The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michele Buck: Yeah. I mean, I’d say, the categories that we are in have always been very competitive. But the good thing is we have rational competitors. And what we are seeing overall, I’d say, is pretty consistent with what we have seen historically. We have seen some higher levels of innovation as supply chains have gotten stronger and people have been able to support innovation. We have seen some increases in private label, I think, with the economic environment in both confection and in salty. But frankly, the results of those entries have been somewhat mixed, and certainly, our brands have held up really well. We continue to focus on driving sustainable profitable growth. As it relates to infection and promotional activity, display has always been important for that impulse-driven category and so we didn’t see as much of the change in promotion as perhaps some other categories have seen.

So that’s been much more stable for us and we anticipate we will continue to going forward. So we will continue to invest robustly to drive our brands with innovation, marketing support, what we think is the right level of promotion.

Cody Ross: Great. Thank you very much. I will pass it on.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Jason English with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.

Jason English: Hey, folks. Good morning. Thanks for fitting me in. Couple of questions.

Michele Buck: Hi.

Jason English: First, on Salty Snacks, promotion shift, it seems odd, usually promotions are locked in well-advanced retailers. So was this an issue of you actually not having a promotion your planned for like at this time was your sales and finance functions or did a retailer actually cancel activity on you?

Steve Voskuil: Yeah.

Michele Buck: Yeah. Retailers did not cancel activity on us, but it was really our choice to move a promotion. So that piece is that. And then relative to our broader execution issues, we had some temporary out of stocks. We go to market differently with dots than we do with SkinnyPop and the team quickly adjusted and we have seen our service levels improve. So we don’t expect to see that kind of impact in the second half.

Jason English: Okay. So you canceled promotional activity on your retailer. Is that because of supply constraints or what drove that decision?

Michele Buck: No. We have really shifted to investing a promotion in the third quarter that we thought made a lot of sense in advance of S/4. It was a big opportunity for us.

Jason English: Okay. Switching gears, kind of coming back to Mr. Goldman’s line of question earlier, I had a couple of other lines of question on competitive activity. Your release has a tremendous amount of focus on market share and rather than driving category growth and we have seen the category actually weakened quite a bit in recent data. It’s a two-part question. First, what do you attribute the accelerating volume declines in chocolate confection to be driven by? And second, are you incenting organization on share and assuming you are based on the heavy emphasis in the release and prepared comments, how do you manage the risk of us getting back to where we were five years, six years, seven years ago, where it was sort of you always duking it out promoting away value in the category rather than what has been a much more, I would say, constructive competitive environment we have seen over the last couple of years?

Michele Buck: Yeah. Well, as we look at the category, certainly, we have had significant pricing in the category. We have 20% price, and over time, we should see some moderation and the volume decline should moderate as well. So, certainly, price has played a factor. I would say we are always focused on driving the category, as well as market share, because being the category leader, we know if we drive the category we stand to have some of the greatest benefits. So we certainly don’t approach this as duking it out, but rather, how do we continue to connect with consumers and partner with our retail customers to maximize what’s going to be best to drive the overall business in category?

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