Ron Lombardi
Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open
Thanks, Chris. Let's turn to Slide 11 to recap the year. Fiscal 2020 was a successful year in many ways, owing in large part to the continued execution of our strategy. First, we continued to invest behind our core portfolio, which led to growing categories and market share for many of our leading brands. I'd also like to highlight the success in our International segment, which had a great year as we grew many key brands meaningfully, including Hydralyte. Second, our cash generation and free cash flow conversion remain best-in-class. As Chris highlighted, we generated $207 million in free cash flow, driven by strong EBITDA margin and low cash taxes. Finally, our disciplined capital allocation allowed for multiple areas of investment in fiscal 2020. Importantly, we continued to focus on debt reduction, reducing our leverage to within our long-term targeted range of 3.5 to five times. We also used roughly one-quarter of our free cash flow to opportunistically repurchase our stock. Even in a challenging environment, we delivered excellent results in fiscal 2020, and our strategy leaves us well positioned for future success. This three-pillar strategy is highly adaptable and will be our guide as we approach fiscal 2021. Turning to Slide 12, you can see the ways we expect to do this. We believe our proven three-pillar strategy and the building blocks shown here position us for success as we navigate this pandemic. First, our business continuity plan is robust and critical to executing these strategies that tieback to each of our pillars. We have a diversified leading portfolio that's a key strength in many economic environments, including this one. Our company is nimble and we are able to adapt quickly and refocus efforts around targeted brands and opportunities. We'll share some real-time marketing examples of this shortly. We are also adapting quickly to the changing retail shopping trends and continue our proactive investments in channel opportunities such as e-commerce. And finally, capital allocation and liquidity will remain critical in this highly volatile environment. We will remain disciplined capital allocators and true to our company discipline. Let's dive in on each of these in more detail beginning on Slide 13. As mentioned earlier, we continue to prioritize putting our employees first through various proactive measures. We have numerous manufacturing partners which are all operating in a similar capacity. As of today, we've yet to experience any meaningful supply shortages that will result in out of stock at retail, thanks to the efforts of our operations team and our partners despite experiencing some reduced capacity from absenteeism and delays in raw material deliveries. We continue to work with our third-party suppliers around continuity of supply, including prioritizing activities to maintain ample inventory on our leading brands. These efforts include concentrating SKU manufacturing around critical brands and items, finding alternative suppliers as a precaution and other measures. Fortunately, even with increased demand experienced in March, our inventory remains well positioned as we were able to benefit from the elevated inventory levels we had maintained during our warehouse transition to a new third-party logistics provider, which was completed at the end of March. Now let's turn to Slide 14. Our number one brands represent over two-thirds of our sales, as you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, and there's a strength in the current environment. These brands often hold a long history with consumers, which we believe positions us for continued demand as consumers focus on their health and hygiene more than ever. With a leading position, they also get to focus on the end goal of driving category growth rather than fighting for share. This heritage, combined with our long-term brand building and meaningful innovation and new products, continues to differentiate us from other brands and private label. For example, in fiscal 2020, our leading brands continued to drive category growth and the majority of them outperformed private label meaningfully. On the left, you can see our diversified portfolio participates across various categories, addressing a broad range of needs. This reach is a strength. This diversity ensures our ability to opportunistically allocate resources where consumer insights dictate, drive brand building in both the short term and long term. This is especially true now as consumer purchase patterns and trends affected by the pandemic are shifting rapidly. Let's turn to Slide 15 to expand on this. With the market changing, we are seeing consumers change not only what they buy but where they shop due to shelter-in-place orders. This is a unique attribute of the current pandemic, which makes our current environment different from past recessions. Our wide-ranging portfolio is impacted in many different ways by this. On the right end of the opportunity spectrum, consumers are showing increased interest for pain, cough and cold treatments along with feminine care products. Other products shown in the middle are fairly consistent with the recent trends, and we expect them to be unaffected by current changes in daily living. On the left, we have brands that are now expected to see lower usage rates as a result of the pandemic as consumers reduce time outdoors and in vacationing. So how are we capitalizing on these opportunities? The focus is to allocate greater investments to high-opportunity brands. Investments will be both by brand and channel as we'll discuss on the next two slides. While Nix and Dramamine are being affected by the current environment, our investments will strike the balance between the current headwinds being faced by these brands and with long-term brand building effort and potential. So let's turn to Slide 16 for three examples of this nimble marketing approach. Here, you can see marketing efforts on the left include reaching consumers at home through digital and addressable TV efforts, having the ability to have Monistat shipped to your door rapidly. A key brand-building strategy is to move share from prescription treatments over time and these marketing efforts are timely to support this objective. Next in the middle of the slide is Summer's Eve. With consumers staying at home, we have refocused marketing efforts around home workouts and highlight on our recently launched Summer's Eve active product. Last, on the right of the slide is Clear Eyes. We've had several new messages from the brand since the pandemic began. The most important to us is a digital effort launched in late April, saluting all the hospital workers on the frontline fighting COVID-19. We launched this tribute by donating 100,000 bottles of Clear Eyes to hard-hit hospitals New York City. Each of these are real-time examples of our nimble marketing approach and ability. Let's turn to Slide 17 to discuss changes in retail. In addition to consumers shifting brand focus as a result of a pandemic, consumers are also changing their preferences on where they are shopping. Beginning in March, consumer interest in e-commerce ordering and omni-channel click-and-collect shopping accelerated sharply as consumers looked to minimize their person-to-person contact during the pandemic. As an example, in the month of March alone, we saw an increase of 186% in new visitors browsing Prestige products in certain e-commerce retailers. This resulted in our impressive fourth quarter commerce sales growth that Chris highlighted earlier. Moving ahead, we could see this channel representing as much as 8% or more of our total sales in fiscal 2021. So just like with our brand, we are being nimble with our channel investments. Our example's shown here, a reminder about quick and easy shipping to a home from Monistat, keyword advertising for BC and combo pack kits to reduce frequency of purchases. Over the last several years, we've been proactively investing in the emerging e-commerce channel, investing behind digital content and expanding distribution to ensure that our trusted brands are easily available for purchase as customers’ research and shop for their healthcare needs in new ways. In summary, we're rapidly adopting retail and brand plans to an evolving environment, and a diversified and leading portfolio of brands gives us a great starting point. Now let's turn to Slide 18. In fiscal 2020, our brand-building efforts continued to deliver strong financial results. We finished the year with over $205 million in cash flow and a mid-30s EBITDA margin. As you can see on the chart at the left, we reinvested gross margin gains into A&P, consistent with our long-term strategy. With this strong strategic positioning, we are then left with options of how to best allocate this capital to enhance shareholder value. Going into fiscal 2021, this strategy remains consistent and disciplined. First and foremost, we will continue to invest behind our brands, which are aimed at reinforcing long-term connections with consumers regardless of the economic environment. Second, we continue to focus on deleveraging. We continually evaluate the operating environment and how to best manage our leverage profile at any given time. Currently, we have proactively built cash, as Chris discussed, and also have significant liquidity available due to our capital structure. Number three and four on the page are other capital considerations, which are always contemplated if the first two priorities are satisfied. Although admittedly challenging, given the limited economic environment visibility, we will continue to evaluate each of these priorities if they make sense and add long-term value for our shareholders. Let's wrap up on Slide 20 and recap what we've just discussed. We have a time-tested playbook that is set up to navigate this changing and challenging environment. Regardless of the landscape, we always focus on ensuring business continuity and will continue brand building for the term. This is applicable as we think about fiscal 2021 but in a very different way compared to prior years. We've talked a lot about uncertainty today and we're contemplating a number of factors. How long shelter-in-place lasts, various economic impacts from the pandemic and many others. Accordingly, we are not offering our typical full year financial outlook, but we do want to offer some insight to our thinking for Q1. In Q1, we are anticipating a reversal of the accelerated consumption trends experienced in March. So far, this quarter, we are seeing consumption declines as shoppers stay home. Partially offsetting these factors were higher retailer orders in April as retailers replenished their stores following the March spike in consumption. The net effect of all of this is difficult to predict. But as of today, we anticipate Q1 revenues of $220 million or more. We also anticipate EPS of $0.70 or more for Q1 as our proactive expense management and cost timing are expected to more than offset the anticipated revenue decline as compared to the prior year. Meanwhile, we expect to maintain a strong financial profile and continued capital allocation optionality. We anticipate continuing to leverage our financial profile to drive strong free cash flow conversion. And we'll use this cash to focus on debt reduction while being mindful of managing liquidity through each quarter. By executing this strategy, we believe we are set up for continued success. With that, I'll open it up for questions.