Andrew Lazar : Thank you so much.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Peter Galbo: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.
Brendan Foley: Sure.
Peter Galbo: Mike, maybe just to follow up on Andrew’s question, I think if you strip out DSD, the exit in the first quarter, you still kind of had a ship ahead or consumption ahead of what the scanner data would have said in North American Consumers. So maybe, I know you probably don’t want to give like basis point level detail, but if you could kind of rank between untracked, some of that co-manufacturing you do, some of the upside drivers relative, I guess to the scanner data that drove kind of the positive variant in the quarter.
Mike Smith: Peter, thanks for your question on that. On an apples-to-apples basis, our consumption is roughly in line with our sales and we are shipping to consumption. What’s probably driving the U.S. consumption, lagging on Americas consumer sales is we had good growth in Latin America and Canada and that contributed to our total growth. But we also delivered growth in unmeasured, excluding that DSD business exit that we talked about. So we do expect and continue the alignment between consumption and shipments moving forward. We don’t really believe that there’s any sort of inventory movement that we can call out at this point in time. But it’s also important to call out that in that unmeasured growth was primarily driven by e-commerce.
It represents this globally for us, about 10% of our total consumer sales, and so that’s pretty healthy and positive. But we’ve seen double digit growth in all of 2023 in e-commerce and did again in Q1. So we continue to believe that e-commerce is a growth channel, and we do continue to put resources up against it. But coming back to sort of the top of your question on the influences on measured channels, I would probably think about that as one thing to consider and think about. But largely, we really believe that our shipments and consumption are broadly in line with.
Peter Galbo : Got it. No, that’s helpful. And then maybe guys, just I wanted to clarify on China, because the slide seemed to say maybe two things. I think in the China Consumer business, which I know is kind of more branded food service, there was some weakness. But then on China Flavor Solutions, you talk about strength in QSRs in China. So just wanted to maybe unpack a bit more on those because it seemed to be saying two different things and get a better read kind of between those two sub-segments. Thanks very much.
Brendan Foley: Sure. I’ll make a couple of comments here, and Mike might have some things to add. We are not thinking about China any differently than what we said last quarter. It largely met our expectations for the first quarter, both from a consumer segment perspective and a flavor solution segment perspective. And we continue to expect that for total 2024, China Consumer sales to be comparable to 2023. Broadly our outlook for the Chinese consumer does remain cautious. I mean, there are several reasons to continue to think that way, persisting unemployment with young adults, reduced consumer confidence. Consumers are still somewhat reluctant to spend. In our business, and that falls into our consumer segment, is sales to smaller independent restaurants and they are losing some traffic to the larger QSR chains.
That might be where you’re hearing us say two different things. So off of that is some perspective around that. Yet, like we do with other regions, we have plans in flight to address how we’re looking at China and the changing trends of Chinese consumers. We do expect our Flavor Solutions business to be stronger in 2024, just based on the trends that we’re seeing. So, that’s I think, some of the perspective. Mike, do you want to add anything?
Mike Smith: Yeah, I think, we were in China about two months ago and saw a lot of these trends with QSRs, big established QSRs were starting to gain share and drive some traffic into their stores versus that kind of smaller mom and pop type stores. I mean, I would just give you context to this kind of talk as we talk about our whole Flavor Solutions business. The QSR business in some parts of the world, like China, is really doing well. Other parts, it’s a bit challenged. So as you think about our guidance, those are things that you can talk about the Flavor Solutions business is lumpy in part due to the fact that, our CPG customers and QSR customers control new product launches and there’s foot traffic and things like that. But China has started off strong on the QSR side, which is great.
Peter Galbo : Great. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Max Gumport with BNP Paribas. Please proceed with your question.
Max Gumport : Hey, thanks for the question.
Brendan Foley: Good morning.
Max Gumport : The last quarter you talked about making, good progress on restoring distribution that was lost to past supply issues. And it sounded like you’re reiterating that commentary and that you still have line of sight to making some good progress on getting that distribution back following customer resets the middle of this year. I was just curious if you could give us a bit more color on some of the updated insights you’ve gotten over the past couple of months since we last heard from you on what you are seeing, what you are hearing with regard to customer wins in U.S. spices and seasoning. Thanks.
