Clorox Company (The)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Clark's Company's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star 1 on your touchstone pad at any time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press the star zero on your touchtone pad at any time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Ms. Lisa Burham, Vice President of Investor Relations for the Clarks Company. Ms. Burham, you may begin your conference.

Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today are Linda Rendell, our CEO, and Kevin Jacobson, our CFO. I hope everyone has had a chance to review our earnings release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on our website. In just a moment, Linda will share a few opening comments, and then we'll take your questions. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements, including about our fiscal 2023 outlook. These statements are based on management's current expectations, but may differ from actual results or outcomes. In addition, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the forward-looking statement section, which identified various factors that could affect any such forward-looking statement, which has been filed with the SEC. In addition, please refer to the non-GAAP financial information section in our earnings release and the supplemental financial schedules in the investor relations section of our website for reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Now I'll turn it over to Linda.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our fiscal 2022 results reflect a very challenging operating environment, including record high input cost inflation and ongoing pandemic driven volatility. We navigated this by taking a broad set of actions within our control to rebuild margin while continuing to invest in innovation and our portfolio of trusted brands to position Clorox for long term success. This allowed us to deliver results in line with our outlook, including another quarter of sequential gross margin improvement. While we look forward to a return to a more normalized environment, we are not there yet. We expect the environment to remain difficult in fiscal 23 as we lap COVID impacts on our business, demand continues to normalize, particularly on our cleaning and disinfecting portfolio, and factors like input cost inflation and supply chain disruptions persist. We'll keep addressing these challenges head on through actions that include revenue management, further pricing, ongoing cost management and supply chain optimization, our digital transformation, and the streamlined operating model we announced today. At the same time, we're committed to maintaining our category leadership and delivering superior consumer value. I'm confident that our Ignite strategy continues to position us well for the future. We remain committed to delivering on our 3% to 5% sales growth target over the long term, and are on the right path to drive consistent, profitable growth over time and create shareholder value.