The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Palmer: And just a big picture question, one I’ve been thinking about is in a during this COVID era, clearly, at home snacking did well. You guys have made your own thunder with s’mores and your Seasons. And you’ve seemed to have a pretty good visibility into what you’re doing each year in seasons. And so it looks like you’re going to — you’re poised to have a pretty good 2023. But I’m wondering just as you just think about the overall energy for at home snacking as an occasion, do you have a view about whether that can sustain in terms of its growth rate? I wonder about this not just for Hershey, but for other companies as well. Any comments there would be helpful? Thanks.

Michele Buck : Sure. So let me start by saying as much as we have benefited on our take home business, with at home snacking, our instant consumable business has also been quite strong. So we’ve really seen growth across all what we say, all three segments of our business seasons, take home and instant consumable. We don’t expect that we’re going to lose volume on those segments going forward. So we don’t see a reversal in the trend. But we would say that growth may moderate. We would expect it to moderate a little bit versus where it’s been as consumers just shake out into their normal ongoing behavior.

David Palmer: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Steve Powers : Yes. Hi. Good morning. I wanted to go back to the two topics you talked about already. The A&P investments and the workforce investments just a little bit, drilling down into those. Just any — on the A&P side any notable phasing of the incremental spending that you’re planning and if so just the drivers, of that phasing, if you could. And then on the workforce side, Michele, you walk through a number of priorities, especially on the salty side, and I think there makes sense and they are frankly, intriguing. I guess, question is, where are you with those hires? Is that something that we should anticipate? You kind of have in the near term pipeline and in the investment show up early in the year and carry forward? Or is it something that builds and is more the spending progressively layers out as the year goes on? Just where you are in in making those hires that you talked about earlier? Thank you.

Michele Buck : Yeah, so as we looked at the investments in marketing spending, you should think about the confection investments being fairly stable throughout the year. On salty, our investments will be more front loaded during the year because of the — towards the end of the year is when we’re doing the S’more conversion. So we’re really going to you know drive the volume harder at the beginning and those investments harder at the beginning of the year. On SG&A spend, we will see that across the quarters, and especially beginning in Q1.

Steve Powers : Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Max Gumport with BNP Paribas. Please proceed with your question.

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