Jim Hagedorn: Yes, so you have a lot of those savings that are coming early in the year. They will benefit you in the second half of a year and so you are seeing some of that in the first half numbers as well.
William Reuter: Okay. But it sounds like there’s another $35 million to come in the second half of the year, is that the way to think about it?
Jim Hagedorn: That’s fine.
William Reuter: Okay. all right, that’s all for me. Thanks.
Jim Hagedorn: Yes, I mean I just said frankly we probably got more than half of it in the first half, you’re going to get run rate some of it in the second half but yes.
Chris Hagedorn: I also think that we’re not done. I know that the supply chain reconfiguration within the North American business is hugely important to us and if Matt and I were passing out sort of kind of our view and Nate’s well aware of this on kind of what we expect at corporate. We want to spend more money in marketing by a big percent same and innovation activity. And so to fund that we’re going to continue to pull money out of the business scenarios that can fund the things that make us different and drive the business. I think that you’ll see pretty significant share gains this year. My advice to the team is that we have reasonable share, efficient share, whatever you want to call it today. We’re going to have more share by the time the year is over.
And we have to actually be a vendor that is a great partner to our retailers and to our consumers that we are acting as good as the share opportunity that we have and we can hang on to that. That’s important. I think as we go through this and some of the investments we made behind this year and possibly next with our retailers that have resulted in the kind of program and share gains that we’re seeing as those ends, we’ve got to be a partner that doesn’t lose those when those programs end. So I think this is one of the things I want the business to prove to Matt is that we can get our margins up as a result of what we’ve done and that the investments we make in the business will keep that share and not lose it. And this is really important to where we’re going.
Operator: Our last question comes from Thomas Mahoney by Cleveland Research.
Eric Boohard: Hi, it’s actually Eric from Cleveland Research. A lot of numbers I just want to make sure that I understand the what I heard you say is that April units are up 7% to 9% and dollars are up 1 to 3. Before I asked my question am I saying that right?
Matt Garth: No. What I said was, let’s go back and build this, right. So you have 8% lift because that’s kind of a high single digits with price down and I think actually, Eric, if you go through the documentation that Aimee put on the website, there’s a nice little margin bridge in there. There’s a nice little walk on revenue that also shows you a little bit of this breakdown. So US Consumer and what we were trying to detail was POS, no surprises, yes, first half in the teens, great. Mulch really did well but the underlying core business right where we wanted to be plus 8% and that’s in line with what we were driving to, that’s why Jim talked about references to plan so I talked about versus our forecast. We are not surprised and as we look forward, we know that there’s going to be additional gains coming from promotional activity.
So getting back to where we need to be on POS from April is inside. So a very pedantic approach towards how we are moderating the year and what our message is, which extends from revenue to cost to margin to free cash flow and to net leverage. So net leverage, while we’re on it, I don’t really see an issue for the remainder of the year nor for the remaining period under our credit facility which runs through 2027. So I think there’s good distance, there’s flexibility, you heard Jim talk about it, we’re not managing in a pressured way. So even if POS has some variance, we have levers that we will pull and we will maintain compliance. So feeling really good about how the overall perspective of how the new management team is operating to ensure that we have commitments that are met today, retailers and ours with our constituents including shareholders.
And then the path forward for what we’re laying out for the next decade.
Eric Boohard: Okay, great. So through April, are your POS dollars up 1 to 3? Is that what you said?
Matt Garth: POS dollars? No. Oh, sorry. POS dollars through April, 1 to 3. Yes.
Eric Boohard: Okay. And so this is what I guess I’m trying to figure out. So that number is what you’ve targeted up by single digits for the year. It’s meaningfully behind your units through April. And so what explains the difference between those two and then what eliminates that deficit in May and in June, basically?
Matt Garth: Let me get your math. What you’re basically saying is pricing’s up through April. You expected it to be down. We expected it to be down, which I don’t think that’s the case. And then on the remainder of the year, we have room to make up on units. So pricing’s down year-to-date. That’s in line with what we expected. Units are up year-to-date. That’s what we expected. The net dollars are up less and that’s what we expected. As we move forward, there are big lists coming in May. Between April and May, you have 50% of the year. And so in May, the promotional activity that comes around soils, which by the way, have very attractive margins, almost more like margins, you will see that benefit in the POS numbers. And those are new promotional volumes that we didn’t have last year.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
