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spk04: Greetings, and welcome to the Hershey Company first quarter 2021 question and answer session. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to your host, Ms. Melissa Poole, Vice President of Investor Relations for the Hershey Company. Thank you, and you may now begin.
spk09: Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the Hershey Company's first quarter 2021 earnings Q&A session. I hope everyone has had the chance to read our press release and listen to our prerecorded management presentation, both of which are available on our website. In addition, we have posted a transcript of the prerecorded remarks. At the conclusion of today's live Q&A session, we will also post a transcript and audio replay of this call. Please note that during today's Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These statements include expectations and assumptions regarding the company's future operations and financial performance, including expectations and assumptions related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Actual results could differ materially from those projected as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other factors. The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements based on subsequent events. A detailed listing of such risks and uncertainties can be found in today's press release and the company's SEC filings. Finally, please note that we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe will provide useful information for investors. The presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations to the GAAP results are included in this morning's press release. Joining me today are Hershey's Chairman and CEO, Michelle Buck, and Hershey's Senior Vice President and CFO, Steve Voskal. With that, I will turn it over to the operator for the first question.
spk04: Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question today, please press star 1 from your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Robert Moscow with Credit Suisse. Pleased to see you with your question.
spk02: Hi. Thank you for the question and obviously really great results. I just wanted to get a little more color on your gross margin expectations for the year. You talked about transitory reasons for why gross margin would be down in first quarter. And I think, are you still guiding to gross margin expansion? And To what extent do you need, like, the incremental pricing to get that gross margin to turn the other way? And I would think some of these higher costs that you're talking about, like freight, co-packing, it sounds like you'll need to keep doing those things beyond just first quarter. Maybe a little more color there.
spk01: So let me have Steve take that one. Sure, happy to. So, yeah, we are still calling for modest gross margin expansion on a full-year basis. As you noted and we had in the remarks, there were some transitory impacts in the first quarter, some lapping from last year, some also costs in response to the higher volume. As we look forward for the rest of the year, you know, some of the things that are strengths for us, the productivity gains, the additional volume, the pricing that you referenced, all of that will be part of building that gross margin. So far for the first quarter, and even as we look out for the year, I would say our inflation assumptions are largely tracking to what we had in plan. And the one exception that we noted was packaging. And I think that is one we'll watch. You know, our expectation is that inflation will moderate some as the year plays out, impacted a bit by weather in Texas for the first quarter. So that's one we're watching. And then in any carry forward of incremental costs to support the higher volume. And with more runway here in the balance of the year, we'll have more opportunities to optimize between customer service and manufacturing capacity and the cost of support. So we're keeping a close watch on all those. But yes, at this point, we still see some gross margin expansion over the course of the year.
spk02: Okay. And one follow-up. The new price increase on grocery and non-chocolate, can you give us a sense of what it represents both in absolute terms and also in on an annualized basis once it fully flows through.
spk01: Yeah, so we see it, you know, total pricing for this year across all the price increases, order of magnitude about 100 basis points. About half of that is the non-chocolate piece. And again, reference there, we haven't priced that part of the portfolio since 2014, so this is in line with our broader strategy we've talked about of rotating and refreshing pricing in parts of the portfolio.
spk02: Okay. So on an annualized basis, does that mean it's 1%, 2% to the total business? Yeah.
spk01: Annualized, it's about a point. For this year, it's about 50 basis points.
spk02: Okay. All right.
spk14: Thank you very much.
spk04: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Levery with Piper Sandler. Let's just see what's your question.
spk05: Good morning. Thank you. Good morning.
spk07: Good morning.
spk05: Just following on pricing a little bit, you said the, you know, point to point and a half expectations for the year and mentioned that a lot of that reflects the pricing you just took and some of the promotional benefit in the first quarter. You also just mentioned that the packaging inflation should moderate. You've got some relatively benign things like cocoa costs and dairy, at least so far. But if you were to look for more pricing, say, if packaging didn't come in the way you're expecting, what would you do? How nimble can you be and what sort of timing does it take to flow some of this through? How much upside to the one to one and a half could we end up seeing?
spk01: Yeah, it depends on which parts of the portfolio that we would price. Obviously, the seasonal part takes a pretty long lead time. And so really, that's not something that would be in the card for this year. On an everyday basis, we probably need at least three to four months of lead time. And so you could say there's still some optionality there if we were to see some worst-case scenarios from a cost standpoint. Right now, that's not in the plan. I think we feel good about the plan that we have for pricing, but as I said, we'll monitor what's happening from a cost standpoint.
spk05: Okay, that's great. Thanks. And just a follow-up on the e-commerce side, I believe you've said that those margins might be somewhere around 100 to 150 basis points lower, but as it scales, that should improve. How have you seen that change over this past year with the benefit of the surge and obviously a bigger scale base now?
spk01: Yeah, from a dilution standpoint, I mean, you're in the right zip code. It's a bit dilutive to the overall margin. Obviously, that piece of the business, as we've talked about in prior calls, has gotten bigger. But at the same time, we continue to look for ways to drive efficiency there. and optimize inside that business to bring those margins closer in line with the rest of the portfolio.
spk05: Do you have a sense of just the timing for what that might take? Is that a multi-year process, or would some of this surge that's kind of still sticking now be a big help towards narrowing that gap?
spk01: Sure, it's a multi-year process for sure. I mean, the scale does help. We get more scale across some of the investments and capabilities that we put there, so there's some benefit there in the present. but really to address the full dilution, it's going to be a multi-year process.
spk14: Okay, great. Thanks so much. The next question is coming from the line of Nick Mody with RBC.
spk04: Please proceed with your questions.
spk00: Yeah, thank you. Good morning, everyone. So I had two questions. First was on just shelf space. So clearly, Hershey's done a phenomenal job on execution gains in 2020, gains in early 2021. I'm just Curious, given how your momentum continues, if you would expect to see or have discussions with retailers regarding more space later this year, but also in 2022. That's the first question. And then the second question is just given the online momentum that you've been seeing and the clear stickiness that we've seen, how are you thinking about the supply chain and kind of reorienting the supply chain to make sure that you can continue to effectively execute as the online business continues to grow? Thank you.
spk07: So, good morning, Nick. So, let me first go to the space question. You know, as we started out for the year, you know, we always have a focused plan, focused on balanced growth across all levers, you know, driving base velocity, using media to accelerate growth, growth in seasons, distribution gains. So that's always a focus for us, and we are fortunate that we have been able, given the strength of our performance of our supply chain, particularly overall, but also during COVID, and some of the needs of our customers, to be able to provide some incremental SKUs that were very viable, that our customers were looking for, and we gained about five incremental SKUs for the year, And so certainly with that comes some shelf space gains. So that's something we've been focused on. As we get that distribution and we get shelf space now, that certainly has some staying power as long as those SKUs perform, which we anticipate that they will. So we continue to be focused on that. And as we look throughout the year, we feel pretty good about our ability to continue to to drive distribution as well as shelf space gains. And certainly that kind of coincides with some of the share gains that we have seen on the business have been driven by that. As we look at online momentum as it relates to our supply chain, you know, we've talked before about Supply Chain 2.0, a big initiative that we have to really prepare our business and enable our manufacturing and supply chain for the future. And certainly as we built that program and that initiative, one of the key legs that we were focused on was the agility to enable us to adapt to the changing retail environment and specifically e-commerce being one of those areas because a lot of the packs sold in e-commerce are slightly different than those sold across the business. So some of those investments that we're making there enable us to more efficiently, at a better margin, develop the right packs that enable us to win in e-commerce. So a big focus in supply chain 2.0 against that and in all of our new capacity builds.
spk14: Great. Thank you, Michelle. Sure. Our next question comes from the line of Jason English with Goldman Sachs. Please just hear with your questions.
spk03: Hey, good morning, folks. Thank you for sliding in. I want to come back to the question on pricing, but from a slightly different angle. Michelle, if we look back in history, usually you move, Mars follows, or Mars moves, you follow, and you follow in similar order of magnitude on similar products. And that consistency has obviously helped investors build confidence in the pricing architecture, the pricing discipline, and the pricing power in the category. We're in a bit of a unique circumstance right now where Mars is moving one direction with a higher magnitude and you're moving a different direction with a much lower magnitude. And it strikes me as quite a unique moment in time where you guys are diverging. I guess I'd love a little more clarity to try to understand the motivation for you to go in a different direction and what, if any, implications this may have in terms of that pricing discipline we've historically seen in the category.
spk07: Yeah, so I continue to feel really good about this being a very rational category from a pricing perspective and there being strong discipline from that perspective. Our recent announcements regarding increasing price on seasons and also non-chocolate and grocery are very consistent with the strategy we've been executing over the past couple years of realizing price through different levers. and on different parts of the portfolio. And we think that that's proven effective for us to drive profitable growth and also be able to reinvest in the business, both for us and also for our retailers. But we do know that across competitors in the category, we each do have unique portfolios with different skews to our business across pack types and across brands. We have some different capabilities in terms of what we are good at executing. and perhaps even different business needs at different points in time. And so while all the pricing isn't exactly, you know, exactly, you know, pack to pack exactly the same, what we think is important is while those tactics and products might differ, overall, category price realization is pretty consistent. And so if you look at us and you look at the second largest player in the category, the magnitude and difference in terms of what we each are getting from price is probably a point or in that range. So it's not a significant difference between
spk14: Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. I'll pass it on. The next question comes from the line of Ken Goldman, JP Morgan. Please proceed with your questions.
spk13: Hi. Thank you. You highlighted some recurring headwinds to your gross margin. I think there were some incentive payments, some comment and warehousing costs. Is there any color, Steve, that you can provide on how much these may have added to your COGS or just took away from your margin? And Do any of those incentive payments bleed into 2Q?
spk01: Yeah, so maybe just taking the incentive piece. So, yeah, we will see some additional incentives, if I go versus prior, in second quarter as well. As we get to the back half of the year, it's going to get a little bit narrower year on year. But we'll definitely see some impact in the second quarter. We also have some year-over-year investments and capabilities. I think we touched on these a little bit in our last call, you know, still – Some costs going through OpEx to support supply chain 2.0 that Michelle mentioned and also the ERP program. So those would be, if I kind of look between the lines, some of the pieces year over year, that'll be different.
spk14: Okay.
spk13: And then as my follow-up, I may be pushing you a little harder here than what you're willing to talk about, but it's hard not to notice that COCO is one of the only commodities that hasn't ripped higher lately. It's come down actually sequentially in the last couple months. So I know you don't talk about your specific commodity buys, but can you just walk us through a little bit about how you're looking to lock in maybe some of your favorable inputs a bit longer than you otherwise might have? Just given how everything else has risen so much higher, it really could help you in terms of protecting your 2022 numbers at this point.
spk01: Sure. Yeah, I mean, you're right, Ken. We're not going to get too specific. Our hedging horizons vary. You know, we've kind of said in the past three months up to two years, depending on, you know, what's available in the market, liquidity, pricing. And I will say our commodities team is very good at interpreting the signals and trying to make smart moves with respect to that hedging program. Beyond that, we're probably not going to comment. As I said, you know, COCO has moved around. It's down a little bit. All else equal, you might interpret that as some opportunity if you were to be a little bit longer from a hedging standpoint. But we really don't want to say any more than that yet about 22.
spk14: Understood. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexia Howard with Bernstein. Please proceed with your questions.
spk06: Good morning, everyone. Hope you can hear me okay. Yes, we can. Perfect. Okay. So I guess my first question is, I wonder if you can give us a little bit more detail and granularity around the away-from-home recovery, particularly in North America, which regions, which channels, what exactly is playing out there that you're seeing that's so encouraging? And then my second follow-up question, I know you're not giving quarterly guidance, but obviously 2020 was such an unusual year, and we're going to be lapping some interesting events. developments in the year-ago period as we go into q2 I think you mentioned the ad spend was going to be up materially in the second quarter I'm just wondering whether you can give us any other pointers on how you know the top and the bottom line might be expected to develop or what the pluses and minuses are as we think about next quarter thank you and I'll pass it on sure
spk07: So relative to the away-from-home strength, you know, I would say it is across the board. So first of all, you know, we did see stronger foot traffic and consumer mobility in North America, and that was really, I believe, from the accelerated vaccine distribution as well as from the stimulus funds that were allocated there. And that not only drove strength in what we would call our core channels, kind of the more traditional channels, food, drug, math, and even some pickup inconvenience in Q1. It also had, you know, there was also a very strong positive impact on our non-measured channels as well. So food service, our own retail stores, you know, world travel, retail, some of those businesses that were really big decliners for us last year came back faster than we anticipated. So I would say, you know, it was pretty much across the board in terms of all of those venues, you know, improving a bit more than we had anticipated. So some of it was due to the consumer traffic. And then, of course, we were able to also capture incremental distribution and merchandising in our U.S. confection business, and given the strong sell-through that we saw driven by mobility and foot traffic, strong sell-through at Easter then led to accelerated shipments of some of our summer programs, which also helped us across the board. And then even beyond North America, we actually saw increased mobility in the international markets as well, a bit more than we had expected. So with that, I think those were unplanned for us in Q1. We certainly had planned to see those mobility improvements later in the year and have that in our plan, but not in Q1. And with that, I'll turn it over to Steve to talk a little bit about the quarters.
spk01: Yeah, from a quarterly standpoint, as we look at Q2, building on what Michelle said, we've got a lot of momentum on the top line coming into Q2. We're able to merchandise early some of the summer season. That will get us off to a strong start. As we go forward from there on the top line, you're going to see sales growth moderate. You know, the last get tougher. You'll see pricing start to make a contribution more in the back half. And as Michelle said, you know, our plan assumed mobility would begin to recover as we got to the back half. So that's less of a new piece of the story as we turn the corner on the mid-year. And then, you know, we'll see some margin improvement as the year progresses. You mentioned, you know, ad spending for Q2 is going to be up pretty big year over year. That was the quarter last year where we made some adjustments, some pricing advantage because it was cheaper to buy, and some pricing or some adjustments in how much we spent just in response to COVID. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of color on the balance of the quarter.
spk06: Very helpful. Thank you so much. I'll pass it on.
spk14: The next question is coming from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays.
spk04: Pleasure to see you with your question.
spk12: Good morning, everybody.
spk04: Good morning.
spk12: Michelle, I know this can be a little hard to parse out sometimes, but as you think about how much of the gains that you've made the last couple quarters in distribution and shelf space, merchandising gains you've talked about, how do you think about how much of those might be structural based on a lot of the good stuff that you're doing around innovation and everything else versus you know, a product of what's been, you know, clearly a more accommodative sort of competitive environment from, you know, from a perspective of some others, whether it be, you know, supply chain missteps and things of that nature. So I'm just trying to get a sense. It's a hard one to answer, I know, but how sticky you think some of those gains in market, right, that you've seen can be over time?
spk07: Yeah, so I think you're right. It is a little bit tough to parse all of that out. So I would say, you know, we came into the year feeling really good about our strategies, and many of those we had laid out pre-COVID relative to really focused on, you know, we got to win at the top line with balanced growth, which is, you know, driving against distribution, the core, innovation, seasons, pricing, and volume growth, and, you know, I think what we're seeing on the business is that we are delivering on each of those elements, and so certainly that's That is a piece that I think has staying power that, you know, some of the strategies we put in place relative to, you know, pre-COVID optimizing our balanced focus on the core and on innovation, not over, you know, rotating on innovation too much, you know, not over-rotating on any one factor, you know, balancing price and volume, all those things. So I think that there is some underlying strength there, as well as a lot of the investments that we've made in our core capabilities in our manufacturing and our supply chain over the year that have enabled us to, you know, to deliver perhaps at stronger levels than perhaps some others in the marketplace. And so some of that strength that we're seeing in terms of impact of media, those types of things, you know, they're there, you know, without the COVID impact. You know, we tend to always, you know, as you know, strong category managers, so we do tend to do well when it comes to Winning at retail, we have our proprietary retail sales force that enable us to do that. At the same time, I guess if I was going to parse out some places where some of the current dynamics may be a little bit more transitory, certainly We have one more distribution than I would say is probably at the historic level in terms of number of new items because of our strength in being able to operate in this environment and our agility. We have won some incremental merch associated with the competitive situation as well. So for me, I guess I kind of, you know, I narrow into probably those two factors being probably the biggest ones that are, you know, that are the most unique. And, of course, the other one is that right now in Q1, you asked more about a couple quarters. In Q1 in particular, we've kind of got that unique duality where we're seeing that we're benefiting both from away from home and from at-home behaviors both being strong. And certainly I think that that, you know, that can't sustain at the level that it did in Q1. So we do think that that's going to moderate a bit. Does that help?
spk12: Yeah. Yeah, that's very helpful. It'll be really interesting to see how much of the at-home moderates as mobility does return, you know, for the industry as a whole. Obviously, it'll be really interesting. But I hear your point about how strong both of those really were at the same time in Q1. So, yep, that's very helpful. Thanks so much.
spk04: Thank you. The next question is coming from the line of Rob Dickerson with Jefferies. Please just answer your question.
spk11: Great. Thanks so much. I just want to touch on the international segment for a minute. You know, I mean, obviously, you know, performance in Q1 was extremely strong. You know, I think originally, right, the expectation was essentially for somewhat modest growth. Guidance now is up for the full year for the total company. And then I know you had comments in your prepared remarks just around, you know, basically playing it safe, right? There's some incremental lockdowns occurring, the visibility is that strong. But I guess, you know, kind of overall, the question is, you know, could it be actually a lot stronger, right, than we would expect as we go through the year, because it would seem as if kind of relative to what we're thinking about for North America, you know, if that international piece does continue to play out, you know, and obviously given those compares are so much easier, it would seem as if you know, the volume driven year could actually be even more volume driven, you know, off of that international piece as we progress through the year. So kind of simplistically, I'm just asking, you know, I realize you don't have the visibility, but, you know, if things were to kind of self-correct and momentum were to continue in international, I mean, could you just not do much better on the top line than you're already currently guiding? That's all. Thanks.
spk07: First of all, I'd say, hey, we feel great that we are seeing strength across every piece of our business, in North America, in every component of North America, including U.S. Confection and Amplify, as well as in international. So that's great to see. And certainly we did have a strong first quarter in international that was significantly ahead of our expectation. I think what was interesting for us was that Despite the fact that COVID cases were high in many of those markets, consumer mobility still increased, and that drove demands for our category that was stronger than we anticipated. I think the potential concern, and certainly as you look at the news, you see this everywhere, is there certainly are some pretty dire situations, especially in some of the markets that we're in, but certainly India being one of those. where, you know, case counts are rising. There are other markets where the vaccination dissemination is going quite slowly. And, you know, as new lockdowns are implemented, we expect that those could hamper mobility and that these trends could moderate. So we know in international things are always volatile, but they certainly are even more volatile during this time. And those markets are not going to have linear behavior. We expect that we'll see continued volatility. What we're trying to do is to drive what's within our control, and our teams are responding with tremendous agility and adapting the plans based on the state and the status in each market. So we feel good that all of our key initiatives, whether it's our China transition to the new business model, a restart or upping again our focus in India on our chocolate initiative, all of those things are going well, but there's just a lot outside of our control, and we'll have to see how the year plays out. If things are positive, certainly there could be upside, and however, we also know that there could be downside as well.
spk14: All right, great. Thanks so much. Our next question is from the line of Morgan Fletcher with Bank of America. Pleased to see you with your question.
spk10: Hi, good morning. Thank you for the question. So I guess my question is on how COVID may have changed your perspective on the portfolio, maybe in an organic, but also an inorganic way. We touched on e-commerce and supply chain earlier, but maybe if we could just go through more how you're looking at categories differently, like baking mix has had very strong growth while refreshments have you know, seen decline. So just how you may be thinking about your portfolio on a category basis going forward. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things that, you know, that we feel good about that COVID just reinforced was the strength of the breadth of our portfolio to be able to participate in different occasions. And so I would start first within Cork Infections and say, you know, we have a, you know, our business splits a third, a third, a third, instant consumables, which are all about people being out and about on the go. take-home, which is all about people being at home and consuming the products there, and then seasons, which is all about celebration. And so within Confection, what we saw was, wow, you know, normally we might focus a bit more of our efforts on instant consumable. And when COVID hit, we were able to immediately shift media, in-store merchandising, et cetera, more to our take-home portfolio. And we also saw that during a time like COVID, consumers were just hungry for connection. And so the role that our brands play during seasons to create that connectivity and traditions and rituals was something consumers just were so hungry for. So really leveraging the full breadth of that within Confection was important. You know, you raised baking and certainly, you know, consumers were baking more and we were able to leverage that as part of our portfolio. So I think what it really taught us was this ability to pivot to follow the consumer, and to focus on the parts of our portfolio that were most relevant to them at that time. And if we think organic and inorganic, likewise, we were able to take advantage of Skinny Pop, which has done incredibly well during COVID, and certainly we know that categories like nutrition bars haven't done quite as well. So it's really playing on the pieces of your portfolio at the right piece of time, but having the options and the breadth across the portfolio to be able to meet those needs.
spk14: Thank you. Thank you. We've reached the end of the question and answer session.
spk04: I'll now turn the call over to Michelle Buck for closing remarks.
spk08: I'll turn it over to Melissa for closing remarks. Thank you for joining us this morning. I know it's a busy day of earnings. As always, I will be available to answer any additional questions you may have.
spk04: Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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