Matthew M. Mannelly
Analyst · Oppenheimer
Thank you, Dean, and thank you, all, for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. We're happy that the call is scheduled for today versus yesterday, where it might have been a little tougher from a weather standpoint for everyone to join us. So with that, I'd ask you to turn to Page 3 of our presentation that Dean referenced. We'll go through the agenda. I want to offer a little bit of perspective of the current environment, and then I'll take you through the performance highlights. Ronald then, as he does typically, will walk through the financial review in more detail, and then I'll close it with kind of an outlook for the remainder of the year, and we'll open it up for some questions. So with that, if you could turn to Page 5, a few comments. I think if you think back, as we've embarked on FY '14, we said this was going to be a transition year at the start of the year as a result of the returning competing brands. I think last quarter, we talked about the retail environment and specifically the soft retail environment in some of the things, the -- I'll say, the whispers and the drums we're hearing [ph] from retailers in terms of the soft retailer environment. And as a result, in the third quarter, there were a combination of things that came together that has impacted our business in the short term. And those things are, specifically, as I said, the soft retail foot traffic that's led to significant retail inventory reductions that have been publicly stated by a number of the leading retailers, plus the returning competitive pediatric brands, which we have been talking about for several months, plus the weak cough/cold season. And while we had a record cough/cold season last year and we didn't anticipate to repeat that, we didn't anticipate cough/cold would be down as much as it's been down this year as a number of people have already identified. I think, when you take those 3 factors and combine them, that in aggregate, that's what's had a significant impact on our business. If you turn to Page 6, a little more on that. You can see here, first and foremost, from a retailer dynamic standpoint, we continue to see foot traffic as the challenge at retail in terms of all the channels that we participate in, particularly the key ones. I think the brands that are coming back are doing so for the most part as we anticipated, but the third factor, as we said, is the cough/cold season, which year-to-date is down over 15% versus last year. If you turn to Page 8, in terms of the highlights of the quarter, I'd say -- I'd start by saying -- and Ron will talk more about this -- very strong free cash flow, which is critical to our long-term success and really critical to our operating model; free cash flow of $41.2 million, which is up almost 12% versus a year ago. Our revenue of $146.2 million is down about 8.7% versus the prior year. However, even with the revenue down, our gross margin has improved slightly versus a year ago. Our A&P spending is up versus the prior year. It's up 8.6%. And as we've said all along, we're a brand-building company, and we'll continue to support the core OTC brands, and we'll continue to support new products and new product development. And as a result, our adjusted EPS, which Ron will talk more about, is $0.30 for the quarter, which is down 18.9% versus the prior year. I think for us, as importantly, if we step back, which we do, I'd say for us, it's critical that we continue to stay the course in terms of our long-term value creation model. And for the quarter, we generated very strong free cash flow that will allow us to further deleverage moving forward and increase our M&A capacity. We're going to continue to build brands. We're going to continue to put appropriate investments behind our brand-building initiatives and our new product launches in the upcoming quarters. And we've, for the most part, completed the integration of Care Pharma, and the performance is exceeding our expectations. If you turn to Slide 9, I think this is -- I think the critical slide for this presentation today, and it shows, as I've talked about, it's really not one thing, but it's a combination of things that have impacted our business. And it's really these 3 factors in terms of that coming together in aggregate that caused the impact on the near term. I think the biggest one, as you can see by far, is the retailer inventory reductions. And again, we heard retailers talk about this 3 or 4 months ago, and it was really in November -- late November and in December that we really saw it come to fruition as a result of what's going on at retail. As we've said, there is an impact in terms of the competitive returns. And you can also see, from a cough/cold standpoint as well as the GI category and some of the dynamics there, that's also having an impact on the business. But you can see, it's not any one that's driving it completely. It's the aggregate of the 3. And in fact, the one that's driving it the greatest is the inventory reductions, which is something that really has just started in the last, now, 60 days. Slide 10. You can see here, in terms of what the inventory reductions and what's going on in terms of performance. And our performance, you can see our revenue growth, which is really our shipments. If you look at it in aggregate, all right, it is in blue; and if you take out the mass channel, it's in red. So you can see, in the first quarter, if you take out the mass channel, we were up. In the second quarter, we were up significantly. In the third quarter, we're down. However, we're down significantly in the mass channel. And you can see, year-to-date, if you were to exclude the mass channel, we're actually up year-to-date; but when we include the mass channel, we're down 2.4%. So that's really where the biggest part of our revenue shortfall is coming from. Slide 11 is also, I think, an interesting slide, and we've talked about this in the past. And you can see, at this point now, core OTC consumption is actually outgaining -- outpacing our revenue. So you can see, again, in the first quarter, consumption exceeded revenue 1.6% versus 0.8%. In the second quarter, our core OTC consumption was up 0.2%, while our shipments of core OTC were up 8.2%. However, in the third quarter, it swung completely the other way in terms of our core OTC is down 1.7%, but our shipments down 7.6%. And you can see, in aggregate year-to-date, our consumption is actually up of our core OTC, but we're down -- there is almost a 4-percentage-point gap at this point year-to-date in terms of shipments versus consumption. I'd make a couple of points, which I think I've made in the past: Having done this for 35 years, I've never seen consumption and shipments line up because it doesn't capture all the channels and it doesn't capture all the key customers. It's just meant to be directional. However, the second thing is, as you can see with the inventory reduction, it's now swung completely the other way through the third quarter, and that's what's causing some of our shortfalls. Slide 12, I think, is important for us. And I think the words on the top of the slide in terms of "It's a Marathon Not A Sprint," I think is critical in terms of our long-term success. We've said in the past that we're a brand-building company, and our formula for success that has gotten us here over the last 5 years, we believe will continue to be successful for us. And that formula starts with bringing innovative new products to the marketplace, providing effective and efficient marketing support and new types of marketing support in terms of driving those brands, and increasing our distribution in the different channels of distribution. And as importantly as I've said in the past, we have good distribution for all of our brands. It's a matter of increasing the number of SKUs in the different channels and the key retailers. Slide 13 shows a little bit in terms of -- as I've said, we're brand builders. We're going to remain focused on building the brand for the long term, and we are going to get through, as we said, the transition year, and we're going to get through these transitional times in terms of the 3 factors that are impacting our performance right now. And you can see how that brand-building strategy has performed over time, and we will continue to focus on the drivers of our growth in our core OTC brands. Slide 14 is a good example of that. And this is our latest new product introduction, which just started to ship last week. So it's called Fresh Guard, and it meets some unmet consumer needs. There are almost 50 million portable dental appliance users in the U.S. today. For them, there is no great way to clean their portable dental appliances without harming them, or in terms of -- they're just not safe, some of the cleaners that are out there. So we offer 2 great new alternatives: One for at home, in terms of they can soak it; and one, that's a wipe that they can use on the go. And so, as I said, this is something that was very well received by our key retailers, and we've just started shipping it. From a marketing standpoint, we'll focus also on professional endorsement, and through some of the dental offices, et cetera, we will reach 1 million patients in the first 60 days. And from there, we will continue to drive awareness with TV advertising, as well as some digital advertising. And we will offer trial and incentive purchases right out of the gate. So we're very excited about Fresh Guard by Efferdent and the kind of the consumer insights that went into this and the opportunity for this marketplace, specifically. Slide 15 talks a little bit about what we've done in the past in terms of appropriately building the brands for the long term. And we continue to do that. And you can see what the numbers are for FY '14 year-to-date. And we've been quite successful in the past, and we expect to do -- continue to do so moving forward. Slide 16 talks a little bit about our Canadian business, which is really grown quite a bit. As a result of our acquisitions almost 2 years ago, our Canadian business doubled, and today, it is over a $50 million business. In many of the categories in which we compete in Canada, we have #1 or #2 brands. And in fact, Gaviscon, which is by far our biggest brand, has just taken over as the #1 brand in the market in which it competes. This business, we're very bullish on. We've seen solid growth. We believe, similar to what I've said about Asia Pacific in the past with that acquisition, with where we stand with Canada today, our goal is to grow that to a $100 million business through organic growth as well as acquisitions over time. So with that, I'll turn it over to Ron, who'll take you through the financial review, and then I will come back and wrap it up. Ron?