Chris Carey: Just one quick follow-up on the gross margin assumptions. Kevin, you said in the prepared remarks that commodities would still be a bit inflationary. What are those commodities? I know there’s always a lag, but I would just be curious where you’re seeing that just given the favorability that we can see on this side? Then I have a quick follow-up.
Kevin Jacobsen: Sure. Chris, as it relates to commodities, and within that $200 million, we said about a third of that we see is coming from commodity inflation. So that’d be roughly, $60 million or so. I would say there’s a few areas. We’re seeing substrate, some chemicals, and some corrugate linerboard inflating year-over-year. Now that’s partially being offset in a number of areas where we are expecting some deflation, particularly in ag products, soybean oil. We also expect diesel down year-over-year. And resin, we’ve got about flat on a year-over-year basis, so it’s not necessarily contributing or helping. But that’s really what we’re seeing in terms of our commodity basket and it’s modestly inflationary, certainly an improvement from where we were last year, but still modestly inflationary is what we’re projecting.
Chris Carey: Okay. And then just on the organic sales over-delivery, non-tracked charcoal comping, some under shipment in the base, and then stronger consumption, just to make sure I have those. Anything else…
Kevin Jacobsen: Yeah.
Chris Carey: …coming up a lot this evening. Okay. All right. Thanks.
Kevin Jacobsen: Yeah. Those are two primary drivers.
Chris Carey: Okay. Great. Just like a strategic question, Linda, it’s interesting how far this whole spectrum on investment has come that, this evening, it’s almost like, are you spending enough? And you’re talking about higher advertising spending, really strong S&A. And I guess maybe it’d be helpful because, we’re getting through earning season now. What’s your take on why we’re seeing this really significant step-up in investment levels? And it’s not just from Clorox. It’s from all of your peers, marketing spending, SG&A are just going to levels that have not been seen in a very long time? Is this just a lot of manufacturers saying we need to get volumes going, are you feeling a lot more push from the retailers to get volumes going? Just, what are your thoughts on maybe why this investment cycle is coming together and some of the key drivers and see where it’s going. So just — I know it’s a big question, but thanks for any thoughts.
Linda Rendle: Sure, Chris. Yeah. I won’t speak on behalf of the industry, I’ll certainly let everyone speak on their own behalf. But I can just give you the insights into how we’re thinking about it. And I think it’s a pretty clear understanding. We — headed into COVID, we had learned a lot about volatility and the impact that it had on our business. And so we began investing more a number of years ago to ensure that we had the right digital foundation, that we had the right organization suited to a more volatile environment, that we have the right capabilities to ensure that we continue to lead from a consumer insights perspective and that the data we have flows as fast as we possibly can get it, so that we can make quick decisions.
So that was certainly an area for us where we needed to invest within our digital transformation and our operating model to ensure we could react as fast as consumers could be. We want to be more consumer obsessed, faster, and leaner. And then if you look at the bucket on promotional spending, I look at that as more of a return to the norm. And for us, that spending is on good things. We spend mostly on quality merchandising. We do that to introduce consumers to innovation. We do that to remind them in keep pulse points of the year, like back to school, back to college, remind them the great products that we have, introduce them to new benefits, et cetera. And so seeing that return to more pre-pandemic levels, I think, makes good sense given the industry can fully supply now.
We can certainly supply now. And so we get back into that good cadence of giving the right information to shoppers. And then on A&SP, which we have decided to take up, as you know, from 10% to 11%, and, and we addressed earlier, I think this is another case where the number one thing that we can do right now is ensure that we have superior value for our consumers. And we have that from a ratings perspective. Over the last couple of years, we reached the highest brand superiority overall from a portfolio perspective we’ve ever had. We continue to have more of our portfolio of superior than we did pre-pandemic. And we think given the stress that consumer is going to be under, it would make absolute sense given the improvement we’ve made on margin to invest a bit more in advertising and sales promotion to secure that with consumers.
And that’s how we’re thinking about it. We have great brands, great innovation, great products, and we want them at this time when they’re making those choices in their total basket of spending to remind them in our household essential categories no one delivers a better value than Clorox. And that’s exactly what we’re focused on. So to me, I think it is it’s exactly what we do. We focus on the long term. We focus on building brands. And the spending is right in line with doing that.
Chris Carey: Thank you, both.
Linda Rendle: Thanks, Chris.
Operator: And our next question comes from Javier Escalante from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead, Javier.
