Earnings Labs

Campbell Soup Company (CPB)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 15, 2013

$20.61

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Campbell Soup Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Jennifer Driscoll, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please begin.

Jennifer Driscoll

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second quarter earnings call and webcast for Campbell Soup Company. With me here in New Jersey today are Denise Morrison, our President and CEO; Craig Owens, Senior Vice President, CFO and Chief Administrative Officer; Anthony DiSilvestro, Senior Vice President of Finance; and Anna Choi, the new senior manager of IR. Welcome, Anna. Denise will kick us off today with a strategic update, as well as her takeaways from our segment performance. Craig will offer his take on the quarter, our segment results and our guidance. As usual, we've created slides to accompany our earnings presentation. You'll find the slides posted on our website this morning at investor.campbellsoupcompany.com. Please keep in mind that this call is open to members of the media, who are participating in listen-only mode. As a reminder, our presentation today includes forward-looking statements, which reflect the company's current expectations about future plans and performance. Our forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions and estimates, which could be inaccurate and are subject to inherent risks. Please refer to Slide 3 in the presentation or to our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings for a list of the factors that could cause our actual results to vary materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Campbell completed the acquisition of Bolthouse Farms 1 week into the year. The acquisition is now included in our results, and it drove most of the year-over-year changes in the first half. On September 27, we announced a $115 million pretax restructuring program designed to improve our U.S. supply chain cost structure. Our second quarter reported results reflect $42 million of pretax costs associated with that program. Last, we signed commercial agreements with 2 large companies in Mexico, which we announced yesterday. Accordingly, our reported results for Q2 include a charge of $6 million pretax for that. Our remarks today for the balance of our presentation will be on an adjusted basis, including Bolthouse Farms' operating results for 25 of the 26 weeks of the first half, but excluding the transaction costs and the restructuring charges. Since our presentation includes non-GAAP measures, as defined by SEC rules, we've provided a reconciliation of the measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures as an appendix to the slides accompanying our presentation. These slides, along with our earnings release and selected quarterly financial information, can also be found on our website accessible by computer or with the Campbell IR app. In both places, next week, you'll be able to access Campbell's presentation at the CAGNY event, Consumer Analyst Group of New York event, in Boca Raton, Florida. We're presenting at 10:30 a.m. Eastern and then hosting the following luncheon. Our presentation slides will be available afterward in an archive. And with that, let me now turn the call over to Denise Morrison.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. Today, I will offer my perspective on our performance and discuss specific segment results, highlighting what's working and areas where we face challenges. Additionally, I'll provide an overview of our breakthrough innovation efforts. Finally, I'll touch briefly upon the announcement we've made yesterday afternoon to expand our business in Mexico through access to manufacturing and distribution capabilities that we have not had before. I'll then turn the call over to Craig Owens, Campbell's Chief Financial and Chief Administrative Officer, to provide details on our financial performance. As I stated previously, our goal was to drive sustainable, profitable net sales growth. We're putting the consumer first in everything we do at Campbell as we turn around this great company. We're actively listening to consumers and engaging with them to understand their needs, and we're converting our insights into action to delight both our core baby boomers and other growing consumer segments. I'm also encouraged by the creativity and dedication of our people. All of this is beginning to have a meaningful impact on our business. We posted solid performance in the second quarter, with net sales up 10% and adjusted net earnings up 6%. Both net sales and EBIT are up 1%, excluding Bolthouse Farms. We achieved this growth while advancing our work on cost controls and productivity improvements across the entire company. Our laser focus on brand building and innovation has helped drive our sales growth. Most of our businesses performed well in the quarter. Sales rose in U.S. Simple Meals and in Global Baking and Snacking. The Bolthouse Farms business continues to deliver results consistent with our acquisition plan. For the first half, with the exception of our U.S. Beverages and North America Foodservice business, our organic sales…

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Thank you, Denise, and good morning. I'm going to take a few minutes to walk through our second quarter results and segment highlights, followed by a look at our first half results, and then wrap up with a look at the full year sales and earnings guidance. As Jennifer mentioned, my discussion of results will exclude the impact of all restructuring programs for the current and prior years, as well as the transaction cost associated with the Bolthouse Farms acquisition. So for the quarter, we reported net sales of $2.3 billion, a 10% increase from the second quarter of 2012, reflecting the impact of Bolthouse Farms. Excluding the acquisition impact, organic net sales increased by 1% in the quarter. Excluding restructuring cost, which impacted both the current and prior year quarters, adjusted EBIT increased by 5%, or $349 million. Of the adjusted EBIT increase, 4 points came from adding Bolthouse and 1 point came from growth in the base business, primarily driven by strong earnings growth in U.S. Simple Meals. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.70 this quarter, a 9% increase from the second quarter of 2012. The increase reflected EBIT growth, the benefit of a lower tax rate and fewer shares outstanding, partly offset by higher interest expense related to the acquisition. Our second quarter EPS results exceeded our initial expectations. U.S. Soup consumption performance exceeded our forecast, more than offsetting unfavorable retailer inventory movements and higher marketing spending behind innovation. As you can see on Slide 21, 9 points of the 10% increase in net sales were attributable to the Bolthouse Farms acquisition. Excluding the acquisition, the growth in organic sales reflected pricing contributions of 2 points and a negative impact of increased promotional spending of 1 point. The pricing gains primarily reflected our previous list price increase…

Jennifer Driscoll

Analyst

Thanks, Craig. At this time, we'll conduct a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jason English of Goldman Sachs.

Jason English - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst

I'd like to get a little better understanding on this Mexican transition. And specifically, I have a few questions. So I apologize in advance. I'm just going to rattle off a few. First, can you give us a rough sense of how big your soup and beverage business is in Mexico right now, where the current distribution level stands, where you think distribution could go to over time? And then give us a sense of the time line for this transition and roll out.

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Yes. So Jason, we don't disclose the size of the business. But it is relatively small, right, in Mexico, while we've been there for quite some time and have developed a reasonable soup business, given that the soup business there is not primarily wet soup. And lately, we've had a lot of success with our beverage business there. Our distribution model currently is primarily in the developed trade. And really, I think the primary impact of this change is that it's going to take us, in a much better way, down market and into the smaller mom and pops and the smaller outlets that are so important, particularly to our Beverage business in that country. The time line is that we will phase out of production really across the next several quarters. But fairly quickly we will move into distribution through the third parties. And so we'll start to see some of that impact us as early as the latter part of this quarter.

Jason English - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Are you expecting any material impact on the overall margin profile of this business?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Well, I don't want to get all deeply at this point into the accounting for this, but the margin will improve. We'll probably see a decline in our reported sales because of the structure of the agreement, but I think it'd be best for us to tackle that when we report the quarter where that impact begins.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Thilo Wrede with Jefferies. Thilo Wrede - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: I just want to clarify something. So if I understand you right, you're planning to increase advertising on V8 because you're not happy with the performance of the brand. You increased advertising on Chunky, and apparently the brand is reacting there, yet you're still planning to decrease advertising overall. Doesn't the success of your advertising show you that more advertising would be helpful?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Yes. Thilo, let me take that question. There's a number of different dynamics going on in different brands. And what we've been talking about is, for each brand, optimizing all of the drivers of demand. In the V8 situation, we believe that as we introduce our new V8 with improved taste and the Hint of Lime and the new energy drinks and the juice boxes on kids, increasing our advertising in the second half is a good way, as one of the drivers for that business, in addition to merchandising and the innovation and product improvement that I just talked to you about. In terms of Chunky, we -- the biggest change on Chunky was going back to the NFL and having advertising that was a lot more productive than when Chunky got lost in the Amazing campaign last year. We think that has been huge. So across the Soup business in general, our advertising investment is still indexing significantly higher than peers. But we've used media vehicles. For example, we shifted to higher-quality GRPs and doubled our network prime GRPs, which were much more effective for us. So we've made some changes in not only the advertising campaign in Chunky, but also in the media as well. So I think that it's -- suffice it to say, that we are looking at all those drivers by brand, and we're making the decisions based on the situation the brand finds itself in.

Jennifer Driscoll

Analyst

And just a fact check. Advertising was down in Soup, not up as you said, Thilo.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Right. Thilo Wrede - Jefferies & Company, Inc., Research Division: But it was -- was it up on Chunky?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

No. It was down on Chunky. I mean, it's one of the things that makes it a good example of what we're talking about. We had great response to more effective advertising on Chunky and to some of the other things that we did in the marketing mix. But advertise spend on Chunky was down.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Katzman of Deutsche Bank.

Eric R. Katzman - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

I guess -- we heard from Kraft this morning of inventory deloading in some of their markets. Smucker's seem to have skated through without that, but you mentioned I guess broth as a challenge. Can you -- perhaps you can kind of go into what's happening with that? I think you broadly mentioned that you undershipped consumption. But in broth, it sounds like it was a pretty tough quarter.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

The broth business was affected by the fact that we shipped our holiday broth program at the end of October. So it actually hit in the first quarter, which raised our inventory levels. And we actually guided for that as we entered into the second quarter. Overall, for the half, broth was down 1%. So I think, overall, what we found in the second quarter as our consumption, our dollar consumption on soup picked up, we actually were seeing dollar consumption. This is MULO [ph] of plus 3.2%, with our shipments only being up 1%. So we've been outpacing our shipments with consumption. But our inventory is only up slightly at the end of the quarter, and that's in anticipation of the programming that went against the Super Bowl.

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

So broth was sort of the most extreme piece of that, Eric. But for the half, it's all pretty well squared up, even within broth.

Eric R. Katzman - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then I guess the challenges in Beverages are -- that's been going on for a while. But Foodservice, that's not a business that we really have talked about much at all, basically, I guess, because it's been relatively small and not all that impactful one way or the other. But it sounds like that's going the wrong way in a very rapid rate. What -- I guess, is there anything really that you can do other than try to gain some accounts back sooner versus later to offset that? And how much of a drag to, I guess, earnings do you expect that to be in the second half?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

A large portion of our sales decline, as we said, was due to the loss of a key restaurant customer, but we've also had an impact in the bottom line due to increased promotional spending. The cost of doing business in these channels have increased for us. So we're working through programs with retailers -- or sorry, with restaurants and with operators. We have a campaign for customer acquisition, but this is going to take time, and that's why we've basically said that we do anticipate that over the next few quarters, this business will continue to face challenges. The one part of the Foodservice business that actually remains a bright spot is our retail fresh soup. And the other thing that's in our profit in this business is we're investing in new capabilities that will support our ability for new customer acquisition.

Eric R. Katzman - Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division

Analyst

And so to the question about the earnings hit, can you kind of give us some sense as to how much of a drag that's going to be?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Eric, I don't actually see the trends getting a lot better in that business. I mean, as you've pointed out, the -- there are some step-change things that happen as you acquire or as you lose customers. We're on the negative side of that this year with a pretty significant restaurant loss. And we'll keep working on expenses and customer acquisition. But I think, realistically, we're going to see that business be a negative drag through the balance of this year, and then we will have cycled that customer loss.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Lazar of Barclays Capital.

Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

Just looking at your full year EPS guidance, which hasn't changed, but given the over delivery in the fiscal second quarter, I guess at the midpoint of your full year range, it implies essentially no EPS growth in the second half of the year. And I'm trying to get a sense of why that would be. Is it -- we already have the higher year-over-year tax rate in our model. Is it just the Foodservice issue you just talked about and some higher spending planned in Beverages? Or is there something else there that would lead the earnings growth to slow that much sequentially?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Well, if you look at it half to half, Andrew, the delivery on -- the implied delivery on EBIT is not very much different. So it's all about what's going on below the line, and it's the combination of cycling the very low tax rate from last year in the second half. So in the first half of this year, tax was a small favorable as we went from EBIT to earnings per share in the first half, and it's going to be a big negative as we go from EBIT to EPS in the second half. And then you've also got the fading positive impact of the share repurchase program. We suspended share purchase at the beginning of this year. So on the first half, the positive impact from that was something like 3 points, and it'll be more like 1 point or so in the balance of the year. So those 2 things are really what's going on between EBIT and EPS differently between the 2 halves.

Andrew Lazar - Barclays Capital, Research Division

Analyst

And you'd mentioned that condensed -- I think condensed sales were essentially flat for the half. And I know there were some concerns coming into the year that you were taking some pricing on condensed and what would the elasticity be. But it seems like, at least thus far, that's been manageable and -- so I'm trying to get a sense, is that level of elasticity essentially in line with what you had planned coming in or better? And what does it tell you about the, I guess, resiliency of that piece of the business and the role it can play in your broader portfolio?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Yes. Andrew, on the condensed soup, the performance has been better than what we expected in terms of the list price increase, and we're seeing that not only across the base but also the incremental.

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

I mean, if you look at consumption data for the quarter, condensed was actually up about 3 points. So we're pretty happy with that.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ed Aaron of RBC Capital Markets.

Edward Aaron - RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

You mentioned in your prepared remarks that consumption in soup came in a little better than you expected. As you kind of look at kind of the underlying data there, does it look to you like that's a function of what you've been doing to kind of improve that business? Or was there perhaps just more of a benefit from kind of easy comps and some better weather year-over-year?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

We have -- our conclusion on the performance this quarter really has been that our growth is driven by improved execution across the drivers of demand. We talked earlier on the call about the Chunky example, but if you think just in that one line, we've made taste improvements, we have had new innovation. In fact, 3 of the new varieties are performing in the top 5 of all RTS. We have had better positioning with the NFL. We're now being much more true to the brand target, dealing with satisfying the core male demographic. We've optimized pricing. We had better distribution and more impactful merchandising. So it's not a silver bullet. It's just been working with the brand and what it stands for in a much better way. In the advertising, we've kept it competitive levels, but we actually have more impactful advertising with the NFL. And quite frankly, you could say, "Yes, the weather had an impact," but it's really hard to predict or measure weather. So basically, we think it's that plus all of the other things we're doing on the business.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Alexia Howard of Sanford Bernstein. Alexia Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: Actually, maybe just continuing on the question of Chunky execution. It must be quite unusual to have some of those brand-new SKUs be in the top -- the top of SKUs for that entire brand. Is that because they're getting an awful lot of new promotion and merchandising support? And if so, how long is that launch merchandising support likely to last?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

I think it's a combination of the fact that we've had better quality merchandising and more frequency of promotion, not necessarily in the depths of that promotion that's really worked for the brand this year. And the new SKUs would be promoted, at least the new base SKUs, would be promoted with the rest of the line. Alexia Howard - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: And the promotion for the new SKUs, that will continue -- is there unusual promotion on those new products? And how long does that typically continue?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

There's not a lot of differentiated activity on the new SKUs within the Chunky line, Alexia. I mean, they have done very well, and we are really happy about that. But I -- the Chunky line tends to get promoted, both base and incremental SKUs together, and we're just seeing really good response to some of the new flavor adventure that we've got in the new SKUs. So it's pretty good news for us.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from John Baumgartner with Wells Fargo.

John J. Baumgartner - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Denise or Craig, just thinking about the industry and the environment here, it seems to be picking up a little bit. And I guess in light of that, just wonder if you can maybe share your vision in terms of Global Baking and Snacking to the extent that maybe there's some white spaces in your portfolio that you'd like to fill, or maybe certain geographies where a deal could enhance your leverage or enhance your growth. Just wondering if you have any thoughts there.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

The Global Baking and Snacking business for us has been pretty robust. And we're seeing increases in sales in both the United States and in Asia-Pacific, across the savory and the sweet. And then in the United States, we did have a windfall in our bakery business due to the Hostess bankruptcy. We were able to get extra shelf space and extra merchandising. I think that we're encouraged by those results. I don't know, Craig, if you have anymore to add there?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Well, I mean, we have said a number of times that part of our strategy is to be a little bit more active in M&A. One of the -- certainly, in terms of category, baking and snacking is interesting to us. So if we saw an opportunity to fill portfolio whitespace, as you put it, in some of our target markets with baking or snacking assets, that would be interesting to us.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Driscoll of Citi.

David Driscoll - Citigroup Inc, Research Division

Analyst

Wanted to ask a bit more of a big-picture strategic question. Incredible news yesterday, with Heinz going off the board here with a -- sorry, a non-strategic buyer, a financial buyer. Denise, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on -- it's always been one of my beliefs, and I think a fairly widely held belief, that the combination of Campbell's and Heinz would produce just tremendously powerful cost synergies on bringing those 2 companies together. You don't need to comment -- you're probably not going to comment on Heinz, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this idea of extracting cost synergies in a really big-picture strategic sense as to what we can do with Campbell's. I mean, it does seem like there's some amazing opportunities. And to see a company like Heinz go off the board from a financial buyer who should have nowhere near the capabilities of bringing cost synergies like a Campbell's would, I'm just surprised that, that type of a transaction has happened and we haven't seen a Campbell's get involved with something like this.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Well, we found the news surprising yesterday as well, and we wish Heinz and all the investors well with their plans. I'm not really going to comment on that transaction. What I can comment on, though, is the fact that at Campbell's, we are constantly looking at ways that we can reduce costs and manage our margins in these businesses, and we'll continue to do so.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from David Palmer of UBS.

David Palmer - UBS Investment Bank, Research Division

Analyst

I have a question on innovation. It sounds like some of the new flavors of Chunky have worked well. You also had Go soup and some other platforms with the idea that you wanted to broaden the shoulders of the brand, reach down into younger demographics. Could you speak to those new platforms, where there's a prospect of those being in-source because they're that successful from co-packing, which is my understanding, that those are being co-packed? And any insights there, that'd be great.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

Yes. I think the easiest way to deal with this is the fact that we've had 2 types of innovation. We've had sustaining innovation, which we've just talked about in terms of the line extensions to our base business, and then also the breakthrough innovation. The major breakthrough innovation that we've had in Soup and Simple Meals, as you've pointed out, is the Go soup and the Skillet Sauces. And to date, they've added about 0.5 point to our sales growth in quarter 2. Let me give you a little color on this. We reached our distribution targets for ACV, although it was a slower build. But we've completed that at the end of quarter 1. And just to give you an idea, that's about 70% in the MULO [ph], and in grocery, it's about the mid-80s. Therefore, once we achieve that, we turned on the marketing mid-quarter, particularly in digital and social media and then in-store, with sharper marketing and consumer promotions. Because right now, we're in a stage where we want to drive more trial with this new demographic of millennials. And the trial is building. And where we have trial, repeat is encouraging. And so we believe that this is going to take longer to create a franchise with this new demographic, but we're very committed to it, and this is the beginning of a platform to do so. In the case of Skillet Sauces, we're really making a market here because this dinner sauce segment does not exist. And so what we've found was customers placed the Skillet Sauces in some different locations in the stores. We're learning where they should be situated. We're reading the data on that throughout this introduction. But what we've come up with and we're talking to retailers about is we envision a new dinner sauce section in the store. And we recognize that it creates -- it's going to take longer to create a new category than building on line extensions. But so far, the retailer receptivity to this idea is very good. So we're pretty encouraged by these platforms, and we're going to continue to work them and build on them. And you'll hear more about that at CAGNY.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Growe with Stifel, Nicolaus. Christopher R. Growe - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division: I just had a question for you on the Foodservice business and just a follow-up. A lot of my other questions have been answered. So on the Foodservice side -- and obviously, the loss of a customer can hurt the business in the short run, but is there anything you need to do to that business to get it either -- whether it's from an investment standpoint or even a restructuring standpoint, I know you've got a pretty good plant there. But is there anything you can do from either of those sides to help kind of improve the performance for the new, if you will, Foodservice business?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Yes. I -- well, so we're working actually in both of those areas. We are putting in some new capability. There's been -- particularly around soup, we think that the market growth is more about ready-to-eat soup rather than our frozen soups, and so we're making some capital investment in one of our plants there and extending not only our capacity but also our packaging capabilities. With respect to restructuring, we've been through actually some restructuring of that organization. It improved our profitability last year and the year before. I think we'll retake a look at that. But the reality is that some of the pressure, in addition to the lost customer, is coming from the -- just pressure within the industry at both the distributor level and the wholesaler level as we see pressure on prices. So we're having to respond to that. We're being competitive. It is creating a difficult business environment for us that we think we'll work our way through it. But that's the reality right now in the marketplace.

Operator

Operator

We have Jonathan Feeney with Janney Montgomery Scott.

Jonathan P. Feeney - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Just one quick one. The $297 million in marketing and selling expenses in the quarter you disclosed, if -- what would that have been roughly without -- I assume Bolthouse had some marketing and selling associated with it, but how much would that have been down on an organic basis? And I guess related to that, clearly you had -- did have some success with Chunky and in an environment of falling advertising expenses. So what is it that's special do you think about soup and maybe you’re ready-to-serve franchise that's allowing you to get growth where, I guess -- sort of industry dogma that you need to advertise to sell product deals to accelerate volumes incrementally?

Unknown Executive

Analyst

Down 2%.

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

So we would have been down 2% marketing and selling expense, Jonathan, excluding the impact of Bolthouse. I think, as we've said several times, I don't want to keep -- I don't want to be repetitive. But the reality is, Chunky is responding very well to a lot of activity that we have going on across the different drivers of demand as we talk about it. Advertising is a piece of that. It's an important piece of that. We think our advertising is more effective. We think the positioning, the more unique positioning on Chunky going sort of back to its roots and getting it out from under the umbrella advertising has made every dollar that we've spent on air more effective than it was last year. And as we've also shown, and we'll talk a little bit more about this at CAGNY, the -- although we are down, and it's appropriate for us to talk about that because it's a driver from year-to-year, although we're down on our advertising spend, we are still very fully spent if you compare us to sort of industry averages against our Soup business.

Operator

Operator

We have Rob Moskow of Credit Suisse. Robert Moskow - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: So it's a one-part question. I think this year management has demonstrated that they can stabilize the Simple Meals business. And operating margins, by my forecast, anyway, look like they're going to come in around 25%. They've come in 25% almost every year for the last 4 or 5 years. And I guess my question is, is stabilization good enough right now for that business segment? I mean, would you be happy with kind of like a slow 0 to 1% kind of pace of growth and 25% margins? And if so, are you concerned that there might be dilution to the margin for the portfolio overall as you concentrate your resources on growing kind of the lower-margin parts of the businesses like Beverages and Bolthouse?

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

All right. I'm going to try and really answer this question. First of all, stabilization of this business is not good enough. And we've always said that we want to stabilize and profitably grow the business. We recognize that the business as is, is capable of a few points of growth. And it will be the innovation that we bring to the business on top of what we have today that could take that growth higher. Some of those executions will be at a lower margin, but they'll be important because they'll be reaching different consumers than what we've been able to do to date, and bringing them into the franchise. But overall, Soup and Simple Meals will be a very profitable business for Campbell's. I don't know if you have anything else to add?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Yes. And, Rob, you're right. If you focus on margin dilution, there probably will be some, right? We talk about entering faster-growing segments, faster-growing geographies. It's very unlikely that those new spaces will have the same kind of operating margin that Soup does. But to the extent that we expect those to be incremental growth, it adds to our total growth portfolio, I'm not so concerned about margin dilution per se. And particularly, when you put it on top of not only stabilized soup business but one that has had some growth to it and one that's benefiting from increased innovation, I think the formula starts to work pretty well for us if we get all those things going at one time. Robert Moskow - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: A few points of growth? Was that a 2 or a 3 behind it for Simple Meals? Or is that how I should interpret that?

B. Craig Owens

Analyst

Don't have a specific forecast on Simple Meal growth going forward.

Jennifer Driscoll

Analyst

Okay. Thank you for your very active Q&A session. We'll switch to Denise for her wrap-up.

Denise M. Morrison

Analyst

So in conclusion, I'd like to leave you with some key points. We're encouraged with our overall performance this quarter, as we continue to make progress on advancing our 3 growth strategies. Our U.S. Simple Meals business is clearly picking up steam, with positive sales and profit growth in both the quarter and the half. It's still too soon to judge the long-term success of our breakthrough innovations in U.S. Simple Meals, but early results are as we expected. And over time, we believe these products can contribute meaningfully to our growth. In Global Baking and Snacking, we posted solid results. Our Goldfish brand continued its positive momentum, and we drove increased consumption in our sweet snacking business. We also gained shelf space with fresh bakery. And in Asia-Pacific, we grew biscuit sales for both the quarter and the half. We have more work to do to improve the performance of U.S. Beverages and our North America Foodservice business, where we lost a significant customer. Bolthouse Farms had another good quarter, driven by innovation and increased distribution across its 3 categories, and we advanced our efforts to expand our international presence through agreements with Grupo Jumex and Conservas La Costena that will give Campbell expanded access to manufacturing and distribution capabilities in Mexico to grow our business. We're looking forward to a second half of continued investment and profitable sales growth. Thank you very much for joining us today, and I look forward to seeing many of you at CAGNY next week. Jennifer, can you please provide the closing comments?

Jennifer Driscoll

Analyst

Thank you, everybody. We appreciate you joining us for our second quarter earnings call. The replay will be available in a couple of hours. The phone number for that, if you missed any of our call, is (703) 925-2533. If you are a reporter and have questions, please call Carla Burigatto, Director of External Communication at (856) 342-3737. If you're an analyst or investor, call me, Jennifer Driscoll, at (856) 342-6081. That does conclude our conference, and you may now disconnect. Have a great weekend, and see many of you in Florida.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the conference. You may now disconnect. Good day.