The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript - Page 5 of 7 - InvestingChannel

The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I think, the team is accepting the reality of an extended or expanded price gap versus private label as the challenge they need to deal with. And as Jon frequently says, we wake up every Monday morning and deal with the reality in front of us. This is a reality we need to deal with.So, what that means is we need to create innovation. We need to create product and packaging innovation, communication strategies and in-market executions that are able to provide value to consumers and retailers. And that’s what we’re focused on. I don’t think that trying to eliminate the price differential is a meaningful and helpful strategy for us. But if we can generate growth via innovation and via superiority, that’s both helpful for us and the market and the path forward we’re choosing.Jon Moeller I couldn’t agree more.

And frankly, while Andre rightly points to a difficult consumer environment, if you look at our results thus far in Europe, they’re very encouraging, not just in the last quarter, but through last fiscal year as well. We’re achieving growth rates in Europe that are higher than we’ve seen in a long time. And so, now is not the time to back off. It’s time to move forward and strengthen the execution, just as Andre described.That doesn’t mean we have our heads in the sand. We’ve made several adjustments to price gaps, not just versus private label, but versus branded competition as we’ve gone through this period of pricing, and we need to continue to be sensitive to that. But first and foremost, we need to delight consumers and customers with the offerings that we’re bringing to market and go from there.Operator The next question comes from Jason English of Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.Jason English Hey, good morning, folks. Thanks for just letting me in, and congrats on strong results. A couple of quick questions. So, first on pricing. Can you give us some more quantification on perhaps breadth than magnitude? And when you blend it all together, what sort of order of magnitude should we expect at consolidated level in terms of organic sales contribution going forward?And then, secondly, SG&A, love to see the reinvestment back in the business. But really sharp sequential change both in terms of year-on-year for overall SG&A and just sequential dollar step up. Can you unpack a bit more kind of where the money is? What’s — where the extra investment is going?Andre Schulten Yes, good morning, Jason. Pricing magnitude, the latest round of pricing is fairly consistent with what you would have seen in the past, but it’s very tailored to the market as we said before.

Mid-single digits, I think, is the ballpark I would give you for the latest increase. And I think pricing over time will move back to be a contributor to top-line, but not the sole contributor to top-line. So, we need — and the market needs to find a balance here over the next few quarters to return to modest volume growth and pricing contribution to return these categories to mid-single digit growth. That’s what we’re working towards.On the SG&A line, look, a lot of our reinvestment is driven by innovation timing, so when are the right initiatives in market to double down on. They are driven by pricing timing. So, when do we and can we support our brands as we take pricing and drive innovation. What I would tell you is the latest push we had as a management team to our earlier discussion was to really double click on our sufficiency in Europe and to see how high is up, what — how hard can we push, especially the media and communication side in terms of value communication across Europe.

So that’s the one area I will give you where we paid a lot of attention over the last three, four months.Jon Moeller I would just add one thing. It’s our category leaders that determine the level of investment that we’re making at any point in time. And prior to this quarter, just as you go back in time, there were more situations where we weren’t able to fully supply demand. And, obviously, those are situations that you — you continue to invest in mental awareness and — but not spike that investment, because you can’t supply it. And as we get into an increasingly better supply environment as we did in the last quarter, you resume a level of spending now that you can fully support it. So that’s a part of the dynamic in addition to the dynamic that Andre described.Operator The next question comes from Mark Astrachan of Stifel.

Please go ahead.Mark Astrachan Yes, thanks, and good morning everyone. Wanted to ask sort of related two-part question more about U.S., but I suppose you could talk globally if relevant. How sticky do you think this strategy of irresistible superiority is in terms of volumes? Obviously, we see that you’re gaining share if you look at the U.S. So, you’re effectively trading consumers to higher-value products that work better than peer sets, right? So, it would suggest then there’s a stickiness here that perhaps didn’t exist in kind of prior cycles. So, I’d be curious how you think about that and how it flows through from a volume standpoint going forward?And related to that on just the volumes, what’s your best guess as to why volumes are down from a consumer standpoint?

Is the pantry destocking, unloading? Does that imply that they’re potentially as reloading at a later time if and when consumer sentiment improves? Thanks.Andre Schulten Hey, Mark. I’ll take the first crack. I think the concept of irresistible superiority is: A, dynamic and must-be dynamic; and B, is relevant across value tiers. So, as consumers get more careful with their spending for example, that just means we need to double down on our view of what superiority and some of our lower value tiers means.So, if you think about diapers in the U.S. for example, we have Luvs, which is about half the price of a Swaddlers diaper. And that means that we need innovation on Luvs, because we’re now competing with private label and we need to make sure as consumers look for value, that brand can stand on its own from a product, packaging, communication and retail execution standpoint to provide value to those consumers.So, it’s really not a strategy that by default drives trade up.

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