Newell Brands Inc. (NASDAQ:NWL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So we are working through this process deliberately as we indicated we would with fiscal year ’23 to being a year in which we had to put some basic fundamental stuff in place. We have now put those capabilities in place. We’ve upgraded the talent across the organization and changed the ways of working and you’re going to start seeing real signs of that because the growth rate, while still down in ’24, it’s going to be appreciably better than it was in the prior period. And the financials are going to continue to improve structurally. And so by the time we get out to ’25, we should be hitting on all cylinders, and we’re actually quite excited about it.

Chris Peterson: Yes. I think relative to the guidance question, the base periods remain a little bit choppy because of retailer inventory destocking timing, shipment timing, et cetera. And so what I would say relative to the guidance is that we expect core sales growth to be better after Q1 in the balance of the year than we expected in Q1, as we’ve said. I think it’s premature for us to talk about guidance by quarter between Q2, Q3 and Q4 at this point. And it will be a little bit choppy, but we certainly expect Q1 to be the weakest quarter of the year from a core sales growth perspective, core sales to improve after Q1. And I think we’ll stop there, and we’ll continue our normal guidance pace of updating on the quarterly guidance at the beginning of the quarter.

But because our focus is really on driving, as Mark said, the sequential improvement in core sales growth from negative 12% in ’23 to down 3% to 6%. And remember, within that 3% to 6%, there’s two points of stuff we proactively chosen to exit. And so if you were to exclude that, which we haven’t not done from core, we’re really guiding sort of down one to four in the areas that we’re focused on for ’24. And I think that’s what gets us excited about the trajectory as we move through the year and think about where we’re going to be over the course of the year as we head into ’25. So thanks, everybody for joining. And we’ll follow-up with anybody as always, after the call.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. A replay of today’s call will be available later today on the company’s website at ir.newellbrands.com. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.