Matthew M. Mannelly
Analyst · Joe Altobello, representing Oppenheimer
Thank you, Dean. Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. As Dean said, we'll be working off our investor presentation, which we provide every quarter. And if you go to Page 3 of that presentation, the agenda, I'll take you through some of the -- briefly, some of the performance highlights of the second quarter. Ron Lombardi, who's with us, our CFO, will then take you through a financial overview. I'll then come back with a little bit of an outlook for the remainder of the year, and then we'll open it up for some Q&A. So with that, if you would turn to Slide 4. So Slide 4, we've shown in the past, I think, I would just reiterate a couple of things. Our goal is to deliver shareholder value over the long term. We believe one of the key ways to do that is our cash flow and how that can help increase that shareholder value over the long term. We also pride ourselves on being a company that's product-driven, that's consumer-driven and that is driven to deliver innovative products and exceed consumers' expectations in the marketplace. And the final thing, I'll just add on this page, we've talked about in the past our culture in our company. We now have 160 employees, and our culture is really built on 4 pillars and that's leadership, trust, change and execution. And the reason I bring it up this morning is, I think we demonstrate that day in and day out. I think the most recent example of that is we've just had a very successful new installation and go live for our ERP system. And it was a great example of how 160 people pulled together to make that happen, and that's just another example of our culture in terms of leadership, trust, change and execution. So with that, if you'll turn to Slide 6. In terms of the performance highlights, I'll say just a couple of comments. First of all, we're very pleased with the second quarter outcome, obviously. Very strong financial performance in a very challenging retail environment. Our adjusted EPS of $0.47 is up almost 12% versus prior year. Our free cash flow remains very strong, delivering almost $33 million in cash flow from operations, and we've taken our leverage ratio down to about 4, which again, is quite significant on 2 fronts: Number one, it was only 1.5 years ago that we were at 5.25, so you can see what our cash flow does in terms of our ability to de-lever. And the second thing is, we did an acquisition this quarter, so to bring down our debt ratio while doing an acquisition, for us was very important as well. From a revenue standpoint, $168.4 million in revenue, we're quite pleased with, excluding Phazyme, on an apples-to-apples basis, that's up 5%. And if you take out the Care acquisition, it's still up 1.6%, again in a very challenging environment. And our gross margin remained fairly constant with last year at 56.8%. I think for us, it's important we continue to invest in building our brands. And our core OTC revenue was actually up 3.5% if you exclude the brands that we've discussed quite a bit in the last 6 months that were impacted by the return of the recalled competitive pediatric products. We continue to invest, increase in our A&P investment, and it's up almost 11%. We're doing that by investing in our core OTC brands, as well as new product development, and we are continuing to put solid support behind those pediatric brands that are experiencing returns from competitive products. We've also increased our advertising spending and we have terrific new campaigns for BC/Goody's and Clear Eyes in the marketplace today. And finally, the Care Pharma acquisition, which closed in early July, the integration has proceeded very well, very smoothly, very flawlessly, and the business is performing in line with our expectations. If you turn to Page 7, you'll see here in terms of our revenue growth across the portfolio, again, very strong performance across the entire portfolio. I said up 5%, excluding Phazyme, up 1.6% if you take Care out. Again, our core OTC was down 0.5 percentage point, but up 3.5 excluding the Pediatrics, and that was as we expected and candidly, it was better than we expected. Our non-core OTC up 4.5%, and our Household business for the quarter was actually up 8% versus prior year. If you turn to Page 8, the next couple of pages, I'll talk a little bit about the business and a couple of the brands we're very excited about. First of all, BC and Goody's, 2 of the brands that we purchased from GSK North America a little over a year ago. Goody's is a terrific brand that really has its heart in the South, as does BC. We introduced an innovative new form in terms of Goody's Headache Relief Shots. There's no other product like it in the marketplace, and we're quite pleased with the introduction, and we believe this is going to be something that's going to build over time and be quite successful in the marketplace. BC Cherry on the other hand, really what it does is it leverages the franchise, which is very solid in the South, and brings out a new flavor. And we not only bring out a new flavor, but we bring it out in a new delivery vehicle in terms of the stick pack. And again, with that introduction, that's off to a very strong start as well. You can see on the next page, on Page 9, in terms of BC Cherry, and really, Goody's Headache Relief -- Goody's as well, it's all about speed of pain relief. So our marketing is really built around speed of pain relief. You can see with BC, we aligned ourselves with the SEC. We've done quite a bit of sampling at the SEC schools in the fall. We also have developed retailer partners -- partnerships with some of our key retailers in the South, done -- we have -- you can see down there, a mobile marketing vehicle that we go around and do the sampling that also aids us in terms of gaining displays from our retailers in those areas. If you turn to Page 10, Goody's Headache Relief Shot, as I mentioned earlier, this is something that we're very excited about. And really, I just want to share with you, just over a week ago, on the 26th, was a big NASCAR race in Martinsville, and previously, with the Goody's 500, we renamed it the Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500 this year. It was on national TV. We did significant sampling. We got terrific signage. As importantly, we tied in with our retailers. If you look at the logo for the Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500, you'll see down there it was powered by Kroger. We did a pass-through rights to one of our key retailers, which allowed us to do displays in over 1,000 Kroger stores. So that's a good example of us leveraging our sports marketing assets. We also purchased national advertising on ESPN for the first time. And again, from a PR standpoint, we were quite successful. In terms of impressions from that race, as well as the PR and the Facebook and YouTube, we've gotten over 400 million impressions from that race. And in the upper right hand corner, we're excited was a promotion that we -- that started during that race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Fastest Fan contest, and if you Google it, I think you'll find it quite entertaining, and it has received over 100,000 hits in the first week. So we're quite pleased with that. And the reason I point all this out is, this is a brand that we are very bullish on it for the long term. We've brought an innovative new product, and we're marketing in different ways than we've marketed in the past, in terms of connecting with the consumers. If you turn to Page 11, changing gears a little bit, talking about from a retailer standpoint. We talked a little bit in the past about C stores, and this is a channel of distribution that really is, is just starting to become a strength for us. And our acquisition of those GSK North America brands in 2012, for BC and Goody's in particular, have very, very strong distribution in the C store channel. And that channel has 147,000 outlets. So that strong equity in those 2 brands has allowed us to leverage other brands, and you'll see on the right the key brands that we've leveraged to date have been Clear Eyes, Dramamine and Luden's. And it's allowed us to gain distribution in a number of outlets within that channel. And in fact, those 5 core OTC brands in the C store channel were up almost 20% in the second quarter versus the prior year. If you turn to Page 12, you'll see some examples of our brands in those locations. I think it's not just C stores. If you look on the left, you'll see -- we got new distribution in places like Hudson News and Paradies in airports throughout the United States. We also have got new distribution in gas stations like Pilot Flying J. And finally, at the bottom, it's not just the traditional convenience stores, but we've also opened new distribution in a number of the college bookstores across the United States as well. With that, I'll turn it over to Ron, who'll take you through the financial overview.