Welcome back. We have a special presentation to kick off day three at CAGNY. It is my pleasure once again to welcome Reckitt back to the conference. Though the company's leadership joined us virtually during the pandemic and sponsored an amazing lunch last year, it has been over 15 years since we last heard from the company in person. Moreover, after a seamless management transition over the past year, this is the first time that Chief Executive Officer Kris Licht and CFO Designate Shannon Eisenhardt are appearing together at the same time, the same stage. We are both lucky and extremely flattered at the occasion. Now, through the eyes of many in the room as consumers, we know Reckitt's strong brands like Lysol, Mucinex, and Finish that we've increasingly turned to to keep us healthy, safe, and clean over the past few years.
At the same time, North America represents just one-third of the company, so there's a great big world to explore through Reckitt. I'm going to turn it over to Kris to bring it to life for us. So Kris, welcome to CAGNY.
Thank you, Tim, for that warm introduction, and welcome back to CAGNY. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our Reckitt CAGNY presentation. For those of you who I have not yet met, I am Kris Licht. I started with Reckitt just about four years ago as the Chief Transformation and Chief Customer Officer. I then ran our global health business for three years, and in October, I took on the role of CEO of this great company. Today, I'm joined by our CFO Designate, Shannon Eisenhardt, and together we're going to talk to you about our journey to deliver value creation with attractive and enduring returns to shareholders. But before we start, I would like to share with you a quick video about Reckitt. I hope that video highlighted to you the portfolio of excellent brands that we sell here in the U.S. and elsewhere.
We've put a number of these products in our goody bag, which I hope you take with you after the presentation. Before we move on, I would like to draw your attention to the usual disclaimer in respect of forward-looking information. Also, we have not yet published our 2023 results, and so any financial information that Shannon and I share with you today will not include any full-year 2023 data or 2024 guidance. What I will talk about is our medium-term outlook. Reckitt has a rich 200-year heritage, and today we have a unique portfolio of brands which consumers love and trust and rely on to protect, heal, and nurture. We have either launched new brands ourselves or have acquired brands over time across our portfolio and geographic footprint. We are a global business with operations across six continents.
We have around 40,000 employees across the globe, and we sell over 30 million products every day, which generates net revenue of over GBP 14 billion, or as we would say here in the States, around $17 billion. A lot has happened over the past four years since I joined Reckitt. We have seen significant volatility, many opportunities, and challenges both across markets and across our business. Today, Reckitt is at an exciting place. I'm going to take you through the highlights of our key priorities and expectations for the future of our great company. Reckitt today is a strong and competitive business. We have an inspiring purpose and a unique entrepreneurial culture which is fit for the future. Our brand portfolio is excellent, and it serves as the foundation for enduring value creation. We have an opportunity to further sharpen and improve execution and optimize our fixed costs.
Given our strong cash flows and healthy balance sheet, we are now accelerating returns to shareholders. This provides us with the attributes for Reckitt to return to leading total shareholder returns. Now, let me address each of these in turn. Our purpose is clear and compelling. Our brands and products do good and enable us to protect, heal, and nurture in the pursuit of a cleaner, healthier world. Our distinct culture is purpose-driven, entrepreneurial, fast-paced, and action-oriented. Our people are driven to outperform, and I'm delighted with their passion and their energy throughout the business. At the heart of our culture is doing the right thing always. Our culture defines who we are. We have an ownership culture, and our leaders demonstrate a strong sense of accountability. Everyone at Reckitt sees and feels that. This accountability and ownership is so evident in times of crisis.
We saw unprecedented demand for Lysol during the recent pandemic, and our people worked tirelessly to deliver for consumers. More recently, the U.S. infant nutrition market saw some significant supply disruption. Our teams from the U.S. and internationally worked 24/7 in conjunction with the U.S. government and close coordination with our retail partners to provide 40% more safe, high-quality formula to help the U.S. address these shortages. Our culture is continuously evolving, and we place greater emphasis on care than we did in the past. We embed sustainability into everything we do, and we've become a more diverse company. Our desire is to be an even more inclusive company, providing a work environment where uniqueness is embraced and inclusion is a lived experience. I do believe our culture is a special asset that we will harness and continue to evolve as a source of enduring competitive advantage.
Let's now turn to our categories and our brand portfolio. We operate in categories with significant and long-term runways for growth. Category creation, household penetration, and premiumization can fuel our growth for decades to come. Let me give you a few examples. The growth of self-care, including OTC, is fueled by heightened consumer interest, increased disposable incomes, and the need to migrate to greater self-care as populations age. In emerging markets, OTC is, in fact, still a nascent category with significant and long-term growth runway. Autodish is a good example of category creation, household penetration, and premiumization, all of which contribute to an extremely attractive long-term growth outlook. Intimate Wellness remains a high-growth, attractive category fueled by increased consumer interest, normalization, and engagement. Significant innovation and product premiumization give us confidence that this category will also enjoy attractive long-term growth.
Laundry additives is an excellent example of category creation, where we continue to see long-term growth opportunity as more and more consumers discover the benefits of these propositions. On average, we expect the medium-term growth of our categories to be in the region of 3%-4%, and as market leaders, we expect to exceed this. We have an excellent portfolio of market-leading brands. More than 70% of our brands, on a net revenue basis, occupy market-leading positions in their respective categories with a high level of consumer trust and affinity. Nothing demonstrates the strength of our brands and their ability to stretch and expand better than our three-year growth rate, which has been sector-leading. As a result, at the end of 2022, we were a GBP 3 billion larger business than just three years ago on a like-for-like basis.
Today, we bring our best tools to bear to delight consumers and grow our categories. We can only gain superiority when we leverage data-driven insights and bring new scientifically grounded innovation to our consumers. We have invested in both our digital and machine learning capabilities. We connect consumer contextual, behavioral, and demographic data to map where to play and how we win. Our robust R&D capabilities embed science and superiority into our products, backed by the foundational work we do across our nine science platforms. Let me give you a few examples. The field of the microbiome and the impact on human health, animal health, and the environment is vast. The microbiome, that is, the microbes that live in us, on us, and around us, is also enabling entirely new growth areas. At Reckitt, we have six targeted areas anchoring our microbiome science platform.
Let me highlight a few of those examples. The baby microbiome, the precious first 1,000 days of life. Research clearly shows that seeding a healthy infant microbiome has lasting health benefits in the areas of allergy and immunity. We use that science in our infant formula product innovation. There's the built environment microbiome, the microbes around us. It is this understanding which helps us innovate in areas such as laundry sanitizer and bio-based disinfection, and it demonstrates the clear relationship of hygiene as the foundation for health. In total, what makes the microbiome science platform so powerful is how the science cuts across all of these areas and the connections we can make between them to help with better insights and utility for future innovation.
In the area of polymer science, another one of our platforms, we are focused on using novel film technology to lightweight packaging as well as including post-consumer recycled polymers in areas like Finish and Enfamil. It's also about the product inside. We use polymer technology in our Autodish innovation, enabling us to release the right ingredient into the wash at the right time. At Reckitt, we embed sustainability in all of our product development because sustainability matters to consumers, to customers, and to us. A unique enabler is our sustainability calculator. It measures the impact of a new product versus existing products so our R&D and marketing teams can evaluate critical design decisions, taking account of their environmental impact in contribution to our sustainability ambition. This goes hand in hand with delivering superior products and accretive economics.
We look at reformulation, packaging, ingredients, and consumer use, illustrated by this dashboard. There are always benefits and drawbacks to innovations, and we weigh the impact of our decisions carefully. We want consumers to trust our brands and their environmental footprint. I talked earlier about our categories, our brand portfolio, and how category creation, household penetration, and premiumization can fuel our growth for decades to come. Let me give you a few examples of what I'm talking about. Lysol took the power of germ kill into the laundry aisle a few years ago with the launch of Lysol Laundry Sanitizer, specifically designed to sanitize laundry and kill 99.9% of bacteria that regular washing leaves behind. Leveraging the strong equity of the Lysol germ kill promise into this new category has created an attractive proposition for all.
For our customers, we helped premiumize the laundry aisle as Lysol Laundry Sanitizer increases retailer revenue per wash by $0.0045. For our consumers, it helps cut the chain of infection in the home. For Reckitt, it creates a meaningful and long-term runway for growth. While it's already a $260 million category in the U.S., the household penetration levels today are barely above 10%. There is significant headroom for growth and penetration here. Sticking with Lysol, in June of 2023, we created another new germ kill category with our new Lysol Air Sanitizer. Traditional air fresheners only freshen the air, and the traditional disinfectant sprays only kill viruses and bacteria on surfaces. That's what makes Lysol Air Sanitizer a first-of-its-kind product in the air care category.
We've worked closely with the EPA to produce the only antimicrobial product that kills 99.9% of both airborne viruses and bacteria while eliminating bacterial odors in the air. Have a look at our ad that explains Lysol Air.
Viruses, bacteria? Air fresheners are no match for them. Introducing new Lysol Air Sanitizer. It helps protect your family from coughs and sneezes and eliminates odors in your home. It even has three fresh fragrances to choose from. Unlike air fresheners, one spray kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria in the air. Because scent can't sanitize, Lysol can. Welcome to the future of air. New Lysol Air Sanitizer.
With the launch of Lysol Air Sanitizer, we are creating a new category, and we are accelerating Lysol's growth. Turning to Autodish, where Finish is the number one brand globally, we enjoy clear market leadership positions in Europe and in emerging markets. We are not market leaders in the U.S., and we've seen significant competition from our leading branded competitor. We made a commitment four years ago to significantly step up our R&D investment to improve product superiority in our Finish franchise. This investment is now delivering returns as we leverage our polymer science capabilities, which I talked about earlier. More than 50% of our Autodish portfolio now utilizes superior thermoforming and CycleSync technology. Our new Finish Ultimate Plus ad highlights just what an efficacious product we now have in the U.S. market.
Introducing Finish Ultimate, engineered for the ultimate clean in the toughest conditions. Dry burnt-on stains, old dishwashers, very hard water, even when you skip the rinse. Its new CycleSync technology releases the right ingredient at the right time, and Finish Ultimate breaks down stains, cuts grease, and boosts shine for the ultimate clean even in the toughest conditions.
Following the European launch of Finish Ultimate Plus in early 2023, we've driven both premiumization in the Autodish category as a whole and seen some good market share gains. We launched this product in the U.S. in the back half of last year, and we hope to achieve similar results in due course. An example of where we're utilizing the combination of our science and strong brand equity to enter new categories for one of our brands is the large $1 billion U.S. sore throat category. We identified a gap in the sore throat market. Consumers suffering from severe sore throat wanted a trusted brand delivering a medicated solution to minimize disruption to their busy day. We've combined the strong and trusted equity of Mucinex with the science from our global Strepsils sore throat platform to launch Mucinex InstaSoothe, a highly efficacious medicated pain reliever that delivers powerful numbing relief.
Since launch, we've gained 6% market share in the U.S. sore throat category, and we believe that we have a long runway for growth as we premiumize the segment with this superior and efficacious solution. Don't trust my word for it. Here's Mr. Mucus to tell you all about InstaSoothe.
Sore throat got your tongue? Mucinex InstaSoothe sore throat medicated drops, uniquely formulated for rapid relief that lasts and lasts.
Stop, my baby!
Get Mucinex InstaSoothe. It's comeback season.
Now I want to give you an example of how we're premiumizing nutrition with superior science. Enfamil NeuroPro contains critical ingredients to drive brain superiority and immunity, including MFGM. This superior proposition is enabling us to both premiumize the value per infant nutrition basket for our retailers and the category while driving better health and cognitive outcomes for consumers. That was a brief insight into our categories, our brands, and why we believe we can sustainably outperform through category creation, household penetration, and premiumization. However, to achieve this ambition, we must have the infrastructure and the capabilities to win in our core markets. We have a scaled global footprint across developed and emerging markets. We've seen strong broad-based growth across both and enjoy significant scale benefits in major strategic growth markets such as the U.S., China, and India.
These markets taken together contribute to 40% of group net revenue and around 55% of our growth over the last three years. This scale in our manufacturing and go-to-market networks enables us to partner effectively with customers and continue to grow the distribution of our brands. When coupled with our excellent brand portfolio and strengthened innovation pipeline, this creates the opportunity to rapidly scale and execute consumer-preferred propositions around the world. I'm going to briefly dive deep into three key strategic markets. Starting with the U.S., our largest market and just under a third of our total business. We have a focused and high-quality portfolio of market-leading brands, including Lysol, Finish, Mucinex, Enfamil, and Air Wick. We have grown this business at a three-year compounded growth rate of 8.6%.
We have a robust local supply network with six plants, enabling us to locally produce over 50% of what we sell in the U.S. We aim to increase local supply in the U.S. in the years to come, and we will be more responsive to the constantly changing consumer demands in this market. We've also focused on customer service in the U.S. We have increased our relative share of distribution in recent years and significantly improved our position in the Kantar Powe Ranking survey of retailers, up four places last year. We still have work to do to improve these scores and our service levels, but we have a strong leadership team, an excellent go-to-market system, and supply capability, and we're well-positioned in this important U.S. market. India is another strategically important market for us.
It is now the world's most populated country with significant growth potential for our health and hygiene categories. India represents around 6% of our total group and benefits from an excellent portfolio of market-leading brands. In particular, it is our largest Dettol market, and Dettol is one of the most trusted and iconic brands in all of India. We have grown this business at a three-year compounded growth rate of 9%. In India, we are almost exclusively locally produced, and our supply organization delivers 98% service levels consistently. We have delivered strong and sustainable growth in India and more recently improved our distribution capabilities, doubling our direct coverage of customers. Now turning to China, which is around 5% of group net revenue, our portfolio is currently centered around two key brands, Durex and Dettol.
In addition, we have a number of exciting brands with significant penetration potential, including Finish in the Autodish category and Move Free in the VMS category. We've grown this business at a three-year compounded growth rate of 15%. We have a strong go-to-market capability, particularly across digital platforms, with 14% of our sales now made through the live stream channel only. We've also adopted a more local approach to supply in China as we seek to be more responsive to consumer demand. Currently, 80% of our sales are locally produced with excellent service levels. I hope this provides some color as to why I believe we have the right to win in our key markets. With a combination of market-leading brands, the right go-to-market capabilities, and a robust and increasingly localized supply chain.
I would now like to share with you the driving logic behind the Reckitt portfolio and how it creates value. I've just reflected a bit on the attractive categories in which we operate and our excellent portfolio of brands. As we go forward, I will consider this portfolio through three clear principles which will govern our organic and inorganic capital allocation. Number one, a brand or a business must enjoy a clear long-term runway for growth, not just for a few years, but a truly long-term runway to belong in our portfolio. Number two, it must have an attractive earnings model. I primarily look at the strength of the gross margin. It needs to be high and the high end of the category in which it operates. That enables continuous investment and premiumization, as well as operating margins that are consistent with our group earnings model.
And number three, we must have a source of sustained competitive advantage. It must be a trusted leading market-leading brand, a superior product or technology, or some other source of enduring advantage. Not all of this is new. Elements of this thinking is what formed the Reckitt portfolio in the first place back in time. And as we move forward from here, every brand within our portfolio will need to earn its place by satisfying these principles. This will also be the lens through which we judge inorganic opportunities. We've already shown that this portfolio has the capacity to grow faster than our peer set. Over the past three years, we've delivered sector-leading organic growth, and this gives us the confidence that we can be a mid-single-digit growth company going forward. And we've delivered this growth with superior gross margins, which demonstrates the continued strength of our earnings model.
I will now turn to areas where I want us to sharpen and improve. There are three priority areas where we can get better. Firstly, while we have superiority in many parts of our brand and product portfolio, we have an opportunity to further improve, particularly in hygiene. Secondly, as I mentioned at the half-year, we have examples of executional excellence in our markets, some of the best I've seen. But next door to these markets, we have mediocrity. To me, this is not acceptable. We now have the tools and the people to execute with excellence everywhere, every day. And thirdly, we have an opportunity to optimize our fixed costs while maintaining the capabilities that we have built. I spoke today about how we're working to strengthen the superiority of our products.
This will remain a priority in the coming years as we continue to create categories and stretch and expand our brands. We will continue to invest in capabilities that give us superior consumer offerings. I've highlighted a couple of examples here. Durex is the global leader in condoms. We have leadership and expertise in the key polymer for condoms, latex. We now also have leadership in more recent condom technology, polyurethane. We are actively working on the next generation of condom polymers, which I look forward to sharing with you in due course. Our polymer science platform also enables us to premiumize in Autodish, and we will continue to invest in ever greater levels of efficacy and superiority in Autodish. Another priority of mine is that we win in our markets by more consistently executing with excellence. We have the tools to win in the market.
Most of our sales teams have the latest digital technology to optimize revenue growth. We've improved our service to customers, and we're being recognized for that, and this work is never done. We will increase our distribution points over the next three years, and we have more work to do to execute with excellence everywhere, every day. Now let's look further down the P&L. Our industry-leading margins demonstrate our advantaged portfolio. However, there is room to be more efficient in our cost base. You can see this when we look at the difference between our gross and operating profit versus peers. To optimize our fixed costs, we are extending our productivity program with a greater focus on this area of the P&L, and we will pursue four areas of opportunity. First, we will simplify our organization and look for scale opportunities wherever they exist.
We've already identified concrete opportunities to streamline the organization and channel investments more effectively, and we have started executing on those. Second, after a period of significant investment in capabilities and centers of excellence across our business, we have an opportunity to take stock and right-size those investments without cutting the important muscle and capabilities that we have built. And fourth, while we've been using machine learning in our business for some time, the application of generative AI presents us with entirely new opportunities for effectiveness and efficiency. We are currently studying those and making quick progress in their application. I expect these four areas of opportunity to generate savings in the order of 200 basis points of net revenue, which will enable us to invest in growth and enhance earnings over the coming several years. The capture of the fixed cost opportunity will be funded from within the P&L.
Given this, the net benefits will build over time. I'm now delighted to hand over to Shannon, who will briefly cover how we intend to enhance our shareholder returns.
Thanks, Kris. Good morning, everyone. I'm Shannon Eisenhardt, and as a brief introduction, I joined Reckitt last October, having previously spent my career at Procter & Gamble and most recently at Nike. Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to spend time at both our headquarters in the U.K., as well as getting out to visit a number of our larger markets. I've had the opportunity to engage with our executive leadership team, as well as with the board, and it's really been an invaluable experience for me. This has given me the chance to not only learn about where Reckitt is headed, but to really understand the history of Reckitt and how we've gotten to where we are today.
Reckitt's been on a journey in many areas from both an execution and a governance perspective, and I look forward to building on what we've accomplished in recent years, as well as recognizing that there continues to be opportunity for improvement. We have more work to do. I'm excited to join Reckitt at what I believe to be an inflection point along our journey to deliver enhanced returns to our shareholders. At Reckitt, we generate strong cash flows, and we have a healthy balance sheet. I'm confident that our cash flow generation will remain strong. Our leverage was about 2x net debt to EBITDA at June of 2023, and I look forward to providing an updated view of our free cash flow, as well as our leverage position at our year-end presentation.
Given our leverage and strong cash flows, we're in a position to deliver improved returns to shareholders moving forward. I'd like to briefly review our capital allocation priorities. First, we will invest in organic growth. This remains our top priority and will be funded through our organic earnings model, which Kris just hit on briefly. Second, we'll continue to prioritize strong free cash conversion. Last year, we upgraded our dividend policy centered around sustainable growth, and this upgraded policy will continue. We'll also continue to target a single-A credit rating. Just now, Kris shared the three principles for long-term portfolio value creation that we will use to manage our portfolio moving forward. And finally, we're committed to returning surplus cash to our shareholders. Consistent with this, we announced a few months ago our new share buyback program.
Our share buyback program will initially be the $1 billion that we've already made good progress to date. We've returned around GBP 300 million since the beginning of November, and I expect this buyback program to be sustainable and grow over time as we grow our free cash flows. The amount will depend on movements in our other capital allocation principles. The combination of a full calendar year of share buybacks, as we look forward to 2024, and growing our dividend means we aim to deliver around double the cash returns to shareholders this year versus what we returned back in 2019. I'll now hand back to Kris to conclude the presentation.
Thank you, Shannon. So to conclude, our medium-term ambitions are clear. We will continue to deliver sustainable mid-single-digit top-line growth with our excellent portfolio of brands. We expect to grow adjusted operating profit ahead of revenue growth. We maintain our dividend growth policy, and we are commencing an ongoing share buyback program. Let me leave you with this message. Our strong competitive business is poised to deliver sustainable, profitable growth and enhanced total shareholder returns. Thank you for your interest in Reckitt.
That's really silly.
You may have to come up here.
Yeah, sure.
Okay. Hello, everyone. I think we've got 12 minutes for any Q&As that you might have. Please put your hand up. Iain Simpson, go right ahead.
Thanks very much. It's Iain Simpson at Barclays. Hi, Kris. Hi, Rich, and Shannon. A couple of questions from me, if I may. So firstly, you talked about 200 basis points of savings from fixed costs over the coming years, if I heard you correctly. Could you give us any sense as to how you think about the balance between reinvesting those and dropping those through to the bottom line? And then secondly, if I may, a question around portfolio. You talk about attractive earnings model, enduring competitive advantage, long-term runway for growth. How do you think about the long-term runway for growth opportunities within your nutrition, your sort of infant formula business? Thank you very much.
Great. I'll stand so I can see you, Iain. How are you? It's good to see you. So the savings. Look, I think, as I said, these savings are going to roll into the P&L over time. We're going to be absorbing the one-time costs associated with realizing them inside the P&L, and therefore, it'll unfold over time. So now that being said, I think we will balance that. The answer to your question will not be formulaic. It will be dependent on real opportunities that we see for investment and growth. There are some places, for instance, where we think we can support our brands at a higher level and be more fully funded as we grow, for instance, our OTC business in emerging markets. So that's a good example of a place where we would like to invest more, and I'd like to see that happen.
But at the same time, we're going to judge that as we go. There's no question that a good portion of that will flow through, and we intend to meet the framework that we've set out here for the medium term, and this is one of the ways we want to do that. But the big idea here is simply to get the virtuous cycle in the P&L to really move and to allow us to really accelerate our investment and growth. So I'll hesitate to give you an exact number, but it'll be a balanced mix, and we'll make those choices as we go. On the portfolio, look, our framework is covering our whole portfolio. There's no question we have things in our portfolio that are growing much faster and some things that are not growing as fast, right?
Just you look at the markets and the different categories. I think what I shared with you today is even in very developed markets like here in the U.S., we can grow fast, and we have conviction that we can do that. In nutrition, as you touched on, we've obviously and we are still in a situation of normalizing after our business became much larger than it historically has been last year due to the supply crisis. That is still a normalization process that's ongoing. We're going to share more about that at full-year results, but we'll continue to share because that is still sort of normalizing in the category.
There's no question that there are fewer babies being born in many markets around the world, but there's also no question that the real way to grow this business and what's attractive about this business is actually the runway for significant premiumization. That's why I anchored on the science that underpins our innovation and our formula and the benefits that we can deliver when we bring new propositions to market that are clinically supported, where we have strong science to back that, and claims that we can make that are very relevant for consumers. So in terms of health outcomes for babies, etc., there's a long runway for growth to actually improve formula, deliver new benefits that are scientifically proven, and premiumize the business as a result. There's adjacencies in nutrition that I'm sure you're all aware of.
So broadly, it's an interesting space from a growth standpoint, and we're interested in some of those adjacencies as well. But I don't think nutrition will be the fastest growing business in our portfolio. I think that's probably fair to say. But I think there's good growth there still to be had. Go ahead.
Can you go with Celine?
Okay.
Let's go to Celine.
Okay.
Thank you, Celine Pannuti, J.P. Morgan. I wanted to come back to your point about you said there were places where you think you could sharpen and improve, and you mentioned hygiene and some key markets. I mean, you gave a lot of good examples of the new innovation in hygiene, but can you talk about where you think that there are what exactly are the places in emerging markets and in hygiene where you think you can sharpen your performance? And my second question, I was intrigued to see that only half of your business in the U.S. is produced in the U.S. Can you talk about why that is, and if you ramp up, will that have an impact on profitability in that market?
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Celine. Look, first, I would say the point I was making around hygiene was really to call out the product superiority opportunity that we're very focused on. And while product superiority is relevant in all our businesses, and it's something we work on every day, we did find a couple of years back when we took stock of this that the hygiene business was more at a disadvantage in certain segments, for instance, Finish. And that's why the movement in Finish to thermoforming is a really exciting and important element of our strategy, and those investments are generating very significant returns wherever we make them, so we're going as fast as we can to do so.
So it is an example of where product superiority is a place that we're focused and where we have more work to do, and that's why I called out hygiene. I would say the other opportunities that I spoke about, be it more consistently high levels of execution every day, everywhere, as well as the fixed cost optimization opportunity, those are actually pervasive to the group. I don't see them being particular to hygiene at all. They are relevant everywhere in the business. In terms of the U.S. production footprint, and I'm happy you asked me this question because it's very important for our business, we have actually progressed this. So I think most of us, large global companies, have realized that very globalized supply chains are vulnerable to some of the shocks and crises that we've been through over the last several years.
And so it makes a lot of sense for us to regionalize and localize production, in particular in a big strategic market like the U.S. And we have, in fact, done that. So we have brought more capacity to the U.S., and we have also enhanced our production footprint in Mexico to serve the U.S. in a range of products. But this is an area of focus, so that's why I'm happy you asked, because I do think that number needs to go up. And actually, the conventional wisdom was that a globalized supply chain where you benefited from labor arbitrage and so forth would lower the cost position. I think the real-world situation that we're in today is if that supply chain is not extremely reliable and agile, the economics of that pretty quickly erode.
And so it is actually a very good idea when you sell products that have the kinds of margins that we sell to look at localized production to the greatest extent that we can. So we are, in fact, looking at that. I'll be happy to share with you more as we go, but this is a major priority for capital expenditure.
Yep. Sure.
Bryan Spillane from Bank of America. So a couple of quick questions. First, cough and cold season, a couple of your competitors have talked about it being, I don't know, not enough coughs. So if you could just give us a perspective first on just how that's unfolded for you all?
Yeah. So the season that we're seeing right now is what you might call a robust season. So it's relative to sort of historical averages. It is a "good season." That being said, what we saw last year was highly unusual, right, because it was really the first year where everyone had to navigate a post-COVID kind of open society. And so we had high levels of COVID, of cold and flu, RSV, all the different things. But we're still seeing very high levels of incidence. They're not quite as high as last year, which makes sense. If you think about the science of that, that's kind of what you would expect. But it's not a dramatic change. The other thing that always happens with the season is that it's a little bit about the shape of the season.
Last year, we had a spike, an unusual spike in Q4 as opposed to in Q1 when the spikes normally happen. We're lapping that. Part of what you're seeing is also it's not just absolute size of season. It's also shape.
Right. Okay. And second, just on infant nutrition in the U.S., I don't know, demand is down, and there's been a lot of movement in government subsidies to consumers or to households. So just is there a need for a pricing reset in infant formula in general, just given kind of the weakness in the market and maybe the softness in some of those consumers or households that purchase formula?
Well, I mean, I think what you saw that we talked about in Q3 is that we took pricing in that business because we needed to, because the input costs went up quite a lot, and we passed on significant pricing, and successfully so, in the early part of last year. And so we're now also seeing other people pricing in the category. And I think where we are right now, we're not seeing that to be sort of an imbalance, and our earnings model is protected by and large. Now, as you also know, this is an area of heightened regulatory interest, and standards are going up for the industry as a whole, which we don't really have an issue with. We're still trying to understand the cost implications of some of that, but it's too early to say really what that means.
I think fundamentally, what I'm saying to you is we priced it has worked well, and we're happy with where we're sitting at the moment.
Thanks, Bryan. Anybody else?
I know there are more questions out there, but I would suggest maybe we should take the conversation over to the breakout room. As we do, please join me in thanking Kris and.