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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Hain Celestial Announces First Quarter Fiscal Year 2018 Earnings Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Ms. Mary Anthes, Senior Vice President, Corporate Relations. Ma'am, you may begin.
MI
Mary Celeste Anthes - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning, Skyler, and thank you all for joining us today. We are pleased to report Hain Celestial's First Quarter Fiscal Year 2018 Earnings Results. Irwin Simon, our Founder, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Gary Tickle, Chief Executive Officer, Hain Celestial North America; and James Langrock, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as several members of Hain Celestial's management team are with us today. Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements which are current as of today's date. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements either as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Our actual results may differ materially from what is described in these forward-looking statements, and some of the factors which may cause results to differ are listed in our publicly filed documents, including our 2017 Form 10-K and other reports filed with the SEC. A reconciliation of GAAP results to non-GAAP financial measures is available in our earnings release, which is posted on our website at www.hain.com under Investor Relations. This conference call is being webcast, and an archive of the webcast, and an accompanying presentation will be available on our website under Investor Relations. Our call will be brief, so please limit yourself to one question. If time allows, we'll take additional questions, and management will be available after the call for further discussion. Now let me turn the call over to Irwin Simon. Irwin?
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. We hope everyone had an opportunity to review our press release that was released this morning. We're pleased to report a solid first quarter results, which met our expectations for net sales profitability across all our segments as we continue successfully execute against Project Terra initiatives. In a highly dynamic consumer packaged goods world – and I say dynamic and highly changed and highly changeable, the retailer environment – we've had tremendous progress on our focused customer-centric, go-to-market initiatives, including the benefits of our SKU rationalization, increased brand investment in the U.S. We've also had good execution against our strategic initiatives by Hain Pure Protein, our U.K. business, our European business and our Canadian business. While Gary and James will take you through our results in more detail, I want to speak to a few highlights of the quarter. Our worldwide net sales increased 4%, driven by double-digit growth from Earth's Best, FreeBird, Hartley's, Spectrum, Alba Botanica, JASONs, our Linda McCartney brand, Yves Veggie Cuisine, Avalon Organics, New Covent Garden Soup, Arrowhead Mills and Live Clean; also, growth coming from our Sensible Portions, Tilda, Terra, Imagine, Ella's Kitchen, Lima and our Sun-Pat business. Our net sales growth combined with solid gross margin expansion helped us grow adjusted EBITDA to $59.5 million from $45.6 million in the prior period, and earnings per diluted share of $0.19 compared to $0.08 in the prior period, or $0.23 on an adjusted basis compared to $0.14 in the prior year. The natural and organic product category continues to grow mid single-digits across the U.S. and our natural conventional specialty channels. Hain Celestial is uniquely positioned to succeed in this category with the scale of our diverse portfolio of organic and natural brands,…
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you, Irwin. It's my pleasure to present the first quarter results for the U.S. business. We are continuing to execute on our strategic plan to drive growth for our top 500 SKUs in measured and unmeasured channels, and the top 11 brands. In the first quarter, we generated net sales of $263 million, an increase of 4% from quarter one last year. As a reminder, $21 million of Ella's Kitchen sales have been removed from the U.S. and are now reported in the UK segment. Including the divestiture of Rosetto from Q4 of FY 2017, the impact of SKU rationalization, and the planned inventory realignment in FY 2017, net sales are flat year on year. Gross margin improved 100 basis points year on year and, excluding SKU rationalization, improved 110 basis points. Major drivers of gross margin improvement were trade spend efficiencies along with Terra improvement projects, which were partially offset by higher commodities and freight and planned price reductions on Spectrum. Our operating income for the first quarter was $27.1 million (sic) [$23.1 million] (13:19), which was $1.2 million lower versus the prior period. The major impacts in operating income were a planned $4 million increase in consumer engagement investment and other investments and capabilities, including salaries of $1.5 million as we build out internal sales and marketing capabilities in advance of a change to the go-to-market model, which will remove around 30 brokers from our model with annualized savings of around $5 million starting in FY quarter three 2018. Turning to consumption trends, there continues to be a number of factors influencing the shoppers' choice of channel. At Hain Celestial, we remain focused on providing the right brand and product proposition in all channels, both measured and unmeasured. We are focused on selling more of our products,…
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you, Gary, and good morning, everyone. We are extremely pleased with our first quarter financial results which were in line with our expectations. We ask that you refer to our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation tables and the press release for additional information on our financial results. As previously discussed, effective July 1, 2017, Ella's Kitchen was previously included within the United States reportable segment, was moved to the United Kingdom reportable segment through the changes in our internal management and reporting structure. All prior period data has been adjusted to reflect this new operating and reporting structure. Ella's Kitchen represented approximately $85 million in net sales in fiscal year 2017. The solid momentum we achieved during the first quarter provides us with even more confidence that we are on track to meet our sales and profitability guidance for fiscal 2018. Net sales for the first quarter performed to our expectations at $708 million, a 3.9% increase compared to $682 million in the prior year. On a constant currency basis, net sales increased 3.3%. Adjusted gross margin increased 220 basis points year over year, driven by more efficient trade spend in the United States, price realization and operating efficiencies in the United Kingdom, and improved profitability at HPP. SG&A as a percentage of net sales was 12.8%, a 30 basis point increase primarily due to increased marketing investment in the U.S. in both personnel and advertising costs as we continue to focus on brand awareness in our U.S. business. Irwin and Gary discussed the top line highlights for our business segments, so I'll provide you with more of the underlying financial results for each segment. In the U.S., while gross profit increased by almost 10% year over year, operating income was down slightly from the prior year. As discussed previously,…
OP
Operator
Operator
Our first question comes from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line's now open.
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Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc.
Analyst · Barclays. Your line's now open
Good morning, everybody.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Morning, Andrew.
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning, Andrew.
AI
Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc.
Analyst · Barclays. Your line's now open
Hi. So a quick one, Gary. Thanks for all the detail on a lot of the consumption in measured and non-measured. I guess if – the one thing that came across as you talked about is, we're looking at 12-week versus the 52-week, as you mentioned, the gap between scanner and obviously shipments sort of widened quite a bit and you went through a lot of the detail. If you had to, I guess, boil it down to sort of the key just two or three things that you think have led to that widening, and then maybe when we should start to expect to see the data come a little bit more in line with what shipments look like would be helpful. And then I've just got a very quick housekeeping one for James
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Okay. So I think first thing I'd say, if we have a look at MULO+C data, we certainly do expect it to improve. But in terms of the alignment to the overall business, the overall projection for the year from my side is, at the earliest, we'll start to see better reads start to come through in quarter three, simply because of some of the things we're cycling. I mentioned on the call that I expect that we would see stronger performance in the unmeasured channels for the balance of the year. We may have a flat to slightly negative full year performance in MULO+C, so it will be the unmeasured channels, just because of the dynamics of how the business is performing, will be the stronger driver of growth. And so we won't see all of that turn up in MULO+C in fiscal 2018. To your question around the widening, I think this is – it's an interesting time, we're definitely seeing the consumers shifting channels. They've obviously got a lot of opportunities now. There's a lot of new news coming with what's happened with Amazon and Whole Foods that's brought traffic back to that category. And as I mentioned, we're seeing online growth moving very fast for us, growing very quickly. So I think this channel blurring is going to continue, and it's part of the reason why we see divergence because I don't expect, anytime soon, our online business to slow down. If anything, I expect it to accelerate. And I would also point out that the work that we've done – the teams have done with some of our big non-measured channel partners is really starting to pay dividends. We're seeing good solid performance across all of our key platforms with them, and I expect that to continue. So I think this is just a function of how we're going to see this channel blurring occur for the consumer in the coming quarters.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
And, Andrew, I think it's important, Hain always had a big business outside MULO, whether it's Whole Foods, whether it's Sprouts, whether it's the independents. And if you look at Amazon and Whole Foods today, 2% of overall sales of food go through there. So you think about it, $800 billion, that's $16 billion of food sales that are now going through there that five years ago was not there. So that's where we're seeing it. And I think you once asked me where are the sales going and the shift, and whether it's the Thrives, whether it's the Boxed, whether it's the FreshDirect and our other online business, that's where we're seeing a tremendous shift. And I think as you look at our business today, it's probably 58%, 55% is MULO and the rest is other channels. So there's a big shift going onto our business from other channels.
AI
Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc.
Analyst · Barclays. Your line's now open
Great. Thanks for that. And then, James, just a quick one. If we wanted to adjust on our own sort of last year the next three quarters for the shift in Ella's from the U.S. to the UK, you gave us the sales number for the full year, is there a way you could do that for EBIT? I know it's a lot smaller, but just to give us a sense of what we would need to think about adjusting out and into the other segment from EBIT?
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
So I'll give it to you for Q1 on the operating income, Andrew, if that helps. So their operating income in Q1 for Ella's was about $3.5 million.
AI
Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc.
Analyst · Barclays. Your line's now open
Okay. And no reason to think that was usually volatile over the course of the year, necessarily?
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
No. It's pretty consistent, Andrew.
AI
Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Inc.
Analyst · Barclays. Your line's now open
Great. Thank you very much.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Ken Goldman with JPMorgan. Your line's now open.
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Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line's now open
Hi. Thank you so much. One question from me to start. You talked a little bit more about the portfolio review. Irwin, can you give us a little more color as to what you're looking at, what the goals are, what maybe some of your larger investors are thinking about? I'm just trying to get a sense of what the key variables will be in terms of what you really think of as core and what you may think of as more valuable to outside the firm.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thanks, Ken. So a couple things, how you take complexity out of the business is number one. Let's come back from the UK business. In the UK, private label is a big part of business over there, but our private label contribution is 6%, 7% on EBITDA, where our branded business is 18%. Do you focus on branded or do you have the right mix there? But there's a lot of overheads that our private label business absorbs over there. If you look at our protein business, and it's a hot category, and you recently saw Hormel just paid a tremendous price for a protein business, a lot of complexity. And with that, is it better off in someone's hands that's already in that business? And there's numerous assets, whether they're smaller assets, that are moving more towards private label, are they more into the DSD businesses, so do you streamline our businesses. So that's what we are looking at, Ken, taking out complexity. Where is – there's risk in every business with commodities, where are higher risks in commodity business, and where are the growth areas? And the other thing from an acquisition standpoint, where are the up and coming new categories? How do we focus on plant-based, which is becoming a bigger, bigger part of our business, whether it's our Yves business, our non-dairy business, our snacks business, our personal care business, BluePrint in the drinks business. So we're in a lot of businesses, are we putting enough dollars against some of those high growth areas and focus on 10 brands instead of the number of brands we have. So that's some of the stuff that we're working on right now.
KL
Kenneth B. Goldman - JPMorgan Securities LLC
Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line's now open
Great. I'll let it go there. Thank you, Irwin.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Okay.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Bill Chappell with SunTrust. Your line's now open.
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Stephanie Benjamin - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust. Your line's now open
Hi. Good morning. This is actually Stephanie on for Bill. I just have a question on the U.S. segment, Gary. And just kind of gapping the reported sales growth in consumption, unless I heard this wrong, it sounded like measured channels were down, call it, mid single-digits during the quarter and then unmeasured performed much better, but it was really only up 1%. So I'm just looking to get a little bit more color on how – I know obviously there's a difference between shipments and consumption, but kind of the drivers of the 4% growth. Thanks.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yes. So as I mentioned – thank you for the question – was that in this quarter, we were essentially flat on the top line if you take out the impact of the cycling of the SKU actualization, the exit from Rosetto, and also the inventory realignment from prior year. So obviously the balances between what you see in the measured scan data, which is significantly negative, and the balance of that of course is all in unmeasured channels, which is getting us back to flat. And of course, the trajectory of the non-measured channels is where we're seeing stronger performance, both with our major customers in the non-measured channel and also online. So that's essentially how the two balance out.
SI
Stephanie Benjamin - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust. Your line's now open
Thanks, and that's really helpful. And then as we look for the remainder of the year, are there any other inventory realignments or kind of big one-time items that we need to be aware of just for modeling the quarters going forward? And that's it for me. Thanks.
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yes, so this is James. So they'll (41:24) have a similar impact in Q2, and then in three and four, inventory realignment is de minimis. But you'll still have an impact in Q2 similar to Q1.
SI
Stephanie Benjamin - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.
Analyst · SunTrust. Your line's now open
Thanks so much.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Akshay Jagdale with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
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Akshay Jagdale - Jefferies LLC
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open
Good morning. Can you hear me?
JI
James M. Langrock - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yes, we can hear you.
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning.
AL
Akshay Jagdale - Jefferies LLC
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open
Perfect. Hey. Good morning. First one's again for Gary, so thanks again for all the color, but as we think of the cadence for the sales growth going forward, so you mentioned excluding the SKU rationalization, et cetera, it was flattish growth – or flat growth. Your guidance is for, I think, low to mid single-digits top line growth. So how should we think of the cadence of this going forward, right, assuming it's going to accelerate on a reported basis? I mean, can you give us some color, because there so many moving parts in the year ago period with the inventory realignment et cetera, just to help us model like cadence of the sales growth as we go through the year. And then the EBIT growth, because if you're going to have a similar EBIT performance in 2Q, which is down slightly, let's call it, year over year, then in the back half, you're going to have to see pretty massive margin expansion. So can you just help us with that? And I have one follow-up.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Okay. So, a lot of questions there, but I think the first one is in terms of cadence, we see quarter on quarter improvement in growth, and that's very much how the plan was built. We knew this plan had to be developed with the transformation in business and why and where the investment was front half-weighed, the growth was back half-weighted. There are a number of factors we can go into why that is the case, but basically the investment plan is front half-weighted and that's why we see our EBIT relatively flat in the first two quarters, but we expect improvement of that as that balances out for the following two quarters and the growth picks up. And that's just how the model was built. That's at a very high level. Obviously, there's a lot of detail by brand and by category as to how those pieces are built out, but that's the expectation from the business so the cadence was back up.
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Akshay Jagdale - Jefferies LLC
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open
And the growth acceleration on the top line, is that on a reported basis or excluding the SKU rationalization or both?
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
I always talk through reported basis here.
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Akshay Jagdale - Jefferies LLC
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open
Okay. Perfect. And just one on HPP, your guidance basically implies you're going to get back to fiscal 2016 levels in that business on EBIT. In fiscal 2016 in the first quarter, you made $10.5 million; second quarter, $19 million, I know there's a lot of money to be made in the second quarter and the next couple weeks, but the first quarter seems to have been a little bit below expectations. Are we going to make all of that up in the second quarter? Is that the expectation or am I missing something? Thank you.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Well, first of all, you heard what I said before just on HPP, on Empire, and timing there during the holidays. The second thing is a big part of HPP is our chicken business, which was up 26% and continues to grow. And yes, there's a big reliance on Thanksgiving, but one of the things we've talked about in our total protein business, how we're moving more and more into deli for their process ground. But between Empire's growth, between our chicken business growth being up 26%, and our growth in other turkey products. And some of the cost savings that are coming out of HPP, we feel good about making some good moves in the back half of our protein business.
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Akshay Jagdale - Jefferies LLC
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open
Perfect. I'll get back in queue. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Amit Sharma with BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open.
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Amit Sharma - BMO Capital Markets
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Hi. Good morning, everyone.
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning.
AM
Amit Sharma - BMO Capital Markets
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Gary, a very quick question for you. When you talk about low to mid single-digit growth in the U.S., are you comparing that to 3.7% growth in the quarter or are you comparing that to the flat growth in the quarter?
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
No, no, it's always to reported growth, so it's to the 3.7%.
AM
Amit Sharma - BMO Capital Markets
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Okay. Got it. Perfect. And then as we think about greater growth in the non-tracked channels, right? Historically, you've thought about those channels as maybe less margin or lower margin businesses, I mean just generalizing it, compared to the measured, is that still the case or has your profitability increased in those non-tracked channels?
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah, I think you have to understand the mix in the non-measured channels is changing, so whatever may have been historically stated may have changed because, of course, you've got a mix now between online, we have strong natural players who've come up and resurged, if you like, in the unmeasured space, and in between, we've got club and a couple of other specialty players as well. So I don't think of it as being a massive margin dilution by virtue of being in our measured channels. It does obviously depend on ultimately the mix of products you sell in those channels, and that's part of the work we're doing on the curation of our top 500 and how we focus on those in our measured channel, but I'm not seeing it as a choice for margin dilution just by moving it to unmeasured, no.
AM
Amit Sharma - BMO Capital Markets
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open
So just maybe a little bit modest dilution but not massive. And then just one more for Irwin. Irwin, lots of conversation around retail pricing and not just in Whole Foods and Amazon but overall retail and how brands may be losing some of their cachet. When you talk to your customers, are you hearing anything from their demands for more pricing concessions in order to hold on to the shelf space or any other changes in how business has been done in those channels?
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
I think what I'm hearing, I'm not being asked for more dollars from the retailers, but I think what's important today, retailers want you to support your brands and invest in your brands. And what's changed tremendously, Amit, is – and what you've seen within Hain, our trade dollars, our promotional dollars is not where we're spending our dollars today, it's connection with the consumer. And I think everybody out there is focused on two things: data and content. And good content or good brands and good products, and supporting your brands and driving household penetration will drive sales. It's not about price, price, price anymore, and I think on commodity items, it is, but organic products, natural products, I think it's important that you get out there and you bring awareness to your brands. Now, price is important, you can't price them 20%, 30% higher than a conventional, but consumers got to know your brand. And every retailer that I've met with at senior levels, one of the reasons they're moving to private label is they feel that a lot of the other consumer packaged goods companies are not investing in their brands, not innovating in their brands, and they're saying why we should we pay a premium, then let's go out and do a private label because our brand may be stronger.
AM
Amit Sharma - BMO Capital Markets
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Got it. Thank you so much.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Scott Mushkin with Wolfe Research. Your line's now open.
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Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC
Analyst · Wolfe Research. Your line's now open
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So I kind of want to go back to the growth rates just to make sure I understood what was said, and then I actually had a question. So the U.S. business grew 4% in the quarter roughly, I think that's what you guys reported. Is that correct?
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yes. That's right.
SL
Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC
Analyst · Wolfe Research. Your line's now open
Okay. And then I think you also said in the 12-week period ended 10/18, the measured channel which is take away from retailers, fell 6.5%, and then the unmeasured channel – I think I got this number right – was up 1.1%?
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
We're talking about the top 500 there, Scott, was up around 1% across all channels.
SL
Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC
Analyst · Wolfe Research. Your line's now open
Yeah. Okay. Okay so I guess maybe I'll just take it offline. I'm just trying to square – I guess I'm trying to understand the take away versus the ship-in, if there's a mismatch there and understand the 4% growth (50:39)
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah. So what we said was, Scott, that basically we are flat in the quarter on top line, net of all the impacts I referred to. So if you treat this very simply, the 6.5% that you're seeing in measured channels is offset by the unmeasured channel performance.
SL
Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC
Analyst · Wolfe Research. Your line's now open
Okay. I think I'm going to follow up offline. I don't want to waste a lot more time on that, I know we talked about it. So my second question is the brand building and vis-à-vis I think you called out Arrowhead Mills and the display – I think Irwin did – the display in Whole Foods, and the product just looks incredible there, and it's such an incredible product too. So was just wondering if you could talk about, A, how you go about building the brand? Do you think 5% like kind of commitment from a revenue perspective is still the right number? I know Ella's in the UK was built for a lot less than that. Then I also wanted to understand how you think about your brand portfolio vis-à-vis where you want to put those brands. I know Arrowhead Mills also is moving into Walmart and that seems to be interesting, given how much success it's having at the Whole Foods-Amazon platform. So I was wondering if you guys could talk to your brand building and your philosophy. Thanks.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah, sure, and it's a good question, and obviously one of our key focuses here is improving household penetration and the awareness of our brands. The organic and natural space is certainly interesting to consumers, and for those who are crossing over from conventional brands, this is a whole new world for them for many of them. They don't know the brands well. They're not so familiar with them. So a big part of our work is really on just the initial consumer engagement and driving brand awareness. Now to give a live example of some of the work that's going on for MaraNatha. We've just done our first round of research just to understand how that initial read has worked out, and six weeks results, we can see already the purchase intent has gone up for the product. The aided brand awareness has gone up by 71%, that's just in the six-week read from the first round of work we've done. And this is the type of work we're doing both for MaraNatha. We've started for Spectrum. We did some work for Imagine, and there's more work to come. This is extremely important because we have brands here that are valuable brands that are not necessarily well-known to a number of consumers. So that's the initial build point for a lot of these brands to raise their unaided awareness and aided awareness, and then ultimately from there, you can start to build out the story for these brands so the consumer has a richer and deeper understanding of what these brands stand for. The beauty of Hain is we have really rich stories to tell, and that's ultimately our ambition is to tell these stories in a meaningful way because we know consumers in this space care about the…
II
Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
And I think what's important, Scott, is our brands, when you look at natural organic brands, a bigger percentage of natural organic brands there are bought online than bought brick-and-mortar. So if you look at where the future is and where our brands are bought and where purchasing is going, we're in sync. But consumers need to know your brands and we got to have the ranking, and that kind of shows where Ella's, for instance, was in brick-and-mortar, and as it moved to online, the sales – and we're not talking about the UK and Europe, but what we're seeing in sales of Ella's online versus brick-and-mortar is tremendous.
SL
Scott A. Mushkin - Wolfe Research LLC
Analyst · Wolfe Research. Your line's now open
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you. Next question?
OP
Operator
Operator
We do have time for one or two more questions. Our next question comes from Alexia Howard with Bernstein. Your line's now open.
Alexia Jane Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Good morning, everyone.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Good morning, Alexia.
Alexia Jane Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: So with the progression of the segment operating profit growth – or decline, I guess, this quarter on the adjusted side in the U.S. business, you mentioned that some of that was due to the increased marketing spending. How long do you expect that to continue? When do you expect to get back to profit growth in the U.S.? And given the phrasing of it, was that marketing investment within the SG&A line? I assume it is. And was pricing actually up year on year in the U.S. in the segment? Thank you and I'll pass it on.
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Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah. So, Alexia, as I mentioned earlier on an earlier question, quarter two we'll essentially be around flat with prior year, again because our business is front-weighted. So we'll see in quarters three and four a return to profit growth, which is just essentially how we built the investment plan. And the question around price...
II
Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Return to (57:13) profit growth.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah. That's right. So you'll end with up with net profit growth for the year. And then for the question around pricing, minimal pricing, we had a small price impact from a planned price reduction on Spectrum, which started last year. It was around $500,000 or $600,000 impact, not so significant this year. We will have some small pricing adjustments on the upside coming through later in the year, primarily in tea, to capture the costs for higher COGS related to the quality standards we have for our tea. But essentially, it will have a minor impact, it's really net neutral.
Alexia Jane Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC: Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.
II
Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you. Next question.
OP
Operator
Operator
And our next question comes from Andrew Wolf with Loop Capital Markets. Your line's now open.
AL
Andrew Wolf - Loop Capital Markets LLC
Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Hi. Thanks. Good morning. I wanted to follow on just with one question on e-commerce and online business. So I think historically, it's pretty well-known that not just for Hain but for the consumables broadly, online business has really been concentrated in a few categories, I think you guys mentioned baby is a leading one for Hain, and I think that's been one of the categories where online penetration's been pretty good for a while. Could you just kind of generally speak to what kind of broadening you're saying that you talk about the good growth, leading growth you're seeing in online business? Is it still in some narrow categories? Is it sort of going one category at a time? Are you seeing the really broad – broadening, not just what's on Amazon's website but what's actually selling through to consumers for home delivery? Thanks.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yes. No, it's a good question. And I think this is part of the inflection I referred to earlier in terms of what's happening in unmeasured channels. We are seeing broad-based growth across our platforms. So whether it be snacking, pantry, personal care is up over 70% for the quarter, babies, obviously growing very strongly. So this is quite broad based. And it's really not because we know this is where our shoppers increasingly choose to shop, we know from the feedback we have with our online trading partners that natural and organic is a very strong search term. So this is an area that we think will continue to accelerate as the, let's say, the mix model unlocks between what happens online and what happens in bricks-and-mortar with some of the major players. So for us, it's broad-based. It's consistently broad-based, and we expect that just to continue.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
And Andy, we're seeing this along the fresh line too, whether it's AmazonFresh, for turkey and chicken, FreshDirect. In the UK, we're also seeing this with a lot of retailers, whether it's Tilda products online, Ella's of course in the UK, so it's not just U.S., we're sitting that around the world.
AL
Andrew Wolf - Loop Capital Markets LLC
Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Okay. Thank you for the color.
OP
Operator
Operator
And our last question comes from David Palmer with RBC Capital Markets. Your line's now open.
DL
David Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Thanks. Just a follow up on consumption trends. The 55% of your business that is measured channels you said is down mid single-digits or so in the quarter. In the scanner data that we see, it looks like that decline rate accelerated a little bit in recent weeks, last 12 weeks maybe down 7% to 8%. Are you seeing that sort of dynamic playing out? Are you seeing the non-measured commensurately accelerating such that you're staying roughly flat in consumption? And I have a follow-up.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah. Sure. So you're right, we have had a recent acceleration in the measured channels. Part of that is driven by a couple of key factors. One is that for our Celestial Tea business, which is a significant business for us, we have a timing issue in terms of when our promotional program starts this year versus last. So they're off by a quarter, that will address itself in this period. We've also had the drag, as I said before, the Sensible Portions partial loss of distribution which is a big impact. And in this last read we had this one Terra Chip program that was not renewed from one of our club customers, so that had a disproportionate impact in the quarter as well. So there's a couple of things that drove the more recent numbers. In the unmeasured channels, as I've said, we continue to see an acceleration with the online customers, solid business in most of the other customers as well. So it is shifting slightly but this is somewhat timing-related to when our activities fall. When we look forward to our program for the balance of the year, we're pretty clear that we have a line of sight to all the major programs that are happening in the MULO space that are going to drive more positive results. I can certainly take you through the detail of that when we get time, there's a lot of information by channel but, ultimately, the expectation is that we see a bit of a rebalancing in MULO+C in the coming periods.
DL
David Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line's now open
And then very much related to that, when we envision how you're getting the acceleration in non-measured, what brands and channels are really doing the most heavy lifting in that acceleration? Thank you.
GI
Gary W. Tickle - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Yeah, certainly online is a big piece of it but I have to say all of our key large club customers are also performing well. And, of course, we've seen the resurgence performance of Whole Foods which was something that predated, actually, the Amazon tie-up. A lot of good works being done by my team there to work with the Whole Foods group closely on our core category performance and driving the top 500 more strongly, and we're extremely encouraged by the performance we're seeing in that business. So that's also part of the drive.
DL
David Palmer - RBC Capital Markets LLC
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Your line's now open
Thank you.
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Irwin David Simon - Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Management
Thank you, everybody. We remain confident that our leading natural organic Better-For-You brands, our strong team, our strategic initiatives position us well to execute on our mission and create and inspire a healthier way of life. What's working for us, out SKU rat, our focus on our top SKUs and spending on the consumer to enhance our brand awareness. We expect further improvement in our results throughout the fiscal year as we execute on Project Terra, our strategic initiatives, and continue to drive incremental sales growth margin improvement to deliver long-term sustainable shareholder value. I'd like to thank our team of over 7,000 employees and our Board of Directors for their contributions and support. Together, we will further capitalize on our core strength and resources to drive Hain Celestial's next chapter of growth and success. Lastly, as I said earlier, don't forget to buy your Plainville turkey, your Arrowhead Mills stuffing, your Imagine Bone Broth and Gravy, along with many, many Terra products and numerous other Hain products. Thank you very much for listening and everybody have a healthy, happy, safe Thanksgiving. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.