Good morning. Welcome to the Glanbia Q1 2023 Interim Management Statement Call and Webcast with Siobhán Talbot, Group Managing Director, and Mark Garvey, Group Finance Director. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Liam Hennigan, Group Secretary and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, welcome to the Glanbia first quarter 2023 interim management statement call. During today's call, the directors may make forward-looking statements. These statements have been made by the directors in good faith based upon the information available to them up to the time of their approval of this interim management statement. Due to inherent uncertainties, including both economic and business risk factors underlying such forward-looking information, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by those statements. The directors undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on today's call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I'm now handing over to Siobhán Talbot, Group Managing Director, Glanbia plc.
Thank you, Liam. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 2023 results call and presentation. On today's call, I'll provide an overview of our performance for the first three months of the year, and I'm joined by my colleague, Mark, who'll cover the financial results and outlook. At the end of the presentation, we'll be very happy to take your questions. Overall for Q1, our performance for the group was broadly in line with our expectations. Our core consumer trends that drive the business have continued to be resilient through the quarter. While there are some timing factors in the first quarter volumes, we have increased confidence in the earnings potential of the group this year and are therefore upgrading our full year guidance for group adjusted EPS growth from 5%-10% to 7%-11% for the full year.
This is really due to increased confidence in GPN margin and earnings for the second half of the year, which in fact will be the overall driver of group earnings for 2023. In terms of the quarter, GPN was on track with full year revenue guidance. Following our most recent price increase, which was just in Q4 of 2022, we are seeing some elasticity on certain brands and products, but that's pretty much as expected with our largest billion-dollar own brand in fact performing better than expected. In Nutritional Solutions, we have seen some supply chain rebalancing, which has been a feature of Q1. As we outlined in early March, the destocking that we saw in our Protein business in the latter part of 2022 was now more evident in premix, actually, in the first quarter of 2023.
We expect this overall trend to be transitory and to normalize in the second half of the year. We've continued to progress our strategic agenda with the Glanbia Cheese JVs and Aseptic Solutions sales now complete. We completed the sale of our interest in Glanbia Cheese on the 28th of April and received EUR 179 million, which includes the repayment of some shareholder loans. As a result, we've increased and extended the buyback program from EUR 50 million to EUR 100 million. Turning then to Q1 revenue. Our performance overall, as I said, was broadly as expected. Pricing, as expected, was a key factor in driving revenue growth, and that reflecting the full year impact of the 2022 pricing actions. As I said, Q1 revenue for GPN was on track with full year guidance, with branded like-for-like revenue growth of 5%.
Pricing was up 14.2%, offset somewhat by negative volumes of 9.2%, which was largely driven by SlimFast. As outlined at our full year results, the SlimFast brand refresh is in market, it's likely to be the second half or latter part indeed of 2023 before we see that brand returning to growth. We speak more to brand performance later. We're very pleased with the very strong own performance in the quarter, where we had both strong shipments and strong consumption with positive volumes. Pricing was positive across all brands following that series of pricing actions in 2022. As I said, the last one was just in the fourth quarter. In Nutritional Solutions, revenue decreased by 14.8% in the period. Pricing was positive by 1%, with positive premix pricing offsetting negative dairy.
Volumes overall declined by 17.4%, driven, as I said, by that supply chain rebalancing across the business. Our Sterling Technology acquisition continues to perform well, with the net impact of acquisitions and disposals contributing 1.6% to revenue growth in the period. Turning more specifically to GPN, as I've said, like-for-like revenue growth was 5%, representing 2.2% growth in Americas and 10.3% in international. Pricing, as I've said, was the key driver of growth, delivering 14.2%. We've seen particularly resilient volume performance in our sports nutrition brands globally. We have stayed close to our consumers over the quarter, and we've continued to invest behind our brands, and this really has resulted in a resilient performance in the context of the pricing action we took last year.
Consumption, as I said, continues to be good across performance nutrition and indeed healthy lifestyle portfolios. We have seen some elasticity, but overall below our expectations. As I mentioned, the volume decline was really driven by SlimFast. In terms of margins, the structural margin of GPN is underpinned, as we've mentioned previously, by the transformation program. As we said earlier, we are upgrading our GPN margin for 2023 between 12.5% and 13.5%, largely driven by the visibility we now have on input costs underpinned by the transformation program, but also coupled by the continued resilience of our consumer demand. In terms of the brand, Optimum Nutrition, as you know, remains our largest brand, now 60% of GPN revenues in the quarter and continues its strong momentum.
It had very strong shipment growth at almost 21% in the quarter. Pricing was a key factor. We did have positive volumes for ON. Consumption continued, again, very strong over 36% for the 12 weeks to the end of Feb. This was underpinned by increasing velocities, distribution gains, and indeed continued marketing activation. While the overall brand performance was good, Gold Standard Whey as a key SKU continues to do very well, growing both volume and price. Turning to Healthy Lifestyle, which is made up of the Isopure, think! and Amazing Grass brands. This is 17% of the GPN revenue in the quarter. Like-for-like revenue declined by 1%, driven by some elasticity and some inventory customer reductions. Underlying trends remain very robust. Consumption good with 12 weeks to the end of February, 15.4%.
SlimFast brand is now 12% of the GPN revenue in the quarter. This does continue to be challenged by the headwinds in the diet category and the continued decline of the keto range. The trend was largely as expected, and as I said earlier, it will be the latter part of 2023 before we regain brand growth. We did see a decline in revenue in the quarter by 28%, and consumption was declining currently. The brand refresh is in the market. We are supporting it well with new branding and pack design and new creative. It is really too early to provide any meaningful updates, but we do remain very optimistic about the future of SlimFast. We know that weight management remains a key focus for consumers, particularly in our largest market in the U.S.
We believe that we can grow the brand relevance and reach by broadening its reach to the weight-maintaining consumers. Turning to the other growth platform, Nutritional Solutions. Revenue in NS declined by 14.8% in the period. As I've said, pricing increased by 1% with positive pricing in premix. Volumes declined 17.4%, driven by the customer supply chain rebalancing. We have seen customers in our protein business reduce inventory in the second half of 2022. In Q1 of 2023, we did see this trend across premix also. After a number of years of strong growth in NS, post the supply chain disruption of last year, I think in the context of the current economic climate, inventory rebalancing is a trend we've seen across a number of our customers.
We're having a lot of conversation with our customers and based on those, we expect this destocking trend to be a continued feature of the first half, but that will normalize as we move through the year, particularly in the protein space. The net impact of acquisitions and disposal contributed 1.6% to revenue growth in the period. Sterling Technology, as I've said, acquired early in 2022, continues to perform well. This was offset by the disposed revenue relation to Aseptic Solutions, which was completed recently. EBITDA margins in NS are also expected to grow in 2023. They will improve from 2022 levels to between 12% and 13%. The year-on-year increase in margins will be driven by an improved mix in the value-added solutions, operating efficiencies, and of course, we'll have a mathematical accretion as dairy pricing declines as we move through 2023.
Looking broadly then at Nutritional Solutions in terms of its overall category reach, it continues to support customers across a broad range of markets, ultimately seeking to address from an ingredient perspective that growing consumer health and wellness trend. We do this through our core strengths in premix solutions and our extensive capability in Protein Solutions. The business has evolved enormously over the past number of years. We've added a lot of really exciting capabilities through acquisitions and organically, and a lot of innovation capability, as we've spoken to before, in Nutritional Solutions. As we spoke to at our recent capital markets event, Nutritional Solutions now plays across a wide range of growing categories, and we're always increasing our relevance to our customers. One of the strengths of the business, in fact, is our very strong relationship with our customers.
There's been no change to our customer base in the quarter and our global and regional customer relationships remain a strength of the NS business. This provides us with insights on consumer demand and end-use markets. As I said, our customers are telling us that an easing of supply chain constraints are allowing them to be comfortable with reduced inventories. They've largely not seen any change in underlying consumer demand in their end-use markets, apart from some softness in the vitamins and supplements category, where demand is, looks like it's returning to a more normalized pre-COVID levels. We're very comfortable that we've not lost any share of wallet of our customers over the quarter. Our mid to long term growth ambition remains as we've previously spoken to.
We remain confident that our three-year volume target for Nutritional Solutions of 3%-5% for the period 2023-2025 remains valid. Ultimately, as outlined at our capital markets event of last November, the purpose of Glanbia in delivering better nutrition, as you all know, is really at such a core key societal need. The fundamental category trends that we're playing into remain very positive. We remain very well-positioned across our ingredient solutions and brands, and we have very clear strategic priorities across the growth platforms, both of GPN and Nutritional Solutions. We remain very much on track to deliver our long-term sustainable growth. There remains plenty of course to be navigated through the rest of 2023. We do expect earnings momentum to improve as we move through the year.
Overall, as I said, our 2023 earnings growth will be driven by growth in GPN, and it is our increasing confidence in those margins and earnings that is giving us the confidence to upgrade our full year group earnings guidance to that growth rate of 7%-11% constant currency. With that, I'll hand over to Mark, who will speak to some of the financial positions.
Thanks, Siobhán, and good morning to everyone on the call. As I noted on our last call, the group has changed its presentation currency and we'll be reporting results in U.S. dollars from 2023 onwards. On the 31st of March, we issued restated financial information for fiscal years 2021 and 2022, as well as half year 2022 to assist investors with comparatives. On April 28th, the group completed the sale of its interest in Glanbia Cheese U.K. and Glanbia Cheese EU to Leprino Foods. The group received funds of EUR 178.9 million associated with the transaction, including EUR 114 million of consideration and EUR 64.9 million related to the repayment of shareholder loans. In addition, there is EUR 25 million of contingent consideration dependent on the performance of the business over the next three years.
The group expects an exceptional gain before contingent consideration net of transaction costs of over EUR 50 million related to this transaction. At quarter end, and prior to the closing of the Glanbia Cheese transaction, the group's net debt was $604.8 million with net debt to EBITDA at 1.43 times and all relevant metrics well within covenant levels. The group has $1.3 billion of committed debt facilities and has such considerable resources from underutilized debt facilities for further investment activity in the GPN and Nutritional Solutions businesses. We continue to target an operating cash conversion level of over 80% for the year.
We expect capital expenditure to be in the range of $75 million-$85 million for the year, which will include a number of IT implementation programs, additional manufacturing equipment and Nutritional Solutions and maintenance capital expenditure. In 2023, as of close of business yesterday, the group has spent approximately EUR 31.7 million of the EUR 50 million share buyback program announced on March 1st, purchasing 2.36 million shares at an average price of EUR 13.40. Following the receipt of proceeds from the Glanbia Cheese transaction, we are increasing and extending the current EUR 50 million program to a EUR 100 million program. We expect these programs combined will be less than 1% accretive to adjusted Earnings Per Share for the year. Turning to our guidance for the year.
As Siobhán has said, we are pleased to be upgrading our key guidance metric for full year adjusted Earnings Per Share growth as we get improved visibility and earnings momentum in GPN through the year. GPN revenues in the first quarter will be broadly tracking to plan, with strong ON performance continuing. Healthy lifestyle is seeing some elasticity but within expectations, and weight management showing the most significant volume declines as we work through the brand refresh program. Having delivered 5% branded like-for-like revenue growth in the first quarter, we continue to expect 5%-7% revenue growth for the full year, driven by pricing.
We expect strong earnings growth in GPN for the year and are now expecting our EBITA margin guidance to are now upgrading our EBITA margin guidance to 12.5%-13.5% for the full year, compared to GPN EBITA margins of 11.2% last year. In Nutritional Solutions, as Siobhán has outlined, we have seen destocking in our premix business in the first quarter, following on from a similar trend in our protein business we saw the second half last year. From our conversations with customers, we do expect some destocking activity will continue in Q2, but overall, we expect this to be transitory and to normalize in the second half of the year, particularly in Protein Solutions. We expect to see improving volume trends as the year progresses and now expect overall Nutritional Solutions volumes to be marginally down on last year.
We expect 2023 Nutritional Solutions EBITA margins to be between 12% and 13%, an increase from 11.4% in 2022, as a reduction in dairy pricing will be an opposite factor to last year's dilutive effect of margin, as well as ongoing efficiency focus and a portfolio mix benefit from the execution of recent acquisitions such as Sterling Technology and the sale of Aseptic Solutions. Sustaining our cash and returns focus, we are guiding operating cash flow conversion of over 80% for the year and a return on capital employed between 10% and 13%. To conclude, our outlook for 2023 is positive.
We will continue to monitor revenue trends closely, but have sufficient confidence in our earnings momentum to upgrade 2023 group adjusted earnings per share guidance from 5%-10% to 7%-11%, reflecting our increased confidence in GPN margins and earnings for the second half of the year. With that, I will hand back to the operator for questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, please press star followed by one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question, and please do ensure you are unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from the line of Alex Sloane from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking the questions. I've got a few, if that's okay. Maybe firstly on GPN. I was wondering if you could maybe help frame the scale of the expected gross margin benefits that you're expecting from the lower buy input costs and maybe sort of what proportion of that you're assuming will be reinvested in marketing or promotion in your updated margin guidance? Secondly, just on the inventory rebalancing, destocking in Nutritional Solutions, I wondered, is that primarily a North American phenomenon or are you seeing that Internationally also, and as we look forward into Q2, is there any signs of that maybe reducing certainly on the protein side, where maybe it started earlier? Then one final one, if I can, on SlimFast.
Is the pressure here still mainly related to the keto range? I wonder if you could update on how big that is now within the mix. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Alex. Thank you for all those questions. I'll take the GPN, maybe the SlimFast one, and Mark, I'll turn to Mark for Nutritional Solutions. Overall, for GPN, I'm not going to overly calibrate the gross margins for you, but suffice to say that there is obviously a benefit in gross margin. That's coming from a number of areas. Clearly, in the second half of the year, yes, absolutely lower whey costs, is a factor that's going to improve margins. I would also say that as part of the transformation program, the business has become very focused on areas like revenue growth management, SKU management, so margin optimization in general. That provides a fundamental underpin to margins, which we're very pleased about, and we believe will be sustainable into the future.
I would say to you in terms of the marketing investment, yes, we do expect to increase our investment in 2023. We have in fact increased it and plan to increase it in the first half. We're probably going to move from that high single digits into double digits marketing spend this year. We will monitor that as we move through the second half of 2023, with an ambition to set ourselves up well for 2024. As you can imagine, we're getting good returns for the investment that we've done historically in Optimum Nutrition. You're seeing that in the consumption growth. Overall, pleased with the visibility that we have now.
There's plenty to navigate, but that increasing visibility of the trajectory of margins is fundamental to upgrading GPN, as we said, and on the group. Turning Alex to SlimFast. Yes, it is fair to say absolutely that keto remains still the biggest drag, for want of a better word, on that SlimFast performance. We have lost listings in the keto is clearly part of that reduction in consumption and shipments that we're seeing. That's going to be a factor, as I said, through an amount of the year. SlimFast is an ever-reducing part of the portfolio, but there's a bit still to go in that, I think. Our focus now, as we've said, is on the refresh.
Our focus really is taking SlimFast back to its core, which is the high protein, low carb, ready to drink, working well with our retail partners in that. Remain optimistic about the brand. All of the research that we're doing, as you would expect, significant amounts of consumer research would speak to positive brand awareness, positive comments around indeed elements of the refresh, but too early to give you maybe much more insights beyond that at this point. Yes, Mark.
Good morning, Alex. On your question on destocking, of course, this is a trend we've seen in ingredients category over the last number of months. Firstly, I would say, yes, it is primarily North American issue that we're seeing in this, and a little bit different in terms of timing what we're seeing on the protein side versus the premix side. For example, we were seeing destocking in the Protein Solutions side for the second half of last year, third or fourth quarter. See that again in the first quarter this year. Expected that to alleviate somewhat actually in the second quarter and obviously then improve into the second half. We'll see that trend, I think, in Protein Solutions.
Premix for us was more of a sort of a destocking event really the first quarter this year, and that will continue into the second quarter, and we'd expect to see that improve in the second half of this year. You probably know that the comps are more challenging for us at the beginning of this year versus last year with a very strong improvement in volumes come through at the beginning of last year. That will obviously improve as well. That will help you sort of understand how the volume trends will improve as the quarters go on this year.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Patrick Higgins from Goodbody. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I guess firstly, could you just talk about, I guess, your market share performance in ON, just given the strength of the consumption data. I assume you're taking share. Is that shelf space or is that through, you know, expansion into adjacent categories like RTE or RTD? My second question is maybe could you just give us a bit more detail on your performance in GPN International? I guess an extension of that is the direct-to-consumer business as well. Thanks.
Thanks, Patrick. Yes, very pleased, I would say, with the evolution of ON and across a number of areas, not least indeed market share. What we're seeing is continued growth in two of the big channels for us, which is online and FDMC. We believe we're gaining share in those channels, and that's been a big focus for the brand, as you know. Particularly the FDMC space, actually, we're gaining shelf space. You might remember actually that one of the comments I made last year that with the change in operating model that we've done in the Americas now, while we were in fact losing some keto SlimFast distribution, we were gaining shelf space on ON. Again, that's that one face to the customer in action, really. Pleased with that overall.
I would say in terms of format, powders actually remains the strongest category. Pleased with the evolution of the ready-to-drink launch in Optimum. That's going all to plan. What we're seeing is a real resilience in the protein powders. I think that's playing to a number of factors, not least the affordability of the powders, that resonance with consumers in terms of the authenticity of ON overall. Very pleased with the evolution of that. International business, continued to grow in the quarter, growing in our D2C business as well. Particularly in areas like Asia, Central Europe, Oceania had a good quarter. Staying close to our consumers there as well. You know, we did a lot of pricing in international, are seeing some elasticity in some of the regions, pleased with how it's all evolving.
We'll never be complacent on that consumer piece or indeed on the elasticities. As I referenced, our last pricing of 2022 was only in the fourth quarter. That's why we'll always have an element of caution. Very pleased with it to date.
That's great. Thank you.
Thanks, Patrick.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Rashad Kawan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning, Siobhán, Mark, and Liam. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. A couple from me, please. On Nutritional Solutions volumes, I'd say, what gives you the confidence that trends will improve over the year? How do you think inventory levels are at the end of the quarter? You got into, you know, marginal declines in volume year-over-year. Should we interpret that as something in kind of the low single digit range? Then my second question around margins. How much of your input costs are hedged for the year now? Just trying to assess how firm that margin guidance is for GPN and if there's any room for more upside if whey prices continue to come down here. Thank you.
Morning, Rashad. I would say we're reasonably confident actually in terms of our conversations with customers at this point. We're already seeing, I would say the trends in Protein Solutions improve. We think as Siobhán said earlier, obviously customers are making decisions around their working capital and inventory, et cetera, and that's flowing through more in premix now, I would say, than the dairy Protein Solutions side. Again, our conversations with customers give us reasonable confidence that based on end market demand, that we are going to see the trends evolve as we have talked to them. At your point, yes, low single digits is where we probably expect to end up in terms of volume declines by the end of the year.
To your question on just margins, we've talked a lot about procurement strategy, as you know, over the last number of calls. We have pretty much procured most significant amount of whey that we need now for the year. We have very good confidence actually in terms of what our cost structure is gonna look like quarter by quarter to the end of the year. We feel we're in pretty good shape there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Cathal Kenny from Davy Research. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good morning, all. Two questions from me, both on GPN. One, can you comment on the level of inventories as you see it within your key channels within GPN? Secondly, on ON, the like-for-like growth in Q1 to 20.8%. Can you provide color just on price volume there, please? Thank you.
Good morning, Cathal. In terms of inventories, I would say that we're feeling inventories are pretty good and balanced at this point in time, actually. If you take the performance side, you never get full visibility, obviously, in terms of the patterns for your customers. If we look at the quarter, we would say that they were pretty good. We had actually had some retailer destocking on the healthy lifestyle in the first quarter. I'd say overall, at this point, feeling inventories are pretty okay actually across the piece. That'll ebb and flow, and as I say, we never have complete visibility. We're comfortable with that overall revenue guidance that we've said for the 5%-7% for the year.
The shape of the volume price of that will clearly evolve as we move through the year, as you would expect. Clearly, as you rightly referenced for the first quarter, ON in particular was very strong. I think what you're going to see as we move through the year, SlimFast was probably its highest rate of decline in the first quarter. You'll see that moderate. You'll probably see healthy lifestyle in terms of shipments improve as we go through the year, and then probably ON more normalized after a very strong first quarter. Don't want to over-calibrate, Cathal, the volume price of ON just specifically for the quarter, but what I would say to you is that volumes were positive. In terms of the significant pricing moves, we did have positive volume, shipments, and we're seeing unit consumption growth continue in ON as well.
Very pleased with that overall.
Thanks, Siobhán.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Lauren Molyneux from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi. Morning to both. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, please. Firstly, just on your Nutritional Solutions customer behavior, I know you've had quite a few questions on destocking, but it would be quite good also to get a feel for kind of the destocking headwind in Q1 versus what the underlying volume growth was for the quarter. Then just kind of related to that, on your behavior of your customers as to whether you're seeing any customers delaying orders, because obviously we're seeing the prices in the dairy markets coming down, whether that's impacting kind of the timing of these orders, customers waiting for them to come down a bit further. The second question would just be around the share buybacks that you've obviously expanded today.
Just if we could get a bit more color on your decision to increase this instead of deploying capital a different way, maybe via M&A or investing into the business. Thank you.
Good morning, Lauren Molyneux, how are you? I would say, your question on destocking, I think, you know, we're going to see this primarily, as I said, as a first quarter event, primarily in Premix, which will improve as you go through the year, but we are gonna continue to see some more destocking in the second quarter, and then the transitory nature of that will come through in the second half, where we get to see a improvement. Particularly Protein Solutions will come through, I would say in the second quarter, third quarter into the end of the year. Premix will continue through the year, and be by the end of the year, we expect that to be mostly done.
We have seen customers delay some orders, for example, on the Protein Solutions side, as they have looked at pricing, for example, reducing on the whey, for example. That's something that has been a trend. The dairy cycle does that. We sort of. We'll see that begin to change I would expect right now. Obviously we've had our own procurement strategy around that too, as we think through where we expect whey pricing to go. That's another reason why we feel we'll see destocking trends really end more in the next quarter on the dairy side. On the share buyback, I think what we said before is that we have a very balanced capital allocation strategy here in the company.
We like to make sure that we have the ability to have organic investment as well as M&A investment as well as return both shareholders via dividend or via buyback. From our perspective, increasing the share buyback by an extra EUR 50 million is a very balanced approach, given we just received EUR 179 million in the Glanbia Cheese transaction, for example. It gives us ample capacity to continue to further look at acquisition activity as well, which we are doing currently too. We feel it's a very balanced approach.
Maybe Lauren, just a small add-on to that point for Mark, in terms of your valid question around investment in the business. That's a piece actually we've been very, very conscious of. In fact, since the latter part of 2021 into 2022 and again 2023, for example, we're going to upweight our marketing spend behind our brands. Spending behind our brands, really driving particularly Optimum Nutrition has been a key focus for us. We'll not be reducing that. In fact, if anything we'll be increasing it. I think the overall shape of the P&L actually for 2023 in GPN, for example, will be a very good shape to the P&L.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. The next question today comes from the line of Farhan Baig from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Good morning, everyone. A couple of questions from me as well. A short one to begin with. What is your volume expectation within GPN within the 5-7% revenue guidance? Secondly, on input costs. It seems you haven't updated your offering guidance, but you have your margin and profit guidance, which suggests you're expecting a large amount of the incremental input cost fall to the bottom line.
In a market that I guess you've highlighted as challenging, and there's likely to be competitive activity, have you historically seen the requirement to pass on some of that input cost fall to your customers, particularly given prices in GPN are up over 20% over the past 12-18 months? Thank you.
Good morning. It was challenging enough to hear all of your questions, but hopefully, I get it all. If I don't, please follow on. From a volume perspective, you know, if you look at our overall expectations in performance nutrition for the year, as we've said, we expect 5%-7% in terms of revenue growth. That'll be pricing led. There may be a small volume decline there, but primarily pricing led. We are very comfortable actually with the trajectory we've seen in the first quarter. It gives us a lot of confidence, I think at this point, as where we expect the year to come through. That's the current expectation for the full year.
To answer your question on input costs, I mean, there are dairy cycles that we followed over the last many, many years. We are pretty familiar with how this plays out. Obviously, the fact that input costs have come down significantly over the last year has allowed us to procure, I think, quite smartly, and it gives us the ability to pass on some margin improvement in terms of our overall guidance for the year. You'll see that of course in the second half, and you expect that to see continuing into next year. I would, you know, emphasize again that we did speak to our 12% margin for GPN, very much structurally defined as our transformational work that we did in GPN.
What we're seeing now is the ability to have some benefit from, you know, lower input prices, which we can of course pass on too in our marketing costs here, so we can invest behind our brands, which is important for us also. Now to your question as to whether or not that would be passed on in terms of pricing, we may see some promotional activity as we get towards the end of the year. I mean, we've seen some of that before through the cycle as well. We're very well able to manage through that, as we've sort of been able to do that in prior times as well. We've obviously baked that into our expectations for overall margin expectations for the year.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass the conference over to Siobhán Talbot for any closing remarks.
Thank you as always for your time this morning. Obviously, if there's any follow-up questions, we'd be delighted to engage with you. Thank you very much and good morning.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.