Reynolds Consumer Products Inc. (REYN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So next up, we have Reynolds Consumer Products. And joining us are the company's President and CEO, Scott Huckins; and Nathan Lowe, CFO. So Scott and Nathan, both of you, while not new to Reynolds, have been in your roles as CEO and CFO since January, so relatively new on that front. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what you both hope to accomplish in your new-ish role.

Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having us. We're glad to be here. I think it always starts with people for me. So I think the first priority is building and retain a world-class team. We've had the fortune of adding a couple of key accomplished executives to the team this year, and that balance is a group of pretty tenured veterans that the company has had in place for many, many years. So I think the first is team. In terms of aspirations for the business, really 2 simple principles. We'll spend some time unpacking. But the first would be consistent organic volume growth. The second would be with that margin expansion. So we're working on, as we've talked a little bit about with you on earnings calls, 3 or 4 key principles: innovation, share gain opportunities and a pretty good-sized investment into revenue growth management to complement household formation. And then in cost, we're really looking at the whole stack, which I'm sure Nathan will enumerate on, but that's the prize we're after.

Okay.

Yes. I think for me, there's just a ton of opportunities right down the P&L. I think we're very fortunate that we've got a balance sheet and cash flow that allows us to just invest in the future of the business. Much as Scott said, I think it starts with people first. So one of my main priorities is to really elevate the finance team so that they are moving from, I'll call it, a traditional oversight and insight model really into business partners that are at the front end of the business, driving results. The second would be, I'm personally working with the teams to look at the cost structure, whether it's back office SG&A right through every element of supply chain or on the front end of the business from a cost to serve perspective. So of course, that comes with earnings growth, but it also allows further investment in the business. The third would be that we've got the balance sheet now in a really good spot where we can invest behind some of these initiatives. But we don't take that lightly either in that with that comes the need to put capital to the highest value use. And with that, we're driving an ROI mindset deep through the organization. The fourth one would be just earnings stability. So we've tried to create the team to be more agile and more responsive to shocks in terms of commodity volatility, tariffs, et cetera. To be fair, this year has been a pretty good test, and I'm proud of how the team stood up so far.

Okay. That's great. Let's take a step back. I was hoping you might be able to give us, let's call it, like a high-level overview of the categories in which you compete, just using this as an opportunity for people in the audience who maybe aren't as familiar with the business. How do you think about the long-term growth of those categories? And maybe talk about category growth today and why that's -- I know the answer, but a little different than kind of what your long-term expectations are.

Sure. So for those who don't know the organization, we run the business through 4 segments. The first, let's go in order would be Reynolds Cooking & Baking. That includes the flagship Reynolds Wrap product and a number of fairly innovative offerings in our cooking business. Second segment would be Hefty Waste & Storage, which as its name suggests, is primarily a branded waste bag and food storage bag business. Third business is Hefty Tableware. That's a full portfolio of tableware offerings ranging from cups, dishes, plates and cutlery. And then the last segment, but not the least, would be Presto products. That is a pure-play store brand business that includes the largest private brand food bag business in the U.S. So that's the lineup. We think that the long-term growth should be low single digits. And kind of like the earlier answer I gave you, to me, we think about it as it starts with household formation and our opportunity is to inflect that through innovation, share gain opportunities and better revenue growth management execution.

Okay.

And to your point, the outlook for the categories this year was a little different to that. We started the year with an expectation of low single-digit declines in that category growth. To be fair, it's really a tale of 2 parts in that we've got a foam category that's down double digits, which is presenting a 2-point headwind for the overall category expectations, which really means the rest of the categories, we expect it to be flat, which is really representative of the consumer still being under a decent amount of pressure. The good news is it's held up pretty much as we expected so far this year and probably even better as we look back over the first 2 quarters, we outperformed the categories by a little bit as well.

Okay. And also just within that low single digits, pricing versus volume...

Yes. There's an interplay here because we've talked about 2 to 4 points of cost headwind and similarly pricing recovery. So we've maintained all throughout the year a low single-digit revenue guide for the year, but the components of it have shifted a little bit away from volume and into price.

Okay. One thing that I find interesting about the categories is just how consolidated they are. So -- and particularly your role in food bags, you think about trash, aluminum wrap. So if you could talk a little bit about the role of innovation and marketing in driving category growth overall? And then maybe also talk about that competitive landscape given just how consolidated they are.

Sure. So I'd start with -- I mean, innovation and marketing are terribly important to driving the categories. In turn, I'd say innovation is critical to make sure our products are right on trend with evolving consumer needs. It's probably the more obvious. I think what's interesting about the marketing piece of it is it's evolved in that when you look at the U.S. economy, you add up Gen Y, Gen Z, millennials, et cetera, their share of wallet is actually larger than boomers. And I just introduced that to say, therefore, the marketing message needs to be resonant with that evolving shopper. And I'd probably offer 2 examples of where you can see this come to light in our business. One is a more mature, one is less mature. The more mature would be we've been on a scented waste bag journey for about 5 years' time now and continue to invest behind that with messaging appropriate. A much more nascent example would be in our disposable tableware business, specifically compostable cutlery, attacking that portion of the U.S. consumer, younger consumer that's more sustainability minded.

Okay. And how about category by competitive dynamics across the board?

Yes. So I guess on competitive dynamics, I'd say kind of go in a funnel. When we think about our categories taken as a whole, when we look at, say, promotional activities or promotional depth, we see the marketplace today a lot like the marketplace right before the pandemic. So I wouldn't call it anything material there. Again, in all the categories, we see responsible activities and behavior, nothing unusually pointed out. To your point, each category is different, but we tend to be in categories that take like a Reynolds Wrap, it's ourselves as a branded player and then everything else is store brand. Waste bags has 2 large branded players and then store brands, et cetera, but they are concentrated to your framing.

Okay. And then I guess, how would you rank the innovation efforts of your competition? Because that's a very interesting dynamic where your innovation, you compete against private label, if the category is going to grow, if your responsibility to grow it because historically, private label isn't the innovator.

Well, it's interesting because it kind of gets into part of the core strategy of the company. We actually like the complementary nature of having a brand and store brand business for a couple of reasons, and that includes innovation ironically. First is having the store brand part of the business allows us to serve different segments of consumers at different price points that might be the case if we were just a pure branded player. The second is actually relevant, we think, in trying to manage the category or grow the category with retailers because if we're managing a category, take waste bags where we've got both a branded and store brand presence, we've got our money where our mouth is, if you will, on both sides of that. And then I think the third piece of it is it can be quite synergistic, the resources and activities between the brand and the store brand. But -- Nathan, any add on?

Nothing in the context of innovation.

Right. I'll maybe leave you with one more then is usually, as you -- I think in your premise of your question, you would expect to see the brands kind of lead the innovation and the store brand follow. We actually had some examples where it's flipped, right? So if we've got our store brand business maybe partnering with a given retailer coming up with some innovation, that might be on the forefront and then the brand follows. So we have actually seen it work both ways.

Interesting. Okay. Also on your first call as CEO, you'd mentioned force ranking innovation. So just curious how your innovation process has changed.

Thanks for the question. So what we're after there is starting with consumer insights, meaning leaning further and further into what is the evolution of the consumers in each of our categories and then building the innovation pipeline from that. That's probably the table stakes, if you will. But then what we're doing behind that is trying to assess how large each of these innovation opportunities are not just for the analytics of it, but then to be intentional about how we're allocating both the financial resources, but also the human resources behind that. And so we think that, that is a logical way to go about it and at the top of the house and have a view of we truly do have our financial and human resources invested in the best programs.

Okay. Let's focus on categories, if we may for a moment. So I wanted to talk a little bit about trash, an area where you've had really significant success over the last 5 years. It's a focus category for investors, not just because the share success is for you, but also because we're all well acquainted with your key branded competitor. So first, can you just help us understand what's driven these long-term share gains?

Again, great question. We've probably enjoyed some success in that business, particularly, I'd say, in the last decade. When I think about it, I think there's a couple of forces that are really driving that. At the first part of it is just the brand itself, right? So when you think about the Hefty brand, it's a 60-year-old brand. The activities under that brand are around $2 billion at retail. Brand enjoys a 98% level of consumer awareness. So it's great to have that kind of beachhead. The next up would be innovation we were just talking about. That has been a serial innovator, if you like, over the years, whether it's on unique SKUs to match a consumer need or the scented program we've talked about. Behind that would be our marketing and advertising program, we think is pretty differentiated. The surface, it speaks to strength is anything but ordinary. But we've had a partnership with John Cena, who many of you would know for it will be 10 years next year and still going strong. And I would say probably obvious but important to emphasize would be execution at retail. That I'm very proud of our team consistently driving distribution gains while at the same time, maintaining good velocities and quality. I think those are the elements that have created brand success. And then kind of back to your brand, store brand, I think tying that together overall is really supply chain and manufacturing. We've got -- we would be the largest waste bag player in the United States, and we think that, that helps put a fine point on the success of that business.

Okay. I know you talked generally about -- when I asked about competitive dynamics that things were generally rational and kind of in line with where they were before the pandemic. But I'm curious to just focus on trash for a moment because competitors have flagged elevated promotion in the category. It sounds like you kind of aren't seeing that. So just maybe we can dive a little bit deeper on promotional activity and why you think there's a different view.

Yes. I mean there's certainly going to be ebbs and flows of quarter-to-quarter promotional activity. But again, I go back to what we see looks a lot like our levels pre-pandemic, both for waste bags as a category, but for the total company. And I think the rationality comment stands. When you pour through all of our financial reporting, I don't think you'd find that the answer is in promotion because it's disclosed essentially. To me, it speaks more to the success of the waste bags win with the consumer for the reasons that I shared earlier.

Okay. Private label. So your role as a branded manufacturer and also one for private label puts you in a really interesting position. Elsewhere in Staples, we've seen companies take actions to minimize their exposure or their production of private label. But I don't think that's even close to anything you would consider doing. So can you maybe talk about the benefits of being both a branded and private label producer? I know you touched on it earlier, but I think it's an interesting topic. And from a margin perspective, Presto, your private label business, shows very solid profitability, which is also an interesting dynamic. So I'm just curious how about the profitability of brand versus private label and the benefits to having both when so many of your broad peers at this conference, let's put it, broad consumer kind of take an opposite approach.

I'll maybe just kind of underscore strategy and then Nathan can certainly talk about the comparative financials. But again, I think we see the brand store brand business is a bit symbiotic and complementary as I was offering the ability to do some consumer segmenting and price point management. And again, just to reiterate, we like how that shows up at retail where we're talking about driving the category. And then lastly, probably a good segue to Nathan is there's certainly -- we observed some synergy in our supply chain and our resource base between the 2. So Nathan, with that...

Yes. I mean on to margins, it varies a lot, as you'd expect, by product category, by channel, et cetera. But not surprisingly, the branded business generally carries a higher gross margin, but we still see meaningful EBITDA contribution coming from the store brand part of the business. I think the bit that often gets overlooked is what Scott was alluding to is having that broader offering within a category or even just with a retailer gives us supply chain synergies for sure, but it also gives us a broader base for innovation. And the thing I really like as well is that the private label manufacturer, generally, you would expect to have better cost discipline. I like the fact that we take that and we bring it across the entire business. So for me, they're both very meaningful and complementary parts of the business, and we're really focused on growing them both.

Okay. Have you seen kind of go up little bit consumer question. But I think because we're talking about private label and branded in time, I want to ask everyone at the conference kind of their latest read on the consumer environment more broadly. So not about your category growth, not about your guidance, but just what your kind of latest read is on the U.S. consumer and maybe something you may see in terms of private label versus branded preference or behavior.

Maybe I'll do the last question first. When we were studying all the data of our Q2 call, I would say as we look across all of our categories as a proxy, you might see a 100, 200 basis point difference, some categories, the brand taking share, some store brands taking share. But taken as a whole, surprisingly stable. Our view all year long has been the consumer is under pressure, whether it be the decline in consumer confidence, down double digits year-to-date, record levels of debt, whether it be credit cards, auto, home and frankly, just higher fixed cost base facing those consumers. It's I think Nathan was sharing earlier, one of the variables in shaping the guide at the front end of the year was that view meeting possibly a more robust view of category performance. So please add to that as you see fit.

Yes. I think the one trend we've seen less so about moving to store brands is the move to larger pack sizes or lower opening price points. That's been pretty consistent across most of our categories. And the latter is just the move in the channels. There's certainly been a shift towards club in particular.

Okay. Great. Let's talk a little bit about input costs. So aluminum has been a big area of focus in the last couple of months. I was hoping you could give us an update, not just on what you're seeing in the market, but how the commodity-based pricing that you took in Cooking & Baking has been faring?

Yes. Great question. Aluminum started the year for context at around $1.20 a pound and is now at $1.90. So it's been sitting there for pretty stably for a month or so. We have now just got into market our third price increase in the Reynolds & Cooking Baking business in September, which to me just demonstrates the pricing power and the brand strength of that business. What's also been showing up in retail now is a lot of the store brand foil manufacturers are pushing price. In some cases, they're approaching parity with the brand. If not, in a couple of cases, they're on top of the brand, which is a nice setup from where we're looking.

Yes. Okay. Any other areas of your cost basket that we should be paying attention to?

I mean, by far, our second largest commodity and major cost driver is resin. You haven't heard us talk much about it this year. That's really a function of us doing a lot of work on that particular cost to take some volatility out and just looking at different supply arrangements and so on just to deliver a more stable earnings growth model, as I talked about before.

Okay. Perfect. So like in that vein, you've spoken to the potential to hedge some key inputs. So I guess I'm curious, maybe looking back like why Reynolds hadn't done that historically and kind of the current status. So doing things that are you fully there and just around hedging or putting in different ways of managing costs?

Look, I think it's a little speculative, but I'd say the history lesson is I think the company got on the wrong side of a couple of hedges and didn't like the outcome going back in time and sort of moved away from it. We've been pretty consistent, I would say, in the last 2 or so years in how we approach it. We're really looking at a handful of things. We're looking at the underlying commodity volatility and how significant it is to the business. We're looking at how expensive it might be to take out some form of protection. That could be a financial instrument. It could be, like I said, supplier contracts, which carry obviously a much lower cost. And then the third is you really got to understand the commercial dynamics of a particular category. So it might seem good on the surface to take out a hedge. But if no one else is doing it, you can really get out of whack and get on the wrong side of some price gaps, too. So -- but what does it look like in the future? I'd say it looks a lot like what it has done the last 2 years that we're observing. We're taking actions where we think it's appropriate, all with the goal of reducing volatility in earnings.

Okay. On the topic of costs, time to ask about tariffs. So back at first quarter earnings, you laid out tariff-related cost about $100 million to $200 million, half of which were cited as direct and the other half indirect, meaning commodity inflation. So you already touched on commodities, we just did. But maybe you can speak to what the direct tariff exposure looks like. And I think on the second quarter call, you mentioned some onshoring some production. So kind of what does that entail? And does it help with the tariff mitigation.

Yes. No, good question. The -- what we said at the start of the year, and I think it's important just to ground on what the exposure was is if you think about our finished good imports, it represented a single-digit percentage of our overall COGS. So the exposure, relatively speaking, was fairly small. What's evolved throughout the quarters is that the indirect impact -- sorry, the direct impact of tariffs has gotten smaller than what we would have thought of at the start of the year and the indirect by virtue of aluminum has gotten bigger, but we're still in that 2- to 4-point range in terms of a cost headwind for the year. In terms of onshoring, you're right, we did mention that. I think smaller product categories, meaningful profit margins that I think strategically makes sense for us to manufacture here. Frankly, they were always in the pipeline for bringing onshore. But when the tariffs were imposed, it just increased the return profile even more. So we reprioritized those.

Okay. Okay. And then generally speaking, though, your manufacturing footprint does pretty well insulate you from tariffs. Can you compare that to key branded and private label peers? I mean I don't know if to any extent tariffs could actually be a tailwind to Reynolds over the long term from a competitive standpoint?

I'll start. I could. Maybe to ground folks who don't know the company well, very, very U.S.-centric business, high 90s percent revenues come from the U.S. On the cost side, we have 17 manufacturing plants, 16 in the U.S., 1 in Canada, so a terribly U.S.-centric environment. Certainly depends on the category, but to varying degrees, competitors may rely more than we do, say, on international supply chains. So this year, that probably would have seen an increase in cost. But I think we would argue probably more important is uncertainty. I think the uncertainty piece of it is probably more impactful than the hard dollar actual cost because I think when you flow that down to or through the retailer perspective, having uncertainty is very difficult from on-shelf prices and the like. And so I think the case for it being tailwind would be RCP then having an opportunity to provide U.S.-centric cost certainty relative to, say, a competitor that's got a more international supply chain. So we're pursuing those opportunities, and we'll see how that evolves into the future.

Okay. Is that primarily in tableware?

You'd see examples of it really across the business. I'd say you certainly would see it in aluminum foil. There are certainly other store brand players that probably have a degree of international supply, certainly true of the food bag program. A lot of -- our intelligence tells us a lot of food bags come from overseas, and you'd see it in pockets and tableware.

Okay. Great. Okay. So moving beyond COGS, I want to talk a little bit about productivity work, which you said you want to be more holistic. Spoken about becoming more streamlined, more agile, and we saw some of that come through in results in the second quarter. Can you just explain a little bit more concretely, like what does a holistic approach mean to cost savings and how that compares to productivity under Reyvolution, the historic program?

Sure. I'll start. So I think the holistic comment was really designed to talk about looking at every lever, whether it be in revenue and costs. So we talked a little bit about revenue growth. But on the cost side, whether it's manufacturing costs, supply chain costs, procurement, et cetera, and looking at all of those every dollar. I think the Reyvolution program you're asking about, certainly a fine program, but I'll maybe do an analogy. So Reyvolution might have been attacking, as an example, say, in a manufacturing plant, maybe there were a series of a few lines or production lines that the productivity wasn't there. And so Reyvolution would have been designed to improve that performance. What we're after is looking at the total, in this example, plant P&L to say, did the plant's cost taken as a whole improve or not. So that would be the holistic piece.

Okay. Okay. And cost savings, I mean, to what extent is the plan to reinvest cost savings in the P&L? Or are we flowing through and driving earnings?

A mix of both. Why don't you take that?

Yes. I think of them as 2 separate items for what it's worth. I think here's all the things we're working on to drive improvements and drive earnings on the surface, great. Then we look at the opportunities we have to invest in the business. If that investment is in the P&L or if the investment is in capital, either way, if it's got a good return profile, and we think it's the right thing to do to drive value, we'll invest back some quantum in the P&L.

Okay. Okay. Let's talk a bit about sustainability. So I think the casual onlooker, if you will, would look at your products and say, they're disposable and therefore, bad for the environment and maybe easily substitute with reusable. So what would your response be to that?

Good and timely question. I think maybe the ground, I'd say, for those who don't know the company, as of this year, 2025, we offer or will offer a sustainable alternative in every one of our major categories. So just to kind of ground, this has been in flight for a series of years in terms of just the what. But I would say, certainly, that younger consumer, I think, on the margin probably has more appetite for sustainability. I think the challenge we see across HPC companies is, one, either that sustainable alternative or that product offering, frankly, lacks quality. And so you might get trial but not repeat or it's priced at such a premium that really discourages trial. So our observation is -- and the phrase we'd like to think around is affordable sustainability. And we talked a little bit about on the call and here today, an example of that, we think would be a perfect meet the mark would be having our cutlery products have compostability not a huge price premium, absolutely at least as good as the nonsustainable analog. That to us is critical to have sustainability resonate.

Okay. Capital allocation. So back at your Investor Day in 2024, you talked about that your current -- your total addressable market was around $20 billion, but you could expand that up to $43 billion by organic innovation or M&A. We haven't seen any M&A since that meeting 15-ish months ago. So just wondering how we should think about that going forward?

Well, first of all, I'd say you've got a great memory taking us back there. You're right. We think the total addressable market for us to play in is much bigger than where we've been focused. I will say there's been no direct M&A into acquiring a brand or getting into a category that way. What I would say is we've made a lot of progress on extending the brand into some of those adjacent areas organically. The first example I'd offer, I'd call it an indirect M&A entrant is through the Atacama acquisition, where we acquired technology, and then we proceeded to do R&D off the back of that, which led to us commercializing the Hefty EcoSafe cutlery, which because it solves those 2 problems Scott was talking about, I think, has the opportunity to really expand the sustainable cutlery category, which is a $1 billion category. Second, we're playing in other think -- appliances in the kitchen where there's now new and different use occasion. So 2 sources of innovation there that get us out of those traditional categories would be air fryer cups and the other would be in parchment cooking bags. So again, new use occasions, if not new appliances in the kitchen. And then the third would be, historically, we've only played in the private label press-to-close food bag category in a meaningful way for sure. We, in the last year or so, had launched the Hefty brand and have continued to build momentum this year with further distribution. So again, expanding by virtue of a brand into a category we previously didn't play.

Okay. And when you think about beyond taking the brand -- the examples you just gave, taking there's a new kitchen appliance, a new way of cooking and you say we've got a brand that has a right to play there and what's the unmet consumer need. But when you think about other categories that you could acquire your way into, I know you're not going to give me the category. But how should we think about like maybe the checklist, right, the things that make them make sense to you?

Maybe I'll start, please add on. I think I'd start with the definition of adjacencies. We focus on consumer items that have high repeat. So kind of think about the commonality of our 4 businesses, they are high repeat items where fulfillment and replenishment are absolutely critical to the category. Two would be distribution. Our business is fairly diversified across mass, club, grocery, online, if you want to call that a channel. So again, having the ability to add value to it across those 4 channels would be important to us. And then something that we know about, so the adjacency definition of if you looked at shopping aisles literally on either side of ours, that's what gave rise to the around, call it, $20 billion of opportunity. But I think it's those capabilities we start with so that we would be embedding something that we would acquire in an ecosystem that already understands how to process it rather than something, let's say, a durable good, for instance, nothing wrong with durable goods, but that's really not our core capability.

Okay. And what about geographically? I mean, before your time, both of you at the company, I think it was a conversation about international. Is that still on the potential list? Or are we focusing domestically?

I'd say we've pursued international somewhat organically, really, it's still a small part of our business, but a growing part of our business. I think our view to date has been we still see pretty good-sized opportunities close to home here in North America, therefore, the focus, but never say never, but I think for now, we're focused on driving value here in North America.

Okay. Great. And then just final question is, how do you think about capital allocation otherwise outside of M&A?

Yes. I think the easiest way to think about it is all potential uses of capital compete based on returns. That's sort of the starting position. I'd say, generally, internally, we're focused on a lot of capital opportunities. We know we have a pipeline of high-return options to drive growth, expand margins, improve earnings stability. You've heard me talk a lot about automation, which I see falling into both the second and third category there, and we've built out a multiyear pipeline here that I think has the potential to drive earnings growth for multiple years to come.

Okay. Great. All right. So I think we're going to wrap it up there. So thank you so much for joining me. Please join me in thanking the Reynolds team for being here.