Earnings Labs

Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. (PBH)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, May 16, 2013

$58.62

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2013 Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc., Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sonia, and I will be your operator for today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Dean Siegal, Director of Investor Relations and Communications. Please proceed, sir.

Dean Siegal

Analyst

Good morning, and welcome. As a reminder, there's a slide presentation, which accompanies this call. It can be accessed by visiting our website, prestigebrands.com, clicking on the Investors page, the Inventors link, then on the Q4 webcast link. I am also required to remind you that during this call, statements may be made by management of their beliefs and expectations as to the company's future operating results. Statements of management's expectations of what might occur with respect to future operating results are what is known as forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which in many cases are beyond the control of the company and may cause actual results to differ materially from management's expectations. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only of the date of this conference call. A complete Safe Harbor disclosure appears on Page 2 of the presentation accompanying this call. Additional information concerning the factors that might cause actual results to differ from management's expectations is contained in the company's annual and quarterly reports, which it filew with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I would like to introduce Matt Mannelly, CEO; and Ron Lombardi, CFO.

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

Thank you, Dean. Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining us this morning for our fourth quarter and our fiscal year '13 year end call. We're excited to be here this morning. As Dean said, with me is Ron Lombardi, our CFO. We're going to take you through the fourth quarter, as well as some comments about fiscal year '13 and, as Dean also mentioned upfront, we'll do that the way we typically do, with the presentation that's on the website. So with that, I'd ask that you move to Page 3 of the presentation. As I said -- as we've done previously, I should say, I'll give an overview upfront, just highlighting the quarter and the year. Ron is then going to walk you through the financials. I will then close with a few comments in terms of the year and as we move into FY '14. And at that point, we'll be able to take a few questions. So with that, if you'll turn to Slide 4, please. I think this slide, hopefully you're very familiar with, those of you that have followed us, by now. This is an important slide for us since it really communicates conceptually how we run the company and the idea, in fact, that we really are focused on brand building and driving that core OTC growth through A&P investment and innovative products is really our primary focus. That helps us lead to the second part, which is an exceptional financial profile, which Ron's going to talk a little bit more about today and our free cash flow and all that helps us from a balance sheet standpoint in terms of significantly paying down debt for the quarter and for the year. The third part, which has been critical to…

Ronald M. Lombardi

Analyst

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. We start the financial review with an overview of the fourth quarter results on Slide 12. As a reminder, unless otherwise noted, the financial information we are discussing today excludes certain TSA, integration and other costs to arrive at adjusted results. A reconciliation between reported results and the adjusted results can be found in schedules in today's earnings release. So I'm starting on Slide 12. We're extremely pleased with our excellent financial performance in the quarter that capped off our most successful year ever. Results for the quarter included strong gains in sales, EBITDA and EPS. Our solid revenue and earnings growth continue to be driven by share gains in our core OTC brands, solid performance from the acquired GSK brands and growth in EBITDA and EPS that was well above revenue gains. We also realized solid cash flow from operations during the quarter that was in line with last year's results. I will give you more details on each of these over the next few slides. So turning to Slide 13, we have our detailed Q4 results. Our excellent Q4 results continue to reflect our transformed financial profile. Our net revenue has increased approximately 15% over the prior year to just over $155 million during the quarter. As a reminder, we closed on the acquisition of the majority of the GSK brands in February 1 last year, so we're beginning to comp the results. We realized very strong sales growth and share gains in our core OTC brands during the quarter, with growth of over 9% during the quarter. Cough/cold incident levels were very high during the quarter, resulting in strong performance in our cough/cold brands, but we also realized gains in many of our non-cough/cold brands, as well. The timing of the…

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

Thank you, Ron. So what I'd like to do is -- turn to Page 18, if you would, please. Make a few comments in terms of the year and where we're going as we look to '14. And then we'll take a few questions. So as we think about '14, we think -- we believe we have a very solid outlook for '14 and beyond, really. And I think some points I would make is, we had a very strong FY '13 as you can see from the numbers that Ron presented. That strength wasn't just from the work that was done in '13 but it was the work that was done prior and the foundation that was really set up to help us achieve that. I think the good news, we believe, for us is, for '14 and beyond is we have a proven strategy in place that's been working for the last 36 months and now a proven management team to help deliver that long-term value creation to our shareholders. So from that standpoint, we're very excited and we're very confident. In terms of FY '14, our focus. Our focus clearly continues to be on brand building. And so for us some of the key things are the new marketing campaigns that are coming in fiscal year '14 and included among those are Clear Eyes, BC/Goody's and Beano. So you can -- you will see those coming very shortly in the next few quarters and we're very excited about some of those new marketing campaigns. In addition, I pointed out earlier in terms of digital's becoming a bigger part of our portfolio. So we're looking for deeper engagement through our digital marketing, as well as we've expanded into sports marketing assets in terms of NASCAR, SEC, Dale Earnhardt…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Joe Altobello, Oppenheimer. Joseph Altobello - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Just first question on gross margin. I mean, obviously, up very nicely year-over-year. You did mention that a lot of that had to do with mix, particularly the inclusion of the GSK brands. But you did have the GSK brands, or at least most of them, for 2 months of the 3 months in the base period. So I'm curious if there's anything else that was happening to drive the gross margin expansion in the quarter besides just mix? And then as a related question to that, is 57% still the right long-term target for your business, given that you're basically there now?

Ronald M. Lombardi

Analyst

We talked about, on the last quarterly call, that we do have some seasonality in our gross margin because of some of the merchandising and promotional activities that we do in quarters 2 and 3. So if you take a look at our gross margin in the fourth quarter, it was close to what we realized in the first quarter of last year. So that certainly is one of the contributors to the nearly 57% gross margin this year. In terms of what we would see going forward, about a year ago, at the time of the GSK acquisition, we gave an overview of our financial profile and pointed to 57% gross margin. So that's what we've given for direction on that in the past. Joseph Altobello - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. So you're sticking with that?

Ronald M. Lombardi

Analyst

Yes. Joseph Altobello - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And just turning to A&P spending. You said in the past that you would continue to increase the investment behind the core OTC brands until you begin to hit a wall in terms of ROI on the incremental dollar. Do you feel like you're approaching that wall? Or are you still seeing good returns on the incremental investment?

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

Joe, I think it's a good question for 2 reasons. One, if you look at core OTC -- you look at our spending this quarter versus last year, we're up significantly. And look at our core OTC growth. It was very strong at plus 9.3%. So we think we're continuing to see that return on investment. I think the second thing as it relates to '14 on that, Joe, is with the competitive activity and the return of a number of products, I think we as a company are prepared to demonstrate our marketing skills and protect and defend our brands so that I think we will continue to be aggressive from an A&P and a marketing standpoint. Joseph Altobello - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And just one last one, I guess, more of a less -- more or less a housekeeping question. You gave sort of the top line outlook for fiscal '14, flat to up 1%. Should we expect to hear something on the bottom line at the Analyst Day next week?

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

We don't -- Joe, at the Analyst Day next week I think we're going to focus on long term kind of what our expectations are. So I think that's how we're planning on looking at it next week.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Carla Casella, JP Morgan. Carla Casella - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: This is Carla Casella. You mentioned the strong cold season. Did that trail into the follow quarter? And then have you -- can you just talk about how allergy season has been in -- I guess, it exists [indiscernible] the current quarter?

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

On cough/cold, Carla, it doesn't really trail into the following quarter. And in fact, because of the heavy cough/cold -- what you typically have in most seasons is, is retailers winding down their cough/cold purchases in late February, early March. They didn't do that because of the strong cough/cold season this year so we had solid growth throughout the quarter. But that means they're going to wind down their purchases in April this year instead of March, which means you're actually going to see a deceleration in the first quarter, we believe. From an allergy standpoint, it's interesting that you asked that. Last year, we saw an early start to allergy season. We haven't seen that so far this year in terms of translating to orders for allergy season.

Operator

Operator

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mannelly for closing remarks.

Matthew M. Mannelly

Analyst

Okay. Again, we're -- we appreciate everyone's time and commitment on the call. We're very pleased with the results. We're very proud of the results for the quarter and the fiscal year. And we're proud of the 125 leaders in the company that helped deliver that. We look forward to speaking with you on the next call, and we hope you'll also join us on the webcast for our first ever Investor Day next week. Thank you very much.

Ronald M. Lombardi

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for joining today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.