Ward M. Klein
Analyst · Citi
Thank you, Dan. As many of you know, fiscal 2012 was planned to be a year of return on the investments made in fiscal 2011. As you will recall, 2 of our biggest investments in fiscal 2011 were in the global launch of the revolutionary Hydro shave system, and some downsizing of our battery production footprint. Both investments have been executed as planned, and were significant contributors to this year's record results. Against that backdrop, we delivered earnings that came in with the upper half of the range we guided you to a year ago. Nonetheless, we have become a bit more pessimistic on the outlook for the battery market, and therefore, have announced a major restructuring program that I would get into later. But first, a review of the current business, beginning with the Personal Care division. During fiscal 2012, we executed 2 key priorities in Personal Care related to Hydro. First, we expanded the Hydro franchise with the introduction of 2 new products, Hydro Silk for women and Schick Hydro 5 Power Select. Second, we generated significant profit growth in our Hydro Men's system franchise, as the global launch phase of this product line is now substantially complete. Hydro direct profit contribution, which we define as gross margin less A&P, increased dramatically as a result of increased volumes, lower product cost, reduced promotions and lower media spending. We are very pleased with the topline momentum of the Hydro franchise. In Hydro Men's systems, cartridges grew over 50% on higher unit volumes at lower trade spending. In addition, overall Hydro handles grew due to the successful introduction of Power Select. As a result of the combining growth in both handles and cartridges, total sales of Hydro's Men's systems increased by more than 40% in fiscal 2012. Consumer off-take of our new Hydro Silk product has been strong, and sales have been incremental to our women's system franchise in all markets where we've launched. This success was achieved in the face of the significant product launch by our largest competitor in their key women's product line. Specifically, our U.S. 52-week market share for women's system grew 1.9 share points to 39.1%. In addition to successfully executing behind our Hydro priorities, we also initiated and executed price increases across many of the personal care product lines, including a price increase in shave preps. These pricing actions favorably impacted fiscal '12 results, and the full year impact will flow through to fiscal '13. Consistent with what we discussed in our third quarter call, we continue to see a challenging competitive environment in the Wet Shave category. This was evidenced by heightened levels of promotional trade and consumer spending by our major competitor across all Wet Shave segments. As just discussed, our men's and women's systems segments delivered solid results. However, the heightened promotional activity did have a measurable impact on our U.S. disposable and shave prep segments, as these product categories are more susceptible to fluctuations resulting from pricing and promotional activity. In light of what we are currently experiencing, our business plans for 2013 assume this challenging competitive conditions will continue. Looking forward, we have new product introductions in most all of our personal care segments in 2013. There are 2 recently introduced products I would like to highlight. In Feminine Care, we've launched an improved Gentle Glide tampon, Gentle Glide 360, which features 3 layers of protection, a first in the category. Another exciting new product in an entirely new segment for us Litter Genie, which leverages the Diaper Genie technology. Litter Genie is a cat litter disposal system, which is a new, convenient solution for controlling cat litter odors. We have recently expanded distribution from specialty pet stores into the mass and club channels. These innovative new products are being supported with meaningful promotional programs and new advertising campaigns. We have also recently initiated pricing actions in Sun Care and Shave Preps, where we have leadership market positions. Turning to our Household Products division. Global Battery category volumes continued to be down, nearly 5% versus prior year in our latest 12-week data. Prior-year hurricane response volumes that are not repeated in our fiscal 2012 contributed nearly 2 points of the decline, the Battery category and value was also down nearly 3 points versus year ago in our latest 12-week data, as soft volumes are partially offset by higher retail pricing. I will discuss the impact of Hurricane Sandy on our first quarter fiscal of 2013 in a moment when covering the outlook for fiscal 2013. Despite these category challenges, the Household Products division delivered nearly 8% operational earnings growth in the quarter, as were able to offset top line softness with tight spending controls and the favorable impacts from our 2011 restructuring efforts. Now I will provide some additional insights by area. In North America, battery category declines and market share losses resulting from decreased shelf space and display activities at a key retailer, negatively impacted our top line results. Turning to Asia, we continue to experience top line softness in some of our key markets due in part to category volume declines and a difficult competitive environment, especially in Australia. However, we continue to increase our market share leadership position. We expect topline results to improve in the upcoming fiscal year. In Europe, organic top line results were nearly 3% below a year ago, driven by softness in some of our Western European markets. However, we have begun to see signs of more stable volume and pricing conditions across many markets. We are encouraged by the progress and financial discipline exhibited by our European teams in the face of extremely challenging macroeconomic conditions. Finally, in Latin America, our Battery business results have remained strong in many of our key markets. We continue to increase our market share leadership positions and have effectively grown volume and pricing to offset inflationary cost pressures, which have resulted in continued segment profit growth. Going forward, we expect global battery category volumes will continue to decline in the low to mid-single-digit range. I will now address our restructuring program announced today. Our world is changing, and we need to remain ahead of that change, to do so from a position of strength, not weakness. More specifically, our view of the primary battery market is less optimistic. A population of primary battery-powered devices declined significantly during the Great Recession, as did the battery category. We responded with our 2011 restructuring program. In 2010 and the first part of 2011, we saw some recovery to device populations and the battery category, though not back to prerecession levels. However, in the past year, we have seen a resumption of the negative device and battery unit trends, despite the slow economic recovery. We think these slow but steady negative trends are here to stay. To remain ahead of this, we have announced today the details of a major organizational restructuring program. As discussed during our third quarter fiscal 2012 earnings call in July, and our subsequent announcement of the restructuring savings target in September, we have reviewed and assessed our company-wide operating model and cost structure, including benchmarking our cost across the P&L compared with key peers. As a result, we have identified actions that we will take to improve our go-forward cost structure. Earlier this week, our Board of Directors authorized an enterprise-wide, multi-year restructuring plan. Upon completion, we expect to achieve gross annualized pretax cost savings of approximately $200 million, with about 3 quarters of the savings falling to the bottom line to improve shareholder returns, and the remainder invested in the business to enhance long-term growth. We estimate one-time charges associated with achieving these benefits to be approximately 1.25x gross annualized savings, of which approximately 25% to 30% are expected to be noncash charges. Due to the complexity and time needed to complete multiple restructuring initiatives, we expect savings will grow gradually over time, with modest savings achieved in fiscal 2013, and increasing as we move through fiscal 2014. We expect that a substantial portion of the actions necessary to achieve the targeted savings should be completed by the end of fiscal 2014. The total savings are expected to be fully realized in fiscal 2015. In order to achieve these savings, we are undertaking efforts to rationalize 3 and streamline 3 additional production facilities in the Household Products division, to consolidate general and administrative functional support across the organization, streamline the Household Products division product portfolio to enable increased focus on our core Battery business, streamline the marketing organization within our Household Products division, optimize our go-to-market strategies and organizational structures in our international markets, reduce overhead spending including changes to benefit programs and other targeted spending reductions, and to create a center-led purchasing function to drive procurement savings. These collective actions will result in a global workforce reduction of more than 10% or approximately 1,500 colleagues. These actions represent significant and necessary changes to our overall cost structure and organization that will support our long-term strategies to improve cash flow in household products, enable continued growth in Personal Care and to drive shareholder value. We believe that these changes enhance Energizer's ability to continue to compete effectively in the Personal Care and the Household Product categories. In addition, we have redesigned our short-term and long-term compensation structures to align the organization to achieve the targeted savings, increase return on invested capital and improve shareholder returns. Historically, both the long-term and short-term executive performance awards have been based on earnings per share. For the 2013 fiscal year, our short-term performance incentive targets have been revised to encourage delivery of both operating results and our significant initiatives, and will now be based on the following metrics: Cost savings from our restructuring initiative; adjusted earnings per share to encourage the delivery of bottom-line results; company-wide pretax operating profit to reward overall business performance; and networking capital as a percent of sales to improve how we manage our working capital and maintain savings achieved to date. The long-term performance incentive awards will be based on 3 new metrics: Cumulative EBITDA to reward growth in core earnings; return on invested capital to emphasize the importance of capital allocation decisions; and a relative, total shareholder return modifier based on our performance against peer companies. We are fully committed to achieving targeted savings, and will pursue these initiatives with urgency and focus. Before we move to Q&A, I will briefly recap our initial fiscal 2013 outlook, which was included in today's earnings release. Our initial financial outlook for adjusted, diluted earnings per share is $6.75 to $7. This outlook includes estimated net pretax restructuring savings of $25 million to $35 million for fiscal 2013, but does not include any and does not include any share repurchases during this fiscal year. Our estimate also includes approximately 20 million in shipments related to Hurricane Sandy. We realize this is a lot of information for everyone to digest in a condensed timeframe late in the day. We thank you for patience, and also for your interest in Energizer Holdings. And now, Dan and I would be happy to take your questions. Operator?