Kellanova (K) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. It's a shame we can't be together in sunny Florida, but we certainly appreciate your interest in Kellogg Company. In our short time here today, I'll lead off with a brief discussion about what has changed and what has not changed since last year's CAGNY. And then I'll invite a few of our senior leaders to discuss 3 capabilities and strengths that we had been building up prior to the pandemic but that have become even more impactful since the crisis. These are data and analytics, innovation and sustainability. Then I'll wrap up with some thoughts on why we are a stronger company today than we were just 1 year ago and why we are so confident in our outlook for steady, balanced financial delivery. We'd like to convey to you why we are more confident than ever that we are on a path of balanced growth. But first, a reminder that certain statements made today, such as projections for Kellogg Company's future performance, are forward-looking statements and that actual results could be materially different from those projected. It's been an unbelievable 12 months since we last met here at CAGNY. For everyone, the year 2020 was a year like none other, and hopefully, one that will never be repeated. A year ago, we stood on this virtual podium and explained where we stood on our strategic time line. We reduced costs during 2014 through 2017, which funded the return to top line growth delivered with the deployment of our Deploy for Growth strategy in 2018 and '19. The plan was to carry this top line momentum into 2020, moving more toward a balance of financial delivery, a balance between top line growth, profit margin expansion, investment for the future and consistent growth in profit and cash flow, the kind of balanced growth that can be sustained year in and year out in a way that dependently creates value for our shareowners. And in 2020, we did just that. We returned to balanced financial delivery right on schedule. The pandemic only accelerated that growth and made it more difficult to execute. Our priorities had to change immediately. Keeping employees safe was job number one, requiring investment and changes to how we work. Supplying the world with food became more urgent and more challenging. Aiding our communities, which has always been in the Kellogg DNA, took on added urgency as well. We did this effectively with a special culture of Kellogg truly shining through, as employees remained as engaged and industrious as ever, caring for one another and delivering on the responsibilities and objectives in spite of all the distractions. In short, we executed and we delivered. Supply chain showed incredible resourcefulness and resilience, demonstrating the benefits of scale and flexibility as we boosted production in order to fill store shelves. Sales and marketing demonstrated similar agility and creativity, having to replan the entire 2020 commercial plan around the crisis. Sponsorships and promotions had to be canceled or changed, delayed shelf resets, pushed back innovation launches. Advertising had to be delayed and its messaging refined. In the marketplace, we improved our competitive positions around the world, gaining share as we outpaced our categories and increasing household penetration. This reflected our ability to supply the market as well as our refined brand messaging and our decision to increase advertising in the second half. And in spite of substantial incremental costs, significant declines in away-from-home and on-the-go occasions and very challenging economic conditions in emerging markets, we delivered on a financial outlook that was raised twice during the year. We also deleveraged our balance sheet well ahead of our internal plan, giving us enough financial flexibility to resume increasing cash return to shareowners a year early through both an increase in our dividend and a resumption of share buybacks. So despite all the uncertainty around us, medically, socially, politically, we emerge from 2020 in stronger condition. For example, we experienced a sampling event like none other, increasing our household penetration across key categories. We did not let up on communicating with consumers. In fact, we stepped it up during the past 6 months. With e-commerce that much more important to shoppers now, we are poised to continue to benefit from the infrastructure and capabilities we had enhanced over the past couple of years. We also can point to a year of balanced financial growth under our belts. Even if you were to exclude a reasonable estimate of net benefit related to COVID, our 2020 results featured a balance between organic net sales growth, expansion of gross profit margin, growth in earnings and improved conversion of net income into cash flow. And as we discussed a few days ago in our Q4 earnings release, our outlook for 2021 assumes a continuation of this balanced underlying growth, even if made less obvious by the noise of 2020's COVID impacts and 53rd week. And finally, we come into 2021 with greater financial flexibility, thanks to the strength of our cash flow and the deleveraging of our balance sheet. These are just a few of the more visible ways we're emerging stronger than a year ago. Let me turn it over to a few of our leaders to give you some color around other ways we believe we are stronger, starting with data and analytics and our Chief Growth Officer, Monica McGurk.

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. The pandemic has heightened the importance of the investments we've made in recent years to build and deploy global, purposeful, next-generation data and analytics capabilities. These capabilities are key to our ability to agilely and efficiently execute and win in the market. A few areas of particular importance. Kellogg's Family Rewards, the loyalty program we've been running since 2012 gives us proprietary first-party data with over 33 million addressable U.S. households and another 25 million internationally. In conjunction with other D2C platforms and brands, this gives us a huge advantage and understanding of our consumers' habits and attitudes. Our Keystone data platform brings together these data with other consumer data sources such as social, customer data like point-of-sale and contextual data such as weather, creating a more holistic set of data from which to analyze and draw conclusions. Kube is a set of technologies and processes we developed in 2016 as a way to generate real-time analysis and optimization of media and content. Kubes are now deployed in every region, and they have helped us improve ROIs by showing consumers content they want to see, when and where they want to see it and adjusting content on the fly. We've also greatly enhanced our capabilities in e-commerce, which does not only foster growth but also throws off great data with which we can capitalize on our capabilities. All of these capabilities have been enhanced by the growth of advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities both in-house and through strategic partners. Let's take a closer look at the way we are putting these capabilities to good use. Increased at-home consumption during COVID has resulted in increased household penetration across our portfolio, presenting us with an excellent opportunity for reappraisal of our brands. Around the world, we've been able to leverage our data and analytics capabilities to take advantage. Let me give you a couple of examples. Increased idle time during COVID has accelerated shifts into gaming and social media platforms such as TikTok. We saw in the data a rise of content deploying challenges and contests. Pringles Europe's always-on communications model enabled a real-time response to those changes. We launched a #PlayWithPringles campaign to drive awareness, calling on users to generate their own content with a call to action to get creative with the Pringles can. Then when Kube signals showed record-making results in our initial market, we took it across more of Europe. With 4 billion views and over 20x the TikTok benchmark and 1 million or more user videos, this campaign has outperformed all benchmarks for engagement, awareness and user-generated content submission and has been hailed by TikTok as among the best creative campaigns of the year. And this agility is paying off in business performance. In Russia, one of the follow-on markets for this campaign, for instance, Pringles has experienced double-digit consumption growth and increased share in 2020. Here's another example, one that's only recently been implemented in U.S. Cereal. We tapped into 10 billion or more data points to identify new households and behaviors and then identified distinct patterns of demographic and geographic clusters at the ZIP code level. The resultant insights led to tactics used to retain these new households, such as hyper-targeted YouTube video campaigns aimed at growing cohorts. The first of these geo-targeted campaigns has come back exceeding benchmarks for audible and visible completion by 50%, a great sign for cohort retention across our cereal brands. In addition to using data and analytics to inform consumer-targeting and choice of media, we also use this capability to modify content, effectively personalizing it for the targeted consumer. We are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver consumers content they most want to see. Our targeted personalized approach demonstrates how we are optimizing allocation of spend to maximize media and content ROI. A great example of this is our leading Nutri-Grain cereal brand in Australia. Nutri-Grain was able to take a core creative concept centered around active lifestyles and outdoor activity, which has surged during COVID, tailoring an ad with custom visuals and text based on the blogs and social content that consumers were interacting with. This mass personalization at scale drove nearly 25% reduction in digital production costs and 120% improvement in content effectiveness. We're using data and analytics to capture and retain new cohorts, engage across occasions and deepen our relationships, growing share of wallet and loyalty to win with the consumer. And these capabilities are just as critical to winning with our retailer customers, many of whom are capturing growth from e-commerce during this pandemic period. E-commerce had already been growing in importance for us every year, and then came COVID. We've seen a step change in shopper behavior during the COVID crisis. And as a result, our e-commerce business has doubled as a percentage of our global retail sales to about 8.5% in fiscal year 2020. With digital resources and fundamentals in place, we were ready for this. COVID simply accelerated our digital growth and has provided us with yet another source of data and insight, making it another environment to which we can apply machine learning and advanced analytics. Machine learning is driving execution of our business with large retail dot-com customers as it helps us automate and optimize e-commerce search, for example. In a pilot with Bear Naked, we used machine learning to optimize search, adapting campaign times and page placements, decreasing cost per click by nearly 40%, increasing winning share of paid search for the term granola from 4% to 85% and driving year-over-year sales growth of 112%. These learnings are now being expanded across all brands on a customer-specific basis. Similarly, with a third-party partner in the United States, we are able to glean signals that predict risk of out-of-stocks with a leading e-commerce customer. That signal triggers a series of actions: buyer notification for reordering, demand forecast updates and changes to any promotional activity slated for that item. This protects our inventory position and our search rankings, which are tied to in-stock position, while ensuring promotional spend effectiveness. While these examples clearly show how data and analytics help us win with customers, they also give you a peek at how these capabilities also improve our operational effectiveness, countless examples of which we look forward to sharing with you in the future. Of course, all of these capabilities are part of a rich mix of traditional and new media, contributing to always-on engagement and to the big event-driven activations exemplified by another Super Bowl appearance this year for Pringles. This activation featured everything from fantastic outlet executions to home delivery by drone, to a new visual identity for Mr. P. And with the commercial, a big dose of much-needed humor for homebound football fans. So in summary, we are at the forefront of using data and analytics to target consumers, refine content, improve at the point-of-sale and measure more effectively. We are testing and learning rapidly on our own and with an ecosystem of partners to evolve these capabilities. And these applications are just the tip of the spear for how machine learning and artificial intelligence are transforming our go-to-market approach. These capabilities are foundational to how we've responded during the pandemic and the dynamic circumstances we face, giving us the opportunity, and indeed, the requirement to accelerate their use and effectiveness. We can do things today we couldn't have imagined 5 years ago, and the possibilities are endless. These capabilities give us confidence in our ability to lock in and build from many of the gains we've experienced during this pandemic period. Now to give you an update on our equally exciting pipeline of product and package innovation, I'll turn it over to our SVP of Global R&D and Innovation, Dr. Nigel Hughes.

Thanks, Monica. Greetings, everyone. As we pivoted to Deploy for Growth, a key element was rebuilding our innovation pipeline and capabilities. So what do we do differently? Well, we've revamped our whole end-to-end innovation capability to focus on our core food design skills: investing in culinary to get closer to the real food experience; sensory, to equitably learn with the consumer; a design studio and rapid process lab to speed up our prototyping; a scaled-up pilot, which is now certified to make salable food; and finally, our Menuvation Center at The Hatchery in Chicago to showcase our foods with partners and customers. These changes give us a real leg up on the competition because they allow us to hit trends, influence new trends and grow our business. They've transformed our ability to innovate. And COVID has been an accelerant of their use and effectiveness, and we're really proud of the outcome. 2019 was our strongest year of innovation since 2012, both in terms of contribution to the top line and in market impact. We built on previous successes with Coco Pops, Frosted Flakes, Pringles and our granola range, whilst creating a number of wholly new platforms like Snap'd and Bites from which we can continue to innovate. 2020 performance was impacted by reduced industry-wide customer uptake of innovation. But we continue to deliver winning foods from the frozen Eggo cereal and Cheez-It Extra Cheesy in the U.S., Tresor in Europe, new noodles flavors in Africa. To locally relevant options, like Green Onion Chex in Korea and the Panaderia line in Mexico. And also new platforms like our Jumbo Snax cereal range. And of course, Incogmeato, which was developed from scratch in record time. And we're using our new capabilities to emerge even stronger in 2021 and beyond. By leveraging the rich data and analytics that Monica just shared with you, we can get ahead of changes in consumer attitudes during the COVID pandemic, and we are very well placed to support these changes with our foods. You can effectively break our 2021 innovation into 3 areas. The first is simple enjoyment. Our consumers continue to look for simple enjoyment from and we continue to bring news to our current brands through great-tasting variants, like our Pringles Scorchin' hot flavors, Homestyle Rice Krispies Treats, Eggo-stuffed Pancake Bites and a whole range of Tresor snacks. And we're bringing back a real family favorite with Smorz Cereal. The second area is well-being. There has been a significant rise in overall interest in health and well-being. We're addressing this through 0 or low-sugar variants of our foods across the globe and a range of keto-friendly and plant-based protein foods. In addition, many consumers are turning their attention to their gut health and the support of their immune system. Our whole fiber range is perfectly placed for this, and we're leading with our fiber Did You Know education program, alongside food launches like All-Bran Prebiotic in Europe, Special K fiber and our gut health range in Japan. These all have their roots in our Happy Inside experiment of a couple of years ago. And then there's another area that even merits its own mention, our Morningstar Farms range of plant-based foods. Remember, we are extremely well placed for consumers' move towards plant-based eating because we have an overall portfolio that is 86% pure plant-based. This includes a meat alternative, plant-based protein range in Morningstar Farms and its recently launched subline, Incogmeato. In 2021, we will launch innovation across the whole of this range, from Veggie Meatballs and Bites to our new Incogmeato Chik'n Nuggets and Bites. Experimentation and quick market feedback are at the core of our revamped innovation approach, and we'll continue to get new ideas out. Some good examples of this are on this slide. First, we're bringing Cheez-It into new markets. Our launch into Canada in 2020 was our first serious goal at international expansion of this beloved U.S. brand, and it's off to a terrific start giving us learnings for similar expansions of U.S. Foods. And right now, Cheez-It is hitting shelves in Brazil. The other 2 examples on this slide are tests for what could become big ideas. We've launched a direct-to-consumer range, MWell, another learning lab for us in the proactive well-being space. And we're testing a fully recyclable paper Pringles can in cooperation with a major retailer in Europe. This will give us great firsthand feedback on how to optimize our innovation and create value for our consumers, our customers and us. A great example of leveraging sustainability with a learning-by-doing approach. In summary, we've transformed our capabilities, putting food and food design at the center, which has provided the tools to rebuild our innovation pipeline and then to support active experimenting into new and bold innovation areas. So we enter '21 with a strong pipeline of launches for this year and for years to come, centered on the key areas of taste, well-being and plant-based protein, all of which are areas in which we have the expertise, the brands and the food to win in the marketplace. Now I'll turn it over to Amy, who will discuss another strength of Kellogg, sustainability.

Thanks, Nigel, and hello, everyone. Kellogg Company has always been a purpose-driven organization. It's in our DNA. Our founder, W.K. Kellogg, was an early conservationist, a leading philanthropist and an original well-being visionary. With this legacy, we've inherited his commitment to purpose, and this commitment starts with our Board. We have had a subcommittee of our Board dedicated to social responsibility and public policy since the 1970s. Importantly, this work is fully integrated into our Deploy for Growth business strategy. Sustainability is an enabler to balance growth. It supports our bottom line through cost-savings initiatives and risk mitigation while supporting our commercial strategy to deliver top line growth. People today want to live their values through their purchases, and our purpose-driven brands deliver for consumers and the planet. Our portfolio and practices resonate strongly with consumers the world over. Today, this work comes to life through our Kellogg's Better Days commitment to address the interconnected issues of well-being, hunger relief and climate resiliency, and creates better days for 3 billion people and the planet by 2030. Under this commitment, we drive progress on nourishing our foods, feeding people in need, nurturing our planet and living our founder's values. We don't have time to review all of these goals today, but you can see them here. But suffice it to say, we have targets and plans behind all of them, and we don't set our aspirations lightly. To make sure we're meeting the expectations of all of our stakeholders, we are leading in transparency and disclosure. We were one of the earliest adopters of the evolving sustainability reporting standards in food, reporting on corporate responsibility for well over a decade. Every year, we provided detailed tracking of our commitments, goals and progress. We were one of the first U.S. food companies to report environmental indicators in our 10-K public filing. We not only lead with our actions around sustainability, we lead with our disclosures as well. Through Better Days, we've made significant progress on our sustainability journey, as you can see by the example shown on this slide. But we're not stopping there. We set Science Based Targets to reduce greenhouse gas emission. We've significantly exceeded our 2020 target and have reduced scope 1 and 2 emissions by more than 25% since 2015. And today, we're proud to announce that Kellogg will achieve over 50% renewable electricity to address Kellogg manufacturing globally by the end of 2022. And now more than ever, we need to bring that to life for our consumers. As you can see, strong trends about consumer interest in sustainability and purpose have boomed in the face of COVID. People want to use their food choices to demonstrate their values, their commitment to people, community and planet. First, there's our packaging. The majority of our packaging is recyclable paper and cardboard, and 76% of our packaging volume overall is recyclable today. Many CPG companies utilize hundreds of thousands of metric tons of plastic packaging. In contrast, we have one of the smallest plastic packaging footprints among peer food companies. In fact, it takes us a full year to use as much plastic as a leading beverage company uses in just 2 weeks. We even sell over 300 million servings a year in both distribution models without consumer packaging at all. Then there is our food. We know that eating a plant-diverse diet is good for people and the planet because plant-based foods support physical well-being and require less land and water to produce. Across Kellogg globally, we're proud that 86% of our recipes are plant-based today. Think of how favorably that compares with other global CPG and food companies. And we're doubling down on plant-based to drive growth. In 2020, 100% of our breakthrough innovation launches globally were plant-based. And think what that means for the consumer. Publicly available research tells us that when consumers are seeking climate-friendly meals, they can turn to veggie protein and even to cereal. Generally, emissions from the production of a bacon breakfast sandwich could be as much as double the greenhouse gas emissions compared to cereal and milk, a simple choice that can make a big difference. Simply put, our plant-based portfolio of brands and foods puts us at an advantage versus the competition for attracting consumers concerned about the environment. It also provides our retail partners a smart way to achieve both their financial and CSR goals by growing with our portfolio of climate-smart, on-trend food. Consumers and customers alike expect brands like ours to step up to the plate and innovate to deliver foods and brands that speak to those shared values. Kellogg is well positioned to win with these consumers. Our brands like Morningstar Farms, W.K. Kellogg and Kashi are focusing on their impact and purpose. As Nigel mentioned, we're doubling down on our purpose-led innovation with Incogmeato and with sustainable packaging. We recently launched recycle-ready packaging for Pop Tarts bites and Nutri-Grain bites in small format stores. We were first to market with recycle-ready pillow bags for cereal in the U.S., and we're testing a 100% recyclable Pringles can in Europe. Again, we're partnering closely with our retail customers, helping them achieve their sustainability goals and creating effective ways to bring this to life to their stores. For instance, we're showcasing our support of local farmers and finding ways to help shoppers go packaging-free. We continue to be recognized for our progress by the most trusted experts. Kellogg is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability and FTSE4Good indices. We're also on Barron's list of Top 100 Most Sustainable Companies, among Ethisphere's Most Ethical Companies and named a Top 50 Company for Diversity by DiversityInc. As we emerge from this pandemic, we know that being a company with a strong purpose and strong performance is key to balanced growth that will benefit our shareholders, employees, community and the planet. And now I'll turn it back to Steve for closing remarks.

Thanks, Amy. So in summary, through all the external upheaval of 2020, we focused on what was critical to keep our employees safe, supply the world with food and aid our communities. But the pandemic also amplified the importance of so many aspects of our company that we have been strengthening under our Deploy for Growth strategy. As a result, we are certain that we are a stronger company today than we were just 1 year ago when we last spoke to you at CAGNY. Our brands are stronger, and you can see this in our share positions. More households are enjoying our products. This is evident in our penetration and buy rates. And it is giving us the chance to influence them to stick with us long after the pandemic passes. Our capabilities are stronger. You heard just about 3 of them today: our data and analytics, our innovation and our actions around sustainability. Our balance sheet is stronger. This is giving us increased financial flexibility that not only enables returning more cash to share owners but could also enable us to continue to shape our portfolio. And we're solidly back to balanced growth. We delivered balanced growth in 2020 and our 2021 plan has us continuing that balance on a 2-year basis. We are squarely focused on continuing to execute well and deliver against our long-term strategy, and we are confident in the value this will create for our shareowners. So thank you for your time and your interest. We look forward to chatting more during our Q&A breakout session.