All right, we're going to get started. Next up this morning, I am pleased to welcome The Clorox Company. We are joined by Linda Rendle, the company's Chair and CEO, and Luc Bellet, CFO. Linda, in May, you announced your decision to step down from your role. Before we get started, I just wanted to thank you for the thoughtfulness that you have consistently brought to your conversations with the investment community. You have led the company through a time of extraordinary change, and we have always really valued the opportunity to hear directly from you. So thank you, and Luc, we are happy to have you here too.
Thank you.
Before we get started with questions, I think, Linda, you had a few things you wanted to open up with, and then we will get into the questions I prepared.
Sounds good, and thank you for your opening. In line with that, perhaps I will give an update on the CEO succession process. The board is well underway in identifying my successor. They laid out a process where they are doing a comprehensive search, and they are well into that at this point. Until then, the team and I continue to be focused on our strategy and priorities, and we will keep you updated as we have more information. But nothing new to share today. With that, I thought I would just provide some brief opening comments on the business and then get into Lauren's questions. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about last year, our fiscal year that ended in June.
It certainly was a year of volatility for the industry, given what was going on from a consumer perspective. For our company, it was a year of transition. We implemented the final version of our digital transformation with our ERP in the U.S., which was a significant undertaking. We did a greenfield implementation, but that is now behind us, and we are moving into optimization mode. In addition, we made a significant move on our portfolio with the acquisition of GOJO Industries, which you know better as Purell, which is a key player in B2B and retail in the hand sanitization space and expands our presence in health and hygiene, and we are excited about that acquisition. I know we will talk more about it today.
We feel we enter fiscal year 2027 in a much stronger place than we did in 2026, and that was a result of making sequential improvement in 2026 quarter- after- quarter- after- quarter. But we still see the environment as being tough. Consumers are under stress. Our categories remain muted. But we have a strong slate of innovation. We are investing in superiority in our brands. We can talk more about that. Certainly, as we face inflationary headwinds, we are taking all the necessary actions to ensure that we recover margins over time, and importantly, have the fuel to invest in our brands, and we are making strong investments this year. With that, maybe we just get right into questions.
Okay.
Does that sound good?
Yeah, sounds great. Let us start with category growth. As you mentioned, it has been challenging. Category growth has been trending below historical levels. We are seeing that broadly across our space. But I was curious if there were differences worth calling out on a more granular level and specifically where Clorox competes. Are there areas where you see consumers more willing to pay up for premium innovation, or areas where consumers have pulled back more or less than in others?
Yeah, we don't see a really distinct difference in our categories. They all follow a very similar pattern, but they certainly have different things impacting them. Let me walk you through a few of them. First, in aggregate, all of our categories are being impacted by value-conscious consumer. Consumers are trading up to larger sizes and smaller sizes, and they're shopping in different outlets at an enhanced pace to do that. You're seeing more in club and mass, and certainly, they're going to continue to do that, we see, as gas prices are elevated, and they're dealing with the impacts of inflation. That's across all of our categories. Even categories that have stronger growth rates, cat litter, for example, is a mid-single-digit grower. We've seen a little bit more muted, but that's still growing faster than our average.
Our pro categories continue to grow faster than average. International continues to grow faster than average, even though they're under inflationary pressures in those markets as well. I would call out every one of our categories is positively impacted by innovation, and consumers are willing to pay for a better experience. Whether that be in a trash bag, where we've launched a trash bag that has an absorbent layer on the bottom that is a premium, that's doing well at launch, to a Burt's Bees new Squeezy Balm that is a premium, and that is doing well. In our cleaning businesses, we continue to see trade up to our Scentiva platform. Consumers are entering into the new allergy space we launched with Clorox PURE, which is a premium.
We're seeing generally consumers very willing to accept continued innovation and premiumization in the category as long as that delivers a superior value. That's what we're laser-focused on, is making sure that we have the right size, PPA in our base business, that we're doing the right claims work, that we're investing strongly in advertising and sales promotion. But then really to get these categories growing again, we need to continue to lean into innovation, and we have strong innovation plans this year.
Okay, great. You've guided to organic ex ERP comps. Organic flat to up slightly for fiscal 2027, but underlying organic will still be down in the first quarter. I think a big driver of that is Kingsford and dynamics with charcoal specifically. But I think investors get nervous when they see a second half weighted year. What gives you confidence that organic performance will accelerate as we move beyond Q1?
Sure, I can take that.
Sure.
Well, maybe let me get us reconnected to our outlook for the full year. Organic sales growth is expected to grow 3.5%-4.5%, but as you mentioned, that includes a little over 3.5 points of benefit from lapping the ERP transition last year. Excluding this, organic would be flat to up slightly for the full year. Q1 is a bit of a unique situation, and you mentioned part of it is we, excluding the impact of the ERP, we expect organic sales growth to be down in Q1, and that is mainly driven by the timing impact of some merchandising, as well as the expected softness in our grilling business following what has been a weak start of the season in the fourth quarter and resulted in higher level of inventory, both at retailers and consumer homes, going into the first quarter.
But if I leave that on the side, if we really look at the phasing through the year, category growth is essentially expected to be fairly consistent throughout the year, in line with what we saw last year. Looking at market share, we exited last fiscal year with improved trends, and the outlook is essentially expecting us to continue building on that momentum through the benefit of the focus and investment we are making on innovation and commercial execution.
Okay. It's been interesting to see the cleaning business is where Clorox has been having the most success. I guess, and that's judging both reported results and also looking at Nielsen. Do you agree that that's a fair characterization? If so, what do you credit it to? What do you take as learnings from cleaning that you can apply to other areas of the portfolio?
That's the right assessment. Our cleaning business has been a very strong driver for the company, pretty consistent over a number of years. There's a few things that I would highlight that make it so, and it was actually learnings into how we built our strategy that outlined for this period. The first would be the importance of brands. Clorox is an incredibly strong brand that stands for something very powerful with the consumer. It stands for trust. It stands for superior cleaning, and consumers know that, whether that be in the home space or in the B2B space. So continuing to invest strongly in our brands is something that the cleaning team has done for a number of years, and they've built that Clorox brand over years to mean something different to the consumer.
It used to just stand for bleach, and now it stands for a lot more for the consumer. In fact, there are many products that don't have bleach in it today. Some products that don't even disinfect, but they stand for powerful cleaning. The second thing I would be is innovation. Cleaning has consistently launched innovation year after year, going after new jobs that that brand can take the consumer to. If you looked at our portfolio 30 or 40 years ago, we were pretty much a dilutable business. Then we moved into more convenient forms of sprays. We launched the wipes category 20 years ago, and we continue to launch into adjacencies that allow that brand to go into new spaces, but with that primary benefit that we keep at the forefront.
Many of those innovation platforms we built to invest in for years and years and years. Scentiva is a great example. We launched that in 2018. It's been a growth driver for us for almost a decade now. Those are the learnings we applied in our IGNITE strategy to get those other businesses moving, and that has been working in a number of categories. We have more work to do, and I know we'll talk about Litter later. That's a good example where we have to reapply that formula to get back to consistent growth. That is why we've invested in health and hygiene. That is consistent with the acquisition we just made with GOJO. We see a real differentiator in our capabilities, in our understanding of these categories, and our ability to create value over time.
Okay. Another positive story, but still completely different, is Hidden Valley, which historically hasn't gotten much air time despite being a big business. Recently, you've been highlighting the share gains for the brand. Super fun Taste of America dynamic during the World Cup, but I think there's still an ongoing challenge from GLP-1s and maybe the Cyclospora outbreak. How should we think about the trajectory for Hidden Valley going forward?
Yeah. It was really fun to be part of the World Cup fever, unless you were a TSA agent and people were taking bottles of Hidden Valley in their carry-ons. People really fell in love with ranch, which is great and gives us opportunities. You're exactly right. We've been growing share in Hidden Valley. We had a period starting at about a year and a half ago as the food category softened, and we had made some decisions on price pack architecture that didn't go as well as we had intended. So we went back to our playbook, refreshed our innovation plans, did some additional price pack architecture work, and got that business going again, and that led to share growth in Q4. Right now, we're dealing with the temporary impacts of Cyclospora. So if you look at the category, it's been down double digits.
We fared much stronger than that, so we've grown two-three share points, depending on the time period over this time. It certainly is impacting us, too, but to a lesser degree than the category. We see that starting to lessen in the data, so I think we might be through the worst of it. We're going to watch it closely, but I really view that as temporary, and people will get back to those eating occasions. I'm happy to be eating salads again. So, we'll be watching that. I think fundamentally, to your point, the category is under pressure from things like GLP-1s, et cetera.
What we're trying to do with Hidden Valley is, it's a brand that makes everything taste better, whether that be what you're doing on your GLP-1 journey, or you want to enjoy it on something a little more indulgent, like pizza, and that's working pretty well. We're going to continue to do that. So we're excited about the share growth, but we're really focused on getting the category going again.
Okay, great. Let's spend a moment on areas of the portfolio that have struggled more. Let's talk a bit about Litter, given its size, top of mind. I guess for those who are here who aren't as close to the story, maybe you can give an overview of Fresh Step's struggles, the restage, and why it's taking longer to get back to growth than anticipated.
Yeah, Litter is a good example. I spoke about that playbook in cleaning, the work that we do on our brands and equity, ensuring we have innovation and superior value, where we had a lot of operational disruption in Litter that was disproportionate to the rest of the portfolio. We built a manufacturing site in COVID, not a fun time to make a greenfield plant implementation, and so that took longer than we expected. When we had the cyber attack back in 2023, that was one of the categories most impacted because as you can imagine, and if you have a cat, you know this, to change out your trash bag for a period of time and then get back to your Glad bag is not that hard. You run out of the old bag, you purchase Glad.
But when you've trained your cat to use a particular Litter, that transition back takes a bit longer. So it took us longer to get back with consumers, and we were focused operationally on doing that in e-commerce, et cetera. We fell behind, frankly, was in innovation and ensuring that we had superiority, and our competitors kept moving. So the team took a very hard look at our plan knowing that, and we said we needed to do a complete restage of the business, starting with price pack architecture, getting our claims right and our packaging right, improving our formulation to remove more dust. We did that as the first part of the restage in Q4. That was a lot of change for the consumer, and some of our retailers made decisions on shelf placement that weren't consistent with what we thought was going to happen.
We got the distribution, but the shelf placement, it wasn't exactly right. It didn't go exactly as we expected, but we do feel that restage was really important to get us going again. Now what we're focused on is driving our brand equity, being really clear what Fresh Step stands for, which is freshness and odor removal. We're going to get back to that. A strong innovation pipeline, and we have a good one this year that we'll talk more about in the back half, and then ensuring we have superiority over time. The team is laser focused on that playbook. The first part of that implementation is in, we're starting to see some green shoots, for lack of a better word, with some of the price pack architecture work we've done.
This is going to be, we view this as a rebuild for Fresh Step, and we have full confidence we will get there. We have done this in other businesses over time, but that is really what happened. We were really operationally focused, and we need to get back to that playbook for our brands.
Okay. You just mentioned that there are some green shoots. This is not about reconsidering the plan. It has been refined, the plan is in place, and now it is time.
It is. The one thing I would call out, and we have said this over and over again to our team, we want to see a multi-year innovation playbook, and we feel good about that, but we want more. This is a category that is innovation driven, even more so than others, and so we are pushing really hard to say, "What does our innovation plan look like multiple years out, and how do we back into that and ensure that we have the right value?" So that is the place that our team is very focused on, is innovation.
Okay, great. Let us talk a little bit about pricing. Given the inflation that we have seen this calendar year, a key topic has been, for across Staples, has been how companies are going to be offsetting these cost increases. You guided to cost inflation above $200 million in fiscal 2027, and have also discussed some plans to raise prices on Glad given the exposure there, which makes a ton of sense. So that is sort of the backdrop, and I had a few questions on this. So Luc, maybe you could give some color on the components of the $200 million. I think there are some questions out there as to how this ties directly to direct oil, how much is logistics and diesel versus downstream. So let us start there and--
Sure. As you mentioned, we expect input cost inflation of slightly over $200 million for the year. For perspective, that compares to a historical average of $75 million- $100 million, so well above that. Oil is an important variable, but it's important to recognize that the inflation we expect this year is broader than just energy alone. If I look at the components, certainly, a big part of it is input cost and commodities. The largest driver would be raising base commodities, but we're also seeing meaningful inflation across a broad range of other commodities that are not energy based. Beyond commodities, we're also seeing inflation across a broad area of the supply chain, from supplier cost increase all the way to transportations. The market's been pretty tight, especially in the U.S. and other related logistic costs.
I would say the inflation this year is proving out to be much more persistent and extending beyond what just the headline from oil. The last thing I mention is from a phasing standpoint, we expect inflation to be more pronounced in the front half, and that goes along with the fact that it generally takes a little bit of time for cost mitigation actions to take place. So that's where this year the cost margin will be pressure, but it's more the timing than the structural issues, and we expect sequential improvement throughout the year.
Okay. Then there's now been this more recent spike in logistics costs. Any changes to the outlook or impact?
No, no change right now. Our outlook contemplated a pretty tight transportation market in the U.S. That's one of the drivers of the inflation that we assumed.
Okay, great. In addition to pricing on Glad, on the conference call you had mentioned, quote, "targeted pricing elsewhere," and then also value investments to improve competitiveness in other spots. Is there anything you are able to call out now, key categories on both sides of this equation to get more specific?
Yeah. We called out targeted pricing for a reason. We feel right now the consumer is stretched, and we have a very broad range of tools to recover margins over time. We will use targeted pricing. You mentioned Glad earlier. Glad is one where we are taking truckload pricing in a more normalized level. Across our food business, in some areas of cleaning, we are taking pricing, but again, being very targeted in how we are doing that, not taking broad price increases in any of those businesses. At the same time, we are making investments on the other side. We talked about Glad being one that we did last year, where we invested in our 80 count to ensure that we had the right price point. We are also doing that in areas like Litter on price pack architecture.
We are balancing where we are taking pricing up and also making in some investments. We are also investing in product in some cases. You are not seeing that in the pricing line, but that actually plays out in DTC instead. We are investing in superiority and a few of our things, and so that contributes to ensuring that we have the right balance between where we are taking pricing and, of course, using cost savings, RGM, price pack architecture in other places, but also ensuring that we are making investments where we feel we need to at the same time. We will continue to talk more about pricing as we put it in the market. We are being, as we said, very surgical where we think we have the right ability to take pricing and where the right value is.
Okay. Then just how should we think about net price mix for the year in the context of everything we have just said and then the sales guidance? Is it a full one-point benefit? I was trying to do some math on Glad, if it is mid to high teens. Anyway, is it around one point?
Yeah, price mix would be net slightly up. This is mainly driven by some of the targeted price increase that we're taking in Glad or, as Linda mentioned, in some part of cleaning. That's tempered by, of course, continued headwinds from consumer value-seeking behavior and channel shifting, as well as some targeted investments we're making to improve value equation in some more challenged businesses like Litter.
Okay, so not quite a full point on net price mix.
Yes, slightly up.
Okay. On Glad, you've been happy with the business returning to share growth in the fourth quarter, which is great news. But at least from what we can see in the data, it suggests that this came with elevated promotion relative to peers. So just looking for some thoughts on the kind of competitive environment for Glad and how confident you are that Glad can maintain its market share momentum in an environment where everyone's pricing, but presumably you'll have less promotion.
Yep. If you look at the drivers of what improved Glad quarter- after- quarter in fiscal year 2026, and what we have as a plan for 2027, it was much more than promotion. We revamped our innovation plan, and that has performed well in market. Price pack architecture played a large role with RGM. We feel the plan is very sustainable that led to the share growth turnaround that we saw in Q4, and we continue with that plan in 2027 with the addition of pricing. To your point, though, we are going to watch it really carefully. We do not know what is going to happen in the category. The good news is we have more sophisticated tools now to react quicker, and to be much more targeted if we have to make additional or take additional actions like we did at the beginning of fiscal year 2026.
It is a competitive and a promotional category. I would say, that is one of the ways that we might balance pricing. So we will take a truckload pricing increase. We are going to see what the consumer does, and promotion is always a lever for us to offset that if we need to. We are not afraid to do that. But what we do not want to get into is a place where promotion is at too high of a level. This is still mostly a base category that consumers use every day. But it allows us to make quick changes to price if we need to, and we will reserve the right to do that. But we see the competitive environment being relatively steady now, and we will see how it plays out this year.
Okay. I just want to get a quick update on tariffs and the extent to which they are hitting your P&L. Where are you exposed? How much of an impact is there in fiscal 2027? I do not think you called one out on the conference call, and I did not know if anything with the recent increased tensions with Canada changed anything. I know there was an increased tariff on charcoal.
Yeah. I would say to date, the overall impact of tariff hasn't been that material in our P&L. A few things to keep in mind. First, given that, I think the heavy nature of our product, we tend to produce very close to the market we serve. And, with our footprint being mostly domestic, we tend to mostly produce in the U.S. with local suppliers. In addition, early last fiscal year, we also were very proactive in making some sourcing changes to further limit the tariff exposure. So given that, I would say the overall tariff exposure or including the materiality of the refund, hasn't been that meaningful as I look at last year's results or even the outlook in fiscal 2027. Regarding Canada, we have been monitoring closely the recent development. It is obviously a very dynamic situation, and we will update our estimates if needed.
Okay. Let's talk a little bit about reinvestment. This is going to be long-winded.
That's okay.
Just a heads up, okay.
Yes, please.
The underlying organic sales growth rate still forecast to be below historical rates. But simplistic math when I think about the impact of inflation, productivity, pricing, and GOJO on gross margins, that pretty much ties to the guidance you've given for gross margins. Right? Then on overall OpEx, you've got incentive comp step-up, but the basis points change that you've guided to for SGA feels consistent with what you'd said since announcing GOJO. I'm struggling to find the room to reinvest and how that is flowing through the P&L and how we should think about that.
Yeah. I would say high level, we feel good about the level of investment in our plan. As you would expect, our outlook incorporates reasonable degree of flexibility. As we look business by business, we'll continue to make adjustment to our plan if we see change in consumer trends or competitive dynamics. Having said that, there's a few places where we're making investment that might not be, to your point, obvious as you look at the headlines. First, let me start with gross margin, and I think Linda just alluded to this. There are a few places where we're making investments to either improve our value superiority or brand positioning. Some of it is in the form of price, and I think Linda mentioned it in the case of Litter, and that can be done through trade or through PPA, but that's actually impacting the gross margin.
In other places, we're actually increasing cost to really just doubling down and stepping up product performance and superiority. That's coming in as part of some of the innovations. Another place is in advertising and sales promo. We historically had a very strong ROI and a leading industry ROI, and we keep seeing them improving year-over-year. But we're also driving material productivity in our production or what we call non-working cost. That's mostly through the ramping up our use of AI. What we're doing is we're actually reinvesting all those savings into working media. So net, your working media is actually up year-over-year. Then finally, in SGA, you mentioned it, the headline is, this is mostly driven year-over-year. The impact is mostly driven by the impact of GOJO and then lapping the lower incentive comp.
But underneath there's actually pretty meaningful productivity that's not only offsetting inflation, but also offsetting incremental investment we're making behind capabilities. That's the way to think about all the investment we're making next year. So net, we feel good about the level of investment in our plans, and of course, we'll make adjustment as needed.
Okay, great. Another question in this vein. In early calendar 2026, the conversation, I think, among investors had been that with ERP shipment timing or through this $0.90 headwind, meant fiscal 2026 earnings were $0.90 artificially low.
Yes.
The right way to think about 2027 would be to add back the $0.90 to the fiscal 2026 base and then grow from there. If we do that, if we add $0.90 back to what you just reported, the $5.53 for fiscal 2026, 2027 guidance at the midpoint is actually down $0.60 year-over-year. Input cost inflation and incentive comp are two drivers. Has anything else changed since early 2026 that drives the underlying earnings to be down so much?
Yeah, no, you mentioned it. The two drivers as we look at fiscal year 2027 EPS is the input cost inflation and the gross margin compression, as well as the lapping of the incentive comp. The one thing I would mention when you look at gross margin compression is the noise associated with ERP impacted both sales and EPS in fiscal year 2026, but it also impacted gross margin because of operating leverage. When you adjust the base by $0.90 in fiscal year 2026, you need to also adjust the gross margin to account for the operating leverage. When you do that, the gross margin compression is actually a little higher than what's stated in year-over-year in our outlook. But outside the gross margin compression, the main driver is lapping of incentive comp.
We had abnormally low, both short-term and long-term payout last year, and it creates a year-over-year headwind.
Okay. That is the biggest driver of the cost inflation.
That is it.
Okay. Let us switch and talk about ERP, the transition itself. Just looking for a bit of an update there. I think, Linda, you said we are into optimization and out of stabilization. I think the latest expectation was that benefits would start to come through in late fiscal 2027 or into 2028. I just wanted to get a sense for that. Is that a bit of a delay relative to earlier expectations? How should we think about potential cost savings once we get there?
Yeah. I will take that. Again, stepping back, we implemented our ERP in the U.S. in fiscal 2026. That was a major milestone in our digital transformation journey. First, because it really modernized the backbone of operation, but second, it really creates a data and technology foundation for us to drive a business that is much more resilient, stronger, and faster. We talked about it, but the transition was not without its challenges. Most of it was really concentrated in our order to cash process, and so it took longer than expected to stabilize our demand fulfillment, service level, and operational efficiencies. But as you mentioned, Lauren, as of today, our service levels are stable, our incremental operational cost came down, and most of the noise and volatility associated with implementation is now behind us.
While it took longer to stabilize and transition, we are now moving into optimization. Now we expect benefits to build progressively over time, and they will start showing up late this year and then well into next year. There are probably three large areas of opportunities. First one is obviously supply chain with real-time, end-to-end data visibility. You now can have just much more responsiveness in your demand fulfillment. A lot of productivity coming from both manufacturing and logistics, as well as some lower inventory and working capital. The second is really around our selling and admin. We are seeing some benefits from automations and more efficiency in our back office functions, as well as the opportunity to continue expanding our global business services. So those are really the direct benefit.
But the third, and arguably more important benefit is really you now have a pretty robust technology foundations that enables you to have real-time end-to-end data visibility. We are seeing now it really enables us to really adopt and take more advantage of AI and strengthen a lot of our key capabilities within the organization. It can be things like integrated business planning or actually just, Linda was talking about trade spending optimizations and RGMs. All of those are actually empowered by the new ERP. So net, the new ERP is not only going to contribute, I think, to productivity and strengthening our cost savings pipeline, but also improve our data insight and capability to strengthen execution and growth over time.
Okay, great. GOJO, so I am sure you are excited now the deal has closed. You can really kind of get into the weeds on integration and thinking about incremental revenue opportunities going forward. One thing that you guys have consistently highlighted is about 80% of revenue is B2B with a large installed dispenser base and kind of recurring refill demand. What does having that steady source of sales and cash flow enable The Clorox Company to do that it couldn't do as easily before?
We love cash flow, and we love what that does consistent with our business. But I think the biggest thing that is getting us excited, and to your point, we closed on April 1st, so we have been in the plan now for multiple months, is really the power of a broader health and hygiene platform. We talked about, rightfully, the cleaning business and how well it has performed over a number of years, and what the attributes of that are. We very much see the exact same attributes in Purell. Although it is more weighted to B2B, we still see those same attributes of a very strong equity that stands for something with the consumer that nothing else stands for when it comes to trust.
These are people who go into a hospital, and that is what doctors trust to disinfect their hands and nurses before they come in. Certainly, they lived through COVID and not being able to have Purell on the consumer side, given they were focused on doctors' offices, was a big downside to consumers. So it has that equity. It has incredible innovation, and that's the thing we're most excited about. We knew about some of it before we started, but when we got into their innovation plan, whether that be on dispensers, so we do have over 20 million dispensers on the wall today, but we continue to upgrade those over time and add to them. That allows us to give better benefits on the B2B side to our end users. I'll give you a really live example.
If you think about what you used to do to dispense soap or hand sanitizer in the past, you went up to something, and you pumped it. Today, if you go to most places, you put your hand under something, and it electronically gives you the exact right dose that you need. The type of technology that GOJO has invested in allows labor to come down in B2B. So they've actually put the battery, that was one of the biggest sources of labor issues, people having to constantly check, does the battery need to be changed, into the refill, and they're able to charge up for that. Over time, we have an innovation pipeline that continues to make those dispensers on the wall more and more valuable.
But the big thing for us is bringing together the Clorox and the Purell equities in both the home and away from home to give a health and hygiene solution across a number of surfaces. Purell plays in skin hygiene today and a little bit in surface hygiene. Clorox is primarily surface hygiene, so we see new jobs to do in the B2B space. We see new jobs to do in the home, and we see those equities as having distinct roles in our ability to do that.
For B2B, they have a very sophisticated B2B organization at GOJO, more advanced than ours, and we had a strong business beforehand with direct relationships with these verticals, and they are very excited to bring these two businesses together so that these hospital systems, et cetera, can offer one solution for their health and hygiene of their professionals and, of course, for the patients and consumers that enter their businesses. We've had more outreach from customers than we've ever had on any launch we've ever done with this acquisition with how excited they are for the growth opportunities. GOJO was already, Purell was a mid-single-digit grower.
That doesn't include any synergies, but we see synergies on contributing to the growth on both the Clorox side and Purell, and we see this as something that was a good growth opportunity, but also because of the dispensers on the wall, this is really what offers lower risk because we already have that installed base, and we felt really good given this was our major acquisition for the last decade. Really good and fits with our capabilities, adds to our capabilities, but lower risk given that installed base.
Okay, fantastic. One last quick thing is that you guys have been really active in tightening the portfolio or divesting Argentina, VMS, but I do get questions still on if there's room to further focus the portfolio. I would like to give more attention and more weight to where you've been more successful with cleaning and hygiene. How are you thinking about the potential to divest underperforming businesses?
First, I think we've been clear we see health and hygiene as north star for our company and a place we want to continue to grow, and we want to do that both organically, and certainly, we have made the investment in GOJO to do it inorganically as well. But we also see the ability for a number of our businesses to fit under that health and hygiene banner, and they do. But we always evaluate our portfolio with the board on a regular basis, and as a management team, we're always looking for opportunities to say, "Are we the highest value owner of this, and are there other better uses of our investment dollars?" We don't have anything to talk about today, but we're always doing that work, and it will be under that guise of continuing to move toward that health and hygiene north star.
Okay, great. We're going to wrap there and go to breakout, but join me in thanking Linda and Luc for being here.
Thank you, Lauren.