Chris Carey: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Rob Dickerson: Great. Thanks so much. Michelle, I just wanted to come back to your, I guess, brief commentary today. And I think you’ve mentioned it on the prior couple of calls just around consumer shopping for products with maybe a bit more satiation. Because, clearly the conversation today seems a little bit more focused on cocoa for cost inflation, salty, and then also pricing potential from here. But like if we just separate all that out and we just, focus more on kind of current consumer shopping behavior, especially within the confection category. Would you say, there are kind of ongoing behavioral shifts that are still taking place or you kind of foresee that, maybe reversing out as you get through the year or just trying to get a sense as to kind of how you view the consumer shopping that category relative to other parts of snacks? Thanks.
Michele Buck: Yes, I mean, I’d say first of all, overall with the consumer, certainly I think there is some increase in consumer confidence. We’ve seen unemployment rates, employment be stable. However, we do continue to see some value-seeking behavior in some pockets of consumers. We believe that the behavior across confection has largely normalized and we think that we have some of the right steps in place to kind of offset that satiety issue that we’ve seen with popcorn in areas like adjusting value across different pack types, enhancing marketing communication in ways that, build the value proposition. So we do expect that we’ll start to see some normalization in popcorn as we go through the year.
Rob Dickerson: Okay, got it. And then I guess I just want to ask on kind of longer-term salty segment growth potential. While I realize you may not be giving, providing new long-term targets relative to what you presented at the Investor Day last year, I mean, clearly it seems like, enough has changed, let’s say, to at least ask the question. So if we’re thinking kind of past 2024, like do you think broadly that kind of low double-digit kind of growth for that segment is still feasible or like, could distribution maybe be a little slower? There needs to be a little bit more investment required to get there. Just kind of any color as to how you’re thinking about that. That’s it. Thanks so much.
Michele Buck: Yes, no problem. We continue to feel great about the salty snack business and their long-term potential. We’ve seen such tremendous growth over time. There’s no change to our long-term outlook. Our long-term outlook and the algorithm has always been around mid-single-digit growth. We had never expected low double-digit on the long-term. We had expected originally that this year might be a bit stronger but not on a long-term basis. So no change to that long-term outlook.
Rob Dickerson: Okay, super. Thanks a lot.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, our final question comes from the line of Jim Salera with Stephens Inc. Please proceed with your questions.
Jim Salera: Hi guys. Thanks for squeezing us in. In your prepared comments, you mentioned that we would be seeing some joint merchandising activations between confection and salty. Can you just give us a sense for — is that to increase, buy rates in Hershey households that maybe buy the confection part of your portfolio but not salty? Or is it more of a way to increase the visibility for salty by kind of piggybacking on, the good merchandising activations you already have for confectionary?
Michele Buck: Yes, it’s really some of both. Certainly there’s power to that visibility of all of these great brands together. Our salty brands now are two of our top ten brands. So they have the velocity that warrant being with some of our other really major brands. And then of course it does encourage some of that cross household purchase as well.
Jim Salera: And then if I can maybe drill down on Dot’s in particular, I think you mentioned, incremental club distribution for Dot’s. I can say in my neck of the woods at least, it certainly feels like I or Dot’s placements when I shop my local club store. How much more distribution upside should we think about for Dots in some of those untracked channels where we don’t have as much visibility?
Michele Buck: We still do have some distribution upside on Dot’s. So I’d say more than several points of distribution upside still remain.
Jim Salera: Okay. Great, thanks guys.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question.
John Baumgartner: Good morning. Thanks for the question. I wanted to come back, Michele, to the outlook for ad spending in 2024, I guess, more or less in line with sales. Is that a function of just having spent ahead of sales in 2023 and now it’s a more normalized year? Or is there an expectation for maybe a shift in reinvestment to other drivers, whether it’s trade or anything else where your total spend growth is actually above the rate of sales because it just seems as though the larger innovation coming through the need for more pricing in the market. I’m sort of surprised that the ad spend is not going to be up higher this year.
Michele Buck: We always really do look across the entire bundle. And certainly, we have some trade spending increases in 2024. And so we look at what’s the right bundle across DME, across marketing, consumer marketing and trade that we think will have the biggest impact and most efficiently on driving revenue. So it is some of balancing the total view of all of that spending together, which is a big area of focus for us. How do we make it all together work as hard as each individual piece.
John Baumgartner: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session. I’ll turn the floor back to Ms. Poole for any final comments.
Melissa Poole: Thank you all for joining us this morning. We look forward to catching up with you later today to answer any additional questions you may have. Have a great day.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
