Perrigo Company plc

Hello and welcome to the Parago First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please schedule 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 touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bradley Joseph. Mr. Joseph, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Parago's first quarter fiscal 2021 earnings conference call. Hope you all had a chance to review the press release we issued earlier this morning. A copy of the earnings release and presentation for today's earnings discussion are available within the investor section of the Parago.com website. Joining today's call are President and CEO Murray Kessler and CFO Ray Silcock. I would like to remind everyone that during this call, participants will make certain forward-looking statements. Please refer to the important information for shareholders and investors and safe harbor language regarding these statements in our press release issued earlier this morning. A few housekeeping items of note before we start. First, unless otherwise stated, all financial results discussed and presented are on a continuing operations basis. They do not include any contributions from the RX business which is accounted for as discontinued operations. In addition to other non-GAAP adjustments as described in the appendix, adjusted profit measures including adjusted EPS and adjusted operating income exclude from both periods certain costs incurred to support the operations of the RX business which are reported in continuing operations. See the appendix for additional details and for reconciliations of all non-GAAP financial measures presented. And second, organic growth excludes acquisitions, divestitures, and currency in both comparable periods. And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Murray.

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Let's start with a recap of the tremendous progress that has been made on the Perigo transformation by the collective efforts of my Perigo colleagues all over the world. To be specific, we unveiled the Perigo transformation plan at our investor conference two years ago, two years ago almost to the day. At that conference, we shared with you our aggressive plans to transform Perigo from a healthcare company into a consumer self-care company in order to provide focus, increase certainty, restore growth, and ultimately unlock significant value. We also introduced the vision that has guided everyone in the company every day since to make lives better by bringing quality, affordable self-care products that consumers trust everywhere they are sold. Two years ago, I shared that plan would take three years to implement. Today, only two years later, I'm proud to say that all of the major elements of the plan are now nearly complete. about a year ahead of schedule. And while being a global leader in self-care will require continuous improvement, I believe Perigo is at an inflection point right now. Let's take a quick look at what has been accomplished. First, we've meaningfully reconfigured our portfolio with the most notable action being the divestiture of our non-core generic prescription pharmaceutical businesses. in addition to the divestiture of a number of smaller transactions. Proceeds from these divestitures to date, along with our strong cash flow generation, have been used for consumer bolt-on acquisitions that either broadened our self-care portfolio, notably in oral care with our acquisition of Rainier, or accelerated growth within our existing businesses. Once the Rx deal closes, we will have divested three companies generating $2 billion in proceeds and made seven acquisitions at a cost of just over $1 billion. As a result, Perigo is now a pure play consumer self-care company, comparable to other publicly traded consumer companies, which will soon have over $2 billion available to invest to further build our business. In addition to reconfiguring our portfolio, we identified and executed against many areas in our business that needed to be improved to successfully evolve into a pure play consumer company. We upgraded our new product pipeline, systems, processes, and people. We have added top tier consumer talent to our marketing organizations. We have centralized our R&D organization globally. and we have consistently met our internal goal of developing and then maintaining more than 500 million in our new product pipeline. Hundreds of consumer SKUs have been launched over the past two years and the entire program has been turbocharged by meaningful investments in e-commerce and digital capabilities. We also made investments in infrastructure including increasing U.S. tablet capacity, introduced business intelligence capabilities that have led to industry-first omni-channel market share data reporting and significantly improved customer service levels that has led to increased sales and more favorable customer discussions. Collectively, all of these factors have led to a revitalization of our business and taken Perigo from four years of almost no growth to high single-digit growth over the last two years. The third part of the transformation was to restore certainty to Perigo, and we have come a long way in this regard as well. From years of inconsistency, our forecasts have become much more reliable, and even with all of the challenges of a global pandemic, we have consistently delivered on our financial commitments. The sale of generic RX removes a huge concern over business volatility, and we have strengthened our governance Diversity and Inclusion, Cybersecurity, and Commitment to ESG. We also are making meaningful progress with what currently concerns investors the most, the tax and legal overhang on the business or on the stock. Our third quarter 2020 conference call, we announced that the $843 million U.S. Athena Tax Assessment was accepted by the Mutual Agreement Program under the Irish-U.S. Income Tax Treaty designed to prevent double taxation and we remain optimistic that this matter is on a good path towards resolution. And now today I'd also like to inform you that we're in discussions with Irish Revenue about a potential settlement of the 1.6 billion plus Euro tax assessment. Discussions have been largely of a technical nature and grounded in law and have taken place over the last few months. There has been sufficient progress in these discussions for Parago to submit a board-approved offer to settle the matter. From our perspective, a reasonable resolution grounded in law is preferable to what could be years and years of litigation. But if resolution is not reached, be clear Parago still maintains that its original tax filings were correct and is prepared to vigorously defend its position. But I repeat myself, the two parties have started talking and I believe we are on a path towards a resolution in a shareholder friendly manner, but time will tell. This is all I will discuss on this topic today. So as previously stated, with our transformation activities nearing completion and with certainty significantly improved, Perigo is poised to create meaningful shareholder value. Said simply, Perigo is now a pure play consumer self-care company with a growth algorithm that compares favorably to CPG companies that traded significantly higher multiples. The company will have plenty of dry powder for disciplined M&A, putting Perigo in a unique position to supercharge its growth and create value in a consistent and sustainable manner. Let's now briefly discuss our quarterly performance highlights. By the reported numbers, Perigo net sales for continuing operations in Q1 2021 were $1.01 billion, down 6.8% versus a year ago, and organic net sales were down 10.9% versus prior year. However, reported numbers this quarter don't tell the real story. Q1 results were significantly distorted by COVID-related consumer pantry loading in the year-ago quarter, having a 6.8 percentage point negative impact on comparisons, and an estimated negative 6.4 percentage points impact from lower cough cold sales in this year's quarter. These two distorting factors also impacted the year over year EPS comparison. Adjusted diluted EPS was 50 cents per share, 17 cents below year ago. Pandemic related consumer pantry loading inflated the year ago quarter by an estimated 16 cents per share and pandemic-related weak cough cold sales in Q1 of this year had a negative 14 cents per share impact. I think the most important point to make is that the pantry load and the difficult cold cough season were known and accounted for in our projections and that Q1 results were in line with our expectations. No real surprises. Importantly, our business remains strong. Let me give you some perspective to why I say that. For the first two months of this year, January, February, our sales were up 3.8% on top of last year's January, February, that grew very strong 9.5%. But then came March 2020 and COVID-19, which drove a $73 million demand surge and a 29% increase in Perigo total net sales versus year ago. When compared to that huge month, March this year declined 23%, which pulled down the entire first quarter to the minus 6.8% I referred to. If you do the math, you'll see that absent the impact of the pantry load, our business would have still grown slightly for the quarter, even with this year's historically weak cold cough season. As most of that huge pantry load was reversed in subsequent months last year, it depressed second half 2020 results. This means we should have favorable comps in the back half of this year, which is accounted for in our projections. Another way you can see the real strength of our business unaffected by last year's pantry loading is to compare our 2021 results to 2019. In this comparison, our two-year compound annual growth rate is 4.1% with our organic net sales flat, although up 3.7% when excluding the impact from the historically low global incidence of cough, cold, and flu. Notably, this organic kegger does not include oral care businesses as they were not a part of Perigo in Q1 2019, and they're obviously growing. We accomplished these results by growing market share, investing in e-commerce, and launching successful new products. The dynamics I just explained for total perigo are basically the same for our consumer self-care Americas and consumer self-care international business segments, the specifics of which you can see on slide 10. In both segments, our business is growing versus 2019, plus 4.9% and plus 2.6% respectively, based on two-year TAGRs. In both segments, the Q1 results were negatively impacted by the year-ago pantry load. In both segments, Q1 results were negatively impacted by the current year weak cough cold season. And in both segments, the rest of the portfolio on average is growing. Obviously, the year-ago pantry load and subsequent deload are one-offs that will have no continuing impact. So the real question is, what about cold cough? Is that a one-off, or is that the new normal? Let's take a closer look, starting with slide 11. As you know, the incidence of flu activity in the US and EU throughout the 2021 season was virtually nonexistent. Those were down 98% versus a year ago. This extremely low incidence is attributed by experts to social distancing, mask requirements, stay-at-home orders, and school closings, all a byproduct of COVID-19. The incidence of cough, cold, which is more encompassing than flu and includes cough, cold, flu, fever, earaches, headaches, et cetera, The 2021 season was nearly 40% below the 10-year seasonal average. Now that many restrictions around the world are easing, the incidence of cough and colds are starting to trend up and above the prior year. This is according to the most recent IQVIA data. To be clear, this means that the historically low levels experienced this season are not expected to continue. In fact, according to estimates based on that same fan data from IQVIA, the 2021-22 cough cold season is projected to normalize, which would lead to sizable growth in our worldwide cough cold categories. This is a contributing factor that supports our strong second half 2021 growth outlook, though we have taken a conservative approach and only built a partial recovery on cough cold with respect to our guidance. Our deep new product pipeline also supports our second half growth expectations. New product launches in the second half include insurgent brands such as our co-packing of Bobby Baby formula. Second, white space brand launches such as our new probiotic Probify, which is launching across a number of countries in the EU. And three, new innovation in the store brand market with our launch of hypoallergenic infant formula in the US. And four, today's announcement of our introduction of nature baseline of children's products and infant formula under the Burt's Bees brand name via license. The Burt's Bees Organic Baby Formula has recently launched and we expect the line of nature-based remedies for babies and kids to be on shelves and online at leading retailers and e-tailers later this year. We understand our EPS forecast might look a bit back and loaded to some of you, but I'd remind you in a typical year before COVID, our operating income has always typically been weighted towards the second half of the year and particularly towards the fourth quarter as we sell in cough cold products to customers and illnesses begin to spread. This was not the case in 2020 as consumers loaded pantries earlier in the year and illnesses were at a historic low which led to a more evenly spread phasing of operating income last year than typical or normal. In 2021, we expect this phasing to return to our normal split of approximately 44% of our operating income in the first half and approximately 56% in the second half. Again, factors supporting this beyond history is that there is no pantry load this year, cough cold illnesses are expected to return to their pre-COVID levels, and we have a number of new products launching in the second half. The rescheduling of brand advertising and promotions back to pre-COVID levels and timing also benefits our forecast for the remainder of this year. Again, we believe these factors set the stage for significant growth in the back half of this year as consumption patterns and consumer shopping trips trend back towards pre-COVID levels, which in fact is a trend we are already seeing in our third party consumer offtake data in April. Turning to guidance, So the first quarter numbers were down compared to a year ago. As I said, that was expected. We did a little better in the EU, a little worse in the US, but we fared better than many of our peers. Given the tailwinds mentioned and that we are seeing a continued strength in e-commerce, an increase in store foot traffic, more consumers traveling again, and more children expected to return to schools in the fall, We are reaffirming our guidance to deliver 3% organic revenue growth, 5% operating income growth, and 7% EPS growth in 2021. Our plus 7% EPS commitment remains embedded at the midpoint of our guidance range of $2.50 to $2.70 per share. And also remember this EPS guidance is before we put any of the $2 billion in cash we have at our disposal on the balance sheet to work. So to summarize, we've made tremendous progress already this year by completing the portfolio reconfiguration to a pure play consumer self-care leader with a growth profile in line with CPG peers that trade at much higher multiples. Second, building over $2 billion in cash on our balance sheet, which will be available to drive growth. and three, creating a dialogue that might resolve the Irish tax liability in the coming year. Bottom line, Perigo's business model is highly defensible. Our self-care solutions are differentiated in the marketplace and on trend. Our portfolio offerings are well diversified across categories and geographies. We have world-class consumer talent and our business fundamentals are extremely durable. I'm more excited than ever about the future of Perigo and the potential to create value and I'm grateful to all of our teams around the world who have helped to transform our great company. Rest assured we are passionate about building shareholder value just as we are passionate about making our vision a reality to make lives better by bringing quality affordable self-care products that consumers trust everywhere they are sold. and with that I'll turn the call over to our CFO Ray Silcock to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Ray? Thank you Murray and good morning all. Before getting into some of the details of our first quarter financials I would like to extend a thank you to all our Perigo colleagues many of whom are listening to this call today for their hard work and dedication as they continue to deliver great results in spite of the challenges that COVID-19 continues to bring us, whether you're working in a manufacturing facility or working from home. Thanks again, everyone. In March, we signed an agreement to sell our generic pharmaceutical or RX business, and we are now accounting for it as a discontinued operation. As a consequence, this quarter, we're presenting financial information for continuing operations only. i.e. the CSC Americas segment, the CSC International segment, and corporate unallocated, and we're excluding our Rx business. We've prepared our financial information in this continuing operations slash discontinued operations format in accordance with accounting standards code 205. That's because the sale of the Rx business Given its key importance to Perigos becoming a pure play consumer company is a strategic shift for our company and also because the size of the Rx business relative to the rest of our company. This continuing operations framework also applies to the Q1 2020 figures that you see here today, including tax information and earnings per share. As we already said on our fourth quarter earnings call, All cash generated by the RX business will be retained by Perigo until the transaction closes. With that, let's take a look at our first quarter results. On a consolidated basis, we reported gap earnings from continuing operations of $3 million for the first quarter of 2021, two cents per diluted share. On an adjusted basis, consolidated net income from continuing operations were $67 million, and diluted earnings per share from continuing operations were 50 cents, a 25% decline as compared to the prior year, due primarily to last year's COVID demand surge and then this year's historically weak cough cold season. Non-GAAP adjustments comprised largely the $57 million of amortization, which we always add back. We also made adjustments of $3 million for unusual litigation expenses, $2 million in restructuring charges, and additionally, $5 million of transitional costs related to the RX business. With respect to these RX transitional costs, once the divestiture is completed, these costs will either be part of the already negotiated transition services agreement to be put in place at closing, all will be eliminated. For this reason, we have excluded these costs from the Q1 non-GAAP continuing operations results presented here today. Full details of all these adjustments can be found in the non-GAAP reconciliation table attached to this morning's press release. Our GAAP effective tax rate for Q1 2021 is 84% primarily driven by 8.8 million of tax expense which has no associated income with it. This expense was mainly the transfer of IP undertaken as part of the pending RX transaction. In computing the adjusted effective tax rate of 22.2%, we adjusted for this expense and also for the effective tax on those non-GAAP adjustments for Q1 that I just went through. For Q1 last year, we recalculated the adjusted effective tax rate based as part of the continuing operations slash discontinued operations exercise in line with ASC 205. The Q1 tax rate was recalculated based on CSCA, CSCI, and corporate unallocated Q1 2020 pretax income only and the recalculated adjusted effective tax rate on this basis for the first quarter of 2020 was 25.8%. From this point forward in the presentation, all dollar numbers, basis points and margin percentages will be for continuing operations on an adjusted basis unless stated otherwise. Consolidated reported net sales in the first quarter of 2021 amounted to $1 billion A 6.8% decrease versus the same quarter last year. The comparison between Q1 this year and Q1 last year is, as Murray has already pointed out, primarily as a result of the fact that the first two quarters of both years included two specific events, the combination of which had a large adverse impact on the year-over-year comparison. A pantry load at the beginning of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 and many more. This year, an historically low cough cold season adversely impacted our Q1 sales, reducing them by approximately $68 million. Together, these factors have an adverse effect on this year's Q1 comp. to prior year of approximately $141 million. Organic net sales for the quarter were down 10.9%, excluding favorable impacts of $25 million for currency and $32 million for the acquisitions of Dr. Fresh and the branded Sanofi products in the EU. There was also an unfavorable impact of $14 million from divesting the Rosemont subsidiary. Consolidated gross margin for the first quarter was 38.8%, 40 basis points higher than the prior year. This was primarily due to favorable pricing in CSC International as well as favorable currency impacts which helped offset the lower sales volume. Consolidated operating income for Q1 was $118 million 33 million dollars lower than prior year driven by lower gross profit flow through an increase in share based compensation which fell into the first quarter this year and increased R&D spend. These adverse impacts were partially offset by lower A&P spending particularly in the cold categories and by the absence of prior years one-time frontline plant employee bonus. Now let's turn to the quarter-specific segment results, starting with CSC Americas. CSCA's first quarter reported net sales were $641 million, a decrease of $60 million from the prior year, which included a pandemic-related pantry load benefit of an estimated $50 million. The historically weak 2021 cough cold season had an unfavorable impact in the first quarter of approximately $35 million, which was partially offset by the Dr. Fresh acquisition, which added $24 million. Excluding the Dr. Fresh acquisition, year-over-year organic net sales declined by 11.8%. Gross profit in the quarter of 201 million was below prior year by $19 million, primarily due to lower volumes which led to unfavorable plant overhead absorption. In addition, we had higher API costs, active pharmaceutical ingredients that is, on certain products and lower operating efficiencies in the nutrition business which were partially offset by the addition of Dr. Fresh. Gross margin was flat the prior year as favorable mix within the segment offset the adverse plant absorption. This was principally due to the fact that cold products of which we had lower sales this quarter have lower than average margins. Operating income for the quarter was $111,026,000,000 lower than prior year, primarily driven by unfavorable growth profit flow through plus higher R&D spend as we continue to invest in future growth opportunities. Moving on to consumer self-care international, CSCI's first quarter reported net sales of 370 million dollars were 13 million dollars lower than the prior year which included an estimated prior year pandemic related pantry load benefit of 23 million. The week off cold season had an estimated adverse impact on CSCI net sales of 33 million and the effect of divesting Rosemont was 14 million. These declines were partially offset by by a $26 million favorable currency impact in the quarter. Organic net sales in the segment declined 9.1%. CSCI gross profit was $191 million, 3% lower than prior year due primarily to those lower net sales flowing through the P&L. Gross margin in the segment increased 30 basis points, mainly from manufacturing efficiencies. Operating income was $60 million, $4 million down from the prior year as adverse gross profit flow-through was partially offset by lower operating expenses, including reduced AMP in the cough-cold categories as we brought promotional activities in line with lower sales. Moving now to the balance sheet, on a consolidated basis, continuing operations and discontinued operations combined, Our cash position at the end of the quarter was $481 million, down from $642 million at the end of Q4 2020. Lower sales both last quarter and this quarter, primarily as a result of the poor 2021 cough cold season, reduced our cash collections in Q1. Additional impact on our cash during the first quarter came from increased inventory up approximately 84 million, primarily analgesics, approximately 70 million that we spent for two previously contracted IP acquisitions for the RX business, 53 million of which will be reimbursed in the purchase price upon the closing of the RX transaction. Plus we funded $20 million in annual incentive programs in the quarter. In closing, our business remains strong. reflected by the fact that we have just reiterated our guidance for 2021 in the range of $2.50 to $2.70 per share. And as Murray explicated earlier, we continue to make strong progress on our transformation journey where we are well ahead of our original expectations. With that, operator, we would like to open the call for questions.

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And the first question comes from Chris Schott with JPMorgan.

Great. Thanks so much for the updates and look forward to seeing how the tax discussions go. Just a couple quick ones from me. On gross margins for the Americas business, I know there was a weak cold cough that impacted results, but just trying to get my hands around what a normalized gross margin looks like for that business and just thoughts for the rest of the year. And I guess more specifically, I think we've been seeing margins in like a 33% range or so the past three quarters. And I'm wondering if that's a decent proxy going forward, or could our margins remain a bit depressed here in the near term? And I just have one follow up after that.

Well, as we said last year, in the beginning of the year, you had a lot of pain and lower margin and gross margin was a priority. The simple answer is I think it'll progress back towards the 33 as the year goes on.

Yeah, we really prioritize lower margin products based on societal needs rather than profits last year. And then you're seeing some of that in the cost to last year.

The number bounces back going forward as we think about the person this year.

We sold existing inventory. The spike last year started in mid-March, and we sold existing inventory in the first couple of weeks of the spike, which had a very solid effect on our first quarter. But then, as we made product to replace the inventories that we drew down at the end of March, that was when we changed our pattern of manufacturing, as I mentioned, and that's why I think we're going to see a The margins were hurt by that but they're going to bounce back this year.

Okay and then can you talk a little bit about on the balance sheet just some priorities as we think about capital deployment post the Rx divestitures. I guess it's just had a little bit of time since the deal was announced. Should we just be thinking about kind of this being potentially larger deals or maybe just a faster cadence of small transactions and And I guess as part of your thinking about capital deployment, do the current settlement discussions, I guess, impact your capacity, your scope of what you're thinking about in BD? Thanks very much.

Yeah, I mean, the answer to the last part is no. I mean, we have significant cash, we're generating cash, and we'll generate a lot more cash, and we have a large revolver. and I'm not thinking about deals of that kind of magnitude. Having said that, I think you are focusing in on a difference of how I think about it versus a year ago, so good for you. We did a big one with Rainier and then we got to some smaller ones. In my ideal world, I'd love another Rainier within the realm of the five focus categories. I'm not going to just go out there and buy anything so we're going through a disciplined approach and there are targets out there and we've evaluated a number and first I got to get the money so we got to close the you know the rx deal and you know that's proceeding on track but yeah I'm thinking a bit bigger and but we'll remain very disciplined and you know hopefully keep up the good track record we've demonstrated if you know anything gets in the way of that we would then consider some of the other balance sheet activities but but our first priority is discipline M&A and probably second after that would be reducing some debt.

Okay perfect thanks so much. Thanks Chris.

Thank you and the next question comes from Greg Gilbert with Truist Securities.

Good morning folks this is Greg for Greg Gilbert. On the U.S. private label market, for which categories would you say that private label products still have the most share growth potential? Then I had a follow-up question.

I mean, in the categories that we have products in, I'm assuming, right? So, our market shares in, you know, depending on where we are, vary. We have in oral care and in nutrition, we have half the level of market share or penetration that we do in OTC. Within OTC, there are segments that are under-penetrated versus others. You've heard me say this before. In NRT, we're a very high share. In many of the traditional categories, the digestive products, the allergy products were all solid. Pain products were solid. Golf Gold were. we're solid but there are forms that we are underdeveloped in like you know gel tabs and things like that gel caps that represent significant opportunities so and we think over the long term those segments even in otc will continue to grow i think i'd have to get brad to point you back to a presentation i did not trying to remember which conference that i did which i outlined sort of what the value of each sharepoint in each of those segments was worth but as i recall If you went after it carefully and methodically, there was a couple billion dollars of revenue opportunity across all of our portfolios by building and increasing penetration.

Got it. Very helpful. On the Irish tax situation, I understand you're not commenting on specifics. I just wanted to make sure that I heard correctly that you submitted a settlement proposal to Irish Revenue. And just a quick one for Ray. When do you plan to issue prior year results for the quarters and year so folks have Correct Models for Continuing Ops. Thank you.

Yeah, we don't have plans to do that right now but you know they have to be audited and by you know by EY by our auditors each quarter as we go forward so but we I think that they're going to stabilize in the second quarter you know our first quarter last year was was impacted by not only by COVID but also by sales of albuterol. You might recall we got permission to launch albuterol in mid-February and we started it in the end of the month, beginning of March. So what this did was it gave a lot of the income in the first quarter last year was Rx related. So that's causing us some problems as we try and lay out the tax for each quarter. But I would expect you to stabilize in the second quarter and you will be able to use that second quarter number to see forward into the rest of the year for last year. And the answer to the other question is yes. Thank you.

Thank you. And the next question comes from David Steinberg with Jeffress.

Hi, David.

Okay, thanks. I have three questions. First, on cough cold, you're obviously betting on a better year in the fall. And I was just curious, the IQVIA fan forecast, they obviously could not have forecast this past year. But in previous years, how close to the mark was their forecast? And then I think you said you're expecting sort of the lower end of their range for the outlook. I guess how confident can you be in that outlook given their outlooks in the past since the rebound is so important? Secondly, are you seeing any increased presence from OTC manufacturers like Dr. Reddy's and in the smoking cessation or other categories where they've launched products or conversely less competition? And finally, could you just discuss the e-commerce trends you've been seeing? I know you've had some recent momentum. and you're up to close to 10% of aggregate sales now in e-commerce. Thanks.

Sure. Let me do them one at a time. I think we're being conservative but just to be clear IQVIA and their estimates of flu have historically been very accurate and it's sort of the trusted source. The fan days of methodology is patient level data which is HIPAA compliant and it's the largest longitudinal data set available and tracks over 306 million people in the U.S. The FAN program captures a live feed from healthcare providers on patient visits on actual physician diagnosed symptoms and the data is projected using the current census data to each DMA region Total U.S. by Adult and Pediatric, down to the symptom. So, you know, it's our best source. And, you know, in the years, I've only been in this business on this side of consumer packaged goods into the, you know, the health care, self-care over the past few years. But it's been right on as far as I've seen predicting the strong, you know, 2019 cold cough seasons, the allergy seasons, you know. So I think it's pretty predictive. And they're not the only ones. There was an article I saw come out over the weekend from NBC predicting a very high flu season in the upcoming year because with all of the lockdowns, people's immunity levels are down. Some are forecasting not even just a normal season, but a very strong one. But to be clear, what Parago did, we can't be any worse than zero. There was 99% decline there were no flus basically around the world this year so everything's got to be upside I think you would agree to that going all the way to normal would be a big bet so we've been more conservative that and I don't remember the exact number but we're roughly halfway between what where it was and what normal would be so you know to me the way we forecasted it That's an upside to our plan, not a downside to our plan. The e-commerce numbers, and while I'm answering the next one, Brad, if you have the actual growth numbers for e-commerce, but I do believe right now it's still in that same 10% to 11%. It's slowed somewhat. You've had a resurgence of people in store which for us in a private label business is a good thing where where you know a lot of the the price value comparisons are the reality is i think we've done better than um any of our competitors because we invested early in ecom and we're a leader but our shares are still lower there versus the national brand than they are and in store and we'll build that over over time um and i think it's logical right because you You make the in-store comparison, you see that price right away, and people switch, and we're trying to get that done online. But given that, I think it's still a comparable number, probably 10 to 12% range. And Brad, jump in if I'm off a little bit on that.

You're right. Overall, across the entire business, e-com grew about 52%. compared to last year, a little bit higher in America's and a little bit lower in I, but about 52% overall.

Good, thanks. I know the question was on e-comm, but I do think it's worth noting and I elaborating a little more than you even asked in the question, but I personally believe that though, at least in the US, the program of vaccinating in drug stores and in in supermarkets and in Walmarts and Target. So all of that has probably been the single biggest factor in bringing people back in stores and recreating in-store traffic. It sort of forced people back into the stores where they looked around and said, oh, I guess it's OK. I can come in here and start shopping again. So I'm pretty upbeat on the business. I know the first quarter was a challenge. Boy, I look at the second half of cough cold upside and people starting to live their normal lives again as they get vaccinated. And, you know, a lot of pent up money in their checking accounts and all, you know, that I think you're going to see a roaring second half, not for just Parago, but for the entire economy.

Okay, thank you. and the next question comes from Elliot Wilber with Raymond James.

Thanks, good morning. Just wanted to get some clarification around the gross margin profile of the cough cold line. Outside of some of the Mucinex products, I would assume that's a much lower margin line than the overall average for the consumer segment. Maybe that's an incorrect assumption, but just some clarification on how That may have impacted margin performance in the quarter. And then just a couple of follow up financial questions for Ray specifically on operating cash flow. Could you just give us a sense of what the RX business contributed to the result in the quarter? And I don't know if you have the number in front of you, but if there's any way to break out separately depreciation for that business so that we can model consumer on more of an EBITDA basis going forward. That would be helpful. Thanks.

Well, Ray is doing that. Just to be clear, our gross margins were up versus a year ago in the first quarter. And relative to Chris's question in the beginning, I think you'll see them continue to progress and grow from here. But cough cold, I think you're right in general. I think they're a little bit lower of a

Yeah, in fact, as I commented in my prepared remarks, we saw some mixed favorability because we had lower sales of lower margin products. And some of our ibuprofen and the citaminophen products have quite low margins on them, especially those large bottles and so forth. So that's a fact. But ironically, we saw a favorability from that in the first quarter.

Yeah, so it's really a kind of a split answer. If you're listening on the call, you're like, is gross margin good or it's bad? We think it's progressing. This is one of the first quarters where we're crossing the board. We saw gross margins increase as a result of programs that we put in place and SKU rationalization. et cetera, and then as the mix progresses through the year, we think you'll see it grow back up in the US to the levels that Chris had mentioned, closer to the 33 range.

On operating cash flow, you asked about RX, and I think the answer to the question is around $19.5 million, $20 million. Positive contribution. positive cash flow, which is obviously a lot lower than we would normally see. There were some specific reasons for that, but we're not going to really get into discontinued operations at this point.

Thank you. And the next question comes from David Reisinger with Morgan Stanley.

Hi, this is Melina Santoro for Dave. We have two questions. Can you please add more color on why the operating cash flow was weak in the first quarter and maybe talk about what the outlook is for the full year for cash flow? And also, can you help us understand whether the 70 million of asset acquisitions in the quarter was revenue contributing? Thank you.

So the answer to the second question is no, not significantly, if at all. They were Rx acquisitions. They were pre they were basically they had been pre-approved but they related to yeah we're going to get but we're going to get the cost of them back but they had no significant impact on our results for the month apart from that factor so the the operating cash flow I think I went through a little in my prepared remarks some of the reasons why We had an impact on the balance sheet. The biggest single item was that we grew our inventories, and a lot of that was analgesics, and that related to the poor cough cold season and related lower sales. We expect to push that through. Obviously, as we go forward in the year, we would hope to get those inventories down to

Yeah, but we're expecting a pretty well normal cashier. I mean, this first quarter had a number of factors. But just to be clear on that one question you asked about RX, that was when we described the sale as a part that was cash and other considerations. That's because we knew the timing of these R&D activities at a third party person that we had to pay were going to occur. We didn't know whether before or after we closed. Since it's before we close, now the purchase price will be adjusted up for the bulk of those. It's not exactly, but I think it's back to the numbers we talked about when we announced the sale. So it's now going to be all cash at $1,550 or whatever, something like that. There will probably be some other smaller adjustments.

Yeah, and the other reason is that our first quarter ended into April, I think the 3rd of April. So we had to fund our employee bonus program, which was a little over $20 million. So that also hurt our cash flow in the first quarter. But we get that back, obviously, at the balance of the year.

OK, thank you. and this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the comments back over to the company for any closing comments.

This has been an interesting journey over the past couple years and there's been some ups and downs but I do really feel like it's all coming together at the moment. I feel like the team is in place and engaging and demonstrated how they could manage through adversity last year and and it's consistent. The new products are flowing outside of the company. We're doing branded deals, more private label. We've got a strong track record in M&A, pulled off the difficult deal with RX and that will put us purely in the consumer world. I'm sure there's still a long way to go, but it's You know, we're finally getting to the point where I think we'll make major ground this year on the overhang issues as well, which was my hope going into this year. You've coupled that with what should be easy comps in the second half of the year and, you know, a strong strategy and a big war chest. I think this is the inflection point for Parago and it's time for us to start building some meaningful value and and I think we're in the position to do so. So thank you for your interest in Perigo.

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.