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Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. (PBH)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, May 10, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2018 Prestige Brands Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Phil Terpolilli, Director of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Phil Terpolilli - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone on the phone. Joining me on the call today are Ron Lombardi, our Chairman, President and CEO; and Christine Sacco, our CFO. On today's call, we will cover the highlights of our fiscal 2018 fourth quarter, and full year, review the financial results, provide our initial fiscal 2019 outlook and then take questions from analysts. We have a slide presentation which accompanies today's call. You can access it by visiting prestigebrands.com, clicking on the Investors link, and then on today's Webcast and Presentation. Please remember, some of the information contained in the presentation today includes non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliations between adjusted and reported financial measures are included in today's earnings release and slide presentation. During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements around risks and uncertainties, which we detailed on a complete Safe Harbor disclosure on page 2 of the slide presentation accompanying the call. Additional information concerning risk factors and cautionary statements are available on our most recent SEC filings and the most recent Prestige Brands' 10-K. I'll hand it over to our CEO, Ron Lombardi, to walk through the highlights of our fiscal fourth quarter performance.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Phil and good morning, everyone. Let's flip to page 5 of our earnings presentation, which contains an overview of Q4 results. In summary, our fourth quarter results were largely in line with our expectation. Highlights for the quarter include a net sales increase of 6.4% to $256 million driven by growth across our core portfolio. Pro forma for Fleet revenue growth was a solid 2.4%. Also our international business continued to experience strong gains, especially in our Care Pharma portfolio resulting in sales growth of over 10% versus the prior year. Gross margin in Q4 was 55.2% improving on a sequential basis versus Q3. We're making solid progress against the higher freight and warehouse costs discussed last quarter. And I'll provide additional detail later on. We reported adjusted EPS up 15% to $0.62 during the quarter, while adjusted free cash flow came in at $52 million in the fourth quarter and it continues to benefit from our industry-leading EBITDA margins, low-capital spending, and low cash tax rate. The strong cash generation enables us to rapidly de-lever along with creating capital allocation opportunities such as today's announcement of a $50 million stock buyback program. Turning to slide 6, we have an overview of our full year results. In fiscal 2018, performance reflected progress against our long-term strategies and positive momentum in many key areas of our business. We generated revenue growth of 18% versus the prior year with pro forma growth at about 2% trailing consumption trends by over a percentage point due to continued retailer destocking. Most importantly, we continued to win market share with consumers, which we'll talk about in coming slides. We delivered full year adjusted EPS of $2.58, up approximately 9% versus the prior year. We generated adjusted free cash flow of $208 million in the…

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Ron, and good morning everyone. As Ron reviewed and briefed earlier, I'll walk through our fourth quarter and fiscal year results in greater detail and offer some context around our expectations for fiscal 2019 by line item. On slide 17, you can see our high level fourth quarter and full year results, which include total revenue growth for the quarter of 6.4% and adjusted EPS growth of approximately 15% to $0.62 per share versus the prior year. Q4 included pro forma revenue growth of 2.4%, which benefited from continued consumption growth for the company's core OTC portfolio as well as strong performance across the Fleet portfolio. A&P was 13.8% of sales, which was in line with our expectation, but declined versus Q4 of fiscal 2017 as the prior year was affected by the transition period of a partial quarter of Fleet results. Now let's turn to slide 18 where I'll discuss consolidated fiscal year results and provide some incremental context to our fiscal 2019 outlook. As a reminder, the information in today's presentation includes adjusted results that are reconciled in our earnings release. For the full year 2018, our net revenues increased 18% to approximately $1.040 billion. These results were driven by continued strong consumption trends in our core North American and International OTC businesses as Ron mentioned. Pro forma with Fleet, our full year 2018 revenue growth was 1.7%. Adjusted gross margin came in at 55.7% for the full year, reflecting the expected impact of the Fleet sales mix, which has a lower gross margin than the overall portfolio and heightened freight and warehousing costs in the second half of the year, which Ron discussed earlier. Looking ahead, we expect full year fiscal 2019 gross margin to approximate fiscal 2018. For modeling purposes, we would anticipate a…

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Chris. Let's continue on slide 22. Our multi-year results continue to highlight the success of our strategy and how our business is well positioned for long-term value creation. Our strong needs-based brands continue to be well positioned in a dynamic, retail and consumer environment. Retailers in general continue to reduce inventory level, which we expect to continue going forward driven by retailer consolidation and shifting consumer channel shopping trends. This expectation is incorporated into our fiscal 2019 organic sales growth assumption. For net sales, we anticipate fiscal 2019 organic revenue growth of approximately plus 0.5 point to plus 1.5 points or a $1.046 billion in sales to a $1.056 billion. This net sales number incorporates destocking as well as an impact from the launch of BC and Goody's new packaging. We expect revenue growth will be stronger in the second-half of 2019 versus the first-half owing primarily to BC and Goody's restage (21:40) packaging that Chris described earlier and a change in accounting policies around revenue recognition. For profitability, we anticipate EPS to be in the range of $2.96 to $3.04 or plus 15% to plus 18% year-over-year. We expect EPS growth to be largely concentrated in the second half of fiscal 2019 as we invest behind our brand efforts, including the upcoming BC and Goody's packaging transition. Regarding cash flow, for the full year, we expect free cash flow of $215 million or more for the full year. Although, we always focus on the full year, we'd like to note we anticipate a slight organic revenue decline and flat year-over-year EPS in Q1. The revenue forecast is driven by our most difficult revenue comparison of the year, a change in accounting policies for revenue recognition, and BC and Goody's quarterly variability as we launch our new stick pack. EPS is impacted by this revenue projection along with still elevated freight and warehousing costs versus prior year as well as the timing of A&P investments in the first two quarters. In closing, I'd like to leave a few reminders for investors, which are summarized on slide 23. Our long-term performance continues to be driven by a three-pronged strategy that starts with a focus on growing our business by winning with consumers. From there, we take our financial profiles, strong cash generation to reinvest behind brand building and use the remainder for strategic capital allocation. It's an effective, proven and repeatable model that's helped drive the results of the last six-plus years. In total, we're taking share in the OTC marketplace on a multi-year basis, which is a testament to our sales and marketing investments, and long-term approach to brand building. We look forward to delivering against this strategy again in fiscal 2019. With that, let's open up the lines for questions.

Operator

Operator

And our first question comes from Joe Altobello with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. So, I guess first question in terms of the outlook for revenue growth this year, you mentioned, Ron, that you do expect additional destocking. I mean is it fair to say that we should just assume in our models destocking is going to be about a 1 point to 1.5 point headwind at least for the foreseeable future going forward?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, I think that's a reasonable estimate, Joe. We saw about 1 point in fiscal 2018, which was up over what we realized in fiscal 2017, but we continue to feel that we'll be impacted by these trends at least in fiscal 2019. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. And in terms of pricing, you mentioned earlier you're not really seeing much in the way of private label encroachment, in fact private label it sounds like is losing share in your categories. But are you feeling any pricing pressure in your categories from retailers looking to drive traffic at all?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Not necessarily, Joe. And again, it's really a function of the fact that we have leading brands in categories, so we're not facing the same kind of pricing headwinds that you hear many other CPG companies talk about. So, we're not necessarily realizing that. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. Just one last one if I could. The target leverage ratio, I think you mentioned today, you want to get down to about 4.7 times by the end of fiscal 2019. Does that assume any share repurchases and what's sort of the long-term target there given the fact that we're in a rising rate environment at this point?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, Joe, this is Chris, good morning. Yes, the 4.7 does contemplate a $50 million share repurchase. And I think, longer-term as we've discussed in the past, in this interest rate environment, we're certainly conscious of operating and likely to operate at lower leverage levels than we have historically. Our number one priority for our free cash flow is to de-lever. And so, while we don't sit here and set a target leverage because we wouldn't want to pass on an opportunity if it positioned us well for long-term brand building, certainly we're going to be conscientious of that as we move forward. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay, great. Thank you.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Joe.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Jon Andersen with William Blair. Your line is now open. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning everybody.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Jon. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Thanks for sharing the consumption data, the 52-week data for the categories that you compete in and your own brands. I'm wondering if you could talk at all about what you've seen maybe closer in. I know a lot of things can move around in a short-term basis, but maybe if you could talk a little bit about six months to-date or the last three months if there's been any kind of change to your own consumption trends, private label performance or share within your target categories or if it's kind of steady as she goes.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So a couple of questions here, and I guess first in terms of consumption trends for the business. If you go back and look over a long period of time, you'll notice that we do get variability from quarter-to-quarter, from year-to-year in consumption trends across our portfolio. We do have a number of brands that are incident driven. For example, Monistat a few years ago, we did see a decline in incident level that impacted consumption because it was fewer people suffering from the affliction. So, we do get variability. Our long-term trends continue to be above the categories that we compete in and we continue to grow share. So, it really is pointed up over the long-term for us. The next question you had in there was around private label trends, again in the categories that we compete in, we have been meaningfully outpacing private label performance for quite a while, not only growing our share, but just as importantly like we emphasize growing the categories in which we compete in. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Thanks. And then on the inventory destocking, there's a theory out there, I guess, one theory that you're experiencing some destocking because you may be losing shelf space. I think the industry destock issue is an industry-wide phenomenon and Procter commented I think even this quarter of about (29:06) 100 basis points of inventory destock. Is what you're experiencing from a destocking perspective in your opinion, a function of kind of broader retailer efforts to become more efficient across the chain, or is there anything company-specific to it or category specific to it with respect to your brands and your business?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So for starters – again, number of topics in there. We have a detailed way to go in and track consumption versus our shipments into the retailer, so it's not an opinion-based position on destocking impacting our business, it's factual. So, that's the first part of it. The second is, you made mention to a concern out there about the loss of a SKU at one of the drug retailers. Those kind of things happen all the time where retailers look to make a change that might be in line with their strategic focus of what they're trying to accomplish. It happens all the time and they come and go. The net of them for us continues to be positive where we're adding SKUs over time and increasing our presence at shelf. So that's the first part of it. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: And coming back to Joe's question, on pricing because it's such a important topic and one that you also focused on, when you think about your individual brands on kind of a like-for-like price basis, you're not tend to like, you're not experiencing pressure on your own list prices at this point in time. Given the nature of the categories and the strength of your brands within them, is that a fair point?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, that's a correct statement. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Last one for me. The A&P spending at 14% of sales this year, any thought in a tough retail environment to step that up to even higher levels or what's the thought process behind that kind of a debt level of A&P ratio, and is there any thoughts to even stepping it up higher to try and drive strong organic growth in what is a tough kind of retail backdrop? Thank you.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Sure. So first of all our dollars are up next year in terms of what our outlook is and the dollars are up more than it would appear as we've had a number of cost savings opportunities again largely linked to the Fleet integration that we're plowing back into A&P spending. So we're actually taking our dollar spending up more than it would appear. And second is we've built our marketing and A&P plan brand-by-brand detail up. So we look at the opportunities that are out there available to us and how we can execute against them. So we're continuing to look at opportunities where increased spending maybe beneficial in terms of top line gain.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Steph Wissink with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Stephanie Wissink - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Thanks. Good morning everyone. I'd like to dig into the BC and Goody's rebranding or repackaging. Can you just share with us a little bit of how that works at retail, is there a period or a lull where the retailer down stocks existing packaged goods. And then as you introduced the new packaging, they ramp back up, is that what we should expect to see over the course of the next few weeks?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. That's a good way to start the description of it, Steph, so we're going to be introducing brand new SKUs across the year and the retailers have different timing based on their resets. So it's going to take the whole fiscal year to have this rollout across our retailer customer base. So the retailers, as they get ready to transition to the new package, will stop ordering the old packaging, and they'll bring their inventories down to a certain level and then they'll start to reorder the new packaging. So that's one part of the impact that will realize on sales from quarter-to-quarter. The other is that we'll also get some returns from our largest customers, as well as slotting charges and other chargebacks from the retailers as they implement this new packaging. So that's the other part that will hit not only net sales, it's a gross to net item affecting sales, but it also affects our gross margins, as we have a dollar-to-dollar hit there, as we incur those transitionary costs. This rollout is something we're really excited about. If you look at the page in the deck on the left side, we have the packaging I think literally from the 1920s from advertising that we found out on the web. This packaging hasn't been changed for literally 100 years kind of thing. So we think this is going to continue to better position the product for continued growth.

Stephanie Wissink - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

And, Ron is there any pricing advantage that comes along with a rebranding or a repackaging, how do you think about the post re-launch pricing structure of those brands?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, there's really two parts to that. The first is, the pricing proposition around it, which we will address over a longer period of time, as we roll this out. And then secondly, we're transitioning to a new manufacturing process, that gives us added capacity as well that over the long-term will help improve our cost position versus the existing packaging.

Stephanie Wissink - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

All right, then our final question is just on the cadence of the year, I think you've said numerous times, second half stronger than the first half, and clearly your Q1 being down a bit. Can you talk a little bit about what the key drivers are that are loaded into the back half, maybe outside of BC and Goody's, what you see as the ramp in some of your other key brands, and what we should be looking for as good milestones within the consumption data to validate that back half acceleration?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Steph, this is Chris. Maybe just some broad comments around the cadence as we think about fiscal 2019. From a top-line perspective, you mentioned obviously BC, Goody's and Ron mentioned expecting that to flow through the entire year, just given the magnitude of each retailer and their percent of sales, if you will, that's contributing to the first half, second half as well. The second is, we mentioned a change in our accounting policy regarding revenue recognition, that essentially pulls forward certain trade spends into the first half that in fiscal 2018 were recognized in the second half of the year. And then we mentioned also the third factor just to remember our tougher comps specifically around Q1 which is our toughest comp for the year. And then as I worked down the P&L, we also talked about our gross margin for fiscal 2019, anticipating gradual improvements around freight and warehousing costs. And then Ron made mention of the transition cost for BC, Goody's that are going to flow through various lines of the P&L. Also the timing of our A&P spend is heavily weighted in the first half.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Steph, one other comment at the end of your questions there, you made the comment of tracking consumption, what I'd like to remind you is, is that these generic monthly consumption reports that come out have a long history of being disconnected from the actual results of the company for a number of reasons. The first is, it doesn't track all of our business. It doesn't track any of our International business. It doesn't track Canada. It doesn't track all of the channels in the U.S. especially the fastest growing ones which are the online. Our online business doubled this year from $10 million to $20 million, which added about 1 point of growth that is completely untracked, as well as disconnects as we launch new products, there is often a delay before the reports are accurate, as they flow into the systems in that. So BC and Goody's we expect a disconnect. And this isn't a new phenomenon, it seems like I've been addressing this question of why is there such a big disconnect for the eight years or so that I've been here every single quarter or often from investors we meet with. And what I'll remind you is to use it as a data point but don't rely upon it as the-data point in the singular correct piece of information that will provide you insight on how the business is tracking.

Stephanie Wissink - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Thanks, Ron. I appreciate that. Can I just ask as a follow-up, maybe visually then at retail, what should we be looking for from, again, some of your key brands outside of BC and Goody's in terms of initiatives?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah, so continued on-going brand building efforts around TV and digital placements, continued new product rollouts. In fiscal 2018 we had very successful launches around Summer's Eve, Compound W and Nix and BC Sinus and daytime cold, so those will continue to build on momentum in fiscal 2019, we expect them to. In addition to that we've got a number of other new product developments we anticipate launching this year. And again it's something we don't talk about prior to them being launched at retail for obvious reasons. But really it's more of the same stuff in terms of day-in and day-out blocking and tackling around brand building and marketing efforts as well as a focus on continuing to launch new product and bringing innovation to help focus on growing categories.

Stephanie Wissink - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Okay. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Linda Bolton Weiser, D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open. Linda Bolton Weiser - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Hi. So, first of all, can you give me the actual, like the, unadjusted free cash flow relative to the $208 million in FY 2018, what it was if you included everything like in...?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

So Linda, if you go to our adjusted, you can see a non-GAAP free cash flow number for the year of $197.6 million which is in one of our adjusted free cash flow table in the back of the earnings report. Linda Bolton Weiser - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Okay. And then in terms of your projection for free cash flow for the next year, will there be a big gap between the GAAP and non-GAAP free cash flow?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

At this point we don't anticipate any adjustments to GAAP free cash flow, if you will, for fiscal 2019.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

And again the adjustments in 2018 were largely associated with the integration costs associated with the Fleet acquisition.

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Linda Bolton Weiser - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Okay. And then Ron, I was just sort of thinking here. I mean, if your organic top line growth is sort of 1%, and then in the past you've always said that your margins are really high already and not to really expect margin expansion over the long-term. So your EBITDA margin is flat at best maybe. So, really, the algorithm is not for a lot of EBITDA growth here over time and perhaps even declines if you get spikes and cost inflation like we've just seen. So, if you have sort of a declining EBITDA, I mean kind of how do you think about that long-term. And do you think maybe, there are some opportunities to bring ongoing productivity into the company, and not to just reactively respond to inflation, but to actually look for ongoing productivity that might help you stabilize in EBITDA margin rather than experience some declines of margins going forward?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So first of all in fiscal 2018, right, we realized an EBITDA margin erosion that was largely attributable to the freight and warehouse issues that we've talked about, right, and the reduction in gross margin. So we expect in fiscal 2019 to recover those and get back to a normalized level. In addition to that in fiscal 2019, as we talked about earlier, we expect an impact from rolling out the new BC and Goody's packaging that would go away for fiscal 2020. So, if you look out the fiscal 2020, we would expect based on those two factors that we'd be able to recover some of the EBITDA margins going forward after fiscal 2019 is the first part. The second part is, we actually have had for a very long time gross margin and other cost reduction initiative in place. And historically, the way we've looked at that is trying to improve gross margin as a way to find additional resources to increase A&P over time, and keeping a stable level of EBITDA margins, which were at the high end of the industry. So, clearly as we react and recover the freight and warehousing costs and deal with the cost associated with the BC and Goody's launch, we would expect that to go away and go up and that we would continue to focus on improving margins over time – the gross margins. Linda Bolton Weiser - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Okay. Thanks.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Frank Camma with Sidoti. Your line is now open. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the call.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Good morning, Frank. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Hey, there is a lot of questions about private label on pricing. And to me it seems like investors really still misunderstand your business model, brands, and even the fact that you sell over-the-counter healthcare products. That's an observation, not a question. My only question is how much of your debt is floating and I mean actual dollar amount?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Frank, about $1 billion. Since the refinancing we did back in March, we're about 50-50 fixed, floating. And as a reminder we plan to use the majority of our free cash flow absent the repurchase we just announced to rapidly get that number down about half a turn a year as we look forward. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. And what's that price deck roughly?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

So, the $1 billion of floating, majority is priced at LIBOR plus 200 basis points, came down from LIBOR plus 250 basis points. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. So about 4.5%, right, roughly?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Currently standing around 4%, yeah, and we will expect it to increase throughout the year. Yep. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. So in today's credit market, if you were to buy swaps to fix that, how much would it cost you?

Christine Sacco - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

So, the biggest factor – obviously the pricing and the interest rate environment is factored into the pricing on a swap. I mean the biggest thing for us as we think about our capital structure is how quickly we can delever and how much free cash flow we generate? So going out and locking in fixed to swap today for say $0.5 billion that's floating, I'm going to pay that down in just under two years. And so, we're continually looking at our cap structure, we're conscious of our floating debt in this environment. And when opportunities arise as they did in March very rapidly, we take advantage of it, and we'll continue to do that. Frank Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. Great. That's all I had. Thanks.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Frank.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ron Lombardi for any closing remarks.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc.

Management

Great. I'd just like to thank everyone for joining us today and have a good day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude today's program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a wonderful day.