Jeffrey Harmening: Well, Ken you reeled off a lot of things we said at CAGNY, so please to hear that. And you’re right, the — you know, when I say, you know, the benign environment, what we hope to be, I guess it would, with regard to a couple of things, you know, hopefully with regard to inflation, we still see an inflationary environment. It’s 4% now. It was, you know, double-digits last year, and long-term, it’s been kind of 2% to 3% and so hopefully we’re headed in the long-term direction as we look at next year we’ll certainly give guidance in June on what that exactly looks like. But to the extent we can have a more benign inflationary environment and a supply chain environment we don’t see the disruptions we’ve seen, combined with good productivity, that’s a good start.
And I think then the question for us, we still really haven’t answered yet, even a month after CAGNY, is how exactly are some of these external factors going to play out in the fourth quarter, as we lap SNAP and as we lap on-shelf availability and private label and some of our smaller competitors. Those things are a little bit, I would say too early to call, but I will say the third quarter played out largely as we expected and the benefits of lapping pricing played out as we expected. And so it may be completely unsatisfactory. But I’m not going to comment on F ‘25 at this time other than to reiterate our productivity is good. We’ve seen inflation is slowing, although there still is inflation, and we’ll know a lot more about what to expect out of the top line performance in a couple of months.
Ken Goldman: I knew going in I’d be partially unsatisfied, but that was helpful. Thank you. And then quick follow-up, you mentioned that, and just now, again, you mentioned SNAP reductions coming in the U.S. In a number of states, a decent chunk of those reductions have already been lapped. I don’t know if your data would show this, but I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but is it fair to say that you’ve seen improvements in these states? Or is it just a little more complicated than that? I’m just trying to get a sense, because so much of what you’re talking about depends on a little bit of that macro and how consumers react?
Jeffrey Harmening: Yes, the answer to your answer — the short answer is yes and yes. And I’ll explain, I mean, the first yes is that, yes, we have seen a small benefit in the states where we’ve lapped the SNAP benefits. And so we have seen that. But I think it’s important to remember a couple of things, one, that’ll take a while to play out. It’s not as if there’s one event and it just kind of happens and there’s a cliff change. The other is that that benefit is not huge. I mean, there is some benefit, but it’s just not a — it’s not a huge benefit. The other yes is you said there’s some complicating factors. And the answer is of course, I mean, because we’re lapping pricing and pretty soon we’ll have on-shelf availability changes. So there’s just a lot of factors in the environment that make it a little bit noisier than a perfect correlation. But the short answer is we’re seeing a little bit of benefit in the places where we’ve lapped the SNAP so far.
Ken Goldman: Thank you so much.
Jeffrey Harmening: Yes.
Operator: We’ll move next to Max Gumport at BNP Paribas.
Max Gumport: Hey, thanks for the question. So first on Pet, it looks like the action plans you discussed for the Pet segment last quarter are starting to bear fruit. So on wet pet food specifically, I think you inflected from a minus double-digit decline in 2Q to growth in 3Q. I was hoping you could talk about any early signs of success you might be seeing with these more value-oriented multipacks? And how they may or may not inform your view of what the ’24 pound bag could be doing for Wilderness over the coming quarters in pet retail? Thanks.
Jeffrey Harmening: Yes, I would say on the wet pet food side, we certainly have seen improvements, you know, whether it’s all the way back to growth or not. I mean, I’m not sure it’s all the way back to growth, but it’s — but we certainly have seen improvements and we’ve importantly, we’ve seen the improvements in that in the wet pet food business in the places where we got our price points back in line with what we thought would be beneficial. So that’s good. We haven’t gotten them back everywhere yet. So that’s still a work in process. And I think that’ll play itself out in the fourth quarter. But we are encouraged that the actions that we took that we thought would have a benefit are having the benefit that we thought. And so some like Yogi Bear there.
But that is — so that feels good. How that relates to 24-pound bags of Wilderness, I guess, I would say on Wilderness, I think it’s going to be more complicated than just that. I mean, we need to do — we need to get back to advertising Wilderness with a message that’s going to resonate to consumers. We have some ideas on that. We’re working on that now. That’ll be important. And then working with the Pet Specialty channel in particular, where Wilderness has had a challenge and they want to work with us and we want to work with them. And so that’s positive, but we have some more work to do in that channel. And then there’s some SKUs that we need to bring back. So I wish Wilderness were as simple as getting 24-pound bags in, but I think it’s going to be a little bit more complicated than that and take a little bit longer.
But we are encouraged by the fact that what we have diagnosed on wet pet food and then the actions we have taken have largely played out the way that we thought.
