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

Operator: Our next question comes from Olivia Tong from Raymond James. Please go ahead with your question.

Devin Weinstein: Hi, this is Devin Weinstein on for Olivia. I appreciate you taking our questions. Wanted to ask a little bit more about Billie if we could. First I guess another way to ask about the current quarter the actual performance versus your outlook implies around additional $1 million or so inorganic revenue versus what you guys were expecting. So I was curious what specifically drove that surprise? First, your initial outlook. And then also want to ask a little bit about you reporting or the shift in your reporting now including Billie sales in Sun and Skin. Just wanted to us, I mean, that would suggest that there’s either an acceleration in the X razors business or perhaps you guys are focusing more so there. So I just want to ask about your plans around the business X razors and then longer term, if you could give us an idea of how you’re thinking about the organic sales algo for Billie and what gives you confidence around that kind of number?

Dan Sullivan: Yes, good morning Dan. On the first question around organics in the quarter versus inorganics, there has been no change in our thinking in what we built when we developed the outlook, quite honestly, it’s a bit clunky. You’ve got two months of inorganic and one month of organic, and depending what shift when it’s being recognized as one or the other. I wouldn’t view that as any fundamental shift in the business. I think the broader point you’re making though on Billie is exactly how we see the brand and what made it so attractive when we bought it a little over a year ago, which is it’s clear right to move into adjacent categories. And that which started as a shave brand absolutely has the right and the runway to become a women’s lifestyle brand.

That’s what we saw when we looked at buying it. And that’s absolutely what the team is committed to building Billie. So you’re starting to see that migration now, it’s not as pronounced in 2023 because we’re more focused on the pure retail expansion, but you will absolutely see a slightly broader assortment in 2023, which lends your point on skincare like products and then much bigger gains, much broader offering as we look to 2024 and beyond.

Devin Weinstein: Thank you, I appreciate that. And if I could just follow-up with one more quick one, just in regards to your guys increased outlook on the operating margin I just wanted to get an idea if you continue to recognize improved productivity versus outlook today, or perhaps cost alleviate versus where you’re seeing them today? How you balance further investment into your brands versus more direct flow through on EPS? Thank you.

Dan Sullivan: Yes, sure. Good question. Look, we saw overhead favorability in the quarter. And as we said in the prepared remarks most of the A&P favorability was simply phasing and probably half of the G&A was phasing. The other half is structural. And I think what it points to is we’ve been pretty intentional in our focus around driving costs out of the business. Obviously majority of it done in COGS, the G&A has always been a portion of that. And in fact, in our current outlook €“ in our original outlook, we’d estimated about $13 million of cost takeout in G&A. We’re going to beat that. And again, some of that came from Q1, but it also comes from line of sight to pulling forward a lot of the work the teams have been doing here around productivity and efficiency of spend.