However, it also seems plausible that you potentially exceed that level of growth at least in the intermediate term here given easier year-over-year comps and then maybe the potential for some inventory rebalancing at retail as consumer demand improves. Can you comment a bit more on what you’re seeing in China? And then, perhaps offer some broader views on the pace of the recovery, and how you see that playing out? Thank you.Jon Moeller Hey, Kevin. This is Jon. I’ll hand it over to Andre to give some more numerical perspective. But I thought it might help just to share briefly the trip that myself and a large contention of our leadership team were able to make to China in the last three weeks. We spent more than a week there. It was wonderful to reconnect with our organizations, who are doing a tremendous job.
We spent time in consumer homes. We spent time with our retail partner leaders in their stores and in their offices. And of course, we spent time with various government authorities.And without getting into all the details, the bottom-line conclusion was a very positive one, and much more than I was expecting even, and I’m kind of a China fan having worked there many years ago and having lived there. So, my expectation has already started high and those were exceeded.Having said that, and we talked about this on the last call, this is not going to be a vertical restart. And there will be a number of twists and turns, including some of the ones that you’ve mentioned along the way. As Andre said in his prepared remarks, we expect China to continue to contribute at a meaningful level over the middle- to long-term.
But everything looks reasonably positive and constructive.Andre, do you have any other perspective on that?Andre Schulten No, I think you said it. I think the other component we’re not yet seeing is any return of Chinese consumers to travel retail. That is a significant negative for us in the SK-II business specifically. So that, hopefully, we see a more positive trend there in the near future. That’s the only other upside that I think we have. But as Jon said, I think the recovery at 2% organic sales in the quarter is very consistent with what we would have expected.Operator The next question comes from Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.Robert Ottenstein Great. Thank you very much. Just a quick follow-up on — or clarification on some of the numbers and then my real question.
So, the clarification is I think you mentioned that mix was a positive impact on sales, but it was a slight negative drag on the gross margins. Just like to understand that.And then, my focus question really is, if you go into more detail on the U.S. business and the U.S. consumer, you mentioned that you saw an improving U.S. consumer. So, any kind of clarification around that? And then, an update on your pricing in the U.S., how much you saw in the quarter? How much more is there to go in the next quarter? And any kind of impact that you’re seeing, any granularity on that would be appreciated. Thank you.Andre Schulten Good morning, Robert. On the gross margin and sales connection here from mix perspective, the effect that you’re seeing here is product mix.
So, consumers when they come into our P&G portfolio, tend to trade up into higher-value items. We’ve seen that actually consistently over the past quarters. So that — as they trade up into higher unit sales, that’s a positive impact from a mix perspective on the top-line.But those higher unit sales items also have higher unit profit, but the gross margin in percentage is slightly lower for some of them. When you think about adult incontinence, for example, when you think about fabric care, single unit dose versus liquid detergent, gross margin percentage lower, unit sales higher, unit profit higher. So, it’s a positive effect both from the top-line and the bottom-line standpoint, but the percentage mix is lower.U.S. consumer, I think is holding up well.
As we said, any indication that we see on our business is that the consumer is still choosing P&G brands. We are growing volume share in a market that is still down on volume. We are growing absolute volume. So, 90 basis points value share goes, 40 basis points value share goes fairly consistently across periods. We also see private label shares stable at 16%, really no movement here over the past one, three, six, nine months, which is a good indication that we don’t see any material trade down.Now we’re watching this very closely. And we believe that a lot of that is again driven by our very intentional strategy to drive superiority. We continue to invest in innovation. We’ll continue to invest in product packaging innovation. We’re increasing, as Jon said, communication frequency and reach where we see a good payout and return.
Continue to work with our retail partners to ensure that the presentation of our brands online and in-store is as good as it can be. Last element I would call out is we are stable in terms of supply and on-shelf availability, which is also helping our overall position in the market. So, stable, I think is the characterization, but we’re watching carefully.Jon Moeller And just one additional point, the 6% top-line organic sales growth that the team delivered in the quarter, and as Andre said, sales share — value share growth and volume share growth, we still have a couple of categories where we are not supplying full demand. That’ll be remediated here fairly quickly. But as you as you consider the strength of the U.S. consumer, if you look at those key measures, and realize that there — while there are both opportunities and risks within the number, there are opportunities as well as risks, which continue to point to a relatively healthy U.S. consumption pattern.Operator The next question comes from Peter Grom of UBS.
Please go ahead.Peter Grom Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. So, I wanted to ask about the changes in the commodity and freight outlook. Second straight quarter that these headwinds have moved lower, which is nice to see. Can you maybe just give a sense what you’re seeing within that bucket? Where are costs moving lower? Where are costs still sticky? And while I don’t expect you to comment on ’24 at this point, but maybe just conceptually how you see inflation evolving as we look out over the next 12 to 18 months? Thanks.Andre Schulten Good morning, Peter. Freight is relatively stable at this point in time, as we’ve mentioned in the prepared remarks. We expect our freight and transportation and warehousing costs to be roughly in line with prior year.
And I think that is a reflection of a more balanced capacity situation with a driver to load ratio returning to, I think, more historical norms. Again, given fuel prices and all other dynamics, I wouldn’t expect any major change going forward, but we’re at least stable.From a commodity basket standpoint, we continue to see a mixed bag. We have some help in resin-based commodities. We have some help in pulp, though that is moderated by mill shutdowns for maintenance, both planned and unplanned. But on the other side, all our high–energy usage materials, when you think about caustic soda, when you think about ammonia, all of those are increased in pricing. So, the moderation is really limited and it’s not consistent across the basket. So, $100 million after tax is the only thing we’re seeing at this point in time.We also continue to see upstream in the supply chain.
