker 1

9% household penetration for Hero, 25% for the category. We're going to continue to invest our marketing dollars behind Hero to drive awareness. Similar story for TheraBreath. TheraBreath 40% plus consumption. It's driving the category.

Speaker 1

And it's not just the number 1 non alcohol mouthwash, it's actually the number 2 overall mouthwash. All time share highs for the year 17.5, but same story as Hero. A lot of room to run here too on distribution points. We've made some great gains. We think we're going to spread out even more on shelf in the years to come.

Speaker 1

You'll hear from Mike about Hero and TheraBreath for International. There's great momentum there as well. So household penetration, we're a 10 share in households for TheraBreath. But look at mouthwash, 65% of households have a mouthwash. And so again, we're going to invest marketing dollars and innovation behind this category.

Speaker 1

And as you look at the trend line over a long period of time, that just shows that we're the number 2 mouthwash, and we've been that way for the last 3 or 4 months. And then BATISTE. BATISTE is a category and a brand that is, has great growth, mid to high single digits and we're gaining share in BATISTE as well, hitting all time share highs.

Operator

You're are going

Speaker 1

to hear about innovation and even maybe some ad campaigns from Stacy, our CMO. VitaFusion, vitamins. This is a business that has declined a bit, but let's take a step back. Here is the category. The category doubled over the last 2 or 3 years.

Speaker 1

It went from $1,500,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 It's stabilized and it's flat now for these last 3 years. What's happening now? We're down a bit. We're down double digits. The good news is the category is starting to inflect, right?

Speaker 1

That's a green shoot that's happening. And what are we going to do about it? We brought forward and rapidly we broke glass in the organization to move innovation at a very fast clip. So we're launching an entirely renovated portfolio. This goes across all of our SKUs in terms of new and improved formula.

Speaker 1

That's number 1. Number 2, we're launching our most powerful vitamins ever. This is Power Plus Multivytes. Stacy will go into a little bit more detail. And then 3rd, there's a real need for sugar free in the category.

Speaker 1

And so many of our variants will be available sugar free. So those are these aren't me too innovations. These are going to be large investments and innovation, and we're going to support that with the marketing that it needs to be supported with. This is our in my opinion, this is what's going to help drive that business forward. And new products.

Speaker 1

So with that, I'm going to introduce Stacy, who's our new CMO, and she's going to tell you about what we have on tap for 2025.

Speaker 2

Hi, everyone. How are you? I am so excited to be here and to talk to you about our new products. So we're going to have a little bit of fun, okay? So let's start first with a review of what just happened in 2024.

Speaker 2

Matt mentioned that our new products drove 50% of our incremental growth for the company. So what you see here are 3 of our heaviest hitters. So let's talk first about Deep Clean. When dirt and stink run deep, we want you to clean deeper and you do this with Deep Clean and our consumers absolutely did that in 2024. So Deep Clean established that best tier category, but also drove incremental growth for the brand.

Speaker 2

So next up, we have ARM and HAMMER Power Sheets. And this really marries the ARM and HAMMER Clean with the convenience as well as the mess free format of a power sheet. So this allowed us to tap into the fastest growing segment in laundry. And last and certainly not least, we had ARM and HAMMER Hardball. ARM and HAMMER Hardball is our technologically advanced hardball lightweight litter.

Speaker 2

And so that makes cleaning your litter a breeze. So what I love about this story is, 1, there is a tremendous amount of runway with these items. So we're going to definitely invest in growing awareness and trial of these items so we can drive incremental growth in 2025. But furthermore, we're going to expand on each of these in 2025. So I'm going to take you through some of that, okay?

Speaker 2

All right. But before we get to our first innovation for 2025, let's take a look at the free and clear segment within the laundry category. This is a huge segment. It's $1,300,000,000 and it has absolutely been skyrocketing over the last couple of years. Now we already have some products that fit within this space, but we've identified an opportunity to capture an additional over $20,000,000 in incremental opportunity.

Speaker 2

So I'm going to talk you through how we're going to do just that. All right. So our first new product for 2025 is ARM and HAMMER Deep Clean. This is our free and clear detergent. And so as you would expect, this is catering to the consumer with more of a sensitive skin and it's certainly free of all of what you would expect.

Speaker 2

But the real game changer with this item is that we are the only brand with the SkinSafe certification. And this is something that's very meaningful to consumers as it gives them the assurance on product quality and safety. All right. So continuing with that theme, I'd like to introduce you to our ARM and HAMMER PowerSheets in a fragrant free format. So this is what I call uncompromised clean.

Speaker 2

So this is dermatologist tested, it's free of dyes and perfumes, but the real breakthrough is that this item has 50% more cleaning than the leading value brand, because our consumers do not want to compromise with their product choices. All right. Last but not least, we have ARM and HAMMER Plant Power. This is our clumping litter. And what's the scoop?

Speaker 2

The scoop is this. We are bringing our hardball technology into the natural segment. And this is why this is such a big deal. Consumers who buy natural litter feel that it doesn't do as good of a job to control odors and that's because many natural litters will use additives and those additives lead to mushy or brittle clumps. So with our hardball technology, we do not use additives in our natural version for superior clumping.

Speaker 2

So we really think that this is going to do very well in the natural segment and believe if we were to get our fair share, this could be over $30,000,000 for this product launch, all right? And that would be incremental. So moving on and Rick stole some of my thunder here. We are going all in on VitaFusion and we have 3 new initiatives planned for 2025. And we really are moving at lightning speed to make this happen.

Speaker 2

We are first going to introduce a new and improved formula. People, this is going to take taste to the next level. So I want you to imagine a burst of flavor, a velvety smooth texture. This is with our innovative heat resistant formula and softer chew. So not only that, we've also given our Multivites a kick with 10% more Vitamin A, C and E.

Speaker 2

So really excited about this launch. All right. What's up next? We've got VitaFusion Power Plus Multivites. This is our most advanced formula.

Speaker 2

We have formulated with 100% daily value or more of 10 essential ingredients. This is more than any other gummy in the market. And then we've supercharged our advanced formula for adult multis with calcium. We've given the women's multi a boost of choline. And last but certainly not least, we've given our men's multi a boost of CoQ10.

Speaker 2

So really excited about getting this item into the marketplace. All right. This is another teaser slide. This is where we're going next. Sugar is the biggest barrier preventing non users from using gummies.

Speaker 2

And it's no surprise then to see that sugar free gummies are really taking off in the last couple of years. So we plan to expand on our sugar free segment and portfolio of products. So this year we're launching Power C as well as Men's Multi. When you add those two products to our suite of sugar free items, this is going to represent more than 60% of VitaFusion sales in a sugar free variant. Because make no mistake, consumers do not want to compromise.

Speaker 2

We want to give them that same great update to the taste experience, but in a sugar free formula. So we know this one is going to go over really well. All right, switching gears. Rick talked about Hero and how much Hero is a key contributor to growth for Church and Dwight. So it's no surprise, we're going to continue to innovate for Hero.

Speaker 2

And specifically, I'd like to introduce you to our Hero Mighty Patch body patch. So I may be able to speak for all of you, but body acne is a real pain in the butt. It's also a pain in the chest, in the back and so forth. So it makes sense that we launch our largest patch. We call it our double XL patch, which is over 3 times the size of our next biggest patch, which is the surface patch.

Speaker 2

But again, the real game changer here is the notches that we've built into this patch. And so with these notches, it's for better adherence to your curved body parts. Also when you move, it adheres to your skin. So it stays put exactly where you want it and still gives you that same absorbing gunk within 6 to 8 hours that we're known for with our mighty patch pimple Patch. But now we can take care of that back knee and chest knee and so forth.

Speaker 2

So we're really excited about this item. So the last new product that I have for you and this is just for the first half of this year is I'd like to introduce you to Batiste Light Dry Shampoo because some days do call for a lighter dry shampoo like day 3 and day 4. But even more importantly, we know that non users do not want that white residue or that gritty texture that they can get sometimes from a dry shampoo. So I'm going to say to you that this is a triple threat. Our Batiste Light Dry Shampoo has no white residue, a lighter feel and a beautiful soft, soft fragrance in our mellow melon and matcha zen flavors.

Speaker 2

So again, consumers don't want to have to compromise. They're going to get the same great superior Batiste efficacy, but now in a lighter formula. So I'm really excited about this one. All right. So, I feel like I could not be leading marketing for Church and Dwight without showing you a spot or 2.

Speaker 2

So I do have 2 creative spots that are finished, they're ready to go. So you'll be seeing them first before anybody in the marketplace and we are launching Batiste Lite Dry Shampoo with these 2 new spots. So if the people behind the scenes could play the video. Wait, Batiste Light actually leaves no white residue? Well, guess I got to take dry shampoo out of my swear jar.

Speaker 2

Your what? My swear jar. Full of all those things I've sworn off forever.

Speaker 3

Who's that?

Speaker 4

Oh, that's just my ex.

Speaker 5

So, baby.

Speaker 6

He's cute. I know.

Speaker 7

Batiste Light Dry Shampoo, a lightweight finish with no white residue.

Speaker 3

Batiste, it goes on light. Dry shampoo, not for me.

Speaker 2

You used to say that about us, and now you've been just every night?

Speaker 4

Yeah. It's Batiste Light Dry Shampoo. It refreshes your hair and

Speaker 1

And it leaves no white residue, babe.

Speaker 8

Okay, now I'm hooked.

Speaker 7

Latisse Light Dry Shampoo, a lightweight finish with no white residue.

Speaker 2

Sometimes my job can be a lot of fun. So, we have a good time with that one. Alright. So, I'm going to leave you with this. This was just your teaser for 2025.

Speaker 2

This is what's launching in the first half of the year. Guys, we have more coming in the back half of the year. And so if I were you, you might be asking, so what's behind the magic that makes innovation, this innovation? And that I'm going to say is my intro for Carlos Linaris who heads up our R and D and he's going to walk you through just exactly how this innovation comes to you all in the marketplace. So thank you.

Speaker 2

That's what I've got for you.

Speaker 9

Okay. Thanks, Stacy. So a tough act to follow is the marketing and the ads. All right. Yes, so I'm here to talk to you a little bit about how we think about innovation and how we've kind of transformed innovation.

Speaker 9

And just a quick thing about myself, we haven't been in these forums. So I've been doing R and D innovation for now close to 40 years. Big company, about 20 years, Procter, J and J and then led some smaller midsized companies in both beauty and home. So I came to Church and Joy about 7.5 years ago, attracted by the brands, the culture and really kind of an invitation to innovate differently. So my kind of key messages today as I go through this is we have transformed how we innovate at Church and Dwight and I'll show you some of that.

Speaker 9

And it's also a unique approach that we've developed for Church and Dwight. So it is not a smaller version of what you may hear from some of our bigger competitors. It is unique and that's why we think it's sustainable. So let me first talk about what are we doing to create differently. So Rick mentioned this before, we've gone from 1 innovation source in a sense to 5.

Speaker 9

And not only are they additive, really the challenge here is how do you make them complementary and not competing. And I think that's part of what we do differently at Church and Dwight. So let me kind of give you a couple of different levels of why this complementary connection is very different for us. So when I joined the company, you kind of look at our portfolio and it continues to grow a lot of brands, a lot of diverse brands, a lot of diverse categories, and yet we're very proud of our revenue per employee. So that's a challenge when you look across the organization.

Speaker 9

So over time, we looked at it and the highs, how do you flip that model into an advantage into a strength? So our advantage today is we really want to connect a lot of these diverse dots, which really leads to innovation better than others do and probably in ways that others can't because we know personally, I know what the big companies can and can't do and they really can't break the silos the way that we can because of our size and our culture. So let me give you a kind of a very concrete example. Last year, we introduced Batiste Sweat activated. And how do we get there?

Speaker 9

So if you go across our brands and our categories, odor control, odor reduction is a common consumer need, right, whether it be oral care, laundry, litter, women's health, deodorants, you name it, that's a very common need. So rather than attack that individually by R and D department in a sense, we create these platform teams that go across and try to create scale. So the idea is, hey, if you're looking at odor, talk to each other across the organization and connect those dots better than others. And when we go talk to the outside world and our partners, we go to them as a company, not as an individual business unit. So the Batiste story is, one of our partners identified some things, some technologies that were really existing in other categories.

Speaker 9

And we were the first to bring them over into hair care. Others could have, but they never did because they're not really talking to each other, right. They're very vertical in how they do it. So that's kind of a bit of our magic with connecting these diverse competencies. And if you kind of elevate that to these 5 innovation sources, it's kind of the same story.

Speaker 9

Other people could do this, but in most companies, they've got one kind of dominant work stream for innovation. We've got these and they're not really competing. They're really complementary. So today, kind of end result is more than 50% of our pipeline is coming from these new innovation sources. So not only are we adding in terms of the contribution, but the total pipeline is actually now much better than it ever was before.

Speaker 9

So kind of once you have a great robust pipeline in a sense, now it's about making choices. So this is our other unique way of looking at our innovation across our categories, which is this very simple grid around science based innovation versus business growth. But this is really driving our behavior when we have a good strong portfolio is how do you make them bigger, kind of the arrows here. So whether it be choosing where do we make the marketing investments, where do we leverage these across different channels or where do we leverage these across international, it's all about creating the scale once you find something that you really, really like. So you step back, today our innovation portfolio is more balanced than it's ever been before across all the types of innovation.

Speaker 9

We have more transformational innovations, which are what we call our blue box, it's the upper right hand side. Stacy mentioned a few of those. We're very proud of all of those that are there. Sheets in particular, I've never seen a product where from early development all the way to launch, the consumers love them all the way through. We've never had a negative reaction to that product.

Speaker 9

It's really intuitive and loved. And we've got more coming. So unfortunately, we're here in the beginning of the year. There are some things that we'll reveal later on in the year because it's too soon, but we've got a very strong pipeline coming. And the last thing is we've got bigger bets, and that's just kind of the top of this grid here.

Speaker 9

We've got a lot of products that Stacy has mentioned a few of these. I'm not going to go through the list, and then Mike is going to talk a couple of these in the international portfolio too. Okay, and let's just talk results. So basically, if you look at all these together, we have now increased and accelerated our incremental net sales from historically was 1% to 1.5% to 1.5% to 2%. And our metric for innovation is INS, right, incremental net sales.

Speaker 9

So it is not other people measure it differently. This is not gross sales. This is not this is post cannibalization. So we're not just looking at replacing our products. Every time we're looking at innovation, we're looking at how does it grow and how does it add to the company's growth.

Speaker 9

That's why, as Rick and Matt mentioned, last year, we were contributing half of the growth was pure incremental growth from innovation. And if you step back and say, okay, when we kind of started this in 2017 or so versus today, given the size of the company, that change from 1% to 1.5% to 2% is really almost a 4x in incremental dollars every year, right, because the company has grown, so the challenge becomes bigger every year. As we drive that, we're looking at 4x what it was 7 years ago. So and it's also it's working, but it's also sustainable, right? We think 2024 was our best ever, 2025 is continued momentum.

Speaker 9

You said you've heard a couple of these. But we truly believe that the model, because of the way it's working for us, we think it's going to continue to contribute long term. And then one last piece to cover before I hand it over to Mike, kind of our global footprint. We've got 7 global centers, 4 of which are outside of the U. S.

Speaker 9

And each of them have very clear responsibilities. We have no overlap. We're too lean to have overlap within our categories. So you see the big flags there are our 7 global centers. And then we also have 6 regional sites, which are kind of the smaller ones.

Speaker 9

And this is really more about putting the basic, whether it be technical folks or regulatory folks, to help Mike and his team grow across around the world. The next thing kind of back to the connected story, all of these folks now, if you look at typical R and D products, packaging development and so forth, regulatory people feeding the global structure, our plants quality people and our innovation folks from marketing, they're all under one roof, they're one R and D organization. So that's why for us, that power of that connected team, again, it's another thing that probably the big guys can't do. They're much more vertical. The smaller guys don't have that luxury either.

Speaker 9

So it's another one of the advantages. Everybody is now marching towards a really humming innovation engine, to be honest. So as we look at this, we feel we've transformed R and D and innovation, but given where we're at today, we really feel confident that we're going to continue to do that going forward. And with that, I'm going to introduce Mike Reed heading up our international team.

Speaker 10

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Reed. I lead our Consumer International division as well as our Specialty Products group. And I'm delighted to have Chatej Shaba with us here today. So he'll take us through the SPD business in a few moments.

Speaker 10

So I'll focus on the international story. As you know, our Evergreen model for international is 8% organic growth per year. And just to ground everyone, we're about $1,100,000,000 in size. We operate kind of in 2 parts, but just under 2 thirds of our businesses through our subsidiary markets. We have 6 subs that we run: Canada, U.

Speaker 10

K, France, Mexico, Germany and Australia. The rest the 37% we run through our GMG businesses, our Global Markets Group. And we operate over 100 countries, and we work through Group. And we operate over 100 countries and we work through almost 400 valued distributor partners around the globe. And we support that with 5 regional offices, one in Shanghai, one in Singapore, one in Mumbai, London and Panama.

Speaker 10

And those offices continue to grow and add resources in order to support the growth that we've got in those respective regions. 2024 is an outstanding year and certainly capped off with a great Q4. Our submarkets grew almost 5% and our GMG business grew 19%. I'd point to a few things. Certainly over the last couple of years, we've had increasingly better service levels.

Speaker 10

That's one key part of it. But more importantly is we've had really consistent growth across the market, strong portfolio management, and we've really leveraged some of our new acquisitions, particularly here on Therabreath. They've been really strong drivers for us. Most importantly, if you look back a couple of years, but throughout the year, we've had really consistent growth across the quarter. So we're seeing broad based growth across brands, across markets and across quarters.

Speaker 10

So just again, just to reinforce the momentum and the confidence we have in our plan and our strategy, we've seen some really consistent growth and we see that continuing moving forward. If you look back over the course of the last 10 years, we had a little bit blip certainly during kind of COVID and some of those kind of tougher years, but kind of ex that, we've had really strong consistent growth for a really long period of time and we now have elevated our evergreen model to 8%, which we're really confident in. This came up early around we have about 18% of our business is international and that's still a fraction versus many of our competitors that have been on their international journey a lot longer than we have as a company. So this really gives us the kind of the opportunity and the momentum to keep growing. There's a lot of runway, both from a geographic point of view and also from a brand expansion point of view.

Speaker 10

So we see this not as a bad thing, but actually as real opportunity for us to grow and we're growing at a really fast clip. I think most notably is our brand portfolio travels extremely well and we leverage kind of 3 parts. One is we do leverage our U. S. Power brands like ARM and HAMMER, OxiClean, VitaFusion, etcetera.

Speaker 10

Those perform strongly across the globe in their respective categories. We also have a unique set of brands that are either internationally only or largely been built out of international. They're mostly OTC and personal care brands like Batiste, Derimar, Femfresh, Gravel, etcetera. Those are really high performing brands in many, many markets. And then I think we're doing an increasingly good job of accelerating our acquisitions and getting them to market quicker and having them a bigger part of our growth story.

Speaker 10

Hero and Therabraft certainly are the 2 notable ones there. Speaking of HERO, so last time when we were here, we talked about kind of how quickly we're going to roll out HERO to over 40 countries. In 2023, we moved to 12 pretty quickly where we could get registrations. We've moved to over 40 in 2024. We'll be in over 50 early in 2025.

Speaker 10

So this is the fastest we've rolled out a brand as we've acquired from a U. S. Business and taken it globally. And that will become the blueprint and the playbook for us on future acquisitions. But a really great job of getting this to market really quickly and we're seeing really strong success as a result.

Speaker 10

Sterimar, which we haven't talked a lot about in the past, is one of our biggest brands internationally. It's in over 90 countries. This year, we're celebrating our 50th anniversary, but really high CAGR growth for us. We have a very strong portfolio within the natural nasal hygiene space. This is a really important brand internationally that continues to grow and is a really important part of our portfolio.

Speaker 10

It's a little bit different than what you'll hear from the U. S. Domestic team. Stacy touched on the importance of innovation in BATISTE. We've certainly benefited that on our active SKUs with Sweat and Touch Activated.

Speaker 10

They've been really incremental additions to our international portfolio. BATISTE is the world's largest dry shampoo brand, widely distributed and a really strong grower for us. But innovation is a critical part of that, and we're seeing some really strong results in all our key markets. OxiClean has been a really great driver for us and focus, and it's not available in a lot of markets yet, but we'll continue to grow in terms of market expansion, but 20% growth last year and that's increasing our CAGR over the last few years. We are the number one powder brand in both Canada and Japan and we've since just launched into the liquid segment in our Japanese market.

Speaker 10

So really exciting opportunity for OxiClean to continue that momentum. It's got a long runway ahead. And then finally, from a brand point of view, I'd just touch on PowerSheets. So we don't have liquid laundry in many of the markets around the world, but PowerSheets is something we have pushed into. It certainly gives us an opportunity to establish a new segment in many of the world's geographies.

Speaker 10

We got into 12 markets in 2024. We're going to be in more than 25 by the end of 2025. We're already number 1 on Amazon in Mexico and there's really good momentum where we've got distribution. So this will continue to be a focus and we'll learn to see what we can do. We'll also pick up a good amount of the innovation pipeline from the U.

Speaker 10

S. Market as well. So really great opportunity to sort of lift and shift and see where we can get some momentum in a category we really haven't played in traditionally on a global scale. So we've got lots of things we invested in and lots of confidence in where we're growing as a brand or as a division rather. What I would point to is there's a few things here that's not an exhaustive list, but I think they're notable ones.

Speaker 10

In the middle of this year, we made an acquisition of a long time value partner in Japan, which is the graphical team. We see Japan scaling up over the next number of years as we add additional brands to the portfolio. We've implemented a major global ERP system, so it's easier for us to kind of work with on a global basis and as we grow our partners and can kind of grow with us. We widened our regulatory and IT infrastructure quite significantly and that is kind of lines up with the regional offices we have around the globe. We've expanded our offices in Panama and Singapore as the teams widen and as the business grows.

Speaker 10

We touched a little bit on here on Therabreath, really strong acquisitions for us. I think I would add just leveraging NPD from other markets, those two things combined have been a really big part of the growth story. And lastly, and Matt and Rick touched on it earlier, we are we have put resources from an M and A perspective in both Europe and APAC in order to start to get into the deal flow so we can look at international acquisitions. That would be in addition to leveraging any acquisitions we make from a U. S.

Speaker 10

Perspective. So this is, as I say, not an exhaustive list, but a lot of investment, a lot of support going into our international growth and it's certainly responding. We have a long runway ahead. So with that, I will pass over to Surbhi Pokhayal. Thank you.

Speaker 11

Thank you, Mike. Good seeing you all today. Introduction Surabhi Pokriya. I lead all things digital e commerce media and optimization for George and Dwight. I am super excited to represent our mighty batch of digital growth team at Church and Dwight.

Speaker 11

So this is the mighty batch I speak about. This is from our off-site where we were rowing where the U. S. Olympics team rose. That just tells you the kind of caliber we have, not in rowing but in digital for sure.

Speaker 11

And we row all in the North Star direction of accelerating e commerce and media for the organization. This is truly industry's best of breed talent that we have acquired in the company in recent years. Let's talk business. Matt and Rick both alluded to the percentage of our business that is from e commerce today. It is 21.something percent, way up head, shoulders and torsos from a lot of our competitors.

Speaker 11

We are, you know, if not the top tensile, top quartile for sure in all of CPG in terms of e commerce. I do want to remind that, you know, we are not in the business of calculating how much of our business is from e commerce. We just are present wherever our consumer is present. And especially after COVID, the convenience of buying online, right, whether it is your 2 am melatonin you need with your Last Smiler or your cat litter box that needs to be delivered at your front step, The consumer just loves convenience and we are riding that wave and making sure our products show up wherever they need to show up. So this is that incredible trajectory.

Speaker 11

As you look at earnings from our retailers even you will notice a lot of them have started publicly speaking to the amount of growth they see from e commerce. So you can connect the dots there of where the retailers are getting bulk of their business and where manufacturers like us are making sure we are getting a lot of our business as well. Let's talk share. So we have 7 power brands that you know of. 4 out of the 7 power brands have done incredibly well in 2024 where we are not just maintaining but growing share.

Speaker 11

I will speak to the biggest one in particular, Am and Hammer Landry. You know laundry is a big part of our Titanic. It contributes a ton to the growth of the organization. So we won online share not just in liquid laundry but sheets, unit dose and set boosters. And that speaks a lot, right, because laundry is typically considered a category that is meant to succeed in brick and mortar.

Speaker 11

But how we manage share today and just to qualify, online share does not just mean Amazon share for us, right? It means the target.com, walmart.com, kroger.com, all of that combined is where we are winning in all of these 4 brands. Aside from the 4 of 7 brands where we are winning in share, 70% of the brands that contribute to 70% of the sales, we are winning in each of them in terms of online share. Some notable ones being Zicam and Nair. TeraBreath of course, you know how phenomenal TeraBreath and Hero have been to our story.

Speaker 11

Hero has been a digitally native brand, so it's doing much more successful, being much more successful as we gain bigger and bigger brick and mortar distribution. I'll start this section just by re grounding us in terms of what our approach is, right? Like I said, we are here in this era of connecting content and commerce. You will note a lot of retailers are trying to seem into trying to be more social and community builders for the community for the consumers at large. But a lot of social channels also have aspiration to be retailers.

Speaker 11

So the lines are blurring between where is content shown and where is commerce happening. And we want to stay at the intersection of both commerce and content. So that's our priority one. 2nd, everything is buzzing AI. I am surprised I am the first one on stage to speak about AI, but I am sure you are also following a lot of news on this.

Speaker 11

We want to look at AI, which is not a hammer looking for a nail, but which is clear in terms of what's the business problem or context we are solving and how can AI enable us to do that. I'll share a couple of examples, especially in marketing creative and as you walk the halls, I welcome you guys to have more conversation on that. Lastly, in terms of e commerce global footprint, Mike spoke clearly how we are just 18% of our company's business comes from global today, little bit behind where our competition is and there's a ton of aspiration we have especially in expanding with respect to e commerce. I'll share a couple of examples how our new launches are doing amazingly well in every market that we launched. Speaking to our first pillar with respect to content and commerce, right?

Speaker 11

You are super familiar how social has become what I call the 3rd shelf of discovery, right? There's a physical shelf in store, there's a digital shelf that you go online and try to shop. And social is sometimes you're not even trying to shop, but you do a lot of serendipitous 2 am kind of shopping on social. So we are there at that moment of truth where the consumer discovers us why she's doing the endless scroll. We are super intentional about making sure we partner with both micro and key opinion leaders, influencers who impact how consumers make their decisions today.

Speaker 11

You'll see a couple of examples here, be it Alex Earl, Edgirl or Suni Lee, the Olympic gymnast and a lot of live streaming shopping that we have been doing in China for years now. The notable thing to see here is not just that over 10 of our brands have the highest number of video views on TikTok across all categories we operate in, But it's not just about views and followership. A lot of our content has industry leading engagement rate. And what engagement rate means is our consumers are not just liking and following our brands, they are commenting on our post, they are sharing our post, they are interacting and building community with us. So that's super meaningful for us because that's the long term loyalty and intimacy that we want to create with our consumers.

Speaker 11

2nd, we are super careful that we don't want to leave media as a dead end, right? We want to make sure that once the consumer is inspired by seeing an ad spot either on TV or TikTok, there is an ability for them to shop our products. So we are making sure that over 90% of every media that you see, be it YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or anywhere else, we will lead you to a cart in 1 to 2 clicks if you have the desire to shop our products. This is an example of, you know, one of the AI initiatives we are leading. You know, there's the concept of aspect ratio, right?

Speaker 11

You can shop on your 6 inch mobile phone, but you can also shop on your 60 inch television. AI is helping us make sure that creative is conducted in a way that there is less human touch involved and making sure that creative is valid both for the 6 inch screen and the 60 inch screen. So you will see a couple of, you know, snippets here both for ARM and HAMMER. And our partners like TikTok and Google make sure that they grade us to tell us how we are performing with respect to their expectations on showing up creative really well. So AI is super important not just in terms of showing up well on social creative, we also know that as the consumers shop for us online you spend no more than 5 seconds in our kind of what I call low consideration categories.

Speaker 11

So if you land on an Amazon or a walmart.com page, we have to make sure that the 5 seconds you spend looking for ARM and HAMMER laundry sheets, we make the right first impression on you that you are inspired to add us to the cart. So look at these examples. The score at the bottom left goes from 18.5 to 87.4. All that means is this is AI helping us do eyeball tracking on lookalike audiences to make sure that the creative we put out has the maximum eyeballs on it in that 5 second time on the retailer PDP. And this has done wonders for us because the more the creative is sticky, the higher chances are that the consumer converts and buys the product.

Speaker 11

Finally, speaking to the global footprint, Mike spoke eloquently to it. TeraBreath, Mighty Patch Hero and PowerSheets have done a lot for us. These are what I call category disruptors and even category creators. We launched them in markets where there were no sheets existed and no acne patches existed. And within 6 to 12 months, they ranked number 1 spot in several online retailers.

Speaker 11

TeraBread in particular, you'll notice an interesting retailer here, not many might be familiar, but Olive Young in Korea is the number one beauty retailer where TeraBreath quickly garnered a spot one. Similarly, Mighty Patch across France, Germany, Mexico became number 1 really, really quickly. So our products travel well, literally, quite literally. Finally, I'll wrap it up by saying our pace of growth on digital has been quite phenomenal, industry leading truly, but we are very focused on being clear about where to play and how to win on that. We have industry leading e commerce growth, but we are in aspiration and in true form making it as profitable as we can.

Speaker 11

So we are very choice full about what we sell online, when we sell online and where we sell online. We have unprecedented online market share today and we are on track to keep growing it. We are also super conscious about best ROI on our media spend. I may not have mentioned but about 82% of our marketing dollars today are digital media, which is why you see all the media there and we struggle to give you TV, you know, print spots that we used to have back in the past. So we have to print them specially for these kinds of events.

Speaker 11

So we have to make sure that our retail our media dollars stretch the highest. So the return on investment of that is super critical for us. In terms of category leadership and digital penetration, like I said, having rapid market launches like we did for Hero, TheraBreath and Sheets is critical and launching them online first gives us early dibs into what the consumer is feeling and gives us an opportunity to tweak them as needed as we do broader brick and mortar launches in those markets. We'll do a lot more on AI and technology both in martech and adtech and we lean on both large and smaller third party technology partnerships and that's one big area of impetus for us in the coming years. I'll close by saying, you know, the best way to predict the future is to create it and we are hard at it.

Speaker 11

Along those lines, there's a big business pivot we have in Specialty Products division and I welcome Chitit Sharma to share more on that turnaround story. Thank you.

Speaker 12

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Shitaj. I'm the leader for our Specialty Products division. It's really my honor and excitement to share with you the B2B arm of the company. Because for many of you, it may be a question, why does a CPG company even have SPD?

Speaker 12

And I want to show you what we are doing and how we are contributing to the growth of the company and how we'll keep growing and be a growth accelerator for the overall organization. As you all know, our evergreen growth model target is 5%, so let's see how we did last year. Last year as a division, we delivered over $300,000,000 in revenue. It's split 60% on our animal nutrition business and roughly 40% under our specialty chemicals division. But let's take a moment to look under the hood what really is SPD, specialty products division.

Speaker 12

Specialty products division has 3 businesses. The largest business we have is animal nutrition. I can ask you around how did Church and Dwight enter animal nutrition? It's very, very simple. You know, we sell Arm and Hammer, hopefully all of you are a user of our Arm and Hammer, which is the baking soda, you see samples here.

Speaker 12

Chemically, that's sodium bicarbonate. That same sodium bicarbonate, the company started feeding many, many decades ago to dairy cows. It helps with food digestion as well as better milk production. That's how we entered the world of animal nutrition. And now you fast forward, we are manufacturing both feed supplements, marketing and selling, but also pre and probiotics.

Speaker 12

Now there are lots of companies that say they sell probiotics. So what's special about us? We are truly unique. What we do, you can buy, if you're running a dairy operations or a poultry farm, you can buy probiotics, everybody will ship you in a bag and that's their probiotic sample. But what we do, we go to your operation.

Speaker 12

Let's say you're running a dairy farm, we'll come to your operation, we collect samples, we send those samples to our lab in Wisconsin, where our scientists analyze those samples, run it against our library of probiotics. We have over 82,000 probiotic streams. And then we match that for your unique need and create a truly customized solution. And we sell that under our Certilis brand. It's a great product that we are very, very proud of and you're going to see more about it.

Speaker 12

Our second biggest business is performance product. This truly is the core of the company. Performance product is where we sell, again, arm and hammer sodium bicarbonate. Remember the same baking soda I talked about? It's where are we selling it?

Speaker 12

Instead of selling in the half pound bag or a pound bag that you buy, or you may buy at large box chains, £5. We sell at £50 bags like you see on the screen here, or maybe up to a 1000 kilo tote. We're selling it for large B2B application, industrial, pool, but even lifesaving application like hemodialysis. So it's truly amazing what sodium bicarbonate can do and the number of application it has. The 3rd business that you may not have heard a lot about is our B2B business.

Speaker 12

This is where we take all the amazing brand the company has searched and dried. We customize their packaging and we sell them for commercial and professional applications in different channels, from Janssen, food services, hospitality. It's small, but I'm confident this business is poised for growth and you'll hear a lot more about, not just today, but in coming years from us. So SPD, you know, I joined the company roughly 2 years back. And when I came and I analyzed the results, as you can see, we have had inconsistent performance.

Speaker 12

So one of the very first thing we did as a leadership team, we looked at it and we said, what's our strategy going forward? We created a new vision for SPD and we launched a new strategy called SPD Reimagined. So I'm very excited to say that if you look at our results from last year after launching the strategy, we had an amazing turnaround. We went from negative 8% in 2023 to plus 7% organic sales growth in 2024. Now how did we do that?

Speaker 12

As I said, we have an amazing group, we have a very talented team of individuals, but we did core pillars in our strategy. First, we divested the non strategic non core assets. I think you've heard about we shut down our MegaLac, which was a dairy supplement business in Q1. We exited our food safety business in Q2. And what did that do?

Speaker 12

That allowed us to focus on portfolio optimization. Simply put, across the three businesses, we could focus on brands that drive profitability and channels where we can do more higher profitable growth. And that really helped us. Then next we shifted, just like the broader company you heard from Mike, international. International is a huge growth opportunity for SPD.

Speaker 12

And we are focusing on key countries, both in Eurasia as well as Latin America. Last year, actually, we hired new sales leaders, both for our Latin America business and for our Eurasia business. So we're very excited, the results we're seeing from that. And then we invested in marketing and innovation acceleration. And you will say, what did you invest?

Speaker 12

Again, when I joined, I was very surprised to see that we are part of a CPG company and we had no in house marketing, right? You heard from Stacy, our CMO. So just like marketing is core for CPG, it's essential for B2B business also, from both the right brand messaging, brand positioning and doing the omnichannel marketing, because the B2B customers are everywhere, just like we are. And what did that do? It's here's a great example I'm excited to share.

Speaker 12

We launched our Sertilis, remember the probiotic I talked about, the customized probiotic. We launched 2 new products last year, called them Hatchwell and Mova. So what are these products? So we have, as I said, over 80,000 strains of probiotics. Our scientists and our technical service team identified one of our poultry operators who are having issues, where the poultry chicken, they were dealing with mobility issues.

Speaker 12

The chicken couldn't walk to get the water and the food where it is. And guess what this was called? Before our marketing team, this product was called Sertilis, Enterococcus, Sicorum, something. So we all needed to be a PhD to understand what this product is. And this is where we rebranded it and we said, well, what does it do?

Speaker 12

MoveWell. Even I get it. When you hear the word move well, it's your chicken can move well, it can have a better quality of life and our production partners, they have higher productivity. These both these products, Hatchwell and MoveWell, have been great success for us and we're seeing a lot of engagement from our customers that is helping us grow again with our innovation acceleration and our portfolio optimization. International.

Speaker 12

International, we have a huge runway of growth. Last year, we grew 7%, and now international represent 28% of our sales in our animal nutrition business. But we have gained, we are continuing our product registration for our pre and probiotics, So Suttellus, Salmanax, Amax, our brands. And just last year alone, we added 15 new countries. So we're rapidly expanding where we're going to enter with these countries and keep growing hopefully much stronger than the average market growth rate.

Speaker 12

So to summarize, I'm very excited, hopefully you can hear that, that SPD is going to be, as Matt said, perennial growth driver. We're going to keep driving 5% based on these pillars. We're focusing on the right brands that will drive the portfolio optimization. International is a key, and we're excited with the growth we are seeing there and building on the whole strong marketing team that we have created and innovation acceleration. So it's going to really lead the way.

Speaker 12

With that, I'll pass it back to our CEO, Matt Farrell.

Operator

Okay. Thank you, Satish. Hey, many of you know I've been with the company for 18 years. And the one thing that's remarkable about Church and Dwight is its consistency. It made me wonder how does that actually happen.

Operator

And what we're known for is execution. And what that means is we do what we say we're going to do. That's the difference between a company that's consistently successful and one that is not. So you come to there's lots of analogies between sports and business. People roll their eyes when they hear them.

Operator

But one thing that is true is that the teams that have the best players win. So when you're investing, you're investing in people. This is Analyst Day, it's the one time a year you get a peek under the hood. You see some of the leaders of the company and they come up and kind of talk. I have the pleasure of working with these people every day.

Operator

We have exceptional leadership in this company. These are understated people, low ego, massive technical skill. And it's not just at the top, it's throughout our plants, it's in our laboratories, it's in our sales offices, it's throughout the company. And a lot of companies will say things like that and you kind of you'll be checking your watch or looking at your phone. But if you're trying to figure out why is this company so successful for so long, that's it.

Operator

It's the culture of this company, the kind of people we attract, the kind of people we recruit to the company. And many of you know I'm going to be leaving here in April 1, April fools' day. But this company is in such great shape, starting at the top with Rick and the management team that you're seeing here today and the strength that we have throughout the company. So it's a good time for me to walk off the field. So I'm going to move on now to how we run the company.

Operator

If you've owned the stock for a long time, if you can check your phone right now. But we have 5 operating principles, right? You've heard this before. And that's the thing about Church and Dwight. Many of the things you hear from us, you've heard last year, the year before, you hear it down here at the Stock Exchange, you hear it at CAGNY.

Operator

That's because we have an operating model, and we stick to it, and we execute it. Again, back to do you do what you say you're going to do. It's a personal commitment that we feel, not to the company and to each other. We said this is what we're going to pull off this coming year. So you heard a lot about our brands, about leveraging our brands.

Operator

We got great brands around the world. Second thing is friend of the environment. A little bit about that, that's very important to not just to our employees, but it's also important to our consumers. It's important to our retailers. And we have a long heritage and we're really proud of, starting back in the 19th century.

Operator

You've heard me talk about bird cards before. I'm going to show one of them in a minute. But I always take a little bit of time to talk about our heritage here. If you look at early 20th century, we were using recycled paper. We were the first to take phosphates out of liquid laundry detergent.

Operator

We've been planting trees since 2017. We planted millions of trees that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. And you remember all that from 5th grade, right, photosynthesis. And 100% of our global electricity is offset by green energy. And then we started we signed up for science based targets.

Operator

So we have these projects to take CO2 out of the atmosphere because we use a lot of CO2 when we're making baking soda. Here's one of those bird cards that we used to put in our yellow boxes. And if you can I don't know if you can read it very well, but it says useful birds of America? And at the very bottom, it says for the good of all, do not destroy the birds. And for those of you who are interested, you can still buy these.

Operator

These are the original bird cards. They're available on eBay. So buy now. This is not an advertisement for eBay. I just want to tell you.

Operator

I know some of many of you are very enthusiastic about the ARM and HAMMER brand. This is something we want to look into. All right, ESG, everybody gets measured on ESG. You can see we got great scores consistently 22, 23, 24. Third thing to talk about is leverage people.

Operator

We have a really lean shop. We've always had a really lean shop. Why is that important? It's because it forces you to prioritize. We only work on the stuff that matters.

Operator

So consequently, we have the highest revenue per employee of any of our peer group. So we got $6,000,000,000 in sales. We got 5,500 employees. So we got over $1,000,000 of sales per employee. And as Sarebi took us through, we're world class when it comes to e commerce.

Operator

And we got there because we put our minds to it. We knew we were bottom of the barrel in 2016. And now we're ahead of the pack. We really believe in a simple compensation structure. So everybody kind of knows where they are at all times.

Operator

We don't get involved with EVA or some of the other these complicated esoteric measurements. It's straight up net revenue, gross margin, cash, EPS and strategic initiatives, 20% each. And it's unusual for a company to have gross margin as part of incentive comp. What that does is promote financial literacy. When it's going to hit your pocketbook, you're going to say, hey, what is gross margin?

Operator

How do I get it? And that's kind of galvanizes the company. And the ways we get it, good to great, we like to joke within the company. This is the book everybody's heard about, but nobody's read. But that is the name of our continuous improvement program.

Operator

Supply chain is our bedrock when it comes to finding ways to save money. New products, we try to launch new products that have a higher gross margin than the ones that we're replacing. And then when we buy a business, we try to find a way to grow expand our gross margins as well. Now you've heard us talk about being asset light. That's very, very true.

Operator

We want to buy businesses that don't have plants. But for a long period of time, our average CapEx as a percentage of sales is 2%. And the other thing to keep in mind too is about is close to 30% of our finished products right now are made by 3rd parties. So that also helps us continue to be asset light. And finally, leverage acquisitions.

Operator

You do those first four right, you get good returns. If you're good at acquisitions, which we are, which Rick took you through earlier, we are good at identifying, targeting, acquiring and integrating. And you can blow it on any one of those 3. You pay too much, we don't integrate it, a disaster can happen. All right.

Operator

We've seen this slide before, a long history, a bit of a drought, 'twenty three, 'twenty four, but not for lack of trying. And now Rick is going to come up and take you through the 2025 outlook.

Speaker 1

All right. So let's turn to the 2025 outlook. We announced today that we're going to have a top line expectation of 3% to 4% organic, 25 basis points for gross margin expansion. You'll hear we have a little bit higher than historical inflation, more like 3% versus 2%. Marketing, 11% plus, probably in the range of 11% to 11.4%.

Speaker 1

So it's incremental because we're driving share gains, leverage SG and A and 7% to 8% EPS growth. And we expect to generate again $1,100,000,000 or so of cash flow, CFO. So we have a long track record of this growth, 2.5% to 3.5% is our outlook. But if you look at the track record, it's 6%. Why is that?

Speaker 1

It's M and A. We historically also do M and A. Organically, expectation is 3% to 4%, 10 year average is 4%. And that 3% to 4% is largely volume driven, and that's been the case for not just 1 year or 2 years, but for over a decade. It's our history.

Speaker 1

It's volume driven growth. I mentioned this earlier, gross margin expansion in 2025, 25 basis points, it gets us right back to 2019 levels. We believe we have more room to run as we have this productivity program that's a muscle, similar to how Carlos described the NPD and innovation process. It's analogous to how we do productivity. And we also have some fast growing acquisitions that have higher than corporate margins.

Speaker 1

Speaking of margin, I'll talk about 2025 really quick. Volume and mix largely give you a little bit of a benefit of 30 basis points is our expectation, a drag of 150 basis points and then offset by a large degree to productivity. That's what gets us to the 25% of expansion. And costs, I mentioned this earlier, but it's probably 40% or so from a commodity based perspective, and that's ethylene and resins are up and natural gas is up. But more so, it's also depreciation for new capacity.

Speaker 1

It's putting in new 3PL in the Northeast. It's other higher costs for our partners, co packers, as Matt mentioned. Marketing spend, 11% plus is the expectation in 2025. And then SG and A is leverage, leverage while making investments for what matters in terms of building capabilities, ecom, international. And then we've had a long track record of high single digit or even double digit EPS growth, and we expect 7% to 9% or 7% to 8% in 2025.

Speaker 1

And we put this in the release as well. There is some phasing, right? We're supporting some innovation with marketing in the front half of the year. We have a little bit higher revenue growth in the back part of the year, and so that's why there's a little bit more phasing of EPS growth in the second half. This is my favorite slide as the CFO, and it's probably still going to be one of my favorite slides in the future.

Speaker 1

And why is that? It enables us to do a lot of things. 115% free cash flow conversion means we can go do capital allocation, right? Cash flow matters more than most. And we get there a few different ways, but one of the ways we get there is we have a strong, tight way we manage working capital.

Speaker 1

We've gone from 52 days down into the 20s. We expect this to further improve as we look forward. And our balance sheet's never been stronger, 1.5 times debt to EBITDA. And that means we have this is the highest number we've ever had on this page too, over 6 $1,000,000,000 of firepower. This is dry powder to do M and A.

Speaker 1

This is fantastic. And this leads to what is our use of free cash flow? What's our capital allocation? Well, number 1 is M and A. Just because we haven't done a deal in the last 12 months or 24 months doesn't mean we're not working really hard at looking at deals.

Speaker 1

I would tell you that the ELT spends a lot of their time looking for the right deal. We think the number one value creating opportunity is looking for the next business or brand to buy, but we're going to be picky and fussy as we go through that process. Number 2 is CapEx. Number 3 is NPD. Number 4 is debt reduction, although that's hard to do when you've prepaid all your debt.

Speaker 1

And so now we just have fixed debt. And so we're waiting for a great acquisition to go borrow some more one day. And then return cash to shareholders. Matt covered this. This is we're not a capital intensive company.

Speaker 1

This matters when you look at free cash flow conversion. And then finally, dividend increase, long track record. I don't know what's longer than long, but 124 years is decades, a century or more of paying a dividend. Credibility, consistency, that's what Church and Dwight is known for. Now before I ask everybody to come up, I do want to acknowledge that we have a huge amount of confidence in our future, okay?

Speaker 1

And that you heard it from each person today, whether it was Mike on International, Saravia on Digital, I talked to the U. S. Business, I talked about our outlook for M and A. And the nuance there is just not in the U. S.

Speaker 1

We're looking at M and A both domestically and internationally. A year ago when Brian was here, who happens to be sick today, we told you that his team increased by 300%, right? So he went from 1 person to 4 people. So we have people in Europe, we have people in Singapore and Asia. So the focus on M and A is alive and well.

Speaker 1

I also want to acknowledge Matt. And Matt has been here for 18 years, right? And we just did a quick montage of New York Stock Exchange. He embodies the culture of this company, okay? We are where we are because of Matt Farrell, to a large degree.

Speaker 1

You just heard him talk about people. You just heard him talk about leadership. We are unique and different, and Matt's a big reason why. Here's a quick look back. So Matt joined the company back in 2006, dollars 2,000,000,000 revenue company.

Speaker 1

Now it's a $6,000,000,000 company. Market cap was $3,000,000,000 Now we're $26,000,000,000 But more than that, he's added capabilities, right, capabilities like e com, like pricing, things that we do that we take for granted. One of the great things about our culture is we're not insular. If there's something that we see that we think we can go after, we're going to run as fast as we can with speed and urgency in order to execute it. A lot of that, again, Matt certainly did that.

Speaker 1

So with that, I'll invite everybody else up and we'll take questions. All right. Why don't we start with Rupesh? Do we have microphones, Jill?

Operator

Hang on. One second. We got another seat.

Speaker 1

Here we go. All right.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks for taking my question. So maybe just starting with the Vitamin business. So a lot of enthusiasm on the innovation. And I know I think you ended the year with a double digit decline.

Speaker 5

So how are you thinking about the Vitamin business from a sales perspective this year?

Speaker 1

Yes. So the Vitamin business is one where, look, like I said in the comments, we really did break glass. We're moving with these aren't little I innovations. These are big I innovations in our opinion. So we're going to put the whole full force of the company behind that to launch them the right way.

Speaker 1

Our new CMO, Stacy, is right working with our leader, Bruce, to really make sure that we're telling the consumer the real core benefit again. So look, do we think the business is likely going to decline a little bit longer? Yes, we do. But what we want to see is an inflection point. And these innovations are going to help give us that confidence for an inflection point.

Speaker 5

Great. And then maybe my one follow-up question. Just on HERO. So you're in 40 countries going to 50 countries. Just curious if anything surprised you.

Speaker 5

And then as you look at consumption growth within international markets, like how that's trending versus your expectation?

Speaker 1

Yes. I would just say HERO has been a fantastic brand in the U. S. And as Mike alluded to, he, to go out, usually it takes us 2 years, 2 to 3 years to roll out a brand from the U. S.

Speaker 1

Acquisition to our international subs and distributors. But to do this within such a short time to be in 40 countries is fantastic. Mike, do you want to talk about some of the opportunities?

Speaker 10

Yes. I think my mic is yes, I'd say what we saw in the U. S. And what we're seeing internationally is the same story. So what I would say is early on, we got into most of our subsidiary markets, not all of them depending on registration timing.

Speaker 10

But those markets that we've entered, we're already in number one positions in patches really quickly, in some cases already number 1 in acne. And that's just with sort of the core suite of introductory SKUs. We haven't even tapped into the innovation pipeline yet. So many of the 40 countries that we've talked about, those are really early days. We're seeing really strong excitement and really good takeaway off shelf.

Speaker 10

So the consumption rate is where we expect it to be, actually much further than that, and that's before we've introduced NPD.

Speaker 1

Yes. I would tell you a quick story, Rupesh. I've been traveling a lot with Mike, and we have brand camps all over the world. And we have one in Vietnam, we had one in South America, I think in the Dominican. Punta Cana.

Speaker 1

Punta Cana, yes. And the distributor for South Africa was there, and he was one of the first to launch. And he was giving just case studies after case studies on HERO to all these other countries because it was he represents many other companies as well, number 1 SKU by far across all the companies that he represents. So I think that little microcosm is going to play itself out in many countries. Yes, Darr?

Speaker 13

Thanks. So Rick, Matt spent a lot of time talking about how the organization is in a great place, but there's always a chance under new leadership to refocus in specific areas or emphasize different areas. I'm just curious, any initial thoughts under your leadership as to maybe where you'll double down on or areas you'll emphasize more? And then also just a specific question on the way to Fusion side, given all this great innovation versus tough couple of years, do you expect to gain shelf space this year at retail? When does that sort of play out in terms of how you think about shelf space for the brand?

Speaker 1

Yes. So I'll take the second one first and then if Carlin has anything to add as well. Look, when the business is in decline, you're not going to go gain shelf space, right? So we got to make sure we have inflection points and then we can go do the sell in. We got to go show the retailer our strategy, right?

Speaker 1

And then we can go ask for more shelf space. But, so I don't expect to gain any more shelf space in vitamins. Anything you would add?

Speaker 7

Yes. It doesn't really

Speaker 1

add to

Speaker 7

it either. I would say, yes, we're definitely at an inflection point. So we've got to get the credibility, build that back up. We've got some great relationships with the retailers. So they're in it for the long game with us.

Speaker 1

Yes. So what would I do, what would I double down on or maybe different? Look, our strategy is working extremely well. We have a long track record of just fantastic growth and building capabilities, M and A, everything. 2 or 3 things come to mind.

Speaker 1

This is iterative, but I would say not because it's me, but because it's the right time, our international investment and our international growth. I thought Mike did a great job showing how we have these big aspirations, and we are under indexed to the peer group. So that's 1. We're going to continue down that path. Number 2, I would say, there are bigger bets.

Speaker 1

Carlos just walked you through how we innovate and Stacy talked about what we innovate. There are bigger bets to be made on innovation. Like too often, I think companies of our size and bigger don't put enough chips behind. When we believe there's a needle moving innovation, we should get behind it in a bigger way. So we're going to try that a few times, right?

Speaker 1

And then maybe the third is there are a handful of brands that we own. We own 80 brands. There's a handful of brands, in my opinion, and then we're going to work through this as a team on which ones they are, they could be bigger, but they are poised for more success. But stay tuned on that one. Yes, Andrea.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Congrats to both of you again on the new chapter. So just thinking of like the appropriate like a lot of has been in CPG thought about the appropriate level of investment. And given that you're correctly branching out to more categories or in a way a lot of more international, is 11% appropriate as it was in the Evergreen model up until the level that you are now? And then I have a question on M and A.

Speaker 6

What is the what are the capabilities that you want capabilities or categories that would rather have developed by externally or internally?

Speaker 1

Yes. So on the marketing investment, I care less about 11% or 11.2% or 11.4%. I care the most about how our shares are doing. Shares are, the marketing investments and input, the scorecard is how our shares are doing. If you look back at our track record, it happens to be that we've spent between 10.5%, 11.5% more often than not and our shares are healthy and gaining more often than not.

Speaker 1

So my scorecard is shares. I think 11.4% how we ended the year, 11% to 11.4%, All those numbers are interesting, but it's healthy. Some brands we spend in the 20s, some brands we spend 5%. But it kind of matters for that brand. Either it's a household personal care, it's different.

Speaker 1

So that's that one. M and A, Andrea, we don't ever go look at a category. That's just not how we work, right. We can only buy what's for sale. And so we become this is the team that becomes rapid experts when we go find a deal to look at.

Speaker 1

And we've probably spent 100 of this team's time, 100 of hours on due diligence this year. And more often than not, we're walking away because of a category dynamic that we learned about, high exposure private label or a company has a claim that they can make that, it's only a matter of time before they get in trouble for making that claim. And so we go do all that research after the fact. Capability building, I really like, as an example, what Hero did for us. Hero's digital prowess in terms of content creation, their speed and urgency to go test and bring innovation.

Speaker 1

But I don't know if Surabhi or Carlos, if you guys want to talk about like Hero capability or what acquisitions can do for us on capabilities?

Speaker 11

I'll add to what Rick was saying, right. Just a small anecdote, the average age of the Hero employee when we acquired them was between 25 to 28. That just tells you the amount of time and the amount of energy and the amount of background expertise they have that is more social and digitally savvy than the typical talent we had. So that's the kind of ingestion of talent we had through Hero and we percolated that through the ecosystem. And similarly, we had similar things on GNPI that Karl will speak on.

Speaker 9

Yes. I was just well, very quickly on the Hero one, I mean, I think every acquisition teaches you something. And it's certainly from the speed, the innovation and the partnership, they've got very strong partnerships outside that took them very long time to get there, and we've continued to leverage that. So we maintain that for the acquisition and then we leverage it across other brands as appropriate.

Operator

I want to add something to that. I was at a party out in Brooklyn last night. And Hero has a whole party every June and every January, so summer and winter. And I think one of the things we've learned and credit to Stacy, who managed the HERO integration, one of the things we've learned over the last few years is how do you interact and integrate a business with a very different culture in Church and Dwight with startup that's almost a virtual business with really world class digital marketers? How do you preserve that?

Operator

And 2 of the 3 founders were there last night, Chu and Andy. And they helped us preserve the magic. And I think a lot of companies struggle with doing that. So we learned a lot from that over the last few years. And I think that positions us well than in the future to also acquire, startups.

Speaker 1

Chris?

Speaker 14

Can I just ask about category growth going into 2025? I think sitting here a year ago, you established a 4% evergreen target. The outlook for this year, 3% to 4%. What are you embedding from a category growth perspective? Is that a little bit different from how you saw the world a year ago?

Speaker 14

I would assume yes. You also talked about dry powder to respond to competitive activity, I think, over the summer going into the back half of the year. So just in the context of this category growth dynamic, the outlook for 25%, what you had said about competitive activity, but we haven't really heard about that. How do all these things fit together in your view over the next 12 months? And I guess, the sanctity of 4% and how flexible that is?

Speaker 1

Yes, it's a good question. Rewind the clock a year ago, remember we said January through May categories, not us, categories were growing 4.5%, right? That's kind of a different window from where we are right now. But categories were off and running. Then in the summer, we said categories in general were growing closer to 2.5%.

Speaker 1

That's what happened for the balance of the year, 2.5%. And you just saw the category slide that I put up and overall categories grew 2.7%. I would say our fundamental baseline of understanding is categories are going to grow around that 2.5% growth rate next year.

Operator

And we are going

Speaker 1

to continue to take share and that's how we get to a range of whatever it is. Could be better, could be worse, but that's why we gave you a range of 3% to 4%. From a promotional perspective, I would say actually laundry is a good example, but laundry is pretty consistent as you look sequentially a bit, litter is up a little bit, litter is driven by a competitor who is still trying to get some of their share back. Happy to say that we kept over 50% of our share a year ago when that issue happened for them. So really happy where we ended up.

Speaker 1

So promotional levels are back to normal is what I would say from a pre COVID perspective and all that mixes in. And that's why we gave you a range of 3% to 4%. And if categories do better, we'll do better. If our shares do better, we could do well also. Anything you'd add?

Operator

Yes. I'm sort of the old man, the macro environmental guy. So when we look at the U. S. Consumer, we may have a different point of view than maybe some of the larger peers.

Operator

And we don't think anything has changed. We think that prices on shelf are high. Wages have not kept up with price increases. And that's not just CBG, it's food, beverage. We are all reading about the cost of rent, cost of insurance going up.

Operator

We read in the last couple of days that consumer confidence has declined a little bit and interest rates are still high. So we would say things really haven't changed from our point of view earlier in 2024. And we said, hey, we see an inflection. We think things are turning down a bit. And we think all those arrows and things that we considered when we said that are still in place.

Operator

So that's why we said, hey, this makes sense to call 3% to 4% top line for 2025.

Speaker 15

Maybe just to follow-up on that, just kind of the phasing of the growth, right? So 1Q, 2% organic sales growth, pretty decent step down from what you just delivered in the Q4. And the data that we can see doesn't look like that's kind of playing out. So what's really driving that? Are you just being conservative?

Speaker 15

Is there something we can't see? And then just kind of following up to Chris' point, just on the phasing, right, given a 2% start, 3% to 4% for the year, what kind of gets better from 1Q? Are you assuming the category kind of reaccelerates as you kind of cycle easier comparisons? Or is there something else that's driving that?

Speaker 1

Yes. I would probably simplify it to say there's 2 things. One is our international business. The GMG piece of it's a little lumpy sometimes, historically speaking, but it's going to be a little bit lighter in Q1. It will be a little bit heavier in other quarters.

Speaker 1

I would also say there were some club promotions that move around between Q1, Q2 and Q3. So that stuff is kind of normal. It's also an untracked channel. So you're not going to see that as much, but that's a simple answer. Anna?

Speaker 3

I just wanted to focus more on HERO and Therabreath. Maybe I can ask in a different way on the international opportunity for HERO. Is this kind of like basically should we think about it in a similar way to how the U. S. Market was a few years ago?

Speaker 3

Or are there more formidable competitors in those local markets where you're expanding? And then on TheraBreath, you mentioned significantly more household penetration is possible. So I was wondering if you have a better breakdown there of maybe the 0 alcohol mouthwash opportunity versus the alcohol mouthwash opportunity there? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. Mike, do you want to talk some more about Hero opportunity?

Speaker 10

Yes. So just on balance across international, we're seeing a very similar play out for the brand across most markets. There's no question there's different levels of competitive intensity, particularly more in the Far East where a lot of the patches kind of were born. So there's more competition there. But we broke it in quite successfully there.

Speaker 10

We have a really strong brand. We have really strong assets and we have a really strong pipeline. And so early indication is we'll be able to compete quite successfully there. But certainly as we've entered markets where we're the introductory patch, we're able to kind of gain a lot of share and a lot of momentum really quickly. It'll just be different competitive landscapes market by market, really, really confident in the brand and the pipeline.

Speaker 1

Yes. On the mouthwash side of it, I understand the segmentation of alcohol free and alcohol. I think we're starting to think about it a little bit differently now, right? Sometimes when we do deals and you convince yourself that you're number 1 or number 2 brand in a segment or a sub segment, we're saying, we're the number 2 overall player now. And so we believe we can play in all aspects of the entire category and do well and gain share and drive household penetration.

Operator

Here's a little bit of some numbers because we're maniacal about numbers. The mouthwash category grew 3%, but you look at alcohol and non alcohol, say nonalcohol is growing 7% and alcohol is down 1%. That's the math. So all the growth is on the nonalcohol side, and that's where we sit and that's where the category is growing.

Speaker 1

Yes. Olivia?

Speaker 4

Thank you and congrats to both of you. I want to talk about gross margin a little bit and a more muted gross margin expansion target for this year. So can you talk about the building blocks there? Seems like a lot of the innovation is more premium. And so what are the offsets that's holding back further expansion, particularly since it's part of the comp structure?

Speaker 4

And it's not material for you, but have you assumed more headwind from tariffs? It just came across the wires that it's 25% Canada and Mexico, 10% China. So if you could talk about maneuvers to offset that, that would be great. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. So in terms of supply chain and gross margin, gross margin expanding 25 basis points in the face of higher than normal inflation, we think is really good. So remember, historical inflation for us is 2%. You can go back for a decade or longer and see that. Then COVID happened and it got a lot choppier.

Speaker 1

So the yes, innovation is premium. Yes, we have fast growing businesses at a higher margin, but this headwind is still inflation, and it's moderate inflation is the word we used in, I think, the release and elsewhere. So we're doing really, in my mind, a really good job by offsetting inflation with productivity. Our productivity program is running on all cylinders. Rick Spahn or Carlos, would you guys want to talk about anything from a cost perspective that you want to highlight?

Speaker 5

Yes. So just from an input cost standpoint, inflation we're seeing is largely on a from a commodity standpoint on ethylene, which impacts high density polyethylene for us, post consumer regrind as well. Natural gas is up. So those were headwinds that we had. But as Rick referenced, our productivity program is alive and well and more productive than it ever has been.

Speaker 5

We had a fantastic year last year.

Speaker 1

Yes. And then your second question really on tariffs. Tariffs are we've been moving for years to limit our exposure, right? And we've said our outlook excludes any impact from tariffs as many competitors would say the same. And we are less exposed than others is what I would kind of handicap.

Speaker 1

We're going to continue to focus on local manufacturing when we can and do things with productivity to offset as best we can. And we'll see these are volatile situations, so we'll see how long it lasts and what happens. But we have a culture and a capability to be reactive when we need to be.

Speaker 10

Javier?

Speaker 16

If you could expand in 2 categories, again, vitamins, sorry about that one, but hopefully from a different angle, to what extent what is happening in drugstores has been incorporated into this repositioning or upgrade of the business. A lot of the category is now growing online, not the drugstores. And to what extent private label from the drugstore point of view is making the whole thing more difficult given the struggles of the channel. So that's point 1. The other is on detergents.

Speaker 16

How important is it that now you kind of like finally crack kind of like a best or the mid tier, something that you tried before, now you have it, it seems that it's gaining a lot of traction. Does it translate into more shelf space? This is a big category if you can expand how important it is strategically that your largest category, you seem to have a breakthrough? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean, ARM and HAMMER Laundry, I'll start with that one. Good, better, best situation. And we're extremely pleased. You know our history.

Speaker 1

You know that we tried to launch OxiClean into premium detergent. It didn't work. There is consumer confusion on the brand to be additive versus a laundry. Arm and Hammer, there's no confusion at all. And the incrementality is better than we expected.

Speaker 1

So when you hear Carlos talk about, we have a high bar for our NPD, incremental net sales. It's not a gross amount. It's not how much it sells. It's the incremental net cannibalization. And that is beating all of our metrics on incrementality.

Speaker 1

So it is working. The consumer is really pleased. Our reviews are really strong. Carla, anything you would add on just your assessment of Deep Clean and the acceptance?

Speaker 7

Yes. I think on the laundry side with Deep Clean, we're very, very pleased with what we're seeing. The retailers are pleased as well. So this was a piece of innovation that we worked for quite a while on. It wasn't just us developing and taking it in.

Speaker 7

So we were very collaborative in how we approached it. And I think the consumers are definitely speaking in terms of where we're picking up the incrementality piece probably to a greater extent than we even expected.

Speaker 1

And then Javier, really your second question is around vitamin. And I can't go into a lot of detail here, but I would just tell you, our strategy is applicable to classes of trade that we play in. It's applicable to what segments we play in. And a part of it is definitely the online strategy as well. Half of all vitamins are sold online.

Speaker 1

A third of all gummies are sold online. And so to win in the category, you can't just look at bricks and mortar and Turkana data. You really have to be a little bit more broad than that. And that is a big future for the gummy business is what we do online. Steve Powers.

Speaker 17

Thank you. Two questions, if I could. The first one, just to kick the tires a little bit on the ERP upgrade that you called out in the release. I'm assuming those costs are cash. Just clarify that.

Speaker 17

And then any risks or timing that, that may impact on sales cadence throughout the year as that rolls through? And then the second question is actually for Carlos. I don't know if there's a way to do this, but maybe of all the innovations that Stacy laid out for us for the first half, are there 1 or 2 that you would highlight that sort of uses the case study that says just exemplify the new product development and kind of highlight capabilities that exist today that maybe you couldn't have brought that product to life 5, 6, 7 years ago?

Speaker 10

Thanks.

Speaker 1

So on the ERP upgrade, no revenue recognition issues in 2025. That project won't go live until Q1, Q2 of 2026. So Kevin, anything you want to add on SAP and the ERP system?

Speaker 10

No. The SAP system is the lifeblood of our operation, and it's what enables a lot of what we heard about today. Technology drives our ability to acquire and grow.

Speaker 1

Yes. Carlos?

Speaker 9

Yes. We talked a little bit about Patiste. I talked about how we got there. So that will be one. But I think kind of that blue box with upper right, that's what we get excited about.

Speaker 9

I mean, hard boiled tomatoes and other example that's the litter. That's extruded sorghum. It's not the clays that are typical in this category. So that's a great example of open innovation. We went outside, found the partner that had the technology.

Speaker 9

We needed to change it and adapt it. So, Broader in house added our expertise on top of that, what you some of the aesthetics and fragrance work. And the other one example is, it's really it was about grains. And again, that team was used to dealing with clays. But we've got food people.

Speaker 9

We got food nutritionists in the building that say, okay, we know how to technically extrude grains and put those together. So it's identifying it, bringing it up and then meshing some of these things together. So it's almost like that number I threw out the 50%. Everything's got a little bit of a story. And sometimes frankly, it's hard to pinpoint one of the innovation sources as why the innovation worked.

Speaker 9

It's how they kind of come together. So I think those are 2 and you can go down the list and the sheets. We talk about sheets as a first branded product out there with sheets, but we were doing that internally and a lot of like design thinking and working with the consumer directly and they just kind of led us to that form. So that's another skill set of doing R and D work with Design Thinking with the consumer that got us to a form that is really delightful for them.

Speaker 10

Bonnie?

Speaker 2

I just wanted to ask about international. Rick, you sounded very excited about the growth and the opportunities there. So hoping for a little more color on the differences of growth that you're seeing in Global Markets Group versus the subsidiaries? And then maybe where you see the most upside? And then a second part of this is as you think about expanding and getting into new markets, how do you evaluate the risk getting into some of these new markets and opening them?

Speaker 2

And any learnings that you've had from past and what you're doing maybe differently and doing better? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. Okay. Well, you read me right. I am excited about it. And it's broad based.

Speaker 1

It's geography and the countries we go into, the brands that we're bringing, some brands that we're going global with. Oxyfleen is the example that Mike gave in the deck, and I thought it was a really good one. The distributor that we bought in Japan, there's other countries just like that story that will play out in my mind over the next 5 years. And it's all about we're probably 20 years behind most CPG companies on their way. And you can get there if you have a great brand portfolio like we do.

Speaker 1

Like we get a lot of acceptance when we go to a country when we have a new news, new brand for a retailer. But that's also why we put M and A high up there on the list for international. Like for the first time ever, we're going to say, yes, you know what, we want to buy incrementality. We want to buy some brands and build that capability in other countries. So Mike, anything you want to add?

Speaker 10

Yes. What I'd say is, I think from our current position is, we're encouraged because we've got broad based growth across the network. So I'd probably think about it in 3 ways. There's we've got kind of established subsidiaries that are kind of more mature, that are growing faster than market rates. So that's good news.

Speaker 10

Those are kind of the Canada, the UKs, the France's. We've got a couple of subs that are newer, like Germany and Mexico that are seeing double digit growth. So those are really strong contributors for us in mature markets. From a Global Markets Group perspective is we're seeing good broad based growth across multiple regions. For 2024, I'd point to LatAm and probably Eastern Europe as being 2 kind of standouts.

Speaker 10

But we've had great growth rates in the Middle East and we've had pockets of growth in country by country. But I think to answer your question around how we evaluate is every country is a little bit different. And what our route to market, how we partner, how we the competitive intensity market by market, that's all going to be a little bit different. What brands we can register, which ones we can't. So we're quite thoughtful about where do we have the right to win from a portfolio perspective, what brands can open the door and create scale.

Speaker 10

And that will there's more commonality than not, but there's going to be nuances market to market, but that's the way we're approaching

Speaker 12

it.

Speaker 1

Yes. Philippe?

Speaker 12

Thank you. So Rick, you talked about your 2025 guidance being mainly volume driven, and that's the history of the company over a long period of time. But if you were to see further commodity inflation from here, partially maybe because of tariffs, would you consider price increases in the U. S? And bigger picture, how you're seeing the competitive environment in the U.

Speaker 12

S. From a promotional activity? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Price increases are not really anything that's being discussed right now, right? The consumer is exhausted. And so companies, including ours, we're working extremely hard to offset any inflation. Even though we had higher than historical inflation this year and our expectation is, again, in 2025, we're offsetting that with productivity. And that's the expectation right now.

Speaker 1

If there's some sort of hyperinflation or hyper event, then time will tell on what has to happen. But if it's anywhere within normal bounds, companies are going to offset that.

Operator

Over here,

Speaker 8

Rick. Hi. Thank you. I'd like to touch a little bit on the great growth that you've seen with some of your newer brands, Hero and TheraBreath. You're obviously expanding internationally,

Speaker 11

but we will get to

Speaker 8

a point where you're going to have to start tough start comping really tough compares, and lapping that. So how are you thinking about that and the white space opportunities still have ahead to ensure that we're not quite at that point where that becomes a big challenge? And then related, can you touch a little bit on kind of how you're allocating your marketing and innovation dollars? We got a little bit of a glimpse of that today, but not too much for the second half of twenty twenty five. So any color you can give us on where you're spending and then your flexibility in that spend if new trends come up or new global issues come up that could come and provide a little bit more volatility?

Speaker 1

Yes. I think we have we still have a great growth profile for HERO and Therabreath for years to come, okay? Yes, when you look at those explosive consumption numbers, that can't continue forever. But we believe we have double digit growers for a long time. And why do we believe that?

Speaker 1

It goes back to household penetration. It goes back to brand awareness. And I'll let Stacy talk about brand awareness. We just reviewed it for Hero and Therabreath. But it's underwhelming still.

Speaker 1

And so we have a lot of opportunity to invest behind those two businesses. You can either fix a weakness and we're always problem solving, that's our culture. We're going to go improve every brand we have. But to double down on the strength matters too. And Hero and Therabreath are strengths, and we're going to get behind them in a big way.

Speaker 2

Yes. I think Rick just mentioned something really important, and that is our unaided and aided awareness are still fairly low for both of these brands. So I could not be more confident that our jobs are just to get out there and drive awareness on both of those brands so that we can attract new users and drive velocity to the products that we have at shelf. And I'm also thinking about our acne portfolio. Hero is about treating the life cycle of the pimple.

Speaker 2

So that really gives us a lot of runway for additional innovation spaces that we'll certainly tapping into as we move forward.

Speaker 1

And in terms of market allocation, I would just say we don't get into that level of detail. I would just say that for innovation, we're putting chips behind, of course, deep clean, things that you saw up here, deep clean laundry detergent, sheets, the BATIST launch, like all of our innovation, the vitamin innovation, we're putting dollars and investment behind all of those.

Operator

The only thing I'd add to that is there's a lot of written about, hey, heroin, thorough breath are pulling the train so much for Church and Dwight. And it's a little bit like the Olympics. You take out the highs and you take out the lows and then how's the core doing. And you got to keep in mind, our vitamin business has been dropping big business double digit and yet we're still growing over 4% on an annual basis. So you always got to look at context when you start pulling things in and out.

Speaker 1

All right. Matt, you want to close this?

Operator

Yes. Any other questions? All right. So this is my final trip to the stock exchange. A few people have asked me about how is that going today.

Operator

And my response is that it feels like it's happening in slow motion. So when you do this every year, it's sort of like, yes, it's something to do and then you're thinking about the next quarter and the year and CAGNY and whatnot, but not for me. And this is the last time for me. So I'm going to enjoy it today. So thank you all.

Operator

Many of you have become friends over the years. Many of you I'll see you at CAGNY. I look forward to that. But then, April Fools Day, April 1 will be my last day with the company. And as I've said before, I think this management team that you see here, the talent that we have in the company, our commitment to delivering not just for ourselves but for the investors is very strong in the company.

Operator

We've got a super strong balance sheet, lots of cash, got this competency to acquire businesses. This is a great company to bet on. So meeting is adjourned.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Remove Ads
Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
Church & Dwight Q4 & Investor Day 2024
00:00 / 00:00
Remove Ads