Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the General Mills fiscal 2015 second quarter earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, December 17, 2014. It is now my pleasure to introduce Kris Wenker, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please begin.

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everybody. I am here with Ken Powell, our CEO, Don Mulligan, our CFO and Jeff Harmening, Chief Operating Officer for our U.S. Retail segment. And I will turn the call over to them in just a minute. First let me cover my usual housekeeping items. Our press release on second quarter results was issued over the wire services earlier this morning. It's also posted on our website, if you need a copy. You can find slides on our website too that supplement this morning's presentation. Our remarks will include forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. The second slide in today's presentation lists factors that could cause our future results to be different than our current estimates. And with that, I will turn you over to my colleague, starting with Don.

Thanks, Kris. Good morning and happy holidays to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Slide four summarizes our results for the second quarter. Net sales totaled $4.7 billion, down 3% as reported and down 1% in constant currency. Segment operating profit totaled $847 million, 6% below prior year on a constant currency basis. Net earnings declined 37% to $346 million and diluted earnings per share were $0.56 as reported. These results include $233 million for restructuring expense in the quarter as well as mark-to-market valuation effects. Excluding these items affecting comparability, adjusted diluted EPS was $0.80, compared to $0.83 a year ago. Constant currency adjusted diluted EPS matched last year's second quarter. Slide five shows the components of total company net sales growth. Pound volume reduced sales by two percentage points while sales mix and net price realization added one point of sales growth. And as I mentioned, foreign exchange lowered reported sales by two percentage points. Turning to our segment results, slide six summarizes U.S. retail performance. We have realigned our U.S. retail businesses into five operating units cereal, yogurt, snacks, meals and baking products. I will let Jeff Harmening tell you more about this change in a minute. In total, net sales for U.S. retail decreased 4% in the quarter, with growth in snacks and yogurt offset by declines in the remaining units. Segment operating profit was down 10% from last year's levels. Innovation in our convenient stores and foodservice segment helped drive net sales growth of 4% in the second quarter. Our six priority platforms, those are yogurt, snacks, cereal, frozen breakfast, biscuits and mixes posted combined net sales growth of 11%. Favorable product and channel mix helped drive a 13% increase in segment operating profit for the quarter. Slide eight summarizes our second quarter international…

Thanks, Don and good morning, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to give you an update on our plans for U.S. retail. We know that our first half U.S. retail performance was not where it needed to be. It's true that the slowdown in overall U.S. food and beverage industry sales is a challenge, but it is up to us to take actions to improve our own performance. We will do this through strong new products, meaningful renovation of existing brands and excellent execution of our marketing and customer programs. So far this fiscal year, we are gaining share in categories representing nearly 70% of our measured sales. That's not the case in frozen vegetables and dessert mixes where our price points haven't been competitive. We are making tactical adjustments to address this going forward. We mentioned in our first quarter call that trade merchandising expense was a headwind. We are working to improve trade performance going forward and in the second quarter we were able to increase our average unit prices by reducing some inefficient merchandising spending. We expect to see continued improvement on our merchandising effectiveness as we move through the rest of the year. Let me tell you more about how we are going to deliver improved performance in the back half, starting with the top three priorities I highlighted in July, namely cereal, yogurt and snacks. Our first priority for U.S. retail this year is investing in cereal for growth. Our retail sales continue to outpace the category. We have grown cereal market share in six for the last seven years and their share is up again through the first two quarters of this year. That said, retail consumer sales for our cereals in measured and non-measured channels combined were down 3% through the first half and…

Okay. Well, good morning to one and all. Thank you, Jeff. So Jeff just described initiatives underway in U.S. retail and I will give you an update now on our other two segments and I will start with convenience stores and foodservice. U.S. sales for food away-from-home now well exceeds $600 billion annually. Technomic predicts industry sales will grow around 3% in calendar 2015. We are focused on several attractive segments of this large market. As you can see on slide 35, K-12 schools is a $19 billion channel, colleges and universities generate another $16 billion in sales and convenient stores account for more than $50 billion in food and beverage sales annually. Each of these growing channels represents great opportunities for our brands. We have focused our business on six product platforms that together represent nearly half of our total segment sales and as Don showed you a few moments ago, we are seeing good growth on many of these platforms. Our yogurt business grew 22% in the second quarter. We saw good growth on Parfait Pro Bulk Yogurt, which gives operators an easy way to make yogurt parfaits. Our Greek yogurt varieties also are performing well in foodservice channels with sales up double digit in the quarter. The success of GoGurt as a choice in McDonald's Happy Meals is another key sales driver. The GoGurt and McDonald's partnership was launched this summer in 14,000 stores nationwide and we are very pleased with the results to-date. Our snacks business is growing at a double-digit clip. That's due in part to the fact that we have more than 30 fruit and grain snack items that meet government requirements for K-12 school snacks. The current regulations call for more whole grains and reduced levels of fat, sodium and sugar. We have…

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question is from the line of Ken Zaslow from BMO Capital Markets. You may proceed, sir.

Good morning, everyone.

Hi, Ken.

Hi, Ken.

Just a philosophical question. Each of the last couple of quarters, General Mills continues to find more cost-saving opportunities and if the U.S. packaged food volumes continue to temper over the next couple of years, you guys have said that you are looking to hold margins, protect margin and invest in growth. Why would you not think about doing it a little differently and saying look, let's expand margins and expect more modest growth? What is the philosophical reason for why you would be going your way rather than accepting maybe slower growth and expanding margins?

Well Ken, thank you for the question. You know, over the mid and long term, our expectation will be that everyday food consumption in its many varieties of forms, whether it's in-home or through convenience channels or foodservice service channels, that fundamentally is going to be a good growth opportunity for us and we are going to see, after all a slowdown broadly across the industry, we are going to see those categories strengthen. We believe we will see unit volume strengthen some. We believe we are going to start to see, over time, a little bit of pricing come through as well. I think these are very clear expectations and very much the way the category has operated historically and our core belief is that we will see a return to those dynamics. And given that, we see the growth opportunity will strengthen and improve for that. And the way to capitalize on that very big, very core opportunity is to make sure that we are investing in innovation, we are ready to drive growth with renovation and innovation and the right kind of consumer marketing focus. So as we have said all along, also we are very, very focused, as you pointed out on productivity and margin expansion initiatives. We think that the programs that we have initiated recently that Don described around strengthening our supply chain, strengthening the U.S. organization through Project Catalyst, that will generate an additional stream of efficiency, if you will, over the next three to four years. And when you combine those two efforts, we see the opportunity going forward to maintain very solid levels of investments in innovation and marketing while protecting margins and delivering on our long-term financial model characteristics. So I guess, just to go back to the headline, our core belief is that food is going to be a big opportunity, continue to be a big opportunity. We will see our categories recover. We want to be ready to invest and capitalize on that with innovation and investment.

Great. Thank you.

Our next question is from the line of Eric Katzman from Deutsche Bank. You may go ahead, sir.

Hi. Good morning. Happy holidays, New Year to everybody.

Hi, Eric.

Hi, Eric.

I guess the rewiring and the adjustment within U.S. retail. So if I understand it correctly, so now basically Small Planet Foods doesn't exist and something like Cascadian Farms is going to report into the cereal head? Is that kind of how to think about it?

Yes. That's right.

Okay and so this, as much of an opportunity as the organic market presents and obviously you kind of agree given the Annie's purchase, you are talking about $600 million or $700 million in sales out of $10 billion or $11 billion. And so like how does shareholders, why shouldn't they be concerned that what is a relatively small and lower margin but growth business doesn't get lost in the $10 billion or $11 billion in revenue?

Yes. Thanks for that question. I think it's primarily a matter of a couple of things. The first is our historical track record. I me we brought Small Planet Foods into this $10 billion business over a decade ago and we have been growing at double digits since we have done that. And so we are used to operating natural and organic businesses out of Minneapolis and have done it for quite a while. In addition to that, we have had several brands, including Liberte and Immaculate in our baking business that we have had in our operating units for some time already and we have liked how they performed. And far from getting lost, what we have found is that not only have we been able to grow those businesses but also the understanding of the natural and organic consumer and what they are looking for has actually rubbed off on the rest of the people in the business. And so we think that there is an opportunity, not only to accelerate our growth for our natural and organic brands within these operating units, but also that the consumer understanding we generate there will have benefits for our other brands as well.

Okay and then I guess can you, Ken, maybe and with Don, can you talk a bit about just the promotional environment? I guess you are talking about, in addition to HMM, you are talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of savings relative to, what is it, $2.8 billion or so of EBIT and it seems that in the industry, at the moment, it's kind of a bit of a fight to the bottom. All of your competitors are taking massive restructuring and yet, whether it's HMM or more specific restructuring efforts, those EBIT dollars and maybe this is kind of a little bit to what Ken was alluding to, the EBIT savings or the savings are just not showing up, whether it's better sales or expanding margins. So why should we be comfortable that the dynamic changes and that the shareholder is going to get the benefit of any of these efforts?

Well, Eric, if I understand your question, it is similar to Ken's question. I think that in categories, both broadly defined and narrowly defined that have growth potential and offer high opportunities for innovation and behavior, which is consuming food in a variety of ways that's clearly going to grow. I think that our shareholders should expect us to deliver on all three of the variables that you mentioned. we should be delivering some growth. We should be delivering margin. We should be delivering earnings per share. And so, again, our philosophy, if you will, our core beliefs are that we are talking about overall universe that is over $1 trillion in sales opportunity and it's on us to find the innovation and the growth opportunities that will drive our topline and it would be really a grave error to not really pursue those very aggressively. So our approach is to deliver balanced growth. Our model, financial metrics, we think that that is the right way to run the business. And so that's the approach. I will ask my colleagues to jump in. Don, if you want to add anything to that or?

I will just expand on the point on balance. Eric, as you know, our return model to shareholders has always been balance between earnings growth and cash return. When you talk about growth versus margin expansion or sales growth versus margin expansion, I would apply the same balance term to it. We are going to generate a sizable amount of savings as we talked about today. We are going to reinvest a portion of that to help drive growth, which is by far the most sustainable way to create value for our shareholders. We are also going to use a part of it to protect our margins. Hence you are going to see a very balanced approach to how we look going forward and again very similar to what we have done in a larger scale between our earnings and cash, apply the same thought process and approach to sales growth and margin.

And just to, maybe, pile on a little bit, Eric, as we look across our portfolio, we see so many examples of innovation driven growth. Our concern is not that we can't innovate. Our focus is on delivering more innovation because, to us, that's clearly the way forward. I made a few comments on convenience and foodservice, our business there, which competes in low growth segments in low single-digit growth. We are doing very well in that segment. Now it's all driven by innovation. It's driven by innovation in yogurt, innovation in what our offerings to the foodservice operator. It's all about innovation. As you look across the cereal portfolio, I think Jeff commented on our wellness offerings, our indulgent case, there's just plenty of examples of where you get it right, the consumer responds pretty markedly. So we have this very strong belief that innovation is the way forward for us. There is clear evidence that that is true. We need more of it. And so the approach to the rewiring of the organization that we are pursuing now is very much on a more focused leaner innovation focused structure that will deliver these ideas faster.

That's right and so when we look at it, we have a good understanding of where the consumer is and we feel like we have a really good understanding of where they are going. Whether it's in better-for-you snacking or whether it's in wellness or what they expect of the economic value for their products. And so, because we feel like we have a good idea, when we innovate well and we spend behind it, we like the results. And I will give you a couple of examples. Look at Yoplait Original Yogurt, which is up double digits. And it's all behind the renovation of the product and advertising behind the insight that Yoplait Original is really a better-for-you snack that the whole family loves. And so when we see that we can drive growth on that. The same would be true of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and adding cinnamon and giving a product that delights consumers and executing well against that. The same would be true of Old El Paso when we have flavored shelves and we come out and we grow that business by double digits. And so we see a lot of opportunities and we see those opportunities. We need to pair that with where the consumer is going and we need to invest behind those. And so as Ken said, it really is about innovation and increasing the levels of innovation. We have an innovation that's going to be meaningful to where consumers are and where they are going to be.

Okay, Eric. I think we have beaten that one to death. We better move on.

Yes. I will pass it on. Thank you.

Our next question is from the line of Matthew Grainger with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year.

Hi, Matthew.

Good morning, Matt.

Hi. So Don, just the earnings for the quarter came in a little bit ahead of the prior range that you had laid out across the business segments. Was there anything in particular that changed or improved as you actualized the quarter?

No. Matt, the quarter actually came in largely as we expected. There was a little bit of phasing on expenses that helped the quarter, but not good enough, obviously for us to more our full-year expectations. But what I would say about the quarter, it was very solid versus what our expectations were and that provides a little extra dose of confidence as we think about delivering our full-year guidance. But I wouldn't take anything away from the quarter in terms of the flavor of the full year is really more expense phasing in the quarter.

Okay, thanks. And just in the context of all the innovation you have had year-to-date, what you have in the second half, advertising in the U.S. and overall is still down mid-single digits, I think during the first half. So where should we think about the full-year coming in? And can you just help us put that mid-single digit decline into context in terms of what it translates to in terms of reach and your selection of media and how you are seeing overall advertising effectiveness?

Yes. Well, that was one of the expense areas that we had some phasing that will come back in the second half. We do expect for the full year now advertising to be down a touch from last year. And part of that, quite honestly, is just being very selective of where we put our advertising, making sure we are putting it behind our best ideas. But don't over read anything into the second quarter and I will turn the mic in a second to Jeff. But in the U.S., for example, while our accrual expense was down, the actual spending in the marketplace and pressure in the marketplace was more level to last year. Thus we don't see that as an overriding concern in the quarter. We expect the full-year, though to be down just a touch as we really reallocate those dollars during the course of the year. Jeff?

To build on that, it really is in the U.S., we expect our advertising and media expense to be down just a little bit for the year. So it really is primarily a matter of timing for the quarter and in terms of the vehicles we invest in, we have a really good idea about the vehicles and what they return and how they work. Whether that is through social media or search or TV or sampling and so we allocate our dollars according to what we think is going to be most effective and we have a good idea across vehicles what that looks like.

Okay, thanks. And I guess is that more a function of just cutting back some of the breadth of where you are spending? Or is that partially a judgment call on whether some of the vehicles you may have used in the past are seeing the same level of effectiveness that they would have historically?

It's not really a matter of the vehicles changing effectiveness versus what we have seen historically. But we want to make sure that we are investing behind the programs and initiatives that are going to be most valuable for our consumers and the messages that is going to rally resonate with them. So it really is not a matter of seeing less effectiveness. It is a matter of making sure that we are spending our shareholder money wisely behind initiatives that the consumer is going to value.

Okay. All right. Thanks again everyone.

Yes. Thanks, Matthew.

Our next question is from the line of John Baumgartner with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Jeff or Ken, just in light of the reduced guidance last month and then the comments today about the tough operating environment, just how are you thinking about the impact of lower gas prices on the consumer and maybe for your center store volumes, either for your categories or for the industry as a whole? Didn't hear much about that in the prepared comments this morning.

Well, as we look forward, like anytime, there are puts and takes. And while it is certainly true that consumers, especially at the lower end of the economic scale, are still challenged. That I think will not change. Having said that, certainly having lower gas prices, if that remains to be the case going forward, that should be helpful. And as should the fact that we are lapping reductions in the snack programs which we started lapping in November. And so you know, those two things, I think are positive and help balance out what we still think will be a challenging environment.

Okay. So you are factoring in your back-half guidance some benefit from lower gas prices and a little bit of relief for the consumer then?

Mostly what we are factoring in our back half guidance, John, is how we assess the innovation that we have and the programs and initiatives. We really look at what we are controlling and what we are doing. It's nice that, we might have what was a bit of a headwind now becomes a tailwind. But that's not strategy for us. That's the environment. It's still on us to do things that drive growth. And so as we think about the back half or look at the back half, we are looking at the new products and the marketing initiatives and these kinds of things and we think those are going to help us push it forward a bit here over the next two quarters.

Thanks, Ken. Thanks, Jeff.

Our next question is from the line of David Palmer with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Good morning, everyone.

Hi, David.

A question on the marketing direction for Cheerios and your confidence in getting that trademark back to growth from what looks like mid-single digit declines in standard data. In the past, it looked like Cheerios was coming up with new flavors, driving trademark growth with that. The recent innovation looks so, with Ancient Grains and the GMO-free yellow box conversion, it looks like more of an grading quality renovation plus innovation strategy. Do you think that's a fair characterization of what you are going to continue to do? Do you think that's working?

As we look at Cheerios, what I would tell you is that our base business, which is the non-promoted business has gotten better, quarter-to-quarter as look from the first quarter to the second quarter. and certainly part of it is the new product introduction of Cheerios protein but also we have seen improvements on our regular core yellow box Cheerios or original Cheerios and on Honey Nut Cheerios. And for us, I think the key is to make sure that we keep Cheerios, whether it is through product renovation or whether it is through new products, that we keep it relevant for our consumers. So we are looking for things that are minimally processed. And certainly talking about oats and Cheerios, it is something we have started to do and we like the way that looks. But we think we also have more work to do on Cheerios, whether it is through new products or the renovation that we currently have and we will be excited to tell you more about some more specifics about those plans when we come to CAGNY in February.

Yes and one follow-up question on Annie's. I wonder how you think of the extendibility of that brand? Just to stretch the point, could there be an Annie's cereal in the future that you think would make sense?

A couple of things on Annie's. I am glad you asked about Annie's. Most importantly, first the performance of Annie's actually accelerated in the second quarter of this year and so it was the testament to the Annie's leadership team as well as how we are integrating it within General Mills. Beyond that, we see a lot of opportunity with Annie's in growth. The first is through distribution of their existing products. The second, I would say as I talked about, is expansion into some new categories. And Annie's had been planning from expansions. We think we can complement that with some of our own capabilities. And so while I am ready to talk about specifics of what those look like right now, again in a couple months, I will be more than happy to share the direction. But we see growth opportunities for Annie's and for us it's most important as a matter of prioritizing ones we want to go after first, because we see so many opportunities, both in the distribution and in entering new categories.

Thank you very much.

Our next question is from the line of Jason English with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed, sir.

Hi, Jason.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. First a bit of a housekeeping question. So far this year you have bought back a lot of shares, hefty dividend distribution. You have had to take on some levers to fund that. It reads like a slow levered recap. Is that the right way to read it? And if so, how comfortable are you in terms of taking that leverage ratio up?

Jason, obviously we are comfortable, otherwise we wouldn't have done it. But we came into the year with our leverage ratios little lower than our long-term goals. And so we had, if you will, have an opportunity to lever a little bit. Annie's gave us a great use for those funds. And that's actually what's driving the leverage. It's not the share repurchases and dividends. It's the fact that we bought a great new property in Annie's and given our balance sheet strength to be able to pay for it fully in debt. So we feel very comfortable with our capital position.

Okay, thanks and Ken, a quick question for you, or anyone who wants to comment on it. I want to go back to the comment on innovation-driven growth. From the outside looking in, the look at the industry and SKU proliferation appears systemic with nearly everyone spinning away on the innovation treadmill. I think every quarter for the last few years we have heard you and your peers trumpet the upcoming innovation success that's expected to follow but we just really haven't seen the evidence. Distribution points grow and volume still bleeds out. It has all the red flags of an industry ripe for portfolio rationalization and we have seen that play out at Heinz, Kellogg, ConAgra and even to Kraft at a modest degree but you and Campbell have really bucked the trend. So I guess my question is, how can we have faith that your innovation is working in context of your persistent topline shortfall? How have you avoided the rationalization to-date? How can you slide into the next round of innovation without sacrificing your existing shelf space? And what's your view of whether or not it's time to examine your own portfolio for rationalization?

So let me just make a couple of general comments, Jason. First of all, I think that you are talking about SKU proliferation and that kind of direction of questioning. I think that's a very legitimate and fair comment and I think it's on us to make sure that we are working to keep our house in order and make sure that hard-working SKUs are on the shelf and taking, if they are not working, get rid of them, if we would be better off with a smaller, more productive range, then by all means we should do that. And frankly that kind of work has been very much a part of the HMM process over the years. We know that rebalancing product portfolios around the highest turning, highest productive and cutting SKUs is a very, very effective strategy for us and for our retailers. So that kind of discipline, we will continue to do them. And I think that your question and the implied challenge there is very legitimate. Having said that, we know that innovation is very effective because as I said earlier, we have so many of examples of what it does for us when it works. Now granted, all of it doesn't work as well as we would hope. There are winners and losers here, but our job is to get rid of the losers, cut our losses, move on, focus on the winners and continue to bring new ideas to the consumer, especially now in this era where we see consumer values about food and consumer desires around food changing in so many ways. It's really an era of change and if our answer to that is to not change, that's a huge mismatch. So with all this change going on with millennial values and how they see food, the time is ripe for good consumer focused innovation. We get it right, capitalize on that change, it's a real opportunity for us and that's really how we see the environment. I don't know if you want to add anything, Jeff?

Yes. My addition to that would be that when we talk about innovation, we have to be careful that we don't only about in terms of new product, but also the renovation of our existing portfolio. And we need to do both. For us, it's an add. We need big sustainable new items, but we also need to make sure that we are renovating our product mix to we keep them relevant. And when we do that and we do that well, we really like what we see. That's why I have highlighted Cinnamon Toast Crunch this morning, whose baselines have grown at 20% in the last quarter. It's based on better product. That's why we have highlighted gluten-free Chex, whose turnaround was not based on new product innovation, but was based on innovation of the existing product and the same would be true of Yoplait Original. And so, Jason, I think the observations you make, as Ken said, is fair. But I think one of the things that we are really focused on is we are making sure the we are innovating, not only on our new product line, but also on making sure that we are renovating our existing products.

Okay, that's helpful.

Okay. Thanks. Jason. Thanks for the question. We appreciate it.

Operator, let's sneak one in here before we are out of time.

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Chris Growe with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hi, Chris.

Hi. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you fine. Yes. Good morning to you too.

Thank you. I just had a question for you then on the U.S. retail division. I guess maybe for Ken or for Jeff. But I want to understand, you have had advertising down a little bit year-to-date. It sounds like it will be maybe down modestly for the full year. And then promotional spending, at least, has sequentially decelerated a bit. Is there an investment whether it's advertising or it's promotion that you think needs to happen to get these topline growth going again in that division? And maybe related to that, the new products which I thought was a good lineup in your first half of the fiscal year, I think some of those have actually done relatively well, don't seem to be contributing as much as I expected overall to sales. Are they more cannibalizing the existing business? Or if you could work that in, fold that in, if you will, to your answer?

Well, as we look about what we need to do going forward, it really is a matter of increasing the amount of innovation we have and whether that's on existing products or the new products. That is our number one priority. But in addition to that, we need to back that up with spending behind those good ideas that we have, which is why Don earlier talked about making sure that we are going to be reinvesting some of the savings we generate from program such as Catalyst and Century into topline growth. The other key, I think, is that as we look at our new product lineup, we are really focused on the sustainability of our new items. And for that reason, we will have fewer new items in our second half, but we will have bigger new items in our second half. And this focus on making sure that our new product innovation is sustainable, big sustainable new items, I think is going to be important for us. And it goes back to the question that was asked just a minute ago. So for us to return our U.S. business to growth, it really is a matter of sustainable new product innovation backed by increasing levels of core brand innovation and marketing expenditures that back those things up.

Okay. Thank you for that. And just one quick follow-up, maybe for Don. If I heard right, Don, is the inflation in the first half any different from the second half? I think you had said around 3% inflation in the second half as well. Is that correct?

Yes. That is correct, Chris.

Okay. So things like dairy cost and grains, there aren't going to be as much of a benefit for the second half of the year? Is there, in particular, any inputs that we should watch out for in the second half of the year?

Yes. We have seen some pair of movements in a couple of areas you have mentioned, but we also, with the California drought earlier this year, seeing some ingredient cost increase. We are seeing sugar increasing. So there is enough offset there. And plus you factor in the hedge position that we came into the year with. We do see a pretty stable. Inflation as the year unfolds. Right at that 3%.

Okay and then same on HMM or is there any real difference in the first half or second half savings from HMM?

No. it fairly stays there as well.

Okay. Thanks so much for your time.

Thanks, Chris.

Thanks, everybody. If there are questions remaining, you know where I live. Give me a call.