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

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Stan Sutula: Yeah. So let’s start with Red Collar first. So as Red Collar comes in and we cut over production over time and this will be over an elongated period of time. There are a few things that have to happen. One, and of course, I should start, all of this is baked into our guidance. So as we planned this out, this is all incorporated within our guidance. So first, as we take the Red Collar facilities and migrate those over to produce Hill’s formulas, there is investment that has to go into that. We have incorporated that into our capital and we have incorporated any income statement impact into the numbers. And that really centers around what Red Collar was producing was much simpler formulas for us and for others, and our diets, our formulas are much more complex, in particular, in the prescription diet area, which is why I think they are such valuable to consumers.

So that involves additional mixing, additional ability and testing, quality testing as we go in, and that will require capital investment into those facilities, all planned all on track. The variances that we have in total, so let me step back to there, the variances that we have in total go into gross profit so that as they are going through, we expect that those will get better. We expect that those will get better as we get some relief on the overall manufacturing as those Red Collar facilities come fully on board and produce more of Hill’s formulas. That allows us to go in and do more efficiency planning within the existing facilities. So as we think about Tonganoxie, that’s, again, the new wet food plant that will come online in the second half of 2023.

In the beginning, we do have some startup costs there and those startup costs, again, are around things like bubble staffing as we bring the staff on board and get them trained and so we expect that, that will contribute in the second half, but it becomes a headwind in the first half around Hill’s. So thinking about Red Collar, keep in mind that this was acquired and was in for the full quarter of Q4 of 2022. So we will wrap around from an impact here in Q4 of 2023. But as we go forward, you should think that the impact to margin is roughly in line with what we saw in fourth quarter. So it would be a benefit to the topline and given that the private label activity is at a much lower margin that will impact margin through the year but at a slightly decreasing rate.

Operator: Our next question will come from Rob Ottenstein of Evercore. Please go ahead.

Rob Ottenstein: Great. Thank you very much. A couple of follow-up questions. One, you mentioned in the press release or the comments that there was an e-commerce inventory drawdown on skin health. Can you just clarify exactly what brands that was and why that would be happening? And then I’d like to just kind of talk a little bit more about Hill’s. One question that we are getting is, what was the effect of private label on the organic number. So if you took private label out, was the volume growth actually down 100 basis points, so a clarification on that. And then bigger picture, if we could kind of scope out and look at the whole pet food area in general, you guys are obviously premium and have been gaining share a long time. Can you talk about historically potential trade-down impact given a tougher consumer environment and how you may be adapting to that and what your volume assumptions are for pet in 2023? Thank you.

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