Ramon Luis Laguarta
Analyst · Barclays
Yes, that's a good question. So the permissible portfolio in foods and obviously, no sugar in beverages, and some functional platforms in beverages have been a focus of the company for now quite some time. Permissible snacks, which is where your question was going, has been -- it's over a $2 billion business already. We're by far the largest permissible snacking company in the U.S. with multiple platforms. So SunChips, a very successful platform based around multigrain. We have PopCorners, more focus on baked, never fried. We have multiple -- now we have Siete, obviously, as a new member of the family. And then Simply trying to address the no artificials and just natural in the big brands. Those platforms continue to grow, and I'm very happy that you're saying you're seeing more physical availability of Simply. That was the bottleneck for consumption. It was not really consumer appetite for the product, but more availability of the product and the right affordability, the right price points that drive the trial. I think we've worked on both availability and affordability, and that will drive trial. We're seeing increased trial in Simply. And those are great products that a lot of consumers that were kind of sitting on the fence of some of our large brands Doritos, Cheetos and Lay's or Ruffles are now opting to come into the brand. So good feelings and that will continue to be a focus of our A&M, of our sales force, as you saw, and our customer plans. Now going into the future, a big -- a couple of big innovation ideas. One is the relaunch of Lay's and relaunch of Tostitos. Those are two huge platforms that we want to elevate the real food credentials of the two brands. These are very -- these are anchor on potatoes, anchor on corn, very traditional cooking methods on both, very simple ingredients, great food for our consumers. We will relaunch them, we'll put a lot of resources against. We'll eliminate artificial from those two big brands, and that will happen Q4 and Q1 and then into next year. Yes, we're also -- in our remarks, we're talking about some innovation in more functional spaces with our food business. Yes, protein, in some brands like PopCorners, some brands like the Quaker snacks and eventually in some of our larger brands. And to your question, we've been very surprised, positively surprised, how consumers are seeing our brands expanding into those more functional spaces with credibility. So we'll push hard. The big push to protein, though, is going to be on our beverage business, where we have some big launches coming up in Q4 and Q1. We will be participating in the liquid protein space with, I think, superior propositions that have no artificials, that are great tasting, and that I think will give us the return on what is clearly a consumer trend that is scaling up in the U.S. and it's part of the repertoire of our consumers. So those are the areas we will obviously talk more in the coming quarters. It's a little bit early, and we -- obviously, for confidential reasons, competitive reasons, we don't want to disclose too much at this point.