Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Glanbia Q1 2025 Interim Management Statement Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Liam Hennigan, Group Secretary and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Glanbia first quarter 2025 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 on the information available to them up to their time of approval of this interim management statement. Due to the 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 these forward-looking 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 the call over to Hugh McGuire, CEO of Glanbia.
Thank you, Liam. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Glanbia quarter one 2025 Interim Management Statement call and presentation. On today's call, I will provide an overview of our performance for the first three months of the year, and I'm joined by my colleague, Mark Garvey, who will cover the financials and outlook. At the end of the presentation, we'll be very happy to take your questions. Overall, our first quarter performance for the group was in line with our expectations. Group revenue increased by 7.2% as we continue to see good demand for the group's better nutrition brands and ingredients while navigating unprecedented inflation in whey protein isolate, macroeconomic volatility, and short-term challenges in the club channel in the U.S. In performance nutrition, revenue was in line with expectations, albeit against a challenging backdrop.
In Health & Nutrition, we continue to see good momentum with strong demand for end-use markets and like-for-like revenue growth of 5.6% in the quarter, with volume growth of 6%, driven by growth in both the premix and Flavor Solutions businesses. In Dairy Nutrition, we saw strong growth in Protein Solutions and an increase in pricing, driven by favorable dairy market pricing. I spoke at our full-year results about the unprecedented inflation in whey protein isolate, which is impacting our Performance Nutrition margins in 2025. Mark will provide more details and guidance shortly, but we continue to take decisive action to mitigate this impact as much as possible. This includes a range of levers, including revenue growth management initiatives across pricing and promotional effectiveness. We have taken pricing in quarter one in international and are planning to take pricing in the U.S. in quarter three.
In addition, we've reduced promotion spend across H1 on margin dilutive promotions, and we have launched multiple smaller pack sizes across channels and markets to ensure affordability for consumers. We're reducing our marketing spend as planned in H1 , focusing on initiatives that we know drive awareness and recruitment. We're also making good progress on product reformulation to reduce dependency on whey protein isolate, and we've seen new supply come on stream. In addition, we continue to engage with a number of our strategic partners on both increased supply and longer-term contracts with the aim of reducing whey pricing volatility going forward. We have seen whey protein isolate come off its peak pricing of quarter two, and while prices still remain elevated, we have good visibility to input costs to year-end, which are in line with our previous expectations.
It has been a perfect storm of demand and supply impacting pricing, but it is cyclical, and we will have structural upside from these initiatives going forward. We're also making good progress on our group-wide transformation program to drive efficiencies across our new operating model and support the next phase of growth, and I will provide an update on that shortly. Significant work has also been undertaken across the group in relation to tariffs. Subject to no further changes in tariffs, which we've managed to largely mitigate through a range of actions, I'm pleased to say that based on the current market environment, we reiterate our full-year guidance of $1.24-$1.30 in adjusted earnings per share. For Performance Nutrition, quarter one was in line with our expectations. Like-for-like revenue was down 6.6%, driven by a volume decrease of 5.8% and a price decrease of 0.8%.
Excluding SlimFast and Body & Fit, which are non-core and being sold, like-for-like revenue declined by 4.8%. The volume performance was largely as expected, driven predominantly by lower revenues in the U.S. due to three key factors. One, lower revenue in the club channel as a result of increased competitive dynamics, lapping of innovation pallets in quarter one 2024, and a reduction of margin dilution promotions. Two, the continued decline in the specialty channel, positive to see that The Vitamin Shoppe has now come out of bankruptcy earlier this month. Three, the impact of SlimFast. These declines were somewhat offset by good growth in the U.S. food, drug, mass and e-commerce channels and the continued scaling of our international business, which delivered strong growth in the quarter, particularly in Asia-Pacific.
Pricing was broadly in line with expectations, with the marginally negative year-over-year impact as a result of tactical price changes, primarily relating to higher margin products in our energy category, which are delivering strong volume uplift. In terms of brand performance, Optimum Nutrition , our largest brand at 66% of Performance Nutrition revenue, delivered a like-for-like revenue decline of 3.1% and U.S. consumption growth of 0.4%. We saw strong double-digit growth in the U.S. FDM channel, growing ahead of the category, where we are seeing the benefit of the increased distribution that I referenced in the latter part of 2024, with consumption accelerating in March. Optimum Nutrition also delivered double-digit growth in household penetration and TDP. From a marketing perspective, we're encouraged by the results of our Optimum Nutrition brand activation in quarter one.
The U.S. Pretty Damn Good campaign resulted in increased displays, consumption growth, and strong recruitment, and the Myth-busting campaign in the U.K. and other international markets also drove strong sellers. Our focus continues to be on driving recruitment and conversion, broadening the brand's appeal through increased campaign reach and education. Our Healthy Lifestyle portfolio delivered a like-for-like revenue decline of 7.7% against a strong comparative quarter in 2024. Our priority growth lifestyle brand, Isopure, continues to enjoy strong growth across all channels. Our new look, design, and formula for Isopure is in the process of being rolled out, with increased brand visibility and new improved flavor. Isopure also delivered double-digit growth in household penetration and TDP.
We're also launching a new exciting innovation early this summer, Isopure Protein Water, which comprises 15 grams of premium protein and 20 ounces of refreshing water with electrolytes, 0 grams of sugar, and only 50 calories. Our Think Protein Bar business continues to compete in a highly competitive bar category, and we've just launched Think Crispy Squares, which has good retail listings. With the appointment of Monica McGuire, CEO for Performance Nutrition Americas in quarter four last year, we've taken the opportunity to streamline our Americas organization. We've flattened our structure with brand general managers reporting directly to the CEO to increase pace and accountability.
We've appointed a new leader for our innovation agenda with the appointment of a new Chief Innovation and Growth Platforms Officer, and we've also created a new role of Chief Commercial Development Officer focused on retail partner activation to drive our RGM and trade management strategy and to implement trade architecture and promotional effectiveness. We maintain our full-year guidance for Performance Nutrition like-for-like revenue to be broadly in line with 2024, excluding the impact of SlimFast and Body & Fit. Turning to our new segment of Healthy Nutrition, which comprises the premix solutions and flavors platforms and focuses on priority high-growth end-use markets such as vitamin minerals and supplements, active lifestyle nutrition, and functional beverages. This is a business we've grown organically and via acquisitions in recent years to scale.
We're the product development partner for both established and emerging brands, with our ability to combine flavors with key functional ingredients and application science, providing a unique proposition for our customers. This segment delivered a strong performance in the quarter, delivering like-for-like revenue growth of 5.6%. This was driven by a 6% increase in volume and a 0.4% decrease in price. Total revenue increased by 24.9% as a result of the 19.3% increase from the Flavor Producers acquisition. We're pleased with the strong volume performance in the quarter, which is driven by good growth across VMS and functional beverage markets, and we continue to see good broad-based demand, with the functional beverage category continuing to experience strong growth internationally. Pricing was broadly flat and in line with expectations. The Flavor Producers business is performing well, and the integration is on track with operations, commercial, and innovation substantially complete.
We continue to invest in innovation and new capabilities and are building out our new powder flavor capability with the recent commissioning of our spray drying that allows us to capture more opportunities both internally and across our broader B2B customer base in powders and ready-to-eat. In terms of guidance, we're reiterating our guidance of mid-single-digit like-for-like revenue growth in 2025, which will be predominantly volume-led. Dairy Nutrition, which as a reminder combines our previous U.S. cheese and Nutritional Solutions dairy proteins portfolio. This is on track to operate as a standalone business from the 1st of July 2025, with a dedicated leadership team led by the recently appointed CEO, Tom Tench. This platform is largely one integrated manufacturing footprint with a high supply and operational interdependency and is also the route to market for our joint venture supply of whey and cheese ingredients.
This business provides a scaled leadership position in dairy as the number one producer of whey protein isolate and the number one producer of American-style cheddar cheese. In terms of performance in the quarter, like-for-like revenue increased by 18.9%, driven by a 3.6% increase in volume and a 15.3% increase in price. The volume increase was driven by strong growth in protein solutions, particularly targeting the high-protein ready-to-eat category, and we continue to see good demand for colostrum targeting gut health and immunity. The pricing increase was largely driven by favorable dairy market pricing. For full-year 2025, we continue to expect profit growth across dairy nutrition and our joint ventures combined. As I referenced earlier, we continue to execute our group-wide transformation program at pace to drive efficiencies across our new operating model and support the next phase of growth through three focus divisions.
The first pillar is the operating model optimization, where we have created two new segments with Dairy Nutrition on track to be stood up as a standalone business from July 1. We have also streamlined our operating model in Performance Nutrition Americas with a flatter structure and new talent to drive the innovation agenda. The second pillar is to unlock supply chain efficiencies, and Steve Waters has recently been appointed as Chief Supply Chain Officer to deliver synergies across our broader global manufacturing, quality, and procurement operating model. Given the challenges on supply and sourcing with recent tariff announcements, we have accelerated the procurement initiative. The third pillar is about accelerating our digital transformation, which has been underway since the middle of last year. This program will deliver savings in year, and we would expect a $15 million-$20 million benefit in 2026.
We continue to expand this program across our back and middle office as we pursue efficiencies across our operating model. The final pillar is our ongoing portfolio evaluation with the planned exits of our weight management brand SlimFast and our Body & Fit direct-to-consumer e-commerce business in the Benelux region, which is ongoing. These processes are in the early stages, and we will provide an update in due course. Portfolio evaluation is a continuous process, and we've made significant progress over the last number of years. We will continue to evaluate our overall portfolio to ensure we deliver long-term, sustainable, and profitable growth and how we best create value for shareholders. Overall, the transformation program is a three-year initiative, which is expected to generate annual cost savings of at least EUR 50 million by 2027, which will be utilized across reinvestment in the business and profitability improvement.
We are ambitious to deliver more savings and continue to explore opportunities to accelerate further. With that, I will hand over to Mark.
Thank you, and good morning to everyone on the call. The group has a strong balance sheet, and at the end of the first quarter, net debt was just under $579 million. We have committed facilities of over $1.3 billion with an average maturity of 3.5 years. Capital expenditure, both strategic and business-sustaining for the year, is expected to be between $80 million and $90 million, with investments primarily related to ongoing capacity enhancements, business integrations, and IT investments to drive further efficiencies in operations.
The group is currently in the process of executing a EUR 50 million share buyback program, and since commencement of the program in December 2024, just under 3.5 million shares have been repurchased and canceled at an average price of EUR 12.23, a total of EUR 42.7 million completed so far. The buyback is being temporarily paused as the percentage of the group's issued share capital held by a significant shareholder, Tirlán, is approaching 29.99%. This will be a temporary pause. Tirlán have previously announced that they intend to do a share spinout of approximately 15 million shares to their members, expected to be completed this May, which will reduce their shareholding. Once that has been executed, we expect to recommence share buyback activity.
As announced at our full-year results in February, the board has approved an additional EUR 100 million buyback program, and subject to approval at our annual meeting today, we expect to commence that program following completion of the current buyback. Now turning to outlook, and today we are reiterating our 2025 guidance. In Performance Nutrition, like-for-like revenue growth excluding SlimFast and Body & Fit is expected to be broadly in line with 2024. This is predominantly as a result of lower revenues in the club channel in the U.S., which, as disclosed previously, will impact the first half of the year. The revenue decline in Performance Nutrition was marginally better than expected in Q1, and we continue to expect a sequential improvement throughout the year, with growth predominantly second half weighted.
Performance Nutrition EBITDA margins are expected to be in the range of 13-14%, with margins lower in the first half of the year. At our full-year results in February, we had procured whey up to August, with whey protein isolate costs at peak levels in the first half of the year. Whey protein isolate procurement has now been completed into early Q4, and while we continue to navigate an environment of higher whey costs, we have procured in line with our forecasts and expect to do so for the remainder of the year and are confident delivering our EBITDA margin guidance in the range of 13-14%. As previously disclosed, we have line of sight to approximately 15%-20% of new whey protein isolate supply coming to market for the back end of 2025 and into 2026.
We are utilizing all available actions to mitigate the short-term inflation through pricing and revenue growth management action, focusing on productive marketing spend and an overall targeted approach to managing costs. Healthy Nutrition delivered a good performance in Q1 across premix solutions and flavors platforms against a strong comparable period in Q1 2024, and we continue to expect like-for-like revenue growth of mid-single digit for the full year, which will be predominantly volume-led. Healthy Nutrition EBITDA margins are expected to be between 17%-18% for the year. Dairy Nutrition delivered a strong performance in Q1 on the back of good volume growth in protein solutions and strong dairy market pricing, which we expect to continue into the second quarter of 2025. We continue to expect profitability growth across Dairy Nutrition and our joint venture operations combined as previously guided.
Operating cash flow conversion is expected to be over 80% for the year. We expect to deliver adjusted earnings per share in the range of €1.24-€1.30, approximately -11% to -7%, second half weighted, which will be led by revenue and EBITDA growth in Healthy Nutrition, continued optimization of EBITDA in Dairy Nutrition and our joint venture operations, offset by a decline in EBITDA in Performance Nutrition, primarily as a result of higher input costs, which we expect to be transitory. We continue to monitor the macroeconomic environment, in particular related to tariffs. The group has some exposure to tariffs across our three businesses, and we are working to mitigate any material impacts on the group. In the current environment, we do not expect a material impact of direct tariffs on the Performance Nutrition business.
In Healthy Nutrition, we expect that the impacts will be largely mitigated through pricing pass-through arrangements. In Dairy Nutrition, where we have some U.S. product that was earmarked for China from our wholly owned businesses and joint venture, we are working to sell that product into alternative markets, which may result in holding some inventory for longer than planned. As you will appreciate, this is a dynamic situation. Consequently, we are reiterating our adjusted earnings per share guidance of $1.24-$1.30 based on the current direct tariff environment. If there are further developments in tariffs or trade agreements which may impact our business materially, we will continue to assess and update you on their impacts. With that, Hugh and I will be happy to take your questions, and I will hand it back to the operator.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to our first question. Our first question today comes from the line of Setu Sharda from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I've got three questions. The first one is, can you give more color on PN pricing? Why is the pricing still negative in PN, and does the margin target in PN require less pricing than had previously guided? Secondly, if you can elaborate on what has been driving the strong Health & Nutrition volume in Q1, if there is any pre-buying ahead of tariff.
The third is how much U.S. whey is exported to China and whether that could reduce given tariffs and health whey prices.
Good morning, Setu. How are you? Hugh McGuire here. Question one, PN pricing and the—sorry, let me jump around a bit. Sorry. The U.S.—I started U.S. whey into China. We do not calibrate that. It is an area that we feel we can probably move some of the product around a little bit. We are watching carefully, obviously, as everybody is on tariffs, so we just wait and see. It is not something that we are watching carefully and feel that we can mitigate by moving to other markets. In terms of pre-buying and healthy nutrition, no, we are not seeing any pre-buying in healthy nutrition at this point in time. Demand remains very strong in our end-use markets, whether it be vitamin mineral pre-mix or lifestyle nutrition.
In terms of PN pricing, it's an area we continue to evaluate. As I said in my notes and our commentary, we price increased in quarter one in international. We plan to price increase in quarter three. Whey is an area, obviously, it has a key influence on that, and we continue to—we're comfortable with our guidance for the end of the year on whey as well. Pricing is an area we continue to keep considerable focus on. From this, at this point in time, we're comfortable with our guidance on pricing.
Thank you. That helps.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Higgins from Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, everyone. A couple of questions just around the like-for-likes within the GPN division. Could you maybe give us a sense of what the like-for-likes ex-Costco look like for Owen?
Is Owen in growth, excluding that private label launch challenge there? Maybe just touching on the lifestyle brands, could you just dig into the kind of weakness in terms of like-for-likes there across those three brands? Have any of them been caught up in the club channel issues? The final question I had was just, what's the kind of competitive intensity across the market through the quarter in the U.S.? I know you mentioned in the full years, online had been quite competitive. Has that competitive intensity kind of eased as the quarter progressed into Q2?
Morning, Patrick. Yeah, I'll start with the last question first. Competitive intensity—look, it's always hard to gauge at the end of quarter one because you just come through new year, new you with all of these significant kind of secondary displays, promotions, innovation.
What we are seeing is, in terms of—we are seeing an easing in pricing. When we look at the pricing in quarter one in GPN, the negative was entirely driven by tactical price reductions in the energy category. We are seeing some easing in pricing as we put through price increases. As we, like others, are reducing our promotional spend as well, given the high whey costs. I think in like-for-like in GPN, we're not going to calibrate down to the customer level. What I would say is that we're seeing very strong growth in food drug mass. It's double-digit growth. You'll have heard me speak at quarter four around increased distribution in food drug mass. We're very happy with that. We're seeing continued good growth in e-comm.
Within the club channel, it's kind of a mixture of private label, which we've spoken to before, but also reduction in incremental pallets that we spoke about first last year and a reduction in promotional spend, given the high whey prices we've pulled back on MVM and TDP support as well. In terms of lifestyle, there's the little bit of club, again, the same thing, a reduction in MVMs in quarter one versus last year. We're up against strong comps, and there can be a bit of moving parts within that business as well. Again, something that would be positive for the full year, particularly Isopure.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Joanne Lim from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on Health & Nutrition. I wasn't sure if I caught your response to Setu, but can you provide more color on what's driving the growth here, please, and was there an element of pre-buying by customers? Second question was on the price reduction. Of this minus 0.8%, how much were the price reductions, technical pricing, and will this continue into Q2? Are you worried about pricing pressure from online distributors? We've heard about Amazon putting additional pressure on sellers in terms of pricing. My last question is just on GPN Americas. It declined quite significantly. What gives you the confidence for sequential recovery through the year? Thank you.
I'll take the Health & Nutrition question. Look, yeah, strong performance in the first quarter. We haven't seen any significant pre-buying impact there, both the flavors platforms, which of course are now becoming additional to our new acquisition coming in as well, Flavor Producers lapping into the second quarter, and premix. It is really fortification, mineral supplements. That's a strong demand from our customers coming through, so a bit better than we had anticipated actually in the quarter. We expect to see that continue into the second quarter. By the time we get to half year, we'll be in the mid-single digit territory, I expect as well, and Healthy Nutrition. A very nice start for that business. I'll pass back to Hugh on the pricing.
Yeah. In terms of pricing, just to reiterate what I said a moment ago, the negative pricing is entirely driven by a tactical price reduction in our energy category.
If I was to take that out, we actually had positive pricing in quarter one, driven primarily by price increase in international, but also good control and pullback on promotional spend in quarter one in the U.S.. Very specific. I think in terms of Americas, yeah, look, if you look at 13% decline, if you take SlimFast out of that, the main drivers of it will be especially channel decline, which you've called out. As I said, pleasing to see The Vitamin Shoppe come out of bankruptcy. Club channel then would be the rest of us. There will be kind of two parts of that. There will be the private label we've spoken about before, which would be about half of that. Also, there will be a reduction in promotional, incremental pallets and promotional. We will start to lap that as we head into H2 .
We also have nice innovation coming in H2 , of which one I've called out, our Isopure Protein Water. We see good, strong demand, continuously good, strong demand in food, drug, mass channel and e-commerce as well. It will be really, we'll lap that as we go into H2 .
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Deirdre Mullaney from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks, everyone. A few questions for me. The first one is just on the demand environment in the U.S.. I mean, a lot of kind of large staples companies are referencing a weaker U.S. consumer. I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on this. Is this something that you're currently seeing in the category? I suppose, can you just comment on whether kind of a weakening U.S. consumer has kind of baked into your assumptions for the year?
Second question then, I think you referenced accelerating the procurement initiatives in relation to kind of given the tariff environment. I'm just wondering if you can unpack this a little bit more and kind of talk about what this involves. The last question is just to follow on from Patrick's earlier question on the healthy lifestyle like-for-like. Just wondering if you're able to quantify the impact that the strong comp had from last year. Those are my three questions.
Morning, Deirdre. I might take the first one. I think what I'd say overall as we watch results, it's probably been a mixed bag. You've heard us speak before about our consumer being resilient in saying that. We're very aware that we see consumer confidence declining since the end of the year. Firstly, what we see is consumers are continuing to increase their protein intake.
Powder protein remains one of the most affordable formats. I called out the fact we've launched multiple smaller pack sizes to just ensure that we maintain affordability. Overall, protein demand remains strong. If you look at the data, we've actually seen protein powder category in NIQ accelerate in the last quarter versus the 52-week trend and accelerate again in March. We are seeing good, strong demand for protein powder, and our consumer is resilient. We see that in our own surveys, actually. We continue to review our surveys. We see consumers are resilient. We see it actually McKinsey had a recent consumer sentiment data study they do. Just to reiterate it, the space we're in, 83% of consumers expect to spend the same or more on vitamins and supplements, and 80% expect to spend the same or more on fitness and wellness.
We're in good, strong categories where we're cautious. We're watching carefully, but we're seeing good, strong demand for the categories we compete in.
Yeah. I'll just take the question that you had, Deirdre, in terms of procurement and also just wrap in what Hugh mentioned in terms of digital transformation. There are a number of initiatives that we have ongoing as part of our transformation, which are clearly key for us in terms of getting that $50 billion plus savings by 2027, some of which will come in next year. You can see we're combining the supply chain that allows us to leverage procurement across categories at a stronger level than we might have done before. We see some opportunity there that will start, we believe, to kick in towards the end of this year into next year.
On the transformation side, we have signed contracts now to outsource our finance, HR, and IT services to a lower-cost service. That will start coming in at the end of this year as well, as those are now well underway. That is going to give us significant opportunity as part of that $50 billion starting into next year. Very pleased with the progress there. A lot of other initiatives ongoing, but they're a clearly important part for us to drive margin improvement in the future.
Just to come back there, Deirdre, on the healthy lifestyle question then as well, I'm not going to calibrate across brands. It's more it's just there'll be a little bit of promotional pullback in the quarter, lapping a very strong quarter, double-digit growth quarter in 2024. We'd still be confident on healthy lifestyle, particularly on Isopure, which is one of our priority growth brands.
Okay. Great. Thanks a lot, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Karel Zoete from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, all. Thanks for taking the question. I have two questions. The first one is in relation to your innovation agenda. You call out quite some activity and innovations for later this year. At the same time, we know there will be significant cuts to the marketing budget. My question is, yeah, how do you prioritize what you spend, and where will you spend less in 2025 to free up resources? The other question is more around innovation in relation to plant-based proteins, a big topic a couple of years ago, less so today.
Where do we stand today with your portfolio, also taking into account the probable willingness to diversify a bit away from whey inputs only? Where are you with plant-based proteins? Is this something still very much in vogue for U.S. consumers, or is it less topical to go after that opportunity? Thank you.
Morning, Carl. Maybe you speak to innovation agenda first. I would speak more broadly. Clearly, innovation is a key priority across all three divisions. We have seen good growth in demand. We see very strong growth for protein targeting lifestyle and ready-to-eat within our Dairy Nutrition business. We see strong demand on innovation as well, particularly around our flavor growth. As I called out, it is pleasing to see the evolution of that business from a liquid flavor, natural organic flavor business into powders now as well, again, driving our innovation agenda.
From a consumer perspective within a consumer branded business, innovation is always a key focus for the business. We're excited about our Isopure RTD, which has taken us about two years to develop. It's quite technology. Getting that protein into solution and product taste like water is a real innovation for us. It is a key area. To your point then and how we support it, we're very clear. We would prefer to be spending double-digit marketing like we did the last two years. Unfortunately, with the way our inflation cuts, we've had to tighten our belts. We are still very clear that the priority brands that get the most attention and focus are Optimum Nutrition and Isopure in terms of marketing investment. We will be able to support the innovation launches.
I think if there were a headroom as we go into 2026, it would be certainly an area we'd look to increase back on spend. Lastly, plant. We have plant protein offerings across our broad-based portfolio. I wouldn't say it's not an area of focus, but it's not an area we're seeing very strong growth across our brands. Our consumers are still looking for dairy high-end whey proteins, particularly.
Okay. Super. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We will now go to the next question. Your next question comes from the line of Cathal Kenny from Davy. Please go ahead.
Morning, all. Thanks for taking my questions. Three questions from my side. Firstly, on whey pricing, conscious that you've called out, it has retreated from its recent high.
I guess that's ahead of capacity coming on stream in late 2025 and 2026. Just interested to hear your view on whey pricing for the next calendar year. That's my first question. Secondly, just on ON and market share developments within North America, interested to hear your take on that and/or your competitors following you on price and promotion intensity. The third question is on the club channel. Just interested to hear what visibility you have over the next two quarters with regard to that channel. Thank you.
Maybe I'll start with your last question first, Carl. Look, the club channel, and there's a number of customers within the club channel. There's always innovation and kind of new products moving in and out of that channel. We've got visibility for 2025.
As I said, within that channel, it is very much around the treasure hunt concept. You are going to find new products moving in and out of there all of the time. We would have good visibility up to the end of the year. Clearly, we would always be talking about potential new opportunities and innovation with those customers as well. In terms of market share, I call that, look, we have seen good growth in market share in food, drug, mass driven by the increased distribution and new products that we launched late last year that we spoke about continue to do well in e-commerce. Clearly, we will have lost a little bit for ON, we will have lost a little bit of share within club channel, although Isopure will have gained share.
We don't have market share data for the club channel, but it's an area we continue to focus on. In reality, it's around driving growth. In terms of pricing promo initiatives, we have big initiatives around RGM for obvious reasons given the high whey cost. We have pulled back on promos. We are seeing competitors do that as well. They have the same pressures we have in terms of input costs as well. Lastly, whey pricing, look, it's hard to call at this stage. We've seen some new supply come on board. That's the challenge, which is forecasting supply. The plants are built. It just takes a while in terms of commissioning. We're not changing our view in terms of that additional 15-20% of high-end whey protein isolate coming on in 2026. It's just the timing of that.
All we'd say now is we're comfortable with our guidance for 2025. We've seen it come off the high end, but it's still elevated pricing versus what we would have seen traditionally. We would see that going into 2026. Thank you. Just to follow up on the Isopure Innovation RTD, what's your strategy around the launch for that? We launch in early summer, and it'll be a customer exclusive initially as we then start to broaden it out later on in the year.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is a follow-up from Joanne Lim from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hello. Just one follow-up question. I saw that Clearway Capital has sent a letter to Tirlán calling for a breakup of Glanbia again recently. Have you heard from them? Any thoughts you can share on that, please? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. We're aware of the proposals. All I'd say is we listen to the perspective of all our shareholders, and we welcome the feedback. We're a public company, so there's no sacred cows. We're continuously looking at opportunities to create value, and we will continue to do that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is a follow-up from Patrick Higgins from Goodbody. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for taking my follow-up. I just had a question on the international markets and performance distribution. We're pretty strong. How much of that plus 6% was price? And what was the key drivers across those markets? Was there any kind of pull-through in international just ahead of the tariffs announcements either?
Hi, Patrick. I'm not going to calibrate for international distinct. Just good growth, good general growth, and we actually see sell-outs higher than revenue growth.
There's obviously lots of moving pieces in international with so many different markets on a revenue by quarter, but we're certainly not seeing any pull-through in terms of tariffs. We have price increase. We'd have probably seen more of that in quarter four before price increases in quarter one. We're watching elasticity carefully. It's on plan, but very too early to call. No, very happy with international performance, particularly at the sell-through level.
Yeah. On the pull-through point as well, remember we've moved a lot of local manufacturing to China and India. We don't have the same exposure we had a number of years ago, Patrick, in terms of U.S. sales into those markets. It's not a significant issue.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Very clear.
Thank you. That was our final question for today. I will now pass the call back for closing remarks.
Great, Sharon. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Just to close, look, quarter one has been about ruthless execution in the face of significant short-term headwinds. We are pleased with the resilient performance of the business. We will navigate the impact of the tariffs and the current transitory whey protein isolate headwinds, taking proactive action on those initiatives, and we believe we will mitigate those. We are continuing to focus on executing the transformation program, which is significant, and significant operating model optimization, efficiency across supply chain, and digital transformation. We will deliver those over the next couple of years as well. We will continue to evaluate our portfolio to ensure we deliver long-term sustainable and profitable growth. Lastly, we will continue to invest in our key capabilities. Resilient quarter one, and we move on to delivery of quarter two and into 2026 and 2027. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.