Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Church & Dwight conference call. Please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and the actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. For more information on the factors that could influence results, please refer to Church & Dwight's SEC filings and the Touchland press release, which is available on Church & Dwight's website. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Mr. Rick Dierker, Chief Executive Officer of Church & Dwight. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We have some exciting news today. This morning, we announced that we entered into an agreement to acquire the Touchland brand. I'm going to begin with brief comments on the acquisition and then turn the call over to Lee McChesney, our CFO, who will provide the financial details. We will open up the call for some brief Q&A. We're excited about adding Church & Dwight's eighth power brand. Touchland is the fastest-growing brand in the hand sanitizer category in the U.S. and is the number two hand sanitizer in the category. This acquisition meets the company's long-standing acquisition criteria: number one or number two in the category, asset light, a growing brand, and expected to be gross margin accrued to the company. Acquisitions have been a key driver of Church & Dwight's historically strong shareholder returns. The U.S.
Hand sanitizer category is approximately $640 million, with low single-digit growth. However, we view this brand similar to Hero, where we see new consumers coming into the category and driving category growth. It's early days in terms of household penetration. Touchland is at 6% versus the category at 37%. Touchland has established a loyal consumer base and is growing the hand sanitizer category. The brand skews towards younger consumers and already has a high level of brand loyalty and repeat purchase in line with category leaders. Andrea and Ruggero and team have built a great brand and are laser-focused on the consumer. Innovations grounded in four pillars: design for on-the-go use, distinct form factor, formulas which provide a differentiated consumer experience, and delivers a sensorial experience. This has hit the mark in the hand sanitizer category and enables a premium positioning.
In recent months, two positive developments are: Touchland has launched into the body mist category, and the hand sanitizer business expands into Canada and the Middle East. We plan to leverage our capabilities to accelerate the growth of Touchland and select international markets. Next up is Lee with some financial details.
Thank you, Rick, and good day, everyone. As Rick noted, we are energized to bring the Touchland acquisition news today. Let me provide you a few important additional comments on the transaction. Let's start with valuation. The purchase price for the acquisition is about $700 million at closing, consisting of on-hand cash and Church & Dwight restricted stock, and a payment up to $180 million, contingent upon the achievement of Touchland's 2025 net sales, for a total purchase price of up to $880 million. Touchland's net sales for the trailing 12-month through March 31, 2025, were approximately $130 million. EBITDA was approximately $55 million. The acquisition is expected to be neutral to the company's 2025 EPS, inclusive of transition costs, acquisition-related expenses, foregone interest income, incremental marketing, and intangible amortization expense.
As we look forward, Touchland's annual net sales are projected to grow double-digit s in both 2025 and 2026. In 2026, the acquisition is expected to be 3% accretive to cash earnings. Let me walk you through that earnings impact. You start with the $55 million in trailing 12-month EBITDA, which is growing double-digit s through 2025. Then you have the intangible amortization and foregone interest income, and then we also have transition expenses. This all results in flat-ish EPS for the remainder of 2025, and we expect approximately 3% cash accretion in 2026. One final comment from me: with this transaction likely to close in Q2, we are still looking for additional opportunities. Our strong balance sheet continues to give us the flexibility to pursue additional accretive acquisitions. With that, we'll now open up the call for a few questions. Operator.
We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Rupesh Parikh with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I guess just going back to the top-line commentary for double-digit growth in the coming years, I just want to get a sense for the bigger opportunities remaining in the U.S. And then since this company just went into the Middle East and Canada, does your confidence in the brand resonate in international markets?
Yeah, thanks, Rupesh. I would say I'll start with your second one first. Early days on some of the international markets, for sure. The trends we're seeing in Canada, for example, are just fantastic. That is where we can really add value. We have a great footprint all over the world, through distributors and through our subs, and think that we can help in a big way from regulatory and just distribution. Similar to Hero, how we went to a multitude of countries fairly quickly, we plan on doing the same here with Andrea and team. As for the U.S., distribution today is fairly limited. Five customers make up 80% or more of the growth. The customers that are doing where this is largely based is Sephora, Ulta, and Amazon, I would say, are the three largest.
We feel like we have years of runway with those customers. This is early days for this brand. Again, the growth rates are accelerating and not decelerating at this point in time.
Great. Maybe just my one follow-up. Just on the tariff side, the sourcing, is this all U.S. sourcing or just any color there on the tariff front?
Yeah, so the majority of this is not exposed to tariffs. There's a little bit from China. We feel like certainly over the next 12 months, we'll mitigate that, but that's all part of our outlook that we share.
Great. Thank you. I'll pass it along.
Your next question comes from the line of Dara Muzenian with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Morning.
Hey, there.
Just wanted to help understand, was hoping you could help us understand the differentiation for the brand, why it's unique. The packaging really stands out. Obviously, great growth over the last few years here. Just wanted to get a bit more detail on what's driving the high loyalty and repeat purchases that you mentioned, particularly in the context of a hand sanitizer category that doesn't necessarily stand out as offering a lot of brand differentiation. I was just hoping for a bit more detail there.
Yeah, sure. I put a couple of comments in my script. Even with my conversations with Andrea and the team and the founders, I think it really comes down to how they're innovating. I guess number one is the distinct form factor. I think the packaging is just fantastic. It's easy. It's this on-the-go mentality that's convenience, which consumers really appreciate. The consumer experience here is not just a clinical hand sanitizer. It's kind of value-add. The sensorial experience in terms of scents, the amount of effort and time and energy that gets put into developing with the fragrance houses what the different fragrances are. All those four or five things together are just making a product that hits the mark. When you do that, it starts to build a brand. Now it's not just a product, it's a brand.
When you have a brand, there's an ability to go across other categories as well. They're having early success doing that.
That's helpful. That actually gets to my next question, which is, strategically, when you look at this purchase, A, could it be a springboard into more categories for you and other acquisitions? B, how extendable is this brand across other categories beyond where it is today?
Yeah, it's a great question. I'd say it's early days. There's absolutely such a long runway to go on hand sanitizer. We believe that that's underpenetrated still in the U.S., even at those top two or three customers. There is going to be a lot of time, energy, and focus on getting our fair share there, growing the category, and then in our international footprint. Yep, early days, but because of the great loyal consumer base and the approach to innovation, we think there's upside in additional categories. Body mist is a good example. There are others down the road. Again, we're laser-focused on making sure that we've fully fleshed out the opportunity in hand sanitizer.
Okay. And then last question for me, just from an M&A standpoint, I mean, might this signal more interest in things like hand lotion in general, or might there be more on the M&A front, or should we view this just as an isolated attractive opportunity?
Yeah, I would say this is, in my mind, there's a lot of adjacencies to the Hero acquisition. This is, at its core, what we think is a kind of a problem-solution brand. It hits the mark. Consumers identify with this brand. Their repeat purchase cycle is fantastic. I wouldn't say that there's a strategy to get into lotions or anything else next. I mean, we're agnostic of the category as long as we feel like the business hits the mark with the consumer and then hits some of the financial criteria. Yeah, I think personal care, household doesn't really matter, but this one certainly hits the mark.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Anna Lazo with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you so much for the question. I was wondering how you would compare and contrast this to your prior acquisitions, maybe how is Touchland similar or different to Hero and TheraBreath in terms of operations. You touched on runway for distribution. And just how it fits into your overall portfolio today. Thanks.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities you can draw between Hero and TheraBreath. The household penetration one, right? I think I quoted in my comments that household penetration for Touchland is 6% versus the category at 37%. Similar runways for growth. I would say both of them are at its core limited international footprint, and I think we do a good job there. Distribution opportunities still exist in the U.S., for sure. Hero and Touchland are both premium problem-solution brands. I think that's also a good parallel. Again, I think there's a lot of similarities.
I would just add, obviously, I mean, it meets all the criteria as Rick talked about. Again, being number one or number two, it is an asset-light business, gross margin accretive for us. You think about our evergreen model and what we can do. I mean, they are doing all this with certainly lighter marketing dollars than we typically put in. There is just a lot of opportunity to drive further growth here.
Yeah, I also like the category story. We've said this publicly a couple of times, but acne, for such a long time for Hero, was a $500 million category. You look back and it was Proactiv and Clearasil back in the day. A new form comes out, and now the category is a billion and a half. That's largely because of the patch form. Hand sanitizer has been a steady category for a long period of time. I'm kind of ignoring the COVID years. This came out kind of after COVID. Steady $600 million category for a long period of time. We think this will continue to transform the category.
That's great. Just as a follow-up, what are the learnings, I guess, from Hero and TheraBreath that you can maybe apply here that you didn't know prior to those acquisitions? Maybe are there a few things that come to mind that you can apply here to Touchland? Thanks.
Yeah, I think we did it with Hero. We wanted to make sure we kept the founders in that example. We're doing it here. The team is entrepreneurial. The team has a great vision. We're going to help with scale and some e-com capability as well. By and large, we're going to take the best of both worlds and be able to accelerate growth from here. I think we did that with Hero. I think for TheraBreath, that was a little bit more traditional of an acquisition. Again, you just kind of leverage the strengths of both organizations to get a better result.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Grundy with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. Morning, guys. Congratulations on the deal. A couple of questions for me. We talked about Hero and TheraBreath, which have been fantastic deals for you guys. One that maybe did not go the way you'd hoped would be Flawless. I understand the replacement cycles are different. The asset turns are different in the appliance space, etc. Even just sort of a quick glance this morning, there are some store brands or knockoff brands that can be had at less than half the price. I guess, how did you get comfortable with the durability of the moat?
This kind of follows up on the earlier question, but I guess just in the context of the Flawless deal and how you get comfortable here that the moat is durable and it's not going to be sort of competed away here by lower-priced brands, particularly the company's strategy is to expand into mass channels, grocery, etc. If that's kind of part of the plan, and that was really the one area where it was really difficult for Flawless to kind of stand out on the shelf where it had success in Ulta and so forth. Sorry for all that big rambling, but your thoughts there would be helpful just to kind of put investors at ease here that there's real competitive advantage and durability to this brand longer term. Thanks.
Yep. Sure, Kevin. First and foremost, we just do not view this as an appliance. Flawless, we have talked about numerous times, and I think we even changed our acquisition criteria post that deal. We said fast-moving consumer good. That was certainly not the same for Flawless. That was a few-year purchase cycle. This is a much more rapid, depending on use-up, probably within 30 days or so. It is a much more frequent purchase cycle. We believe it is a fast-moving consumable. That is first and foremost. The second one is, yeah, you are right. There are low-end knockoffs. We do not think the quality is the same. We do not think the brand cachet is the same either. Same issues exist in TheraBreath and Hero. We need to make sure that we are doing a few things. Innovating correctly, right?
It goes back to the four pillars I talked about: on the go, distinct form factor, the formulas which are differentiated, and the sensory experience is better than most. Innovation matters in a big way, and the brand matters in a big way. It's the same argument you could have back in the day on Amazon Basics or on private label. Many of our brands face those. The way we differentiate is brand building. We're going to be increasing marketing to a great degree, drive awareness and household penetration. Again, innovation matters.
Thanks, Rick. Just a quick follow-up for me. The channel strategy from here, what should we expect from an ACV perspective if we look at three years, four years from now? Maybe you do not want to go that far, but something you could speak to in generalities like, what should the channel mix look like three years out, four years out relative to what it looks like today?
Yeah, that's a good question, Kevin. I would just say we're laser-focused. We feel like we have a lot of runway in our existing channels of distribution with Ulta, with Sephora, with a handful of those customers before we need to go wide and go to mass. We think that there's, again, a lot of runway to run and chase. So we're focused there in the short and medium term.
Okay. Sorry to put you through real quick. Is that to say that there's some reluctance to move into mass channels in a more material way, just given the positioning of the brand? It is really not part of the M&A model now. What you guys are focusing on from a return perspective is really the channel opportunity, existing channels, and maybe you're a little bit leery to move into a Walmart as an example for some of the reasons we talked about, and then I'll pass it on.
Yeah, yeah. It just depends on the life cycle of this brand, this category. I would say like a baseball game, the first few innings, we feel like we need to fully flush out the channels we're in. There's going to be a few examples where it's part and parcel to that, but we have no plans to immediately go to mass as an example.
That's perfect. Thanks for indulging all the questions, guys. Good luck. Thank you.
Thanks, Kevin.
Your next question comes from the line of Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning. Rick, I do not know if you mentioned it, but do you have—can you talk about just the mix of sales like Touchland.com versus retail today and how you see that development kind of DTC versus through retail channels?
Yeah, I think overall, I think DTC is around 6% of the business. If you think of bricks and mortar versus online, online is about 30% of the business. Hopefully that helps.
Yeah, it does. I see that the brand has experimented with limited editions through licensing, Hello Kitty, and more recently Disney. How big a part of the business is that? What is your perspective on that going forward? I do not know how that impacts sort of brand equity and also economics, just the role of licensing in the brand's development.
Yeah. Good question. I would say the team's been very selective on what other brands to work with. There are a lot of offers to work with Touchland, but just like anything, you want to be picky on who you jointly partner with. I would say like the Hello Kitty example, the other examples, many of those are sold out is the short answer. Licensing has been extremely successful. Limited edition type launches and to date, most, if not all, have been sold out ahead of schedule. I think that will continue. Again, we're just being very picky on who we partner with, and Andrea does a great job with that.
Okay. Very good. Thanks a lot.
Your next question comes from the line of Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Rick, three questions for you. One, just the margins. It sounds like you're planning some investment. What does that look like in terms of margin impact? Second, what other categories do you think that this brand can extend to? You've obviously extended Hero into some near-neighbor categories in the acne area. Just kind of thinking about that. Lastly, if you could talk about the process. Was this an auction? Did they come to you? Just kind of sort of stuff. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Olivia. On the margin side, as you can see from the EBITDA to the sales number, it's a fantastic margin business. My comments earlier were more about household penetration, how we're going to do that. Part of it is we're going to increase marketing over time. Again, it depends where you are in the journey of building brands and driving household awareness and penetration. We're going to increase the marketing number over time. While that might have a hit to EBITDA margin, there are always offset small synergies that we would hope to get over time as we distribute the product and logistics and all those things. Number two is categories. They've already extended into body mist, and they've been successful early on. Again, it's early days. I'm not going to talk anything further than that.
I would just say that this brand has the ability to go through into other categories. We're going to be very picky and choosy when and where we do that, but early days off to a great start. Again, I said it before, international growth, I think, is even closer in and immediate. Then your third question was about the process.
The process.
I won't go through all that detail. I would just say that our reputation serves us well. Founders talk to founders, and we've been talking and building relationships with Andrea and her team. It was a direct conversation over time, and we're excited about the future.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Hey, Bill.
Hey. Just kind of a different take. I'm just trying to understand coming from the beauty channel with where it typically plays, that's not Church & Dwight's historical strength in terms of operating with these retailers and innovating and marketing and merchandising there. I mean, how do you do that is one. Then two, you're in a skincare market, especially sold at Ulta or Sephora, that has dozens and dozens of very capable players with strong brands and innovation. It would seem that if the hand sanitizer continued to grow, that would be right for them to move into your market just and take their brands over there and pretty quickly kind of flood the market with Me Toos for, not Me Toos, but their own version.
I mean, have you looked in or can you talk to the risk of that in the current channels and how you kind of fend off that versus just going to mass?
Yeah, sure. I would probably say that you're right. Historically speaking, Church & Dwight hasn't played as much in the beauty channel if you look back maybe, I don't know, 5 or 10 years ago. Also have to remember that Ulta is a big customer for us for Hero and for BATISTE. We do have experience there. Sephora, not as much. Amazon, of course, we do. Some of the other mass retailers like where they have Kohl's or Sephora within a Target or within a Kohl's is also kind of commonplace. I guess I would say, first of all, we do have some experience over the last five years in this class of trade. We still have more to learn, especially on Sephora.
Kind of what I said to Kevin, I think if the analogy is a baseball game, the first few innings were really laser-focused on really growing existing class of trade, right? Andrea and her team are going to continue to manage that. That is the focus of that team. When it is the right time, we will have more distribution discussions past that. We are also going to help immediately, same way we did for Hero and TheraBreath, to take these businesses global. That is not an insignificant opportunity. We think we can help with that immediately. Now, your second question is really about, "Hey, what about if this is such a great business and brand, why are not additional competitors going to come chase it, especially from that class of trade?" It is always possible. We are seeing dupes in mass right now.
They're kind of the low end, similar to how we saw Hero dupes, right? These businesses might be not as efficacious or branding is subpar, but that's why we build brands. That's why we spend the time to invest in innovation and marketing and grow these businesses and have consumers that love a Touchland brand. And we've been very successful at doing that with many brands. I would say the Touchland team's been very successful doing that so far. We don't view that much of a risk for additional hand sanitizer coming out of the beauty class of trade. If anything, we view the mass dupe as a little bit higher of a risk, but that's why we are spending so much on brand building over time.
Okay. Just to clarify, so you don't think that Estée Lauder or L'Oréal or a bigger beauty brand might not see this as an opportunity to just easily expand into the market if it gets higher? You expect most of the competition to come from, I guess, less innovative or less brand-focused players?
That's right. This is a $600 million category today. This isn't a multi-billion dollar category where a ton of new entrants are going to come in and compete for a relatively medium-sized category. That's our opinion.
Okay. Thank you.
Your last question comes from the line of Andrea Teixeira with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Rick, as you said, the brand building that Andrea and her team put together for the brand is impressive. I could tell from the numbers you provided, the margins are quite high for the business. I was wondering if you can explore a bit, given the risk of new entrants, as you just spoke to Bill and the team, anything to share in terms of the A&P spend and how the team and, obviously, the team that is in Touchland right now, how they can keep that moat and keep that engagement from consumers. DTC is relatively small, but as you said, there is a huge presence in the beauty segments and channels.
I was wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on what is being done at Instagram and other beauty-related social media and how much is being spent as a percentage of sales. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Andrea. I would probably say the short story is the moat, again, is really focused on the innovation, the four pillars I talked about before. The brand that's being built over time since 2022, 2023, 2024, they're not spending a ton of marketing today. A lot of it is organic, actually. And people asking and reaching out to be part of the story, and they're getting lots of impressions and awareness that way. We're going to move on to the next stage of the brand growth, and we're going to start funding incremental media and marketing to drive awareness and household penetration. Over time, that will also build the moat. The repeat rates are strong. The teenage youth bringing it into their house and then making moms and the rest of the household loyal consumers has been a great trend to see.
More than two-thirds of the business is actually coming now from 18-35-year-old consumers. That is just, again, building the brand over time, building the moat over time is each repeat purchase. Hopefully that helps.
Yeah. One last one, just as a clarification, because we are going to check the sourcing. It seems a lot is being made in the U.S., but there are some products that are designed in the U.S. and made in China. I apologize if I missed any explanation on that, but I think it would be helpful to see the sourcing. I appreciate the marketing commentary as well.
Yeah. I think the molds for the device or for the package are made currently in China and I think Mexico, but filled in the U.S. Again, over time, those are things that are fungible.
You do not believe that this margin is at risk, the margin that given that, that how we should be thinking and modeling as we incorporate Touchland in your numbers, how we should be thinking about margin going forward then?
Yeah. I would say the EBITDA margin that you guys can calculate is astronomical. We're going to spend some of that back in marketing to drive incremental growth over time. Really, it's all about, again, household penetration. This business is going to have fantastic margins. It's going to have fantastic growth rates. That's going to help the virtuous cycle of as we grow the business, as the brand grows, as we continue to innovate in this category and others, I think you're going to position us well for the future.
If I can just add, in terms of the impact on the earnings, you said 3% accretive to cash earnings in 2026. Is that a full-year consideration or is that at some point in 2026?
Yeah. That's a full year, Andrea. I mean, again, it's still early days here, but let us get through a few months that this gets closed, and we'll give you some more specifics as we get along here.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
I mean, just to get to your question, Rick, I mean, this fits right into our model. This is an accretive acquisition. It's going to drive us, drive the gross margin. It drives on the operating margin and some really good growth momentum here.
Wonderful. Thank you. Pass it on. Congrats.
I will now turn the call back over to Rick Dierker for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We will talk again at the end of the Q2 earnings season. Thanks very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.