Mondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDLZ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Cody Ross: Thank you. That’s helpful. And then there were recently headlines in the news about a grocer asking food companies to lower prices on the back of moderating inflation historically on the back of inflationary cycles, would you consider rolling back price increases? Or do you expect to lean more heavily into promotions? And if it is promotions, can you just update us on what you’re seeing from the promotional environment? Thank you.

Dirk Van de Put: Yes. So the request was in the U.S. And as we explained before, we are certainly not seeing for 2023, our costs coming down. We still are seeing double-digit inflation in our cost. We just implemented a price increase in the U.S. We’re implementing price increases in Europe. So we are not in a situation where we can say that costs are coming down, if anything, they’re up versus last year. From a promotional perspective, since we are rebuilding our customer service and our inventories in clients, there is no need for us to promote more. In fact, what we’ve done in last month is promote less to get our customer service back up. As long as volume continues to be this strong, we are not planning to increase our promotional pressure at all.

Operator: Thank you. Our last question will come from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Stephen Powers: Great, thank you. Shifting gears a bit. On Slide 9, you talk about the accelerating benefits to total company organic growth from recent acquisitions. And I guess I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about plans and expected contributions from Clif and Chipita and Ricolino in 2023, but I was also hoping you could talk about the profitability of growth from those newly acquired businesses and how that compares at this point to base portfolio profitability, whether you describe the relative bottom line contributions as fairly comparable and proportional or whether there’s still remains upfront investment on the newer additions that will dampen profit margins for a time? Thank you.

Dirk Van de Put: Yes. So I can maybe take you through the way we’re thinking about the contribution to growth from businesses like Clif and Ricolino, and then Luca can talk a little bit about the margins. So as it relates to Clif Bar, we’ve taken over in August. We have strong results driven by good demand and good pricing, we had strong double-digit revenue growth, and we had high double-digit EBIT growth in the fourth quarter. We started to implement pricing, which was not normal for them. So we’ve done two pricing actions last year, and we’ve seen minimal volume elasticity. We’ve also started to prioritize the SKUs in their portfolio and working on their supply chain. So we are seeing good supply recovery through Q3, and now we’re starting with the integration of the businesses and find the cost and the revenue synergies.

So we have a full integration team in place, we have a wide variety of opportunities already identified. As it relates to future growth, I think we have a strong position in the U.S. in the protein and the energy bar space. It’s a $16 billion market, which is growing very fast. We have an opportunity to expand through Clif, but also to a business like Grenade in Europe in this space and its well being oriented. It’s ESG-focused. So it’s right on the money as it relates to consumer interest. But even in the North America, we think that Clif has a huge opportunity for expansion, better distribution, and we are going to complement that with the international opportunity. So I would say that explains a little bit the Clif thinking. As it relates to Ricolino it’s a very different type of setup that closed in November so far, well above expectations, top and bottom line.