Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (HEN3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear investors and analysts, good morning from Düsseldorf, and welcome to our conference call following our announcement this morning. Together, with our CFO, Marco Swoboda, I would like to talk you through the major topics, and of course, also answer your questions. Thank you for joining and for making yourself available really on short notice. Before starting, let me remind everyone that this presentation, as always, is containing the usual formal disclaimer of forward-looking statements, within the meaning of relevant U.S. legislation and that it can be accessed via our website, henkel.com/ir. The presentation and discussion are conducted subject to this disclaimer. I will not read it, we take it as read into the record of this conference call. Let's have a look on what we have announced this morning. First, we published a strong set of preliminary results for 2021. With organic sales growth at the upper end of our outlook range, a stable adjusted EBIT margin of 13.4% and adjusted EPS growth of more than 9%. Second, we provided our outlook for 2022. Here, we expect stronger organic sales growth while earnings will be strongly impacted by unprecedented pressures from higher cost for direct materials and logistics, in particular, in the first half year. Third, and definitely most importantly, we will merge our business unit, Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care to create a strong multi-category consumer platform, Henkel consumer brands. We are leveraging our strength and form a second strong pillar next to our successful Adhesive Technology business with about EUR 10 billion in sales. And we are taking our purposeful growth agenda to the next level. Fourth, we have announced Henkel's first-ever share buyback, a strong signal of our confidence in the financial strength and the future prospects of Henkel with a volume of up to EUR 1 billion until the end of the first quarter of 2023. And finally, our new mid- to long-term financial ambition for the Henkel Group, aiming for an organic sales growth of 3% to 4% and adjusted EBIT margin of around 16% and an adjusted EPS growth by a mid- to high single-digit percentage at constant exchange rates and with differentiated ambitions for both our Adhesive Technologies and the combined Consumer Brands platform. Before explaining our announced strategic initiatives in more detail, let us start with our financials, and here, turning over to you, Marco. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thanks, Carsten. And also good morning to everybody from my side on the call now. Let me provide the preliminary figures for fiscal 2021. We achieved a strong performance with organic growth across all business units and all regions, a stable margin and a very strong increase in earnings per share. Despite a very challenging business environment, with unprecedented disruptions in global supply chains, shortage of raw materials and sharp price increases. So on a preliminary basis now, the group sales increased to EUR 20.1 billion. Organic sales growth was 7.8% with strong volume growth and the contribution from pricing at about 3% in the full year. And compared to the 2019, so the pre-COVID level, this corresponds to a strong 2-year CAGR of 3.5%. Adjusted EBIT improved to EUR 2.7 billion and the adjusted EBIT margin was then stable at 13.4%, supported by strong growth in volumes. And as expected, the exceptional headwinds we have been facing from input cost inflation were not yet fully compensated by our pricing and saving initiatives. Adjusted earnings per preferred share reached EUR 4.56, an increase of 9.2% at constant exchange rates. Taking a closer look now at the performance on business unit level and here all, of course, on a preliminary basis. Henkel's strong top line development was driven by all the 3 business units in particular, Adhesive Technologies, which achieved sales of EUR 9.6 billion. This translates into double-digit organic growth of 13.4%, mainly driven by volume, but also strong pricing. Beauty Care recorded sales of EUR 3.7 billion and organic growth of 1.4%. Here, the continued strong recovery of our professional business was outweighed by a weaker performance of the consumer business. Laundry & Home Care sustained its strong growth with sales of EUR 6.6 billion and an organic sales growth of 3.9%. Now to the bottom line. As mentioned, the margin levels were strongly affected by the drastic and broad-based input cost inflation. Nevertheless, in Adhesive Technologies, we expanded the adjusted EBIT margin by 100 basis points to 16.2%, mainly due to strong volume growth and the corresponding positive operating leverage effect. As outlined in earlier calls, particularly the EBIT margins of our consumer businesses, Beauty Care and Laundry & Home Care were impacted by the extraordinary input cost inflation, which could not be offset by pricing and savings in the supply chain. Now moving on to the outlook. On group level, with these results, we did deliver on our outlook that we gave earlier and that we had updated in mid-November. And the results also compare well to our initial outlook launched in early March last year, which did not reflect the stronger-than-anticipated headwinds from input cost inflation that kicked in, in particular, from Q2 onwards last year. A strong performance of our global team in this challenging environment. Turning now to our outlook for the current year and starting with our expectations with regard to the market environment. Following the sharp decline in global economic growth in 2020, resulting from the pandemic and the significant recovery last year, industrial demand is expected to continue its growth trajectory but at a more normalized pace. Global supply chain constraints will continue also in 2022 across many industries and geographies, especially the automotive sector will continue to be held back by the well-known semiconductor supply crisis. The pandemic situation is expected to ease throughout the year, and we anticipate that consumer behavior and demand will further normalize with varying dynamics in our consumer categories. A decisive factor will be the further development in the raw material and supply markets. We do expect that we will continue to face strained supply chains and limited capacities with unprecedented headwinds from high direct material and logistics costs. And taking these factors now into account, Henkel expects organic sales growth for the group in the range of 2% to 4% in 2022. For Adhesive Technologies, we expect organic sales growth in the range between 5% and 7%. For Laundry & Home Care, we expect organic growth of between 2% and 4%. And for Beauty Care, we anticipate negative organic sales growth in the range between minus 5% and minus 3%. And here of note, in particular, due to measures already decided and an implementation to improve the portfolio including the discontinuation of activities that will not be part of the future core business, amounting to around 5% of the business unit sales in 2021. Our earnings performance in 2022 is expected to be affected by substantial pressures from accelerated costs for raw materials and logistics and outlined the market development that we project earlier. At the same time, we continue to invest in our brands and businesses. By business unit, we expect an adjusted EBIT margin of 15% to 17% in Adhesive Technologies. We do assume that the business unit will be broadly able to compensate heavy input cost pressures with pricing and savings. This is not yet fully the case for Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care. Here, we expect the adjusted EBIT margin to decline versus 2021 levels to 10.5% to 13% and 7.5% to 10%, respectively, as additional pricing measures require more time for implementation. On group level, this results in an adjusted EBIT margin range of 11.5% to 13.5%. And for the adjusted earnings per share, we expect the development of minus 15% to plus 5% at constant exchange rates, wide ranges, which are reflecting the high level of market uncertainty and volatility. Let me provide a bit of context and specific key assumptions and factors to take into account when assessing our outlook. First, on input cost inflation. At the midpoint of the adjusted EBIT margin range of the outlook, we assume direct material prices to increase by a low double-digit percentage on average in 2022 compared to 2021. To put things into perspective, this is equivalent to a gross price inflation of close to EUR 1 billion in absolute terms, a similar magnitude as in 2021. At the lower end of the outlook range, we are assuming a mid-teens percentage increase of direct material prices. And even at the upper end, we are assuming a high single-digit percentage increase. Of course, the teams are working hard to compensate for these extraordinary headwinds through comprehensive countermeasures, including additional pricing as well as savings initiatives. While we expect to compensate a large share of the effects in 2022, we will see the full benefit only in 2023. Obviously, this also depends on the feasibility and the timing of the pricing initiatives. When it comes to the strategic initiatives announced today, the organic sales outlook, as said, includes measures to enhance the portfolio in Beauty Care already planned as part of the merger. They are equivalent to a negative impact of around 5 percentage points on organic sales growth of the business unit. Further benefits and onetime effects from the creation of Henkel Consumer Brands are not yet included in our outlook. And with this, back to you, Carsten.

Thank you, Marco. Dear analysts and investors, today, we announced a major step to further evolve our company. Merging our Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care business units to create Henkel Consumer Brands, one strong multi-category platform as a foundation for future profitable growth, bringing clear benefits for Henkel, our shareholders, customer and teams creating a broader base to further optimize and shape our portfolio and capturing synergies and efficiency gains. With Henkel Consumer Brands, we will leverage our strengths. The integrated consumer platform will be well positioned to actively shape its future in a highly dynamic industry. And I'm convinced that this merger will take our purposeful growth agenda to the next level. On this, 2 years ago, we started a journey. Based on a detailed review of our strengths, but also areas for improvement, we launched our purposeful growth agenda. Our comprehensive strategic framework with 6 pillars and the ambition to shape a winning portfolio, to create competitive edge by accelerating impactful innovations by anchoring sustainability firmly in everything we do and by transforming digital into a value creator; to develop future-ready operating models and to strengthen our collaborative culture with empowered people at the heart. The past 2 years showed that we set the right priorities, leading the way to set the right course for our future. We also announced that we would continue to constantly evolve our purposeful growth agenda, and we did, as you will see in the course of this presentation. But let me briefly summarize what we achieved so far. We will provide a more detailed update on this implementation of our strategic framework in February. We made strong progress along the 6 pillars since the launch of our purposeful growth strategy. We have divested and discontinued brands and businesses with a total sales volume of about EUR 0.5 billion, the target volume we had communicated. In addition, we closed 3 compelling acquisitions to strengthen our businesses. We launched strong innovations across all businesses, supported by a significantly increased investment level compared to 2018, with positive effects on our market share performance. We reached our milestones in sustainability for 2020 and 2021, and we are implementing strong initiatives to advance in fields such as circular economy and climate protection, and we will be raising the bar. In February, we will present our 2030 plus sustainability ambition framework. We achieved strong progress also in digital, increasing the share of digital sales by 50% to more than 80% in the full year 2021 with an important milestone and accelerating our digital transformation is a key priority. Our combined digital unit, Henkel DX is live and in full execution mode. The first phase of operating model changes across our businesses has been implemented and is fully operational. We reorganized our group-wide purchasing function, ensuring optimal alignment to our businesses, customers and markets, and we successfully completed the setup of Henkel dx, I mentioned before, having integrated all digital and IT teams under one roof. Last but not least, and this is a topic that is highly important to me. We continue to make cultural change tangible for every single employee. Our new purpose: Pioneers at heart, for the good of generations is guiding us on our journey towards a collaborative culture with empowered people, strong progress and many achievements we can be proud of. But what is also clear, we are not yet where we want to be. Let us take one step back and reflect on where we are today and on our aspiration. We're a strong global player with leading positions in brands and technologies, both in Adhesive Technologies and in our consumer businesses' Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care, with sales of more than EUR 20 billion, roughly equally split between our industrial and consumer businesses. With our Adhesive Technologies business, we are extremely well positioned as the globally leading solution provider in highly attractive markets. The mega trends, mobility, connectivity and sustainability offer excellent growth opportunities for our products and technologies. We have a unique portfolio of technologies and great application knowhow. The breadth and the depth of our portfolio is second to none in the market, serving numerous industries and regions around the globe, not least, thanks to our clear approach to actively manage also our portfolio. And we built on a strong customer-centric organization and lasting partnerships with companies which are leaders in their respective industries. The teams deliver a convincing financial performance year-over-year, and at the same time, our business offers strong prospects in terms of our future growth and also margin potential. So our Adhesive Technology business is in a very good shape and well positioned for the future, and our ambition is also clear. To fully leverage our strengths and the growth opportunities offered by the mega trends in our end markets in the years to come, organically and via acquisitions, which complement our portfolio, and by that, create value. In our consumer businesses, Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care, the situation is more differentiated. Yes, we do have clear core strengths, but we also see the need for fundamental change. We hold strong positions in attractive markets, which offer substantial size and growth potential to us. In 90% of its country category positions, Laundry & Home Care is the #1 or #2 and has been demonstrating an excellent performance in almost all regions. Our stronghold in Beauty Care is our strong competence in hair, representing 80% of the portfolio with top positions in professional as well as in color and in styling. And we are proud of our wide range of iconic and reowned brands, Persil, Bref, Schwarzkopf and Syoss to name just a few; and of our strong track record of impactful innovations based on our team's deep consumer insights, the technology expertise and our sustainability focus. Strong assets, but overall, we could not translate them in a convincing top and bottom line performance in the past years. As you know, we have been and we are facing challenges in certain segments and markets, particularly in the North American region. Despite the progress in our portfolio management so far, our customer portfolio -- consumer portfolios are not yet focused enough. When reviewing the current setup and challenges to master, we came to the conclusion that by operating Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care as 2 separate business units, they cannot leverage their full potential and lack scale on an individual basis. That being said, the need for change is clear, and we took the decision to act accordingly as part to advance our purposeful growth agenda in order to win the 20s. And there is a clear aspiration to unlock our full potential in consumer in attractive markets by taking a customer and channel-centric approach and leveraging their synergy potential with an optimized portfolio. So we took the fundamental decision to further evolve our company. We will merge our Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care business units to create a stronger platform for growth, one multi-category consumer goods unit forming a second strong pillar next to our successful Adhesives Technology divisions, Henkel Consumer Brands. We will join forces in our consumer goods businesses to create one strong integrated business unit as a foundation for future profitable growth. The integrated Consumer Brands business will bring significant benefits to Henkel, our shareholders, customer and teams and will be well positioned to actively shape its future in a highly dynamic industry. And with this merger, we will take our purposeful growth agenda to the next level, and we will drive growth and profitability of our combined consumer platform and Henkel. Today is the starting point, laying out our plan for the future of Henkel Consumer Brands. And given the relevance, we wanted to inform the market as soon as possible, even if this means we cannot provide all details and be very precise now in quantifying the impact of this strategic step, which I'm sure you are highly interested in. We are committed to transparent communication and will be sharing more details in the coming months. Let us now take a more detailed look on the benefits we see in terms of platform, scale and team. Starting with the platform topic. With Henkel Consumer Brands, we will create one category platform for growth for all our consumer brands and businesses under one roof, including many iconic brands, such as Persil and Schwarzkopf. With the combined size of around EUR 10 billion, the new business unit will be organized around customer and channel centricity with one phase to retailer, trade or channel partners across all consumer categories. Importantly, we are raising the bar on what it takes to be a Henkel business, with clear must-haves for the brands and businesses in our consumer portfolio. First, about leading position; second, healthy gross margin; and third, strong growth. We will provide more background at our results conference on February 23. With the new multi-category platform, we also have the opportunity to step up and shape our portfolio beyond the current level of our active portfolio management. This includes further divestments and discontinuations of noncore brands and businesses so that our teams can focus on products with attractive growth potential and margins. The new platform also enlarges our options in terms of acquisitions by creating a stronger base for M&A across the consumer space. Now on to scale. By integrating both business units, we will join forces to advance in fields critical for success, such as innovation, sustainability and digitalization, and operating one strong multi-category platform with more scale allows us to capture significant synergies and become more efficient and agile as an organization. We expect to achieve these synergies in particular, in areas such as administration, distribution, marketing and supply chain. With this, we will free up substantial resources for higher and more targeted investments in our strategic priorities. For example, in the further digitalization of R&D, enhancing our e-commerce capabilities or in making sustainability, the true differentiator in competition. And ultimately, this will help us to be more successful in a highly volatile environment and support our profile, strengthening both growth and profitability of the new consumer platform. And last but not least, we will form one team to win, under one leadership, taking full ownership and responsibility for results, our combined team will focus on advancing the entire consumer business with delayering leading, to leaner structures as well as to faster and more agile decision-making, which will allow -- which will also be an accelerator of our cultural transformation. As a combined business, we will become an even more attractive employer offering more exciting roles and opportunities for our teams and leaders and also new hires, which brings me to the leadership of the new combined unit. The integration process as well as the new Henkel Consumer Brands business unit will be led by Wolfgang König. Wolfgang has been leading Beauty Care as Executive Vice President since summer 2021. With more than 25 years management and leadership experience and international companies on 3 continents, in the consumer goods, home and personal care industry, he is the perfect fit to form and develop our new Consumer Brands business, of course, together with his new leadership team. And together with Bruno Piacenza, the current Executive Vice President for Laundry & Home Care, who will continue leading the business unit and who will work with Wolfgang to ensure an efficient transition process. Bruno will stay with Henkel latest until the end of 2022. Let me use this occasion to sincerely thank Bruno, also in the name of all colleagues in the management Board, for his outstanding passion and expertise for more than 30 years at Henkel, of which we shared together 26 and for his dedication to successfully lead our Laundry & Home Care business over the past 11 years. In a nutshell, with Henkel Consumer Brands, we will combine our strength in the consumer goods businesses and create one strong multi-category platform for future profitable growth, with significant benefits to Henkel our teams, our shareholders and our customers. Under the leadership of Wolfgang, we raised the bar and focus on brands and businesses with attractive growth potential and margins. We expand our active portfolio management beyond the current level and ensure that our customers will have one contact across all consumer categories. And at the same time, we will create substantial synergies and free up resources for higher investments in sustainability, digitalization and innovation. We also offer more exciting roles and opportunities for our teams, talent and leaders. We will start preparations for the integration process immediately and aim to have the new organization in place and completed latest by beginning of 2023. This strategic move is an important element to advance our purposeful growth agenda, and it contributes to our vision, to win the '20s by outperforming markets through innovative and sustainable solutions. Next to the merger of Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care, we announced another key initiative today, the launch of Henkel's first share buyback program to create value for our shareholders. Marco will share now more details on this. Marco?

Yes. Let's move to capital allocation, which obviously was also a topic of our exchanges we had in the course of last year and is on an ongoing basis. And first, before we go into the details, we basically -- let me start with a broader perspective of our capital allocation. So Henkel's capital allocation strategy focuses on both sustainably strengthening our businesses with investments as well as letting our shareholders participate in the company's success. First, value-enhancing CapEx to further strengthen our operations; and second, -- and we have always been very clear about it, acquisitions, which are an integral part of our strategy and where we follow a stringent approach in order to strengthen our businesses. And third, an attractive dividend for our shareholders, with a target ratio of 30% to 40% and a long-term track record of increased or at least stable dividends since our IPO. Today, we announced to launch a share buyback, the first in Henkel's corporate history. With the share buyback, we enhance shareholder returns and thus create additional value for our investors. At the same time, it underpins our confidence in the future potential of our businesses and the company's financial strength. So what are the specifics of the program? Henkel will repurchase shares in an amount of up to EUR 1 billion. That corresponds to around 3% of the company's capital stock at current share price levels. We'll buy back both preference shares and ordinary shares at a ratio of 80% to 20%, which reflects the current relative trading volumes of the share classes. The program is expected to be carried out in the period from February 2022 until the end of Q1 2023 by the stock market. Importantly, this share buyback will not impact our ability and flexibility in terms of M&A. Also, after the share buyback, we are well positioned to invest into our businesses and pursue strategic acquisitions both in our Consumer Brands and Adhesive Technologies business unit. With that, back to you, Carsten.

Thank you, Marco. Let us now take a closer look at our new mid- to long-term financial ambitions. I said it before, we expect the merger and the creation of Henkel Consumer Brands to be a strong value driver supporting the growth dynamics and margin profile of the new business unit as well as the group. This is also reflected in our new mid- to long-term financial ambition. We raised the bar for the top line and introduce a new ambition for Henkel's profitability. For the group, -- our ambition is to achieve organic sales growth of 3% to 4%, up from the previous 2% to 4% and an adjusted EBIT margin of around 16%, a strong upside to the current level. We now also launched specific mid- to long-term ambitions for our 2 future business units. We aim for 3% to 4% organic sales growth and an adjusted EBIT margin in the mid-teen percentage range for our consumer brands. For Adhesive Technologies, our ambition is to achieve organic sales growth of 3% to 5% and an adjusted EBIT margin in the high-teens percentage range. In terms of adjusted EPS growth for the company, we reaffirmed our mid- to long-term ambition of a mid- to high single-digit percentage increase at constant exchange rates. This also includes value-enhancing M&A, and of course, we will keep our focus on free cash flow expansion. So in summary, a compelling mid- to long-term financial ambition underlining our commitment to purposeful growth. Before we move now to the Q&A, let me outline the next steps. Today is the starting point in taking our purposeful growth agenda to the next level. We announced to merge Laundry & Home Care and Beauty Care to create our joint consumer business unit, Henkel Consumer Brands. As the merger, we'll also have implications on employees around the world, we will now start the information and consultation process with the respective employee representatives in due course. On February 23, we will share further details on the final results of fiscal 2021 as well as updates on the progress and next steps of our strategic agenda for purposeful growth. And we will introduce our new sustainability framework 2030. Further information on the integration process of the 2 consumer business units, the planned additional portfolio measures as well as the additional details, including the expected synergies from the merger, we will provide together with the figures for the first quarter on May 5. With the intent to organize the Capital Market Day presenting both Henkel Consumer Brands as well as our Adhesive Technology business and the teams. Also, hopefully, an opportunity to connect in person here in Düsseldorf, and timing will be announced in due course. With that, let us move to the Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, we are really looking forward to taking your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Guillaume Delmas from UBS.

Carsten and Marco and Lars, I just wanted to check something first and then probably I have 2 questions. The one thing I wanted to check is, am I right to assume that today, you will not quantify the synergies nor provide any kind of split on how much you expect these synergies to be reinvested and how much will drop to the bottom line? Is that the right assumption?

Yes, I thought you wanted to give first your questions, but we can directly also go on that. So first of all, the short answer is, yes, we will not provide today the detailed level of the synergies and also not the split of what goes into investment and what goes into bottom line. On the other side, Guillaume, I think we have clearly presented the new midterm, long-term ambition of our consumer brands business going forward with 3% to 4% top line and mid-teens margin ambition. So therefore, I think, understanding that we wanted to communicate early in terms of what we want to do, but take the time to make the respective clearance on that, and on the other side, give you the outlook in terms of what our mid- to long-term ambition is. And we also need, as I mentioned it before, also to consult with our employee bodies on that.

Very good. So just 2 questions I have here. And the first one is on the operations, you expect to discontinue in Beauty Care in 2022. It seems it will amount to roughly EUR 200 million in turnover. So does it come on top of your previous target of disposing or discontinuing EUR 1 billion in group's turnover, including half of that before the end of 2021? And also because we're talking about discontinuations here for Beauty Care rather than disposals, should we expect some adverse impact on the division's organic sales growth, not just for 2022 but also for early 2023 at least? And then my second question is on your consumer goods portfolio. I mean it seems you're finally trying to address once and for all the underperformance of consumer goods. So I would assume you must have looked at all the options available to you with a very open mind. So curious to hear whether you considered some large business disposals, and in particular, what convinced you to keep at least for now your U.S. consumer goods business, given it's been such a drag on your performance in recent years.

Guillaume, thank you for your 2 questions. Marco, do you want to take the first one and I take the second.

So first question, Guillaume, was whether that roughly EUR 200 million that you said, the 5% impact on Beauty Care comes on top of the previous communicated target of divesting -- discontinuing up to EUR 500 million until end of 2021. So that indeed is coming on top. So we have more or less achieved the previous target end of last year. And that is a new step that we want to take to improve and enhance the portfolio of Beauty Care with various measures, including discontinuations and divestments, but also in the way we run the business and that has an impact of these 5 percentage points on the top line, and of course, we will try to keep also the ongoing impact on 2023. You mentioned as low as possible, but it's now too early to tell. But of course, we are pretty much aware of that, and we will update you as soon as we can in more detail.

And Guillaume, turning to your second question in terms of portfolio overall and also in relation to North America. I think you're absolutely right. The decision, which we have announced today is definitely based on a very comprehensive analysis of different strategic options, also extreme options. And based on these findings of this strategic review, which we did, we are convinced that keeping and further developing our Beauty Care as well our business in North America is the option, which creates the highest value for Henkel and our shareholders. And that value will create one strong multi-category consumer goods unit with the name Henkel Consumer Brands. And with this step, we will leverage our strengths with clear benefits, with regard to the 3 topics I mentioned, platform, scale and team, and for sure, especially the topic of scale will bring us into this situation, raising our bar what should be part of our portfolio going forward. And therefore, it gives us more flexibility, but also a clear path of addressing things which are not meeting our expectations, and I mentioned in my speech, the topics of growth perspective, of margin perspective in terms of gross margin, but also in terms of market position.

Our next question comes from the line of Christian Faitz from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. Just one question left for me, please, on the share buyback program to be implemented. Am I right in assuming that the Henkel family will implicitly increase their stake? Or do you have signals from your biggest shareholder that the family will also sell shares into the program out of their pool?

So Christian, I mean, clear point, we will buy back both preference and ordinary shares. So you're right, implicitly that may mean that also the pool of the family will increase its share. And I have no indication that, that will not be the case. So the pool is a pool, and I'm not aware of any indication that will change.

Maybe there is no indication.

We now have a question from the line of Jeremy Fialko from HSBC.

Jeremy Fialko, HSBC here. A couple of questions from me. First one is talk about the 16% margin target. So if we take the midpoint of your 2022 guidance, clearly, you'll be at around 12.5%. So could you give some sort of a time frame or trajectory as to when you think you'll get there and do you think there would be logically a slightly bigger bounce back in margins in 2023 as you put some of the price rises through? And then the second question is more on the investment that's already gone into the consumer divisions. Clearly, you've put a lot of investments in. You've taken margins down very, very heavily when we look at them relatively, say, 3 or 4 years ago. And yet the performance of the division has still been pretty difficult. So what you just reflect on that investment? What do you think that the investment hasn't paid off? Do you think it's been misdirected. Is there any investment that you can pull back on? I'm just interested to sort of get a bit more perspective on this investment and some of the results or lack of results from it.

So Jeremy, maybe starting with your first one referring to the mid- to long-term ambition margin target of around 16%, and as you're saying, starting from the 12.5% at the midpoint out of the outlook for the year. You know that especially, and Marco alluded to that, that the year 2022 is significantly impacted by the -- again, drastic increase in material prices like we had a similar situation in the year 2021, and we have taken respective measures with countermeasures against that. But I think it's also obvious and clear that we are not able to compensate all of that within the course of 2022. And by that, I think this is, for me, something which we assume will not be in the next couple of years, a similar situation. So therefore, from a timing perspective, our financial ambition is meant to be achieved. As we mentioned over the mid to long term, we are not giving a specific year on that, and it also underpins our strong commitment to generate sustainable profitable growth and attractive returns, in general, going forward. So as I said, we don't specify the time frame as it would not be appropriate, given the prevailing high dynamics and the volatility of the environment I mentioned at the beginning. To your second question in terms of investments, in our consumer business over the last couple of years, I think it is our clear intent to reinvest a part into the consumer business and brands in order to give and drive our growth dynamics and to sustainably strengthen the margin profile and taking the point we increased significantly. When you remember the starting of the purposeful growth agenda, March 2020, we significantly increased our investments in marketing and digitalization, especially with a strong focus on our both consumer businesses, that means beauty and laundry, and if you remember, it was EUR 350 million more than 2018 and EUR 200 million more than 2019. And I think we reported on that, that these investments paid off quite well. We have our issue in the North American Laundry & Home Care portfolio, but all the other countries where I reported, I think also in the last quarter, we have seen record market share gains in most of the countries and that is due to 2 things. That is to the innovations we brought to the market, for sure, the execution, but also the higher level of investments. So therefore, I think this is first that investments have been paying off a similar situation. I mentioned that going into the future, we concentrate and will concentrate on our hair competence which also is related to color, styling and professional and especially color and styling. We have been seeing also good market share developments in combination with increased investments. So from this point of view, I think I can really say that the investments have been paying off. On the other side, we put our portfolio management -- active portfolio management stronger into our focus, which was already done with the roughly EUR 0.5 billion discontinuation and disinvestment topics we reached over the last 2 years, but we also clearly pointed out today that this is an exercise which will not stop and even will be, I would say, accelerated in a way because of the flexibility we are giving ourselves by creating one consumer platform, and by that, raising the bar, what should be part of the portfolio going forward. Hope that helps, Jeremy.

Next question comes from the line of David Hayes from Societe General.

So the first question, just in terms of the margin outlook, sort of dramatic change, 250 to 300 basis points down in consumer. So can you just wonder to when do you start to see that risk? Was it sort of through the fourth quarter and the planning process? Or I guess, more specifically, was it as negotiations with the retailers took place over the last few weeks or so, were you seeing that you weren't going to get the pricing that perhaps that you were hoping to get as early in 2022? And then the second question is around the consumer integration. Again, I guess, similarly, is this something that's been in the review in thinking for a long time? And what -- when you're weighing up that decision, are you perhaps giving up in terms of what's the risk that you're giving up in terms of the current structure? Why was it in place? And what might you missed out on? And then I guess in terms of sort of another subquestion I guess to that, but consumer stand-alone are very clearly. Is it right to say or fair to say that the review may also include eventually splitting those 2 businesses in terms of 2 separate listing? Is that where this potentially goes into the medium term?

So David, maybe we need to come back to the second question because I did not get 100% in which direction you were heading, but maybe starting with the outlook. So first of all -- and maybe it's better that Marco takes that because it is significantly linked to the raw material impact. Maybe, Marco, you take that?

So margin outlook, David. Yes, over recent weeks, I would say the market -- the input cost markets were pretty dynamic. So that plays a very crucial role if you look into Q4 and the course of Q4. I think also here the input markets have dramatically develop further, unfortunately, more to the upside and also partly against many, many forecasts of expert institutions. So we have seen further rises in feedstock cost and consequently also our input cost in the course of the fourth quarter, even continuing into beginning of the year. Of course, we had intensive debates, what can be passed through, not passed through. And here, we also, of course, still need to make a lot of assumptions because negotiations are not all fully through. But what is clear that also the level of input cost inflation is above what was seen earlier and that requires additional measures in terms of pricing, which we then have to also implement in the course of the year. So it's a mixture, as you can see, from different factors. There's still high uncertainty in the numbers. That's why also the range of the outlook is pretty wide or wider than what maybe you are used to. So it's a combination of things, also taking into account the development over the last weeks.

Thank you, Marco. So David, in the meantime, Lars has helped me to understand the second question. So on your question, what has changed, why we are now taking the decision because we believe that this is the best decision for Henkel to generate value and build really a successful future. Because we are convinced that by combining our strengths into one integrated multi-category consumer brands unit, we will be able to develop these businesses much better than on a stand-alone business. With the scalability I already talked about and the efficient platform and the unified teams, we will drive the growth and the profitability. And on the other side, the pandemic over the last 2 years, further accelerated also certain mega trends like digitalization, sustainability, but also distribution channels shifting further to e-commerce, and we gain impact by pooling resources definitely to address these strategic priorities. And at the same time, the new platform, and I think that's an important factor also, enlarges our options in terms of M&A by creating also a stronger basis for acquisitions across the consumer space in that setup. So maybe that's to your second part. And to the third one, when you were talking about a first step in terms of split up or 2 separate units, the clear answer is no. We are convinced and partly, for sure, I'm repeating myself now, but we are convinced that of the attractiveness of our Beauty Care business and our Laundry & Home Care business. With our strong brands, we hold leading positions in many categories and markets. 80% of the Beauty Care portfolio is focused on hair. I mentioned it before, top positions here, especially in professional worldwide #2/3, coloration #2, styling in the active markets in which we are #1. And in our Laundry & Home Care business, with 90% of our business category positions, we are occupying #1 and #2 positions. And therefore, we firmly believe that combining these strengths into one integrated consumer brands unit where we'll be able to develop these businesses much better than stand-alone. And in Adhesive Technologies, we are a clear global leader with an unparalleled breadth of technologies and competence. And being active in these different business areas with different exposures has helped us to steer our company also successfully through unprecedented global crisis. And on top, I think the opportunity, the combined size also gives us the opportunity to fund larger acquisitions in both business units compared if it would be a stand-alone or a split business.

That's great. Just a quick follow-up. Just in terms of the decision on consumer integration, I guess just in terms of timing, I mean was this something that was kind of in the stepping stones right back in 2019? Where we invested EUR 350 million, or take out the portfolio or change the portfolio. The next step will be what we're hearing today? Or is this something that's kind of come about in the last 6 months because, again, things have changed slightly and do you think that's now the next step?

Now the next step, David, I think when we were going out in March 2020 with our purposeful growth agenda and with the framework, I think it was clear that within the environment in which we are in, the world is quite -- is changing definitely more drastic and more dramatic than it has been 5 or 10 years before. That means we did not only rely on that strategic framework. In parallel, we continued to talk about strategic topics within the company. We launched mid of last year, our new purpose, and for sure, we also started the question of portfolio strategies in parallel to that. And today is the outcome, having a comprehensive review on all the things. And it's not delinked with our purposeful agenda. It's linked because, as I said, I mentioned it, it's for us to take the purposeful growth agenda to the next level. I think a normal process, I think management is needed to take care.

We now have a question from the line of Iain Simpson from Barclays.

A couple of questions from me, if that's okay. Firstly, you talked about how as a result of the resets you've made in the last couple of years, you're making record market share gains. I wondered if you could highlight any sort of category, geography combinations that you felt were performing, especially strongly. I have in my head that emerging market laundry is doing pretty well, but it'd be great if you could give some details given that the market data is a little bit patchy outside of the U.S.? And then secondly, I wondered if I could just dig into your comment that you think you maximize value by retaining U.S. Laundry and Retail Beauty, if I understood you correctly. By maximizing value, do you mean relative to a DCF valuation of these assets? Because obviously, sometimes there can be a case that something perhaps has a bigger impact on sort of valuation multiple and share price than would be the case if you're just looking at a DCF perspective. So any color you can give as to what you mean by value there would also be very helpful.

Yes, maybe I start -- I can start, for sure, with the first question, the topic of market share. I want also to be precise, when I talked about the record market shares, I was relating that to our Laundry & Home Care in countries besides the U.S. only to be clear. But within that, I think the -- my statement is absolutely correct. And the good thing is this is really across the categories, which we see in Laundry & Home Care. So it's related to the laundry, but also to home care. It's related to our toiletry category. It's related to additives. It's related to heavy-duty detergents. So we're really across categories. And I think that's, for me, really the important factor that we have been driving that really across categories. In Beauty Care, it's not so much about all the categories here. It's more related to the 2 I pointed out, which is styling and color. Maybe that helps on that. To your second question in terms of maximizing the value. There are different -- I would say, we can have 2 answers. One Marco will give because of your specific question when it comes to DCF but maximizing the value was also related to the point that we looked into really within the strategic review in different options. I mentioned also extreme options on that and maximizing the value in that sense means really that we give ourselves the opportunity, and I mentioned it before, to be more flexible and to have a broader range of opportunities when it comes to optimizing our portfolio in which we are in, means raising the bar and having a decision on what is part of our portfolio and not. And with this, I don't want to speculate now because we are doing this review, and we will come to -- back to you what that in concrete terms means what kind of portfolio parts we believe we should have in that portfolio and whatnot. That's the one answer. And Marco, maybe you take the one which is more DCF related.

Good. So clear the statement made, and we do maximize value, first of all, is based on the analysis we have done also on a DCF basis. So it's clear. But we're also not blind on the valuation of the share price. It's also clear. We do believe in the long term, DCF is the right indicator and that is associated with our clear goal of also enhancing the performance of the laundry business in the U.S. where we are not happy with the performance, as we had outlined earlier, and we are working on measures to improve that. And as soon as possible, of course, we'll also further update you on that. And of course, we do that more comprehensive portfolio analysis also of the combined unit, that is one of our tasks ahead. And as soon as we have here the outcome, we will also update you on that together with the details of the merger.

Just to make sure I've understood you correctly, and apologies. Are you saying that for now, there's a decision to retain assets because you believe that maximizes value, but that you are as part of building this new consumer goods unit doing a strategic review of what goes into that unit, meaning that there might potentially be further disposals down the line, but who knows, we'll have to wait what the strategic review comes back with. Is that correct?

No, we will look at the portfolio on a very granular level. I think Carsten outlined that also, and then we will also take further actions and the first set of measures we had communicated in terms of scope for the Beauty Care division. And of course, we will look also in the other fields of business and see what specific activities will not be part of the future portfolio. As soon as we have that, we'll give you also a further update on that.

Thank you very much for your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now hand over to Mr. Knobel for his closing remarks.

So first of all, thank you for your questions. And by that, also let me close our presentation with the key takeaways. So we will create one strong multi-category consumer goods unit, Henkel Consumer Brands. We will leverage our strength with clear benefits with regard to platform, scale and team, the strong second pillar next to our successful Adhesive Technology business unit fueling growth and profitability. We will launch Henkel's first share buyback with a total volume of up to EUR 1 billion. We achieved strong preliminary results for fiscal 2021, delivering on our guidance. We provided the outlook for 2022. We anticipate strong top line dynamics, despite additional portfolio measures and Beauty Care already decided, while the bottom line is really affected by unprecedented headwinds from higher raw materials and logistics costs. And we have introduced our new mid- to long-term financial ambition, emphasizing our commitment to drive our top and bottom line performance, fueled by the implementation of our purposeful growth agenda, which we will evolve with our measures to further shape our company. And with this, I would like to thank you really for joining and taking the time for our call today also on short notice. The next event will be as planned. The full year results conference call on Feb 23. Take care. Stay safe, and stay healthy. Thank you. Bye-bye.