Earnings Labs

Prestige Consumer Healthcare Inc. (PBH)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, May 14, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q4 2015 Prestige Brands Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Leanne, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and we will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I'd now like to turn the call over to Dean Siegal, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed. Dean P. Siegal - Director of Investor Relations & Communications: Good morning and welcome. As a reminder, there is a slide presentation which accompanies this call. It can be accessed by visiting prestigebrands.com, click on the Investor link and then on today's Webcast & Presentation. I am required to remind you that during this call, management may make forward-looking statements regarding their beliefs and expectations as to the company's future business prospects and results. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties which in many cases are beyond the control of the company and may cause actual results to differ materially from management's expectations. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this conference call. A complete Safe Harbor disclosure appears on page 2 of the presentation accompanying the call. Additional information concerning the factors that might cause actual results to differ from management's expectations is contained in the company's Annual and Quarterly Reports, which it files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, I would like to introduce Matt Mannelly, CEO; and Ron Lombardi, CFO. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Thank you, Dean, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. As Dean said, as…

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. So, let's begin on slide 21. We'll take a look at some of the highlights for the fourth quarter. As Matt described, we're really very pleased with our fourth quarter and full year results, including our record revenues for both period and the very strong organic growth of about 2.5% for the fourth quarter. This quarter continued our trends of strong organic sales growth across our core OTC brands and international portfolios. This resulted in extremely strong fourth quarter and full year results. Our results for the quarter included not only solid revenue and EPS growth but excellent, strong free cash flow generation and the strengthening of our overall financial profile. If you look down at the bottom of page 21, you'll see that total revenue grew about 33% during the quarter to $190 million, a record for the fourth quarter. Our adjusted EPS growth was ahead of the sales growth at about 34% to $0.47 for adjusted EPS, and then finally, that excellent free cash flow growth of about 45% to just over $50 million during the quarter. So again, we're very pleased with the results during the quarter. Turning to slide 22, we have our consolidated fourth quarter and full year results. As a reminder, today's information includes adjusted results that are reconciled in our earnings release. Our net revenues increased again about 33% in Q4 and about 20% for the full year with full year sales coming in at approximately $715 million. These results were driven by continued strengthening consumption trends across our core OTC brands, as well as in our international portfolios. These results include about $2 million of negative FX impact in Q4 and about $4 million on a year-to-date basis. We expect currency fluctuations to impact our business…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your first question comes from the line of Joe Altobello from Raymond James. Please go ahead. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thank you. Good morning, guys. First question, wanted to talk about PediaCare a bit. It sounds like you guys are starting to deemphasize that brand somewhat. I imagine that has to do with some of the competition you are seeing from Children's TYLENOL. So I guess, first, can you talk about that change in your strategy? And second, maybe what you are seeing in terms of the overall spending level for that brand and from competition? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Joe. I'll be happy to talk about that. If you go back to the conference calls over the last two years, we've said we're really going to look at this over two seasons and see how things settle out. And so with the end of this cough/cold season as we enter 2016 with our annual operating plan, the analysis and the strategies that we developed, we said we're still very bullish on the pediatrics market. We just believe Little Remedies is more differentiated than PediaCare vis-à-vis the competition. So that's where we will be investing more A&P dollars. And as we've done in the past with our portfolio, we have to make choices in our A&P spending. So, we're going to pull back the A&P spending a little bit in PediaCare, we're going to put it behind Little Remedies because it's more differentiated. We're still going to support PediaCare. We have some exciting things with PediaCare in terms of target audiences and things we're doing with the Hispanic community with PediaCare. We also have some exciting things that we're looking at in terms of channels of distribution and better leveraging PediaCare in the dollar channel. So, we are going to shift strategies. We're going to deemphasize it a little bit. As I said earlier, one, we've said we're going to assess it after two years and; two, I think what you saw this year, the power of the portfolio was even though that competitive onslaught and the marketing spend continued into the second half, we still saw terrific overall growth for the company and the OTC portfolio. Does that answer your question, Joe? Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Got it. It does. Thank you. And secondly, on Monistat – yeah, sure.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Joe, just to add two comments to that. If you take a look at our total organic consumption trends in Q3 and Q4 in the heart of the cough/cold season, to Matt's point, you'll see that we were able to still have a very nice performance during that period. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Right, right. Okay. And then in terms of moving to Monistat, that brand has started to grow with you guys owning it even before the direct marketing to the OB/GYN. So, what's driving that and how much upside do you see for that brand in the next year? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think what's driven it to date, Joe, is some basic blocking and tackling that we did when we bought the business in terms of aligning the correct pricing across the portfolio in some of our key customers. So, little things like that make a difference to the portfolio. And I think over time and I think it's over the next couple of years, we see terrific opportunities and upside for Monistat. That's why we're going to be investing significantly in it. I think I would note though the healthcare professional play is a long-term play. That's not something we're doing to drive revenue in 2016. We're really doing it to drive it in 2017 and 2018 even more. Joseph Nicholas Altobello - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Got it. Thank you, Matt. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Carla Casella from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Carla M. Casella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. My question was related to the additional ad and promo spend. Did you give a magnitude of how much additional spend? And if we look specifically at second quarter when you are spending behind the Monistat spending in the professional trade, how should we look at the second quarter spend versus last year?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Carla, we really don't break out expectations on a quarter-by-quarter basis. We do see some fluctuations between quarters. But our focus in our investment for the entire year of fiscal 2016 will be significant, especially behind the Monistat brands and initiatives we've got going on for healthcare, professional, and updating our advertising and TV commercials that we expect to do.

Carla M. Casella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. I guess I was more just wondering is it – are you moving the dollars around in this coming quarter, I guess, first fiscal quarter? Or will we see more of the ad and promo be weighted towards this first quarter than it was in the past?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We'll see increases in the first half of the year, Carla, between those – the first and second quarter year-over-year as we begin to get investments behind the Monistat and some of the other initiatives we've got going on.

Carla M. Casella - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Jon Andersen from William Blair. Please go ahead. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning, everybody. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Jon. How are you?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning, Jon. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: I'm good. I'm good. The first question I had is just more on the fourth quarter. The top-line number was stronger than – quite a bit stronger than the guidance. I think for the guidance for the year we were looking for like 18% and came in closer to 19.5%, which had a – and that was driven by Q4 results. So what – just curious what came in stronger if you can parse that out? Was it a particular brand or collection of brands? Was it the international business? Was it the strength of the cough/cold season? Any help there would be great.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. First thing I'll mention, Jon, is that the cough/cold season, the incident levels trended all the way up through the end of the fourth quarter, which were a bit above what we expected going into the fourth quarter, right? That's always a tough call. Another thing I'll call out is the continued strong performance of Clear Eyes. As Matt mentioned earlier, we took – became the number one brand in the redness category. And then overall, continued strong trends in our core OTC brands in our international portfolio. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Jon, I think it's the consistent A&P spending we've been putting behind the business. As I said, we yielded broad-based consumption gains across the core OTC, which we're really happy about. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. That makes sense. I guess sticking with advertising and promotion, Ron, I think in the prepared comments, you mentioned that you expect A&P in 2016 to be above the 2015 level. Just for clarification purposes, do you mean above on an absolute level or on a rate basis as a percent of sales, or both perhaps?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Both. We expect it to take gross margin gains and invest them in higher levels of A&P, which will result in both a percent and dollar increase year-over-year. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. That's helpful. The gross margin rate of 68% kind of the run rate level is – I mean obviously, that's a terrific gross margin rate. Is that the right way? I guess you will have a full year of impact from Insight next year. Is that a level which we should think of as a run rate level for a longer period of time, or I guess are there other internal initiatives and/or I guess future M&A that could even move that higher over time?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. For 2016, as I mentioned earlier, we expect to be at approximately 58%. So, the fourth quarter run rate will be where we start to get into for fiscal 2016. And then, I think we've mentioned this in the past, we've got mid-term objectives of growing our gross margin closer to 60% over time. We've got cost saving initiatives that we'll execute against over time, and certainly, as we grow our OTC business and it becomes a larger portion of our total sales and household continues to become a smaller portion, we'll get a benefit of mix. And again, it's our intention to take those increasing margins and invest them in higher levels of A&P going forward. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Just a couple of quick housecleaning questions. The G&A spend in the quarter was – I think you've had Insight for the full quarter in the third quarter, so the step-up from $14 million to $16 million on the G&A line was a bit more than we had modeled. Was there simply some year-end true-up activity there or how should we think about that for 2016?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. We tend to have slightly higher G&A in the fourth quarter versus other quarters in the year. And then the other thing that gets classified in G&A is we did have some FX losses during the quarter that will get recorded in G&As. That was a small amount of the increase over 8% as well. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Perfect. Last question, the D&A and CapEx for 2016, I know CapEx is generally modest, but if you can help us with that it would be great.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. For D&A, we were just under $6 million in the fourth quarter. So, if you annualize that out, we would expect around a $24 million number for next year. And then, D&A, we spent $6 million this year. You could use that as an estimate for 2016 as well. Jon R. Andersen - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. Thanks, guys.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Jon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And your next question comes from Frank Camma from Sidoti. Please go ahead. Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Good morning, guys. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Frank. How are you?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning, Frank. Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Good. Hey, I was wondering if you could just talk briefly about the inventory levels at retail. You mentioned that it sounds like the retailers, from your perspective, are becoming a little more optimistic, so I was wondering if you could just address that. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I don't think we've talked about this in other quarters, Frank. Third quarter and now fourth quarter, we're not seeing the broad-based pressure on inventories that we saw for several quarters. It doesn't mean we're not seeing some inventory pressure from individual, like key accounts because we're seeing – you still see a little bit of that. But I think in general, also when you look at our consumption trends versus our shipment trends over the last few quarters, our retail inventory is in good shape. So, I think Ron used the term retailers are cautiously optimistic, but they're still bottom-line focused as we head into 2016, right? Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Yeah. Okay. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, they're not going to take their eye off it. We're not seeing the squeezing we saw 12 months ago on a broad-based level. But clearly, like I said, that's why the words are cautiously optimistic. The retailers continue to look at that, but we're not – we don't see significant headwinds right now. Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. Good.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

And we haven't benefited from any recovery in inventory at retail yet. We're seeing a narrowing of consumption to shipments. Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. Understand. And then the other question just is on, I know it's obviously a smaller component, but household cleaning for about a year had actually seen some not only stabilization but growth in this quarter. It actually came in at my expectation. But was there anything driving that in this quarter, the slight decline here? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Frank, household – some of that is dependent on programs and programs by channeling key customers, so there's always some movement around in terms of throughout the year. So, I don't think there's any fundamental change. It's just a shift in programs quarter-to-quarter. Frank A. Camma - Sidoti & Co. LLC: Okay. All right. Thanks. That's all I have for now. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Frank.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last call comes from Linda Bolton Weiser from B. Riley. Please go ahead. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Hi. I was curious, just on PediaCare, as you deemphasize that, have you already lost any distribution or do you expect to in the future? And how does the distribution of PediaCare compare with Little Remedies? So, for example, is PediaCare in Walmart but Little Remedies isn't. Or are there any retailers that you could lose or actually with Little Remedies, is there opportunity for distribution gain as you put more behind it? Thanks. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Linda, for us – it's similar for some other brands as well, but for Little Remedies and PediaCare, we have distribution for both those brands in really all the major accounts. Our distribution losses and our distribution opportunities are by SKU, not really for the brand. So, this is why we believe Little Remedies has more upside because of its point of difference in terms of to grow and to gain distribution. And to answer your question, PediaCare did take some distribution and facing losses this year already. So, that's already happened. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay. And are there any margin differences between the two brands in terms of the SKUs that are offered in each line or is it very similar in terms of the margin profile? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Very similar margins across those. I mean, they're similar – they're liquid product, so very similar margins. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay. And then I was curious about your guidance on organic sales for the year. For FY 2016, it's quite robust at 2% to 3%, but you said, I think, for the second half, it would be a little lower at 1.5% to 2%. So, is that a matter of just the comparisons that are harder in the second half, or is it launch schedule and what you have planned or the advertising cadence or what is it that's making it lower in the second half of the year?

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

It's really the comps, Linda. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay.

Ronald M. Lombardi - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We have very strong Q3 and Q4 results as well as a fairly robust cough/cold incident levels this year. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay. And just finally, the longer-term front, I know a lot of – some of the larger household and personal care companies like Procter & Gamble are commenting on as they spend more on digital, you are actually seeing reductions in the advertising and promo ratio over time is what they are saying to expect. It doesn't sound like you're really thinking that way even though you are spending more on digital. But can you just comment on that as a longer-term trend phenomenon? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I think for us, given our spend levels, where we were and where we are today, we're not looking to gain more efficiencies in A&P (42:03). So, we're not moving to digital to gain more efficiency. We're moving to digital to gain more effectiveness with our consumers. So, we're not looking in here to internally squeeze the A&P to cut it back. We're looking where can we invest in A&P. So, I don't think for us we're saying that that number is going to come down over the next couple of years as a result of the move to digital. Linda B. Weiser - B. Riley & Co. LLC: Okay, great. Thank you very much. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Linda.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We do have another question and it's from Kevin Ziets from Citi. Please go ahead.

Kevin L. Ziets - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. It's more of a bigger picture question on, I guess, celebrity attachment to your products. It seems like Clear Eyes and Goody's are examples where you have that and it has really worked. And I don't expect you to say necessarily on a specific brand basis, but if you could just comment in general whether those types of products where you attach a celebrity to the marketing campaign whether they have better growth in general and better margins all-in than maybe some of the other brands and whether you would think about doing that with some of your newer brands, maybe Monistat or something else? Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Kevin, I think it's a good question. I think, again, what I tried to say earlier was look at our marketing mix portfolio in our toolkit and how it's changed over the last five years. We used to be basically, turn on the TV and drop a couple of coupons. Today, we're much, much more than that whether it's celebrities that we're using for different brands, whether it's sports marketing events, whether it's digital blogging, et cetera. But I think we're going to continue to expand our toolkit. I think that's what marketers do. And I think we look at for all our different brands, what are the assets that make sense whether it's celebrity or other things, but we're going to continue to do that and we'll probably continue to expand it. And the beauty is in this industry, gross margins are healthy enough that if you do it the right way, you can afford to do that successfully.

Kevin L. Ziets - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

That's great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Matthew Mannelly for closing remarks. Matthew M. Mannelly - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Well, thanks, everybody. Just a couple of closing remarks as we transition to Ron, given that this will be my last call. I think as trite as it sounds, it's about the people and I'll start with the passion of the team members of Prestige that have built this company and we'll continue to build it. It's also about the people on this call, the analysts who really have discovered us and written about us and our story along the way. And I can tell you, whether it's the conferences or really the market trips that we've spent with Joe Altobello, John San Marco (45:06), Frank Camma, Jon Andersen and Linda Bolton Weiser, how enjoyable it's been and how much we respect the work that you've done and the investments that you've made in Prestige, so we thank you for that. And finally, it's about the investors as well. And we do a lot of meetings, a lot of one-on-ones with investors, and I don't mean to exclude anyone here, but a couple of examples are – I can tell you it's enjoyable to go up to Boston every couple of quarters and sit in one of the big Fidelity conference rooms and it's like a firing line of about 10 people asking you questions. And that's the fun part of the business. It's also enjoyable to deal with people like the people at First Manhattan who've been with us the entire ride and continue to believe in us. And it's enjoyable to deal with people like BlackRock who's built up their position considerably in the last couple of years. So, we – that part of the business is an enjoyable part of it. And I'll just go back to the Prestige people. Our culture is really built on leadership and we talk about it a lot here and the fact that we have 200 leaders in the company and what that does is it allows us that when one leaves, we have plenty of other leaders to take us to the next level. So, I'd like to thank the 200 leaders for what they've done and more importantly what they're going to continue to do for Prestige, so thank you for that. So, with that, we'll end the call and we appreciate everyone's time and have a good day. Thank you.