Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I could gather that now. All right. Hey, guys, thank you again. We're gonna keep this show on the road, keep it going. Next up, Colgate. We started this morning with a turnaround story from a mid-cap personal care company. You guys who were here, Edgewell. Now we turn to another such story, but one being executed on a global scale. As many of you know, Colgate's growth had slowed a few years back as its market share was being chipped away on multiple fronts. Since then, and with a new CEO at the helm, the company's been able to bend the trend back up following substantial reinvestment, rejuvenated innovation, and improved execution. As you will hear, the saga is not yet over. The company's performance has markedly improved, but further progress lies ahead.
To detail the progress that's been made and the opportunity that lies ahead, we have two of the company's lieutenants who are leading the journey, Mr. John Faucher, Chief Investor Relations Officer and EVP of M&A, and Mr. JP Zamorano, the current President of Latin America. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.
Good morning, Jason.
JP, let's start with you. This is my first opportunity meeting you face to face, and I imagine the same holds for many of the folks out here in the audience. Before we get too deep into it, just give us a primer, give us a background. You've been with the organization, I believe, for an incredibly long time. Talk to us about your career journey.
Thank you, Jason. I started in the company 33 years ago in Colombia. Grew up in marketing. Left Colombia 25 years ago and spent most of my time in three geographies: Latin America, Asia, and North America, in both U.S. company and global roles. Did some interesting marketing roles, marketing director of Central America, marketing VP for the U.S. I did global home care and managed some of our business around the world. I managed China for four years, managed Mexico. I was president of North America, and since four years ago, I came to Latin America.
Wow. Very worldly. Been all over the place. Sounds like you probably racked up a lot of frequent flyer miles along the way. Hopefully, you can use them in retirement. Keep them safe.
Yeah.
So your position in Latin America is an interesting one because often we talk to investors about the growth advantages of Colgate. On paper, you can look at your category country footprint and say, "Yeah, like, they just have more exposure to growth than anyone out there." One of the pushbacks we hear from investors is, they're kind of at a ceiling in terms of market share. Your position is so dominant, and dominant position brings with it strengths. The con is it's hard to keep the growth going. You're the target, right? Like, when you're the dominant number one, you're the target that everyone's gonna chip away at. I think that's particularly true in Latin America.
To all the skeptics out there who say, "Of course Colgate's going to be an evergreen market share donor, that's what happens to brands with such dominant market share position," what would be your response to that?
You know, we have really strong market shares in LatAm, and in some categories, larger than others. Toothpaste, about 75%, but they go all the way down to 30%-40%, depending on the category. Per capita consumption is a super interesting opportunity for us in oral care. If you look at, we have some countries like Brazil and Costa Rica, where people in average brush about 2 times per day. If you take most of the other markets will be 50%-90% of that level. That's why we are so committed on investing on our Bright Smiles, Bright Futures plan. We cover in Latin America about 30 million kids every year.
We are an important component of the 1.6 billion kids that we have co-covered as a total company. We also work on occasions. You know, most of the people will be pretty disciplined about brushing in the morning, but some people skip at night. You know, giving reasons for doing that and reminding people is super important to us. In addition to per capita consumption, we have many other opportunities. We have the opportunity of premiumization. You know, if we take people from our family toothpaste or base business into Colgate Total, that will be a jump of about 150 index-200 index. If we take them to our whitening toothpaste, it would be 200 index-250 index.
If we take them to some of our therapeutic solutions, we're talking more between 300 index-500 index.
Wow.
In addition to that's a pretty good opportunity for us. Obviously, as we go more digital, you can identify the right targets to be able to do that. Who is the people that are buying our family toothpaste and will be a good prospect to buy the whitening toothpaste that we can do that in a easier way today. In addition to that, we have some of the channels or retail environments in which we do not have high market shares. Pharmacy is a good one. Gap between total market share and pharmacy, about 2,500 basis points for all. That's a big opportunity and one that we're taking advantage of. There are some other categories like electric toothbrushes, which are very low penetrated. You probably know we have a really interesting partnership with Philips in Latin America.
We introduce our products in Brazil and Mexico. We're doing quite well.
Mm-hmm.
I should mention it's not only about oral care. We have many other categories that we can tell the same story.
Okay. Well, what does the category mix look like in Latin America?
Good question. You know, we have a significant more important home care and personal care business in Latin America. I would say it's a good balance between oral care and the other categories. The interesting part is that the other categories allow us to have critical mass to, one, build a stronger partnership with our customers. Second, build a stronger go-to-market, especially as we go into the indirect trade. Build much more efficient plans. You know, a good example of that would be our plant in Mexico, where we have the four categories or three categories and in that plant, it's the largest plant in the world, and obviously, you have the efficiency. A super interesting part that I always mention is training for our people.
You know, when you are in oral care, you are extremely good at brand building. You are really good at using the professional, leveraging the professional for your business. As you go into the other categories, for example, in home care, you learn to get more from the money. You make sure that you understand how you drive volume. You make sure you understand how to drive the distribution in all the retail environments.
You mentioned the professional channel. I assume you're referring to, like, the dentist community and the medical detailing sales force. Do you have the medical detailing sales force throughout Latin America?
Yeah, for sure.
Is that global for you, John?
Yes. We, we do have global, and JP can talk about how it's worked in some of the other markets. We put together sort of a center of excellence in the center to focus on the profession, whether that's for vets, vet techs, dentists, hygienists, derms, aestheticians, really sharing that learning across the different categories. It's gonna be a big focus for us. It's become a bigger focus over the past two years, particularly given some of the pushes on therapeutic that JP mentioned, and also some nice opportunities on brands like PCA Skin and Elta.
Yeah. I wanna come back to the derm side in a bit, 'cause that's still relatively new for you. JP talked about the trade-up ladder and how it's not just about a share game, it's also about a category game and how do you get consumers trading up and the premiumization. It sounds like you're having good success in Latin America. What are you doing elsewhere in the world, like, to drive consumers up these rungs?
You know, I think JP talked about the therapeutic piece, so I'll focus on oral care, two pieces of it, but it is broader than that. You know, on the therapeutic side, we've made a big push across the world with some of our GABA brands, right? elmex and meridol, which are brands that we bought back in 2004. We have expanded them geographically much more aggressively over the past couple of years. Brazil, Argentina, we've used elmex to gain share in pharmacies, JP can talk about that.
In markets in Africa, we've taken meridol, which is a gum health brand, and we've launched that very successfully in markets like South Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and those are big therapeutic markets, where some of our competitors have very strong market shares, and we've been able to go in, generate nice sales momentum, and gain some share. That's an opportunity. Then whitening is another big premiumization opportunity. That is one where, you know, we with our last couple of presentations, we've highlighted some of the market share gains that we've made in the whitening segment. I think we can grow the whitening segment faster and gain share within toothpaste. If you look at those share numbers, we've had nice share gains, but it underindexes versus our global market share.
We can grow whitening faster and gain share in whitening at the same time through products like Optic White Pro Series or Glow, which we just launched in Latin America or our new MPS technology, which we've launched in Asia and Europe. Big opportunities. You wanna talk about maybe the premiumization in Latin America?
Just to build before I get into that interesting part is that these conditions are not only about toothpaste. You know, you can even start with the professional, in which you can have products for whitening or for periodontal treatments that you can give to your patients before, during, or after the treatment. You can have consumer mass products that will reach the same conditions. Yeah, sometimes they lead with toothpaste, sometimes they lead with, you know, at home products, or they lead with other categories like mouthwash.
Mm-hmm.
It's a tremendous opportunity. John mentioned, you know, using the power of the portfolio brands that we have globally, a little more openly than what we used to do before. A great example will be, we go back to the opportunity we had in pharmacies, about 25 points of gap versus the total market share we have in the market. The Southern Cone, being Brazil and Argentina, represent a significant portion of that opportunity. We decided to introduce elmex in those markets. We started in São Paulo in that region, which is the first region. We already have seven points of market share in pharmacy, which is quite substantial.
We are expanding, and we do that in a way that at the same time we expand the brand and build distribution, we expand the coverage to the dentist, and therefore, we have the model of dental recommendation then used by the product, and it becomes a very nice cycle.
You're a few years into this journey, right?
Absolutely.
A couple years ago, I think some of the improvements you were seeing as a result of this were being masked by some other disruptions. You had a disruption, I think it was in Colombia. You had then last year, we came, there was some supply chain issues, preventing you, I think, from getting toothbrushes into the market. We've had these externalities kind of shock to the system that have masked your underlying performance. Where do we stand on those now? Like, are those issues all behind you? Are we in a situation now where the underlying improvement is gonna be playing out through reported results?
Absolutely. I mean, business in Latin America is in very good shape. I think that if you wanna do business in emerging market, you will have to deal with issues from time to time. Those issues are the same for everybody. What is important is that you have a team that knows how to face those issues and overcome them. We've been doing business in Latin America for almost 100 years, so this is native for us. I don't think that there is any major issue that I can highlight now. As we took aggressive pricing to protect our margins, we have seen some of the volume being affected, especially in some of the categories that are more sensitive to pricing.
Bar soaps, liquid cleaners, dish, for example, dishwashing. We have seen a sequential improvement, and having the margins in the right place obviously give all the flexibility for us to invest behind our brands. You know, we can put money against advertising. We can put money against our innovation. We can put money to make sure that we activate the brands at the point of sale.
Yep. Are your gross margins in expansionary territory now?
You say expansionary? Are they improving?
Growing year. Are they growing year-on-year?
Yes.
Yeah. That's what I thought. I'm just drawing a blank on the bridges that you guys put in your 10-Qs, which are very helpful by the way. Thank you for that. Pricing's been a key component of that, clearly in Latin America where you've got tremendous pricing muscle. I mean, you're dealing with currency devaluations year upon year. John, can you walk us through the rest of the world and where you sit with pricing?
Sure. I mean, as we went in, going back and looking as raw materials really became significantly inflationary, it's about two years now, obviously we began to take pricing. Again, as JP can talk about, you know, the emerging markets playbook that we have in terms of being able to execute against pricing across the business, you know, we've got a lot of muscle that's built up over the decades there. We took additional pricing on the back of the war in Ukraine. Obviously, when we saw significant increases in, you know, what we call fats and oils, so in tallow, palm oil, palm kernel oil, soybean oil. We're lapping some of that pricing now. We have taken additional pricing pretty much across the world so far year- to- date.
you know, I think going forward, as we begin to lap some of the pricing last year, I think you're gonna see less pricing in the market. There is still raw material pressure, but it has lessened. I think we feel good about the pricing we have in the market and the response that we've seen. I think you're going to see that turn into gross margin expansion as we've guided for the year. We would expect gross margin to improve sequentially, it improved sequentially from Q4 to Q1, and then from Q1 to Q2, and then into the back half of the year. I think we feel like we've got the right trajectory of gross margin at this point. you know, other companies do have logistics in COGS. We have it in SG&A.
That is providing some favorability as well as you look at our gross margin performance on a comparable basis. Obviously we have the impact of the pet food supply acquisitions, which is impacting our gross margin. You know, we are, I think, well positioned to make the progress that we've talked about on the last couple of calls.
Yeah, I mean, the progress is evident in many of your segments as we unpack it, and including for consumer products overall when you roll up those and look at it as a consolidated business. One of the laggards has been Europe, where the margins are still down substantially year-on-year gross margin, despite lapping a lot of downward pressure last year. Is that just a byproduct of the difficult pricing environment in that market?
I mean, a little bit. Pricing in Europe as you know, has generally been deflationary, not just for us, for CPG generally over the past many years. What we have seen is over the last 18 months we've, you know, been able to get some pricing in Europe for the first time because of the significant raw material and gross margin pressure. There is generally less pricing available in Europe than there is in other markets. It probably came in a little bit later, again, given the way the negotiation processes work over in Europe.
On top of that, we have had, you know, if you look at FX right now, Europe's one of the regions, you know, for the first time in a while, JP is not the poster child for our FX headwinds. We saw more of that in Europe over the last 12 months or so. That seems to be abating as we look at the recent strength in the euro versus the dollar, so less of an impact there. You have, I think, a little bit less pricing. Pricing went in a little bit later, some foreign exchange, and then also natural gas, which was a bigger headwind in Europe going into conversion costs than in other markets. Yes, I would say Europe a little bit behind from a gross margin inflection point standpoint.
Africa, Eurasia, Latin America, as JP talked about, North America, we've begun to see that inflection point. Asia, Europe a little bit behind, and then obviously Hill's given, you know, some of the raw material as well as the acquisition impacts there.
Well, let's unpack that because as you point out, like the rest of the business is performing pretty well. You're seeing good improvement, and I don't know if everyone else does roll up consumer products, but if you roll up consumer products and look at it as a standalone entity, your performance last quarter was stellar. The progress you're seeing quarter-on-quarter is great. There's a couple holes we could poke here and here, as you can with any global company. But holistically, the performance is solid. Hill's top line's been phenomenal, but the amount of margin degradation seen over the last couple of years has been really substantial. I was surprised. I went and looked at Nestlé's. I unpacked Nestlé's P&L and they haven't seen the same compression. General Mills has with Blue Buffalo, but Nestlé hasn't.
They've been going sideways, but they've been going sideways at a much lower level than you. They weren't coming from the same level of profitability. One could look back and say, "Geez, maybe, like, to get some of this expansion, you've had to rebase the profitability of the business. You've had to put more in maybe lower margin channels, maybe lower margin products, maybe a lot more marketing." Is that part of the story here? Like, are the highs we saw before just unattainable with the type of growth you're aspiring to for that business?
When you talk about the high, you're talking about sort of six, seven years ago highs, right?
You're bumping up against 30s, right?
Yeah.
Like high 20s margins.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think if you go back to sort of the changes that we put in place, really starting at the end of 2018 with the Science Diet relaunch, right? What happened was, you know, we really found our groove in terms of looking at that, in terms of saying, "Okay, leaning back into science." We said, "Okay, the pendulum had swung dramatically towards organics and naturals," and we began to sense that shift in terms of pet parents and vets wanting to talk more about balanced nutrition in the portfolio and the role that science can play in extending the time that people have with their pets. We really leaned into that, and so that was a couple of different things. We invested in ingredients, we invested in packaging, we invested aggressively in e-commerce, we invested aggressively in advertising, right?
We said, "Okay, you know, this is a brand that is, you know, Hill's both Science Diet and Prescription Diet are incredibly well-positioned for this environment." Yes, we leaned into that. There's also a component of the fact that, you know, Hill's has a significant North American business, which allows us to drive very nice net sales growth, meaning sales in dollars as well as dollar-based profit that goes along with that. We made a big investment in Hill's, both domestically as well as internationally, and, you know, that's paid off in terms of significant growth. As I look at this, you know, the ability to continue to invest to keep that flywheel going is important, right?
We may take some of that incremental gross profit dollars and invest back in advertising if we feel like we have an opportunity, right? You know, JP has some of the highest market shares we have around the world. We have 75 for a region. Hill's, our best market share is in the U.S., where we have about a 5% market share in terms of retail pet food. There is a significant opportunity there if we invest. You add in Europe, where there's a market share opportunity, Latin America, Asia, where there's long-term consumption opportunities because the category, the science part of the category, is very underdeveloped. You know, there's a real opportunity for us to invest. Yes, the investment levels have moved up.
If you take a look at the total company advertising to sales ratio over the last five years, it has moved up nicely. I will tell you, Hill's has moved up more than the total company from that standpoint. That's a piece of it. The second piece that I'll highlight, just 'cause it's more of a temporary, more of an optics piece, is the impact of the acquisitions, the supply acquisitions that we made last year, right? You can do the math in terms of figuring out what the overall impact is on Hill's at the gross margin line, 'cause we've given that number, you know, for the total company basis. You can figure that out on a percent to sales basis. That's obviously been substantial. The third piece in this would be the raw material impact.
We have seen significant raw material impact at Hill's, you know, probably more than what we've seen on the balance of the other company, and it's still seeing elevated raw material inflation right now. You know, we're at a different inflection point there from a timing standpoint on those raw materials versus some of the other categories we have. On top of that, we did see some inefficiencies from running at 100% capacity utilization, right? The sweet spot from a capacity utilization would be not at 100%, because then you're expediting raw materials to get in. You're trying to avoid losing sales, right? That's the market share. What happens is, you know, we had some inefficiencies in our plants as we were running at very high capacity utilization rates.
Those should be gone now that we've been able to use the incremental capacity to take capacity utilization down to a more comfortable level. I think we feel very solid that with the pricing we have, productivity, we have ramped up FTG at Hill's, and I think you're gonna see higher levels of FTG at Hill's going forward, which I think is very good. We feel good about the rate of gross margin expansion going forward at Hill's. I think you're gonna see some improvement there.
FTG stands for Fueling the Growth productivity program.
Funding. Sorry,
Funding the Growth. Funding the Growth. Okay. Yeah, I didn't really know. FTG, productivity. That's the key point there. Okay. Lot to chew on there. First, the Red Collar acquisition, the gross margin dilution, that's also accompanied with SG&A leverage, right? Like, and we can do that math too if we assume this business had about 10% EBITDA margins, which is a typical margin for a co-man-type business, and it's giving you substantial offsets to that gross margin at the SG&A line.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct. The SG&A is definitely lower.
The cadence for... That, that's transitory, but it's gonna take time 'cause you've got to rotate out some of the co-man and private label business you're doing there, which is very low margin, and replace it with your much higher margin Hill's volume. What's the cadence? How long does it last? What's the relationship risk tied to that? Like, if you're doing private label for a retailer, and presumably it's one of your retailers, like, they're, that could be damaging. Like, they don't want you to maybe give that business up.
I mean, we have very good retail relationships and, you know, one, I think we feel very comfortable in terms of how we're managing through the whole process that goes along with this. That is not something that we are overly concerned about. As we look at this, you know, you and some of your coworkers have done some work on overall supply within the pet food industry, and we think there is gonna be some increasing supply. You've seen a lot of the manufacturers talk about this. Over the next two years, as industry supply moves up, we think we have the ability to transition this capacity, which right now is being taken up by private label.
We think that will find a home, and we'll be able to transition our own volume in, which obviously, as you mentioned, is a very nice margin accretive situation when we transfer our private label volume for, you know, one of the more profitable brands in the segment.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You mentioned global reach for the business. Can you give us a snapshot of what the geographical footprint looks like? You mentioned LatAm, where the category is still a bit more nascent and a real opportunity. JP, do you get involved with that, or is that, "No, no, you're on the consumer product side. Hill's is a walled off business, like, they're gonna do that solo"?
Let me answer that question.
You go first.
I don't. We provide support. We provide support with the talent, we provide support with infrastructure, we provide support with consumer insights. They are our brothers and sisters and we make sure that we give them all the possibility for them to succeed. Connected to what John is saying, obviously, with more capacity, bigger opportunities will open for us in Latin America for that business.
Yeah, I mean, a great example of this is I had a conversation two weeks ago with someone at the company who started off in consumer affairs in Brazil and then went to marketing for Hill's in Brazil, and then had other roles with Hill's, including roles in Topeka, and then now is one of our general managers for one of our businesses in North America. It's, you know, it's a phenomenal career path that you never could have mapped out. Because they had access to both the Colgate side of the business and the Hill's side of the business, it's a great talent developer.
One of JP's direct reports did e-commerce at Hill's, and so, you know, had a head start relative to e-commerce, what was happening on the rest of the business, and I think that has led to very strong e-commerce performance in Latin America over the past several years. There definitely are a lot of synergies, particularly in terms of talent on top of the whole professional aspect. In terms of the international opportunity for Hill's, again, our market shares are lower in Europe. You know, part of this is gonna be growing out the category. Again, the high-end pet food category is still relatively underdeveloped in emerging markets. It's there, but it's small. We have the ability, I think, to not only grow share, but to effectively grow the category in a lot of those markets as well.
Europe, there's still growth there in the high end, no question. That's more of a market share opportunity. I would say, you know, nicely north of 50% of the business is in the U.S., the rest of the business is sizable.
Okay. We got time, I got plenty more questions, but I wanna make sure the audience has any questions, get an opportunity to ask them. Any questions out there? All right, let's keep it going then. We touched on a lot of oral care. We started the conversation there. We touched on your pet care business. Let's go back to the skincare business, which is still sort of new for you guys. How big is it on the derma side, and what are you seeing? I think Filorga is still under pressure right now. It's, as are a number of businesses tethered to Asia. SK-II is still under pressure.
Yep.
was under a lot of freaking pressure.
Yeah.
What are you seeing in that market in Asia, travel, retail, China? Any green shoots coming up?
I mean, so I think, you know, overall our skin business has done well, if you look at the three brands combined, and particularly in terms of PCA Skin and EltaMD. I think we feel like the channels that we've chosen, particularly in the U.S., the derm channel, continues to do well. Elta and PCA have very good e-commerce businesses, Elta more on Amazon, PCA more on sort of brand.com. You know, that's been very good, nice margins, great professional model. We do really good work with the profession in those businesses. Asia has been an issue, particularly China. No question. We've talked about that a lot. I think, you know, we had a view for a, you know, moderate recovery in China, which I think is playing out.
I think we feel like we have gotten through some of the worst aspects of that and that things should improve going forward relative to, you know, what we had been seeing in our expectations. We think that's encouraging. We are expecting things to, you know, to the extent that things get back to normal. I think we're still a little unsure what the new normal will be post-COVID from that standpoint. We're being, I think, appropriately prudent with our assumptions. You know, it's gonna be lumpy. You're gonna see travel come back in certain ways, right? You know, when is Chinese travel to France going to come back? That's going to impact the Filorga business. Obviously, you've got Korea, you've got Hainan, all these different factors that go into there.
I think relative to our expectations, things are proceeding, you know, pretty much as expected. I think it is going to be, you know, a moderately paced recovery from that standpoint.
Okay. Okay. You didn't mention how big it is.
It's like low to mid-single digits.
Okay.
as a percentage of the mix.
Still small. Is this something you wanna scale over time inorganically as well as obviously you want it to grow organically? That's a silly question, so I'm not gonna ask that. Inorganically, would you expect to continue to add more things to this?
I mean, I think we would like to. I think we're gonna be, again, sort of prudent is the word I like to use here. You know, the professional model is a model that we understand well, across all of our businesses. And again, it's really been vital to the work that we've done on Elta and PCA, and Filorga and some of the core pharmacy markets. I think as we look at this, if we can find brands that are reasonably priced that we think we can really leverage that professional endorsement model. Yes, we will look at them, but, we're gonna be prudent, and we're gonna, you know, pay a fair amount and really make it so that, you know, we are the right owner of the brands.
Yeah. Yeah. The model makes sense, but it looks like an incredibly expensive model. You know, running a medical detailing sales force without a lot of scale is gonna be a quick path to an upside-down P&L. I imagine the ability to scale and the synergies that come with that, with adding new brands, can be rather substantial.
Yeah, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, that's why having a professional sales force, you know, putting that in place, going to derms' offices, going to spas and aestheticians, once you put that in place, it does allow you to look at that scale model, right? You factor in, as you well know from covering, you know, Estée and other companies, you know, very strong incremental gross margins on that business.
Yeah.
Right? If you think about that, really creates that flywheel that funds investment, right? Because it's not just the investment in the staff, it's also the investment in the advertising, et cetera.
For sure. For sure. Okay, home care, you touched about the benefits of home care brands in terms of scale, your manufacturing base, your scale with your customers. Does the same hold globally? Just from the outside looking in, it looks like it's probably the least attractive piece of your portfolio, at least from a growth perspective, and degree of commoditization and competition. Like, are these unfair and perhaps biased observations, or are they legit?
I think, you know, I'll ask you to sort of follow up on this. Home care, so first off, all of our businesses are growing, and they're growing at least in line with our 3%-5% long-term organic sales growth target, right? Those all four categories. Obviously, oral care and pet nutrition are growing faster, but we've been pleased. I think, you know, it's interesting, if there is, you know, a market perception that home care doesn't grow, but if you look at our competitors, when they break out their segment data, you know, some of our big global competitors, you'll see their home care business, in a lot of cases, is growing faster than their personal care businesses even. We think there is growth there. We think there's growth.
We think there's long-term margin opportunity, particularly in home care. We tend to have big, lumpy businesses. Lumpy is not necessarily the most attractive word to use in countries, right? We've got a big home care business in France. We've got a big home care business in the US, Mexico, Brazil. In those markets, we have big scale advantages behind those businesses. You know, JP has, you know, leading market shares in a number of markets as well. From that, France is another market where we've got very big market shares. We think there's a lot of value that we can drive there. I think we are ramping up our innovation in those categories. You know, again, JP has got a ton of that in his region.
Yeah, I think there are ways to get back to growing those businesses even faster and, you know, growing them through premiumization and innovation, not just through distribution. Anything you would add?
No, I will echo the comments. You know, growth has been there. Margins tend to be lower than the oral care and personal care categories, but that's already factored into the P&L. There is always a margin growth opportunity in those categories, and it give you all the beauty, all the things, you know, the critical mass, the training ground for people. It give you operating margins for.
Cash flow.
Exactly. For that.
I mean, they're very big drivers of cash flow, which, you know, helps us from a capital allocation standpoint.
Well, these categories are really, really big, so important to participate.
Deeply integrated and entwined with the overall business.
Absolutely.
Yeah, very synergistic.
I think our oral care business is stronger because we have the other two.
Yeah
...that always help us to support it.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. As you think about where else you'd like to perhaps buy, we talked about derma, cosmetics. Is that where the focus would be on M&A, or are there other areas where you would entertain acquisitions?
I mean, so first off, I would say, you know, it's important to understand that, you know, we like the portfolio we have. We think, you know, there's always ways you can optimize your portfolio, but, you know, we're not focused on, you know, changing the portfolio of our business dramatically from that standpoint, but we'll always look at opportunities. I think, you know, we would look at, you know, oral care and pet nutrition along with skin health as our priorities from that standpoint. You know, are there new categories? Are there new forms? Are there new channels that we could take a look at? You know, that's gonna be the case. It's, you know, again, we like the portfolio we have, so we're not necessarily looking for new brands.
Are there ways that we can go in and, within specific opportunities, you know, accelerate that growth at a reasonable price? Yeah, I think that's really the best way to describe it.
Okay. I would love to go deeper on that. We're out of time. We're actually now going over by a couple of seconds. On that note, we'll wrap it. JP, pleasure to meet you in person. Thank you so much for joining us today. John, great seeing you again.
Jason, great seeing you as always.
Thank you.
Thank you.