Earnings Labs

The Procter & Gamble Company (PG)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 1, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Procter & Gamble’s Quarter End Conference Call. Today’s discussion will include a number of forward-looking statements. If you will refer to P&G’s most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K reports, you will see a discussion of factors that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from these projections. As required by Regulation G, P&G needs to make you aware that during the call, the company will make a number of references to non-GAAP and other financial measures. Management believes these measures provide investors valuable information on the underlying growth trends of the business. Organic refers to reported results, excluding the impacts of acquisitions and divestitures and foreign exchange, where applicable. Free cash flow represents operating cash flow less capital expenditures. Free cash flow productivity is the ratio of free cash flow to net earnings. Any measure described as core refers to the equivalent GAAP measure, adjusted for certain items. P&G has posted on its website, www.pg.com, a full reconciliation of non-GAAP and other financial measures. Now, I will turn the call over to P&G’s Chief Financial Officer, Jon Moeller.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

Good morning. I am joined this morning by AG Lafley and John Chevalier. We will start our discussion with a review of fiscal year and fourth quarter results, AG will then discuss our going forward strategy and plans to strengthen our results, and I will close with guidance for fiscal 2015. One housekeeping item before we begin all the numbers we will be discussing today assume discontinued operations treatment for the pet care business, reflecting in our planned exit. Impacts of the move from operating results to discontinued operations were provided previously in an 8-K filing and are available online. Now, on to results, we grew organic sales 3% in the fiscal year we just completed in line with median performance in our industry. We essentially held market share. Core earnings per share increased 5%. Organic sales and earnings per share results were both within our target ranges. In fact, they were both within the pre-Venezuela devaluation ranges that we established going into the fiscal year despite more than a 25% reduction in market growth rates from 4 points a year ago to 2.5 points to 3 points currently and significant negative foreign exchange developments versus our going in plan. Our productivity program, which we will talk more about later, was a significant enabler in delivering in this outcome. On a constant currency basis, core earnings per share grew double-digits despite market growth headwinds. All-in sales grew 1%. All-in earnings per share grew 4%. We generated $10.1 billion of free cash flow with 86% free cash flow productivity. We increased the dividend 7%, the 58th consecutive year that the dividend has been increased. We have returned $12.9 billion in cash to shareholders, $6.9 billion in dividends, and $6 billion in share repurchase. About 110% of net earnings all-in. We made…

AG Lafley

Management

Thanks Jon. So that we are crystal clear, as John reported we delivered our business and financial commitments in 2013-2014, but we could have and should have done better. If just a couple of businesses that missed their going in operating plans had delivered, we would have achieved our internal leadership team goals of 4% sales growth, built modest market share, delivered 7% core EPS instead of 5% and 5% core operating profit growth instead of 2%. Despite all the market realities Jon described, country volatility, market slowdowns, currency hurts, customer and competitor challenges, the point here is delivering a better year was solely in our influence and control. So, while operating discipline and executional capability is getting better, a lot better around here, it must continue to improve to reach the levels of performance this company and our organization is capable of. We are increasing our focus on shoppers and consumers, they are the boss. Everything begins with consumer understanding winning the zero first and second moments of truth and everything ends with winning the consumer value equation, consumer preference, purchase and loyalty. We are focused on creating and building consumer preferred brands and products that generate leading industry growth and value creation. This is how we will generate top tier total shareholder return. We need to continue to strengthen our brand positions, our product portfolio and pipeline and our selling effectiveness in the country’s channels and customers in a way that maximizes shopper trial and regular purchase, drives brand and category growth and delivers more reliable value creation for customers, partners for P&G and of course for shareowners. Today, we are announcing an important strategic step forward that will significantly streamline and simplify the company’s business and brand portfolio. We will become a much more focused, much more…

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

We continue to expect global markets in our categories to grow in value terms 2% to 3%. Against this backdrop we are currently forecasting fiscal 2015 organic sales growth of low to mid-singles. With this level of growth, we will maintain or modestly grow global market share on a local currency basis. We think this is pragmatic and realistic starting point for our fiscal ‘15 financial commitments. Pricing should again be a positive contributor to organic sales growth, though likely not to the same degree we have seen over the past several years. Foreign exchange is expected to be a one point sales growth headwind. With this level of sales growth we are forecasting mid-single digit core earnings per share growth. We will benefit again from significant productivity savings, but like last year these will be partially offset by FX headwinds which won’t annualize at current spot rates until the back half of the year. We have a few value corrections to make. We are also going to invest and consumer trial of preferred brands and major new product innovations that are in market and that are coming to market. We will continue to make investments in innovation and go to market coverage in the fastest growing sales channels. Non-operating income and tax should be roughly in line with prior year levels. And we are targeting to deliver 90% or better free cash flow productivity. Our plans assume capital spending in the range of 4% to 5% of sales and share repurchase in the range of $5 billion to $7 billion. At this level, share repurchase should net of option exercises contribute about one percentage of earnings per share growth. On an all-in GAAP basis we expect earnings per share to also grow mid-single digits including around $0.20 per share…

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Bill Schmitz with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Bill Schmitz - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed

Hi, gentlemen. Good morning.

AG Lafley

Management

Good morning, Bill.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

Good morning.

Bill Schmitz - Deutsche Bank

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please proceed

Hey, can you give us a timeline for the sales of those your 90 businesses that have been deemed non-core?

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

Well, as AG said in his remarks, the timing on this is going to be governed by our ability to create value, which we are committed to do as we exit this business as much as we have done exactly as we have done with the prior category and brand exits. And rough order of magnitude, this is I would guess, Bill, though I am not providing the specific guidance probably call it 12 to 24 months, but again, we are not going to be governed by timeline, we are going to be governed by value creation.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Faucher (JPMorgan). Please proceed.

John Faucher - JPMorgan

Analyst

Yes, thank you. Sort of continuing with this, one of the things you guys are working on is driving sort of more cost efficient structures and I guess how do you fragment some of these brand groups or is this I guess can you talk a little bit about how this is making the structure less complicated as you go to this many brand groups? And then secondly, as you look at some of the productivity efforts, can you talk a little bit about the focus on stranded overhead and do you feel like your recent productivity will allow you to eliminate some of the potential dilution from selling off some of these businesses? Thanks.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

So, John, first of all as we look at the portfolio in the way that AG described, we are really looking at it through a strategic lens and we are wanting to play in categories with brands, leadership brands that play to our strengths. We have talked before about the core capabilities that we believe we have as a company and very simply brands that leverage those capabilities have proven over time to sustainably create value. And those that don’t fully leverage those capabilities on average, we have struggled with. And so part of this simplification if you will is just matching up our businesses with what we are good at and not having to struggle with some things that we are not as good at. So, that in itself is a big simplification. You can imagine going from a company of call it 160 brands to a company of 70 or 80 brands is in itself incredibly simplifying, the number of innovation platforms that we need to focus on, the number of manufacturing platforms that we need to focus on, the number of products that we need to sell to each and every customer and distributor. So, there is tremendous simplification that comes with this. To your specific question of stranded overheads, it is our objective and expectation that we will use the productivity savings that are available both through simplification that comes from portfolio focus, but also the productivity savings that come through the organization structure changes that AG talked about to in effect offset the stranded overhead impact. There will be some dilution as these businesses go out just as there have been with businesses that we have been divesting. But it will be on that order of magnitude and it will result primarily from the loss of operating earnings of those businesses. We will take care of the stranded overhead.

AG Lafley

Management

John, just a couple of additional points, I mean, this is the classic strategic choice. We want to be in the businesses we should be in, not the businesses we are in. Secondly, it is driven by shoppers and consumers in the market primarily. We are focusing on the brand and business portfolio in the four industries that consumers actually buy and prefer, right, that customers really support and can support, where we have very strong brand equities, where our net promoter scores are higher, where our brand positioning is well-differentiated and where the product performance delivers. So, it’s very straightforward. And the objective is growth. The objective is balanced, profitable sales growth and much more reliable value creation, much more reliable generation of cash, primarily by cash and profit. In terms of the organization side, it’s going to get a lot simpler. It’s already begun to get simpler. A lot this is already underway, but we just have real clarity about what a regional selling operation does and what a business unit does. And they are now connected with far fewer handoffs and we will continue to improve that design to further reduce the handoffs. And we are just going to be much more agile and much more adaptable in a much quicker inside, much simpler inside, so we can deal with all of the change and the pace outside. That’s really the objective here. Look, we had our last global leadership council meeting last week, okay, I don’t know the number, Jon, what are there 30 to 40 people and go, okay we now have a lead team of about 10 of us. And basically the region leaders, the sector BU leaders, Jon and myself 10 to 12 of us, we meet more often, we work on the business, we get things done on a weekly – by weekly and monthly basis. So, we are just going to be more adaptable. We are going to be more agile. We are going to be more responsive. We are going to be able to make decisions a lot faster and turn the decisions into action in the market that really matters.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lauren Lieberman with Barclays Capital. Please proceed.

Lauren Lieberman - Barclays Capital

Analyst · Lauren Lieberman with Barclays Capital. Please proceed

Thanks. Good morning. Just two quick things. First was just around any kind of tax implications or risks from selling businesses at a very low cost basis? And then the second was how do you think you will be able to kind of ensure you don’t lose shelf space or facings as you divest or discontinue brands? Thanks.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

On the tax question, Lauren, there will be some low business assets that will be part of the portfolio that’s going to be disposed. We have done a pretty good job historically about managing that through tax efficient structures. Those do take time, which is what we are talking about when we say that value creation will guide the pacing of the exits. So, we will try to manage that as effectively as we can. AG, you want to talk about?

AG Lafley

Management

Yes. I mean, Lauren, obviously we have anticipated the concern that you raised and a whole bunch of other concerns that we have to manage through the transition and through all the details of the execution, but I guess I just mentioned three quick examples. One, in the U.S. we started out with a laundry brand portfolio of 15 brands, okay. Today, we have a brand portfolio of 5 and over the decades, our share has increased. And as we pointed out in my prepared remarks, our share is approaching 60 again. And more importantly, our share of the value created in that segment is at probably the highest level based on our calculations ever. So, I think there is a lot of evidence in a number of our business categories that the shopper and the consumer really don’t want more assortment and more choice, they want efficient consumer response. If you just look at what’s going on in the omni-channel and pure-play e-tailer environment with online shopping, we are doing a pretty doggone good subscription business. We are doing a good shopping list and automatic replenishment business, because in a lot of our categories, frankly, their low involvement and consumers want to keep their life simple and convenient. And having the leading brand, better performing products and a good value everyday helps them keep life simple and convenient. Two last very quick points, if you look at this company decade by decade at the end of the decade, all of our growth in value creation is driven by three things: one, we are able to grow and continue to create value from our core established brands and businesses going into the decade. Two, we’re able to create, transform, or acquiring build at least one major new business. And three, we’re able to move successfully in the new space. Okay, whether that’s developing markets or new channels or whatever. And I suspect in2021, when we look back at this decade we’re going to see the same pattern. We’ve done a lot of analysis that shows more does not drive growth and more certainly does not drive value creation, absolute last point and you will know this one as well our better than I. When the team sort of got us into the beauty and personnel care business between 2000 and 2007, we tripled the sales from whatever was under 7 to 20 plus, we quadrupled a profit and we did it on half a dozen brand businesses. Pantene and Head & Shoulders, Olay, and SK-II, and a trio of fragrance brands accounted for virtually all of that growth in value creation in an industry that’s notorious for activity and complexity. So I just believe very deeply that we’re picking our spots in these industries that played our strengths and our assets and we’re going forward.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Wendy Nicholson with Citi Research. Please proceed.

Wendy Nicholson - Citi Research

Analyst · Wendy Nicholson with Citi Research. Please proceed

I had two questions. First, maybe for you AG, you said at the beginning that there were several businesses that missed plan during the course of the year. And I’m curious whether that is – was predominately innovation at some short of expectations or misprice products or what the problems were and I think you said you feel more confident about your execution ability going forward. But may be specifically why is that, is it different people in charge or do you have a better sense of adoptability if things are going wrong. So, that’s question number one. And then number two, Jon, your comments really surprised me, you said that for next year you only play in to maintain or modestly grow market share, which strikes me as a very – I don’t know weak stands to enter the year, I mean, I would think with all the innovation and all your plan spending, you would have more confidence or more enthusiasm about your market share trends, thanks.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

Let me take the second part of that question and then turn it over to AG. Look, we’re trying to establish very realistic external guidance that frankly is reflective of the macro environment that we’re in as reflective of what we’ve proven ourselves capable of delivering thus far. We delivered 3% organic sales growth this year or forecasting low to mid singles next year. We delivered 5% core earnings per share growth this year or forecasting mid singles for next year. We share completely your desire to do better than that and as we proved that capability if and as we prove that capability guidance will reflect that.

AG Lafley

Management

Wendy, on your first question, first to be very clear about what I said, it’s just a couple – two businesses had delivered their operating plans. We would have achieved our internal goals of 4, 7, 5 operating, okay and generated of course even more cash, just two, okay. The issues were different in one business frankly, they let their pricing get out of line and the thing that was frustrating about it is, it was out of line and for whatever reasons, I don’t feel like the team came to grips with that reality fast enough, okay? It’s being fixed. It happened before in this category, we know how to fix it will get fixed. And ironically it was a business that had like a 10 or 12, your run of very strong balanced growth and value creation. In the other case, we got our nose ahead of the tips of our skis on an investment in a new line of brands and products. And we just need to get back to the discipline, okay, of testing and qualifying major investments that we are going to make. Hey, there is a lot of risk in the product innovation side. There is a lot of risk when you are making investments in the marketplace, but we try to and we have a track record of and when we are performing to our capability, we do a reasonably good job of testing things before we expand them. And we just got the investment way ahead of the actual results in the marketplace. Those are the two. The things I feel good about I should say is and my teams knows this is I actually feel very good that more of our businesses are executing better are sharpening their strategies and translating it into operating plans, and that our execution is improving. But hey, this is an intensely executional industry and we just absolutely we have to be at the top of our game all the time.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

And just one more point on this. While we did have problems in a couple of businesses as AG described, we had many businesses that had the best year they have had in a long time.

AG Lafley

Management

That’s right.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

So for instance our Duracell business had a fantastic year. Our salon professional business had one of its best years in quite a long period of time. So there are many more things working than not working.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Dara Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please proceed

Good morning. So A.G. on the portfolio rationalization, can you discuss why you are implementing it now, the strategy makes sense, but what’s kind of change is driving you to undertake this now. You previously outlined that 90% of the business was core and you expected divestitures, I am assuming the brand rationalization announcement today includes those businesses you already expected to divest or should we look at this as rationalization on top of that. And then last just given the process will take one to two years, are you committed to staying on board as CEO for as long as at least the bulk of the brand rationalization process takes?

AG Lafley

Management

Okay. Dara, stop me if I don’t – if I don’t capture all of your questions. Okay, last question first, the Board, I am serving at the pleasure of the Board and we are criteria driven, we are not schedule driven, okay. So obviously, I wanted to drive this strategy and accelerate it but that’s totally driven by our understanding of shopper and consumer needs and wants and the realities, okay, of the marketplace whether we are talking about channels and customers whether we are talking about competitive factors or whatever. So this is purely consumer market and competitive driven strategic choice. Second thing is we are already underway, okay. So this is a continuation in acceleration. I mean we are underway on the portfolio pruning I just want to accelerate it, okay. We are underway on the organization redesign, I just want to accelerate it. We are underway on the major restructuring and productivity savings that were announced 2 to 2.5 years ago. I just want to get it to a logical end point for the first phase, so that we can focus on operating with excellence and growing this business and performing at our peak. And I am sorry the third part of the question was Dara remind me.

Dara Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please proceed

Just why now specifically, I mean it makes sense but what drove you to make the change at this point?

AG Lafley

Management

Okay. Look, in an ideal world, okay, in an ideal world we would have done this at the depth of the financial crisis and recession. That would have been the perfect time to do with, if you think about it, right, dramatically focus, dramatically simplify. Get the cash flowing right and then once the bank is full, bide your time until the market starts to come again, right that would have been perfect, right. If we work Monday morning quarterbacks I could look over the last 40 years that would have been the perfect time. But I missed. We missed some of that opportunity. And frankly when you are in the middle of a financial crisis when you are watching oil approach $150 a barrel and chaos is reining around you in the biggest recession since the 30s you always – you don’t always have the time to think through or the resources to act on a transformation of this seismic scope. But having said that, I don’t see any reason to wait, I don’t see any virtue in waiting another minute. And I guess the last thing I would say is just think about what we are going to undertake. I don’t want to go out and spend $1 billion round numbers on totally redoing the sourcing and supply chain in North America and do it for the wrong business shape and size that would be a terrible mistake, right. So in a lot of other places we are making investments that are going to make this company stronger, help us operate better etcetera, etcetera. And we have to make sure that we are doing this for the business that we think we are going to have and we think we are going to run for at least the next five plus years or so.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Olivia Tong with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Olivia Tong - Bank of America

Analyst · Olivia Tong with Bank of America. Please proceed

Can you talk about what other strategies you considered, why is this the right strategy and why doesn’t this at least in the interim take some focus away from fixing issues in the 70 to 80 brands that you are planning on keeping?

AG Lafley

Management

I don’t see any trade off there Olivia. In other words, we will have more talent, more resource in our financial and people against the 70 to 80 brands. So I mean we are – we have been all over several of those businesses. And frankly I am involved with 10 to 15 of them working with the leadership team. So I don’t see any trade off. Now I won’t tell you that there – that we haven’t taken on extra work for another year – year and a half maybe at most for parts of it. As Jon said maybe the last disposals are as far as 18 to 24 months away. But now job one is to take care of shoppers and consumers, work with our customers and suppliers and deliver the operating plans and commitment on the 70 to 80 core brands that make up the portfolio that’s going to drive this company ahead.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Ferrara with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Chris Ferrara - Wells Fargo

Analyst · Chris Ferrara with Wells Fargo. Please proceed

Thanks. AG you highlighted P&G following the consumer as it relates to innovation at the premium side of categories and at higher price categories and I think you called out the success of innovation in high end laundry as an example. Now I understand like you don’t report laundry standalone, but fabric and home was up 1% organically, the Nielsen data in the U.S. shows share erosion even following the launch activity obviously there was a lot of competition there with lot of deep discounting, you responded that your own deep discounting, I guess is this an anomaly what’s happened in this category like how do you reconcile that the view that innovation is successful at the high end at least in this category?

AG Lafley

Management

Okay. Chris let’s go through this one in some detail because I think it’s instructive. And if you have the patience we will go through one or two others because I think they are instructive too. I would like to just take U.S. laundry and let’s go back to about a year ago in early September when we were at Barclays. And you may recall that we announced a series of fabric care category brand and product innovations that would be coming to market in the middle or end of the first quarter of 2014. I think we said at that time that they included the extension and expansion of our Pods product innovation to Gain and Ariel and two other countries like China and Japan which I spoke. We announced strengthening of our heavy duty liquid product offerings the so called value added offerings to meet consumer needs that were unmet and we announced the introduction of Tide Simply Clean & Fresh to meet unmet consumer needs and mid-tier segment and category. I think at the time we pointed out that virtually all of the category growth and most of our P&G sales growth and value creation would come from the Pods and the value-added, heavy duty liquid, brands and product lines. So, let’s look at when happened, while in September and October, the media and many of our analysts commented on the program, and 95% of the commentary was on Tide Simply Clean. In October, November, and December, our three main economy competitors all unleashed a series of essentially price rollbacks and price discounting and temporary promotion after temporary promotion, all of which has continue to present. We started shipping in mid to late February. And frankly, we couldn’t keep up with all demand of customers. So, we…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Nik Modi - RBC Capital Markets

Analyst · Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed

Yes, thanks. Hey, AG, maybe you can just provide a little bit more context on the streamlined portfolio, will there be a geographic angle for this as well or is it just hey, these are the 80 brands that we are going to focus on globally, or if you look at it on India or Venezuela or Brazil, are there certain brands that maybe you will pullback from even though they are a global brand? Thanks.

AG Lafley

Management

Okay. Understandable question, I am going to – hopefully, I will be able to answer this as clearly as possible. Remember, Nik, we are shopper and consumer driven. And that means where all of the shopping and consumption occurs locally. So, if and when we get this right, we will have the right mix of brands, product lines, and SKUs for China. We will have the right mix for Brazil. We will have the right mix for the Arabian Peninsula and Turkey. We will have the right mix for India and the sub-Sahara. Okay, so this is totally shopper and consumer driven. We looked at the real growth and value creation potential. And as I pointed out, these are brands that for sometime have not been delivering on that front, okay. So, yes, if we get this right, we will have the right – we will not be short of brands or products to win in any market we choose to compete in. And eventually, I think as you know, that’s going to mean all the emerging markets of the world, because that’s where the demographics will be driving us. That’s where the babies are born. That’s where the households form. That’s where incomes are rising. So, we think this positions us just as well in emerging markets as it does in any developed market.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

And if you think about the screen, we talked about earlier, Nik, which is businesses that play to our strengths. Typically, when we are operating the business that does play to our strengths, we can operate that business globally. And so this is not a – there is not a geographic frame to this. It’s as AG said consumers, shoppers match with P&G strengths.

AG Lafley

Management

Yes. And Nik, just one more thing, so again in our attempt to help everyone understand, in some cases, it’s simple. We sell one brand name everywhere in the world, Pampers, Pantene, okay. In some we sell two, Always Whisper. In some of our lines in fabric, in home, in beauty and personal care, we sell what we call clone brands. Okay? So, the principal brand might be Rejoice okay, but we sell Rejoice under a different name, okay in individual markets, because that’s sort of the history of the brand. We keep those brands, same in laundry, same in cleaning. So, we are very practical. We are very consumer and customer driven. And we worked outside in from the markets to our brands and then to our business categories and sectors.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ali Dibadj with Bernstein. Please proceed.

Ali Dibadj - Bernstein

Analyst · Ali Dibadj with Bernstein. Please proceed

Hey, guys. So, before I get to the question and I often hate doing this, but I think it’s worth just a comment, because I have heard it from many investors. I am not sure you did yourselves many favors on the – in the press release not talking about the quarter really at all. So, we all got to Page 13 or whatever it was saying that there is some rounding and beauty was down three, but there is no explanation, I am not sure you did yourself any favors. So, just for the sake of it heard from a lot of people, want to put it out there. The question though more is around just again learning more about this very interesting structural change. So, it feels like I think most people’s ingoing assumptions was 10% of the business that was going to be divested was going to be more along business segment lines. And now I think you are flipping a little bit and talking about it from a branding line. So, I want to understand that if that’s true? And then a few questions that come out of that. One is lots of changes and the rationale is focus, which I get, but where do you know where the right balance is? So, why isn’t something even further like a bigger breakup not the right answer? How did you make that decision? And then also from a focus perspective, if these brands are going to sell, are about 10% of the sales, 5% of operating profit, can you give us a sense of how much of your time, management’s time and resources were on those? And then last want to go back to a question from before, I give you another chance, if AG, the Board says we want you here through this 12 to 24-month period, big transition period, we trust you to do this, do you want to be there for that time? Thanks for all those.

AG Lafley

Management

Criteria-driven, I am having fun. I am full of energy. I am 24/7. So, that will take care of the last one.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

If my e-mail volume is any indication, it just backs up what AG said, he is here and working hard.

AG Lafley

Management

Second point, Ali, it’s strategy first structure second, right. Structure supports strategy. Third point is ultimately it’s about competitive advantage and value creation, right. So, we don’t see – we see competitive advantage in multi-industry sector participation. We see competitive advantage in technologies that flow across categories and industries. We see competitive advantage in sourcing as a company and providing information and other services as a company and purchasing as a company. So, when we do the math on the value creation, we get to this choice, strategic choice, this set of businesses has the potential to be the biggest value creator, right, which should be in the interest not only of our company, but also of our shareowners. But yes, I mean, the balanced point is a very fair one and I am not going to tell you that any of us are good enough to get this precisely right. And you know what we will adjust as we go. I can’t tell you whether a 50-brand company might not be a little bit better than a 70-brand company if you see what I mean, okay. The last point to your direct question is the management distraction is episodic intermittent and not the driver. The activity and complexity that clogs us up is the real issue, okay. Let’s just take SKUs, okay. I don’t know what the end result will be here, it’s being worked business-by-business and iteratively, but believe me the SKU reduction will be a lot bigger than the 10% up to sales line or revenue line. Let’s take product lines, the same, okay. So all of the sudden, one of the reasons that a number of our businesses have performed better is because the businesses and the R&D team and I all sat down in July and we sat down several times since and we just pruned out the bottom 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% of the activity and focused on few others and that’s accelerated better products to market. The businesses – some of the businesses that Jon mentioned in other businesses that did really well this last year didn’t well because there were extremely focused. And the last point and I could use the whole bunch of different examples here when you’re carrying the bag, I’ll use the old metaphor, with all the P&G brands and product lines in it to distributor or wholesaler to one of our sophisticated retail customers believe me, it is a huge advantage to be selling fewer leading consumer and shopper preferred brands and product lines.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Steib with Credit Suisse. Please proceed.

Michael Steib - Credit Suisse

Analyst · Michael Steib with Credit Suisse. Please proceed

Thank you, good morning. I have a couple of questions please. AG, you mentioned, you emphasized really the importance of having the right balance between premium priced products on the one hand and affordable products on the other hand, where the consumer demands it. I was wondering in the core brand portfolio of 70 to 80 brands that you have identified now. Do you think that that balance is right at this point? And in other words, should the sort of negative mix effect on the top line going forward be less of a headwind once you’ve gone through these various disposals? That’s my first question. And then Jon, forgive me just for asking a financial question, but given your outlook for fiscal ‘15, you suggested that essentially the top line growth is going to be against tough comps in the first half and cost savings will build through the year? Should we therefore expect earnings growth to be sort of flattish in the first half and it all comes good in the second half? Thanks.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

A couple of things and one on the expectation of the reduction and negative mix on the top-line as we go forward, that will in all likelihood continue. We’ve been pretty clear about that. It’s driven by disproportionate growth in developing markets, which we expect to continue and as we move consumers up those portfolios overtime that impact will lesson as developed market growth is reintegrated that dynamic will lessen, but it has been with us and we’ll likely be with us for some period of time. On the guidance question, we’re not providing quarterly guidance, but all dynamics that you talked about are the right ones. I think you focus on the right things and I’ve encouraged you to follow-up with the IR team later today. And I’ll let AG to handle the question on whether we’re priced right broadly.

AG Lafley

Management

Yes, Michael, let me try to make the couple of strategic points and then I’ll try to give you some insight into where we think we are at this moment in time. The first thing is incredibly important and often not well understood and that is the issue in our industry in household products and personal care products is almost always consumer perception of value and value has different drivers in different categories and different brands. Price is one of them. Okay, price is one of them, but brand awareness and trial rates and household penetration, brand equity, okay, product performance also are incredibly important. Second point, we have a huge opportunity to get a lot clearer with consumers about what the value equation really is. I am going to give you a specific example from Gillette. We talked earlier that we just introduced FlexBall and it’s off to a good start. We will see how it does. Alright. We did pre-market research in a blind context, so they don’t know what the brand is and the new FlexBall razor was preferred 2 to 1 by system users versus the best performing product in the market, which happened to be our ProGlide. We are now in the market four, six, eight weeks. We went out and did a 400 male person panel, where we asked them to use the new FlexBall razor versus whatever they are using today. So, we had disposable users. We had shave club users. We had system users. We had electric razor users. 95% of them preferred a FlexBall, 95%. Interestingly, a lot of disposable users by the way half of the world, okay, uses the disposable razor today. The interesting thing is disposable users often say they use disposables because they think it shaves just…

Operator

Operator

And your final question comes from the line of Steve Powers with UBS. Please proceed.

Steve Powers - UBS

Analyst · UBS. Please proceed

Believe it or not a few more questions, if I could. First Jon, maybe I missed it, but did you offer any cost or timing estimates associated with the supply chain restructuring that you are undertaking. And then second taking a step back you are clearly making progress on the cost cutting especially in SG&A, but the top line continues to lag a bit, this quarter it does feel like you rounded up 2% organic growth in the quarter, so does it make sense to drop all these marketing efficiencies to the bottom line or should you be reinvesting even more aggressively. And then lastly maybe related to that, AG as you said it all starts with the consumer and you guys have been long known for leading consumer insight capabilities, so what specifically is the consumer telling you that you need to do better in the market that you are not doing and maybe you can just talk about that in the context of beauty for example? Thanks.

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

In terms of the marketing I mean we are perfectly happy to reinvest and are looking for opportunities to reinvest and feel that we can do that and continue to become both more effective and more efficient. We are going through a transformation in this industry that we want to take advantage of while remaining fully in front of consumers with our marketing efforts. And so we look at things like the reach, the frequency, the targets that we are reaching, the conversion rates on the messaging and that’s much more important than actual dollars spent given what’s happened in that industry. But you should not mistake this for a second as lack of willingness to invest behind smart ideas to build the top line.

AG Lafley

Management

Yes. We are maintaining or increasing our investment in marketing that works and we are driving for savings and frankly non-working dollars or other efficiencies that you get from the move to more digital mobile, social, etcetera. On the consumer insight side that is the focus, the full focus of a lot of people in this organization. And again I think we had a lot of activity going on and we weren’t relentless about digging, digging, digging for shopper insights and consumer insights. Very simple thing, the mindset at Gillette was to test the new system with system users. You sort of slap yourself in the forehead and say well, wait a second. Everybody grooms, some people do a clean shave some people do a sculptured groom in the face. Some people body groom. Let’s first of all understand what the job to be done is. And then second of all let’s make sure we are putting together instruments, okay and experiences that meet all the needs. So I mean we are going to sell an opening price point disposable razor from Gillette at I don’t know $2 to $3 and we will take you all the way up to $200 to $300 if you want to buy art of shaving product or a top of the line Braun product. Specifically regarding beauty, look here is the headline on beauty. In terms of value creation they were one of the better performing sectors this last year. Unfortunately it was a little unbalanced, too much of the value creation came from cash and profit improvement, although I will take it and there is a lot more there. Secondly, the progress we are making, okay. The Old Spice and Safeguard some of the hair care brands we had – we showed some…

Jon Moeller

Chief Financial Officer

I want to thank everybody for joining us this morning. I realized we didn’t get to everybody. It’s a cheap substitute, but I am available the balance of the day. Don’t hesitate to call, John and the team, are here as well. And we thank you for your participation.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a great day.