Michael B. Polk
Analyst · Bank of America
Thank you, Nancy. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q1 2012 results call. Our objective today is twofold: First, we'll review our first quarter results and share some observations about our performance; second, we'll discuss the progress we are making driving our growth game plan into action. Let's get into the results. We posted a solid set of Q1 numbers that represent the positives delivering full year results in line with our guidance. Importantly, we delivered these results in the context of a significant change agenda. We've aligned our organization around the new growth game plan, executed the European transformation SAP EPC cutover, driven Project Renewal into action, and delivered our third consecutive quarter of consistent results, getting the business back into a predictable cadence of delivery. I'm proud of the team. They've been fully engaged and continue to demonstrate their ability to drive delivery and drive change at the same time. Net sales growth this quarter was a very solid 4.6%. Core sales growth was 5.2%. We estimate that about $28 million in net sales were pulled forward from Q2 into Q1, associated with SAP implementation in Europe. Adjusting for this pre-buy, core sales would have been up 2.9%. The 2.9% underlying core sales growth is stronger than we anticipated when we guided the full year at the end of January. As you recall, we thought we'd be in the lower end of the 2% to 3% full year guidance range in the first half of 2012, as a result of less merchandising support in Western Europe during the SAP transition window and operational challenges on Décor. This planned slowdown was more than offset in Q1 by strong performance on our Professional and Baby businesses. Q1 normalized EPS was $0.33, a year-over-year improvement of 14%, and $0.02 better than consensus. Adjusted for the benefit of the SAP pre-buy, normalized Q1 EPS would have been approximately in the middle of our full year EPS guidance range of 3% to 6%. We delivered 10 basis points of normalized operating margin improvement, despite increasing strategic SG&A, about 90 basis points. The increased strategic SG&A investment was fueled by continued progress on structural SG&A, down over 80 basis points versus prior year and good sequential and year-over-year improvement in gross margin to 38.3%, up 20 basis points versus prior year. Our 38.3% gross margin was our highest result in the last 6 quarters, despite continuing challenges from operational issues in our U.S. Décor business. Importantly, cash flow was over $60 million better than prior year, and we returned over $40 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. In Q1, our Professional segment had another strong quarter, delivering core sales growth of 10%, with the reported sales up over 9%. This continued strong performance was broad based. Our Consumer segment core sales declined 2%, with reported sales down 2.6%. This downturn was driven by the continued challenges in Décor which, while expected, masked a very good quarter on the balance of our Consumer segment. Writing, in particular, had strong performance with excellent innovation on Parker and Paper Mate having a positive impact on those businesses. We have made good progress resolving the operational issues at Décor. Q1 represented sequential improvement in customer service versus Q4, and we believe we'll see further improvement in all key metrics in Q2. The Décor business should return to more normal operating rhythm in the second half of 2012. Our Baby & Parenting segment delivered outstanding growth in Q1, with reported and core sales growth of 21%. Our Baby growth rates were enhanced by weak year-ago comparisons and some onetime benefits that either don't repeat or reverse out in the balance of the year. Our expectation for the remainder of the year is for more modest performance. Importantly, the Baby results due reflect steady progress with Graco POS positive in the U.S., and excellent momentum on Aprica in Asia, partially offset by continued challenges in Europe. Excluding the SAP pre-buy, 8 of our 9 global business units grew core sales in Q1, 5 of the 8 grew core sales greater than 5%, and 2 of the 5 grew core sales greater 10%. In the emerging markets, core sales grew over 14% in Q1, with double-digit core sales growth in most of the major countries. Our Q1 core sales grew nearly 3.5% in the developed world. Excluding the SAP pre-buy, developed world core sales would have been up about 1%, with strong growth in Japan and solid results in the U.S., offset by continued sales declines in Western Europe. Our key growth initiatives yielded the impact we expected in Q1. Industrial Products & Services achieved their 9th consecutive quarter of double-digit core sales growth. Rich Wuerthele and his team are simply doing the fundamentals right, superior products, superior selling systems, new market entry and everyday great execution. Parker Ingenuity continues to be deployed into new markets with a very successful launch in Japan. I visited a number of our customers and salespeople in Japan a few weeks back, spending time both in Tokyo and Osaka, our Fine Writing business looks terrific. We will launch Parker Ingenuity, with Parker 5th Technology into China in Q2 2012. IRWIN delivered double-digit sales growth as a result of continued new product momentum and strong 'Irwinization' merchandising programs across the Americas. Our blue wall and other merchandising vehicles are getting the IRWIN brand and our new innovations in front of contractors in a more effectively way than ever before. Paper Mate InkJoy has been launched in virtually all countries where Paper Mate is sold. Market growth is accelerating, and our shares are up over 100 basis points in the latest 13 weeks in the U.S.. Importantly, Paper Mate growth is driving about half of the category's growth despite having about a 14 share of market in the U.S., primarily on the strength of Paper Mate InkJoy. We're gearing up in partnership with our customers for back-to-school, and the heavy launch support behind InkJoy is still in front of us. On Baby, Aprica's momentum continued with growth of over 50% in Asia. I met with our team, as well as our largest global Baby customer when I was in Japan. Our customers are pleased with our innovations, and we're working in partnership with them to continue to build the market. Finally, Rubbermaid Medical continues to deliver outstanding results with core sales growth of over 30% as we continue to scale this brand. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law just had their first baby this past weekend, and I had the opportunity to go welcome my nephew Jacob into this world. For me, I'm not sure what was more thrilling, to see and hold little Jacob, which I got to admit was really cool, or to see and hold the 8th Rubbermaid Medical M38 cart systems that were in the Maternity Ward of Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey. That was just as cool as holding little Jacob. Beyond these initiatives, our efforts to unlock the trapped capacity for growth are also progressing well. In Europe, we've migrated our ERP systems to SAP, and are operating in an EPC model as of early April. The teams in Europe have worked nonstop over the last few months and have done a great job to get us to the starting line, and we're ramping up order processing and fulfillment as we speak. There are several weeks of handholding and issue resolution in front of us, as there always is in an SAP conversion. But the trend line is positive, the transition was managed well, and things are progressing as expected. Project Renewal has good traction as well. Q1 represents the first operating quarter for our simplified group in GBU structures, 3 groups to 2, 13 GBUs to 9. So far, the teams are functioning really well. We've also implemented our new U.S. selling organization. We have created integrated cross-functional customer and channel teams at most of our top customers and in most of our channels. We still have GBU level salespeople on those teams, but they now report to a sales leader for that customer or channel who is responsible for developing our strategic relationship and our joint business plans across the total portfolio. We transitioned to this new structure in the U.S. in Q1. We've held top to top meetings with many of our customers, and we already have a funnel of new commercial ideas flowing into the business. Importantly, this strengthened customer-facing capability comes with lower costs than in the previous design, as duplicative selling structures at the GBU level have been eliminated. Beyond our selling structure change, we've announced the closure of our Rubbermaid Consumer factory in Greenville, Texas. We should be up and running in the second half of the year in the rest of the network with capacity utilization increased and gross margin benefits flowing through to the P&L. So the European transformation and Project Renewal are progressing well. We've also announced our drive to reduce indirect procurement in partnership with IBM. Together, these programs have given us the flexibility to begin to fund increased investments to strengthen brand building and selling capabilities on our priority businesses in our priority markets. In Q1, we began to invest in increased selling coverage in Latin America on our Professional and Writing businesses, and to fund early in the year support behind the Paper Mate InkJoy launch in North America and Latin America. There will be more investments to follow as we move into the second half of 2012 and into 2013. So we're pleased with the Q1 results. They're a solid first step toward delivering our full year guidance of 2% to 3% core sales growth, 3% to 6% normalized EPS growth, up to 20 basis point improvement in normalized operating margin, and cash flow of $550 million to $600 million. The team is working hard to establish a cadence of delivery in the business that is consistent and predictable. At the same time, they're embracing and implementing the changes necessary to create a bigger, faster growing, more global and more profitable Newell Rubbermaid. Before handing over to Juan for a more detailed dive in the numbers, I'd like to discuss the impact of the SAP pre-buy on next quarter's results and also punctuate a unique event in the Q3 year-ago period that I've mentioned before, but want to highlight again. First, the European SAP pre-buy effect on Q2 is self-evident. The roughly $28 million of pre-buy revenue and the associated EPS in Q1, will reverse out in Q2. Additionally, we will not return to normal merchandising support in Europe until the end of May or early June, once our order management systems are back to full capacity. The Q2 reversal of the Q1 SAP benefit, the lack of EMEA merchandising support, coupled with peak ForEx pressure and generally poor European macros will put pressure on Q2 results. While none of this is new news and is all consistent with the guidance previously provided, I would point out that the best way to evaluate our results at the end of June will be on our first half numbers versus prior year. As I mentioned on our January call, the other unique event in the numbers relates to the management incentive true-up that occurred last year, as it became apparent that we were not going to deliver our targets. The bulk of that benefited -- benefit flowed through to EPS in Q3 2011. This year ago benefit will create about a $0.04 to $0.05 EPS hurdle for us to clear in Q3 2012. With the reversal of the Q1 SAP pre-buy in Q2 and the year ago incentive plan true-up in the prior year Q3 base, the middle 6 months of 2012 will be tough months to lap with respect to EPS growth versus prior year. That said, our strong start to the year puts us right on track to deliver in the full year guidance range, although EPS growth will be more skewed to Q1 and Q4 than it normally would be. With that, let me hand it over to Juan.