There we go. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining this Reckitt Fireside Chat. I'm Guillaume Delmas. I head the European Food and HPC team at UBS. Today, absolutely delighted to be joined by Reckitt CFO, Shannon Eisenhardt. Shannon, thank you so much for being with us today.
Thank you.
For the next 45 minutes or so, I thought I would divide this fireside chat into two parts. First, addressing the three key debates on Reckitt at the moment, and then in the second part, assessing Reckitt's transformation journey, where we are and what lies ahead. Without further ado, let's start with the three key debates and the first one being the sustainability of your like-for-like sales growth in emerging markets. Shannon, last year, like-for-like sales growth in emerging markets accelerated very significantly, well ahead of your medium-term ambition of high single digit like-for-like sales growth. First, big picture-wise, what do you think has fundamentally changed about your EM business compared to, say, the last decade? Secondly, zooming in on 2025, what were the main factors behind this very strong performance, and were there some temporary one-off factors in that performance?
It's like three questions. This is your numbering system. Q1, parts one, two, three. Let's see. I think that the emerging markets growth we saw in 2025, absolutely significant acceleration. The first thing I would call out is the fact that when we shifted from running a GBU model into a geography model, we started that January of 2025, one of the benefits we thought we would see from that and we had called out was this greater focus on emerging markets should drive an acceleration in growth of emerging markets.
If you think back into our old structure and our old model, when we were running health, hygiene, nutrition GBUs, what we saw was that our developing markets, as we called it at the time when we just closed, were growing maybe 100-120 basis points ahead of our developed markets. When you just look at the size of the business, the footprint of the business, the investments we've made over the years, I would have thought we should see more outsized or a larger differential.
As we shifted into a geography model, we went from a world where an opportunity in India or an opportunity in LatAm in emerging markets in hygiene was priority number six on a GBU president's list to Nitish running emerging markets with a fully dedicated leadership team whose only focus is how do we drive outsized growth in emerging markets. I think some of what we're seeing is just the benefit of the new structure starting to take place. Having said that, you obviously don't get that switch immediately. I think we're also seeing benefits of, for decades, we've been investing in China. We talked a lot in 2025 around the outsized growth that China's contributing to emerging markets and to Reckitt. I think we're seeing the benefits of the fact that we've been in China for decades. We've invested significantly.
We have a manufacturing facility in Taicang, which is really a state-of-the-art facility that has the opportunity to continue it to expand as we bring new products into China. We have live streaming capabilities that we can come back to because I think that's a differentiator for us. We've been investing in those capabilities and studios for a number of years. We announced last year an R&D facility that will be opening later this year. That's an R&D facility in China for the Chinese consumer. I think what we're seeing is we're really getting scale and momentum behind 20 years worth of investments in China. I think we've been very consistent in that investment.
When I first went to China two and a half years ago, when I joined Reckitt, it was an environment where a number of multinationals were sort of pausing or pulling back a bit on their commitment or investment into China, and we've really stayed the course there. I think we're seeing the benefit of that as well.
Zooming in on China, I mean, it's 1/3 of your EM exposure. Last year, close to half of your like-for-like sales growth. Was China significantly ahead of your own expectations in 2025? Looking ahead, what do you think are your key strengths, competitive advantages, in China that should drive future outperformance? I guess, can you maintain that double digit-
Sure.
Pace in China going forward?
Sure. Look, we were very pleased with the performance we saw from China in 2025. I think there are a few things worth calling out because of course, we constantly are asked around the sustainability and how do you comp the comp, and it's a big market, how can it keep growing in that way? China delivered double-digit growth in 2025. With Q4, what we shared was it was our 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in China. We've been really transparent. As we look to 2026, my expectation is China will deliver double-digit growth again. We feel confident that we have momentum, and we have the right plans in place to continue to drive that outsized growth coming from China. Why are we able to do that? What's different about us than some of our peers?
I think the first piece to call out is really around our where to play choices and what constitutes our business in China. Our three largest brands are Durex, Dettol, and Move Free. If you think of those brands, they're squarely in consumer health. What we've seen in China is that there's a high level of interest of Chinese consumers in the space of consumer health. That's helping us. Another tailwind in consumer health, which is a bit different than if you think of companies that have beauty care or personal care businesses, is we're seeing that the Chinese consumer puts a real value on Western branding within consumer health. There's this authentication that comes from some of these Western brands in this space.
I think that's different than maybe in beauty or personal care, where when you see a product that's working, there's very quickly a local competitor that comes up and is able to steal that market share. I think that's one of our differentiators. The other one that I think is important is around our e-commerce and live streaming capability. We've shared that 80% of our business in China is e-commerce. If you went back to pre-COVID, that was about 20%. We've seen a really dramatic shift out of brick-and-mortar and into e-commerce. That shift is driven by the Chinese consumer. It's where do they want to find our products and our brands. Our local team in China saw that shift happening, I think, very early on and caught that shift.
What that allowed us to do was years ago, we were establishing e-commerce capabilities. We were meeting the consumer where they wanted to be met, and we were establishing these live streaming capabilities, which if you haven't seen it firsthand, it's sort of hard to wrap your mind around what do we mean when we talk about this live streaming business. It's literally the habit you see in the China marketplace is folks get home from work, they have dinner, they get on their phones, and they spend a couple hours watching live streaming. It's a platform where we're able to entertain, educate, and then drive to purchase Chinese consumers. We've been doing that for a number of years, and now we have many, many studios that have talent that are literally operating 24/7 live streaming.
I think we shared a statistic at CAGNY that 800 million Chinese consumers are on social commerce each month. The opportunity is enormous, and our ability to do that and meet the consumer there has really helped us and allows us to very quickly iterate and optimize our messaging to consumers.
From China to India, which is your second-largest emerging market. I mean, first, can you say a few words on whether you've seen any change in the consumer environment post the change in GST at the end of September? Or would you expect a pickup in demand in India? Secondly, I mean, a very vast question, but how is your strategy for India different to what you're doing in China?
It's completely different. It's great to use those two markets as the examples because they're sort of the bookends of emerging markets. You have China, where I said we have 80% of our business online. You flip to India, which is vastly continues to be a brick-and-mortar market, and it's all about points of distribution, operational execution on the ground, and ability to really drive that business every single day. In China, what we've seen, to answer your GST question, it causes a little bit of phasing across quarters, but we've not seen a step change in consumer demand in India. Our expectation is that India has been delivering high single-digit growth very consistently, and we believe will continue to deliver growth at that level in India. We internally frequently talk about some of our very best operators are in India.
I mean, we really have a sales team in India that knows how to get that business done. We've been expanding our points of distribution and our coverage of the India marketplace, and we believe that that expansion and ability to continue driving growth is very much present in India.
That was debate number one. The second one is, can Reckitt achieve robust like-for-like sales growth in mature markets? I think the focus at the moment is particularly on Europe. We've had a pretty muted like-for-like sales growth performance in 2025. What did drive this slowdown in category growth to the point like there's pretty much no growth right now in Europe? Was it broad-based in terms of categories, in terms of countries? Was it more led by volume or pricing? How is this impacting also like the competitive landscape in the region?
Sure. We'll start with Europe, but we're gonna hit North America, right?
Of course.
Okay. Europe. I think about Europe in 2025, you know, it was an interesting year. If I go back to the beginning of 2025, we were seeing category growth rates around 3%-4% in our categories in Europe. You then fast-forward to half year, we were talking about, all right, we've seen a deceleration. Our categories are growing around 1%, maybe a little bit less than. If you then get to Q4 and exiting the year, what we've seen is category growth is nonexistent right now in our categories in Europe. We're very much operating in an environment of no category growth. As I look forward to 2026, I don't see any catalyst that makes me think we're gonna get back to our categories delivering growth in 2026.
I think we're making plans based around an assumption that we're gonna be operating in a European environment that has flat categories, no growth. Within that environment, first of all, I'd be the first to acknowledge it will be hard to drive volume growth because at the same time, we're seeing a heightened level of promo activity in Europe. We're very focused on ensuring that we're executing with excellence across Europe, every day. We're focused on that across channels. Whether it be large grocery, small pharmacy, discounter channel, we absolutely need to be showing up competitively for consumers.
We've been talking for the past twelve months around the fact that we have been seeing value-seeking behaviors coming through consumers, more frequent trips to the grocery store, smaller cash outlays, looking for smaller-sized product. We're just very focused on how do we remain competitive, how do we keep holding and gaining market share, and how do we compete well in an environment where our categories aren't a tailwind for us?
Moving to North America, I mean, above and beyond that short-term drag from cough and cold that we saw in Q4 and should impact as well the first quarter, would you expect a pickup in like-for-like sales growth in North America in 2026 versus the flattish development we had in 2025?
I do. I think when I look forward into 2026, my expectation is North America will contribute to our growth of core Reckitt in a much more significant way versus what we saw in 2025. The reason to believe for that is if you look at our 2025 results and you strip out the seasonal impacts, we were seeing an acceleration over the course of the year, and we saw good growth coming from our non-seasonal businesses. If I start with Lysol as an example, we've been delivering really good growth in Lysol for two years, and it's broad-based growth. We're seeing growth from categories we created, like Lysol Air Sanitizer, Lysol Laundry Sanitizer, but we also talked about in Q4 the strength we're seeing in the wipes business.
If you move over to VMS, that's a category that in 2024 and the first half of 2025 was pretty subdued in the U.S. In the back half, we saw ourselves driving growth in VMS in North America. We had a launch in Neuriva of a new Neuriva 3D product, and we're seeing success with that. Innovation, of course, in these categories will always be important. When you think of Finish in the U.S., it's been closer to flat performance, but Finish is a spot where even when we're not gaining market share, the category is growing and premiumizing, and we can drive top-line growth. My expectation, to your point, I think Q1 will be a tough quarter for North America.
I think we have to remember that Q1 is when, now that the season's wrapped up, we're going to see retailer destocking because the season's over and they no longer want to hold those inventory levels. I do think that in Q1, and then you'll have clearer line of sight to it in Q2, Q3, Q4, what you're going to see is strength coming from that non-seasonal portfolio where we're growing ahead of category growth rates. We are seeing categories grow in the U.S.
That was debate number two, which gets me to debate number three. How should we think about Reckitt's earnings growth in 2026? That's a lot of numbers on this slide.
Guillaume, I think we could teach you some things about slide creation.
We favor numbers over, yeah, aesthetics.
Right. I'm gonna answer with my own numbers.
Yeah. Do not get distracted. Maybe, you know, if you can walk us through the key moving parts.
Yep.
Of your margins. Let's start, you know, with the gross margin. I mean, would it be fair to assume that in terms of the core business, consistent with what you've been saying now for more than 18 months, we should expect a relatively flattish development gross margin-wise for the core business. Then next to that, Mead Johnson, we should anticipate some kind of a gross margin contraction because 2025 was a bit flattered by strong operational leverage. That was mostly around the third quarter, and also the insurance payment.
Insurance wouldn't have been in gross margins, but other than that, you're correct. Gross margins, we've been very consistent. I'm not looking to expand core Reckitt's gross margins in the near term. We've talked a lot over the past two and a half years of our expectation and need to be stepping up our capital investment in our supply chain and our manufacturing capabilities, and we're doing that. You saw that in our 2025 numbers, where we spent 4.2% of net revenue on CapEx. Gross margins for core Reckitt assume flat. Gross margins for Mead Johnson, we had elevated levels of it, of product going through our manufacturing sites as we were restocking the trade post-tornado. Yes, Mead Johnson gross margin, slight contraction.
If we move further down to the operating expenses. Here, the way to look at it, BEI, you've been saying the ambition is to grow BEI ahead of sales every year. 2026 should be no exception to that rule.
Mm-hmm.
Second ambition is to reduce further fixed costs in absolute terms, but not as a percentage of sales, given the deconsolidation of Essential Home. Adding all that together, it seems like the ambition for 2026 is to expand margins relative to the 24.9% group margin reported in 2025, but probably margin being slightly down relative to the 25.6% margins when we only combine core and Mead Johnson. Would that be a fair guidance?
Yeah. I mean, the way I would walk through it is we exited 2025 at the 24.9%. When you pull out the Essential Home business, that becomes a 25.6% operating margin if you're thinking like- for- like from businesses.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly as you said, we are very focused on offsetting the stranded costs from the Essential Home transaction with Fuel for Growth savings. We've made a ton of progress on our Fuel for Growth program over the past two years. We're very confident that when you look beyond 2026, we're gonna exit 2027 having more than offset all of those stranded costs, and we actually changed our guidance to get to below 19%, but we're not confident that we can fully offset that within 2026. Agree, we've been very consistent on BEI. We wanna have the flexibility to drive the brands and invest in our brands, and so we want that to be growing year on year as a percent of net revenue. That 25.6%, I think we will be slightly below that in 2026.
Moving further down, how do we think about the contribution from Essential Home? I think you mentioned GBP 25 million pre-tax income from services provided to Essential Home. Do you have any visibility on this year's associate income from your 30% stake in Essential Home?
Yep. GBP 25 million, that comes from a number of different transitional agreements we have around manufacturing, around distribution, around service supply. As far as the income that'll come from the 30% stake, you know, we haven't given specific guidance. I think you see in our year-end results, you can see the profitability of Essential Home when we owned it in 2025. I think it would be fair to assume that profitability might look different in first year of ownership under a new owner. I think you need to think through what the leverage would look like on that business.
I think we saw sort of what the trend of business results was in 2025, and so as you put all of that through, then just remembering that we're a 30% shareholder in that vehicle going forward.
That was debate number three, which means we can move on to Reckitt's transformation journey. Starting with your portfolio, I mean, I think that's been the most visible achievement of your transformation, with Essential Home being deconsolidated from the 1st of January of this year. Now, you still report Mead Johnson as a non-core asset. Anything you can say about the next steps for Mead Johnson, and maybe if you're already getting some interest for this asset, so a process that could be quite different from the one you just went through with Essential Home.
I'd start with we're really pleased with the performance of Mead Johnson. We've been clear it's non-core. I think we've gone through the rationale and the reasons for why we don't believe we're the best owners of that business. Having said that, we are the current owners of that business, and so we're focused on making sure we continue to appropriately invest and deliver consistent results with Mead Johnson. If I then move into process, it's really dependent on the timeline around the litigation we're dealing with in the U.S. We haven't set out any sort of timeline around when we think we would be able to to potentially transact on Mead Johnson. I don't have any new news to share there. I will say I think it is a very different potential transaction.
It's an existing business that operates relatively independently today within our portfolio, as contrasted with Essential Home, which was a business that didn't exist, that we were carving out and working to sell. I do think that when we get to that point, a transaction will look a little faster, a little clearer, hopefully more straightforward. The only other thing I'd say is I've been at Reckitt for two and a half years. There's consistent inbound around interest in the business, and so I'm confident that when we get to that point, we'll be able to move forward, but there's no timeline to share.
For Core Reckitt, I mean, do you see any clear gaps in your portfolios of brands? Something you would like to fill via acquisitions.
I think now that we have Essential Home behind us, we probably have a little more mind space to be thinking about potential M&A. I think Reckitt has an amazing history of bolt-on M&A and has generated an incredible portfolio of power brands that we sit here today responsible for. I think we could be interested in bolt-on M&A opportunities. If I think of what would be most interesting, I think our self-care category would be really interesting. It has a long runway for growth. It has incredible structural economics. I think within emerging markets, self-care is a very nascent or under-penetrated category where it could make some regional brands of interest. That would probably be top of mind as I think about those opportunities.
Great brand and much improved innovation in recent years. As you know, as things stand today, how would you rate your current innovation engine? Maybe, can you touch a little bit on, you know, the progress you've made in the past few years on that front?
We significantly stepped up our investment in R&D, trying to think of the timeline now, probably back in 2018, 2019 sort of time range. We're now up to about 2.9% of net revenue we're investing into the R&D function. We're really comfortable that we're at the right level. Why are we comfortable? It's to your point. We're seeing now the benefits coming to market of that step-up in investment. Obviously that timeline is different depending on if you're thinking through health products or more traditional hygiene products. Hygiene products, two to three years from when you increase that investment to when you're gonna start seeing the new technologies coming. Health, a little bit longer. If I just think through, we're creating new categories, Lysol Air, Lysol Laundry.
We recently announced at CAGNY the new 12-hour cold and flu multi-symptom product from Mucinex, which is a really significant innovation. We've been investing behind that for 17 years, and so are super excited to bring that to market this season, so summer is when that will start selling in. Then we talk about more everyday innovation, but when you think of Activ-Botany, which we've been talking about on Dettol, that's driven a ton of growth in China, which is different scents, different formulation. Neuriva and mini capsules we've talked about.
Larger innovation around Durex Intensity across Europe, the first nitrile condom. I mean, I can go on and on. We have examples we share every quarter, but I think as we look at the sufficiency of our innovation pipeline, we are confident that across all four categories, we have the right amount of innovation to sustain 4%-5% top line growth.
The right amount of innovation, does it mean you do not expect a step up in the number of new product launches going forward? Like you find like, you know, right now you've got the right level of innovation or as the industry is also seems to be launching more products, level of competition increasing, you may be forced or have to also step up the number of new product launches.
I mean, I think we own our destiny. No one's gonna force us to do more, right? We want to make sure that we're driving the right level of innovation, and it's a little bit less about number of launches because it's hard to compare, right? A new product development like this Mucinex product is very different from a new scent of Lysol, as an example. It's really about as we move these projects through our pipeline, looking at what's the size of revenue we expect to generate from them, and is that sufficient to deliver our top-line ambitions. I think you'll see variability in number of launches year to year, but I think what you should see is that we have the right level of newness and the right level and balance of innovations to support that top-line growth.
That was portfolio innovation. Switch gear and look at your supply chain, because there's been a complete mindset shift from, I think, cost-focused to more being value-focused. Can you talk about the visible benefits from this change? Where, you know, which KPIs do we see improving and likely to improve further as a result of this change of approach and mindset?
Sure. That's a great CapEx chart. That's exactly what we wanted to do. I think we've been really transparent, Kris and I, over the past three years, that we think supply chain resiliency and the importance of being a world-class manufacturer is paramount within our business and our ability to continue to drive sustainable growth. We've been talking actually for a few years that we've been guiding CapEx at 3%-4% of net revenue, and we kept saying, "We wanna be at the top end. We wanna be at the top end." Then for two years, we were at three and change. This year we did it. We got to 4.2%, which feels great. We guided for 2026 around 4% 'cause now we wanna sustain that.
We feel like with Harald as our Chief Supply Officer, he brings incredible capability of what does world-class manufacturing for an FMCG look like. He's hired a team that knows how to execute these large projects with excellence, and we have the confidence now that when we invest that level of capital, we're gonna see the benefits and the ROI that we're looking to see. What are some of the more visible KPIs that you'll see? I mean, some of them are just brand-new manufacturing facilities. We announced the Wilson facility in North Carolina in the U.S., which will go live in 2027, which is suddenly getting quite close. That will be a health manufacturing facility for our North America business. We've shared that that'll bring us from two years ago, we had about mid-50s.
I think it was 56% of the product we sold in the U.S. made in the U.S. When Wilson is up and running, that will be above 80%. For us, it's not just about, oh, it's great that we have more local manufacturing. It's that if you think of a health business, a Mucinex business, where demand can be so inconsistent, and when the season hits, the season hits, having that product manufactured in North Carolina is gonna allow us to make sure we can meet that consumer demand. If I were to rewind back to 2023, when I joined in October 2023, we were missing millions of GBP of revenue opportunity because the season hit, and we weren't ready, and we couldn't get the product there fast enough.
Another KPI you'll see is I think you'll see additional top line or confidence in the ability to deliver that top line because we have more reliable manufacturing in the right place, making the right products. I think longer term, what you'll see is that we'll get to a place where we're back to expanding our gross margins because we're gonna have manufacturing facilities that just run more reliably, more efficiently, and we're gonna start to see those benefits flow through to gross margins. I would put that out sort of three to four years before we're expecting folks to be seeing that or would wanna rely on that.
Then it's your Fuel for Growth efficiency productivity program. You revised your ambition on Fuel for Growth last week when you reported your full year results. Goal is now to be below 19% by the time you exit 2027. I mean, can you maybe shed some light on, you know, why Fuel for Growth is running ahead of plan? In which areas do you see incremental opportunities? I think you always like to remind us that there's no finish line.
There is no finish line. Fuel for Growth, why is it running ahead? I mean, I think there's a piece of it that is, of course, when we put out expectations, we want to make sure that we're going to be able to deliver against those. Some of it is there are so many different moving parts in what was intended to deliver the transformation of our fixed costs and drive these savings. We've been able to just execute against that a little more quickly than what we expected. We have been seeing those benefits flowing through. It's important to remember while we ended 2025 at 19.4%, when you look at that percent in 2026, it will likely go up a bit because we now have the headwind of the stranded costs from Essential Home.
However, when you think about what do we still have to do that gives us confidence that we'll not only get to 19% but actually below, it's really sort of the final two large buckets of the program around shared service and around GenAI. Again, we started sharing these ambitions 18 months ago, 24 months ago. We had plans in place around what should shared service look like at Reckitt? What do we think the size of the prize is? We had ideas and had started work around GenAI and what we thought the applications could look like and where we would go. If you fast-forward 18 months, the plans that we now have in place and the progress we've made on shared service just provides us with a much higher level of visibility of exactly what are the savings.
We have a roadmap by market, by function. We have three hubs set up and running, hiring people, ready to move work from markets into hubs. That's giving us the confidence in the GBS space. If you think about Gen AI, we started our work on Gen AI in October 2023. We started within the marketing function. We've now moved on to the R&D function, into the supply function, and we know that in 2026, we'll be really going hard around HR, finance, legal, more enabling functions. Again, it's we have learnings from marketing and from R&D where we now know how do we do this and how long does it actually take, and when do you actually start seeing savings. As we then model that forward, it just gives us a lot of confidence on over the next 24 months, what does delivery look like?
Fuel for Growth has allowed a significant step-up in BEI, in brand equity investments in the last few years. Maybe can you talk about the areas where you've been allocating this incremental BEI? I guess taking two steps back, this increase in BEI, how should we be looking at it? I mean, is it Reckitt keeping up with an increased cost of doing business in the industry? Or is it Reckitt looking at strengthening its level of outperformance and market share gains and ability to fast premiumize?
Sure. First and foremost, every year when we're putting together our plans on BEI, what's most important is innovation and how are we making sure that we're really sufficiently and fully funding new product launches and those innovations that are so important to driving the sustainable top-line growth. If you bring that example home in 2026, our largest innovation is this Mucinex 12 Hour. We've had many conversations over what does it look like to really set that product up to fully leverage the newness and the technology as we launch that. After that, it really comes down to looking at all of our brands by brand, by country. What's our share of voice? What do our market share results look like? Where are we not delivering in line with our expectations? How do we compare versus our competitors?
Deciding, okay, what are the most important priorities, and where do we want to allocate incremental BEI? We evaluate it over the course of the year as well to see what's working, what's not. Do we want to put money elsewhere? Do we want to make changes or shifts? To your latter point, I don't view this as we're trying to somehow catch up with our peers. I really view this as it's so important to drive sustainable top-line growth, two things. One is that we have innovation, and the second is that we're fueling our equities. This intention and strategy of growing our BEI year-on-year as a percent of net revenue is about making sure that we're really fueling our ability to sustainably deliver top-line growth.
If we move on to a continued reinvention in a world of big data and artificial intelligence. I mean, starting with digital and consumer data, China is probably the most advanced country when it comes to digital use of consumer data. Does your success in China in recent years give you an edge, and particularly as you try to roll out some of these best practices in other parts of the world?
I think it does. I mean, I've said I think we were a first mover in that space in China, so I think that we have a lot deeper and more robust learnings. We're actively discussing where do we think those learnings can best apply? Where do we think we're gonna see those consumer shifts or consumer trends moving next? We're already thinking through testing and learning in other markets of emerging markets. How do we think through social commerce? Where do we think that's gonna develop? Where do we see live streaming going next? How do we get a similar first-mover advantage in those markets so that we can try to replicate what we've seen in China elsewhere?
Do you see big data, it's a bit the buzzword of the moment, but do you see big data as a new source of competitive advantages for large companies such as Reckitt, or will it create a more level playing field like, you know. How do you think about big data and how you're using it, and embedding this in, the way of, doing business at Reckitt?
I think it can be a competitive advantage. I don't think it's a given that it is for us or for any large company, frankly. I think it's really a matter of how do you prioritize which datasets you think can be a competitive advantage versus sort of being baseline available to everyone. What's the unique, you know, sort of filter you can put on that data that's really specific to your business, your brands, your consumer, to turn that into a competitive advantage. I think if it's just sort of big data, we're chomping through it, but not with this really specific lens of how or why or in service of what, then I think it's not a competitive advantage.
Do you rely a lot on first-party big data? Like, you know, thanks to, direct to consumer, you know, some of that you've got in China.
Mm-hmm.
Do you have a lot of consumer data that are like, you know, proprietary to Reckitt? What do you do with it at this point in time?
We do have a lot of consumer data, proprietary to Reckitt. That was actually one of the reasons why when we went back and you think through in 2023, how did we decide to have the marketing function as our first application of GenAI? It was really taking a look at our data across Reckitt and trying to think through where do we have proprietary data that's well structured that we think we can use an LLM in a really efficient and unique way. That's what first guided us into marketing. We've shared some examples, a video at CAGNY around how we're using that consumer data around concept generation, as an example.
As a plug, we have our next Focus On event in May, which is all about digital science, which we'll share more on how we're using digital and AI to create products and connect with consumers.
My last question would be about artificial intelligence. How do you make sure Reckitt is AI ready? Like, does it require a lot of upskilling of your employees?
Mm.
How do you approach this internally?
I mean, absolutely we're having active conversations on how do we think differently about talent, because as we sort of roll through function by function, wanting to figure out what are the opportunities for AI, how do we leverage AI? It then becomes a very live conversation of what are the different skills our current employees need so that they can really embrace this and not feel uncomfortable or scared or resistant. Because I'll say one of the learnings we've had as we've rolled AI through the marketing function was you go through sort of these acceptance and rejection curves as the employees who are being asked to change their ways of working to do things differently. I think you sort of start from some fear. I think as we educate people, they get more excited.
When we roll out the tools, there's a really high level of adoption at the start. When we go back and look 30 days later, people are going back to old ways of working. Maybe there's certain tools they really like, but others they don't. It's a constant effort around really landing new ways of working and getting folks comfortable and upskilled and knowing how to do this.
Just a quick follow-up, but over the next couple of years, where do you see the biggest AI-led opportunities? I mean, is it more on the efficiency side of things, so ability to free up more resources, to improve free cash generation? Or is it about speed, ability to launch products much faster from idea to shelf, reducing the lead time, and there the benefit would be more on the organic sales growth?
I think it's both. I really do. I think we approached AI initially as a company more through a lens of productivity. I think today the conversations we have around AI, it needs to be and. It's the power of and. It has to be about productivity and how it's gonna contribute to the Fuel for Growth ambitions and how it's gonna help us to continue to fuel this growing BEI investment, and we see really tangible ways that AI is gonna help us drive top line. As a quick example, if you think about R&D, which was the second function where we've deployed AI, that shrinking of the timeline it takes from idea generation to launching a product, the faster we can run that innovation cycle, when you start to layer that on, you see more and more top-line opportunity. I think it will be both.
Very last follow-up, I promise. Compared to peers, where do you think you are AI-wise?
That's a great question. Well, our advisors who are supporting us tell us we're well ahead. I honestly, I think that's really hard. I was in a meeting this morning discussing it with one of my colleagues. I think it's really hard to judge. I mean, if I judge based on what other companies are sharing externally, I think we're in the ballpark. I think we're doing well. I don't think we're behind. I don't know that I would say we're cutting edge. I don't know that we're striving to be leading edge. It's a debate we've had internally. But I also don't. You know, we don't share everything externally, so it's hard to know that that's the right benchmark.
With that, thank you all for joining. Thank you very much, Shannon.
Thank you very much.
[I'll see you] v ery soon.