Edgewell Personal Care Company

Good morning and welcome to Edgewell's second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Goff, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning for Edgewell's second quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. With me this morning are Rod Little, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Sullivan, our Chief Financial Officer. Rod will kick off the call and hand it over to Dan to discuss our results and full year fiscal 2024 outlook before we transition to Q&A. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay via our website, www.edgewell.com. During the call, we may make statements about our expectations for future plans and performance. This might include future sales, earnings, advertising and promotional spending, product launches, savings and costs related to restructuring and repositioning actions, acquisitions and integrations, changes to our working capital metrics, currency fluctuations, commodity costs, category value, future plans for return of capital to shareholders, and more. Any such statements are forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which reflect our current views with respect to future events, plans, or prospects. These statements are based on assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described under the caption risk factors, and are in the report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2023. as may be amended in our quarterly reports on Form 10Q, which is on file with the SEC. These risks may cause our actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. We do not assume any obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law. During this call, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is shown in our press release issued earlier today, which is available at the industrial relations section of our website. This non-GAAP information is provided as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, or as superior to, measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. However, management believes these non-GAAP measures provide investors with valuable information on the underlying trends of our business. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rod.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our fiscal 24 second quarter earnings call. We've delivered strong financial results in the quarter. Slide sales growth and accelerated gross margin gains of over 300 basis points drove 19% year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth and over 50% adjusted earnings per share growth. both of which were above our expectations. Our strong margin results serve as a catalyst for the increase in our profit outlook for the full year, while reinforcing our commitment to return to pre-COVID level gross margins over time. I'm particularly pleased with the execution of our teams, as margin expansion delivered in the quarter and embedded in our updated full-year outlook is underpinned by a healthy balance of both accelerated realization of our productivity initiatives and disciplined execution of our strategic revenue management efforts. Combined, these two initiatives drove over 400 basis points of gross benefit in the quarter. Organic net sales results in the quarter included a double-digit increase in our right-to-win portfolio, driven by our market-leading sun care and grooming businesses, and continued growth across our international markets, reflective of of both price and volume gains. I continue to be excited about the results we are seeing in our international markets. After posting 6% growth this quarter, these businesses have a two-year stack growth rate of over 9%, driven by better execution, improved commercial capabilities, and importantly, stronger leadership. In Japan, our second largest standalone market, we had meaningful organic growth while gaining almost a point and a half of market share in wet shave. In Europe, our momentum continues with growth across both branded wet shave and our custom brands group, as we have begun to execute the relaunch of the Wilkinson Sword brand in market. And in Latin America, growth was driven by higher pricing and volumes, reflective of a strong start to the sun care season. In North America, as category consumption softened, sales in our right-to-play businesses of wet shave and feminine care declined. While there were certain transitory factors at play, including the cycling of last year's NPD pipeline fill at Costco and shave, and retailer efforts to further reduce safety stock levels across femcare, the results in these categories for North America were below our expectations. Importantly, our results in North America across our right-to-win portfolio were very strong, and in total we grew over 11% in the quarter, with gains in both volume and price. Solid planogram outcomes and good early season execution drove 13% growth in sun care. An incremental distribution and new product rollouts in Cremo and the Billy launch into body fueled over 20% organic sales growth in grooming. In summary, we operate a broad and diverse portfolio of global brands, and our first half results are further proof that our strategy is working. For half one, we delivered 1.4% organic sales growth, 190 basis points of gross margin accretion, invested over $111 million in support of our brands, and increased operating cash flow by $54 million and realized over 26% adjusted earnings per share growth. As we turn to the second half of the year, our priorities are clear. We will continue to execute with excellence in support of our productivity program. We'll invest behind meaningful innovation and MPD across sun, grooming, and body care, as well as our carefree master brand launch. And finally, we will continue to deliver top and bottom line growth across our international markets. With this, I'm confident in our organization's ability to be successful. And now I'd like to ask Dan to take you through our second quarter results and discuss our outlook for fiscal 24. Dan?