Linda Bolton-Weiser: Yes, hi. Good morning. I was curious, as you increase your spending on advertising and promotion over time, can you talk about where you’re seeing the best ROIs? And as you spend more, are your ROIs actually improving over time? Thanks.
Laurent Mercier: Yes. Good morning, Linda. That’s a very important question. I would say, this is even the daily focus of the organization. So, let me step back a little. This is what you are highlighting here is now fully part of our all-including umbrella. So, very clearly, we started to focus on fixed cost, then on cost of goods, now we are really addressing all the (ph) we are investing, and we are building methodology of course, combined with marketing teams, digital teams and commercial teams, right now, we are getting fully equipped to measure and to optimize ROI. So, this is the number one focus. And also, we are improving because, as we shared just before, we are now also growing in different categories. And basically, the way you spend money in skincare is different versus the way you spend money in fragrance.
So, these are really nice capabilities that we have built, and consumers want to say that over the last two years, and this time to build these capabilities. So, ROI is the key word, definitely making sure that each dollar we are spending on either on innovations or base business, every time we’re deciding based on ROI and is reviewed by Sue and by myself, and, of course, with the team in recurring session. So that’s absolutely so that we make sure we are making the best of our money and the better ROI for the coming quarters.
Operator: Our next question comes from Mark Astrachan from Stifel.
Mark Astrachan: Thanks, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Two questions for me. One, just first on the Consumer Beauty. So, still gaining share there. The rate of increase narrowed a little bit in the quarter. I guess, what would be your expectations going forward for that? And then, maybe sort of related to that, curious about your views on the length of the current beauty cycle, which has, obviously, been a couple of years now coming out of the kind of the peak of the pandemic, mask warning, et cetera. So, fragrance and makeup have been drivers of the beauty category. Is it reasonable, if continues? And kind of what would be your expectations for the length of the current cycle? Thank you.
Sue Nabi: Yes, good morning, Mark. So, thank you for these two questions. Sue speaking. So, again, when it comes to Consumer Beauty, you’re right to point out on the fact that Consumer Beauty is entering the new cycle, in fact. The first cycle that started somewhere around Jan ’21 was really to reinvent the brand equity, sometimes coming back to historical brand equities, strengthening this, modernizing this, creating great advertising with the highest ROI, as just mentioned by Laurent. And this was really what explains the back to market share gains, which happened now for the full year. This is the first time since 2016 that this division is gaining market share for a full year. So, this was Stage 1. Stage 2, in a way, I love to say that Stage 1 was fixing the surface, if I may say, and then Stage 2 is really getting deeper, and we start to see real, I would say, disruptive best-in-class in terms of efficacy in the market innovation.
This takes time. It takes 1.5 years to create a fantastic mascara, fantastic foundation or a long-lasting lip color. So, this is now the moment of this. So, you can imagine that Consumer Beauty businesses, specifically behind makeup, are going to continue to put on the market, big innovation supported by excellent advertising, having the best ROIs in the company. And on top of this, we have the adidas brands. We’ve talked to you about adidas last quarter. We started in West — Eastern Europe, sorry, with a very, very strong results, specifically on the high-end shower gels. And now we are implementing this innovation in the Western world. And as you can imagine, this has a big potential also this brand in China, where the brand is cooler than ever, and it’s already the Number One shower gel brand for Chinese men in this country.
So, you can imagine us building this brand into a well-being — high-end well-being brand in Europe, in China and hopefully, in the rest of the world, as you can imagine. Now to answer the second part of your question about the beauty cycle, again, I’m a strong believer that the main thing that has changed since a few years now is what I call the healthification of the beauty industry. This industry is about things that make people look better or feel better. And this becomes something that’s a non-negotiable for consumers. And there, the limit is only us in terms of ability to innovate, to tell new stories, to bring new brands and new technologies to continue to make the consumer interested in our category, because this is a need to meet and not something that is nice to have.
