Hey, good morning, everyone. I'm Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley's household products and beverage analyst. Just before we get started, a quick disclosure. Please see the Morgan Stanley Research website, www.morganstanley.com, for important research disclosures and contact your Morgan Stanley representative if you have any questions. With that, I'm very pleased to welcome Edgewell back to Morgan Stanley's Global Consumer and Retail Conference. Joining us today are Rod Little, President and CEO, and Dan Sullivan, CFO. Thank you very much for being here, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Rod, I thought maybe we could just start high level. You have made meaningful changes across the organization in the last year, including new leadership in North America, a move to a regional hub model globally, now reshaping the portfolio with the recent Fem Care divestiture, optimization of North American wet shave, a lot of changes. As you look at the business today, A, just help us understand how these changes might strengthen your execution, how significant you think the payback from these changes will be, and if they can drive higher top-line growth going forward. Just organizationally now, what are your biggest focus points or priorities post these changes?
Yeah. Thank you, Dara, and thanks to everybody for attending today and for the interest. We're at a really interesting moment with the company where we've, I think, are making the biggest moves and the most strategic moves that we've made since the separation from Energizer right now, many of which we've been working on for multiple years, all coming together now. Let's start with just simply, what are the couple of things that are working really well as context for then what do we need to fix and address? First is our international growth, which is 40% of the portfolio, is super durable. We've been growing mid-single digits now for four years running. We expect that to continue in fiscal 2026, which for us started October 1, so we're in our Q1 right now.
In addition to the sales growth, we're building gross margin every year in international. It is a very powerful model that we've got with 40% of our sales growing mid-single digits and growing margin. Second thing we have going for us is our cost productivity work. A very consistent 200-300 basis points of cost of goods sold productivity year on year. We have line of sight to that continuing, and we'll talk about it even ramping up as we look to 2027 and 2028. The third thing that is working, and I think rock solid for us, is our new innovation model.
We went away from a globally structured model to a locally tailored model, very local with our consumer insights, very local with our NPD development, and we're seeing all the new product development we put into the market winning on average in a much bigger way and being communicated to consumers in a much more engaging way. International growth, cost productivity, innovation model, all really good. The area that, frankly, just being really straight, that has not worked well for us is North America. We needed a commercial reset in North America, which the good news is teams in place. They've been working together now for a while, and we'll start to see all the good things come out of that North America reset as we get into the Q3, Q4 for us, which is April, May, June, July, August, September period.
A lot of good things happening there. In addition to a whole new leadership team, Jess Spence, the new President, recruited in October of 2024. The team underneath her, really talented backgrounds, really capable brand builders, and in a streamlined structure where we now went from five business units in North America to two. A pure play shave business unit and a sun, skin, and grooming business unit. Two heads, two leaders underneath Jess running those businesses. A new sales leader in, Procter & Gamble background, knew him from my network, top-rated person over there that's now running our U.S. sales team. We put a new CMO position in, Unilever background, America's Unilever CMO style background. Some real talent upgrades in addition to a streamlined structure. The final piece of the North America plan is we're investing incrementally in brand support behind the brands in a meaningful way.
Corporately, I'll get into it later, we've increased our spend dramatically over a two-year period, but that's all going into the U.S. brand building work to reignite and drive growth back into the U.S. My structure is now very simple at the top. I've got four regional leads. I've got four functional heads that report to me directly. The COO layer was always a temporary layer to be in there to allow me to put focus on getting North America fixed and winning. That's done now. We have announced the Fem Care divestiture sold at a premium to the total company for our worst-performing unit, if you will. Consolidation of shave manufacturing sites from four sites into one mega site with over $100 million of investment going in there and new capital, new line equipment to make even better blades.
Our focus as we go forward, kind of to your point on the priorities, is really twofold. One, it's winning in shave globally. We're already winning internationally, which is 55% of our shave business. Prioritizing winning in the U.S. in shave is priority one for the total company. Priority two is continuing to build out the expansion of our Sun Care and Grooming business globally. We have big opportunities outside the U.S. for both of those portfolios, which we're still in the early innings of driving. A lot going on, but frankly, I'm excited to be at this moment because we're at a point where the execution of the strategy will really start to show up this year in 2026.
Great. We started with the internal changes you made. The external environment, certainly fluid, difficult, I think, as an accurate characterization. You've got muted growth across CPG categories. Can you give us a bit of an update on first the consumer, your perspective there, specifically in the U.S. and internationally, what you're seeing? Then B, just the promotional environment in the U.S., which seems to be ramping up. How are you managing through that? Is there anything incremental to what you expected, or is that competitive activity more in sort of a normal day-to-day course of business?
If you look at our categories and take an aggregate average across shave, Grooming, Sun, Skincare where we play, the average growth rate globally is about 2%. Domestically here in the U.S., it's about the same. We're seeing in that 1.5-2.5% range, generally in line with the past 52-week average, the past 26-week average. We're not seeing a meaningful change in category growth rate, either domestically here or internationally. There are a few markets that look a little different, but on average, a very resilient and robust consumer to this point, I would say. We have seen, though, some challenges, certainly at the lower middle-income consumer demographics, where there's been more pressure in the categories, people deal-seeking a little bit more, seeking value with price pack counts maybe a little higher, things like that. We're the number one private label manufacturer in the world.
We're not seeing private label share grow in shave. Very steady, very stable. What that's created is a higher promotional environment in 2025. We're not expecting the category growth rates nor the promotional trends to change in 2026. We've budgeted accordingly. We've budgeted effectively at low single-digit category growth rate, and we budgeted similar promotional trends carrying forward, which is an elevated promotional level, particularly in women's shave has been quite promotional. Fem Care has been very promotional. After January 30, we're not going to have to worry about that one. I would say a healthy enough category and consumer environment for us to be successful in.
Great. You recently announced the sale of your Fem Care business. What does that do for you organizationally in terms of opening up greater focus or capital for other areas, Rod? Maybe Fran, if you can discuss capital allocation priorities post the divestiture.
Yeah. I think the divestiture of our Fem Care business is a transformational moment for the company. I do not want to understate the importance of getting this done. I will share a little background as to why. We are a globally scaled business in every category except for Fem Care. It is a regional business for us. We do not have the rights with trademark rights and names to operate globally. Even if we did and we could acquire them, the cost to compete and the investment required would not make sense. Financially, it just would not make sense. We have a regional scaled business now moving to a buyer who is globally scaled. Their whole is the North American geography. They did not have a brand set to play here. We have been looking at this business now for six or seven years on what to do with it.
We've never had a buyer bring us the value that we thought beat what we could generate ourselves. Even in a flat growth area, just the cash flow it generated created a present value stream of cash flows. It was actually quite substantial. There was one buyer in the world that could beat that, and it was Essity. When Essity came forward and was willing to give us the value that's at a premium to the total company for our most dilutive asset, it became a no-brainer to do this deal. Financially, it makes a ton of sense. Selling it for $340 million, value premium for what is the growth dilutive asset in the portfolio, the margin dilutive asset in the portfolio, and the highest capital intensive asset we have in the portfolio, we now have out as of January 30.
What we're left with is more flexibility operationally, more optionality financially, and a real focus on our core, which is shave, Grooming, Sun, and Skincare globally with the rights to win and play and be successful globally. I love the focus we have, and I love the value we got for the sale.
I think building on our capital allocation strategy, our purchase price was about $340 million. That was the economics of the deal. 80% of that is what we expect will be converted into cash. I think in the short term, we're really focused on strengthening our balance sheet and paying down debt. I think that's our initial focus. From our capital allocation strategy, clearly we've anchored across a couple of key areas. Capital investment that's really focused around either driving efficiency or driving innovation growth. We've got a share repurchase program that we've had historically, and over the last 12 to 18 months have really taken advantage of what we believe is an undervalued stock price. We have already repurchased in fiscal 2025 about $90 million.
I think in the short term for 2026, our focus is really to offset dilution and really focus around getting our debt leverage to our target, which we believe the Fem Care proceeds will help do that. When we look at M&A, we're always looking at M&A. There are lots of great brands out there, but our threshold is pretty high, and we have filters that we want to focus on creating value. Fem Care proceeds give us optionality for us to continue to look, but right now the threshold is high around M&A. In the short term, it's really strengthening our balance sheet.
Okay. As we look out to fiscal 2027, how quickly do you think you can cut out the stranded overhead in the business post the deal once the TSA agreement concludes? After putting the proceeds to work, can this be accretive as you look out to fiscal 2027? What are your thoughts around that?
Yeah. I think in terms of timeline over the long term, we do believe it will be accretive. We do have a level of stranded costs. The full year EBITDA for Fem Care is about $25 million. That's what we realized in fiscal 2025. Our expectation is the headwind in the short term will be somewhere around $35-$45 million. That factors in the profit that we're losing, the stranded costs that remain because we are an entangled business. We do have a TSA that we expect will take us through at least early part of 2027, so about 12 months. Our focus is to really address stranded costs and make sure that we are putting our cost base in line with our streamlined portfolio. That will take time. We do have a TSA that we think will extend about a year.
We're finalizing the scoping of that. We'll come forward in Q1 to give more specifics around that. Over time, we will anticipate taking the stranded cost out.
Okay. On the subject of cutting out costs beyond Fem Care, can you just discuss further opportunities on productivity longer term? Rod mentioned earlier how productivity has been a focus and has enabled margin expansion and gross margin expansion. Just give us a sense of the pipeline going forward, what the key buckets are in terms of driving continued productivity going forward relative to the strong track record in recent years.
Yeah. Great. So look, we've been building productivity into our DNA for quite a bit of time. We've been delivering well over 250 basis points of productivity efforts, four-plus years in the making. I think in 2026, when you double-click, our core productivity is about 260 basis points. Then we've got about 50 basis points of additional tariff mitigation. Our total productivity savings is about 300 basis points in fiscal 2026. When we think about where we focus, it's really a couple of key drivers. We look at our supply chain and how we distribute. That is an area where we've continually optimized and drove efficiency, especially across markets. We look at labor in our manufacturing plants, whether it's balancing out our full-time, part-time mix. It's also about automation and taking labor out of the process.
That's been core in how we've been able to deliver productivity. We have footprint optimization. Rod talked about our consolidation within North America. What gives us confidence right now is we have strategies in place where we look across markets around footprint optimization. We have a big strategy within North America, specifically on wet shave, to continue to drive efficiency there. We have already realized the cost to achieve by the end of 2026 will be about 90%. As we fast forward to 2027 and 2028, those new programs are going to help reinforce the consistency of our productivity initiatives and delivery. I think when we think about 2026 overall in gross margin, we are accreting. We are growing about 60 basis points on a reported basis and 20 basis points in constant currency.
A lot of our productivity in 2026 has gone to offset tariffs, which the net impact is about $25 million to us. We will continue to have productivity as a source. It will continue to drive gross margin accretion, hopefully not just to offset tariffs in the long term, but really become a source of our reinvestment model.
Great. Rod, you're planning to increase A&P spending as a percent of sales in fiscal 2026. That's versus cutbacks we've seen in prior years as a percent of sales. Why is now the right time to step up spend? Fran, maybe you can touch on just the level of ROI you're expecting in terms of top-line growth from that higher spend, particularly given the difficult environment.
Yeah. Yeah. Look, now's the right time to increase spend because we've got the right team in place to generate really interesting content, really engaging content in campaigns that break through and ultimately drive sales. The time's right to do it. In fact, we started the investment last fiscal year as we got into the spring and summer, and we saw our plans coming together specifically around a Cremo Scent Kings campaign. Cremo's the fastest grooming brand in the set at Walmart, up 40% last year on a units basis alone. That campaign was a big driver in that. Hawaiian Tropic, we put a new campaign in place last year. Tana Sutra was the name of the campaign with Alix Earle. There's going to be a multi-year campaign with that. Fastest growing brand in the Sun Care set last year was Hawaiian Tropic, partly behind that campaign.
We put a new campaign in place on Hydro Silk, Schick Hydro Silk on women's legacy shave. It was very successful. As we started to see that, Dan can talk about some more of the results. It gives us confidence as we go into 2026 to lean in and invest even more because it's the right thing to do for the long-term health of the business. You will see us bring new campaigns in addition to those I mentioned on Billie, a new master brand campaign on Schick, and a new campaign on Banana Boat. What's interesting is you look at where we were two years ago in 2024, the low point was about 10% of sales was invested in A&P. The 2026 plan is based on 12%, so a two-point increase.
If you adjust for our private label business, which consumes no brand support, it is more like 150-200 basis points higher on a branded business. We actually think we are to a quite healthy place now with how we have budgeted this year. The reason we were not spending 12% in fiscal 2024, frankly, the thinking and the campaigns were not good enough. They would not have given us a return. We are very confident in what we have now that it will.
Yeah. I think building on that point, it is about the quality of the spend, not just the absolute. Now, we've taken an investment stance. We increased about 80 basis points in 2025, and our expectation is to reach 12% in 2026. A lot of that in terms of proof points, I'll take that in two parts. International first. We've been on this journey to really build equity within international. What we've seen is really durable mid-single-digit growth. We were not there a couple of years ago. Now, because we've been more focused on through-the-line activation, engaging with our customers differently, and more importantly, activating innovation, we've been able to see that proof point come through in our international growth.
Now, as we fast forward with the changes that we've seen in North America, our focus around how we invest, how we engage with the brands, how we're bringing the brands to life is actually in a very new and different way. We see those green shoots. If you look at North America, where they landed in Q4, they're actually at slightly under 1% declines versus their full year at over 4%. That is also translating into unit market share and total market share. In Q4 alone, we've seen North America grow, specifically in wet shave, where now it's growing versus declining. We saw continued growth in Sun and Grooming. I think those green shoots give us really the confidence as we move forward that the campaigns are working.
We know that brand building takes time, but as we fast forward to 2026, we expect a trend improvement within North America. We expect that North America will land close to where they're landing in Q4, which is flattish to down one. That will really catapult into more growth trajectory into fiscal 2027. In absolute basis, as far as spend is concerned, I agree with Rod. We're really at a healthy level right now. I think what we'll anticipate is driving more efficiency on that absolute spend because you've got that durable growth that's happening in our core brand building.
Yeah. Great. Rod, the international business is now 40% of sales, as you mentioned, solid mid-single-digit growth in recent years. It has been a strong growth driver. We touched on earlier some of the factors behind that growth, but just perhaps dimensionalize growth opportunity going forward by geography and product category internationally. What gives you confidence you can sustain that mid-single-digit level going forward?
Yeah. We are confident we can sustain mid-single digits internationally. We've done that the last four years running. The big driver behind all of this at the core of it is people. We've got really strong leaders and now really strong leadership teams in place that work very well together internationally. The average engagement rate positively for the company is 82%. In some of the international markets, it's over 90% in terms of positive engagement. They are super motivated teams, very good at what they do, and success breeds success, right? When you're winning, you start to feel like you're running downhill a little bit, and that's where they are. As we look to it, China is an interesting market. China was a tough market, just category growth-wise last year. We grew double digits in China, as an example. We're the market leader in Japan in shave.
We're growing in Japan in shave, and I think we feel like we can actually accelerate our growth. Geographically, Asia will continue to grow and drive our growth longer term. In the short term, Europe is likely to be our biggest growth driver, interestingly enough, right? In a bit of a flat, challenged market, we've got real competence and competitiveness around shave internationally. It's 55% of our business. We're growing. We're holding share in every single market internationally that we operate in shave. Where we're the leader in Japan, we're growing the category. For example, we launched Schick First Tokyo. It's aimed at getting young kids into the category, get more kids into the category sooner. What's interesting is the younger you go in cohorts, they're shaving more often. They're shaving more body parts more often. That's a global phenomenon.
We have an innovation pipeline aimed at new market entry into the category. The other thing I would call out, if you go to categories to your question, shave will for sure continue to grow, we think, in that low to mid-single-digit range. The real growth driver internationally over the next three to five years is going to be Sun and Grooming. As we look at our path forward, we're just launching Cremo now, only online into Europe, with the same formulations, the same positioning. They're hugely successful here. We will have tripled that brand size from when we bought it, about $50 million three years ago, by the end of this next year. Just launching that into Europe with real strength and real growth tailwinds behind it. Sun Care, Hawaiian Tropic is winning everywhere. It's growing double digits everywhere.
The Alix Earle campaign that we put in place here, there's a similar campaign in Europe. It's working, and we have huge potential to grow market share in Sun Care outside the U.S. with more distribution points, more brands where we have Banana Boat, bring Hawaiian Tropic, and vice versa. I feel really good about the growth internationally, geographically, everybody contributing, and from all categories. Kind of on the strategy we laid out a couple of years ago, where we said grooming and Sun Care are going to be accelerants to our growth profile, we're seeing that today. In international, we think that will even become a bigger spread as we go forward as Cremo starts to come online.
Great. Looking at the U.S., you have plans to stabilize organic sales growth, as you mentioned, this upcoming fiscal year. What does it take longer term to get the business back to growth? What are the key drivers? How much visibility do you think you have on that near-term improvement to get back closer to stability in the U.S. business?
Yeah. Visibility to goodness in the U.S., very high, actually, which may sound odd given where we're coming from. We know we've got the team right. We've seen the consumer response to plans and programs we've put in place. We're kind of at this moment where we're inflecting the trends as we speak, and there's nothing there that should change that trend line. To start, categories, low single-digit growth rate. Not greatness, but also not declining. In an environment where our categories are growing low single digits, if we hold share, we can grow low single digits. Last year, fiscal 2025, down 4.5% organic net sales, as Dan Sullivan mentioned. Q4, the end of last year, we exited at minus 1%. We budgeted 2026 at kind of that minus 1% to flat range.
The back half of 2026, that April to September period, is going to be in that low single-digit growth range. We have line of sight to pricing coming online. We have line of sight to better distribution outcomes across the entire portfolio. Committed retailer by retailer. We have not baked all of that into our plan because we have tried to plan a little more conservatively because we think there is real value in building our credibility back of just doing what we say and hitting our numbers. Whether it be inflation or tariffs or foreign exchange or whatever, we need to have the levers to be able to absorb that and still deliver. That North American step change that we are seeing happening right now gives us confidence that we can do that. Final thing I will say on the North America piece, you get the team right.
We're putting incremental investment into North America, another full margin point next year behind new campaigns and these five power brands that I mentioned earlier. We're putting our money where our mouth is investment-wise, if you will, too. Look, I feel really confident in the North American business despite where we're coming from.
Okay. Maybe we can go deeper into a couple of product categories. Grooming, can you talk about the growth opportunity there from a brand perspective, category growth you're seeing? Then on wet shave, maybe you can detail the various pieces of the business there and also category growth and competitive environment relative to market share.
Yeah. We'll take them in order. Grooming, we love the category. We've acquired into it with Jack Black, Bulldog, and Cremo. It's now globally about 10% of our sales when you put all that together from zero a few years ago. We think it's mid to high single-digit growth rate, both domestically and globally. If you look in Europe, Bulldog is the leader in grooming. In the U.K. market, for example, we'd put a premium line in with Bulldog on skincare. It's a real authority in the U.K. market and across pan-Europe. A lot of success with Bulldog. So we like our portfolio in grooming, and we think there's real tailwinds in that category that will continue. We just need to keep doing what we're doing effectively. On wet shave, very, very interesting category. And by way of background, I know it really well.
I was at P&G when we acquired Gillette. I was on the deal team that brought Gillette in. I've been in their manufacturing plants historically over time. I've operated around that business. We had the deal done to buy Harry's. We spent a year with them, tried to plan and get that done before the FTC blocked us. In 2020, we bought the other nascent startup, Billie. Dollar Shave Club from time to time has been offered to us, right? We know, and BIC is right across the street from us. We know every single competitor in this landscape. What I will tell you that's fundamentally different in the shave category than it was 10 years ago, 5 years ago, even 3 years ago, it is less competitive today. Internationally, there are still two players that play. Harry's has tried to launch internationally and failed.
They've gone into a couple of European markets and are effectively coming back out. There are two players. It's us and Gillette globally. Domestically, Dollar Shave Club, you know that story. Unilever paid $1 billion for it, sold it for inventory value to a PE firm on the West Coast. That's come and gone, and it's us, and it's Gillette, and it's Harry's. Harry's has done a really nice job. Part of why we wanted to acquire them was their brand building skills. It's gotten to a level now it's difficult for them to grow from here. They're primarily a men's business, and retailers are looking for a full player across men's, women's, disposables, and private label. We're the only branded private label manufacturer. There is a relative competitiveness to this category right now that it's just less competitive than it was previously.
Retailers are open to us and wanting us to win and be successful because they know we've got the technology to be able to compete and win and be a counterbalance to Gillette, which frankly, the category does need. The Harry's story is interesting because as retailers look at it, it's only destroyed value. Despite them growing, it's traded $4 blade cartridges to two and taken value out of the category. It is up to us to step up and be part of the growth story in the category, which we're prepared to do. I mentioned at the beginning, we're elevating shave as a total company priority, and we're investing in it, including investing in men's domestically here in the U.S., which we've not done in five years.
It's a very interesting moment for shave, and a lot of it is applying what we're doing that's winning internationally back to the U.S. market. For example, some of our Japanese innovation will show up in market here over the next two years.
Great. That's helpful. We've covered a lot today on the internal changes of the company. Anything as you look at the Edgewell story, Rod, that you think maybe the investment community is overlooking or is underappreciated?
I think there's two things. One is the announcement we made a couple of weeks ago on divesting Fem Care and the consolidation of our shave manufacturing platform, which was four legacy acquired sites that were all suboptimal, underinvested in over time, going into a new single site with massive investment behind it. The combination of those two things, the optionality, the flexibility that it will give us, is fundamentally different than what we've had the last four or five years. I think financial flexibility is one, whereas we've planned 2026, we're confident we can deliver, right? That's one. I don't think it's fully internalized yet. I understand we've got to earn it, right? We've got to prove it quarter by quarter and do what we say and become a reliable deliverer like we were a couple of years ago.
The second big thing for me is the power of people and the team we have in North America. I would put it up against any team in any category we compete against. It's a really, really talented group, and it'll show, I think, in our results quite quickly here. Again, that's a prove-it story, right? We were coming off of not great results domestically, so we got to prove it. It's all in place there. It's all there. Weirdly, we sit here more confident today than we've been at any recent point despite where the stock is trading because we know we've got the right plans in place and the right investments to really be successful here.
Great. That's helpful. We talked a little bit about capital allocation earlier with Dan. How do you think strategically, longer-term, multi-year about M&A fitting into your growth priorities? Is it really a lot on your plate internally in growth opportunities, and that's not a big focus point, or could this eventually adding another leg to growth be a focus point for you?
Yeah. I think it's an and there, to be honest. I'm a big shareholder at this point with what I've accumulated over the past couple of years. I very much think shareholder first. I always have a financial background, but now more than ever to be a responsible steward of go get the organic opportunities. They're there to be had, and we've got a good plan for that. If we can accelerate and transform our valuation in a positive way, everything needs to be on the table. It may look different than what we've done in the past. We didn't get credit for Billie. Great acquisition in my view. We didn't get credit for Cremo. Great acquisition. Why? Because other things were happening that offset that.
As we get the organic business really rock solid and firm and deliver on that front, if there are ways to accelerate value creation via M&A, whatever it is, we're super open. When you read about it, kind of like the Fem Care divestiture, oh, that makes sense. Nice one. It would need to read like that for us to do anything with our capital. Otherwise, we like leverage reduction at this point. At some point, we like share repurchase at this point as well. That's the last priority.
Great. That's very helpful. We're out of time, so we'll end things there. Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.