Richard Dierker: Yes. That’s a great question. Number 1 priority in the company is always to grow our brands, right, have brands consumers love, grow share over time in good categories. The number two priority is probably gross margin. Gross margin expansion leads to EBITDA expansion leads to cash flow, right? We’re known for cash flow generation. And I would say, two things really help give us confidence over the next few years. If you look back at our history, we normally have about $50 million of inflation. We haven’t had $50 million inflation, it feels like for a decade. It’s only been three to four years, but it feels like so long. $290 million of inflation in 2021, $250 million in 2022. We’re calling $125 million in 2023.
That is not normal, right? We’re going to return to the days of normalized inflation. And meanwhile, our productivity program is alive and well, even stronger than it’s ever been. So as that — you saw in the bridge, I think that was closer to 100 plus basis points. We target closer to 2% on productivity. So if that equation normalizes, I think that’s a great way we’re going to have gross margin expansion. And then number two, as our businesses like THERABREATH and like HERO continue to grow and expand globally, that’s going to be a great tailwind too.
Matthew Farrell: Yes. Just some math. I think the — our gross margin just a few years back, pre-COVID, 45%. It’s 41.9% in 2022 recalling 100, 120 basis points improvement. So pick the midpoint, so you go 41.9%, 43% in 2023. And then I used to dish it over to Rick Spann for a minute. By the way, Matt Duffy is here today. He’s one of the on people that drives are good to great program, and we target 2% of sales for cost savings annual. It’s $100 million. That’s a big number. It’s a huge effort to make that happen, but that’s what it works referring to week we’re able to sustain that going forward. And any kind of help from commodities and input costs, we’ll be able to return to expand gross margin in the future. But Rick, anything to add about the target-rich environment. You’ve all seen Top Gun.
Rick Spann : Sure. Four years ago, we made a conscious effort to increase our focus on our — good to — great program, our productivity program. We brought Matt Duffy on who’s in the room, as Matt said, to lead the program. And it was a push in the beginning. We couldn’t get a lot of traction in the company. It’s now part of our culture. We have marketing leaders asking us what else we can do to drive cost savings. We have the R&D community focusing on it. We’ve created a value engineering team whose sole focus is to break down our products and figure out more effective ways to go to market with those products from a cost standpoint. So it really is part of the culture now it’s driving much bigger savings than it was four years ago.
Matthew Farrell: Yes. As far as call-outs, I neglected to point out that our entire M&A department is actually here on the stage. So if you want to talk to him after Class, please do. All right. Any other questions, no, I guess that concludes it today. I was so happy we were able to do this in person this year and look forward to seeing everybody next year. Thank you.
