Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE:KMB) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So that can give you a perspective of what we’re seeing in terms of investments and overall spend in 2024, building on what we did in the past few years.

Steve Powers: Okay. Great. Thanks a lot, and I’ll pass it on.

Mike Hsu: Okay. Thanks.

Chris Jakubik: If we could take maybe one more question, that’d be great.

Operator: Certainly. Your next question is coming from Andrea Teixeira from JPMorgan. Your line is live.

Andrea Teixeira: Thank you. Good morning. And welcome, Chris. So, can you — I have one question and a clarification on your comments, Nelson, towards the end of the last question. First, can you break down a bit the 2024 guide by division? I’m assuming you’re still looking at like between to get to your number, mid-single digits for Personal Care, some growth in volume there, because that’s where you get most of the growth, and then, Tissue to be flattish — Consumer Tissue to be flattish or to grow low single, and then Professionals to be negative, especially in the first quarter as you lap those contracts. The reason why I ask is that historically, for a good reason, it’s a better ROI, but you’re more dependent on Personal Care than the others.

And you’ve been, to your point and to your benefit, getting market share, in particular in U.S. and China in diapers and Fem Care. So, I was wondering how you feel about the comps and how you feel about being able to meet this number in between low-single and mid-single. I mean, at least at the high end of the guide, it does imply that you have a strong volume growth in Personal Care. So, I was wondering how you feel and how you could decompose by division. And then, a clarification on the reinvestment. You said — Nelson, you mentioned $200 million was the actual number, roughly, of the investment, and then this year would be about half of it. And I was wondering, what is the incrementality? It’s more displays and shelf space, promo? What is going to be the main source?

Because to be fair, you’ve been, to your point, investing for a while now since Mike took over five years ago? Thank you.

Mike Hsu: Hey, Andrea, great set of questions. Maybe I’ll start with the bottom half first, and then Nelson could kind of decomp some of the organic drivers. On the investment, again, my priority would be focused on advertising. I think we get great returns on advertising, both from — certainly from traditional TV and stuff, but more importantly, the digital, and the returns are very, very high. And so, our focus is there. I mean, we are going to be, I would say, competitive on the promotion front — on a trade promotion front, but that said, that’s not how we’re going to drive our business. We do feel like we get great value and we have great creative both on things like Huggies, on U by Kotex, across our business, on Scott 1000 lasts long, and so we got great copy and we’re going to invest there.

Nelson Urdaneta: Yeah. So, in terms of kind of the breakdown by segment, I mean, we expect Personal Care to be growing in the mid to high single digits. So think of mid-single digits overall at the high end. And in the other two segments, we will be growing in the low-single digits. And that kind of gets you to the algorithm that we’ve provided. As I stated at the beginning, our plan is a vol mix, largely lead plan. And keep in mind that pricing will be around 200 basis points of that. And that’s largely related to currency-related movements in hyperinflationary economies. So that’s kind of the breakdown on how you should be thinking of our segment growth next year.

Andrea Teixeira: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I’ll now hand the conference back to Chris Jakubik for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Chris Jakubik: Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. For the analysts that have follow-up questions, we’ll be around all day. And beyond that, we’re looking-forward to seeing everybody in March.

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.

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