Church & Dwight Co., Inc. (NYSE:CHD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Richard Dierker: Chris, you’re — the major difference between what you guys can see in Nielsen or IRI versus what’s actually happening and on the personal care side is really what’s happened in the discretionary business. Like the WATERPIK coverage that you don’t see, I remember the universe is this small or your view through Nielsen or IRI on the WATERPIK business. Your view is largely a bit smaller for the FLAWLESS business as well. I think those two things are a big part of the disconnect. But take a step back, a lot of the portfolio is growing consumption really well. I think as you see Hero add to distribution and other retailers, you’re going to see that, that gets picked up correctly. It just has to get scaled up to a greater degree. Anything you guys would add?

Paul Wood: Yes, I was going to answer if you had funded to be first. I would say the syndicated piece does matter, right? A lot of the personal care brands and what those retailers are, what you can see versus what we see. And it’s not an excuse, that’s just kind of where the business is and some of those just tracked the way that you guys are seeing it in the system. So I think Rick hit it.

Christopher Carey: And just related, if I could, but the supply chain improvement is the inventory improvement and the shift of consumption. We’ve seen promotions come back up, specifically on your laundry business. Was that an impact on price mix in the quarter? And can you just describe that promotional activity, whether — it certainly looks like it was more offensive as supply came back, you promoted behind laundry. But am I reading that situation wrong? And just again, any impact on the quarter, would be helpful.

Matthew Farrell: Yes. Let me give you some help with sold on deal for the categories that generally have lots of promotion. And then Rick or Barry or Paul can chime in. So if you look at the liquid laundry detergent, okay, Q2 versus Q4 you’d see that the sold under was 31% in Q2. It’s 33% in Q4 for liquid laundry detergent. If you look at unit dose, it was 28% sold on deal in Q2, and it’s 33% in Q4. So it’s 500 basis points move. And then the other category that’s a lot of promotion is litter. So litter was 11.5% sold on deal in Q2, and it’s 14% in in Q4. So you’ve seen a move up. Now historically, liquid laundry detergent is kind of mid-30s sold on deal. Litter, however, is still low. It’s typically high teens. So things have heated up a little bit in the last couple of quarters, but it hasn’t gone to the point where it’s a rocket ship or it’s a big spike.

It’s sort of gradual. And as we look ahead to 2023. I would say our sold on deal were probably similar to what we did in Q4 evenly throughout the year. So if anybody wants to chime in, you can.

Richard Dierker: I would also say year-over-year, yes, it’s a drag because we’re lapping a period where we didn’t really have as much promotion. Fill levels were low. And so now as we get back to normal levels of promotion, is it a year-over- year drag, yes. Is it offset is off base from what our historical levels have been now.

Barry Bruno: But supply allows us to get back to advertising and trade that are at normative levels, I would say, right? We’re not wildly off where we’ve been historically, but that allowed us to in Q4 get back to normative levels.

Matthew Farrell: Okay. All right. Finally, this side of the room. Coming to life.

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