Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm Bonnie Herzog, Senior Consumer Staples Analyst at Goldman Sachs, and I'm thrilled to welcome you all to our annual Goldman Sachs Global Staples Forum. We have a great lineup of companies for you today, which should make for robust conversations, especially as we emerge from the hyperinflationary environment in 2022 and 2023, and see the consumer continuing to grapple with high prices and interest rates against what is still a pretty tough macro backdrop. That said, companies really have not been asleep at the wheel, and many have been sharpening their commercial strategies to provide better value propositions for the stretched consumer. So with that, we're excited to kick off this year's conference with Clorox, and it's my pleasure to welcome Clorox's CEO, Linda Rendle. Join us on stage.
Now, Linda is a CPG veteran with over 20 years of experience at Clorox, where she held several leadership roles and is the key architect behind the company's IGNITE strategy. Linda was appointed CEO in 2020, at a time when the industry at large was dealing with COVID-led disruptions, which was followed by decade-high inflationary pressure and then certainly rising rates. Since then, the team has been working hard to recover from supply disruptions caused by a cyberattack in August last year. Now, overall, Clorox has made meaningful progress with restoring distribution and service levels and is aiming to put these challenges in the rear, rear view mirror by next quarter. So there's really a lot to unpack, and my, you sure have been busy. So Linda, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Bonnie. I believe you wanted to-
Yes.
-kick off with some opening comments? Wonderful. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us today. Just start with some brief comments to set the stage for Bonnie and I to have a conversation, maybe beginning with Q3, and on just a recap of our results. Our quarter mostly came in line with our expectations, with some puts and takes. Sales came in lower than our expectations, driven by a few businesses that took us longer to restore supply. The good news is, at the end of Q3, we were able to fully restore supply on those businesses, so not an issue moving forward. Gross margin came in ahead of expectations behind our strong margin transformation program, as well as a moderating cost environment.
And as a result, earnings came in above expectations, and we feel good about that progress in Q3, based off of that. Maybe just some context, Bonnie, for those results.
Yes.
Because I think that's really important, and to your point, there's been a lot going on. So maybe just taking a step back, we experienced a significant cyberattack in August that really impacted our operations. At the height of our reduced shipping and manual processes, we were down on distribution by a third. We had lost a third, and that was in the fall time period. And so we knew it was going to be a long road to recover this year and that we were laser-focused on all of the steps required to do that. In Q2, we made progress well above our expectations, and I credit that to the work that we've done to build a more resilient supply chain as we dealt with COVID, as well as the better customer relationships that we developed during that time as well.
Then we knew for the back half, we had much more work to do. We had bluntly restored inventories in Q2, but we had to do the SKU by SKU, location by location, retailer by retailer, supplier by supplier work. We finished that at the end of Q3, and inventories are largely restored. We restored all of the supply constraints we had on our businesses, and for the first time, returned service levels back to our goal since 2019, pre-COVID. We did that at the end of Q3, as well as restoring much of our distribution, and that resulted in recovering about 90% of our share at the end of Q3. We have more work to do in Q4. We intend to fully restore the distribution that we lost in Q4, and we're still on track to do that.
And then really what it comes down to is the consumer. We lost consumers during that time. We have full confidence we'll get them back. It's the timeline on how long it will take. Purchase cycles every quarter, basically. So when we catch them in that time, we believe we have the right plans. We have increased spending, but that's what we're looking towards. And then just finally, before we get into it, Bonnie, I want to reiterate, not only operationally have we made progress, but we set out to transform, I think, this wonderful 111-year-old company into a modern version of itself. We want to be more consumer-obsessed, faster and leaner, a faster-growing company that delivers back to the consistency we did pre-pandemic, but with a faster and profitable growth rate. And we made continued progress this year, despite all the disruption.
We are well on our way to return our gross margins back to pre-pandemic levels behind a set of capabilities we've built over the last two years to do that, that are in addition to the cost savings program we had. On innovation, we've continued to build stronger brand portfolios, invest more deeply in all of our brands. And then I think the big thing that we're doing is really reimagining the way Clorox operates. We are implementing a digital transformation, a new operating model, so that we can move as fast as we need to. And we're already starting to see that work pay off in our speed to market on innovation, et cetera.
And then, of course, the work that we need to do to evolve our portfolio, and we made progress this quarter with the sale of our Argentina business, which was a big FX headwind for us for a number of years. And although that team performed really well, we determined it was best to be out of that business. So with that, Bonnie, I will let you get into your questions, but hopefully, that's good context for our conversation.
No, that was really good. It's a super good overview, and you just touched on something. You mentioned, you know, all the progress you've made. You still mentioned you have some more work to do in Q4, so maybe give us a little bit more detail on what exactly needs to be done in the next, I don't know, couple months or maybe already has started to take place.
Yep. So I think the most important thing is restoring the remainder of the distribution that we temporarily lost during the cyberattack. So in Q2, we were able to catch up bluntly on inventories. Q3, we were able to restore the nitty-gritties of inventory across the network and restore supply, and that sets us up for the retailer resets that happen in Q4... and we believe, based off of what we know on those results, that we will fully restore the distribution that we lost, as a result. That also needs to be paired with merchandising and getting back to the merchandising plans that we had intended to do this year, and we are in a position to do that. We have the right plans. So it's really fully restoring those fundamentals of the business.
And then I mentioned in my opening comments, and most importantly, that sets the conditions to get all of our consumers back. And we've recovered 90% of that share, but we still have more to go, and as we've talked about over the mid to long term, we intend to grow share, but that's what we're watching really closely. Each consumer, why did they trade out when we were out of distribution? How do we get them back? How do we make sure we have the right pack at the right deal, et cetera?
On that point, have you already seen that happen where you have restored distribution, you're gaining those consumers back into some of those categories, or …?
Right. So as we're restoring is happening now. Retailer resets are happening as we speak.
Okay.
So some happened in April. It takes a while for that sell to turn over, depending on the retailer. So that'll happen throughout the quarter.
Okay.
But we continue to have strong confidence. It's not fully done yet, but we still see the plans in place to do that. On the consumer side, you know, we're watching our share tick up. We still have some work to go in the remainder of the quarter. And again, because you have one purchase cycle, if you miss a consumer during that purchase cycle-
Okay.
and we won't know that, you know, until we get to the end of the quarter and we see how that all shakes out. But we have very strong confidence in the plans. And I think I would maybe just reiterate, our portfolio has a higher percentage that consumers deem superior value-
Yeah.
than we did pre-COVID. We've retained that. So again, if we don't get them this purchase cycle, we'll get them the next one. We're very confident in the plans we have and the increased investments to support it.
Drilling down a little bit further into some of the categories, are there some categories where maybe you've gained more distribution versus previously, and then some where you're still hoping to catch up? You know, if you'd highlight a few of them.
I won't get into the details of what will happen this quarter just because it hasn't set yet. But you could guess that, that's always depending on the innovation plans you have. Maybe two categories I'd call out that took us longer to restore supply-
Yeah.
that's Glad and our litter business.
Okay.
So those were two of the big impacts that we had in Q3. Although we're fully restored now, we definitely saw more competitive activity. I would not say that the categories have in any way become more competitive.
Okay.
It's that when you're out of stock-
Right
...you know, retailers will award competitors with merchandising.
Okay.
And so we've seen more competitive activity in those two categories. So those, we're laser focused on them, getting that distribution back, restoring merchandising. That's the place that we are just hyper-aware of right now, given how much longer it took. Those are complex supply chains. We had already had issues in litter well before the cyberattack, and the cyberattack exacerbated those. So those are two we're watching really closely. Some businesses restored much faster-
Okay.
we began merchandising in Q3. We'll talk a bit, you know, as we end Q4 on exactly where that landed, but in aggregate, we believe we'll restore distribution.
Yeah, so the intensity of the competition, it's still pretty fierce in those categories, but it's moderating at all, or is it still pretty strong?
What I would say is, again, it's not a different level of competition-
Mm-hmm.
-it's more competitive activity-
Activity.
just that switch back and forth between suppliers, but it's not like... Your pricing is holding-
Okay.
Et cetera. We believe as we've restored supply, we'll have our merchandising events, and it'll be kind of normalized in Q4. But we'll be watching that really closely because, as I think you said in your opening comments, the consumer is pressured, and we're watching that closely, as are all of our competitors.
Definitely want to talk about that in a second, but before I switch to that, as you think about everything that happened, and I feel like you've touched on this at other events-
Yeah.
What, what are you putting into place to prevent some of these incidents from happening again in the future, or lessons learned given the cyberattack?
You know, first and foremost, like any company, as you would expect, we had been making cybersecurity improvements forever, for years. And in fact, in this last period of our strategy period, we spent two times the amount on cybersecurity improvements than we had in the previous period. But this is a great opportunity to learn, and we learned a lot during this, and we have an amazing set of partners who've helped us. So we have a continued roadmap, and we've made a lot of improvements this year, and we'll continue to do that. I think that's what every company is going to need to do because these criminals are getting more sophisticated, and their methods are different. But that's something we've long been dedicated to, but the job is never done-
Right.
in cybersecurity. That's, I think, the key thing. We're always paranoid now, but I feel great about the improvements we've made on process and people, and tools coming out of this.
Ultimately, it's going to make you a stronger company if you think about it in the next way.
Right.
Okay.
That's right.
So the consumer-
Yeah
... top of mind. In the context of sort of what you just mentioned, it would be helpful to hear your perspective on the consumer, especially on the low-income consumer, and kind of what you're seeing. As we are seeing, as I mentioned, some softening in the macro data, and then certainly in the context of that, your view on either if it's consumption or any kind of change consumer behavior would be helpful.
I would say the consumer continues to be remarkably resilient given what they're going through.
Mm-hmm.
And I think that is an important thing to keep in mind in the comments I'll have. We've been saying for a while, we believe, though, the consumer is under a lot of pressure and coming under more pressure, and we are beginning to see those impacts in a couple of new ways. First, I would say, you know, the very, very first thing we see is value-seeking behaviors, and that continues. They're buying larger sizes, they're buying smaller sizes, they're trading in and out of different retail outlets. And that's across all income groups, Bonnie. We are certainly laser focused on low-income consumers.
But I would tell you, they are the savviest consumers we have in consumer packaged goods, and so they, they tend to know value in a different way, and they are not usually the first ones to trade to private label, because they can't afford for products to fail, and we continue to see that, but watching them very, very closely. What we did expect is coming off of the multiple rounds of pricing in our categories, that categories would soften a bit. They have, but they're generally in line with what we expected. And we're starting to see volumes come back, commensurate with that. So what we're looking for moving forward is, given all of what you talked about from a macroeconomic perspective, if inflation's persistent, et cetera, how does the consumer hold up? What choices will they make?
They are behaving differently, and I wouldn't say necessarily in our categories, but they're behaving differently in their lives, which is putting pressure on their wallet. You know, they're still valuing experiences and travel, et cetera, so that's what we're watching really closely is, does that begin to impact our categories more? But again, they've been fairly resilient. We're doing all of the things needed to ensure that we give them the best value, and that's taking into account the brand, the product, the price, and they've been, you know, holding up pretty well, and we'll make adjustments to our plan if we need to, as they evolve.
Okay. And then in the context of that, and you, you're probably seeing more pressure from private label competition and thinking about your different price tiers, do you feel like you have the right price tiers, or you're making adjustments? And then, I believe in your last quarterly call, you mentioned that promo levels may be re-returning to more normalized levels. So touch on that and kind of where you're at in that cycle.
From a pricing perspective and our lineup of products, we feel very good about what we have. You know, we have items in the largest sizes that offer consumers who want the best price per use or ounce. We have those, and then we have very good opening price points for a consumer who says, "I only have a few dollars out of pocket, but I want the brand." And of course, we compete in all retail channels and have very strong presence across, you know, pure play, e-com to dollar stores, you name them. From a private label perspective, you know, we have not been largely impacted by private label over time, during times like this. I would say for this period, if you normalize for cyber, that continues to hold true.
We did see consumers trade into other brands in private label when we were out of distribution, but we're beginning to see that come back. And if you look quarter-over-quarter, our share is up and private label share is down. And so we'll see what happens in Q4, but we would expect as we restore that distribution, we get back to kind of more of a normalized state. But we're always watching that. We're watching it in just a few categories where private label is a bit more developed. But for now, we feel good and that the consumer continues to choose brands. What we're seeing is the middle get squeezed, so consumers tend to move towards the premium brands and then private label, and that's exactly what we're seeing right now.
A lot of second- and third-tier brands are losing share, very consistent with what we've seen in the past. And then from a promotion perspective, we absolutely expected it to return to what we said were normalized levels, pre-COVID levels. And that is what we're seeing, and what we continue to expect for Q4. And for our categories, you know, the majority of our business is done off shelf. We continue to expect that. But consumers who are looking for that deal or that value, particularly during times where they're sending their kid back to school or they're worried about, you know, getting a new pet and do they have the right litter, we tend to be-- we're able to influence them, and capture them as a new consumer or a returning consumer during those pulse periods.
So we use it pretty strategically, but definitely seeing promotions come back up as we expected. So far, we don't see anything that would indicate they're going above the levels that we expected, but again, something we're watching really closely.
Something that you're obviously then also doing to make sure to bring that consumer back to your brands. Are there any categories that are more pronounced where you're seeing promotional levels versus others that you'd call out?
Glad and Litter are the two-
Yeah.
We would expect those two to be a bit higher, and they're playing out that way, but nothing higher than we had expected.
Okay. All right. So switching to gross margins, you mentioned, you know, you've made some good progress on recovering your gross margins. Your full year guidance does suggest FQ4 levels back to around 43%. So as we look at next year and beyond, can you, you know, maybe talk about further opportunities for gross margin expansion?
Obviously, and I know you know this, but just to set it straight, we're not setting a guidance or any type of forecast for next year. But what I'd say is we have very strong confidence in our ability to restore gross margins to what they were pre-COVID. And as you indicated, Bonnie, we'll make substantial progress this year, like we made substantial progress last year. And what we really built is an enhanced set of capabilities to do this. We call it our Margin Transformation Program. We've always done very well on the cost savings portion of that, and that will continue. But we've developed new capabilities in net revenue management, which include price pack architecture and all those tools, which will begin to really take hold starting next year.
We have some plans in place this year, and we've made some progress, but it really takes off in fiscal year 2025 and 2026. Pricing has played such a large role. We'll continue to take targeted pricing where it makes sense. International, for example, is a place we continue to do that. But we've really feel like we've built a suite of tools that give us very strong confidence that we'll be able to return those gross margins to pre-pandemic levels. We continue to be committed to that.
As you mentioned, the price pack architecture, where are you at in that evolution? Are you still in the beginning phases, so you see great runway of growth? And then just wanted to make sure, as you think about, you know, different pack sizes and packaging, you have the capabilities, you know, the infrastructure in place to kind of execute on that as you evolve.
We're in early stages.
Early. So-
... you know, being really blunt, we're behind other people.
Okay.
That's a lot of runway for us-
Right.
-which is terrific, and a new set of capabilities and tools that allow us to, to be able to do, the work we want. And this is not just on gross margin, this is revenue growing-
Right.
As well, if we do it the right way, and that's exactly what we intend to do. And so I would say early in the journey, feel very confident we've built centers of expertise that we have assisting the business units to develop their plans. I think maybe, Bonnie, remember from when you covered us earlier, we always had a cost savings plan.
Yeah.
We now have a plan on Net Revenue Management and Price Pack Architecture that the teams have for three years. That's part of that, and we feel very, very good about the plans and capabilities we built. Lots more to come.
Lots more to come. And then in the context of, even with maybe stepped-up promo levels, everything you just mentioned, you still feel good about potential for margin expansion moving forward?
Yep.
Maybe touch on productivity savings and remind us if, you know, you've quantified and where you're at with that in identifying potential future savings in the system.
You know, we're always targeting from a cost savings perspective, 175 basis points of EBIT margin expansion, and we've been well on track to do that and have had, in fact, even during the cyberattack, many record quarters of cost savings. But in addition to that, we put in place a new operating model beginning last year, and we believed through both our digital transformation and this operating model, that there's further productivity to be had in how we run the company. As we give people the tools that they don't have today to change the way that they work, there's places that we can absolutely drive more productivity. So we'll do the traditional cost savings work.
We're doing the productivity work on, you know, SG&A, and we target getting that to 13% over time as we implement our digital transformation. But there's lots of runway left. You know, sometimes you get to the end of the year, and you say, "Really, is there more?" And you do. You can find opportunities, and technologies help us do that, whether that being seeing end-to-end in the supply chain, new technologies for product development allow us to do it, and then certainly investing in, in our company and the way that we work is going to help us do it as well.
Thinking about other investments, you know, thinking about your A&P investment levels, they've been rather consistent over time, and we've seen a pickup more recently, which is encouraging. First, hoping you could talk about the benefits you're seeing in your brands as a result, and then areas maybe where you think more needs to be done. Then second, ultimately, I'm thinking about what's the right level of A&P to sales over time for your, for your business?
You're absolutely right, Bonnie, that our A&P has largely been consistent, about 10% of sales ±. This year, prior to the cyberattack, actually, we decided to invest more, 11% of sales. And we did that because we saw a more pressured consumer. We felt great about the plans that we had. We came off of a very strong fiscal year 2023, where we had 6% sales growth, very strong margin and earnings growth, and we wanted to lean into that with our brands. And we're glad we made that decision based off of how the year has played out. And what supports that decision is those digital tools that we put in place and our choice very early, many years ago, to primarily merch.
or primarily advertise through digital channels, means that we've been able to significantly improve the ROI on our spend over time, and we continue to have tools. For example, we wanted to get to know 100 million consumers in the U.S. We've done that a year early, and that allows us to personalize to them, and that's much more effective and efficient for us on our marketing spend, and that gave us additional confidence to spend the 11%. And we're very glad to have additional spending in Q4 as we rebuild distribution, as we restore our merchandising levels. So going forward, what will it be? We're going to let the businesses determine what the right level of spending is.
And again, we're not setting fiscal year 25 guidance now, but the businesses will come and tell us what's required based off of their innovation plans and what they're seeing from the consumer. But we continue to be deeply committed to investing in our brands.
And then if you think about the investments and putting back in the business and how you're managing that in the context of, you know, thinking about the gross margin expansion and ultimately EBIT margin expansion, do you see room for further expansion there as well, based on what you just said?
Yes. And so, you know, job number one is to restore gross margins to pre-pandemic levels. And then what we've said and remain committed to, is that we want to expand EBIT margins 25-50 basis points a year. And we're committed to that, and we see runway to do that. And even as we've increased the investment in our brands, we still see our ability to do that behind our margin transformation program, as well as the productivity work that we're doing from an operating model perspective.
Okay. All right, switching to focus on your IGNITE strategy and the targets you laid out a few years ago, can you walk us through the building blocks of your 3%-5% organic growth algo, and ultimately, how you envision this transforming the company? And then finally, have you had to evolve, you know, the strategy at all, you know, in the most recent time, given the disruptions that have occurred?
Yes. When we originally set our IGNITE strategy in 2019, we had increased our growth target to grow 2%-4%. We saw the ability to do that behind strong plans to expand margins, to invest back in our business. We saw growth opportunities by focusing on bigger, stickier innovation platforms across our category. Was basically the way that we saw the 2%-4% playing out. And then as COVID hit, we saw sustained consumer tailwinds on many of our categories that we thought we could get another point out of that growth, whether that be in international or the fact that there's more cats, and the cat litter category has grown and people have kept their cats.
Yeah.
Which we're very relieved that they're not, you know, cats being given up for adoption. We saw obviously, cleaning behaviors changing. If you even just look at our cleaning category, with all the pricing that we took, volumes are still what they were pre-COVID, which is pretty amazing.
Yeah.
And so that helped us get that extra point. What we're looking at right now is how do we continue to expand our innovation plans to get more out of them to do that? What are the places we want to invest in, et cetera? We're always doing that fine-tuning work on the portfolio to ensure that we can do that. But innovation is the primary driver, how we take that curve. And then, of course, we've declared, which is newer for this period, we intend to grow market share over time. And so that will be part of that. You know, we'll get the category growth, but we do intend to grow market shares over time.
That's a key driver, as you mentioned, is the innovation pipeline.
Yes.
As you think about, I don't know, you know, portion innovation next year, how does that shape up from a pipeline perspective versus even the prior year, fiscal year? Do you feel good?
I do. Yeah, this year, I very proud of our team to be able to handle a cyberattack and still launch all the innovation that we had planned for the back half. That was no small feat, and we walled off those resources to do that. But like anything, you know, do you get the most out of that innovation when your team is doing 100 things at once? So for fiscal year 2025, we have been laser-focused over the last, call it 4 months, in ensuring that we even make that pipeline stronger in fiscal year 2025, making the platforms we have right now bigger and launching into some new platforms. So I feel good about what's coming for 2025, but it's early.
You know, innovation, you know, I my team never wants me to declare victory before we do that, and it is early. And so, but I feel like the plans are shaping up. Like I said, about cost savings and net revenue management, we have a three-year innovation pipeline, and those plans are looking good.
So moving to capital allocation, can you walk us through some of your priorities? I know share buybacks have been suspended for, I think, over two years now. So maybe on that, help us understand when or maybe under what circumstances, you know, conditions would we expect to see share buybacks resumed and the rest of the capital allocation?
Yeah, you know, our number one priority is always supporting the business, and ensuring that we have the right investments. We feel like we do. Supporting the dividend would be the next, and then, of course, any opportunities to expand our portfolio where it makes sense for us. And then when we get through those, we want to ensure that we're returning excess cash to shareholders, whether that be through stock buyback, et cetera. We have suspended that program, given the earnings impacts that we had, during COVID and from the cyberattack. You know, we'll look at what the right time to resume that is, but we don't want to build a lot of excess cash up on our balance sheet, and we will certainly return that to shareholders as appropriate. But none of those priorities have changed.
They're exactly what they have been for the last many years.
And then you touched on this earlier. I'm thinking about the M&A and following the exit in Argentina. You know, are there any other, I don't know, non-core, unprofitable, or you know, some parts of your portfolio that you're continuing to evaluate in terms of exiting to deliver on some of the long-term goals that you mentioned earlier? And then also the flip side, you know, acquisitions. You know, are there categories or maybe geographies that, you know, you think an acquisition could make sense to drive faster growth-
Yes
... going forward?
Yeah, as you would expect, we're always doing the work on our portfolio with our board to say, are we the highest value owner of any one of the assets that we have? Don't have anything to report today, but we are always doing that work and ensuring, just like we did with Argentina, that we think we have a portfolio that allows us to grow and be consistent, and that's what we're focused on. And then on the flip side, on the acquisition side, I would love to find a new growth runway. And of course, we're doing that work as well, something that is core to our capabilities, and that would allow us to deliver on that 3%-5% growth rate with expanding margins, and that's what we're focused on as well.
Again, nothing to report there, but we are absolutely focused on that with our board and our management team.
And then everything that you've mentioned in terms of the changes and everything you've implemented, remind us about incentive comp, and has that changed or evolved at all with some of these goals, you know, in terms of how you're rewarding and again, incentivizing your employees?
It has not changed. We reward our people from a short-term incentive perspective on sales, margin, and profitability, and that has not changed. Then from a long term, it's all against economic profit.
Yeah.
So we think those are the right things. You know, economic profit is our North Star, and then on an annual basis, those three metrics help ensure that we are, you know, appropriately rewarding our people and shareholders, and those incentives are well aligned.
I'm smiling, thinking about, you know, everything you've been through in the last year or two plus. But as you sit here and reflect back, what areas do you think, you know, really surprised to the upside, worked better than you expected, and maybe the opposite, you know, where you think you might have fallen short or your team and areas that you could improve moving forward?
It has been quite a lot the last three and a half years. Like, wow. But you know what? It's, it's not a—I shouldn't say it's a gift because it's not, but it's an amazing opportunity.
Yeah.
It allows us to really step back with fresh eyes and say: Are we built for the future? And what I'm most proud of is the team has done just that. We have looked at every corner of the company and said: Are we what we need to be to be the strongest, resilient company that we need to be and deliver against the financial and strategic goals that we have? And so we're taking on an ambitious transformation program, and I'm proud of that work, and it's starting to really show in the way that we're delivering. I don't think we would have recovered as fast in Q2 on inventory had we not had that work in motion. And you even saw during COVID, it took us longer to respond.
But to be able to do that, I mean, we were still out of stock in October, but restored inventories by the end of December. Amazing resilience from the team. So I'm really proud of the fact that we've taken on that ambitious agenda. It takes a while to see those results, and so the team is being patient. We're being patient. We believe we've made the right choices, and we're seeing the proof points that it'll play out over time. You know, there's always a lot of things that you look back and say: I wish I would have done this differently. I wish I'd have responded differently. I think the place I would call out is I probably would have made more ambitious changes right at the beginning of COVID. And during COVID, it was tough to make changes-
It was tough.
-because there was a lot going on.
Yeah.
In hindsight, knowing what I know today-
Sure.
I probably would have started that journey six months earlier. I think the team would have, too. You know, history will tell us if that was right or wrong, but during that time, we were really trying to protect the operation, you know, restore that stuff. But it was also an opportunity where we could have enacted change, and we did that during the cyber events. We did not let the transformation agenda go down, and our team is able to do both. It's hard work, but they're able to do both.
Right. And then what do you think, Linda, is most misunderstood right now about your, your business and sort of the, whether it's the recovery, the speed, you know, you know, the impact that you've, you've experienced? I'm just curious from your perspective.
I think, you know, regrounding in the strength of our portfolio and brands and what they mean to the consumer is the first thing I always want to remind people of. And I think when people think about it, they understand that. But we have leading brands in staples categories that have been resilient for years and years and years. And we continue to have that, and that's not changing with a value-seeking consumer. In fact, our brands mean even more to them during that time, because they can't afford for them to fail. They want to make sure they're getting the best value. So I think that's one, these very strong brands that we invest strongly behind.
And then I think importantly, because the scope of the transformation is large and it takes a while for those changes to root, I just would emphasize the amount of transformation that we are enacting in the company to build a stronger, more resilient company. Nobody at Clorox will work the same as they did three years ago, or even today, two years from now. We're fully equipping them with all the tools they need digitally. It will allow all of those things that we've been good at over time, you know, margin growth, et cetera, to have a set of capabilities to build off for years to come. And I wouldn't underestimate, you know, what we're setting out to do and what it'll allow us to do moving forward when we have all of those capabilities in place.
Do you know, that's helpful. Do you think that there's some, I don't know, doubt about the recovery? It sounds like from your previous comments, you know, earlier in our conversation, that you've got good visibility on that being returned this next fiscal quarter.
I think people largely understand, given what we did in Q2 and Q3, that, that we can restore what's under our control. I think the question mark for everybody, and what we're working really hard at, is when you lose consumers in a very value-seeking time, you get them back.
Right.
We feel very, very confident in our ability to do that. We have the right plans, the right brands, superior value, but that, I think, is the open question, is will you get all of those consumers back, or the consumers will switch, will they stay with someone else?
Right.
And again, what we can do is ensure that we have the right plans, that we're talking to consumers the right way. We have, we have everything and every condition in place to do that, and to us, it's just the timeline it will take. There's not a question to us that we will get them back, but to me, I think that's probably the biggest question for me.
Speaking of that, the timeline is, for you, in your mind, this next fiscal quarter, or it could, you know, move into Q1 of 2025 before you kind of have greater confidence that you've won that consumer back?
What I would say is the fundamentals will be restored at the end of Q4: merchandising, distribution, all of those tools.
Yeah.
We want to get as much of the consumers-
Yeah.
-back, as many of them as we can in Q4, but that very well could go into Q1 or Q2 of next year. Because remember, I think it's really helpful to think of a quarter as a purchase cycle.
Yeah.
Right? And so we have one opportunity to get most of those consumers back. If we don't, we're gonna have to do it in Q1 or Q2, and there's lots of periods in Q1 or Q2 where consumers can be influenced in back to school-
Yeah.
and cold and flu season, holiday. So we are doing as much as we can today, and distribution will help a lot. Once you restore distribution, you get those consumers back who maybe only want that large size that you have. But it absolutely, you know, we are planning that it could, and we go into Q1 or Q2, and we're prepared for that. But what we're holding ourselves accountable is creating those conditions-
Yeah.
that we can get those consumers back, and we feel very, very good about that.
Well, that's a good place to end. So thank you so much. Appreciate everything.
Really appreciate it, Bonnie. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you all for attending today.