Now, we haven’t seen a significant change in their preference yet. If anything, consumers that are choosing P&G products continue to trade up within our portfolio. But you can see our ability to grow in markets even when we see private label shares expand. And so we don’t expect a significant change in that profile. And we believe we are well set up to grow even if the consumer feels a bit of — more of a pinch here going into the fall or winter season. The main intervention for us continues to be investing in innovation and continue to invest in media support to communicate the strength and the value that our brands can provide. We don’t see a significant need to drive price promotion. Our focus, if we promote, if we look for in-store support is really to drive regimen.
So we view it as a strategic tool to drive either trial or habit formation, i.e., regimen steps added to the laundry regime or the hair care regime, for example, because that drives incremental consumption, it drives growth for our retail partners and for us. In many cases, our innovation is strong enough to get in-store support, and that’s really what we’re after. When the product in and of itself generates enough traffic and consumption so retailers want to support it, that’s the golden grade we’re after.
Operator: The next question comes from Chris Carey of Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.
Chris Carey: Hi, good morning. I was wondering if you could expand on two categories, which have been important for volume growth and seemingly should be important ahead. Just first on laundry. We’ve seen an improvement, a reacceleration in trend. Can you just expand on what’s driving that and the durability? And then second, in personal healthcare, I believe that was an important driver of volume growth for the quarter. Can you just expand on what exactly was driving that in the quarter and if you think those trends are also sustainable go forward? So I’m just trying to get a sense of some of the volume durability that we saw in the quarter go forward, specifically in the context of potentially some volatility out of China likely to persist. Thanks so much.
Andre Schulten: Yeah. Thanks, Chris. Good morning. The laundry business is very encouraging. Results around the world are very strong. Let me focus on the US market because that’s — it’s the biggest market and you have the highest visibility to. But if you look at the trends, they are very encouraging. We are now growing value and volume share in US fabric care. Value share has been flat over the past three months. Volume share has been up 1.6 points. So we continue to push the laundry business forward. We have record high fabric enhancer shares and we have record high laundry consumption in the US. Most importantly, I think, is the fact that we’re driving 70% of the category growth in laundry, and we’re driving 100% of the category growth in fabric enhancers.
And it’s really driven by strong innovation, strong superiority and doubling down on consumer relevant communication and in-store support. So I fully believe that this will only accelerate. And to your question, yes, it is sustainable because it’s just in line with the business model. PHC is doing extremely well around the world. And obviously, the seasonality here plays a key role. Going into the season, we see strong results, which is part of the strength in volumes that you see. And the last part I’ll leave you with is we’ve invested significantly and continue to invest in strengthening our supply capability in personal healthcare, which will be needed to support that strong growth going forward. But feel good about both businesses. And yes, I think the trajectory is absolutely sustainable.
Operator: The next question comes from Filippo Falorni of Citi. Please go ahead.
Filippo Falorni: Hey, good morning, Andre. Just a question on gross margin. Clearly, very strong, the performance in the quarter. Big inflection in terms of the year-over-year increase. You seem like you have pretty good visibility in the first half, at least on the commodity front. Can you give us a sense of how you’re thinking the second half will play out, especially as pricing contribution comes down? Thank you.
