Operator
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Church & Dwight Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. Before we begin, I have been asked to remind you on this call that 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 filing. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Matt Farrell, Chief Executive Officer of Church & Dwight. Sir, please go ahead. Matthew Thomas Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'll begin with a few comments on the quarter, and then I'll turn the call over to Rick Dierker, our CFO. When Rick is finished I will conclude with some final comments and we'll open up the call for questions. Q2 was an outstanding quarter for our company. Organic sales growth was 4.4%, which exceeded our outlook of 3%, this performance was a clear standout in comparison to our peers. Earnings per share was $0.49 which exceeded our outlook by $0.03. Our reported sales growth was 14.5% which reflects strong organic growth and prior year acquisitions. Sales growth is clearly a powerful earnings lever in an environment with rising input costs. In the U.S. organic sales grew 5% with 6.2% volume growth. Our categories are growing and our market shares are healthy; 11 of our 15 categories grew during the quarter, 9 categories have grown for at least three consecutive quarters. Beyond category growth our share results are solid with 7 out of 11 power brands growing or maintaining share. As we have said in the past, we have low exposure to private label, about 12% share on a weighted average basis. We're having success in the online class of trade. Global consumer online sales continue to grow and we expect it to exceed 6% of sales in 2018. And finally, I'd like to give you perspective on the promotional environment, 8 of our 11 power brands had a lower percentage of products sold on promotion in Q2 compared to Q2 2017, and still we grew. And this is the second quarter that we've seen this and we don't expect that to change in the second half. Our International Consumer business delivered 6.8% organic growth. As you know International has emerged as a growth driver for our company for the past four years. International markets are a bright spot for Church & Dwight, unlike many of our peers, the investments that we have made in new leadership, regional hubs and our brand focus continue to pay off. Our algorithm is 6% annual organic growth for the International business and we expect to meet or beat that number in 2018. Turning to Specialty Products. Q2 was another challenging quarter for us with a 5% decline in organic sales. This reflects lower demand for animal productivity products from our dairy customers, who are being hurt by low milk prices. There is a silver lining though, the acquisitions that we've made over the past couple of years, which got us into the poultry business have reduced our dependence on the dairy economy. So we continue to have confidence in our long-term algorithm of 5% organic sales growth for this business. Now let's go back to the U.S. business for a minute to call out the drivers of our outstanding organic sales growth in the quarter. Our laundry brands reached an all-time high 18.8% share of liquid laundry in the quarter lead by OxiClean. Oxi Liquid Laundry had its highest ever share of 1.9%. ARM & HAMMER unit grew consumption 28%. Consistent with my earlier comment, the amount of detergent sold on promotion in the category was down 500 basis points sequentially from Q1 and down 70 basis points year-over-year. vitafusion vitamins turned in a strong quarter with 6.2% consumption growth on the strength of increased distribution and velocity. Batiste continued to gain share with 36% consumption growth in the dry shampoo category and the category grew 33% in the quarter. Batiste is the number one dry shampoo for the tenth consecutive quarter and continues to be the number one dry shampoo in the world. Toppik and Viviscal turned in a strong quarter with 16% consumption growth. These outstanding hair care brands are growing because they deliver results to consumers with thinning hair. Turning to innovation, innovation continues to be a big driver of our success. We have new products shipping in several categories, all of which have been performing well. In fact sales of our new products are ahead of our 2018 plan. We launched ARM & HAMMER CLUMP & SEAL lightweight unscented cat litter with guaranteed seven-day odor control which builds on the success of our CLUMP & SEAL franchise. We expanded our Odor Blasters laundry platform, leveraging technology that helps eliminate tough odors. We introduced new vitafusion and L'il Critters probiotics gummy vitamins which support digestive health. Trojan has launched NIRVANA which is an assortment of sensation condoms in an exclusive package design. Batiste continues to expand distribution with three unique fragrances leveraging our number one share position. And finally Waterpik, Waterpik launched a really cool product this year. It's a water flosser to restore whiteness while flossing. Waterpik has been in the Church & Dwight family for a year now. The business is performing extremely well and we continue to expect high single-digit sales growth in 2018. We are looking at Waterpik as a global opportunity. The power of the combination of Waterpik and Church & Dwight is evident. We are laying the groundwork to sustain a strong growth rate in the future, particularly in international markets where household penetration is much lower than in the U.S. So to conclude, we had a strong second quarter, we had a strong first half. We continue to outperform the market because we have brands consumers love, we have right strategies to grow and our company is a friend of the environment, which is important to us and our consumers, and our people make Church & Dwight a great place to work. Next up is Rick, give you details on the second quarter, and the outlook for Q3 and the full year. Richard A. Dierker - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Thank you, Matt, and good morning everybody. I will start with EPS. Second quarter adjusted EPS was $0.49 per share compared to an adjusted $0.41 in 2017, up 19.5%. The $0.49 was better than our $0.46 outlook. The $0.03 beat versus our outlook is made up of $0.03 from a stronger top line, a $0.02 drag on margin due to an oral care withdrawal and then $0.02 from a lower tax rate. Reported revenues were up 14.5% to over $1 billion. Organic sales were up 4.4%, exceeding our Q2 outlook of approximately 3%. The organic sales beat was driven by our domestic and international Consumer business. We're extremely pleased with our strong volume growth domestically of 6.2%. And as expected, our negative price mix continues to move in the right direction as I mentioned last quarter. We expect that improvement to continue as we move through the year and for the second half we expect that to be flat to positive. Now let's review the segments. First, Consumer Domestic, the organic sales increased by 5%, primarily due to ARM & HAMMER liquid and unit dose laundry detergent, Batiste dry shampoo, Viviscal and Toppik hair care brands, vitafusion and L'il Critters gummy vitamins, and XTRA Laundry Detergent. International organic growth was up 6.8%, driven largely by OxiClean, Batiste, and ARM & HAMMER liquid laundry detergent in the export business. ARM & HAMMER liquid laundry detergent and clumping cat litter, and Batiste in Canada, and OxiClean Ultra Gel and Nair in Mexico. For our Specialty Products division, organic sales declined 5% due to the lower volume offset a bit by pricing. Turning now to gross margin, our second quarter gross margin was 44.3%, a 140 basis point decrease from a year ago. This includes a one-time 70 basis point impact from a voluntary recall and an FDA mandated withdrawal associated with certain oral care products. Other drivers were a 120 basis point drag for higher commodities, a 40 basis point drag from higher transportation costs, partially offset by our productivity program of 80 basis points and acquisitions of 10 basis points. Moving now to marketing. Marketing was up $5.5 million year-over-year. The good news is we didn't cut any marketing, even excluding acquisitions our spending was up slightly. As a percentage of revenue marketing was 13.3%. Compared to Q1 marketing increased 340 basis points. For SG&A, Q2 SG&A increased 110 basis points year-over-year, higher SG&A primarily due to acquisitions, including intangible amortization and higher IT and R&D investment spending. Now to operating profit. The operating margin for the quarter was 16.9%. Other expense all in was $18.4 million primarily driven by incremental interest expense and higher debt levels related to acquisitions. Next is income tax, our effective rate for the quarter was 21.7% on an adjusted basis compared to 37.6% in 2017. We now expect the full year rate to be approximately 23%. And now to cash, we had a strong cash flow quarter. For the first six months of 2018, net cash from operating activities was $322 million, an increase of $73 million from the prior year due to higher cash earnings and a smaller increase in working capital. Excluding prior year payments totaling $25 million for the UK pension plan settlement, and higher than normal deferred comp payments, cash from ops would have increased $48 million. So in conclusion, the second quarter highlights were 4.4% organic sales growth and adjusted EPS growth of 19.5%. Now turning to the third quarter outlook. We expect Q3 organic sales growth of approximately 3%. We expect third quarter earnings per share of approximately $0.53; a 2% reported increase year-over-year or an 8% increase on an adjusted basis. We expect marketing to be up in Q3 despite the acquisition mix impact I've spoken about. And now turning to the full year, to summarize our thinking, we now expect organic sales to be 3.5%, reported sales growth to exceed 9%, which offsets the headwinds we discussed on gross margin. Full year gross margin will now be 120 basis points down, reflecting the full year impact of the oral care charges as well as higher logistics costs. As a recap, our full year gross margin bridge is made up of a 130 basis points drag due to transportation and commodities, a 25 basis point drag for the oral care issues, a positive 35 basis points of price volume mix driven largely by volume and our full year marketing as a percent of sales will be 11.5%, reflecting the lower spend rates for recent acquisitions. In other words, absent acquisitions our marketing spend rate will be 12%, which again means our marketing dollars are up year-over-year. We are raising our EPS outlook to be $2.26 to $2.28 per share or adjusted EPS growth of 17% to 18% despite the incremental headwinds from margin and currency. This continues to be top tier among the entire industry. And finally turning to cash, we're raising our expectations for cash from ops to $690 million. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Matt for a few more comments on pricing. Matthew Thomas Farrell - Church & Dwight Co., Inc.: Yeah, before we open up the line for questions, I just want to take a minute to talk about pricing because I know it's on everybody's minds. So gross margin pressure has been felt across many industries over the past 12 months. We certainly have had our share of commodity and logistic cost increases and we have shared with you our actions to contain those costs, continuous improvement programs, hedging promotional efficiencies, just to name a few. Raising price is the other side of the equation, it's been top of mind this earnings season. So as you know, many CPG companies have already announced their intentions to take pricing to help offset their cost increases. We have reviewed our categories to determine if list price increases are cost justified and would deliver a positive financial result for both our company and for our retailers. And like our competitors, we have determined that in certain categories, pricing actions are necessary to help offset our cost increases. We are in the process of discussing those decisions with our retailers right now. We will not be going into specific details in this call in order to allow time for discussions with our retail partners to take place. But, we will report back with details in early November. We'll now open the line for your questions.