Earnings Labs

Newell Brands Inc. (NWL)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 30, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Newell Rubbermaid third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After a brief discussion by management, we will open up the call for questions. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. A live webcast of this call is available at newellrubbermaid.com on the Investor Relations home page under Events & Presentations. A slide presentation is also available for download. I will now turn the call over to Nancy O'Donnell, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. O'Donnell, you may begin.

Nancy O'Donnell - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Great. Thanks, Laurie. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Newell's third quarter 2015 conference call. On the call today, in addition to myself, are Mike Polk, President and Chief Executive Officer; and John Stipancich, our Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind you that on today's call we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please note that Newell has provided reconciliations to these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP financial measures. Our comments today also include forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on assumptions and actual results could differ materially from management's expectations. We direct you to the cautionary statement in the 8-K that we filed with our earnings release and on our website. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike. Go ahead. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Nancy. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. Building on very good first half results, we delivered another strong performance in the third quarter. In that context, we've reaffirmed our 2015 full year normalized EPS guidance and raised our core sales growth guidance. Before we get into the results, let me briefly address two strategic changes to our portfolio. First, as we've announced, we will divest our Décor business. And consistent with our practice on businesses held for sale that do not qualify for discontinued operations, we will exclude Décor from core sales from the beginning of Q3 2015 through the completion of the sales process. I want to acknowledge our Décor associates for their many contributions to Newell and also thank them in advance for their continued focus through the process. Second, last week we completed the acquisition of Elmer's Products Incorporated. We're delighted to welcome the Elmer's team and Elmer's three leading brands, Elmer's, Krazy…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your first question comes from Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley. Dara W. Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey, guys. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Dara. How are you? Dara W. Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Good. How are you? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Great. Dara W. Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: So, Mike or Stip, just one clarification. As you think about 2016, if you did decide to deconsolidate Venezuela at some point, do you think you'd look to offset that negative impact through other areas in the P&L? Or with the FX pressure even before Venezuela and the planned investment behind the business, is it unrealistic to expect any significant mitigating actions versus that potential Venezuela impact in 2016? And then, the real question, Mike, ex-currency, you're expecting local currency earnings to be up about 30% this year, next year as you mentioned 20%-plus. It's heroic you were able to offset the FX through other areas in the P&L, and certainly better than peers. But do you worry at all that you're stretching the organization to hit these numbers and to fully offset FX? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Dara, great questions. It's awfully early to know or speculate about what we would do if we were to deconsolidate the Venezuelan business. We actually have a ton of flexibility with all the work we're doing on cost and with the significant investments. We've got incremental investments we've got planned for next year as I said. Our base plan assumes we deliver double digit increases in A&P investments next year on top of the increases we delivered this year, and on top of the…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Rae Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Hi. Good morning. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Lauren Rae Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

I wanted to talk a little bit about Home Solutions. So you mentioned Food & Beverage doing high single-digit growth. How much longer is there on the storage tote exits really left? And then I was curious about the timing of the innovation launch on the FRESH deal, if that's a fourth quarter initiative because I feel like that could drive another leg of growth beyond the hydration that you're already seeing. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, it's a great question. So, Lauren, we still have more work to do and we're pacing that work against our need to deliver the results in aggregate. You see this playing out actually in our Canadian results right now, where we have even a bigger Rubbermaid Consumer Storage business than we do on a U.S. on a per capita basis. And so we've got more work to do there. We will manage it deliberately and planfully against the upside potential of our Food Storage business. But we will continue to work that issue right through 2016 and maybe even into 2017. But you should expect and understand that that's captured in our plan and it's captured in our guidance. And so, don't expect us to really kind of spring any surprises on you about that. That's baked into our logic and the algorithm for Home Solutions growth. On Food Storage, you're right. We've got this great innovation, called FRESHWORKS, which goes towards the end of this year and really kind of picks up momentum in next year. We're extending the concept behind LunchBlox, which has been a terrific success, as households become more durable and less focused on consumable storage. And school systems and regulatory bodies and municipalities get concerned about waste in landfill cost. We're extending…

Lauren Rae Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. That's great. Thank you. And then on Baby, you mentioned that you have adjusted pricing on the value end of the portfolio. How far into the quarter did that flow through retail? Are you seeing any indication of competitive response? Do you think pricing will be sort of stable there for the next couple of quarters? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, we implemented that through the third quarter. And we've – it's on certain items on our flank at a couple of mass merchants where we've done that. So it's not across the board. It's really a defensive tactic that we do not want any of the lower end players to grab too much share and then be able to over time, leverage that scale to do more strategic work or directly competing with Graco. So, we're always prepared to kind of take the defensive posture and the competitive posture that gives us to degrees our freedom to do what we want to do with the brand itself. I was very pleased with the Graco growth at 8.1% – actually Baby growth at 8.1%. We had strong recovery in Japan, and as importantly, really good Graco momentum in the U.S. despite the valuing down in certain mass merchants to protect our flank against some of our competitors. So, I think we're striking the right balance. We continue to invest in advertising. In fact, we're investing heavily in advertising in Baby and accepting the margin contraction for the sake of catalyzing the growth. And I think you should expect us to continue with that algorithm forward into next year. And if we can, eventually we'll back off but we're going to block and flank – we're going to block any flanking activity on our competitors' part, because we believe that's the strategically right thing to do to enable us to have the degrees of freedom to invest in the core and in the premium end of our portfolio.

Lauren Rae Lieberman - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bill Schmitz with Deutsche Bank. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Bill.

William G. Schmitz - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

William G. Schmitz - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Can you just talk broadly about the retail conversations you're having right now. Obviously, they're facing quite a bit of wage inflation. They're paranoid justifiably so on some of the e-commerce growth, and then in obviously emerging markets given the currency moves, my guess is cash is at a premium right now. So, can you just like broadly talk about what you see on the pricing side and things like that? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. All of our partners are moving – all of our bricks and mortar partners are aggressively moving into the e-commerce space. So, they're all benefiting as they get there with the kind of the growth surge that comes from reaching consumers where they want to shop. And we've made a significant investment to strengthen our capabilities here a few years back and we're, I think, on the front of that curve in partnership with our retailers to help unlock the upside for them and for us. So, on the e-commerce side, I think we're all moving aggressively. And, of course, the strategic motivation for us, Bill, is that we need to have greater than our fair share position in that channel in order to mix up our overall share position as consumers increasingly shift through that medium to do their shopping. So, this is a critical strategic thrust for us as important as broadening our geographic footprint into the emerging markets, and you should expect us to be prepared to talk about that pretty steadily for the next four years or five years to be honest with you because that's going to take that kind of investment and energy in pivoting of our talent base to that space in partnership with our retailers. That's one aspect of…

William G. Schmitz - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. That's super-helpful. And then just, Stip, can you just tell me what the overhead ratio – SG&A overhead ratio was down for the year, and then maybe when it starts to accelerate because I know you have some pretty ambitious targets to try to get that number below 15% or 14% over time. I'm just curious what you think the duration is and when we're going to kind of see that step change because I think that's 20 bps this quarter which is fine, but it's not huge either. John K. Stipancich - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So with respect to the year, we're down noticeably. And we continue to make progress. Part of our big step-up where you'll see probably next year as we tackle some of the support functions coming up. We have some work to do, but it's been well played out and well planned in terms of the delivery overall. So, I think you'll see a better step-up in terms of SG&A. I think Mike's consistently talked about where we try to benchmark ourselves on what's realistic and where we want to ultimately get to. The good news is we see the benefit of the SG&A reductions going into the increased advertising and promotion. And so it, obviously, gives us more incentive to push harder on the overheads within reason in order to fund the A&P agenda overall. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So the only build I would make on that is that I think on the full year, we'll see our overhead below 20%. And on our way to another step change down in 2016, we've focused a lot of energy up until now on resetting the organization to the new operating model, and…

William G. Schmitz - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. That's super helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from John Faucher with JPMorgan.

John A. Faucher - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Thanks. Good morning. Mike, you talk a lot about incremental investments sort of continuing to put money back into the business. And I guess at some point when do you reach the point of diminishing marginal returns? And how are you thinking about allocating that incremental spending sort of way down the line? And I guess this leads to a second question which is, is that one of the things that's sort of feeding your appetite from an acquisition standpoint in terms of the ability to invest more behind these brands maybe than what their current owners can do? And then to add another thing on to that, how are you feeling about divestitures on the other side in terms of – you're obviously dealing with Décor. Is this something where we should expect a modest change from a divestiture standpoint every year, every two years, something like that? Thanks. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: John, great questions. We continue to believe that the right destination for us in order to be able to afford to deploy our portfolio into white space geographies is about 7% of revenue in A&P. We don't expect to get there overnight. We expect to get there over the next couple of years. And we can always adjust the cadence by which we play that story out. So, there's no rush to get there and we're not going to spend any money on things that don't justify spending money on. So, every dollar is valuable to us and we are looking at the investment profile in certain businesses and asking the questions you would want us to ask on growth yield. And also to your point, the next dollar, how do you deploy the next dollar? Should you put the…

John A. Faucher - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Kevin Grundy with Jefferies. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Kevin.

Kevin Grundy - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. Just to build upon some of the other line of questioning here because we talked a lot about some of this at least at a high level. So, Mike, so the top line accelerates to 5% to 6% including Venezuela from the guidance this year, which is 5% to 5.5%. But the EPS growth guidance on an FX-neutral basis slowed. So I guess a couple; could you bridge those two things? What gets better? What accelerates within the portfolio? We talked (47:18) spending, Baby Jogger, Contigo, other accretive M&A goes into organic. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the acceleration, bridge that for us. And then secondarily, the deceleration in EPS growth, particularly given as Project Renewal starts to flow through here seemingly at what should be an accelerated pace? So if you could bridge those two gaps for us, that would be helpful. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No problem. So I think the thing to look at, if you do the math on our growth on a currency-neutral basis, this year will be nearly 30%. Next year, if you look at our numbers with Venezuela and adjust for the $0.22 of negative FX that we expect to see, there's somewhere north of 25% normalized EPS growth on a currency-neutral basis with Venezuela included in our numbers. And so yes, it does slow from 30% to 25%. But in the context of the strategic environment we've got where we're continuing to invest in brands and we expect to increase A&P double digit next year, I think that's one that we would accept as a smart and balanced approach. On the growth acceleration, we talked a little bit about innovation, and the innovation is quite strong as we head…

Kevin Grundy - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Understood. If I could, just one follow-up, Mike, on Venezuela. I know you're probably sick of talking about it, but just a quick update there because the environment is still very difficult if not worsening. It seems like most CPG peers have all decided to deconsolidate at this point. It's going to be 6% of your profit based on what you've disclosed, and even Pepsi recently has deconsolidated this quarter. So could you comment on how you weigh the distraction versus the contribution? And maybe just give us an update on the business. Thank you. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, just one comment on Venezuela. If you deconsolidate it, it doesn't mean you stop operations in countries. So the distraction is no different from a management perspective. But it certainly helps in our conversations with investors to take Venezuela off the table. But the reality is we're not going to walk away. We don't want to walk away from a 50%-plus share of the Writing market in Venezuela because it's a callout. What we're doing is preserving – taking a call option on the different geopolitical future there. And so it would be extremely difficult to ever create a 50% share of market in a country like Venezuela with all the resources it has. Of course, the environment is very difficult and it's going to be volatile. So taking it off the table would certainly help in our conservations with investors. We've tried to bring great transparency to the dynamics in Venezuela so that people don't have the opportunity to second guess the core momentum in our business. You're right. There's a lot of things that happened. John and I are both very, very connected to what's going on in Venezuela. Pretty much every…

Kevin Grundy - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Steve Powers with UBS. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Steve.

Stephen R. Powers - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Hey, thanks. Mike, just to be 100% clear on Venezuela following on from those comments; is your base case now that you are leaning more towards full deconsolidation of the potential next step versus a simple deval to SIMADI, maybe with some offsets, which I think – offsets, which I think was your base case previously? I'm just trying to determine if we're truly in a binary situation here or whether there is still maybe a middle ground? John K. Stipancich - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hey, Steve, this is John. We're still evaluating the situation. We're in a little bit of unique position because we're guaranteed a certain amount of margin there. And actually, we've accessed dollars at the CENCOEX rate this year, a couple million dollars worth at CENCOEX. So you have to throw that into the equation as well for us. Right now, I think our anticipation is to continue to evaluate it. I'm not sure whether going to SIMADI is a likely outcome or not for us. But again, as Mike said, it's a very dynamic situation for us. It literally changes every other day and we'll continue to evaluate it together with our auditors in terms of what the right decision is for us going forward.

Stephen R. Powers - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Perfect, thank you. Switching gears, so I think on the last call you guys mentioned that the team was on the ground in China working through route-to-market assumptions on Writing. And I'm just wondering if you could talk more now with that work behind you in 2016 guidance set, what the plan is there? How broad, how fast, when do we start that kind of stuff? Thank you. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, so good question, Steve. Kristie Juster has been in China for the last week working with the team on this. And we've built an assumption into our plans that has a very modest contribution coming from China in our Writing business in 2016. So, the way to think about this is that very late 2016 entry into China and a very modest revenue contribution this year, more pipeline than consumption, and then 2017 a more material contribution. However, our algorithm for growth in China is going to be slow and deliberate. So, it'll be a multicity entry and then we'll learn as we go and broaden the number of cities as our capacity to do so increases. And when I say capacity, I mean our capacity within the P&L to be able to support the investment. Our first priority for growth is building market share at home. And our second priority for growth is to extend the footprint of our business to the faster growing emerging markets in a disciplined and systematic way on a select portion of our portfolio. That's the logic and the algorithm is supported by the Growth Game Plan and that's what's built into our guidance, both are a short-term and a long-term guidance. And so, China is not a big contributor to our overall performance next year in Writing but will be more material in 2017, late 2016 shipment for 2017 Back-to-School, which happens in the first part of the year and then we'll see how that goes. And we'll learn from our experience in a couple of cities and then we'll decide how to proceed from there.

Stephen R. Powers - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Great, that's very helpful. If I could squeeze in one last question; switching gears again to Baby. The rebound there continues to be great, I'm just wondering as you look at 2016, should we think about that as another year of sort of rebound and prioritized growth or you start to flip back and focus more on margin or are we somewhere in between? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, you're right. We've spent a lot of money on Baby, invested a lot to catalyze growth this year. We've put a lot of money into A&P. The A&P ratio is higher than what we believe it will be on a run rate basis. So, likely, Baby, some money comes off the table. That said, we've got amazing innovation coming to market. I just can't bring myself to not spend trial to build awareness on this stuff. So we're really excited about what's coming. We've got some really cool stuff at Baby Jogger that starts to ship at the end of this year, into the first part of next year that they never would've been able to do on their own. So we obviously want to communicate around that. So I think probably we'll spend lower amounts as a percent of revenue next year on Baby, but I wouldn't expect this massive margin recovery. We didn't build that into our algorithm. We'll probably spend a little bit less on Tools. We'll probably hold what is a relatively low investment level on Commercial Products and then we'll post more investment in behind Rubbermaid, clearly, with the new items that are coming and probably a little bit behind Contigo. And that will be some of the shift. So, it's where the incremental money goes as opposed to too many pullbacks. I wouldn't expect incremental money though to go into Baby and go into Writing, Food Storage & Preservation, Beverages, and perhaps, a bit into Baby Jogger. And so it will follow our Win Bigger investments with perhaps the exclusion of Tools and Commercial Products given that we've got growth occurring in both places without huge investment.

Stephen R. Powers - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Chris Ferrara with Wells Fargo. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Chris.

Christopher Ferrara - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey. I guess first, the $0.21 to $0.23 FX, drag is that with or without Venezuela? Because if Venezuela is going to be an FX drag, is it included in there? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's included in there, Chris. So, we've made assumptions about what happens with the SICAD rate, not based on anything we know. But then we did the same thing this year as we made some judgments at the beginning of the year about what happens through the year. So, it's baked in. That's why I connected in my script that comment to the full year guidance, including Venezuela.

Christopher Ferrara - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. Okay. And, I guess, Michael, just for clarification on the whole topic, right? Because I think, if you go back to last quarter, I think, Stip, you'd said for the back half of 2015 Venezuela might be $0.02 and you guys would scramble if you have to offset it. There've been various disclosures, but I think the K might have implied an annualized rate of something like $0.10. But I think that – it seems that you guys were leaning towards trying to muscle through that and offset it. And now, today, with the guidance, Venezuela's $0.14 for 2016 and you're not going to try to offset it. So, I guess, one, did something change there like how'd you made that comment to try to offset that I just misunderstand that? Did something change like FX elsewhere maybe that makes it harder? And then the concept of mitigating actions in Venezuela on that $0.14, maybe you go back to SIMADI versus deconsolidation. But what is there that you can do? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right, so let's step back to what we've said. So, we've said $0.10 was the Venezuelan impact. What's happened is because we can't get the bolivars out in U.S. dollars, we invest those bolivars into what have become increasingly high-yield bonds that generate interest income. So what's happened here is a blend of us pushing and selling more in Venezuela and then also having higher interest income in Venezuela related to those high-yield bonds. So, that's what's happened. And we've seen through the year that interest income accelerate pretty dramatically from Q3 into what we expect to generate in Q4. So, that's part of the underlying movement from $0.10 to $0.12. All we've done in providing a framework,…

Christopher Ferrara - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Wendy Nicholson with Citi. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Wendy.

Wendy C. Nicholson - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hi, good morning. My first question is just kind of a follow-up; if you exclude Venezuela, dear God, can you look at the core business and just comment on pricing generally? I know you don't break it out numbers-wise but qualitatively, kind of the role of pricing in 2016 top line growth as opposed to 2015 top line growth? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right. So, we won't give you a percentage but here are some facts that we'll need to confront next year that while the ForEx impact will be in part influenced by Venezuela, it's certainly much broader than that particularly in the first half of the year related to the Canadian dollar, related to a bunch of Latin currencies. So, you should expect us to have a rollover benefit from pricing next year to cover that transaction effect and probably incremental pricing to cover the transaction impact related to first half currency issues. We continue to be able to cover with those moves. This will be most pronounced in places like Brazil. It'll be an issue, and something we'll have to do, in Mexico, we'll have to do it in Canada, we'll have to do it in Colombia. So, you should expect us to continue to price next year to deal with and to obviously work hard on productivity to deal with the currency-related – the transaction portion of the currency-related challenge. And we've done a lot of work this year to stay in front of it. I wouldn't expect us to, in a market like the U.S., compensate for transaction issues occurring in other geographies. So, responsibility of our leaders in their – on the ground in country to deal with their transaction issues. So, we're not going to price in…

Wendy C. Nicholson - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

And given the pricing you took in the Writing segment earlier this year and yet you continue to gain market share there, with the sort of commodity deflation we've seen in some areas, have you seen a spike up at all in competitive activity on the pricing front or the promotional front that would lead you to potentially have to take back some of that pricing? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. We're going to put – I don't envision us pricing down the Writing business next year. I want to continue to innovate and invest behind the Writing business in a way that creates more consumer involvement with this category which would benefit both the retailer and us in terms of penny profit and margin development for the category. And so, that's the algorithm for us. If we need to, just like in Baby, we'll protect our flank. As you say, next year is going to be a modest year in terms of net inflation between sourced finished goods, wage-driven inflation and commodity-driven inflation. So, there'll be another quite temperate year in that respect. So, there may be a couple of folks that choose to play the price game, I doubt it, though, in Writing. The place where we're more vulnerable to that, quite frankly, is in the less differentiated portion of the Rubbermaid Consumer Storage business, which is why we don't want to be in it because there's no material path of differentiation there that would justify premium pricing, and that's the portion of our portfolio that tends to get whipsawed in environments where commodities are going in the other direction, which is why we don't like it, which is why we're steadily and progressively getting out of that, and focusing on the portions of our portfolio that are more value-added.

Wendy C. Nicholson - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it, okay, and then just one last one. On the recent management changes, I feel like Mark's [Tarchetti] change was probably fairly well telegraphed in advance. But on the Bill Burke side, I mean, I know he's been obviously very important in the organization. He played a big role in recruiting other people to come over the years. How much transition do you expect? Do you expect other people to be following him out the door? How much risk is there associated with his departure? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Let me just say about both people, they've been unbelievable business partners for me; playing different roles but playing absolutely critical roles in affecting the change that we've driven here over the last few years. And they've been great partners to each other, which has been really important as we've established our new operating model of development and delivery. They were the two leaders of those two portions of our organization, and they partnered in a way that was terrific to amplify this model of these two activity systems being independent but interdependent. One group focused on the strategic. The other focused on commercialization of the ideas. And so I want to thank them for everything that they've done to breathe life into that model. Bill is an extraordinary leader. He's helped the organization understand the context for change, and he's helped great Newell legacy employees understand how they can succeed in this new model. Bill's got immense capacity. Bill can be the CEO of a company. Bill and I – Bill had the same issue I had at Unilever, which is an age compression issue. Bill and I are the same age. Paul [Polman] and I were a few years apart but not…

Wendy C. Nicholson - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Terrific, that's very helpful color. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Olivia Tong with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Great, thank you. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Olivia.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Hi. How are you? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Good. First on Baby margins, should this essentially go back to becoming a double-digit margin business, not necessarily in fiscal 2016 obviously? But is that your expectation over time, or is there still a need for incremental investment or things to do on the lower end of value price point? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Olivia, it's important to remember what's unique about our Baby business. First of all, we've demonstrated the ability to grow this business quite fast. In 2012 – 2013, compound growth globally of just about 10%. And as you see us investing now into this business, we've got the growth going towards 8%, 5% year to date. The thing to remember is, of course it's a lower margin business, so it's dilutive to us at gross margin and also at operating margin given the investment profile we've got on it right now. But the thing to remember is we don't own many fixed assets and we don't have title for the inventory beyond its port of departure and a good chunk of this business from China. And so as a result, it has a very high return on net assets ratio despite having low gross margin and operating margin. So as you think about it from a value creation perspective, if we grow this business, we create a lot of value. Now all that said, I don't expect this business to be a single digit operating income margin business. This business will get back to a double-digit operating margin business as the revenue continues to scale and as we moderate the investment we've made in this business to catalyze growth.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Got it, that's very helpful. And then just on M&A, as you look at your existing portfolio, are there areas you think you can continue to bolster with incremental M&A, particularly in the Win Bigger businesses? And how important is M&A relative to growing the core organically as you think about the out years? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: As we mentioned at a recent conference, we end up with tremendous amount of flexibility and capacity building over time. Our market cap today is what, about $11.5 billion maybe, somewhere between $11.5 billion and $12 billion. And the kind of total capacity cumulative we end up having with today's capital structure is somewhere around $5.5 billion by 2020. That's the model we exposed at a recent conference. So, we end up with tremendous amount of flexibility beyond the fundamental improvements in our performance. And we're going to put that to work in a way that creates value for shareholders and also scales and strategically enhances our company. Up until now, we've been focused on organic growth until late 2014, and then we began to complement that organic agenda with bolt-ons in the core. Elmer's is a bit of an extension of the shoulders of one of those cores into crafts, which I think is exciting and we're going to learn whether the model extends. I think it does, and I think it will be really interesting to see how we do over the next couple of years in accelerating that business's growth with new capabilities deployed and more money deployed against the brands. So that's going to be an exciting thing to watch. The other opportunity for the company long-term is to scale the company. And the question becomes if this model is working, which it clearly appears to be working, can you apply the model across a sixth or a seventh or a tenth segment? And my theory would be yes, it could be applied. And so there will be options at some point in the future where we'll have to decide whether we want to do something more transformational than the bolt-and-build approach. I think that's going to be an option that's in front of us, and that will be something very exciting if it ever were to transpire. Our goal is to build the preeminent consumer durables company in the world. That's our strategic long-term goal. That's the ambition we have for our company. In order to do that, we've got to continue to do what we're doing but also scale the company. And we'll have to see how that all plays out. That may be a dream more than a reality. But I think it's important for you to understand that that's the scope of our ambition.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Great. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jason Gere with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jason M. Gere - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

You know what, I think all my questions are exhausted at this point, so I will pass on to the next caller. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Jason.

Jason M. Gere - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Linda Bolton Weiser with B. Riley. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Hi, thanks for fitting me in. So, Mike, can you just comment on – was the Tools growth of 3% in the quarter, you said it was improved in the second half. Was the 3% in line with your planning? And you said that some macro issues are still impacting, but you said Brazil improved and EMEA was actually good Tools growth. So what's so weak? And then on top of that, is the overall macro regarding Tools, is it stronger or weaker than, say, compared when you first took over as CEO, just when you take all of those different parts of the world together? Are you feeling macro good, good or just medium, or it's very weak? Just give us some more color on that. And then for next year, is that a low single digit or a mid-single digit grower in Tools? Thanks. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure, great question. Clearly in the second quarter, I think Brazil has been an issue for virtually everybody. We have a big tools business in Brazil. We had a tough second quarter in Brazil. We had a strong third quarter in Brazil. So some of the issues there have been a little bit more spiky. The more strategic question mark is in the industrial sector of our Tools business, and that has been softer than what we expected. So the brand that plays there is our Lenox band saw business, not the Lenox tools or accessories business but the Band Saw business, and that represents about 10% to 15% of the total Tools business. We grew 3.1% in the quarter. We expected stronger growth on Tools. And the thing that fell a little bit short was the Lenox band saw business connected to Industrial sector softness. It's going to be something we need to watch. That business was on fire last year and it's had more tempered growth this year. And that hasn't gotten better through the back half as we had expected. We had good Irwin growth in virtually every geography in the third quarter, but Lenox fell short of our expectations. And that was covered by Baby momentum, more than covered by Baby momentum and Writing momentum. So the thing to watch going into 2016 is what happens with the Industrial segment – sector and I think your assumption about how to build the model for 2016 is mid-single digit is probably a good number to have, 4% to 6%. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Thank you. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bill Chappell with SunTrust Bank.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

Good morning and thanks. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Bill.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

A simple one; outlook for resin and kind of how that plays into your gross margin outlook for this year and next year? John K. Stipancich - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. Hey, Bill, we see resin most likely, as Mike said, probably a favorable commodities environment next year, maybe coming down just a little bit, not as much as you may think, and we've had this conversation before about resin not moving as much as, and being as volatile as actually the feedstocks are. But probably it'd be down just a little bit in 2016 would be our anticipation right now. Now, that being said, again, the caution for us is there's a pretty high demand still on in the number of resins that we use. So, resin guys have done a fairly good job keeping pricing up despite the drop in their feedstock price.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

So, it's not a meaningful kind of impact on the gross margin expansion? John K. Stipancich - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: No, I wouldn't say it's meaningful next year.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

Okay. And then second, Mike, just going back to Elmer's. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

Other than citing my favorite Lloyd Bridges quote from the movie, Airplane, are there other uses for glue? I'm trying to understand the revenue synergy potential. And when I say that, is it a different take? Contigo and Baby Jogger was kind of we're buying growth businesses so we can grow even faster. This is a kind of a slow growth where you're – I mean, I know that the historical Newell models that utilize it and turn it around, but are you going to look at it a little bit of everything going forward for bolt-ons or is this kind of a one-off? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: This is an interesting business because of its adjacency and the buyer synergy between Writing in this business. So, if you were to walk at Walmart, the aisle right next to Writing would be where you'd find Mr. Sketch, you'd find Crayola, you'd find crafts, and that's where the Glue business tends to live. You could have made the same argument, Bill, on Writing. When we started, it was a low, slow growth business. And here we are, four years later, growing through innovation and through brand support. I think there's all kinds of different applications for Glue that would drive – and crafts that would drive more consumer involvement in the category. And we'll see how that plays out over time. Our teams need to connect with the Elmer's team to think about what's in their funnel of ideas, and then we got to investment in insights to kind of chart that path forward. You should count on growth acceleration on the core Elmer's business. And there's all kinds of really interesting ideas on Krazy that you could embrace, doings that we would need to discuss with our new JV partner, a Japanese company. And so, I think this is going to be about money and it's going to be about concept developments around the application of the Elmer's brand in the core Glue business and maybe the expansion beyond.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

So, do you think it can be growing by the time you lap it for organic growth a year from now where it doesn't dilute kind of your organic growth? Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We hope so. That will be the goal.

William B. Chappell - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Bank.

Okay, great. Thanks so much. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from Stephanie Wissink with Piper Jaffray. Stephanie Schiller Wissink - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for sneaking us in. We'd like to go one level deeper on the A&P spend, if we could. So, two parts to the question; the first is, just if you look at that spend, can you break it down between brand spend and maybe product-attributed spend or new products that you're introducing and whether that spend need to be attached to a new product innovation? And then secondly, do you have any cases where you have been in a stretch investment position and maybe you pulled back where you've seen sales persist at above average rate? Thank you. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, Stephanie, you're looking for the split of our A&P by new products versus core. Is that what you're looking for? Stephanie Schiller Wissink - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Yes, if you're willing to break it out that way. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right, what we've learned over the last couple of years is that our investment generates the most growth yield when it's connected to innovation. So the vast majority of our investment is behind product news. And there are a couple of exceptions to that. We've done some work on Sharpie, on the core brand of Sharpie, that have worked to expand consumption, but most of the investment is focused on new news. And that's what you should expect going forward. That's certainly true on the advertising line. On consumer promotion, it's a more balanced approach; on trade promotion, more balanced approach because that's the part of A&P that's focused on activating our brands in key drive periods. So…

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Mr. Polk for closing remarks. Michael B. Polk - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you very much, Laurie. Thank you to all of you on the call for your interest in our company, and most importantly, thanks to all the Newell people who work tirelessly to make these results happen. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

A replay of today's call will be available later today on our website, newellrubbermaid.com. This concludes our conference. You may now disconnect.