Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Noel Wallace: Jason, I’d throw one other point, which I think is relevant to not only Hills, but to other aspects or other questions that have come up this morning. And that is the foreign exchange impact in Europe in the quarter, obviously, the second largest business outside the U.S. for Hill’s is Europe and Europe had 11% headwind in foreign exchange and that obviously moved through the Colgate side of the business as well. Now you have seen the significant pricing that we are taking, but obviously, the transactional impact as well as the translational impact of that foreign exchange moved through in the fourth quarter, and certainly, dampened a little bit of the penny profit that we would have expected.

Operator: Our next question will come from Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Steve Powers: Hey. Thank you. So picking up a little bit on what you were just talking about in terms of startup costs, but also the manufacturing variances and the negative mix that Noel you alluded to earlier with respect to the fourth quarter. I guess, a couple of questions related to that. One is, I assume that’s lumped into the raw materials, the 920-basis-point negative impact of raw materials, I don’t know where else it would go. So if that’s the case, I guess, is there a way to quantify what those sort of to me, non-raw materials costs would have been or were in the quarter as a headwind, number one. Number two, how we think about those carrying over and phasing at least into the — I presume the first half of 2023. And then just to clarify and round it out is, are those are those impacts embedded in the several hundred million dollar raw and packaging materials inflation outlook for next year, just because I think it’s a little bit different than raw and packaging materials as sort of narrowly defined.

That’s really my — those are my main questions. If you could also talk a little bit about how you are thinking about Red Collar phasing through the year, and just operationally, what that entails, if there are costs, whether cash costs or costs that are notable going to the P&L as you do transition the private label product over to Hill’s, just that would be helpful to understand? Thank you.

Noel Wallace: Sure. Steve, let me take a very topline kind of strategically how we are integrating Red Collar and deliberate plans that we have take — we have taken to ensure a successful integration into the Colgate-Palmolive Company. First, it’s three significant plants that we are obviously integrating. And as we have talked about for the better part of a year, all of our existing facilities on Hill’s have been running full out, and obviously, that is a very inefficient way to run your supply chain. Now we have obviously been investing in improved capacity, obviously, with the plants in addition to the Tonganoxie in addition to the plant that we purchased in Italy. But again, integrating those into the system to ensure one quality mechanisms are where they need to be, ensuring the lines are capable of the flexibility and the formulations and the sophistication of our formulations, making sure that, obviously, the all aspects of the science driven approach that we have taken to our formulas is well understood and by the culture of the organizations that we are integrating into the company.

All of that has been very, very methodical. We are not going — given that we need the capacity, we are not going to rush ourselves into doing this too quickly. So we have been very careful to ensure long-term success as we built the plans to bring that volume into the Colgate business over time. So, with that, let me turn it over to Stan. He will take you through a little bit of how we planned for Red Collar and how we are thinking about the ongoing startup costs associated with that.

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