Mark A. Clouse
President, Chief Executive Officer & Director at Campbell Soup
Thanks, Rebecca. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter fiscal '24 earnings call. As you saw in our press release this morning, we once again delivered on our commitments with sequential improvement in volume trends and year-over-year operating margin expansion in both divisions. While it is true that category trends have slowed over the last year, I'm encouraged by a variety of stabilizing consumer indicators like consumer sentiment, household penetration, and average categories purchased. However, we are also continuing to see economic pressure impacting select categories in certain consumer demographics. While we expect these trends to improve over time, we're certainly not there yet. In the meantime, I continue to be very happy with our team's ability to control the controllables, including managing our supply chain and in market execution.
Looking ahead, we are affirming our full year outlook as we anticipate continued sequential improvement in topline earnings and margin progress, while sustaining our best-in-class navigation of this volatile environment. Carrie will elaborate on that a bit later.
With that strong foundation in place on the base business, we are eagerly anticipating the closing of the Sovos brands acquisition in the coming week, adding the best volume driven growth story and food to our portfolio. At an upcoming Investor Day in late June, we look forward to sharing the vision for Campbell's next chapter, driven by what will be one of the most focused and advantage portfolios in the industry.
Turning to slide 7, as expected, organic net sales in the second quarter decreased 1% to $2.5 billion, in line with consumption, with many of our brands exceeding their respective category growth rates and growing share. On a two-year compound annual growth rate basis, top [Technical Issues] grew 6%, adjusted EBIT increased 1% and adjusted EPS was comparable to the prior year, following double digit increases in both key measures a year ago.
On slide 8, we've highlighted the success of both businesses during the holiday season, including in strategic categories such as condensed cooking in our meals and beverages division and cookies in our snacks division. Our holiday focused brands delivered a 4% increase in total volume compared to the prior year, driven by our strong brand support programs, terrific in-store execution and robust consumer demand.
Specifically, we had healthy volume and dollar share gains across key seasonal categories such as condensed cooking soup, broth, Pepperidge Farm cookies and Pepperidge Farm stuffing. During the quarter, condensed cooking holiday volume share reached a five-year high with volume share gains in each of the nine weeks during the holiday period. In addition, we saw momentum in our snacks' portfolio with brands like Lance, Snack Factory and Late July, all reaching five-year highs in volume share. Importantly, we delivered these results while addressing an important question about our ability to achieve this while also balancing profitability. I believe we demonstrated this, evidenced by the operating margin expansion in both divisions.
Turning to slide 9, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the topline expectations for the second half of the fiscal year, as this is both an important driver and a somewhat difficult area to forecast. As we have consistently shared since providing initial guidance, our net sales expectations reflect a range of timelines for the category stabilization and consumer recovery.
Our results through Q2 have been aligned with our outlook. As we look at far easier comparisons ahead, we remain confident in modest sequential improvement throughout the remainder of fiscal 2024. More specifically, we expect flat to low single digit organic net sales growth in Q3, with continued sequential improvement in the fourth quarter. Although this trajectory suggests the lower end of our net sales guidance range, we have half the year remaining and a variety of compelling drivers to help accelerate the recovery.
With our supply chain in full force, effective marketing and accelerating innovation and strong but disciplined promotional activity, we look forward to monitoring the pace of consumer recovery closely, with in-market results serving as a clear indicator of that progress.
Turning to our meals and beverages business, we experienced a low single digit organic net sales decline in the second quarter, which as expected, tracked closely to consumption. On a two-year compound annual growth rate basis, top line grew 4% while consumption grew 2%. For the balance of the year, we remain confident in the growth and margin trajectory of this business as consumers continue to seek out our brands for value and quality in a dynamic environment and year ago comparisons moderate significantly.
Turning to slide 11, consumers continue to prioritize value as shown by their preference for home cooked meals, purchasing food that help them prepare stretchable meals, and smaller and less frequent shopping trips. Our soup portfolio is especially well suited to meet these needs. Our condensed cooking portfolio saw both dollar and volume share increase in the quarter, marking the 6th consecutive quarter we've held or grew both metrics. We also saw similar strength in our broth portfolio, with Swanson Broth and stock growing above the category rate, and dollar consumption up 13%.In addition, while growing consumption, this portion of our portfolio also had dollar and volume share gains in the quarter.
While the eating soup landscape remains more challenging, we did see sequential improvement in the second quarter as it relates to dollar share on Chunky and our condensed eating portfolio. The longer-term outlook for ready to serve soup remains quite strong, supported by a combination of continued Chunky innovation and marketing, expansion of the successful launch of Pacific Ready to Eat soup, and we're also excited about the impact of including the strength of the super-premium Rao's soup line, adding approximately a full point of share growth to the portfolio.
On slide 12, let's look more broadly at what the potential next chapter of this great division could be as we prepare to welcome the talented Sovos team to Campbell's. As we announced last month, both companies have certified substantial compliance with the Federal Trade Commission's second request, and we're excited to be one step closer to completing the acquisition. Just last week, with their fourth quarter and full year fiscal '23 earnings results, Sovos announced that they had surpassed $1 billion in annual net sales, a 16% increase versus prior year led by Rao's, which continues to showcase its premium brand equity with consumers, with dollar consumption up nearly 32% in pasta sauce and 53% in the combined frozen meals and pizza segment jarred soup and dry pasta categories.
When paired with our meals and beverages iconic category leading brands and our distinctive fast growing Pacific Foods brand, the Sovos brand's portfolio will strengthen the division for years to come. In fact, although not an apples-to-apples comparison, if we were to simply overlay Sovos results in the last quarter with our meals and beverage results, we would have gained approximately four points of organic topline growth. Imagine for a moment now the value of combining this with our differentiated snacks portfolio, and you can appreciate our confidence in the strength of this portfolio headed into the future.
So now let's turn to our differentiated snacks business on Slide 13. We delivered a second quarter organic net sales increase of 1%, a point ahead of consumption in measured channels. Our power brands net sales grew 4% following a 20% increase in the prior year for 12% growth on a two-year compound annual rate basis. We were pleased with the net sales performance on brands such as Goldfish, Lance, Kettle Brand and Cape Cod, adding to the remarkable track record of our power brands portfolio even as consumers continue to navigate a tough economic environment.
During the quarter, we experienced anticipated pockets of pressure in some of our lower margin businesses, specifically partner brands and fresh bakery. We continue to balance short-term competitiveness and sustainable margins while taking steps to optimize this portfolio for the future. Partner brands were a one-point growth headwind to the portfolio. Although we expect this to continue going forward, it further strengthens the focus of our portfolio on our advantage power brands.
On the next slide, we highlight the sustained resilience of our power brands as dollar consumption has grown 24% versus two years ago. We're encouraged by the continued appetite for our core portfolio, which now represents two-thirds of total snacks net sales. More importantly, we see continued progress on dollar share as power brands have held or gained share for seven straight quarters.
Turning to Slide 15, I want to highlight our Goldfish business which has now held or grown dollar share for six consecutive quarters. Our exciting innovations, proven limited time only strategy and strong marketing execution have fueled continued momentum for our portfolio, and our latest innovation, Goldfish crisps, are off to an amazing start. Launched in January, we realized strong velocities greater than other recent category launches, and it has exceeded our initial expectations as we begin to move Goldfish into adjacent occasions. The news on Goldfish gets even more exciting, Goldfish has now officially crossed $1 billion in net sales, making it the second billion-dollar brand in our portfolio alongside Campbell's iconic Red and White soup.
Our strategy over the past few years and our continued innovation momentum has propelled Goldfish to its next phase of growth. We remain excited about this brand's momentum and see an incredible road for growth ahead, as we strive to make Goldfish a North American Mega Brand.
On Slide 17, I am also excited to share the continued progress we've made on our snacks margin roadmap. On a two-year compound annual growth rate basis, we grew organic net sales by 8% and operating earnings by 15%, with approximately 200 basis points of margin expansion. We've made great progress this year and remain on track to finish fiscal '24 at an operating margin of approximately 15%. And as we continue to solidify our margin roadmap, we are confident in our ability to add about 100 basis points per year for the next couple of years, thus reaching our target of 17% operating margin for the division by the end of fiscal '26.
Even more exciting is the fact that as we further refine our route to market and direct store delivery, or DSD model, we are identifying even more potential efficiencies and savings to fund further investment in the brands or to further expand operating margins beyond 17% in the future.
Turning to our DSD transformation initiative on Slide 18, I wanted to provide an update on our route strategy, which adds another important element for our plans to create essentially a single snacks network. As we discussed during our first quarter earnings call, we're already executing the integration of our warehouse and depot network, as well as upgrading technology across our network and the independent distributor network with the goal of improving efficiency and effectiveness. This leaves independent distributor DSD routes as our next optimization area. Today, the majority of our routes are already operating efficiently where the scale of the business supports separate routes for Pepperidge Farm snacks and Snyder's Lance, we expect no change in these routes. However, for some of our routes, we do not have enough scale to help maximize the economics or efficiency of these routes if they remain separated. To solve this, we've been testing the combination of the entire snacks' portfolio on one truck.
In these limited, under-scaled markets, we purchase certain Pepperidge Farm snacks and Snyder's Lance routes, combine them and sell the combined routes back to independent distributors. We're seeing that beyond the efficiency of this, independent distributors have an opportunity to provide better execution and improve service for our customers. When we pair this improved route with our already existing plans to combine the warehouse system into a single location, the net impact should create better scale and help unlock growth for our business, while also helping to benefit both the area independent distributors and our customers with more compelling economics.
It's still early days, but the results we have seen thus far give us confidence to expand our pilots and execute a pay-as-you-go model in creating these combo routes. We expect to convert about a fifth of the snacks' routes nationwide into combo routes over a multi-year roadmap. This plan will not require significant upfront financial outlay, and as I mentioned earlier, we plan to manage it as a pay-as-you-go model.
Let me share a little more detail behind this strategy. First, these routes will vary in location, including urban, rural and suburban areas. Second, there are no plans to combine the Pepperidge Farm bakery routes as the focus is on gaining scale and capturing growth across our snacks portfolio. Third, in markets where we've executed this strategy, the time between purchase and resale has been swift. And finally, given the financial attractiveness of these routes, we're seeing a meaningful increase in multi-route ownership by experienced independent distributors that are existing snacks and bakery IDPs.
So, wrapping up the second quarter was another solid and consistent quarter while keeping us on track for the year. Looking ahead, there is so much to be excited about as we continue the transformation of Campbell's. And again, we look forward to providing these details this summer in a full Investor Day.
Next up, Carrie will take you through the second quarter and the second half outlook in a bit more detail.
