Kimberly-Clark Corporation

And welcome to today's Kimberly Clark Mexico's 1Q24 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. Please note this call is being recorded, and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Pablo Gonzalez, CEO.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for participating on the call, and we hope your year is off to a great start. As usual, I'll make some preliminary remarks and then pass it on to Javier to provide some details on the first quarter results. We had a good start to the year, particularly on margins and bottom line growth. Net sales, EBITDA, and net income were all quarterly records. Let me first provide some perspective on the top line. Our consumer products business grew low single digits versus a strong comparison driven by the implementation of price increases during the first quarter of 2023 and the corresponding volume protection by clients, as well as Holy Week landing in March this year as opposed to April of last year. Holy Week is traditionally a slow sales period in our categories. However, when compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, that is sequentially, growth in the first quarter was 6% with a healthy 3% increase in volume. Professional posted mid-single-digit growth, and experts of finished products achieved very strong double-digit growth, albeit from a low base. On the contrary, tissue parent rolls, once again, decreased substantially and were roughly half those of last year. This was due to increased internal tissue consumption and significantly lower prices because of excess capacity in the Far East and the lower exchange rate. This hard-rolled sales decrease impacted our top line by more than 400 million pesos and roughly 300 basis points. It's important to point out that the negative impact for this line of business will be lower in the second quarter and reverse during the second half of the year. All in all, our consumer and professional businesses continue to perform well, with healthy volume and strong shares, And first quarter total sales were a new record for the company. On the bottom line, we again posted important increases and continued to improve our margins. This result from a combination of higher volume and efficiencies, better raw material prices, and continued progress on our cost reduction efforts. Let me pass it on to Javier to provide details on the quarter. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. During the quarter, our sales were a record 13.8 billion pesos, a 1.8% increase versus the first quarter of 2023. Total volume was up 0.6% and price mix 1.2%. Net sales were driven by consumer products and away from home, which grew 3.4% and 5.8% respectively. Year over year, consumer products volume was down 0.3%, while price mix was up 3.7%. Exports were down 17.2%, dragged by lower hard-rolled sales. Converted product exports showed again very important improvement and grew 76.1%. Cost of goods sold decreased 8%. Against last year, virgin and recycled fibers SAM and fluff were favorable, while resins compared negatively. The FX was lower, averaging 10% less. Our cost reduction program once again had very good results and yielded approximately 360 million pesos of savings in the quarter. These savings are mainly at the cost of goods sold level and are generated by sourcing, materials improvement, and process efficiency. Gross profit increased 18.4% and margin was 42.3% for the quarter. SG&A expenses were 13% higher year over year and as a percentage of sales were up 181 basis points. Distribution expenses are up and we have strengthened the investment behind our brands. We are investing to improve our footprint and streamline our logistics operations. Operating profit increased 22.2% and the operating margin was 24.7%. We generated a record 3.9 billion pesos of EBITDA, a 19.3% increase. EBITDA margin was 28.2%, a 50 basis points sequential improvement and a 410 basis points differential versus the first quarter of 2023. underscoring our focus on achieving strong margins. Cost of financing was 315 million pesos in the first quarter, compared to 415 in the same period last year. Net interest expense was lower, since we have less net debt. During the quarter, we had a 1 million peso FX gain, which compares to a 21 million loss last year. Net income for the quarter was 2.1 billion pesos, with earnings per share of 68 cents, a 29.1% increase. We maintain a very strong and healthy balance sheet. Our total cash position as of March 31st was 20.2 billion pesos. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 0.8 times, with an EBITDA to net interest coverage of 10 times. With that, I turn it back to Pablo. Thank you.

If we make a few additional comments before going to Q&A. On the top line, Mexico's economy has slowed, but domestic consumption continues to show resiliency. We expect job growth, wage increases, remittances, and handouts through social programs, together with higher spending in an election year, to help sustain this trend and continue to support growth in our categories. Throughout the year and into 2025, we'll look to accelerate growth by strengthening our market positions, taking advantage of the opportunities for a very strong innovation pipeline, together with more effective investments behind our brands, as well as great execution of our commercial strategies. On the cost side, we expect sequential increases on pulp and recycled fibers, but other inputs will continue to compare favorably. And overall, we should experience a fairly stable raw material scenario. Continued growth in our categories, a relatively stable cost scenario, together with investments to optimize our footprint and strengthen execution, as well as consistent and effective focus on cost reductions, will allow us to continue to achieve strong results. Finally, at our February shareholders meeting, a 15% dividend increase and a share repurchase plan of up to 1 billion pesos were approved. With that, let me open the floor for questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and 1 on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star 2. Once again, that is star and 1 to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. And we'll take our first question from Ben Thurer with Barclays. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning. And thanks for taking my question, Pablo Javier. Just two follow-up questions on some of the commentary made. So the first one's really around the economic expectations you just pointed out as it relates to potentially slightly slower activity, but still consumer spending to be fine and the way you, within that, look to market share gains. Could you elaborate a little bit more as it relates to what type of investments you're doing and maybe have a few examples on the marketing side and the innovation side? So just as we have a better picture of what to watch for and what to see for, that would be the first question. And the second is really on the cost environment. and the margin improvement you had and the stability here. Just to kind of get a feel how you think about the sensitivity in an environment if FX were to go weaker as we've seen a little bit more volatility more recently. Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for your questions. First, on the investment examples, there's quite a few, but let me touch on a couple. One, over the past I'm going to say six months, we've pretty much improved all of our lineup on the diaper category, from the premium Supreme Hoggies diaper to Ultra Comfort, and then on the value segment, Suave Elastic, and the economy segment, Comodisec and Azosec. And all of those products have seen significant improvements in performance, and as we have checked with consumers, they're all preferred significantly versus competitors. So that's one investment we're doing, and you'll continue to see further improvements in our diaper category. Another example will be bathroom tissue, where over the last, again, six to eight months, we've pretty much turned around quite a few of our products with improved strength, improved softness for consumers, and again, with very good response so far. And likewise, we'll do some important improvements on feminine care products adult care, et cetera. So we really have a very strong pipeline of innovation. Not only that has already happened, but that it's coming in line for the next couple of years. So we're very excited with that. And as we bring that innovation into the market, we are certainly supporting our brands very aggressively and more and more effectively going forward. So we'll continue to put a lot of focus on that to ensure that consumers notice the innovation and our products are preferred and our brands are strengthened. On the cost environment, I mean, as we mentioned in the preliminary remarks, we do expect to see sequentially some cost increases on pulp and recycled fiber that those mainly have to do with a little stronger demand overall globally, plus some producers who have gone on maintenance or who have had force majeure. We expect that to slow down and maybe even reverse as some more capacity comes in line in the second half of the year, but it's hard to tell at this point how that will change. I compare in the second half. For the most part, the rest of the raw materials, at least the expectation right now is that they'll compare favorably. So that's why overall we see a pretty stable cost scenario going forward. If something were to happen, as you mentioned, with the exchange rate, which has been strong and has helped us on the cost side, we would certainly have to take that into consideration and determine what actions we need to take to absorb such an impact. Again, difficult to tell at this point, but we're ready to move if we need to.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Very complete. Thank you.

And we'll take our next question from Alejandro Fuchs with ITAU. Your line is open.

Hello, Pablo. Thank you for the call and for the space for questions. I have two on my side very quickly. First, I wanted to see if you could repeat the volume performance for the quarter. I think I missed it due to some connection issues on my side. And then the second will be related to the distribution expenses. I think that you mentioned that you're trying to invest in logistics, improve logistics distribution network, but I also wanted to understand if this is also related maybe to higher minimum wages in the country overall, and maybe if you could provide a little more color on the specific things that you're changing on the distribution, if we should expect this to continue the whole year. Thank you.

Thanks, Alejandro. Yes, glad to comment on the volume. As we said, overall for the company, sales were up 1.8%, and of that, volume was 0.6% higher, and price and mix was 1.2%. particularly on consumer products, which grew 3.4%. Volume was slightly lower, 0.3%, and the growth came from a price and mix contribution of 3.7%. And lastly, away from home, which grew 5.8%, volume was up 5.3%. So volume still strong on the professional or away from home business. On the consumer products, as we mentioned, although volume was slightly lower versus last year, that's because of the comparison, because when you look at it sequentially, volume was 3% higher in the first quarter of this year versus fourth quarter of 2023. So, again, let's remember that now growth will come from a more healthy and balanced mix between volume and prices as we've lapped Most of the prices that we've had to put in place because of the very strong cost increases over the past couple of years. So we are happy with our volume sequentially continuing to improve, which is a sign of the health in our business and the strength of our brands. When it comes to the distribution side, yes, we've seen important increases, and I think for the most part there's – different elements, let me put it this way, that are making that happen. One, there's a lack of enough operators in Mexico or truck drivers in Mexico. Some have put it in the realm of 60,000 operators that were missing in Mexico. And Sorry, it seemed that our connection had been lost, but hopefully that's not the case. So, again, a lack of operators that we've seen in the country and that lack of supply has translated into higher costs together with, as you mentioned, higher wage increases in Mexico over the past couple of years. So, overall, and some higher input costs to the logistics companies. So, overall, a very... difficult scenario there, but a great opportunity going forward because although it's put some pressure on our SG&A over the past year and a half, we are making some important investments to take advantage of the opportunity. Those have to do with our footprint, which we've mentioned, and we're looking and have made investments in our footprint to optimize it so that we need to move product around in a much lesser fashion that we're currently doing. and that's by focusing our operations and our manufacturing where demand is happening. And you'll continue to see investments behind that. We did important investments in the bathroom tissue side. Now we're doing them on the napkin side, and we'll continue to focus on that. So that's one area where we're focusing. And the other one is we're expanding our own fleet, which brings substantial savings to us. And we'll be doing that throughout this year. We're already in the process of it. So we think that together, the footprint optimization, the expansion of our fleet and other measures that we're taking to streamline our operations in the distribution side should mean that we take advantage of this opportunity maybe closer to the end of the year and certainly to 2025. It doesn't happen overnight, but we're already working on it. And again, we believe this is an important opportunity to strengthen our execution and improve our cost structure.

Thank you, Pablo, and congratulations on the results.

Thank you, Alejandro.

And once again, that is star and one to ask a question. We'll take our next question from Rodrigo Alcantara with UBS. Your line is open. And, Rodrigo, your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi. Sorry, it wasn't good. Thanks for taking my question. Just going back a bit on the top line and on product innovation and new categories, Pablo, just curious if you can comment here on, I mean, maybe not – inorganic opportunities, but what about new categories where you could possibly explore as a way to accelerate growth? I mean, in your view, which categories could Kimber be, where could be the potential for Kimberly to enter into these new categories to accelerate growth? Just curious on your thoughts, Keith, here. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Rodrigo. That's a very important question and one that we're looking at very intently. As you know, we believe our core businesses still have substantial room for growth. We have a group of categories that have low penetration and we're accelerating that penetration and growth of the categories, but it'll take a little bit of time for those to be more important. But we're seeing great growth there. And we are, as you mentioned, also looking at other categories where we could participate. And the way we think about it is where can we add value to the consumer, to the client, and that at least over time there would be margin neutral or hopefully accretive, but at least neutral. So that's the way we're thinking about this third bucket. And we're, again, intently looking to see where we can add value, again, for consumers and clients. And nothing that I can mention at this point, only to say that we're intentively looking at a couple of categories, and hopefully we'll be able to make some strides on that here in the near future.

I see. Thanks for the update. Actually, a very quick follow-up. If you can perhaps give us a very brief update on it. on your market share trends, right? I mean, we traditionally always speak about the stable share trends. But on the other hand, we have seen very few from competitors, at least in Mexico. So just to hear, you know, what's your view regarding, you know, a more aggressive strategy here from you guys to gain share in the market, not only maintaining stable, but to gain share in the market. Thank you very much.

Yes, I mean, last year, as we mentioned, last quarter's goal and our most important categories, we were able to gain some share. And this year, as the year's starting, things look stable, if you will. But we are, as I mentioned, through innovation, through supporting our brands, looking to accelerate our growth. And for that, we need to grow volume and grow share. So we'll be very aggressive, but we'll be aggressive on the innovation front and on the execution front, again, in supporting our brands. We believe that's the sustainable, healthy way to grow a share, not doing it by cutting prices or being very aggressively promotionally. It's all about having the best product in tier and supporting it as we need in the point of sale and through our brand execution. So we will certainly be looking to, again, accelerate innovation and accelerate the support behind our brands.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Rodrigo.

And we'll take our next question from Renata Cabral with Citibank. Your line is open. And Renata, your line is open. Please ask your questions. and it does look like she has taken herself out of the queue at this time. It appears that we have no further questions. I will now turn the program back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Thanks again for participating on the call, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Hope you have a terrific second quarter. Thanks so much.

That concludes today's teleconference. you for your participation. You may now disconnect.