Energizer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:ENR) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Rob Ottenstein: Great. Thank you very much. A couple of follow-ups from the opening commentary. Can you give us maybe a little bit more color on the plan savings, what particular operations, functions are involved? And maybe most importantly, are those savings going to fall to the bottom line? Are they net of reinvestment in some of the systems improvements you’re talking about? So that’s the first question. And then possibly related to that, I was just wondering if you could give us more detail, more specific detail on the working capital programs and other debt pay down programs and given everybody’s desire right, to manage working capital. What gives you the confidence that you’re able to execute on them? Thank you.

John Drabik: There’s a lot in there, Rob. Let me start to chip away at it and we can kind of direct us in places that maybe we didn’t cover. Let me — I’ll just sort of remind you and others on the call about the overall details of the program, $80 million to $100 million by the end of 2024. Cost to implement the program is roughly 50% of savings. We achieved $7 million of savings already in Q1, $21 million working capital benefits already in Q1. We expect $30 million to $40 million of savings in fiscal ’23 from the program. It’s going to be split roughly 80% gross margin, 20% SG&A. And then the balance would be achieved into ’24. And the intention is certainly for that to drop to the bottom line. I want to be careful in saying that though because I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and provide €˜24 guidance prematurely.

But that’s certainly the intention of the program is to call back margins, improve earnings of the enterprise as we go through this program and to be able to drive incremental earnings power as we get into €˜24 and ’25.

Mark LaVigne: And John, maybe in the working capital, kind of, the details of that.

John Drabik: Yes. The only thing I’d add to that Mark is on the $30 million to $40 million, that’s going to drop. And that really is very much in gross margin that’s helping us drive those gross margin numbers this year. And offsetting some of those inefficiencies in my comments, some of those volumes came down to an earlier question. On the working capital, Robert, we’ve really prioritized inventory and continue to do that even outside this program. Just over the last quarter, we’ve taken out close to $100 million of our working capital, we were able to go after inventory AR and AP, it will continue to be a high focus. I think you’ll see some normalization as we go throughout this year, this was a very good quarter for us and obviously close to 20% free cash flow as a percentage of net sales is we’re calling from more like 10% to 12% for the full-year and I think that’ll give us the opportunity to really fund the momentum project in the back half of the year.

So free cash flow is really a positive number for us this quarter and we expect it to be really strong throughout the rest of the year. As far as debt pay down, still number one priority for us for capital allocation. As we talk about in the prepared remarks, we paid almost $170 million over the last five months. So something we’ll continue to focus on as we go throughout the year.

Rob Ottenstein: Have you kind of disclosed and had approved your working capital objectives with your supply chain? Alright, because there’s two sides to every kind of transaction?

John Drabik: Understood, Rob. I mean, there’s certainly a counterparty in some of these changes we’re trying to drive through, but we have confidence in our ability, I mean, some of the things are just better internal working capital management, which are sort of unilateral actions we can take and have taken to implement. But then it’s also working with your counterparties to improve your working capital and we certainly have confidence in our ability to do that.

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