Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Church & Dwight Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, I have been asked to remind you that on this call, the company's management may make forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, the company's financial objectives and forecasts. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that are described in detail in the company's SEC filings. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Jim Craigie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Church & Dwight. Please go ahead, sir. James R. Craigie - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, everyone. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, especially when we have great results to report. I'll start off the call by providing you with my perspective on our third quarter business results, which you read about in our press release this morning. I'll then turn the call over to Matt Farrell, our current Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, and soon to replace me as Chief Executive Officer. Matt will provide you with his perspective on the financial details for the quarter. When Matt is finished, I'll return to discuss our earnings guidance for the year, and then we'll open the call to field questions from you. You should also know that Rick Dierker is here with us today, who replace Matt as CFO in 2016. Let me start off by saying that I'm very proud of my company for the third quarter business results that we achieved. Despite headwinds from continued soft U.S. consumer demand and weakening foreign currency, the Church & Dwight team built upon our momentum in the first half of this year and continue to leverage our innovation-driven strategy to deliver strong business results in the third quarter 2015. This is exemplified by the fact that our organic revenue growth of 3.2% in Q3 was the sixth consecutive quarter of organic growth above 3%, even though we are now lapping high organic growth levels of 5% achieved in the back half of 2014. As I have stated on previous earnings calls, we believe that innovation is the key to delivering strong sales and earnings growth in any economic and competitive environment. Innovation has been a key driver of our past success, as shown by the fact that over 25% of our domestic sales so far this year came from new product launched in the past five years. In 2015, we launched new products in every one of our major category. Some of these new products, like our new premium price cat litter called ARM & HAMMER CLUMP & SEAL, have become a huge hit with our consumers as reflected in both the brand's share results and its impact on category growth. We first launched the new ARM & HAMMER CLUMP & SEAL cat litter products in 2014, which drove a 23.5% increase in our consumption and grew our share by 290 basis points to a record share of 22.9%. In 2015, we built upon this success by launching a new lightweight version of the CLUMP & SEAL cat litter. This product is also off to a great start. Our total ARM & HAMMER cat litter consumption in the first nine-months of 2015 was up 15% and our share grew to a new record of 24.0%. This share growth in 2014 and 2015 has enabled our cat litter brand to grow from number three brand in the category to a strong and growing number two brand. And this growth help drive the cat litter category up 8.6% in the first nine months of last year on top of the 8% growth in 2014. This exemplifies our belief that innovation is the key anecdote to driving improved value creations for our consumers, customers and shareholders. Our goal is to continue launch innovative new products to drive share gains and category growth in all the categories in which we compete. I'll now turn the call over to Matt to give you specific details on our third quarter results. Matthew T. Farrell - Executive VP, Chief Operating & Financial Officer: Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everybody. I'll start with EPS. Our third quarter reported EPS was $0.90 per share compared with $0.85 in 2014, that's up 5.9%. The $0.90 was better than our $0.87 to $0.88 outlook for the quarter. And netted in our $0.90 is 4.7% drag from FX year-over-year. Reported revenues were up 2.4% to $862 million. Organic sales were 3.2%, exceeding our Q3 outlook of 2%. The organic sales beat was driven by our consumer business, both domestic (04:17 – 04:23) is due to volume with 1% positive product mix and pricing. Now, let's review the segments. The consumer domestic business' organic sales increased by 2.8%, driven by the continuous success of our ARM & HAMMER Clump & Seal cat litter franchise, including the new lightweight variant. Also, ARM & HAMMER liquid laundry detergent and higher sales of VITAFUSION gummy vitamins and BATISTE (04:50 – 04:52) Out of the 2.8% organic sales growth in the domestic business, volume growth contributed approximately 1.6% plus to 1.2% effect of positive price. We continue to expect the full-year organic sales to be approximately 2.5% for the consumer domestic business. Now, let's talk about international. International organic growth was up 7.9%. Volume increased approximately 6.9%, and we had favorable product mix and pricing of 1%. We had strong growth across Australia, Canada, Mexico and Europe, and in particular, our French team had a spectacular quarter with success with BATISTE. We now expect the full-year organic growth to be approximately 7% for the consumer international business. Now, we'll talk about specialty products. For our specialty products division, organic sales was down 2.2% with volume declining 1.4% and unfavorable product mix and pricing of 80 basis points, driven by a difficult comp of up 22% a year ago. We said in May that SPD would come back down to Earth, and it has. Currently, the U.S. dairy industry is still healthy, although milk prices have declined from an average of approximately $23 in Q3 2014 to approximately $16 in Q3 2015. The good news is that corn and soybean are also down, and the dairy industry continues to be profitable. Our comps are very difficult in the second half of this year. Remember, last year Q3 and Q4 were both 20% up quarter. We now expect the full year to be approximately flat for the Specialty Products Division. For the total company, we continue to expect organic sales to be approximately 3% for the year. Now, gross margin. Our reported third quarter gross margin was 44.8%, a 110 basis points increase from a year ago. The Q3 gross margin benefited from four factors: lower trade spending as we had a more normalized pricing environment in the laundry category; productivity programs; lower commodities; and a higher margin from our acquired businesses. These factors were partially offset by foreign exchange, negative product mix, and incremental costs associated with our new vitamin capacity at our York plant. For the full year, in August, we called 25 to 35 basis points of gross margin expansion. We now expect a range of 35 to 45 basis points on a full-year basis. Now, marketing. Marketing spend for the third quarter was $92.8 million or 10.8% of revenues, which is 70 basis points lower than the prior-year spend rate, largely driven by shifting some marketing funds through trade and coupons to continue supporting consumer trial generating activities for the OXICLEAN megabrand. For Q4, our expectation is for marketing to be flat year-over-year. Our full-year expectation is approximately 12.3% of sales or down 30 basis points, primarily due to the previously mentioned OXICLEAN megabrand investment shift. Now, SG&A. SG&A as a percentage of net sales was 11.9%. That's an 80-basis point increase from the prior-year third quarter. This was primarily due to incremental amortization from acquisitions, higher incentive compensation and research and development spending. Our full-year expectation is for SG&A to be flat as a percentage of sales. Other income and expense was $4.9 million, which is largely interest expense of $7 million. With respect to operating profit, the reported operating margin for the quarter was 22.1%, which was 100 basis points higher than the prior-year third quarter. Next is income taxes. While quarters may be uneven, our effective rate for the quarter is 35.2% and that's higher than our full-year expectation of 34.5%. The Q3 rate is higher year-over-year, primarily due to the year-ago benefit from an IRS settlement. Cash flow is next. We generated $408.8 million of net cash for the first nine months of 2015 and that's in line with the prior period. We have invested $44.7 million year-to-date in CapEx and continue to expect to spend approximately $70 million for full-year 2015. Cash from operations is expected to exceed $585 million and free cash flow to exceed $515 million. In conclusion, the third quarter highlights are 3.2% organic sales growth, 5.9% EPS growth, which equates to 10.6% currency neutral EPS growth. Now I'm going to talk about the fourth quarter. Remember, our previous outlook was for the second half top line to grow 2%, we still believe that. With Q3 growth of 3%, we expect Q4 organic sales growth of approximately 1%. For context, if we want to look at this on a two-year stacked basis; Q1 would be 5%; Q2, 8%; Q3, 8%; and then the coming Q4, 6%, as last year we had a 5% organic growth quarter. And (10:23 – 10:25) we expect gross margin to expand. We expect fourth quarter earnings per share of approximately $0.79 per share (10:33 – 10:36) and remember we had 20% EPS growth a year ago in the quarter. Now, I'm going to wrap and talk about the full year to summarize our thinking. We continue to expect 3% organic sales growth and full-year gross margin expansion of 35 to 45 basis points. As we work our way down the P&L, we now expect marketing at 12.3% of sales and operating margin expansion of 65 to 75 basis points. As far as other income and expense, excluding the impairment from earlier in the year, other income and expense is higher by $6 million or approximately $23 million expense in 2015. The full-year adjusted EPS range is now 7% to 8%, that's inclusive of a 4% drag from currency. And I want to remind us that we started the year with a 7% to 9% EPS outlook and a 2.5% currency drag. The currency drag has been growing all year long. In May, it grew to 3%. In August, when we spoke to you, it was 3.5%. And now, it's 4%. So, that's a total of $0.06 of higher EPS drag than when we started the year. So we've raised our currency neutral midpoint to 11.5% in August and we're affirming that today. Back to you, Jim. James R. Craigie - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Matt. Before I open the floor to questions, I'd like to provide a few additional highlights on our third quarter business results in our key categories and business units. As you know, we continue to sharpen our focus on our four megabrands: ARM & HAMMER, OXICLEAN, Trojan and our vitamin business, which each cover multiple categories. These four brands represent over 60% of our company's sales and profits and have achieved the most growth over the past five years through delivering a bigger bang for every dollar of marketing investment than smaller one-category brands. In 2015, we plan to spend over 80% of our media investment on the four megabrands. This investment continues to pay off as we achieved share growth on two of these four megabrands through the first nine months of 2015 despite aggressive competition. The ARM & HAMMER megabrand had an excellent quarter with total consumption up 5%, driven by its laundry detergent and cat litter products. I previously mentioned the excellent cat litter share results for the first nine-months of 2015. The specific third quarter results continued a strong momentum of this business as consumption grew 15% and our share increased 150 basis points to a record 24.0% share behind the new Clump & Seal product line. ARM & HAMMER laundry detergent also had a solid quarter of growth, driven by its liquid laundry detergent which achieved its highest ever quarterly share and its 23rd consecutive quarter of year-on-year share growth. It's important to mention that the total laundry detergent category grew 2.6% versus a year ago in the third quarter, the second consecutive quarter growth after three years of category decline. This category growth reflects two factors: first, a return to more normalized pricing environment and second, that the category has now absorbed most of the unfavorable impact of the launch of the unit just formed by our competitor. Hopefully, the laundry category will continue to grow in future quarters as it historically did driven by category-building innovation and a normalized pricing environment. We now can talk about other products and all the categories covered by the ARM & HAMMER megabrand. The ARM & HAMMER carpet deodorizers achieved its highest ever quarterly share of 53.9%, up 420 basis points versus year ago. All in all, a great quarter for the ARM & HAMMER megabrand, which is our largest megabrand with over $1 billion in annual sales. Next, the OXICLEAN megabrand, who share is up 20 basis points in the first nine months of the year. This megabrand's third quarter dollar share was down slightly. However, the brand's two biggest forms, OXICLEAN powder and OXICLEAN liquid laundry detergent achieved share gains. OXICLEAN's share of the $1 billion stain fighters category, its original category, increased 230 basis points to 46.0% which is greater than the combined share of the next five brands in the category. OXICLEAN liquid laundry detergent, which was first launched in the first quarter of 2014, grew its sales over 20% versus year ago and achieved its highest ever quarterly share. Our third megabrand, the Trojan brand, had a solid quarter as all three segments of this megabrand grew. The Trojan condom business achieved its second highest quarterly share in the past five years at 76.4%. In the total condom category, the top 12 SKUs all belong to the Trojan brand, and 25 of the top 30 SKUs are also Trojan SKUs. Other forms in the Trojan megabrand also had a solid quarter. The Trojan Vibrations line of products grew its share by 310 basis points to 58.0%. Our Vibrations line now has the top 3 SKUs in the category. And finally, the Trojan lubricant line first launched in February 2013 grew its share by 30 basis points to 7.7%, making it the number three selling brand at lubricants category. While the condom category is relatively flat, our Vibrations and Lubricant categories are growing at high-single digits, far above the average consumer products business category growth rate. Last but not least is our newest megabrand, the gummy vitamin business, which we bought in October 2012. This business consist of two brands; L'il Critters for kids gummy vitamins and VITAFUSION for adult gummy vitamins. Last quarter, I reported that despite strong demand for our gummy vitamin business, sales actually declined in the second quarter, primarily due to self-inflicted supply constraints, involving the slower than expected startup of a new production line in our York, Pennsylvania manufacturing facility. I'm pleased to report that our gummy sales grew over 7% in the third quarter as production rates and customer service levels have significantly improved. In addition to our four megabrands, we had a great third quarter of some of our higher margin power brands. Our First Response pregnancy kit brand achieved a record quarterly dollar share of 32.9%, up 250 basis points. Church & Dwight has been the number one manufacturer of branded pregnancy kits for 43 consecutive quarters. And our NAIR depilatory brand achieved a record quarterly share of 60.9%, up 450 basis points. NAIR has been the number one depilatory brand for 44 consecutive quarters with 7 of top 10 SKUs in the category. I'd also like to highlight some great news on our dry shampoo brand called BATISTE. We purchased this brand in the second quarter of 2011, which at that time, was the number one dry shampoo in the UK. We have now expanded the brand to over 80 countries, and next year, it'll become our next power brand with projected sales over $100 million. In the U.S., BATISTE is the fastest growing dry shampoo brand with sales up over 100% this year which propelled it from the number seven rank dry shampoo, to the number two rank in the third quarter. While dry shampoo represents only 3% of the total shampoo category in the U.S. The dry shampoo sub-category is up 34% year-to-date, while the bigger wet shampoo sub-category is up only 2%. Going forward, we plan to leverage the double-digit growth of the dry shampoo sub-category through new product innovations and increased marketing support. To drive the dry shampoo sub-category to at least where it is in the UK at 9% of the total shampoo category three times the current market share in the U.S. This is another great examples of Church & Dwight's successful acquisition strategy in which we can make even a relatively small acquisition with unique consumer benefits and quickly turn it into a strong contributor to the profitable growth of our company. Overall, a very solid quarter for our four megabrands and several of our power brands. I'll finish off, our portion of the call today with a few words on our outlook for the year. As I stated in the press release, we are maintaining our 2015 guidance on organic sales growth and improving our guidance on gross margin. We are not changing the midpoint of our currency-neutral adjusted EPS growth for 2015 of 11.5%. You might question why we're not raising our targets in view of the strong results in the first nine months of 2015. We simply do not feel comfortable of doing at this time for several reasons. First, we had an incredibly strong organic sales growth of over 5% in the fourth quarter of 2014, so we have to comp over those results. And second, if we do have additional earnings upside we will invest it in incremental marketing to enable us to support stronger share growth in our four megabrands behind our new product innovations as we exit 2015. In summary, we feel confident in delivering our annual targets which are in the top quartile of EPS projections that in our industry consistent with our historical performance. The achievement of our targets will be driven by a resilient portfolio of value and premium products, the launch of innovative new products across every one of our major categories, aggressive productivity programs and tight management overhead costs. I also want to assure you that we are aggressively pursuing acquisitions and a significant financial firepower to make them. As you know, we have a great track record of making highly accretive acquisitions because we are very selective of the types of businesses we acquire and very aggressive how we integrate them into our existing business. That ends our presentation. I'd now like to open the call to questions.