The J. M. Smucker Company (NYSE:SJM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Smucker : Jason, for the most part, we’ve seen the gaps close. As I mentioned in an earlier question, on premium, we’re seeing those gaps close now over these last several weeks, and we think that will continue to be the case. And again, the — a little bit of that shift in the premium space has been indicative of the entire segment as opposed to maybe just our brand. So we think that those competitive gaps will come back in line as have the gaps have closed meaningfully in the mainstream space as well. So just continuing to leverage the entire spectrum, the value spectrum of our portfolio will continue to bode well for us.

Jason English : Okay. So just to paraphrase real quick to make sure I understood. You’ve seen the gaps close, but you need — you expect to see them to close further. So you do need further conversions? Is that correct?

Tucker Marshall : Well, no, I think on the premium — no. In most segments, we have seen; and in premium, they have largely closed to the extent that we would expect the competitive dynamics to normalize.

Jason English : Got it. And quickly on pet. There’s about $1.5 billion worth of capacity coming online in the U.S. in pet next year. How do you expect that to impact the competitive environment?

Mark Smucker : Well, first, what I would highlight is that there have been, as you know, some supply chain challenges across pet in general, and that’s an industry comment. We have continued to fare very well throughout the — that dynamic. And our focus has been on optimizing our portfolio, focusing primarily, as you know, on pet snacks and cat food. And the optimization, in particular in our dog food portfolio has performed very well and has allowed us to capture value there as well as experienced some stabilization and some moderate growth in the dog food space. So again, at the end of the day, we got to remain focused on snacks and pet because that’s where we have the ability to continue to lead and then executing the playbook that we’ve previously talked in our dog food portfolio is yielding fruit.

Operator: Our next question is coming from Cody Ross from UBS.

Cody Ross : Tucker, I just want to go back to one of the responses you gave earlier, just around the $0.12 EPS impact from SD&A expenses. I believe that’s a shift. Can you just unpack that a little bit more? What is shifting from 2Q to 3Q? And can you just perhaps quantify it a little bit for us?

Tucker Marshall: Cody, the $0.12 impact to the $0.27 top line improvement due to volume mix is largely due to new additional business investments that we are making. An example of that would be in support of our transformation office. And then I would also acknowledge that a portion of our $0.21 over delivery in the second quarter was due to timing of SD&A, and some of that will now transition into the third quarter. So you will have a portion of the incremental $0.12 investment in the third quarter, a portion in your fourth quarter and then you will have timing from the second quarter of already previously planned SD&A fall into your third.