The Kraft Heinz Company (NASDAQ:KHC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So a product like Just Crack an Egg, we need to make sure we actually brought down the inventories to make sure that understand that consumers may not be having a reduced demand on that type of product. So we are both focused on how do we make sure we continue to drive that service levels towards the 98%, which is our goal. And then secondly is making sure that as we do that, we are agile in term responding to those specifically ingredients that may be challenged in the short term, but that we see improving significantly as we exit 2023.

Stephen Powers : Okay. Great. If I could follow up also — sorry.

Miguel Patricio : Go ahead.

Stephen Powers : I was just going to ask if I could follow up on the elasticity point that you’ve been talking about. You also exited the year with elasticity sort of at their most favorable point, just kind of going off the data on Slide 9. You’ve obviously talked about assumption of those elasticities sort of normalize directionally through ’23. I guess the question is just what’s your base case assumption of the pacing of that normalization? And you talk about an ultimate assumption of not going all the way back to historical elasticity. So just how do we think about that as we expect ’23 to be sort of the mirror image of ’22 from an elasticity standpoint? Or any more color you can offer around that would be great.

Miguel Patricio : Andre?

Andre Maciel : Yes. So look, as we have said, right, we contemplated the guidance that elasticities gradually go back to the historical levels, and we expect historical levels in the guidance to be established towards the end of the year. And we expect Q1 to be the way that we contemplated now to be a little worse than it was in Q4, and again, it goes — if you want to think about that linearly going back to historical levels towards the end of the year. There are obviously things that we keep a close eye on, like we are obviously fully aware and have put the actions in place on its net reduction in the subsidies, which is happening when that has implications and we are ready for that. So I mean we are monitoring each of those things, right? But we believe that elasticities will normally graduate back to the historic plans.

Andre Maciel: Carlos, do you want to say anything about the actions that you’re taking?

Carlos Abrams-Rivera : Yes, I think for us, Andre said, we have seen this coming. So for us, it’s making sure that we continue to provide great value to consumers regardless of the situation they’re in. And I think as I mentioned earlier, for us, it is making sure we use kind of the full price size architecture in terms of options for consumers so that make sure that we also maintain them in the franchise. And that we talked about in terms of our promotion levels, we’re using much more rigorous way in which we can understand the ROIs of investments so that consumers are looking for particular events, whether it’s certain key holidays and so forth. We are present but in a way that actually allows us to be in a much more positive ROI than in the past.

So it is part of what we see. And like Andre said, in North America, we have seen — our stance right now is that by the end of the year, we’ll go back to historical levels. And we are — that’s the way kind of rebuilding our guidance as we think about 2023.

Anne-Marie Megela: Operator, we will take one more question.

Operator: Sure. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler.