And our OTC portfolio in Europe pretty much goes 100% through that channel. And then overall, listen, we feel good about the performance of our business in Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. We did see some volume declines there, as you noted. We’ve been able to take good price and the volume decline is really differentiated geographically. So place like Latin America, you would see a bit more volume decline, and it links a little bit to Tobias’ point also in the hyperinflation comments in Argentina. But overall, we feel good about the makeup of the business. And then you have regions like Asia, where we had low inflation, and we continue to see really strong volume growth in that region and expect to continue to see good volume growth.
Tobias?
Tobias Hestler: Yes, look, on your — on the leverage question, right, we said our medium-term target is to be around 2.5, right? It doesn’t mean 2.5 sharp, but around that, the 2.5 number. We think that when you — with all the analysis we’ve done, we think this is the right longer-term, more medium-term leverage range, taking all the components into account, interest rate and all the other capital allocation priorities. So I think that’s why we aligned with the Board to target around 2.5 number over the medium-term. Now I think how we get there. I mean, I think you should take some confidence from our deleveraging path. We started around 4, so slightly above 4, 18 months ago, and we’re down to 3.0 now. And I think we — I think the strong cash generation of this business will not change going forward.
So I think as we keep executing in the model, there we can do both, we can deleverage. And then also, I think when you think about the share buyback now, we have the income from the divest that helped to partially fund that. And lastly, also, I mean, if you just take at our cash position, we ended the year with a strong cash position. So ended the year with 1 billion of cash on the balance sheet, no commercial paper outstanding. And I think that allows us to pay back the bond, the $700 million bond that’s due now in March from cash and also to pay out the dividend. So I think overall, I think the business is in a very strong place from a cash position. And I think it’s delivering exactly on what we have promised to do and even ahead of time on that.
Celine Pannuti : Thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from the line of Olivier Nicolai, Goldman Sachs.
Olivier Nicolai: Hi. Good morning, Brian, Tobias and Sonya. I’ve got two questions, please. First, going back to oral health. Could you give us a bit more details on the strong growth acceleration you’ve seen throughout the year? How much of this growth could be explained by the distribution gain that you still got on parodontax or Polident? And if that will continue to be a boost in 2024? And then just a follow-up, if I may, on the marketing spend, which grew 3% constant currency but declining as a percentage of sales to 17.9%. Now you mentioned that some of the reduction was in respiratory but did not prevented you from outperforming your peers. So, keen to hear your thoughts there? But also going forward, is 18% roughly a percentage of sales? Is that roughly the correctly that we should think about? Thank you.
Brian McNamara: Thanks for the question, Olivier. Let me start on Oral Health. So yes, we’re very good about the Oral Health performance, and as you saw from the presentation, really strong share growth across the three power brands, which is the vast majority of our business and different dynamics of growth all three. So, Sensodyne continues to see strong growth. Obviously, there was pricing but also volume growth on that business. And I think that growth was really driven by some very good innovations and performance by innovation. So I mentioned Sensodyne Proactive Enamel Repair year or two in many places the Sensodyne Sensitivity & Gum. So we’re really seeing the model, which is the dental detail model, the innovation, the recommendation continue to be very strong and hold up very well in a volatile kind of economic environment.
Also, we just launched in the US and a few other markets, Sensodyne Clinical White in Q1, which is an innovation we are very, very excited about. As you may know, whitening is a big trend in the market. But one thing toothpaste actually are very bad for set people with sensitive teeth and we have a product that actually does both, two shades whiter and 24/7 sensitivity protection. So, feel good about that. Parodontax is a bit of us continuing to activate where it’s been in market but maybe we haven’t had the capacity to resource allocate. We’re seeing it react very well to brands and also to investment and to the growth. And then, I would say on denture care. Denture care is a bit of a bounce back from COVID. So what happened during COVID in that population, an older population less disposable income as social occasions went down, the usage of the category went down.
Obviously, we’re about half of that category on a global basis. And now, we’re seeing that come back but also strong innovation there too, because our MaxGrip Hold product that went out truly, truly has made a difference for that consumer segment. But you wouldn’t expect to see that level of growth going forward, because there’s a bit of a base effect. So overall, feel good about that. On the A&P investment and on respiratory, again, as I mentioned and Tobias mentioned a bit on our brands, but the geographic spin our respiratory portfolio is very different than our competitors. So yes, we decided to invest less in certain markets where we weren’t seeing it and we were still able to deliver. We believe in investing in A&P, no question about it.
I’m not going to put a number on, what I think the right level is, because we do want to be active in the way we manage that and in the way we drive growth and we drive returns of our A&P. But feel good about the choices. And I think the big data point for me is, if you remember at half year we were at 55% of the business gaining and maintaining share. At full year for all of 2023, we’re at 58%. So while we’re making those choices we’re continuing to see the competitiveness strengthened. We’ve always by the way are wanting to do more and be more competitive and even see that number go up. But we feel really good about where we ended for the full year and the choices we made.
