McCormick & Company, Incorporated (NYSE:MKC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Smith: Well, I mean the three things we said in the last earnings call, where the significant inflation and we’re recovering that inflation now through incremental pricing. The significant incremental costs we’ve incurred since pre-COVID, we’re addressing them through the GOE program across both segments and the incremental cost for driving additional capacities as an example, a little of our investment. So, those three things have really driven that operating profit degradation, which we are in the process of now reversing.

Lawrence Kurzius: And I would say that it’s not true that the business mix has not changed. The business mix has changed, and we continue our portfolio migration towards more value-added products. You hear us talking about pruning the portfolio. We have not been specific because we don’t want to talk about things that are — that might be identifiable to a specific customer, but there’s definitely been a movement within our portfolio, both by category and within product categories to improve that business for the long term. And Mike said that we don’t look at the pre-pandemic operating margin as a ceiling. As we said at the time, we look to some of our pure labor house peers who publish public numbers who have significantly higher operating margins. That’s more what we aspire to in the very long run.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Peter Galbo: Mike, just to go back to the question around kind of GOE and to square some of the gross margin kind of math on the quarter. It seemed like you were saying GOE was pretty minimal in terms of contribution to gross in 1Q. But maybe you can just help us like the other components, what did CCI contribute in 1Q? And just where did the actual inflation rate — the COGS inflation rate in the quarter fall relative to that low to mid-teens number for the year?

Mike Smith: Well, we’ve said, I mean, the first quarter is the highest of our inflation rates turned out to be that way, and it will go down the rest of the year sequentially. GOE was a small impact as you referred to. CCI roughly, is really spread throughout the year. So we don’t get really specific around what CCI occurs because it’s a continuous program. So you have every quarter. It’s approximately the same level as last year or slightly higher, depending on your guidance. We said that this year is $85 million. Last year, it was $85 million, so probably roughly the same. But I think as you think about the margin improvement, the pricing realization that we’ve seen — as you’ve seen in our numbers, is really driving a good chunk of that. So that’s what gives us confidence on the rest of the year too. We’re recovering these costs. We said that we incurred the last couple of years. We’re catching up this year, and you’ve seen that in the first quarter.

Peter Galbo: Okay. That’s helpful. And Lawrence, maybe just — you talked a little bit about drilling season and some of the new product innovation. We’ve heard from some others as well. Just curious how you’re thinking about promotional maybe cadence over some of the summer holidays, if that’s maybe the depths aren’t back to a more normal level. But are you seeing a chance to maybe increase promotional frequency as you get into some of your bigger, more important holiday season?

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