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The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 5, 2014

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Transcript

Presentation

Management

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to Scotts Miracle-Gro Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. King. Please go ahead.

Jim King

Management

Thanks, Katie. Good morning all of your, and thanks for joining us on our Q4 conference call. With me this morning here in Marysville are Jim Hagedorn, our Chairman and CEO; Barry Sanders, our President and Chief Operating Officer; as well as Randy Coleman, our Chief Financial Officer, and several other members of the management team. Jim, Barry and Randy will each share some prepared remarks related to our 2014 performance and our outlook for 2015. At that point we will open the call up for your questions. We have a lot to cover this morning so we’ll try to be as comprehensive as possible in our prepared remarks, but in the interest of time, I’d like to request you ask only one question and one follow-up. We might not get to everything but I’ve already scheduled calls with quite a few people this afternoon to cover up any blue sense [ph]. Of course our comments this morning will contain forward-looking statements and so our actual results could differ materially from what we discuss. For that reason we suggest that investors review our risk factors which are listed in the press release this morning and spelled out in more detail in our Form 10-K which is filed with the SEC. Two bits of housekeeping before we begin. Randy Coleman and I will be attending the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Conference November 19th in New York. Please work through Morgan Stanley if anyone has interest in scheduling one-on-one meetings. Also that presentation we make that day will be available via webcast and available on our IR website, investor.scotts.com. One final item, we’re having major Analyst Day event this year in New York in December like we normally do, please schedule us formal affair in popular town [ph] Florida, most likely on February 19th. Many of you know that, that week is also the week of Cagney’s major event for the year. We are managing our schedule so that it does not interfere with the Cagney conference. As moving to meeting to Florida, we’ll be able to conduct store walks at the break of the season and give you a better sense of our go-to-market approach for 2015. Obviously more details will follow from our investor relations team in the weeks ahead but we hope to see as many of you as possible for this event. With that, let’s move on the news of the day, the discussion of our 2014 results, and our 2015 outlook. So let me turn the call over to Jim Hagedorn to get us started.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Thanks, Jim. And good morning, everybody. As we begin preparing for this call it’s been a lot of time looking at our numbers, analyzing what they meant, and thinking about what I wanted to say to all of you this morning. And what I determine to listen is there is two ways to look at the results. You can narrowly look at different numbers themselves, in doing so you’ve seen extremely strong second half that allows to exceed our guidance for the second straight year. And through that lens, it’s a pretty good story or you can look at it more broadly at what we accomplished, and when you do that this is what you’d see. In 2014 we called an expensive tranche of debt early in the year allowing us to lower our overall barn [ph] cost. We improved our margin rate by 100 basis points for a second straight year despite unexpected distribution challenges and unfavorable product mix. We returned $350 million to shareholders to recurring and one-time dividends, as well as share repurchases. We made a strategic tucking acquisitions to fit our long term growth objectives in four different areas of the business. We began our process that we have more to go in reviewing literally every dollar of SG&A in order to reallocate investment dollars to fund long term growth. And we did all this while navigating still uncertain consumer environment that continues to make growth difficult to achieve. Over the last two years we’ve also generated about $550 million of operating cash flow and with a leverage ratio of only 2.2 times, we maintain the financial flexibility to continue funding smart investments in the business, and returning cash to shareholders. More importantly, over the past two year’s we developed a higher level of discipline to…

Barry Sanders

Operator

Thanks, Jim. I want to elaborate just briefly on how we finished the year in each business. Then I’ll turn to 2015 and build upon some of what you just heard from Jim. I’ll cover where I think we stand coming out of line reviews with our retailers. I’ll give you my overall sense of the consumer environment, and I’ll talk about some of the new products and programs for next year. And I’ll give you my overall sense of the consumer [ph] before I turn the call over to Randy. Let’s start with a quick wrap up for 2014. As Jim said a few minutes ago, consumer purchases of our products at our largest retailers were down 1% on a full year basis, but there were some solid success stories to build upon. Let me start with lawn fertilizer. Despite an extremely slow break to the season, our lawn fertilizer business was slightly positive for the year. I consider that a pretty good result given the circumstances. As many of you know, the fertilizer category had seen several years in a row of unit volume declines, we reversed that trend last year and then held the ground in 2014. This is a critical category for us and we have some pretty good fertilizer innovation coming through the pipeline next year. I’ll talk in more detail on a few minutes but I was glad to see the resilience of this category in a pretty tough year. Overall, our growing media operations also had a solid year, good but not great. Soils had a slight decline of 3% that was offset by a 13% increase in our mulch business. I don’t think we’ve ever had a year in which mulch did not grow by double digits, and our expectations for next…

Randy Coleman

Analyst

Thanks, Barry, and hello, again to everyone. As Jim said at the outset, all of us are encouraged by the results announced this morning and feel good about our businesses as we begin to execute our plans for fiscal 2015. I know most of you are more interested in our outlook for 2015 and a detailed review of the fourth quarter results, so I’m not going to spend too much time going through the details of the P&L. Frankly, not much has changed over the past 90 days and the results we announced today and very much in line where we would be as in third quarter. The primary exception is our gain on investment in the AeroGrow business which I’ll discuss in a minute. The one highlight I want to focus on during the quarter was sales growth in the global consumer segment. Sales increased 5% to $355 million as we saw solid performance in both, the U.S. and international businesses. As Jim said, we’re managing this segment assuming 1% to 2% organic growth next year but the momentum we’ve had in the back half of this year is certainly encouraging. As many of you recall, the slow start to this season then it just impact the core consumer business, Scotts lawn service got off to a slow start as well. We entered the year expecting that business to grow 4% to 6%. While it feel short of that goal with 2% growth for the full year, 5% growth they reported in the fourth quarter was also encouraging, and reflects the continued touch up on customer account and production as the year progressed. And on a full year basis finishing with companywide sales growth of 2% at $2.84 billion was a really good story for us given the weather…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) We’ll go first to Jason Gere with KeyBanc. Jason Gere – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Good morning. I guess the first question, I know you’ve said in the past that if you grew 3% to 5%, you would get some good overhead leverage. So can you just talk maybe, I mean, I know you’ve gone through a lot of the details here but a little bit more specifically what you would need to see to get more of the leverage coming to next year because it seems with the sales guidance one to two on the core, it seemed a little bit conservative. So I’m just wondering how that would translate upside on sales, maybe to the SG&A. That’s the first question.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Sure. Jason, we’ve spend quite a lot of time over the summer what we call project growth internally, so we’ve identified about $40 million of SG&A spending across the business including Europe and those savings are being redirected into the business in long term growth initiatives for next year and areas like Lawn Service and areas like Hawthorne where we have big long term plans for our urban and indoor business, and areas like Naturals where we think there is a lot of long term growth. So at this point we’re not planning to taking the savings and drop them to the bottom line which I – much different within the plan that we’ve executed over 2013 and 2014 but that’s what you will see in 2015. Again, if we do get higher sales growth which I think would be largely dependent on whether it be on the guidance we’re providing you would see on a rate basis better leverage but for now I’m real comfortable with the guidance that we’re providing. Jason Gere – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Okay. And just as a follow-up with that, I mean you guys have been very diligent with just taking out the structural costs there. So I mean, in what inning do you think you might be in terms of rebalancing the SG&A and again, how you’re allocating to some of the strategic spending or eventually falling to the bottom line?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

So we’ve made a lot of progress over the last two years but we think there is continued progress to be made, we continue to work on project growth and we think we’re halfway through that initiative. When I think about it beyond SG&A, I think there is a lot of long term savings that we can drive from our supply chain and the distribution network, our warehousing, freight, etcetera, so maybe less people dependent than what we’ve done over the last couple of years and more thoughtful and more supply chain strategy driven but we think there is still a lot of savings going forward. Jason Gere – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Okay. And then just a quick follow-up here is just on – can you talk a little bit more about international, obviously you’ve had a pretty good year this year but can you just talk about the international opportunity in terms of market, the expansion plans out there, obviously it’s a smaller piece, the story people tend to focus on the North America consumer but I was just wondering if you could maybe talk about the next three to five year kind of outlook on that business. Thank you.

Barry Sanders

Operator

Sure, Jason, this is Barry Sanders. The business had a good year, some of that was weather driven, some of that was – the team did a good job and the marketing programs they put out and then quite frankly they’ve gone through the same cost exercise so I think we’ve got our cost structure in place. And so what I would say is, we call it international but the business primarily is the U.K. and France, and both of those markets are doing well and I think we should treat those businesses like they are core opportunities, just like similarly positioned that we have in the U.S. So going forward I think there is geographic opportunities, we have a new leader in Germany, we were very pleased with what he has done this year, we have low market share, so I think there is upside there. Our Australian business reports him through international, we also have a new leader there, we’re extremely pleased with the way that business is performing, so both of those have opportunities to grow. And then there is other markets that we can look at, and just like we’re evaluating here, taking acquisitions, we’ll evaluate the European market the same way and say is there a small product taking acquisitions we can make or is there a geographic opportunities that we have to expand and invest some money. So I think that’s relative to international.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll take our next question from Olivia Tong with Bank of America. Olivia Tong – Bank of America: Thanks, good morning.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Hi Olivia. Olivia Tong – Bank of America: Hi, I just want to talk about you alluding to mass retail sluggishness a couple of times because we’ve heard from quite a few companies through this reporting season about U.S. backdrop perking up. So just kind of curious why you think it hasn’t necessarily shown up in your category or is it just a matter of timing or something else that’s driving that?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

I think it’s a matter of timing and quite frankly, I think we’re lagging a bit relative to spring but what I would tell you Olivia is, they are pacing right on track with everybody else in the fall and we’re very pleased with the results and I think looking into next year they are positive and I think they have good programs going into 2015. So I’d expect them to catch up pretty rapidly. Olivia Tong – Bank of America: Got it. And then on the commodities, I know you mentioned that you’ve walked in quite a bit of oil already, so to maybe not capitalizing on the recent decline in crude prices but is it possible to lock in more now for future use or has that ship sailed in and commodity what they offer in 2015 and it’s hard to lock in initially for 2016 at this point?

Randy Coleman

Analyst

Olivia this is Randy again, typically we – at data point we’re about 70% locked to any one [ph] month but at this point we’re going up to 80% to 85% for 2015, in fact we’re also looking at 2016 to get ahead. So with that carry some mark-to-market risk during the year but we think in the long term, that’s the right economic decision given current fuel prices. Olivia Tong – Bank of America: Got it. And then just on some of the additions and changes that you’ve made to the business, first with pest control service business. Do you – is that still primarily in test mode or do you feel like you now have the ground working place for a much larger expansion of that? And then on Hawthorne, can you give us a little bit of detail why you structured it the way that you did as opposed to just building out that particular piece of that business. I know you guys have been talking about it for some time but just an incremental detail on why you structured it the way that you did? Thank you.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Sure. First with the pest, Olivia I would say pest is more – this is scaling the test, it’s not a long run test because I think we’ve acquired very nice business, now it’s a matter of scaling it and making sure that we get that right, and that we can roll it out across the market. So I’d say we’ve moved beyond test and this is the first acquisition we’ll make – we’ll make sure that we get that right once again before we go and get a lot more scale. On Hawthorne, I would say we have tried some of those things here in Marysville, I think we have a fabulous business, but I would say our business here is focused on big box suburban consumer with 5,000 to 7,000 square foot lawn. The nature of this business is, it’s a different consumer, it’s different channels, it’s indoor, it’s urban, it tends to skew younger, so rather than dilute the efforts here that are going very well we thought that it was better to have a different team that would be focused on a different consumer. It’s a smaller business that could get lost in the shuffle here and make sure that they are focused on the brands that Jim talked about and make sure that they are developing the business. So we just felt it was better to separate it than have a different unit. We have been trying to get it done here in Marysville.

Randy Coleman

Analyst

Olivia this is Randy again. I’d add, when we think about Hawthorne, we think about it similar to the bear business where you have the big national player that have their own businesses that are somewhat separate and different marketing teams, different structure, so that’s really – I was thinking about from a structural perspective. I’ve been trying to let Barry do the Q&A here. It was nice, we used to say in the Air Force, know the enemy, know yourself, I think that’s the answer, know the enemy, know yourself. And for doing outside of this building where I think we kind of view anything less than $10 million is like wait the dime, is completely inconsistent with what we’re trying to build there, and doing it in more urban setting in New York, I think we also view and it is a younger different team than the kind of folks we tend to collect here. Olivia Tong – Bank of America: Got it, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We’ll go next to Bill Chappell with SunTrust. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Good morning, thanks.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Hi, Bill. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Can you talk a little bit just on the worth of business, I mean, I think by now you’re – at least you’re going through the listing process with the retailers or maybe already through. Tell me, do you have some confidence that you will get the increased listings and things can improve there, I mean, or maybe giving little color on how you take back that share?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

I’d say its two focuses Bill. First is, we’re confident with what we’ve done with the retailer. So the listings and the promotions and the plans we have in place, so we’re happy with the plan but the real test will be when the rubber meets the road, next spring when the consumer goes into the retailer we’re confident that what we’ve done with the entire program will be highly competitive in the consumers eyes and we’ll get that share back not only through what we’ve done with the retailer but the consumer executing the plan that we have in place. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Got it. And then with regards to Hawthorne, just trying to understand what are the growth prospects for that business, I mean are there any big players that have similar size that are already there and does it make sense for Hawthorne to have kind of an M&A strategy to kind of build it out?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Yes. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: That’s all I had I think.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

No, it was nice. I think it’s a very exciting business opportunity that reports directly to Barry, and I’m very pleased with it, I think that management and the work and the M&A process is something that I – and I know Randy as well take a lot of interest in making sure it goes well and we don’t sort of shoot ourselves in the foot. I think that some of these deals tend to be a little bit unusual like the AeroGrow deal but that’s one where if you were to speak to – I think those folks, they would say it’s kind of gone exactly the way, we’ve really been able to add value, we have not only been able to add capital but I think whether it’s the supply chain R&D, marketing ideas, just a lot – they have the kind of thing where you say that’s the real first foot in the door and I think it’s gone really well, I mean otherwise we wouldn’t be writing it up. So I feel good about that M&A is a major part of what’s going to happen there and it’s a major focus of the management team there.

Randy Coleman

Analyst

So I would say one part of your question if there is a big acquisition out there in the space there is no big ones, it will be a series of smaller ones and to-date some of the focus that we’ve had is exactly what Jim said, which is more of a private equity partnership focus where we make an investment, we’re investing in people that have either good products, good brands, we’ve given the advantage that we have a scaling capability but we let that team run it independent of this business and that’s working very well for us. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Got it. And then last one, Randy, maybe help me understand, AeroGrow, both in the quarter and in the guidance for next year, so was it the consolidated earnings for the full year in this quarter and then is it treated in above the operating income line going into next year or is it still going to be below the line?

Randy Coleman

Analyst

No, we consolidated in the fourth quarter and the results were immaterial for the quarter. The biggest quarter is the one coming up so Q1 or October through December, preparing for the holiday season, that will potentially be a tale on how that business performs for the full year. But we will consolidate going forward so results will be entirely included in our P&L but because we still only own it by one-third of that business, two-thirds of the earnings will be send back to the other shareholders below the line. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Okay.

Randy Coleman

Analyst

So for 2015, we’re expecting sales to be in the range of $20 million and earnings to be relatively zero, we’ll get back to the shareholders. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: So the other income won’t have anything from it?

Randy Coleman

Analyst

No longer. Bill Chappell – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey: Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll take our next question from Connie Maneaty with BMO Capital Markets. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Good morning. I have a couple of housekeeping questions, one for Barry. When you are giving sales increases, were those for the full year or the quarter and where was the data POS or your sales growth?

Barry Sanders

Operator

The data was POS not our sales, and the number I believe was for the full year. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Okay, fine. On rollout of the new Bonus S in the Southeast, first of all, what percentage of fertilizer sales does the Southeast represent, how important the new product do you think it is and where is the price rate relative to regular Bonus S?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Let me just – because they are sort of preparing their data Connie. Bonus S for the Southeast is every month the more single important product to have. So for the Southeast region Bonus S is the product that – not the only one but it’s the most important twelve months a year.

Barry Sanders

Operator

Bonus S, and this is not a geographic split Connie, but Bonus S is 10% of our overall fertilizer sales. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Okay.

Barry Sanders

Operator

And I would tell you that business has been declining for a number of years and that we expect that to be decent growth for that business next year. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: And what’s the pricing like?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Pricing is the same as…

Barry Sanders

Operator

Yes, it’s going to be consistent with what we’ve had, we did not take a price increase for the product. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: So is it higher margin for you or equal margin, just better for consumer?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Equal margin.

Barry Sanders

Operator

Equal margin, significantly better performance with the consumer. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. What did you find out about Solus that you didn’t know before you made the acquisition? And I guess how can it be so dilutive?

Randy Coleman

Analyst

Connie, this is Randy again. We’ve worked through this deal in picks and starts, couple of times we thought about walking away, atonally the business went into bankruptcy when we decided that we weren’t going to invest a lot of money upfront. We eventually bought it out of bankruptcy, plus some working capital and inventory that we’re liquidating right now but the fact that we paid $1 million for a few brands that right about $30 million at topline for next year. So what happened you know, and honestly we didn’t do the diligence and integration plan as well as we could have – it wasn’t complete from start to finish and once we owned it and really dug in deeply we realized there is something’s here that when you invest upfront, whether it’s warehousing, perhaps in people, and some other areas. So again, it’s unfortunate because we felt really good about the other acquisitions that we’ve done and it’s the one that’s going to take us a year or two to dig out but once we do we still think about the scale benefits to the U.K., the team there is really excited in the long run, and going forward we just need to make sure that we don’t have a similar situation like this one.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

I’ll throw in mine only because I think everybody in the company knows my view. It’s a lesson of how not to do things and the opportunity when you say, pretty much you’re going to have it for free. I think it was pretty compelling and caused people not to be as careful as they are going to be going forward or there is going to be major problems with me. It’s just increased a whole that we hadn’t planned on our budget, I think everybody struggled through it and it’s fine, but it was not a sort of big win that we cannot be happy with and there is going to be corrections going forward to make sure that little deals like this cannot become big problems. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Can you just tell me what’s in the product line, what kind of products is it?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

There is a series of different, so it’s everything from water supplies to long handle pools, really nice tools that in the long run we could expand beyond U.K. and Europe, we think we could even import them into the U.S. and sell them perhaps even through our Big Box, our retailer. So there is a sourcing capability from major two that we didn’t have in the past and that was a big aspect of why we wanted to…

Randy Coleman

Analyst

Connie, I would say tools and burning, and burning unlike sort of nasty commodities in The United States which is a much more difficult market I think. Burning in the U.K. is a pretty rational market, and so the big areas here are tools and birding, there is a bunch offshore sourced stuff that goes into that and these have good market share over there. It just was a – I’m going to say improperly done deal but I think largely because it was attractive, but I think it’s in an interesting bunch of categories that we actually like, we just didn’t plan on having to do a lot of work to sort of get it back up to speed. Connie Maneaty – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our next question from Jon Andersen with William Blair. Jon Andersen – William Blair: Good morning, everybody.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Hi, Jon. Jon Andersen – William Blair: So my question is around pricing and long term margin expectations, the way that you have portrayed 2015, there will not be pricing. So the first question is why no pricing every year?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

In particular, we are taking price increases in a couple of categories where either commodity pressures or based on our analytics we felt like it was pricing opportunity but we’re also rolling prices back in a couple of other categories where we made a lot share or we felt like there was a sweet spot where if we get to a magic price point, the consumer takeaway is a lot better, and the overall value created by producing a price as a little bit makes more sense. So we’re taking no net pricing, net of increases and decreases in 2015 but we are taking increases where we thought it was appropriate. So I’d say 2015 is a little bit of an aberration versus our long term plan for sure. Jon Andersen – William Blair: Okay, that’s helpful, if I can ask one follow-up on the mulch business. I think it was little over year ago you talked about enhancements you were making to the supply chain there to improve the margin structure of that business which we have indicated as well below the corporate average, where are you or how far along are you in that process and more to come in that area?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Yes, we are going to continue to invest capital in our mulch business to drive manufacturing productivity and we have seen that even in 2014 although the next margin results compare that out but it’s kind of a tale two worlds in that. While our manufacturing productivity has improved, it was really the distribution headwinds this year that we didn’t see coming at the start of the year in April, May, and even into June that really brought our margins back to the same starting point. Our gross margins are still in the low teens, and if we can get those gross margins into the high teens just because there is less investment below gross margin, we’ll get operating margins for the mulch business equivalent to the company average and at that point we’ll feel really good about that being a solid part of the portfolio. So there is still work to be done and we’re going to continue doing that work. Jon Andersen – William Blair: Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

We’ll take our final question from Alice Longley with Buckingham Research. Alice Longley – Buckingham Research: Hi, good morning. My question is on store traffic, can you comment on your discussions with the home centers, big box retailers, and what they are saying about store traffic. And I know that’s not important to you right now but when we get into this spring, if store traffic is improving because some of the macro changes that are happening in the economy, what’s the history of that converting to better store traffic for lawn and garden whether being neutral?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

I’ll violate my role here and take a little bit – good morning, Alice. Look I think that – I continue to be – continue is probably not the right word because you would actually think I mean that but not really understanding the numbers overtime since 2007-2008, I think there is so many variables that have gone into sort of retail and point sale movement but here is what we do now, everywhere when weather is good, I mean so that if you looked at how bad sort of the business was in the first half of the season, the weather turns around and we had just a really nice kind of relatively cool summer, and a lot of to make up a boat load of time, and so when you look at our freight negativity, particularly in the growing media business which occurs sort of the second half, it’s logic that store volume went bananas, and I was having this discussion yesterday with one of our retailers is that we were doing what we had to do to keep people in stock but it was that crazy and really ran down inventories on our multi-side and involved a lot of freight. So I think we can – while you can say, we’ve been doing a lot of good things in Europe, Europe had good weather, and so I think this is a lesson – you maybe the analyst that’s been around with us for the longest, I don’t view that – it’s not a negative. I think what it means is that the most important single thing to our business is weather, and so I think when people are buying lawn and garden products, lawn and garden is the most department in the channel and they continue to – and I know this to be the case, they continue to be able to harvest good returns from lawn and garden customers that are in lawn centers. So it’s pretty much a win-win but I think it’s very much weather related, although, again I would say in my discussions with senior management, everybody is concerned in this country about growth rates, and how do we get above low single digit growth rates, and I sort of can’t leave last night without saying I’m hopeful that Washington will start to focus on things that drive sort of economic activity in this country. But I think weather and maybe a little bit of benefit from DC would be useful. Alice Longley – Buckingham Research: So the store traffic is up improved and buying other things in home centers in lawn and garden, that doesn’t necessarily – it’s still over to better home and garden?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Alice, I would say specific to foot traffic I would say there is three elements we’re working on with the retailers; one is foot traffic, the other is transactions, and then market basket size. So far category, specifically in home centers, lawn and garden is the destination category in the spring. And so increases in foot traffic is probably and most likely driven by our category. So if we do see increased foot traffic, next spring, which is the intent, you will see better lawn and garden sales. We also track how that converge the transactions and so we’re measuring that and then we’re doing a much better job of partnering within that transaction, what are they buying. So to make sure that we’re selling them the appropriate market basket and the complimentary items and some of the promotions you’ve even seen us do in the last couple of years is buy this and then buy the next thing that goes along with that. So our promotional efforts are driving market basket, and then we’re also saying how do we drive attachments and drive the project. And so long wind the answer is, if foot traffic is up, that is a fantastic thing for lawn and garden next spring. Alice Longley – Buckingham Research: Okay. And a separate question is, how do you – was mix, I think you said mix was negative this year in terms of its impact on gross margin because of the growth in mulch. And is that likely to be the case as well in fiscal 2015?

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Yes, it will be. The contributor to why we’re guiding to flat margin rates. We’ll see, again pricing will be effectively neutral, our commodities will be up a little bit, we have more supply chain savings and then it will see a headwind from continued growth in mulch. Alice, I don’t know the answer completely to sort of mulch, it’s become a super important commodity within sort of the value opportunity for consumers. It’s – on the Black Friday events, it’s if the turner value for – what turned your home for $20, you get a turn of value. We’re in – I’m in deep discussions with our retailers on how to make it a great value but without it impacting our margins as much as it is, and part of that work we’re doing but part of it is, how do we do it with retailers so that we’re staging inventory better, we have less sort of need to rush freight around all over the country to try to keep people in stock. So there is a lot of planning on saying everybody has got to watch pricing on this product because it’s tremendous value and we’ve got to look for inefficiencies in the system because I don’t see the value proposition going away, it’s just too powerful. But we’re in discussions with sort of everybody that’s involved in the supply chain here and sort of the interface with the consumer to provide a great value but find ways to make it less margin eluder [ph] for everybody. Alice Longley – Buckingham Research: And when you said distribution costs were pressure in fiscal 2015 that was because you had to rush out mulch, a lot of mulch fast I guess, and wouldn’t you be able to plan better now for fiscal 2015 or why did you say distribution expenses will again be a pressure in fiscal 2015?

Randy Coleman

Analyst

I don’t think we said that, I think we said we continue to – so the answer is, to the first part is yes, we would like not to repeat that stuff and therefore a lot of work doing to avoid that. The second part is on the gross margin front, I think what Randy is saying is, we expect mulch to sort of be at the high end of all the products we sell as far as sales growth. So that to itself it not completely useful. I also want to just throw out there and it’s we’re saying at the end of the call that we’re not planning on great weather, if weathers good, that’s good for us, okay. We are looking because this is a year where we’re playing harvest less off the P&L, we’re trying to build some conservatives into our numbers, and therefore some of the stuff is not going to fall into the bottom line. We’re just – we’re trying to build some space in this for us so that – again Alice, the most important thing I ever learned from you is don’t over promise. We’re trying not to do that and so when you say how come if you don’t make as many mistakes. I think if we have good weather we make fewer mistakes, we’ll make more money.

Barry Sanders

Operator

Alice, I would add a specific to the comments on distribution like Jim said, we will do a better job of planning specifically for mulch and some growing media but what Randy did say was we expect upward pressure on freight cost and it’s not just relative to Scotts, I think it’s the entire industry as I talk to other vendors and other categories, both availability of trucking, as well as cost of trucking, everybody is seeing issues and you’re having the plan for just having the trucks and the trucks are costing a bit more these days. So the main part we have to look at is, to be a little more flexible with our retailers, so that if freight does go up that we can manage that with them, whether it’s figuring out how to get it there or freight charge, freight surcharges that it will have to pass along. Alice Longley – Buckingham Research: Okay, super, thanks. And congratulations on a good year overall.

Barry Sanders

Operator

Thank you.

Jim Hagedorn

Management

Thank you, Alice.

Operator

Operator

That concludes our question-and-answer session. At this time I’d like to turn the conference back over to Mr. King for any additional or closing remarks.

Jim King

Management

Thanks, Katie. Thanks everybody again for joining us. Again, just a quick reminder, we will be at the Morgan Stanley Conference on November 19th that will be webcast. And for those of you who joined us late, we’ll be sponsoring an Analyst Day event in [indiscernible] on February 19th and we’ll be giving out more information about that event in the weeks ahead. If anybody has got follow-up calls, feel free to give me a call directly. You can reach me at 937-578-5622937-578-5622. Otherwise, thanks to everybody, and have a great day.