Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE:KMB) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Hsu: You’re exactly on the right, a great issue for us to focus on. I mean we’re pleased overall with our start. And I’m definitely very pleased with the margin recovery. We’re not pleased with our market share performance. And so in Personal Care, we were up an even in about half, a little softer than we would like overall. And then if you say, hey, that was personal care. For the business overall, it was a little bit below that, right? And so we were coming off of 2020 and 2021 where we’re up in over two-thirds. And so we kind of get used to that. So we’re not that pleased with about half or just slightly under half. And so we know we got to get better. I would say though, Steve, it definitely comes with — or the share softness definitely comes with moving fast on pricing.

And what’s happened is we’ve been — other manufacturers have lagged significantly our pricing. I was just mentioning to Javier in some categories in North America diapers, for example. We didn’t equalize on price until nine months after our price — our first price move. And so I think there’s been that lag effect that some competitors have used that interim period to kind of pick up a little share. That’s part one. And then I’d say we’re still working through a few hotspots. I mean, not everything is working perfectly within this company. And so we flagged last quarter. Hey, we’ve got some businesses in Southeast Asia. Certainly, you might understand with Eastern Europe and the ongoing effects of the war, we’re still building our business back in Ukraine.

And so there has been some softness in some markets. We’re on it. But definitely, we earn the game for long-term market share gains, and that’s an ongoing goal for us. And while the market share was okay in the quarter, we weren’t happy with it.

Steve Powers: Understood. Thank you very much.

Mike Hsu: Okay. Thank you all for taking the time to be with us today. Again, we feel very good about our solid start to the year, and we look forward to seeing you in the second quarter.

Operator: Thank you, everyone. This concludes today’s event. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.