Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KMB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley's household products and beverage analyst. And just before we begin, a quick disclosure, please see the Morgan Stanley research website at www.morganstanley.com for our research disclosures. And with that, I'm very pleased to welcome Nelson Urdaneta, Kimberly-Clark's CFO; and Chris Jakubik, Head of Investor Relations for this fireside chat today. Thanks for being here, guys. We appreciate it.

Thanks, Dara. Thanks for having us.

So going back to your Analyst Day in March, you announced some organizational changes to drive greater top line growth as well as greater productivity. Can you just give us an update on those initiatives? Also how much should they play out specifically in 2025 in terms of driving top line and profit growth versus perhaps taking some more time to see than playing out longer term beyond 2025?

Sure, Dara. So a few things. We're migrating the enterprise from a historically largely decentralized business to more of a balanced matrix-ed organization. This should enable us to better leverage our scale in key areas of the supply chain, innovation, marketing and commercial execution. This is a journey that many CPG leading companies have taken, and now it's our turn. As we think about it, we're seeing -- starting to see the payback of these changes this year as it's been progressing. And as we execute our strategy over the next few years, it should ramp up. In the course of 2024, we have been laying the foundations for the changes, and we're beginning to see a more balanced and sustainable growth. First, we've shifted to a volume plus mix-led growth supported by our pioneering innovation. We've ramped up our investments behind technologies that are addressing unmet consumer needs. And we're also ramping up our productivity delivery, and that's allowing us to accelerate our investments behind our brands. And we're also bringing greater focus in the organization globally as we drive our new organizational model that has gone live October 1 of this year. Looking into 2025, we will build upon the foundation we've laid in 2024, and we will bring the global might to the local fight. We will be institutionalizing agile ways of working to be able to drive more focus and leverage our scale and expertise globally. We will be investing to ensure that we have superior product offerings at all rungs of the good, better, best ladder country by country, category by category. We will continue to launch new-to-the-world technologies that are addressing unmet consumer needs. And last but not least, we will drive our supply chain transformation which will deliver significant savings from a productivity standpoint that will allow us to continue to invest back in the business and also expand our margins.

Okay. Great. That's helpful. And as you think about the organization or culturally, do you think you've sort of seeded these changes already? Or is there more work to do in terms of implementing them? How do you think through that?

That's a great question. And it is a big transformation of the business. And it -- we started working on it as we implemented the new organizational structure, and we just -- we didn't turn a switch on October 1. We announced the new organizational structure, and we were going to migrate back on our March 27 Investor Day, and we started doing the work to get that done. The reality is it's going to be a multiyear journey because we are rewiring our organization for growth, and that's a change management process that's underway. But we're very pleased with where we're at, at this stage.

Right. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe turning to top line growth. Your new algorithm from the March Analyst Day is to outperform category growth, which is typically 2% to 3%. But if we strip out Argentina hyperinflation recently, we've seen more muted organic sales growth the last couple of quarters. So just help us get some perspective there. What's occurring in the organization? Just to help us understand the path forward as we think about growth going forward and what the implications are going forward from the recent growth that you posted.

Yes. So at a high level, in 2024, we are lapping the pricing actions that we took in the prior couple of years to maneuver through the highly inflationary environment that we were all facing globally. And what we've seen in the first 9 months of the year is basically a volume plus mix-led growth that we have been talking about. We've also -- as we went through the first 9 months of the year, our organic sales grew right around 4%, with both volume plus mix being positive, rounded about 1 point each. And we've also seen improvement in our market share performance as our innovation has been launched into the market and is working effectively to solve consumer needs. On Q3, in particular, if we look at North America, our in-market consumption of personal care and consumer tissue was 3.2%, ahead of the category by about 40 basis points, which is very positive. And then it's looking at our reported organic sales growth in the third quarter, which was impacted by 2 factors: the first set, transitory factors, as we discussed back in our call in October; and the second, underlying demand. On the transitory factors, a few things to highlight. We're lapping a very strong quarter in Q3 of last year as our supply chain normalized in the U.S. And we had a -- we had a restock across retailers in our products. And then in Q3 of this year, we continued to experience to a lesser extent, some level of destock. The second transitory factor that we experienced in the third quarter was related to lower shipments in the last few days of September due to the storms that hit the Southeast of the U.S. We have couple of facilities, a very large one in the Southeast, and that held back some shipments in the last few days. And the last transitory factor is private label shipments. We had lower private label shipments in the quarter. The second set of factors that we had that impacted organic growth -- reported organic growth in the quarter are underlying demand. And we saw lower demand in North America professional, a couple of channels drove it, restaurants and hospitality. And then we also saw some lower demand in some consumer markets, largely contained to pockets of Latin America and parts of Southeast Asia. Now once we -- to quantify it, the transitory factors were about 2/3 of the headwinds in the top line that we faced in Q3 and the underlying demand softness that I just explained was about 1/3. The important thing is that going forward, we feel good about our plans to continue to drive volume plus mix-led growth ahead of the categories.

Great. How do you think about what a normalized level of category growth is going forward in a limited developed market pricing environment? Is there any change to the way you've sort of viewed that historically as we think through the next couple of years here? And it would be helpful also to get an update on your strategy as it relates to pricing relative to commodities, which potentially aren't as benign going forward. You discussed at Analyst Day better managing your cost buckets, including your procurement process, and managing the neutral PNOC, price net of cost. So just on that front also, if you can explain to us what's tangibly changing there and how you think about that in 2025 in terms of the flow-through of commodity pressure versus if it's more of a longer-term effort as you think about it.

Totally. Let me get started and then Chris, you can chime in. So a few things. At the beginning of the year, we conveyed our outlook that the categories would be reverting to the pre-pandemic level growth rates of around 2% to 3%. In the first half of the year, what we saw is the categories on a weighted average in the markets in which we participate, grew at the higher end of that range. As we came into the second half, we fully lapped all the pricing actions that have been taken outside of hyperinflationary markets. And that was one element. The second element are the factors that I just discussed around the lower underlying demand that we saw both in North America professional as well as some of the International consumer markets in Latin America -- buckets in Latin America and Southeast Asia. And those 3 factors are what's driving us to expect now the category to still continue to grow in that range, but at the lower end of the range. Now as we look forward to your question around costs and our management of pricing net of costs, that is a principle that we've established in the organization. We expect all of our businesses to manage through in a neutral way, at least all their cost, including the transactional currency. And that's a principle that's embedded in the organization, and we expect all of all our general managers to be executing that over time. But as we stare at our commodity costs and cost buckets today, absent hyperinflationary markets, we're not expecting any big uptick in inflation. Hence, we're not expecting any large or meaningful pricing outside of hyperinflationary markets. And what we're foreseeing is a continued volume plus mix-led growth that's going to be at the lower end of that 2% to 3% range going forward.

Yes. I think just to add on to that, when we talk about the longer-term, medium-term growth rate in the 2% to 3% range, it's really volume and mix driven. Pricing is not a reliable driver of growth. As Nelson said, we're in a benign cost environment, don't expect much. But the things that drive that volume and mix led growth, we feel in really good shape. There's 3 things that drive our categories: participation rates, which big tailwinds in adult incontinence. And as you look at it globally, a lot of scope for greater participation rates in femcare on a global basis. So that should be a tailwind. Frequency, that grows with income per capita and in lesser developed markets, there's still a lot of room to grow there. And then finally is trade up. And even in more difficult economic times, we're still seeing the propensity for trade-up when you come out with better performing products. You're seeing that in the data right now. So there's still a lot of room for trade-up, and we can talk about those unmet need states that can still be addressed and that should drive trade-off, not just at the premium end but also when we think about the good, better, best ladder, entry and mainstream levels as well. So mix will be an element to that.

Great. That's helpful. So we talked about category growth. Maybe we could spend some time on market share trends. You touched on earlier, you've seen a rebound in share trends in the U.S. Can you give us some sense of what's behind that from your perspective, how sustainable that is as you look going forward? And at the same time, global share doesn't seem to have moved as much. So international shares theoretically dropped off a little bit. I think that's driven by some specific markets, but I'd love to get an update internationally, too, as to what's occurring from a market share standpoint and similarly, how that informs your forward outlook.

Totally. So we are pleased with the progress that we've seen in our market share performance over the last few quarters. In fact, as of the third quarter, our weighted average global market share was flat versus our baseline. And we gained or held share in about 50% of our key country category cohorts. That's progress versus where we've been 2 years ago. And our focus on ensuring that we have superior product offerings in the marketplace and investing behind our brands as we ramp up our advertising and brand support is paying off. Having said that, there is work to be done. We're not pleased. We want to be even better than where we're at. And looking at North America, in particular, in the third quarter, our weighted market share in North America was flat versus the baseline. And more importantly, we gained or held share in 7 of 8 categories, which, again, very good progress. And to your question of the international market. I think it's important to highlight that in our key focus markets internationally, we've been performing fairly strongly. Looking at China, where we've been gaining share in Huggies for the last 5 years or so, the last quarter, we gained over 110 basis points of share. In the U.K., in both bathroom tissue and facial tissue, Andrex and Kleenex continued to gain share sequentially and year-over-year behind the technologies that we've put in the marketplace a couple of years ago, and both gained about 200 basis points of share in the quarter. In Australia, Huggies, where we're the market leaders, we gained another 170 basis points of share in the quarter. And even in Brazil, in the quarter, we gained 30 basis points of share. There is work to be done as we rewire our organization for growth to continue to strengthen our brand propositions, but we're very encouraged by the progress made, and we're excited about our innovation pipeline that should help, along with the increased brand investment support to drive continued improvement on shares over done.

Okay. And are there some international markets that are lagging? And do you see them sort of getting better going forward? Or how do you think about the...

So part of our -- part of the thinking behind why we have changed our segment structure and why we're launching -- why Mike launched the Powering Care strategy is really to focus the business. And that focus is what's going to be driving more consistency over time on share gains. And we are very positive about the prospects of that.

Okay. you're rationalizing some private label volume in 2025. I think you've said it's roughly a 200 basis point tailwind. Can you just give us some perspective on how much of an EPS headwind that will be? And maybe we can touch on some other items, too. There's the PP&E divestiture, Bolivia, Nigeria exit, some FX pressure. So there's a bunch of sort of nonoperating items. So maybe you can start with the private label culling and how that translates to the bottom line and put in perspective some of those other items also.

Sure. So we are focusing our capacity and our investments behind our brands and in driving differentiation. Over the past 18 months, we have been exiting private label contracts, smaller. And we did announce in April that we were going to exit a large private label contract in the U.S. that represents roughly 2% of our net sales globally. Our aim is to contain the profit headwind from this exit to a proportionate amount. Important to note that once we exit -- fully exit this contract, private label will represent only 2% of our global revenue. The other element or exits that you are referring to, Dara, the personal protective equipment, which we sold in -- on July 1, exits of a few markets like Bolivia and Nigeria, for 2025, they will represent a headwind in reported sales of around 100 basis points. And on the profit line, it will be around 140 basis points. Right now, we're working through our 2025 plans, and we'll be ready to share those early in Q1, concurrent with our earnings call when we give our outlook. But the important thing is that we are working on a plan that can continue to drive balanced sustainable organic growth, excluding the impacts from these exits that you're referring to. Our reported sales will be impacted by these exits. We feel that strategically, they are the right move because they will set us up for more sustainable growth going forward. On the profit line, we are continuing to work on a very rich pipeline of productivity initiatives, which we will seek to leverage as a means to offset some of the headwinds from the exits of these contracts in 2025. We will be back in January with our full outlook for the year and the plans.

Okay. That's helpful. And maybe we can hit on some other nonoperating items, right? There obviously, with the political landscape we've seen recently, tariffs are something that's out there. Just review your exposure there and any cross-country disproportionate exposures that you have. And also with the Blue Yonder news we've had recently over the last few weeks, what's your level of exposure there?

Yes. Totally. So talking about the tariffs, a few things. We are a global company with presence in many countries -- and our supply chain is a global supply chain, which means that we are sourcing raw materials and finished goods from many countries across the globe. Having said that, as it pertains to the U.S., we feel that we are well placed competitively. For starters, the vast majority of the products that we sell in the U.S., we manufacture in the U.S. Our exposure to Canada, Mexico and China, in particular, in terms of raw materials and finished goods represents less than 10% of the U.S. cost of goods sold. Obviously, this is a metric based on a last fiscal year. And as a global company, we continuously look at our intercountry sourcing and supply chain, but this is just to give you a perspective of our exposure on that end for tariffs. And moving on to Blue Yonder. Yes, Blue Yonder is one of our transportation management system providers, vendors. They notified us of an incident that interrupted their operations. Our teams have deployed our business continuity plans which include manual shipments. And thus far, we have been shipping product to our customers. We have not -- we continue to ship products to our customers in an uninterrupted manner at this stage. So far, we have not experienced any material impact. There's obviously inter-month playthroughs of shipments. We are on December 3. So we still need to see how the quarter closes to make sure that there's no inter-quarter phasing of these shipments. But thus far that's where we're at.

Great. Okay. Innovation has been a key focus under Mike and your leadership over the last few years. At Analyst Day, obviously, you talked about an emphasis there. But I think it's been a process that you've been upgrading and changing over the last few years, really. So can you discuss how that process has changed internally? And then going forward, maybe give us a sense for how significant innovation can be relative to recent history and also how that plays in from a mix standpoint.

Yes. Yes. Thanks for the question, Dara. When you look at our results really over the past 2 years, mix has been a pretty consistent contributor anywhere from 40, 50 basis points to 100 basis points kind of year in, year out. And I think when you think about the contribution from innovation, from an innovation perspective compared to say, if you go back to 2019, the contribution to top line growth from innovation is up about 50%. And within personal care, it's about doubled. And I think there's 2 things that play along with each other. One is from an R&D perspective, at Investor Day, we talked about areas where we've built our portfolio around in 3 distinct pillars: materials invention, product design and process -- manufacturing process innovation. So we've really defined where we think we've got a logical advantage. And then you join that together with a clear focus on unmet need states. So it's leak-free protection, garment-like comfort, skin health and wellness, sustainability. So there's a clear path in terms of, okay, how do we take our technology portfolio and apply it to develop new products that really consumers are interested in. And so that's guided the pipeline. And I think what you've seen play out are innovations that are coming to market that address those need states in a way that leverages our technological advantage. So you look at Skin Essentials that we just launched, 2-zoned diaper, only one on the market. So we feel really good about where we stand on that. And then as we have also developed commercial capabilities, go-to-market capabilities and working on better marketing capabilities, I think we can -- as Mike talks about it, we can become better storytellers and execute that more consistently around the world. So I think it's -- that's why we talk about volume plus mix.

Great. Nelson, maybe we can talk a little bit about volume growth at the enterprise company level. I know it will be different by geography, product category, right? So break it down any way you'd like. But just conceptually, we're coming off this environment of excess pricing versus where we've typically been. Can you just talk about the pace of volume recovery so far as pricings dropped off and how you expect that to play out going forward?

Sure. So as I shared in our prior questions, we've been shifting to a volume plus mix growth, and we've seen that play out in the course of the first 9 months of the year. Importantly, consumption in the marketplace has also been volume plus mix led, and the overall health of the categories has remained strong. And that has been an important aspect of why we feel comfortable at how the categories would grow over time and why it would be volume mix led. We are focusing on that going forward. And that's really why we talked about our projection on what the categories would do in the near term, but again, all volume plus mix and led and driven by our pioneering innovation, which is the key because that's what's really driving consumers to stick with our brands and with the solutions we're providing.

Great. And then on the margin front, you've increased ad spend in the last couple of years significantly. First off, do you feel comfortable with the level of ad spend as a percent of sales that we're leaving this year at? Is that the right level longer term? And maybe you can talk about the ROI behind that spend, how you've shifted mix over time and the ROIs you're getting from spend overall in different buckets?

Yes. So we've shown our firm belief in building brands through strong fundamentals, and that includes, Dara, increasing investment behind our brands over time. Since 2018, we've pretty much doubled our investment supporting our brands and our propositions in the marketplace with very strong ROIs. In fact, for this year, we project that our advertising and brand support spend is going to be at 6.5% of net sales, an increase year-over-year of about 60 basis points with an acceleration to around 7% in Q4. We are comfortable stepping up investments behind brands, and we will continue to do so but in a very disciplined manner, ensuring that we have strong returns on investments and that they continue to drive this volume and mix growth over time.

One of the key things that our new Chief Growth Officer, Patricia Corsi will be focusing on is helping us become great storytellers for two reasons. One is how we talk to consumers to drive trial of our brands. And why do we want that? Because we're putting new-to-the-world technologies that solve unmet needs. And then the second one is because we want to drive more brand affinity. That brand affinity ends up driving stronger consumer value, lifetime value over time. But anything you'd like to add for...

I think just one thing to add on that. When you look at our spending levels and the efficiencies that we get, keep in mind that our user base in each category is highly targetable in terms of the user base. That creates efficiencies, but it also makes it more digitally native in the sense that more one-to-one conversation. So it should be no surprise that we've made a significant shift to digital marketing. And again, more one-to-one conversations, much higher ROIs.

Great. At Analyst Day, you discussed plans to reach 40% gross margins, 18% to 20% operating margins by decade end. Can you just review for us the key drivers there? Is that still in sight? How does FX play into that? And just confidence as you look out on both those fronts, looking at the COGS line as well as the SG&A line?

Right. Let me get started, and then I'll have Chris provide his perspective. But we remain confident in our plans and our ability to drive margins to their full potential at Kimberly-Clark. At the cost of goods sold level, there are two factors that are working together to give us the visibility to the $3 billion of gross productivity that we've discussed which is our target for the next few years. First is the creation of a global supply chain organization, and the second one is the adoption of integrated margin management. In July of this year, we set up our global supply chain organization under Tamera Fenske's leadership. And this team has already started to work hand-in-hand with our local teams to drive lower costs, speed to market with global innovations as well as continued improvement in customer service levels. It's 3 strategies that they're executing, which we shared at Investor Day. The first one, value stream simplification. Value stream simplification is nothing else than driving commonality on product platforms, commonality on raw materials and commonality on manufacturing processes. The second strategy is on optimizing our network, and that applies to our manufacturing facilities and our distribution facilities to drive efficiency and speed and lower costs. And the third strategy that they're doing in the global supply chain organization along with the local teams is driving automation and a truly digital supply chain. This is about rolling out state-of-the-art software in both procurement and supply and demand planning, which we're already doing as well as accelerating the adoption of robotics across the entire network. The second element that's given us the confidence and the visibility into delivering that level of productivity in the next few years is the adoption of integrated margin management. This is a discipline that's helping transform our culture to an end-to-end management of margins as opposed to silos of margin. And it touches every component that delves into margins. It starts with revenue growth management, strategies it follows onto -- risk management strategies on commodities and costs as well as maintaining very strong discipline on costs across the enterprise, all at the service of driving higher gross productivity and higher margins. Integrated margin management is not new for the world, but it is new to us. And it's really providing us end-to-end visibility, discipline and accountability. For us to have the organization push forward in delivering not just the productivity but being able to have the ability to invest back in the business and expand margins and optimize margins over time. And that's playing out already in the last few quarters, as you would have seen.

Yes. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that what Nelson's talked about is it's a pipeline. We've got great visibility. So it's much more proactive as opposed to reactive. And I think that allows us to invest with confidence at consistent levels as we move forward. And when you run the math on the $3 billion, we don't need to drop 100% of that down to the bottom line to hit our long-term algorithm in terms of profit growth. And then added to that, you've got SG&A savings that we talked about, about $200 million over the next few years. That, again, will allow us to invest in capabilities, invest in marketing as well as expand operating profit margins. So we think we've got really good visibility on the cost front.

Great. Maybe we can touch on your capital allocation priorities. I mean you've got pretty reasonable debt leverage at this point. With the broader market volatility and stock volatility, I guess, are repurchases and a more aggressive posture there on the horizon? And second question, portfolio reshaping after the strategy changes that were announced at Analyst Day. You've already done some of that in recent years, but can you touch on any further divestitures or on the other hand, M&A, what are the strategic priorities from an M&A standpoint and criteria that you lay out when looking at M&A?

Yes. So starting with capital allocation, we're well positioned to continue to deliver strong cash returns to our shareholders while remaining consistent with the parameters of our single A credit rating. This year through September, our share buybacks and have been $750 million, which are $650 million higher than last year same period. We fully deployed the proceeds from the sale of our personal protective equipment. And as we look forward, a few things on capital allocation. One, we are very confident in our ability to continue to invest with strong returns on the business, especially around our supply chain transformation as I just touched upon a few minutes ago, and on the innovation platforms that we have ahead of us. And in fact, I would expect our capital expenditures to ramp up over the next couple of years as we accelerate our transformation. The second aspect is the dividend. We remain very committed to growing our dividend. This year marked the 52nd year consecutively that we increased our dividend, and that's going to remain a key priority for us. On the M&A, and I'll go into the portfolio for a second -- in a second. We will continue to look at M&A as a key element to enhance our portfolio, but in a disciplined way, ensuring that we have accretive transactions that enhance the portfolio. And then last but not least, what remains, we will deploy to share buybacks. Thinking of the portfolio, a few things. What you guys have seen from us in the last year or so and what we've announced recently is really our strategy in action. And it's driving portfolio changes that will shape our growth for -- in the foreseeable future. As examples of this, you have one, the divestiture of the personal protective equipment business in July, the exit of certain markets like Nigeria and Bolivia, last year's divestiture of our Brazilian tissue and professional business. And I'd also highlight the exit of private label contracts and businesses that we have because that allows us to dedicate our capacity and our investments to our own technologies and brands to differentiate them. We're going to be very disciplined in the process of pruning or looking at the portfolio. It is an always-on process, ensuring that we are protecting shareholder value and that the actions we take are conducive to helping us drive sustainable, profitable, balanced growth in the future.

Okay. Great. Maybe we can just end by touching on the consumer landscape. It's come up a lot at this conference, there's obviously a lot of volatility. But what are you seeing in the U.S. and in any international markets where you're seeing volatility from a consumer standpoint?

Yes. I think when you look at our categories, particularly in the U.S., we're growing in terms of units as well as dollars. As a reminder, I think our categories -- daily-use categories with little substitution, so come back to the 3 things I mentioned earlier in terms of participation, trade-up and frequency, all are in very good shape. I think participation wise, even on the number of births has been stabilizing. In fact, in China, number of births are projected to be up 4% this year. So from a baby care perspective, very stable. We mentioned adult care with a tailwind, participation rates in things like femcare. We feel very good about that. Trade-up remains a key driver in the categories, and you're still seeing that play out even in more difficult consumer times. And then frequency is really a lot of room to run, I think, in the long term, but we have seen some pockets of softness in terms of frequency in some of the D&E markets, Latin America, Southeast Asia. So instead of using, say, 5 diapers a day, 4 diapers a day, maybe come down to 3. So that's caused some pockets of softness right now. And then what Nelson mentioned earlier on professional care, where particularly in the U.S., we would have anticipated a stronger bounce to volume growth in the second half, but with lower foot traffic and hospitality in restaurants, that's caused a little bit of softness in the near term. But I think underlying that, I think the fundamentals in a nutshell are in good shape for -- within our category. So consumer interest in better-performing products are still there. We're mindful of affordability. So price-back architecture will come into play, making sure we've got a superior offering at the entry and mainstream levels, not just premium. And yes, so I think there's ample room to drive increased consumption going forward.

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for your interest in Kimberly-Clark. Thank you, Dara.