Earnings Labs

Diageo plc (DEO)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 31, 2024

$77.77

-1.49%

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Transcript

Debra Crew

Management

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Results Presentation for Fiscal '24. It was a challenging year for both our industry and Diageo as we navigated a volatile operating environment across the globe. It was a year of compounding impacts with inflation and a cautious consumer environment persisting following the extraordinary growth through COVID-19 and the related waves of value chain disruption. I believe these challenges are temporary and the consumer environment will recover over time. At Diageo, we are focused on what we can control. We've navigated volatility before, and we will do it again. And we manage this business with a long-term view. We will continue to invest in our fantastic portfolio of brands and diversified footprint to maintain our position as an industry leader in total beverage alcohol, which continues to be an attractive sector with a long runway for growth. We're focused on driving operational excellence with our amazing brands to ensure Diageo is resilient and well positioned to grow when the consumer environment recovers. Today, I will share the details of our fiscal '24 performance and the deliberate actions we are taking to improve our near-term execution. There are five actions I want to highlight. First, we have met our commitment announced at our interim results to improve the inventory position in LAC by the end of this fiscal. In addition, we have validated the robustness of our systems across all markets and are confident that inventories are at appropriate levels for the current consumer environment in our other four regions. Second, we are strengthening our consumer insights. By the end of this calendar year, we will have completed the rollout of our proprietary consumer choice framework across markets covering a significant portion of our net sales, deepening our understanding of consumer motivations and…

Lavanya Chandrashekar

Management

Thank you, Debra, and good morning, everyone. In fiscal '24, organic net sales were down 0.6%, with positive price mix performance, mostly mitigating a decline in volume. Excluding LAC, the business grew organic net sales by 1.8%. Organic operating margin declined by 130 basis points, primarily driven by LAC. Excluding LAC, organic operating margin was down 56 basis points, driven mostly by investments in digital capabilities, and as Debra mentioned, in further strengthening our route-to-market capabilities primarily in the U.S. We generated free cash flow of $2.6 billion, which was around $400 million more than a year ago. Strong working capital management and lower tax payments more than offset the combined impact of the decline in operating profit, higher interest payments and increased investment in CapEx. Pre-exceptional earnings per share declined mainly due to a lower operating profit and higher finance charges and exceptional items. This was partially offset by lower tax and the impact of share buybacks. We believe our growth algorithm continues to support sustainable long-term growth. Our focus continues to be on driving growth through winning quality market share. We continue to premiumize our portfolio and benefit from improved price mix and drive productivity, all of which enables us to continue to invest smartly back into the business. Price mix contributed 2.9 percentage points to top line growth. Price contribution to organic net sales growth was in the low single digits. Organic volume was down 3.5%, driven primarily by more than a 15% decline of volumes in LAC. More on that shortly. We accelerated productivity initiatives across cost of goods, marketing and overheads in fiscal '24. This enabled us to unlock almost $700 million of productivity cost savings in the fiscal and comfortably exceed our three-year $1.5 billion productivity savings target. Marketing productivity and smart investment choices…

Debra Crew

Management

Thank you, Lavanya, for your kind words. Before I conclude, I will discuss our outlook. The consumer environment continues to be challenging with conditions we saw towards the end of fiscal '24 persisting into fiscal '25. Consumers remain cautious and interest rates are high. Therefore, retailers are likely to remain cautious, too. We expect the negative pressure on organic operating margin that we saw in the second half of fiscal '24 to persist into fiscal '25. That said, we will focus on strengthening the resilience of our business and winning with the consumer. We are focused on driving productivity and mitigating cost inflation while investing smartly in strategic initiatives that drive long-term sustainable growth. And we are confident that when the consumer environment improves, the actions we are taking will return us to growth. As for medium-term expectations, recall that after three years of extraordinary top line growth with 14.5% CAGR from fiscal '21 to fiscal '23, Diageo and our industry are experiencing a period of normalization following the COVID-19 super cycle. And we also continue to feel the impact of macroeconomic challenges, geopolitical uncertainty and a cautious consumer environment, the consumer-facing companies are navigating. But we remain confident in the long-term fundamentals of TBA and our position within it. We believe demographic trends, rising incomes in the developing world, spirits gaining share from beer and wine and long-term premiumization will drive attractive underlying growth in our industry. Diageo has an advantaged portfolio across categories, price points and regions, and we continue to be confident in our ability to grow ahead of TBA and gain quality market share, enabled by superior operating excellence and disciplined investment. We are confident that when the consumer environment improves, the actions we are taking will return us to growth. And we are focused on…

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Management