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Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (CHD)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Mon, Feb 5, 2018

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Transcript

Kevin Grundy - Jefferies LLC

Management

Thanks. Kevin Grundy with Jefferies. I wanted to start, Matt, with your take on the pricing environment. There's been a lot of discussion on it in the marketplace. We've had a lot of disappointing results from some of your peers. Your quarter was actually quite good in that respect. So, a couple of questions related to that. How are the pricing discussions going? I understand that you guys often don't lead in terms of when pricing is taken in the industry. But I guess what investors are wrestling with, has something changed here within the construct of private label, within what's going on with Walmart and Amazon. Is there less ability to take pricing? Do brands seem to matter less? Is that what's causing some of the perhaps reluctance to take pricing at this point? And then, maybe you could just sort of wrap into that, how much pricing, if any, is baked into your 3% guidance for fiscal 2018. Thanks. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: I'll try to remember your six questions, so I can get them in order. Well, for starters, you've heard Rick comment about the trend in price, if you look at our organic number, so there was a big price in Q2, less in Q3, less in Q4. So, the trend is favorable. Second thing is commodities. When you have that kind of commodity pressure, that should tamper everyone's appetite to drop price and to compete on price. A third thing I would say is that generally when it comes to price, you really need to have a pretty significant position in a category. So, for baking soda, we have a 75% share, condoms 70% share, those you might expect, you might be able to take some price. But generally, you…

Jason M. Gere - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Thanks. Maybe talking on the gross margin a little bit, the confidence you have in the flat gross margin outlook. So, I know we've talked about – maybe you talk about where you're locked into some of your commodity costs, the Good to Great program. And then, is pricing – kind of dovetailing off of Kevin's question, is that still an option if commodity costs still run a little bit higher? So, just looking at the HPC landscape and the confidence you have that flat is the right number. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Well, I'm going to let Rick – the two Ricks comment on that. But I'll begin by saying that we have a very robust Good to Great program. So, our continuous improvement program, we're already working on 2019, and we could tell you what programs we have in 2019. Sometimes when you're debottlenecking things, you have to do one thing before you do the next. So, we know going into the year that we have things to offset commodity increases. The second thing is, yeah, we do have a hedging program, and I can ask Rick to comment on that. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. From a gross margin perspective, we're about 50% hedged on our key commodities. We have seven of them that we track all the time. I walked you through some of the movements in key commodities. But the other tailwind we have is some of the mix is, I think, going our way with – as the personal care business has continued to improve over time. So, that's going to help. I'll let Rick opine on the G2G program, but we've had some great incremental steps in our productivity program. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Rick, maybe you can comment on opportunities in the supply chain. Rick Spann - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah, sure. So, we are certainly renewing our focus on the Good to Great program. We are exploring areas that – where we felt as though the pipeline had gone dry. But now with some changes in our focus, we're able to dig into new areas to increase our delivery on Good to Great. So, as Matt said, the pipeline, we're looking at a pipeline through 2019, and of course, focusing this year on bringing home a good delivery of savings in 2018. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Bill?

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Bill Chappell, SunTrust. I had two questions. One on the International, just maybe a little more color – I don't know what the old Evergreen Model was for International, but maybe you didn't change your overall model. So, maybe help me understand where you come up with 6% from developing versus developed and then how does that affect. Is that assuming that the U.S. Consumer – maybe is it slower than it used to be over the long-term? And then, the second question just on new products. I guess in the past, the presentations have been much more focused on a pretty robust big new products, everything from the CLUMP & SEAL to Oxi detergent to what have you. This seems to be a year of maybe more smaller innovation. Is that the right way to look at it, where you're putting more of the marketing behind just kind of the brands and categories versus big new innovation? Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. I'll comment on the Evergreen Model. I'll have Steve and Britta comment on both International and the new products. The Evergreen Model once upon a time was 3% to 4%, if you went back 10 years. And that, a couple of years ago, became 3%. So, that was Evergreen Model 1.0. So, we're a lot more granular now with respect to how we're going to grow in the future. And we have the luxury of having an International business growing 6% and a more balanced animal productivity business that can grow 5%. That takes a lot of the pressure off the U.S. business. So, that's why the way to think about it is U.S. is 2%, International 6% and Specialty Products is 5%. I'll let Steve comment further on his confidence…

Unknown Speaker

Management

Thanks, Matt. So, both you and Rick mentioned earlier today that ex tax, you guys would be growing the top line 3% organic and EPS 9%. I guess the delta in terms of the investments that you're investing back in the business is about $0.10. So, A, why aren't we seeing faster growth this year? I know there's a lag time between those investments and faster growth. Or B, is it that you have to reinvest that $0.10 every year going forward to still get that 3% top line? Thanks. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: The way you should look at that is – and if you're listening today, we have a lot of opportunities here to reinvest. So, you heard about International and you heard about digital. We're maintaining our marketing spend at 12%. It would naturally be lower because Waterpik has a much lower spend. You heard about animal productivity and our expansion there. So, that spend is a permanent spend. So that's going to help fuel us in the future. And in a way you answered your question, Jo, and that it takes a little bit of time, but healthy companies can approach the tax cut very differently than others. So it gives you degrees of freedom and start looking ahead not to 2018, but 2019 and 2020, and that is how we're looking at it. And if you listen to the things I just described where we can put the money, we will make the right choices to sustain our model going forward. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: The analogy I use sometimes is M&A. And sometimes people who have a base business is going backwards has to do a bad deal, that's a reach for something. And so, that's never been the case here. Our business is performing very well, we just had a great quarter, great end of the year. And those are the investments from the same concept as we want to make sure the algorithm is bulletproof 10 years later. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Steve?

Steve Powers - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So, I mean to build on that though, should we be thinking about this as an – this extra investment in 2018, is that insurance policy against 2019/2020 and beyond or should we expect a return on this investments such that we get an acceleration of the algorithm in 2019/2020, question one. Question two is, free cash flow conversion expectation for next year, that'd be helpful. And question three for Lou is if the categories are growing, I think it was 2.7%, 3%, you're growing with those categories presumably maybe even a little bit faster than at the shelf, but you're also getting distribution gains, why is the call 3% and not better. Those are my three. Thanks. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. If you look at our history, this is not a company you want to bet against. So we deliver on our commitments. And our commitments to our shareholders have been that we're going to drive that Evergreen model year after-year-after-year. So, we're going to make investments this year we're going accelerate investments that we might have done over maybe the next two years to three years. We're not prepared today to say suddenly we're changing our model and now we're going to have much higher top line and bottom line. The people who invest in this company are taking a five-year view and they have confidence that we can nail that for the next five years, and that's why they invest in us. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. The other comment I'd add to that is, we always measure ourselves versus our peer group as well. So ex-tax reform, if we're around 9% EPS growth, then the peer group's 4.5%. If post-tax reform we're 16% to…

Unknown Speaker

Management

Thanks. I have a question on your probiotic or vitamin business. You guys put a slide up there where you show that you've lost share and it's the first time in the last few years. So could you drill down a little bit more on what are the key drivers of that share loss, the competitive environment? And then what's your outlook for that business this year? And is your goal to stabilize share and how do you expect to accomplish that? Is it through innovation, stepped up spending, promos for instance behind that business. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yes. You're talking about the gummy vitamin business.

Unknown Speaker

Management

Yeah. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. So, let me just start, I'm going to hand it over to Britta. The way to think about that is that the category continues to grow double digit. So although we may not be growing at double digit, our consumption continues to grow. So, the business continues to grow. And when we bought that business, it had six competitors, today it has 30. So, there are a lot of people that are piling in there. So it's a growing category, grows double digit, we continue to grow. I think what will happen over time frankly is that there will be a shakeout, and it's not going to happen this year or the next year, but generally retailers can sustain that many brands on the shelf. Britta, you can add that? Britta Bomhard - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. So, building on that what you saw was AOC share Nielsen. Nielsen in this category only covers 70% of the market. I just talked about how much and that we have market dominance on Amazon. So actually if you put those together, our share picture would be much more positive, first of all. Second, we do have innovations, and third, we are absolutely confident we will grow that. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Over here, Peg (01:11:23). Rupesh Parikh - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.: Thank you. Rupesh Parikh, Oppenheimer. So, maybe just going back to the international segment, I was curious, clearly, you guys are doing well with Amazon in the domestic segment. Are you able to leverage your Amazon relationship and maybe some of the other retail partners as you grow internationally? Steven P. Cugine - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah, I would say that we're doing just that, Actually both in Canada and Europe, where Amazon is making significant investments. And we're taking the learnings that the domestic team has and applying them in our international markets. I would put Costco in that category as well – strong, global, retailer, and we're very successful with them in many parts of the world.

Unknown Speaker

Management

And then if I could just go into the slide before in your online sales growth. I think your online sales are now 5% of your sales. Is your online penetration continues to increase, are you seeing any impact on your gross margins? Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. The good news is across the portfolio largely gross margins online and in bricks-and-mortars are very similar. So, no, we're not. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. This way, Peg (01:12:30). Olivia, right there.

Unknown Speaker

Management

Olivia. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Yeah. Thanks. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about the latest and greatest in the laundry category. And then also in terms of 2018, can we talk about the component of volume versus price mix? And then just lastly in terms of M&A, you talked about gross margin and the importance of that, but both Waterpik and vitamins were gross margin dilutive. So, can you marry some of the comments around M&A and the importance of gross margin? Thank you. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. You started off with the laundry category. So, the laundry category in the fourth quarter was flattish. It was less promotional frankly sequentially. So, that's all good news. If you look at the brands in the categories that are doing really well, one would be ARM & HAMMER. So, we've grown – no surprise, ARM & HAMMER grew in the fourth quarter and also on a full-year basis. So, that is our flagship brand in detergent. Within the category deep value was (01:13:33) struggling. So, that would be brands like our brand Xtra, Sun and Purex. So, all three of those brands lost share last year. So, that's – so Xtra is a leaky bucket for us, but the combination of our three brands ARM & HAMMER, OXICLEAN and Xtra, we grew share in – I think we're up 50 basis points or 60 basis points of share all in, in the laundry category. And Pods, I mentioned earlier, I said Pods has slowed down quite a bit in last two quarters. We continue to grow double digit. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: And in terms of price mix and volume for the organic call (74:12), I kind of touched on that before, it's largely volume-based. I'm not going to go into too much more detail, but it's largely volume-based. We probably have some positive mix offsetting any price as personal care continues to do well. And then, I think your third question was, was it gross margin with acquisitions, with M&A?

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

(01:14:30-01:14:39) Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Just, you know, our aspiration to gross margin accretion from every M&A deal we do, right. That's definitely the goal. Waterpik is, I'd say largely neutral to gross margin. We think over time, right, we said when we made that announcement in August that we're going to spend around $10 million in 2018 to get $10 million of synergies in 2019. So, I'd expect in 2019 for some of the gross margin to be a little bit more accretive for Waterpik. So, remember just like the Avid deal, when we did, vitamins, when we bought the business, it was a 38% gross margin, and we got up to 45% over two years, and that was part of Matt's slide on how we expand gross margin and just the run way for productivity, so. Scott Druker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: And the only thing I would add too from a retailer shelf standpoint, as powder continues to decline, the powder shelf space will continue to decline. And liquid and unit dose is doing well. So you'll see the powder space will move to unit dose and liquid. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Couple more, over here, Peg (01:15:43).

Jonathan Feeney - Consumer Edge Research LLC

Management

Thanks. Jonathan Feeney, Consumer Edge. Walmart's made a lot of noise about a lot of categories about on-time and in-full, how they're managing their logistics. Could you comment maybe about logistics broadly for 2018, those cost, and any particular categories you've had to think differently about deliveries maybe extra expense, and maybe why you don't seem to be as impacted as some others? I know Clorox, it was pretty big impact. They weren't able to get a lot of product to market. Why are you able to succeed so much better and presumably as you're talking about 2018 continue to do that? Thank you. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah, well, I'll say a few words and if there's anything Rick wants to add, he can. Yeah, as far as trucking and the shortage of truckers, that's pretty much common knowledge. So, we got out ahead of that in November, and we worked with our carrier partners to ensure that we were going to have trucks available and be able to keep up our fabulous record on on-time performance. And we would expect to do that again in 2018 with our transportation partners. (01:16:58) to add to that?

Unknown Speaker

Management

Yeah. The only thing I would add, Matt, is that, we have over 100 carriers that we work with, but 10 of those deliver 80% of our product, of our volume. And so, we were able to partner very closely with those 10 and we've been able to ensure that we had adequate supply of containers and drivers, so we've been ahead of the curve there, as Matt said. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. Thank you. Jason? Jason English - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Thank you. Jason English, Goldman Sachs. Congratulations on a good quarter. I had a couple of questions, maybe the first for Britta or Lou, I'm not sure which. Personal care had a bit of a tough year, but finished on a really strong note, can you give us some of the underlying drivers of what drove the acceleration of fourth quarter and lay out maybe where your expectations are as we head into the new year? Britta Bomhard - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Well, if you ask me, of course, it's great advertising. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: That's right. Britta Bomhard - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: No. I think that we did do – so, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things we're finding is, when we talked about category growth early as well, there's, a, some of our categories like condoms where we talked for long time, young people are, with absolute number declining, are having less sex, we heard all about that I think several times, and they're moving online, right. So, these are things which are difficult to scale. I think we have great campaigns in place now. Same for vitamins, I think we've seen a clear up-tick on…

Andrea F. Teixeira - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Thank you. Andrea Teixeira from JPMorgan. So I wanted to just go back to Jason's question, as you look into outlook for 2018, you mentioned like M&A would not be a tailwind, but I wanted to basically if you can put it in as a ranking, let's say, you mentioned that the mix International wouldn't affect you that much. So maybe like you're going to be investing more in innovation this coming year or you're seeing more of the raw materials had rolling over into 2018. So, we're going to feel more of the impact of the raw materials into 2018. So if you can kind of help us elaborate or on an EBITDA basis you actually would see margins expand, so excluding the non-cash charges? And the second question will be on sexual health, I think she alluded to improving trends, but if you can comment on the 3%, if you're assuming market share gains, market share will actually improve on a total channel basis when you include in also Internet. Thank you. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: And maybe I'll take the gross margin, and you could take the revenue. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Maybe I'll do the sexual health one. And you can think about that extended gross margin multifaceted question. So, as far as sexual health goes, so you probably heard us talk about in previous calls that people are having less sex. And also there is also prevalence of other alternatives. So for example the IUDs, Plan B et cetera. So, all of that is contributing to the category. Another thing I would point out is demographics. So, if you look at the 18 to 24 year old population today versus where it was, say, four,…

Andrea F. Teixeira - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

(01:23:32) Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah. No, it's a fair point that if it was that material, then yes, that would happen. But resins, I think it sometimes is overblown for Church & Dwight, how material it is. It's not like a Clorox in the Glad trash bag business. We have resin in laundry bottles, yeah we do, but it's not as exposed that I think we could ask about it. So, it's one of the seven, it's probably one of the top four, but it's not the number one. So, I don't know if there is any other questions besides that, but really, and we have a lot of confidence in 2018 margin because of the productivity programs that we've done about for a year or two, because of the personal care mix coming. We still launch accretive new products, we haven't changed that. We still aim to launch accretive new products with innovation, right, SLIDE is a great example, Clump & Seal is a great example. We're moving up the litter category, units aren't really going up, but the price premium for the consumer is. Matthew T. Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Okay. So, we've been at this for a good while now. Of course, we only have the room for so long. I just want to thank everybody for coming today. The team that you see up here is representative of the kind of talent that we have at the Church & Dwight, and we are very confident in our future. And I think you would all have to agree that what we're calling for 2016 is head and shoulders over our peer group. Thanks for coming.