Hershey Q3 2021 (Q&A) Earnings Results & Report

Hershey EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.10
• Consensus EPS: $2.00
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.10
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.86
• EPS Beat Rate: 8 of last 8 quarters

Hershey Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $2.36 billion
• Expected Revenue: $2.33 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$34.61 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +6.30%

The Hershey (NYSE:HSY) Company (NYSE: HSY) is a global confectionery and snack food manufacturer headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894, the company began as a chocolate producer and has grown into one of the largest branded snack businesses in North America.

Hershey’s portfolio includes chocolate, non-chocolate confectionery, gum and mints, and salty snacks. Its brands include Hershey’s, Reese’s, Hershey’s Kisses, Kit Kat in the United States under license from Nestlé, Jolly Rancher, Twizzlers, Ice Breakers, SkinnyPop and Dot’s Pretzels. The company sells products through retail, convenience, grocery, mass merchandise, e-commerce and other distribution channels.

Hershey serves consumers in the United States and international markets, with operations and commercial activities extending across North America and selected markets in Latin America, Asia and other regions. The company’s products are sold in numerous countries through a combination of company operations, retail partnerships and licensing arrangements.

Hershey Q3 2021 (Q&A) Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Hershey sees elevated post-COVID demand as sustainable, noting broad-based category growth and emotional “happy moments” that support new take-home routines.
• Ongoing supply chain constraints—including labor shortages and logistics pressures—have forced targeted cuts to advertising where capacity can’t meet incremental demand.
• The company has taken rational pricing actions aligned with competitors, expecting pricing to contribute more to sales growth, especially in the first half of 2022.
• Gross margins will face continued headwinds from raw‐material, packaging and labor inflation plus elevated logistics costs through at least H1 2022, partially offset by price increases.
• Hershey plans ongoing capacity expansions—including new production and packaging lines, an agile fulfillment center and digital/ERP investments—to support future volume growth.

Presentation

[Operator]

I'd now like to turn this call over to your host, Miss Melissa Poole, Vice President of Investor Relations for The Hershey Company. Thank you. You may begin.

[Melissa Poole, VP of Investor Relations at The Hershey Company]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for The Hershey Company's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Q&A session. I hope everyone has had the chance to read our press release and listen to our prerecorded management discussion, both of which are available on our website. In addition, we have posted a transcript of the prerecorded remarks. At the conclusion of today's live Q&A session, we will also post a transcript and audio replay of this call. Please note that during today's Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These statements include expectations and assumptions regarding the company's future operations and financial performance, including expectations and assumptions related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Actual results could differ materially from those projected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other factors.

[Melissa Poole, VP of Investor Relations at The Hershey Company]

The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements based on subsequent events. A detailed listing of such risks and uncertainties can be found in today's press release and the company's SEC filings. Finally, please note that we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe will provide useful information for investors. The presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations to the GAAP results are included in this morning's press release. Joining me today are Hershey's Chairman and CEO, Michele Buck, and Hershey's Senior Vice President and CFO, Steve Voskuil. With that, I will turn it over to the operator for the first question.

[Operator]

At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary for you to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. One moment while we poll for questions. Our first question comes to the line of Jason English with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed with your question.

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, good morning, folks. Thanks for starting me off.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Good morning.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Morning.

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Congrats. Morning. Congrats on a strong quarter, particularly given the strength that you're cycling the prior year. But despite the strength, I can't help but remember that sugary snacks have lost some of their sweetness pre-COVID with little, if any, volumetric growth. COVID's clearly rejuvenated demand, and your capacity expansion effort seems to suggest that you believe that demand is gonna stick. My question to you is why? Why shouldn't we believe that demand is just gonna leak back out in the next year or two?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah, Jason. As we look at the growth that we've seen, the category growth has really been pretty broad-based. It's really cut across regions, it's cut across cohorts. As we speak with consumers, you know, we hear that some of that elevation of those take-home behaviors and new routines that occurred during COVID, that some of those will stick and sustain. Perhaps not all of them, not to the degree to which, you know, people were, you know, suggested that they shouldn't leave their homes. We do believe that some of those will stick and stay around based on what we're hearing and seeing. We do also see some of that continued strength as people are out and about and mobility increases, and that we're seeing a pretty good balance there.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

The other thing we've heard from consumers, you know, repeatedly that we've seen over the years is kind of the emotional aspect of the category and how it fits with kind of good and happy moments. As those happy moments have continued to increase, as people, I think, are starting to believe they see somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel in us working through the pandemic, those moments of happiness that were really associated with, we see continuing. That's really our perspective is a lot of those routines, we think some of which will just continue into the future. That said, there are a lot of unknowns. You know, we certainly none of us knew any of this was gonna happen, and so we can't perfectly predict the future.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

As it comes to capacity investments, what we've tried to do is be really prudent in our investment strategy. We've leaned in places, on brands where we have clearly seen sustained growth over time, and there's a lot of proof points that capacity will pay off. You know, REESE'S is a great example of that. Frankly, there are a couple other places where we had elevated demands that we, you know, we held for a bit before leaning into that capacity until we really thought we were at a point where we could guarantee the ROI. It is a bit of a balancing act, but, at this point, we are bullish on the future.

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

That's helpful context. Thank you. I too like happy moments. One more question, then I'll pass it on. In your prepared remarks, you touched on your collaborative space planning with retailers and resulting acceleration growth for both you and your categories. Can you elaborate a bit on that, what's going on with the initiative and maybe provide some specifics on the changes that are being enacted by the retailers? Thank you. I'll pass it on.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. I'm sorry. Can you just repeat the very first part of the question I missed?

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Well, your collaborative space planning with retailers.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Oh, yes.

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

You were talking about it in your prepared remarks. Give us more specifics, like what is it? What's happened? What are the changes that are being enacted on the back end of it?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yep, absolutely. I would say over time, given that strong partnership we've had with retailers and particularly a lot of our category management expertise around analytics, we've always partnered with retailers in terms of how to think about the placement of confection in their store and ways to optimize category growth, whether that's looking at heat maps of how people travel through convenience stores or years back when we found underutilized space under the checkout counter in convenience stores and we put category there. Recently, a lot of the focus from our retailers or there's been a big focus around, you know, the labor shortage and thus, a push for even more presence of self-checkout.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

We've partnered really closely with those retailers to increase the presence of the category at self-checkout. To maximize the presence in those queuing lines leading up to checkout and particularly self-checkout. I mean, it's a perfect fit with some of the struggles they're having around labor, and a great opportunity to get the category out there and make sure that people don't miss that chance to have that last impulse purchase. I think our retailers are always focused on, you know, what's going on in the environment that they need to address in terms of their store layout. Fortunately, we've been able to help them with some of that.

[Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays. You may proceed with your question.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director and Equity Analyst at Barclays]

Great. Thanks so much. Maybe just first off, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of competitive response with respect to the pricing moves that you've announced, and how that impacts your expectations on elasticity. Because obviously thus far, while early, you know, it would seem like, you know, volume trends have held up, you know, remarkably well in response to the pricing that you've taken.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Sure. As we have always seen in this category, it tends to be a very rational category relative to pricing. You know, our most recent pricing actions are on track, and we have seen several competitors take pricing actions this year, including over the past several weeks. We don't really expect that we'll see any material changes in pricing on shelf versus the competition, any changes in gap, et cetera.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director and Equity Analyst at Barclays]

Great. I guess more to Steve. I certainly understand all the moving parts on the supply chain right now, which makes getting overly specific, right, on 2022 certainly a bit of a challenge. If we take it, you know, from the top line, you know, consumption trends remain very, very elevated. Hershey's got more pricing coming through and has had inventories depleted for really what will be, I guess, two years in a row. I would think all these things provide a, you know, reasonably good line of sight to at least kind of a non-alarmist sort of type of year, at least on sales in 2022. Again, unless I'm sort of missing something, and please point it out if I am.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director and Equity Analyst at Barclays]

On the profitability side next year, obviously, you've already talked about, and I understand there'll be supply chain pressures at least through the first half of the year. I guess my question is, would you expect the year-over-year gross margin pressure to sort of sequentially improve, as you move through the first half as sort of the pricing flows through and you make improvements to the supply chain or are gross margin pressures, you know, potentially expected to be, you know, as, let's say, severe in the first half as maybe what you're seeing in the back half of this year?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Sure. Maybe I'll just start with the top line as you started. You know, I think you're right. As we look at it today, it's hard to point to something that would say you don't have a non-alarming top line. You know, we'll have momentum coming out of this year. We've got the long Easter. You mentioned pricing, which will be a bigger factor next year than it was this year. We also would hope we see some capacity improvements, would give us some upside. Then at some point, inventory replenishment. I think that's hard to call. But that we would expect to see some of that certainly over the course of next year. So still volatile, but I agree with the first premise. As you get into gross margin, I think there still are a lot of moving pieces.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

You know, some of the things I think we can directionally point to, you know, obviously the pricing will have a tailwind on gross margin. As we look at raw materials, the raw material inflation wasn't a big factor for us this year. We expect it will be a bigger factor as we look at next year. Logistics inflation that we're seeing now, you know, I don't think we see a reason yet for that to break at least through the first half of next year. You know, we'll have less spot market activity because some of the, you know, we'll be, say, better positioned for some of the stronger consumer demand than we were, particularly in the third quarter.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

We still expect to see some labor inflation, and as we said in the prepared remarks, you know, we've increased headcount to respond to some of the additional demands. Packaging inflation and resins, I think we keep waiting for that to break, and it's probably moderated, but it hasn't reverted back to other levels or lower levels. I think at least through the first half, we're gonna see that still remain a pressure point. And then we'll see how capacity plays out in the broader supply chain network. You know, the challenges we've had with logistics and trucks and warehousing and all of those labor implications.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

When you step back from all of that, I'd say the gross margin piece is still has a lot of moving pieces, and I think we'll give more clarity, obviously, when we get to February and provide full guidance. Right now, I'd say particularly through the first half of the year, we're gonna see a lot of those cost pressures in place.

[Andrew Lazar, Managing Director and Equity Analyst at Barclays]

Great. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. You may proceed with your question.

[Robert Moskow, Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail at Credit Suisse]

Hi. Michele, I wanted to ask about the decision to reduce advertising for the year. I guess it makes sense in the context of supply chain challenges, and if you can't get the inventory where you want, you know, why advertise? But you know, the stock's done well and your sales have done well because of the market share gains. I just wanted to know if you think there's risk to market share erosion from this decision. Do you think your competitors are doing the same thing so it won't matter? How did you evaluate the risk and reward of that?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. First of all, I would say there is not a strategic change to our business model.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

We remain committed to investing in brands at some of the highest levels in our industry across the peer group. There's nothing that has changed about the strategy, so I wanna be clear about that. Yeah, as we looked at the decision, you know, it really was driven by the fact that we have such elevated demand, and given that the supply chain challenges just wouldn't enable us to be able to meet the further demand that we would create through our very impactful advertising, that it just didn't make sense. It put more pressure on the supply chain, and also we probably wouldn't get a good ROI because we wouldn't be able to fulfill that incremental demand. You know, if we look at our market share right now, we don't think that the advertising cuts that we have executed impacted our share in Q3.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

You know, we're not the only ones having supply chain challenges and issues. Overall, I think across the board, even in the industry, we're seeing a lot of people manage advertising to supply as a challenge. We'll continue to focus on optimizing it. We will invest as much as we can, as much as we think we can sell. Certainly, we're investing in capacity going forward, and we are very agile in how we're handling support behind our brands.

[Robert Moskow, Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail at Credit Suisse]

Okay. Can you give us any update on Halloween? Will Halloween just kinda blow right through inventory or, you know, were you also challenged to fulfill demand for Halloween, just like, you know, other products?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. It is a very strong Halloween season, the biggest that we've ever had, you know, with very strong, double-digit growth on top of the strength that we had last year. We have done our very best to get as much product out there as possible. Certainly, I would say, you know, supply pressures hit every aspect of the business. You know, Halloween season would be a piece of that. We are really excited about the growth that we've seen year-to-date, both in the category as well as on our own business, seeing lots of very picked-over shelves out there as I'm out in stores. It's gonna be a good trick-or-treat based on everything we've heard from consumers as well as people really flock back to that behavior.

[Robert Moskow, Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail at Credit Suisse]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman with JP Morgan. You may proceed with your question.

[Ken Goldman, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Hi. Thanks so much. I wanted to start by asking about your perception of your labor relations right now. We've had a couple strikes, obviously, in the food at home industry, so I'm just curious for any updates, how you see the risks there, and so forth?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. Absolutely. We are very focused on our labor. First and foremost, I would just want to, again, publicly acknowledge and thank our manufacturing employees. We have folks in our plants who have been with the company for 20, 30, 40 years, and it's really their focus, their dedication from the very beginning that has enabled us to demonstrate and deliver the growth that we've been able to during this very dynamic environment. You know, we have very long focused and believed and operated in a way that we believe we are the best advocates for the needs of our people. We are in constant communication with our employees, and we're really focused on our total employee value proposition with those employees. We know that we have highly competitive wage rates, we have excellent benefits, and we routinely benchmark all of that.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

We're also very focused on the softer factors that are very important to our employees, and that includes, especially during these times of global supply chain challenge, work-life balance, stress management, flexibility in hours, being able to get time off. We have enacted a lot of strategies to really try and help with that. You know, we have an always on recruiting approach, and we have really amplified our recruiting efforts this year to be able to successfully manage through the challenges and increase our net headcount. We've also leveraged analytics to, as I said, understand some of the things most important to our workforce. We're very focused on that. We are very focused on prioritizing the needs of that group and continuing to look at ways that we can, you know, optimize the situation in terms of supply and demand. We feel pretty good about that.

[Ken Goldman, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Great. Thank you for that. Then a quick one for Steve. You know, Steve, year-to-date, your corporate other expense line has been up, you know, fairly meaningfully from both 2020 and 2019. I realize that grows, you know, somewhat in line with sales. But I'm just curious, how we should think about when sort of an ongoing annual number for that corporate line is, especially as we think about modeling 2022. Are there any, you know, potential one-time headwinds we should be thinking about that maybe go away next year, or is this kind of a good run rate to think about?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. You'll see, you know, incentive compensation is one of the big pieces in there, and as we turn the page to next year, that'll be one item that resets. Otherwise, there's not as much change. You know, we talked about this year we had some planned investments in ERP and digital. We'll have some of those kind of investments, I expect, next year. We also had a little bit heavier medical claims and benefits impacts this year coming off of COVID. You know, that may or may not continue next year, but probably the incentive reset will be the biggest year-over-year change as we start the next year.

[Ken Goldman, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America. You may proceed with your question.

[Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America]

Hi. Good morning, everybody.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Good morning.

[Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America]

Maybe just to tie one more up on 2022. I guess, Steve, just below the operating profit line, you know, this year there's been some benefit from interest expense being lower. So I guess my question is just as we're looking in the next year and we're just looking at our models below the operating profit line. Is there anything that we should be thinking about in terms of puts and takes there?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. Nothing major. I think if I was to look at, you know, tax this year has been lumpy. If I look at where we sort of set the final guidance for the year from a tax standpoint, and I look to next year, I expect, you know, relatively similar level for next year. You know, we had some one-timers this year that will not recur next year. We talked about it in the second quarter and to some extent this quarter as well. If I kind of take those out and I look at the effective tax position, I see that the same. Interest expense, I don't expect a lot of change probably flat year-over-year. I hope that helps. Not much movement year-over-year other than the one-timers.

[Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America]

Yeah. No, that's helpful. Just to follow up on the capacity expansion, I guess two questions related to that. One is what type of investment is it? Meaning is it like physical you know, like actual physical product production lines? Is it investment in, like, further down the manufacturing like packaging capacity or just trying to get a sense of actually what type of capacity you're adding.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yes. We're adding capacity on both in terms of production, product production as well as packaging, you know, across multiple brands. I think we spoke before about building our agile fulfillment center, that is up and coming online, so it's really across the board.

[Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America]

If we're thinking about or if you could give us a sense of with the capacity now that you're planning to add, just where you stand now in terms of like capacity utilization or available capacity. I guess what's underneath my question is we've been sort of, you know, adding incrementally to this CapEx over the last couple of years and just trying to get an understanding of whether we're gonna stay in this elevated cycle for a while, or are we getting to the point where you feel like you're gonna have, you know, enough flexibility in capacity.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

I'd start by saying capacity utilization varies by brand and piece of the business. Each brand is in a slightly different position. You know, we certainly have invested, you know, several hundred million dollars to install at least nine new lines since the pandemic began, and we do have more plans for 2023 and for 2024. Steve, do you wanna talk a little bit more about where we are in that total investment?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. If you look back really the last two years and this year, you know, we have done a lot of infrastructure spending. You know, we talked about the agile fulfillment center. We've got a Canadian DC that's in process. And of course, the ERP transformation which is a big component as well. Now I'd say we have to finish those projects, but are pivoting more towards the capacity side. I think, you know, like we talked about machines, packaging, so far we haven't had the need to build buildings and infrastructure of that sort. As we look at the total, you know, next year, as we talked about, we have slight increase versus this year from a CapEx standpoint, really due to project timing this year more than anything else.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

As we look further out, you know, we'll give more guidance on that as we get into next year.

[Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America]

Okay, thanks. I'll leave it there. Thanks, everyone.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets. You may proceed with your question.

[Nik Modi, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Michele, I wanted to ask about market share. You know, if you could just give us some context. Obviously, I think a big question has been how much of the share gains Hershey's had over the last, you know, 12-18 months, and how much of that will stick, and looks like quite a bit is sticking. Can you just talk about, you know, where you see the most stickiness, where things have retrenched? Then, you know, obviously discussions are taking place now about 2022 shelf allocation. Just wanted to get some of your early thoughts on how you think you'll progress there.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah, sure. Since the pandemic, you know, we have been able to hold on to about 50% of the market share gains that we had realized. You know, we see certain areas of the business where those numbers are very strong. Seasons in particular, as we mentioned in our remarks, you know, we had gained 500 basis points, and we held on to about 75% of that. Take-home also has been very strong in terms of our retention. We're pleased with what we've been able to hold on to. As we continue to unlock more capacity and reinstate some of that advertising, we believe that we'll see some continued strength going forward.

[Nik Modi, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Just a follow-up on assortment, because I know that's been a big area that retailers have been focused on given all the supply chain challenges. As you kind of engage with retailers regarding space with some of your initiatives, how are you guys thinking about your overall assortment on the shelf?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. I would say, you know, we know that assortment bags are really big sellers with consumers, and there's been a trend toward that, particularly during the seasons and especially during Halloween. We have definitely seen that part of the category tick up relative to assortment bags. If I look broadly at assortments and what is on the shelf, you know, what we've been trying to do is to optimize our portfolio of SKUs for right now based on what consumer demand is, where the demand is, and availability of capacity.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

We've really prioritized a lot of our core items, the, you know, the core of the core of the core items, which are the highest velocity item, even to the point where we're focusing in some places on shelf, you will see, you know, double facing of those items as opposed to the presence of perhaps some second or third-tier items. We've spent a lot of time on this, and we think we've taken a really smart approach that has enabled us to generate that very positive demand and at the same time maximize the available output that we have on capacity and on supply.

[Nik Modi, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets]

Excellent. Thank you. I'll pass it on.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. You may proceed with your question.

[Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Good morning. Thank you.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Good morning.

[Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Just wanted to come back to the trajectory of some capacity relief. I know you've quantified the deload hit for this year. Just in terms of at least how you're planning for it, assuming now that's all set for next year, can you give a sense of how you expect that to unfold and just how soon you can start to see relief and reloading retailer inventories?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Steve, you wanna talk about that?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. I think it's hard to call exactly how that's gonna phase over next year. You know, as we've talked about in the prepared remarks, we've got capacity that's come online this year. We've got more coming online next year. I think, you know, between consumer demand and our capacity coming online, it's gonna be a challenge to kind of quarterly profile that. We'll share more in February. I will have a better picture at that point.

[Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Is the issue more the production lines or labor, or is it both?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

It's a bit of both. Labor only from availability, you know, like everyone. You know, we've done a lot of hiring this year. We talked about it again in the prepared remarks. We've increased headcount, but we've also seen more attrition than we've had in the past. There's a labor component, but there's also a machine capacity component.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. I'd also say there's been a logistics and shipping component as well, although we've been able to take some actions and have seen some improvement on that.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

That's right.

[Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Okay, thanks. You mentioned in the prepared remarks about the strength in unmeasured channels and just how your total sell-through is stronger than what we see in the measured channels. Can you give a sense of if there's any certain products or channels in particular driving that and just how sustainable it might be?

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah, I mean, we're seeing it be up versus the pre-pandemic levels. I think over two year it's relatively in line with what we would call as normal. Low single digit growth is kind of what you should be thinking there.

[Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Okay. Thanks a lot.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Alexia Howard with Bernstein. You may proceed with your question.

[Alexia Howard, Research Analyst of US Foods at Bernstein]

Good morning, everyone.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Good morning.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Morning.

[Alexia Howard, Research Analyst of US Foods at Bernstein]

Great. Two questions from me. Firstly, you mentioned in the prepared remarks that some of the emerging markets are still holding up well. I wonder if you could give us a quick tour of India, Brazil, and Mexico. How large are they collectively, and what are the main initiatives in those areas? I have a follow-up.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. I'm happy to.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Steve, do you wanna talk about the size and-

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. The three markets are doing well. I think we tried the same point, I think, on the second quarter call, but we're gaining share in all three of those markets in our key brands. We're pleased with the progress that we're making. You know, you can continue to see it back from the top line, you know, the benefits of some of the go-to-market work, including the model in China, but also efficiencies in the other markets. We're pleased with the way things are going. As we look to the fourth quarter, some of the same capacity challenges that we've seen in the U.S. and North America are gonna have some impact on those markets as well.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Really pleased with the distribution gains we've seen, the velocity and the share across those three markets.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah, I'd say in terms of the key initiatives, you know, I would probably bucket them across in terms of it is investing in the core. You know, India, we're still focused on the chocolate expansion and broadening that. In Mexico, you know, we have both a strong chocolate portfolio as well as Pelón Pelo Rico in the sweets area. In Brazil, continuing to fill out our portfolio. You know, we launched Halloween in Brazil for the first time. We had a premium dark line that came out in Brazil a while back that's been very successful. Across all of those markets, investing to continue to build those brands and to build distribution, I think are really the key priorities there.

[Alexia Howard, Research Analyst of US Foods at Bernstein]

Great. As a follow-up, I didn't see any reference to the e-commerce channels in the prepared remarks this time around. Has that channel slowed down materially? Obviously, it was very elevated during the pandemic. I'm just wondering what's happening over there and whether that's becoming maybe less of a focus this year.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. Overall, I think perhaps not totally unexpectedly from a broad consumer perspective, overall trips to stores, both brick and mortar and e-commerce are up, both versus 2020 and 2019. You know, in-store trips have pretty much rebounded to the pre-pandemic levels. In e-commerce, what we've seen is that trips have largely maintained versus last year, but we have seen the dollars per trip go down as many of those consumers who were more exclusively purchasing in e-commerce shifted more of their spend back into brick and mortar. Most of the e-commerce shoppers are not exclusively e-commerce. They shop omni-channel. We saw some of that shifting occur.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

You know, relative to our business in particular, our e-commerce retail sales are up versus last year with our omni-channel partners, despite the significant growth that, you know, we had a year ago, and also despite the significant growth that we're seeing in bricks and mortar as well.

[Alexia Howard, Research Analyst of US Foods at Bernstein]

Great. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

[Operator]

Our next question comes to the line of Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. You may proceed with your question.

[Steve Powers, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Yeah, hey, thanks. Good morning. You know, just back to the capacity question again. Just with the timing of exactly when you might be able to alleviate pressure on those most capacity constraints, Bryan, it's hard to call, as you talked about with Michael. I guess I wanted to cycle back to Robert's question and just get a sense for, you know, how long you think this lower run rate on marketing could continue and how long you'd be comfortable letting it run, just given the competitive backdrop.

[Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah, I mean, I think relative to the marketing investment, I mean, we are continuously being agile and flexible. As we are able to either bring new capacity online or make adjustments in how we are operating, we've had a lot of focus in things like freeing up additional capacity by reducing changeovers, by focusing on poor SKUs. I'd say we're in a period of continuous improvement, both in terms of capacity investment and maximizing the capacity we have. We closely monitor that so that as we do see upticks, we can then quickly reassess and adjust our spending accordingly.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. All I would add is, you know, we've talked in the past about the analytics that we have around our media investment. You know, we put a lot of our own investment in building out that analytics capability. Don't think of the media cut as sort of a peanut butter approach. It's very surgical. It's very precise to the areas where we have capacity constraints and very protective of the high ROI core brand advertising.

[Steve Powers, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I guess, just if I could, how much of that analytics and those considerations are driven by your internal, you know, sort of aspects that are internal to you and your control and your capacity versus the competitive backdrop, right? Right now it sounds like, you know, you and competitors are all in a kind of similar spot, and so as you pull back, you're not overly concerned about, you know, share of voice being lost, et cetera. If you felt you were more offside on capacity relative to competitors and saw them ticking things up, you know, how does that factor in? Would you be ramping up ahead of capacity on marketing just to maintain that share of voice?How do you think about that?

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

You know, our retail sales team has very strong presence in stores. We, between what's on air and what's on shelves and what's being promoted, you know, we have very good data coming back on what's happening from a competitive set, and all of that does feed into the decision as we think about how we're gonna optimize our marketing and media spend.

[Steve Powers, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Okay. Okay, great. You know, just one last question, if I could. You called out the price increase executed recently in the U.S. and your expectation for pricing to play a bigger role in next year's growth, which makes good sense. Is there any color you can provide just in terms of the cadence of how you expect, you know, net realized price to flow? Is it gonna be relatively even throughout the year? Is it, you know, does it build? Just any context there would be helpful. Thank you.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Yeah. We're gonna have more in the first half of 2022. Think about the most recent price increase will kick in in the first quarter, plus we'll have carryover from the price increases that we announced earlier this year. The first half will have more price relative to the back half.

[Steve Powers, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Perfect. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes to the line of Jonathan Feeney with Consumer Edge. You may proceed with your question.

[Jonathan Feeney, Director of Research and Head of Product at Consumer Edge]

Hey, good morning, and thanks. Just a quick one from me. I'm trying to understand for Q3 and your numbers. I'm off by a few days, and your numbers are probably better than mine, but clearly, I have 9.7% for pricing in measured pricing in Q3 U.S. scanner channels. You know, when pricing broadly is at retail is ahead of what wholesale pricing appears to be, what's going on, and does that tell us something about you know, the kind of pricing you'd expect to flow through? Is there any you know, possibility that you know, retailers are kinda margining up a little bit you know, at least relative to what you would consider standard operations? Thanks very much.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

Sure. We're not seeing retailers margin up in a material way. What you do see is a lot of impact of mix in retail. I mean, you really gotta click down to get down to pack type and really see what's happening. When you get down to that level, it is consistent more than what you see when you look at it just at the top level.

[Jonathan Feeney, Director of Research and Head of Product at Consumer Edge]

Gotcha. You'd say it's more of a mix phenomenon than.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

That's right.

[Jonathan Feeney, Director of Research and Head of Product at Consumer Edge]

that I'm looking at. Cool. Thanks very much.

[Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO at The Hershey Company]

You bet.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of today's question and answer session. I would like to turn this call back over to Ms. Melissa Poole for closing remarks.

[Melissa Poole, VP of Investor Relations at The Hershey Company]

Thanks so much for joining us this morning. We'll certainly be available throughout the day for any additional questions you may have. Have a great day.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Participants

Executives

• Melissa Poole, VP of Investor Relations
• Michele Buck, Chairman and CEO
• Steve Voskuil, SVP and CFO

Analysts

• Alexia Howard, Research Analyst of US Foods at Bernstein
• Andrew Lazar, Managing Director and Equity Analyst at Barclays
• Bryan Spillane, Managing Director of Equity Research at Bank of America
• Jason English, Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
• Jonathan Feeney, Director of Research and Head of Product at Consumer Edge
• Ken Goldman, Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan
• Michael Lavery, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler
• Nik Modi, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets
• Robert Moskow, Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail at Credit Suisse
• Steve Powers, Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank