Earnings Labs

International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. (IFF)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 13, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the International Flavors & Fragrances Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce Shelley Young, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Shelley Young

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IFF fourth quarter and full year 2013 conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our fourth quarter and full year 2013 financial results. A copy of the release can be found on our website at iff.com. Please note that this call is being recorded live and will be available for replay on our website. Before turning the call over Doug Tough and our senior management team, I'd like to read our forward-looking statements. Please keep in mind that during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements about the company's performance, particularly with regard to the fourth quarter and full year 2013 and our outlook for 2014. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to our cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our 2012 10-K filed on February 26, 2013, and our press release that we filed this morning, all of which are available on our website. Today's presentation will include non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude those items that we believe affect comparability. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their respective GAAP measures is set forth in our press release that we issued earlier today on our website. For those of you who are new to our conference call, I'd like to introduce the participants on today's call. With me on the call is Doug Tough, our Chairman and CEO; Nicholas Mirzayantz, our President of Fragrances; Hernan Vaisman, our President of Flavors; and Kevin Berryman, our Executive Vice President and CFO. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Doug Tough.

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · Barclays

Thank you, Shelley, and good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Our focus on the call this morning is to provide an overview of our fourth quarter and full year operating performance, give you an update on our strategy, take you through a review of each of our business units and provide our current outlook for 2014. After the prepared remarks, we will have some time for questions. Now I would like to provide you with an overview of our performance in quarter 4 of 2013. Our local currency sales growth in Q4 was 7% and reflects strong growth in both our Flavors and Fragrances business units. The emerging markets grew at 11%, which is the highest quarterly growth rate achieved this year. On a consolidated basis, the emerging markets grew at 5x the level of the developed markets in the quarter, and 50% of our sales were to the emerging markets. The overall growth was supported by positive volume on existing business and a steady level of new business wins, reflecting the collaboration among our creative, research and development, and consumer insights teams to provide our customers with products that will continue to delight their consumers. At the same time, we achieved continued margin expansion, which was supported by a moderate decline in our input costs and the many strategic initiatives that we have discussed all year, including productivity savings, mix and volume leverage. As previously forecast, in the quarter, there was no material impact related to the exit of low-margin sales activities in Flavors. As a result of the strong volume growth, combined with continued margin improvements, we were able to grow our adjusted operating profit by 13%, even as we invested close to 10% of our sales in R&D and absorbed costs related to increased incentive compensation…

Nicolas Mirzayantz

Analyst · Barclays

Thank you, Doug. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. 2013 was a strong year for Fragrance, building on the developing momentum we achieved in the second half of 2012. Fragrance delivered solid top line growth in every quarter due to a consistently high level of growth from new business wins, combined with lower erosion on the base business. We increased colleagues' participation with global, as well as regional customers. We ended the year with record levels of revenue, we improved our product portfolio and we are better positioned for future growth. Turning to fourth quarter results. The Fragrance business unit achieved strong local currency growth of 7%, which was on top of the 13% growth achieved in the fourth quarter of 2012. Our Fragrance Compound business had local currency growth of 9%, which more than offset the decline of 3% in Ingredients due to the transition of some volume from Ingredients to Compounds. Excluding the transition, Ingredients would have been positive for the second consecutive quarter. We are seeing continued signs of stabilization in our Fragrance Ingredient business and believe the steps we have taken to reduce costs, while increasing the specialty segment of that portfolio, will improve our company disposition and increase our win rate in Fragrance Compounds. Fragrance Compounds growth of 9% in this quarter is on top of the 15% growth seen in the year-ago quarter and was supported by a strong level of new wins in every category and every region. Our new business wins in 2013 are testament to our innovation and go-to-market capabilities and show good collaboration on the part of our consumer insight, sales and creative teams. The emerging markets continued to be a strong growth driver and accounted for 52% of Fragrance Compounds sales. This market grew at 9% and accounted for…

Hernan Vaisman

Analyst · Barclays

Thank you, Nicolas. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Flavors finished the year strong with another solid quarter of positive growth of 7%. This marks our 32nd consecutive quarter of local currency sales growth and our fourth consecutive year of growth in the range of 6% to 9%. Emerging markets, up double-digits, made the biggest contribution to our growth and accounted for 53% of total sales in the fourth quarter. This growth was led by Latin America, which I will discuss in a minute. Sales growth benefited both from a solid level of new business wins, as well as sales growth from existing businesses. This quarter, there was no material impact on our sales related to the exit of low-margin sales activities. Looking at our growth on a regional basis. Latin America had a strong double-digit growth of 19%; EAME grew by 13%; and Greater Asia, our largest region, increased by 9%. The growth from these regions more than offset a decline in North America of 8%, in part to strong new launches last year in Beverage and very challenging comparable of 15% like-for-like growth in Q4 2012. We are very pleased with our strong performance in Latin America this quarter, where we experienced new business wins in the Beverage and Sweet, primarily driven by our delivery systems, our proprietary FlavorFit portfolio of health and wellness solutions and new molecules from our Citrus platform. On a category basis, all our category experienced growth. Savory, Beverage and Sweet all experienced mid- to high-single digit growth, and Dairy, although not as high, was positive. We continue to work with all our customers to provide creative solutions that result in long-lasting business for IFF. Customers appreciate our creative expertise and ability to translate trends into winning products. Turning to the full year. Our…

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus

Thank you, Hernan, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone, on a snowy New York day. Turning to the fourth quarter, I'd like to view some key metrics and provide you with perspective on the importance of each. Our local currency sales growth in the fourth quarter was 7%, following 8% growth in the fourth quarter of 2012. On our third quarter earnings call, you might recall we were more cautious in tone, given the challenging comparison to the fourth quarter of 2012 when we delivered 15% growth in Fragrance Compounds and 7% like-for-like growth in Flavors. This quarter's growth of 7%, on top of 10% like-for-like growth in the prior year, speaks to many important things about IFF, not the least of which is our ability to harness the power of our creative, sales and development teams to deliver products that customers value. The emerging markets continue to be a strong growth driver and it's important to maintain perspective on the strengths of these markets, given the growth in the consumer market and the strength of the demand for products, which are rapidly becoming part of their emerging, more consumer-oriented lifestyles. Our margins expanded an additional 160 basis points in the quarter, based on moderation in input costs, combined with the strength of our strategic initiatives. I will touch on this later, as we still face an overall headwind to our margins due to the strong inflationary environment we faced in 2011 and 2012. The margin expansion and volume gains resulted in adjusted operating profit growth of 13%, or $13 million, on top of 9% growth in the fourth quarter of 2012. Our adjusted EPS improves 11% this quarter on top of 11% growth in 2012. I've shown this slide before, and I think it's important because this shows our…

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · Barclays

Thank you, Kevin, Hernan and Nicolas for the remarks on the company's performance. 2013 was a very exciting year for us as we continued to execute on our 3-pillar strategy while investing in the future growth and profitability of the company. We are pleased with the momentum on both sides of the business and believe that we are well positioned for growth due to the many steps we have taken to augment our profitability and strengthen the company. We are expecting continued success in 2014. We have the right teams in place to continue to provide customers with superior customized products that deliver improved performance to their consumers. We expect to deliver local currency growth in the range of 5% to 7%, reflecting the addition of Aromor, continued new business wins and volume growth in the faster growing and more mature markets. This includes our organic growth rate range of 4% to 6% with an additional point of growth associated with our acquisition of Aromor. We also expect to see strong levels of adjusted profit and earnings per share growth in 2014 as our business continues to see top line and operating momentum and we benefit from the reset of our expected incentive-based compensation expense to a 100% target level in 2014. As a result, operating profit growth is expected to be up double digits with EPS seeing commensurate strong improvement. Regarding our first quarter of 2014, as Nicolas and Hernan pointed out, we expect more moderate -- modest top line growth in Q1 following a strong Q4 and, hence, performance more aligned with our long-term growth rates in Q1. Regarding EPS, we expect a muted level of growth through the absence of the R&D tax credit in 2014, which was reinstated in Q1 2013. Regardless of these impacts in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Mark Astrachan from Stifel, Nicolaus. Mark S. Astrachan - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: I wanted to ask about the split between pricing mix or contribution from pricing mix in the fourth quarter, and then also get a sense of expectations for contribution in 2014 to input costs. I hear what you said. I know one of your largest competitors they talk about also seeing or having some expectations for pricing. So maybe just give us a bit of -- a sense of how that worked out in 2014, and then just what the housekeeping numbers were in third -- '14 -- '13.

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus

Mark, this is Kevin. I'll take a stab. I will tell you that pricing in 2013 was muted, certainly in the back half of the year especially. So you can consider that the growth dynamic associated with Q3 and Q4 was largely a result of our strong new wins. You heard the mention that our 2013 year, as it relates to growth from new wins, was a record. So very, very strong level of performance in 2013. For 2014, we are seeing selective areas where input costs are increasing, and we would expect to have targeted and selective discussions with customers to have pricing, but we don't see that as being a material dynamic in the overall kind of picture for our growth in 2014. Overall, we don't see a significant acceleration in our input costs, but we see -- are seeing some specific ones that we're going to need to take some pricing actions on. Mark S. Astrachan - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Great. And then just one follow-up. Nonstructural expenses in RSA, what are those? And what was -- or how should we think about that going forward?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus

Well, we specifically called it out, Mark, because we don't expect that those are going to be seen to ultimately recur on an ongoing basis. But effectively, we have some costs associated with our acquisition of Aromor. That's clearly in the Q4 numbers. We had some legal project costs. We had some tax costs that we incurred relative to our emerging market presences. So if you look at those kind of items that -- well, making up the bulk of those, clearly the call-out is to suggest that we shouldn't necessarily see those levels of expenses going forward in Q4 2014. Mark S. Astrachan - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: Okay. So just to be clear, so that is in the adjusted numbers in the fourth quarter then?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Stifel, Nicolaus

Yes, it is.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays.

Lauren R. Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays

I wanted to know if you guys can, one, give us any news that you're at or ahead of schedule on all of your partnerships. Do you have an update on Evolva and vanilla -- vanillin being available to your flavorists and when that starts to impact flavor business trends. And then also just on Aromor, Nicolas, you talked a little bit more about sort of existing portfolio and why it was interesting but didn't really mention much the -- anything specific or -- maybe to put in layman's terms to the R&D capabilities that, that business brings in? But I think there were some things in the press release or whatever you got on Aromor so far that suggests there's something a little bit more interesting there, and I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Hernan Vaisman

Analyst · Barclays

It's Hernan here. Regarding the natural vanillin, as I mentioned in the previous call, I mean, we just finish this quarter, in fact in January 1, is scaled up. It was successful. Now the next step is to get these materials throughout all the creation centers in the world in order to get the flavorist, application teams familiar with it. And we plan to start going to present to customers and show it in the markets in the second part of the year. So we expect to get the first, I mean, revenues coming from these initiatives by the end of this year.

Nicolas Mirzayantz

Analyst · Barclays

It's Nicolas. Regarding Aromor, without going into the specific, well, the key takeaway is that first of all, in terms of capabilities, they have complementary capabilities to ours. And therefore, our ability to develop new molecule is strengthened when you put our team and their team, number one. The number two is it's a complementary portfolio. There is no overlap in our portfolio of ingredients. So it's very incremental to us, both for our external sales of ingredient, but, most importantly, they are really critical ingredients I -- in fact specialty ingredients for perfumers to use in their creation. We know these ingredients very well because we are the -- a partner to Aromor for a very long time. So our perfumers know these ingredients very well and can use them rapidly at a higher level in their new creations moving forward.

Lauren R. Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays

Okay, great. And then just a bigger question on R&D spending. Is it -- is this the right way to think about it? I know there's obviously a payback as you spend. But just curious, do you think there's sort of a mass level where you'd want to be spending as a percentage of sales? Or is it just as long as gross margins are expanding from some of your productivity and mix initiatives, that we just should always think about money going back into R&D just as we'd see your customers always spending back into their advertising budget. Is that sort of the right way to think about the financial model long term?

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · Barclays

Lauren, I think it's partly right. I mean, I think the analogy to investing in your business with advertising is a good one. We've certainly been over 8%, but I don't think it's as simple as just will it expand gross margin. There's a pretty disciplined approach within both the business units in concert with R&D and another units in the company that takes a look at the size of the price, the likelihood of getting the margin, the cost and use, the likelihood of regulatory approval, the time required and so on. So there are a number of factors that go into it. Now we evaluate all the projects that are on the docket with a view to which ones we think we can fund. And I'll have to say that where we are now in the disciplined approach that's really been brought to bear by a number of constituents in the company helps us understand where we think there's a really good return. So I'm very happy with where we are at our investment level. Clearly, if we have the opportunity to enhance that, we can do so. But the projects all go through a pretty disciplined rigor to be approved, and so we're not -- we're certainly not underspending but, frankly, nor do I see us overspending at this point. And we have quarterly reviews which document the probability, likelihood and the expected returns we're going to get.

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Barclays

Lauren, just one additional comment.

Lauren R. Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays

Yes.

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Barclays

This is Kevin. We did have an accelerated milestone payment for Amyris in the fourth quarter. So that bumped up the fourth quarter numbers specifically higher than what would probably be determined to be kind of an ongoing level. So you should be aware of that.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Sison from KeyBanc Capital.

Michael J. Sison - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital

You did a nice job generating good margin expansion in the strategic initiatives. Clearly, you're going to have some momentum in 2014. Can you just help us maybe get a feel of how much improvement you can see next year? And what are the areas that will drive that?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital

I think if you go back -- let's start from the foundation of what our 3-pillar strategy is. And obviously, the footprint, the -- leveraging the geographic footprint, strengthening our innovation and managing the portfolio are all our -- are opportunities that will allow us to continue to hopefully drive our gross margin progress going forward. So it's part of our strategic vision that, that happens. Having said all of that, Mike, we saw some great advancements in 2013. We would not expect to have that same level of improvement in 2014. So I think we're going to be looking at a more normalized level of gross margin improvement in 2014. And of course, that will require us to take some pricing actions into those specific areas where we're seeing some acceleration in input costs for our respective businesses. And I think that at the end of the day, there's an inherent dynamic relative to the innovation that the teams are bringing to their portfolios, which should afford us gross margin enhancement over the long haul. And so that's a critical part of our strategy. We still think that, that strategic pillar is well in place, and that is our intent, to try and drive that. But it will be at levels that are less robust in 2014 than in 2013 in terms of level of improvement.

Michael J. Sison - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital

Okay. And then, Doug, you talked about your return on capital being at very industry level -- industry high levels. That's certainly a great level to be at. But is there a way to deploy that capital a little bit more aggressively to maybe enhance growth? Or you start to get worried when your returns are too high, right, in terms of being able to generate growth. Any thoughts there and maybe using your balance sheet more aggressively, too, to add more growth to the company?

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital

Certainly, Mike. We look at a number of ways that we might be able to attack that issue. And we publicly stated certainly that the focus will be on continued growth and investment. But certainly, the balance sheet and the opportunities for capital, we look at M&A-type opportunities. We've done a small recent deal with Aromor. The company's aspirations would be greater than that, but they will also be well disciplined in the context of the financial rigor that M&A has to bring. Certainly, other capital issues, whether they're buybacks and so on, we've done small ones. But I'd say the overall earning objective here is how can we get growth, that profitable growth. So we hope we have more M&A opportunities ahead of us, and -- that would be deploying the capital.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from Jeffrey Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Of the 5.8% sales growth that you reported in 2013, was more than half of that mix or price mix?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · JPMorgan

No. In 2013, no. Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Yes.

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · JPMorgan

It was largely associated with new wins associated with the efforts by the BUs in driving innovation into the portfolio. So it's largely volume related. Now some of that is mix because you might have innovation that brings mix benefits to it. But we don't break that out necessarily separately. So think about it as volume-mix driven. Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Right, because the puzzle is your cost of goods sold went up $15 million or less than 1%. And if your volume on a ratable basis, maybe your cost of goods sold was flat, raw materials would have gone up, I don't know, $65 million. And even with cost initiatives, it seems difficult to pull that much out. So there must be a very large mix benefit in 2013. Is that right or no? Or why is the growth in cost of goods sold so slow?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · JPMorgan

I think there's a variety of factors that are driving that. Certainly, the strategic initiatives that we talk about a lot, Jeff, are a driver to that. And if you think about the exit of the low-margin Flavors activity, that's worth probably 80-plus basis points to Flavors, 40-plus basis points to the company over that period of time. You have the mix benefits of our innovation coming out of that higher margin levels. We did -- we're able to realize a moderating level of input costs. All of those things add up to something that looks very attractive from a margin progressive. And we think that the thesis underlying that strategic kind of plank of innovation and margin enhancement is certainly going to play forward as well. There was also, and I would say this especially in Fragrance in 2013, a lot of productivity enhancements as well, which related to our ability to drive a reduction in ingredients that support those new opportunities of wins. As well, you know that Nicolas and his team have done some restructuring efforts over time to ultimately drive incremental margins as well. So a broad array of efforts, and it will always continue to be a broad array of efforts because we need to be efficient, productive and innovative in terms of driving the business going forward. Jeffrey J. Zekauskas - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: Yes. And then lastly, your Latin American results were very, very strong for the second successive year, and I imagine that, that's largely Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. Were there differences in the growth rates in those 3 countries? Or were they smoother? And in general, for many companies, the North American growth, with the growth in the economy, is really the strongest element. But for you, especially in South America, you've grown especially well with very, very weak economies. Can you talk about that feature?

Hernan Vaisman

Analyst · JPMorgan

Okay, I'll take a stab, and it's Hernan here. You're right. I see the type of situation when you read the newspapers on the real economy there, that they are really -- almost all economies except Mexico and Brazil [ph], mainly, Argentina and Brazil. And really, we're performing really, really well, and this is basically from what I mentioned before, the high level of new wins that they have there in this area. In some countries, for example, you can think that Argentina we will never grow and there's a bit of pressure on this country, well, our growth is more on the 20%. And this is really coming from the new wins. So we -- usually, you can say that the economies and the growth of our business should be somewhere correlated. But we stated that the correlation will be a big difference between whether the country will grow and when you're winning by yourself. Organically, actually, we're not growing, but our new wins there should accelerate the growth in that region. And your question is almost in all countries, in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Nicolas Mirzayantz

Analyst · JPMorgan

It's Nicolas here. Very similar to what Hernan was saying, we -- well, we've been saying that first of all, emerging markets, especially in Latin America, is that -- where we had a leading position for many decades already. So it speaks to not only the strengths of our portfolio, the strengths of the relationship, very high market share, very, very strong consumer insight and really understanding what is driving consumer preference. So we engage on a position of strength and knowledge and expertise, which is augmented by our innovation pipeline. And the growth was really driven by new wins. So very, very strong growth for the portfolio and a very strong growth last year. Yes, the economy is where we're seeing some signs. We have to monitor the situation. But at least the pipeline of introduction for the Q4 was very strong, and we will have to keep monitoring as the situation progress. And as far as countries are concerned, very, very strong growth in Brazil and Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, really driving the growth in Latin America.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Rohini Nair from Deutsche Bank.

Rohini Nair - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

I just wanted to touch on Fragrances. And I'm wondering whether you can give us a bit more color around what you're seeing there. Functional seems to be doing pretty well uniformly across your markets. Fine fragrance growth also good but maybe limited to certain regions. So if you could address those dynamics. And then along with that, do you have a sense that you may be benefiting from new product wins maybe more so than your competitors?

Nicolas Mirzayantz

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

It's Nicolas here. First of all, I would like to provide a perspective. There's 2 components to take into account. First, comp versus last year. So if you take here North America [indiscernible] minus 6, but it was on the heel of plus 17%, which was significant growth and far higher than what the market was experiencing. So I think that the comp is playing an element. And then if you look at our growth of 24% in the EAME, one thing that is important to take into consideration is a large majority of our customers, while European based, are manufacturing in Europe for the rest of the world. So probably definitely, as we know, part of the 27% growth in Europe, which is far above the market growth, is also then being exported to the U.S., but we cannot record it as U.S.-based sales. So it's difficult for us to track. But definitely, the 24% in Europe were from very strong -- new wins, a pipeline that are shipped in different parts of the world. And then there are things about Latin America. Minus 1. I just would like to remind everyone that last year, in Q4, we grew 59%, which is also very far in excess of what the market was going. So if you look at the 2-year average, it's still a double-digit growth and above the market growth.

Rohini Nair - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

That's great. And just to follow up on that, if we think about profitability on the Fragrance side, it seems that with the increased specialization you're getting from Aromor, your ingredients rationalization, you have good opportunity for improvement over time. So I just want to get a sense of how you may be thinking about those margins longer term, whether we might eventually see those margins approaching the level of Flavors at some point.

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

It's Kevin. I'll take a crack at that. Look, I think that certainly, both of our business units are very strongly economically profitable, and both represent fantastic growth opportunities. We do think that there were some significant opportunities to enhance economic profit within the context of the Fragrance business. And you can see, given their margin profile, well, some of that improvement is coming to light. Whether or not we openly get to a level where those 2 businesses are equal in terms of margins, we don't think about it that way necessarily, but we do believe they both represent very, very strong opportunities to have profitable growth. And specifically, because of the things you called out in your question, there are some things which will afford us perhaps an ability to further reduce the difference between the 2 margin profiles of the business units. And of course, depending upon, at the end of the day, our ability to drive innovation into our portfolios, that will ultimately determine where we fall out in terms of margin profiles in my mind.

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · Deutsche Bank

And certainly, Aromor brings us strength with the opportunity to use those molecules. You can see, we're, using more of them in order to win new businesses will give us perhaps long-term margin improvement, not necessarily short term. But I'd echo what Kevin said, both businesses are attractive. But while we look at the comparisons to each, the real comparison needs to be within the BU and the comparisons to their competitors and what we need to do to win against competitors, not to win against each other. But both are attractive, and we pointed that out both at the Investor Day and in the overall financial results.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jonathan Feeney with Janney.

Jonathan P. Feeney - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney

I wanted to ask specifically, just having gotten off a few of the CPG calls, specifically as it relates to Flavors, do you -- or is there any concern about in -- a slowdown in developing markets affecting innovation plans? And I know you made some comments about this, but just more detailed specifically about how specific customers, like Monde at least, talked about a little bit less spending in emerging market this year. If you had a customer that was in that situation, how does that affect your business? On what kind of lag? And are you seeing any kind of that activity right now even upstream from what you might be feeling directly at the revenue line?

Hernan Vaisman

Analyst · Janney

Thank you for the question. I just came -- it's Hernan here. I just came from Asia, and it's been a long trip there. And as I was mentioning last call, we saw some slowdown in India. I mean, definitely, the economic situation is impacting the overall of the business. But I just came and I -- even now, the sentiment is, in some ways, different. I mean, they see may see some, they say, light at the end of the tunnel by the second [ph]. So our real concern in the third and fourth quarter was India. We see some improvement. Having said all that, I mean, the incentive is clear. I mean, the pace of growth that they used to have, I mean, the developing markets in Asia, the one we're focusing, is different. I mean, when we talk about 2 or 3 years ago, the growth was almost in the double digits, and now you're talking in China 10%, India 6%. So there is a kind of slowdown there. Having said that, the potential is huge. I mean, we've got so many consumers, they -- buying and getting the new cars. So the [indiscernible] the timing [indiscernible]. How it's impacting, I mean, the customers, yes, in some customers that's really impacting in those markets. But again, I mean, we are not only working with one customer, we are working with many customers in one of these markets. And as I mentioned before, domestically [ph], it has a perfect correlation between a customer, between countries and our, I mean, growth. If we are really putting effort there, as what we are doing, a lot of investments, they are really creating good products, that they are really gaining the consumer preference. We can have -- even though it's kind of a lower base in growth [ph], we can have the possibility to grow faster than even of many of the customers in the countries. So in short, the pace of growth in emerging markets is down, but we have the fundamentals in place really to keep on outperforming the market growth.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Edward Yang from Oppenheimer & Co. Edward H. Yang - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Just following along the other questions on emerging markets and your ability so far to decouple from some of these more troubled economies, are there any sort of canaries in the coal mine or leading indicators that you would look to, to let you know that trouble is coming down the pipe?

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · these more troubled economies, are there any sort of canaries in the coal mine or leading indicators that you would look to, to let you know that trouble is coming down the pipe

Well, I mean, I guess the comments we get from customers, the customer interaction we have is ongoing across both sides of the business. I think the one thing that -- there is what we would call defensive and offensive briefs. And the opportunities to go forward to customers with a view to understanding their portfolio and providing solutions to them and recommendations on innovation has really been well received on a number of the globals. So the leading indicators, the way you've called them, can be some softness, which Hernan has just touched upon. But the way we have to deal with that is our customers are still looking for innovation and the opportunities for innovation. And we've ramped up our game, continued to do so. So not withstanding there may be some slowing down, we've been able to counteract some of that through proactive activities. And that would continue to be the thrust that we would do. Edward H. Yang - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay, and thanks for that color, Doug. Kevin talked about how although you have half your sales from emerging markets, only about 1/3 of that half is non-dollar or non-euro denominated. Do you have any plans to hedge out that remaining exposure? And in markets like Indonesia or Argentina or you hear nowadays about Venezuela having some -- putting into effect some capital controls and your ability to repatriate that cash, when you do have sales in the local markets, how frequently do you bring that cash back? Or do you wiggle in those markets?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · these more troubled economies, are there any sort of canaries in the coal mine or leading indicators that you would look to, to let you know that trouble is coming down the pipe

Well, to a large extent, Ed, that's -- that was a mouthful of a question because as you know, it's a complex area. But I will tell you that certainly, in general, we have a belief that we'll continue to reinvest back into the emerging markets. And so to a certain extent, there is an ability for us to use that cash by reinvesting back into the businesses. And that's good for us. That's good for our customers. That's good for their consumers ultimately. Having said that, we do need cash back in the U.S., and we look at all available means to provide opportunities to bring that back to help fund our needs on debt service, share buybacks, dividends, whatever the case may be. So we have very proactive discussions ongoing with our teams around the globe, and the treasury group does a very, very nice job of working out with our teams to facilitate our ability to get the cash where we need it and when we want it. There are challenges. Clearly, Argentina is one. There are others that I would call out, which are bigger challenges actually just because of the magnitude of it. But at the end of the day, some of our FX structures that we have in place and its ability to match our costs with our -- with the more harder currencies is a benefit to us probably versus many of our competitors and/or customers. Edward H. Yang - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And on reinvestment, just finally, you talked about R&D spend. What's your expectation for CapEx for this year?

Kevin C. Berryman

Analyst · these more troubled economies, are there any sort of canaries in the coal mine or leading indicators that you would look to, to let you know that trouble is coming down the pipe

We've continued to say that we're in the neighborhood of 4.5% to 5% probably until the year 2016 when we will probably start to trend down to, let's call it, a lower level, more consistent with history.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Lauren Lieberman from Barclays.

Lauren R. Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst · Barclays

It was just a quick clarification. Hernan, when you talked about the growth rate you were seeing in Argentina north of 20% and that's attributable to new wins, I just want to be very clear that, that does not include any kind of inflationary -- material inflationary pricing.

Hernan Vaisman

Analyst · Barclays

You're correct, this is through dollars. It's not including any kind of inflationary impact.

Operator

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions.

Douglas D. Tough

Analyst · Barclays

Well, thank you all for your participation. I think this morning, you got a sense of the -- how IFF needs to operate and the diversity of the business, whether it's the 2 business units, the regions, the categories. But managing that diversity, we think, leads to our success. We look forward to talking with you in early May for the Q1 results. Thanks for your participation.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for joining today's conference. You may now disconnect.