Ramon Laguarta
Analyst · TD Cowen. Your line is open
That's great. Great two questions. On Tostitos, we've made some investments in the summer, but the Tostitos brand has a lot of relevance in this fall season with all the gatherings around TV watching and tailgating and everything else that happens in the US. So, as we will be putting incremental investment behind Tostitos and as I mentioned, it's going to be around brand investment, so programs on consumer investment, brand investment, and also value in the sense of 20% more bonus packs and some other additional value for consumers that will sure will create additional penetration for the brand and hopefully growth. And we're doing the same with Doritos. Doritos, we’re investing a bit more sequentially. We started with Lays, now we're moving to Doritos. Doritos being a brand that responds very well to any sort of activity and we're seeing already in the month of September, October, how the brand is responding. And will sequentially improve. The other part of the business that --with the pandemic mobility and returning to different patterns by consumers that is being impacted is multi-packs. And variety packs was a huge driver of business. We're seeing that part of the business kind of slowing down a little bit, part is affordability. So some of the larger packs have been impacted. Now we offer 10-count multi-packs to -- before it was more 18 and 24. Now 10-count, that's growing very fast. Parts of the month, the consumers are gravitating toward lower purchase. That's growing very well. We're also giving bonus packs to our multi-packs, plus two units, plus three units. So this will be all additional value that I think will have a positive impact in the business in the coming months. Now when it comes to permissible, we've been working on permissible now for many, many years, both on making our core products more permissible. You see our levels of sodium, our levels of fat are being reduced, and that's creating a positive halo for all our brands, but also creating a portfolio of brands that are, as you say, not necessarily premium. I think the penetration is still limited around between 10% and 20% in some of those platforms, but already beyond what is the premium consumer. It's really democratizing positive choices to consumers. It's SunChips, it's the Simply range, which covers most of our large brands. It is SmartFoods, it is PopCorners, and as I said, some new addition to the family hopefully with Siete. So we keep investing in those. We're seeing penetration increasing. We're seeing positive development of those brands. And everything is impacted by affordability even for medium-income consumers or medium-high income consumers. We don't see this as a long-term derailer. We see something that will continue to provide the right portfolio, add distribution, make sure visibility is at the levels that it needs to be to generate trial. Be very intentional with where we invest money behind these brands to generate additional trial. And the fact of the matter is that, today with digital advertising and all the information and insights that we have, we can be much more precise and thoughtful and have much higher returns on how we build these platforms, which as I said earlier, they are meaningful. They are already $2 billion and this is a large business that is growing and will continue to grow for us in the long term.