Edgewell Personal Care Company (NYSE:EPC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Chappell: Hey, just kind of follow-up on what’s changed since initial guidance in November primarily on kind of that 500 basis point gross margin headwind, from cost, supply chain, other things, has that seen an ease or do you see some ease in some of those costs and supply chain as we move through the year? I understand you are not changing guidance for that, but just I don’t know if you’re seeing any thawing out there or room for optimism as we move into the spring?

Rod Little: Yes, good morning, Bill. Certainly we’re seeing easing and I’ll talk about it. I think it’s important to note that’s what was contemplated in our outlook, right. And so even if you just look at the math, we have 700 basis points of year-over-year inflationary headwinds in Q4, 500 basis points in Q1 and remodeling 350 for the year. So, yes, there is easing but that’s not incremental to our outlook. That isn’t essentially how we’ve modeled it. We’ve been pretty close to the pin now, three, four quarters in a row. Where we’re seeing it, I think, is largely showing up in a couple of ways. One, you’re certainly seeing easing in natural gas and oil, which has a downstream effect on many commodity baskets, including resin and we’ve seen real stability across the baskets which is helpful.

I think two, inland distribution has eased and we’ve seen that. Now diesel rates are still meaningfully above a year ago, but again, sequentially improving. So I think what all of this tells us is the cost side of our equation is playing out largely as we modeled it so far and certainly for the last two, three quarters, which gives us confidence to the full year margin profile of accretion for the full year.

Chris Gough: Bill I would just build on that. We have a quarter in line of sight to the pricing and cost productivity plans that we had envisioned when we built the plan and put our guidance out there and we’re achieving all of that. And so by nature, I think, it builds confidence when things you had projected you would do, you’ve now actually done, it makes the outcome more certain. And so I think we feel good on the pricing revenue line as well.

Bill Chappell: Got it. And kind of follow-up to that, what’s your anticipation of kind of the promotional environment as we move, probably not this quarter, but into the back half as cost for everyone start to come down and retailers are looking for more promotions? I know it’s a different for different categories, but any thoughts there? Are you expecting promos to come back in a big way or in a more normalized way as we enter the back half? Thanks.

Chris Gough: Yes, it’s hard. It’s obviously hard to predict that Bill based on where the consumer goes and the overall macro factors, but what we’re seeing right now is the consumer has been resilient, the categories are operating very predictably, promotion rates, for example, are lower in many areas than they were a year ago. There is rational behavior happening here. And again, I think it’s just €“ there is more certainty today despite it still being a very uncertain environment then there was a year ago. And so we don’t expect it to become more promotional. If it does, we are ready for that and we’ll adjust accordingly. And I would say that’s contemplated within the guide.

Bill Chappell: Great. Thanks so much.

Dan Sullivan: Thank you.

Rod Little: Thanks Bill. Operator, next question please.