Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today, either in person or virtually. I'm Anne Rakunas, Director of External Communications. Before we get started, I have a couple of housekeeping items that I'd like to go over. First, if you'd kindly just turn off your phones or computers, put them on silent if you haven't already. Then I'd also like to remind everyone that today's presentation is being recorded. The slides can be found on our investor presentation website on the Events & Presentations page. For those listening on the webcast, you'll be able to follow along with the slides and chat, and use the chat feature at any point during the presentation to insert a question, and then we'll, we will take that during the Q&A se ssion.
Please be advised that we may make forward-looking statements during our presentation within the meaning of federal securities laws. These include expectations and assumptions of the company's future operations and financial performance. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause anticipated results to differ materially from our expectations. Please refer to our SEC filings that can be found on our investor website. Now, it is my great pleasure to introduce Noel Geoffroy, our Chief Operating Officer. As previously announced, Noel has been appointed as the company's new CEO, effective March 1, 2024, upon the retirement of Julien Mininberg, our current CEO. Noel's career spans over 25 years in the consumer industry across diverse categories and companies, with a proven track record and passion for strong operational leadership, consumer-centric brand building and marketing, and strong people, culture, and development.
Now, I'd like to hand it over to Noel.
Thanks, Anne, and good morning, everyone. I'm so glad to have you all here. I've met a lot of you, but for those of you I haven't yet had the opportunity to meet, I joined Helen of Troy in May of 2022 as the Chief Operating Officer, overseeing the company's global business operations, architecting and leading Project Pegasus, and leading the development of the Elevate for Growth strategic plan that you'll see here today. Prior to Helen of Troy, I worked across a range of consumer companies, including Procter & Gamble, Kellogg, Heinz, and Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, leading complex end-to-end businesses and multifunctional global organizations. During that time, I was privileged to steward several consumer loved brands, brands like Downy, Bounty, Heinz Ketchup, Frosted Flakes, Eggo, Icy Hot, and Allegra, just to name a few. So I'm passionate about growing great brands alongside high-performing teams.
On the personal side, I've been married for 30 years. I'm a proud mom of two terrific young men. I'm an ardent supporter of my alma mater, Clemson, and I serve on the Clemson University Foundation board, and I'm always cheering for the Tigers in sports. That love might have inspired some of the color choices that you're gonna see here today. I'm honored to be the next CEO of Helen of Troy with an amazing portfolio of loved brands, great capabilities, and talented people, and I'm delighted to be here with you today, along with our global leadership team and many of our associates, to share our thinking on Helen of Troy's bright future ahead. We have a robust agenda centered around our next strategic plan, called Elevate for Growth. Julien will get things started, sharing some history and some context.
I will come back to share our strategic plan with the assistance of a few global leadership team members, and then Brian Grass, our CFO, will share a deeper dive into the financials. Following Brian's presentation, we'll take a break for an innovation showcase in the room adjacent, and that'll allow you to visit with some of our global leadership team members and other associates to learn more about our brands and our products. We will then come back for a Q&A session with the global leadership team. With that, I will turn it over to Julien, our CEO.
Great! Well, thanks... Thank you, Noel, and hi, everybody. We're thrilled to have you here today. This is the third time only that we've ever done an investor and analyst day for Helen of Troy, and hopefully, we've earned the reputation that we would not call you together if we didn't have something to say. And today, we have a lot to say, and I hope that it will be interesting for you. As Noel mentioned, I'm here to provide relevant history on a go-forward basis. So this is not a review of the past, this is a perspective on the past in order to be able to help lay the groundwork as we move forward, which is the purpose of our meeting today. I think many of you know Helen of Troy deeply.
Some of you, in fact, were in the room when we did our first-ever analyst day about 10 years ago, and there's many that have become shareholders or followed us in between during that time. So I thought it'd be relevant to just show our journey. This is a 55-year-old company. These are the sales from its founding in 1968, all the way up to where we are today. And you'll see a couple of different eras here. The legacy or beauty-only era is when Helen of Troy was a startup, got itself to about $400 million of sales over its first 35 years or so of history, focusing on brands you'll recognize, brands like Vidal Sassoon, Revlon, both under license, and brands we ourselves started, like Hot Tools, all in the hair and hair appliance space.
We then started, under our founder, a diversification era, and that diversification era had some very interesting changes. We got into liquids for the first time with mass-market personal care liquids such as Brut, Pert Plus, Sure, brands you also know, and we've since divested and entered into the prestige liquid space, but further diversified into new adjacent categories, like housewares. Housewares was a big change for Helen of Troy, far from the beauty world, and yet still in a household space and another part of the home. The Kaz acquisition, which came during 2010, brought the company over $1 billion for the first time, and you can see that in the orange bar there at $1 billion, adding PUR on top of that. I came to the company at that time.
I was the CEO of Kaz, and then since became the CEO of Helen of Troy, and started, much as Noel is doing today, a whole another era, and that era was the transformation era. Blue, just for coding, is the phase one of it, and green is the phase two, and that was enough to double the size of the company in just that 10-year period... and despite the law of large numbers, it's hard to double numbers that are getting bigger. That's exactly what we did. But we sat in a room just like this 10 years ago. Some of you might be wondering, is it worth going to analyst and investor days? My humble answer is yes, at least for us.
The reason I say it is not to be rude, at least for us, but to simply say that we had the question at that time, the aspiration, mostly internal: Could we add 50% to the sales of Helen of Troy, and could we find a way to double its profits through a new strategy? And I'm here to say that 10 years later, we didn't add 50% to the sales of the company. We doubled them during that period of time, and we didn't just double the free cash flow of the company. In fact, it's 2.3 times where it was when we started that era. And it means that strategy matters, leadership matters.
We have just the right next leader in Noel and our leadership team, and the strategy that's being introduced today is a winning one. In terms of strategy, I think as a quick reminder, the transformation era had two phases: phase one and phase two. You can see them here on the side, and I won't take you through them all because we're forward-looking today, but big choices were made. On the left, investing in our core, not managing the company for cash flow the same way, becoming consumer-centric, majorly upgrading our organization, focusing a little bit on culture at that time, and then establishing a shared service base in the company versus a highly balkanized organization. This was transformational. I assure you, it was hard to do in a balkanized company.
In phase two, we liked it so much, we, we brought forward a number of those big ideas, but we added new ones, doubling down on shared services, doubling down on international, and then adding a whole new level of culture, unification, and inclusion on the people side that has been transformational for us in phase two. In fact, it, it creates a journey, and this is a point of perspective. You look across the whole period of change at Helen of Troy, you'll see on the left the idea of a fully autonomous set of business units that were highly balkanized. I was running one of them. I was running Kaz at that time, and the business units didn't have much to do with the corporation, except at the consolidation level, 'cause there was no shared service base to collaborate with.
The culture, if I could say so at that time, it was undeveloped, and I'm being generous there. In the case of where we were, we added the shared services, we overhauled the organizations, and then brought our culture to the next level. We did it again, in phase two and started centralizing more, now using those shared services, doubling down on that collaboration, eliminating all of the silos within the business units, and then unifying our associates under a common culture and bringing the whole organization forward. You can see it's blank on the right, and the reason is because the whole next era is designed to continue this to a whole next level. It's, it's coming very quickly, and the reason is not just because of the strategy we're rolling out today, but also because of Pegasus.
Noel, as she mentioned, she did a wonderful job leading this and seeing the opportunity to go much further and much faster, and it laid the foundation that's now being built on in what we're announcing today for the next level of this journey. If you look at our brands, I think most of you know them, and these are names that are familiar in most households, in fact, in many parts of the world, and they're also market leaders in many countries around the world too. And these brands we're very proud of. We steward them carefully, whether we own them or license them, and we have acquired more to make our family bigger and bigger. As we go forward, I would say that the foundation of this house is critical.
If you look at those four stepping stones, those big ideas, for those of you who may not be able to see down at the bottom of the screen, it talks about differentiated market leaders, with an emphasis on the words differentiated and market leader. That's why they're there, because it matters. It's one thing to be a market leader. It's another thing to be differentiated to the point that you keep your leadership. In terms of higher margin, the ability to grow, and the ability to be asset efficient, this is where our resources have been focused. So as we work our portfolio, we'll talk what we do with it next and keep our foundation of principles.
In terms of how we execute the strategy in the company, we run a flywheel, and this flywheel was created to drive us forward, as a company, and we basically invested in our, those brands and much more than we did before. In fact, more than twice as much. We brought organic revenue growth, margin expansion, and then used those shared services to pull cost after cost and get better and better. In fact, my favorite thing, better and cheaper, who would want anything less than better and cheaper? Anything more than better and cheaper? Run it through an efficient debt structure and a unique tax structure, given our setup, which creates further efficiency, always working on our working capital, and importantly, we're low CapEx as a company. We do not own our factories.
That's an important strategic choice and allows us to deploy our capital into acquisitions, deploy our capital into accretion, and add critical mass to the same flywheel and run it at a higher level of momentum. In terms of our people, there's a secret to Helen of Troy. I've told it many times, so it's not much of a secret, which is we are powered by exceptional people. Their level of passion, engagement, quest for winning, and devotion to driving this company ahead is unmatched. It's unmatched in the company, and I'll show you a little bit more about how it's also unmatched in our industry, and it is the secret sauce that makes all of this work. That culture that I mentioned, I won't read all of this to you. I'll simply say there's a basic set of values.
We call it I-RISE because of the acronym that's across in the next line, and then exactly stating precisely what we mean by that. Anyone can practice these behaviors. I'm here to tell you that when you do, and when a chorus of about 2,000 people also do, you get power, and you get unity, and you get energy, and we call that the power of one. In fact, if you take a look externally at Glassdoor, a common measure of, I wouldn't necessarily say culture, but where people go when they have something to say about a company, they rate them on a star basis, one, two, three, four, five, and Helen of Troy was mediocre, just below 3 stars, not even in the middle of the pack. You can see there was a radical change.
That change brought us above four stars, and we've sustained in the four-star plus club. That's rare air, by the way, in Glassdoor, to be in that club and to keep it, especially through the ups and downs of things like COVID and remote work and even a Pegasus, where we frankly did some downsizing in our organization, and here we are, maintaining this. If you take a look at I-RISE and Power of One, that's the jump. It made a big difference. Power of One is that unity that I was talking about. And if you look at Glassdoor compared to Helen of Troy, Helen of Troy in that four-star and up club, and my favorite measure there is recommend to a friend.
It's sort of like a, like a net promoter's type of score, and our net promoter type of score on Glassdoor, recommend to a friend, is between 77% and 93% in all of those four-star plus years. And the Glassdoor average is at least 10 points below that and 25 points below our high, and that makes us an employer of choice, and people want to be here, they want to stay here, and this is what they talk about when they're on Glassdoor. Changing gears, you entrust us to deploy capital. We're grateful for that trust, and we take it very seriously.
During the transformation era, we've deployed about $3 billion, just under, to work in the transformation phase one, just a little over a quarter of a billion—sorry, $1 billion, $1.25 billion, and during phase two, just over $1.5 billion. You say, "Well, where did you put it?" So we broke it here into the 3 basic elements. Acquisition, which is the middle bar. We did a fair amount of it in phase one, more of it in phase two. And then in phase one, we also bought back a significant amount of the company's stock, because the stock was very undervalued, and we believed very strongly in what we were rolling out 10 years ago when we were in a room just like this. We've done some more of it in phase two as well.
On CapEx, I mentioned we were CapEx light, so unless we're doing something huge, like building a big distribution center, that would prevent us from spending a, a disproportionate amount of money on capital. That distribution center will be discussed later in the meeting, so I won't say more here, but I can simply say game changer. In the case of results, I think they speak for themselves. This is phase one in blue and the first three years of phase two.
We've hit an important speed bump in the last two years, and I'll speak directly to that on the next slide, but I want to demonstrate here that the CAGR, the growth rates for the company, pretty much no matter where you look, whether you look at revenue in the upper left, adjusted operating income or in the bars, our margin on the right, the free cash flow of the company with that big asterisk for the distribution center, that's what that green box is, and our adjusted earnings per share. The CAGR has accelerated from our baseline, and we're very outstanding in phase one, and then we accelerate them again in the first three years of phase two.
That said, we did hit a speed bump, and you can see that our revenues have declined in fiscal 2023, and now in fiscal 2024, they're projected to decline to the numbers that you see here on the left in the last two bars, and our earnings have fallen off considerably. It is probably worth noting that the CAGR of all of phase two on the left is nonetheless faster than the CAGR of all of phase one on the left. So that's revenues, and that's including the COVID up and also the post-COVID down and all the external stuff. On the right, it's not the case. On the right, we have had a significant decline. Pegasus is an important intervention in that area, and it lays the groundwork for the next era going forward.
In terms of what those challenges were that caused that decline, I would say it was a combination of internal and external. I think most of you are aware of all of these at the headline level, so I won't go through them in much detail, whether it was supply disruptions, where possession was sort of nine-tenths of the law at the peak of COVID. Cost inflation has touched all shores, weakening consumer demand, especially in durable products, and we've been in a bit of a rolling recession in some of our categories because of that. The retailers, of course, rebalancing accordingly. Capital deployment, we deployed the capital that you saw in the slide before.
I'm very pleased that we made the Osprey acquisition, the Curlsmith acquisition, the buyout of our Revlon license, amended now to 100 years, and further, the building of that warehouse, and yet interest rates rose significantly, and you saw that our interest expense, like a lot of other variable or floating rate companies, spiked up. And with the EPA, there was a concern about our packaging in a couple of categories. So what about the actions? Rather than walk you through all of them, I would simply say, in typical Helen of Troy fashion, we jumped on them hard. So whether, just pick one, the supply chain disruptions, secured the supply despite the shortages and built our own inventory because possession was nine-tenths of the law in those years.
But then, as the retailers adjusted lower left, we rapidly adjusted our supply base, majorly upgraded our supply and demand planning capability under our chief officer, as Jay Caron, and later Noel brought even new tools to this, and then significantly lowered our own inventory. You've seen $ several hundred million come out of our own inventory since then. And on it goes through all of them, and my guess my message is, this is a company that manages in dynamism, it manages through adversity, and it finds way. Pegasus is very important here. You see it dead center, Project Pegasus restructuring plan, and it will be an important driver to our future.
So as I wrap up, I wanna say that I walk off of this stage and ultimately into retirement, as Anne mentioned at the beginning, with tremendous confidence in the team and the plan going forward. And these are the reasons: First of all, the plan, the company itself is proven. You've seen the numbers, and it's been a long time of managing through a lot of change. This company has the ability to not only change but to power through change and come out stronger for it. That track record is meaningful. The targets that you'll see today are ambitious, they're stretching, and yet you heard what happened in the prior Analyst Day. So pretend 10 years later, what will you see? Or in the number of years that Noel and Brian will talk about, what will you see, we believe.
We don't just believe, we believe it'll create significant value, and we further believe it won't just be for our shareholders, but for all the stakeholders that Helen of Troy serves. In terms of the strategic plan, it has just the right combination of continuity and newness. And in each of the areas of continuity, there's also just the right upgrades to each area to bring them to the next level in that same next dynamism. So I love that balance, and it's just right in the company. The senior team, Noel, did an absolutely terrific job of leading the development of the new strategic plan, the workshopping, the inclusion of the right people, and getting this to the plan that you'll see today was extremely well done, as was the Pegasus work.
And as a result, the senior team, which is here today, is not only highly engaged but now fully committed to cascading it throughout the whole organization and being ready to hit the ground running on March first, as she becomes the CEO and as the organization makes year one of the new plan, happen. And that culture, I've already spoken to it, so I won't say more, but secret sauce makes a big difference. Before I hand the clicker back over to Noel, I do want to say a bit about her 'cause she's far too shy to say for herself, but there's some important information here. It was an easy decision to choose Noel as our Chief Operating Officer. She was just the right one, and we didn't just choose the idea of a Chief Operating Officer.
We had the idea of CEO succession in mind for multiple years, as any good company would do, and we further had the idea that we wanted to hire a person who could grow into that. What we did not know is that we would run into those 2 years of decline, and that was sort of an elephant in the room. In fact, it's just what we called it, and Noel sprung into action. Whether it was the envisioning, creation, and now execution of Pegasus and its multiple work streams, getting her arms around the operations of the company, as any good COO would do, and then doing the strategic planning work. She has leapt forward on all of these with excellent aplomb and with a lot of skill, and now brought the organization with her, and we're ready to talk about it going forward.
It was an easy decision for the board. I remember raising my hand to nominate to the board Noel as our next CEO. The decision was instant and unanimous, and we are ready to go forward with that choice. So Noel, I know that's hard to hear all that good stuff, but it's all very well deserved, and I hand the mic back to you.
I forget my Hydro Flask. All right. Thank you, Julien. I really appreciate the foundation that you have built with the team and that we can continue to build upon, as you said. You've led Helen of Troy to deliver strong results during your distinguished 10 years as CEO, and you leave a strong legacy on Helen of Troy's business, organization, and culture. We're now entering a new era designed to create significant value that builds on the foundation established during the transformation era and also leverages new ideas and capabilities. These strategies are designed to help focus more on the most attractive opportunities, take our brand building and our retailer partnerships to the next level, and fully leverage the scale and capability of an empowered but leveraged operating company. Today, we will walk you through the objectives, long-term targets, and strategic choices in that plan.
Before I do that, I want to call out four elements that are foundational ingredients to the plan that excite me about our future potential. First, we have a diversified and well-recognized family of trusted brands with leadership positions across multiple categories and geographies. Importantly, our brands have opportunities to stretch into attractive spaces where we have the right to win. Our mission is to unlock their full potential. Our strong portfolio of brands was one of the things that most attracted me to join Helen of Troy. My household relies on Hydro Flask and PUR for our hydration needs. My kitchen drawers and cabinets are full of OXO classics, like the salad spinner and angled measuring cups, and I love all things Curlsmith for my curly hair. Second, we have generated new fuel from Project Pegasus to invest in growth opportunities and capabilities.
This will enable us to invest so we can grow the business, particularly our brands, with precision marketing and further product innovation. This is crucial because I believe we're underinvesting today. Third, we are positioned to fully leverage our operational and organizational scale and assets. Two areas I'm particularly excited about include fully embracing our new operating model that unlocks more focus and more centralized expertise than where Helen of Troy was during the phase two of the transformation. I'm also excited about the leveraging of our new state-of-the-art Tennessee distribution center that is now operational and brings tremendous new scale and capability that will set us up for years to come. You will hear and see more about that today. And finally, and most importantly, I'm excited to continue partnering with our talented and passionate people and building on the strong culture that Julien talked about.
We have an outstanding worldwide organization who are passionate about our purpose, our brands, and our values, and of course, passionate about winning. Before I introduce the strategic plan, I want to share the foundation that we're building on. Our purpose, vision, and values are timeless and represent the essence of Helen of Troy. Our purpose fuels everything we do. Our brands elevate lives in moments that matter everywhere, every day.
Whether it's the parent of a sick child seeking an accurate temperature read with a Braun ear thermometer, or providing comfort with a Vicks humidifier, or a mom or a dad seeking convenience and excellence when preparing a meal for the family with OXO tools, or outdoor enthusiasts confident to hit the trail with all the right comfort and tools with Osprey and Hydro Flask, and finally, women preparing to look and feel their best every day with our Revlon Hot Tools, Drybar, and Curlsmith products. We are driven each and every day to steward Helen of Troy's exceptional portfolio of brands to elevate lives in those moments that matter. Our vision for the future is to continue curating and building on our family of highly trusted brands that delight consumers in their everyday lives. And finally, our values explain what we believe and how we operate.
Our Helen of Troy associates worldwide operate with a core set of five values that we call I-RISE: In touch, mutual Respect, Ingenuity, Shared success, and Exceptional people. One area that stood out to me since joining Helen of Troy is how motivated our associates are by our purpose, vision, and values. It's really more than just the words on the page. Let me share a quick video that illustrates what it's all about.
Dear Helen of Troy, I just have to tell your company thank you. This thermometer helped save my daughter's life. She battled rheumatic fever, and this helped us get through it. I had to take her temperature every 30 minutes for months, and with COVID shutting down surgical centers, this helped us monitor her fevers she burned every week while she waited for them to reopen. Thank you. You helped save my daughter's life. Sincerely, Robin Gore.
It's powerful. I hope you enjoyed this short clip that really helps bring our purpose to life. Related to our purpose, vision, and values is our commitment to the environment and society. It's part of the very fabric of the company. We recently published our third annual ESG report. A big thank you goes to Janice Lau, our Global Vice President of ESG, who is here today and will be available during the innovation showcase for those who wish to learn more. I'll walk through the key pillars of our ESG commitment. Our ESG strategy focuses on three areas. First, embed ESG into our business. A few examples include Hydro Flask Parks for All, Osprey's Factory Code of Conduct, and OXO's participation in 1% for the Planet . Let's play a short video so you can learn some more about these programs.
We might look like we're chasing adrenaline, but we're learning to see obstacles as opportunities. What might appear to be aimless wandering, it's really the first steps towards greater heights. These are the spaces where we play, where we gather, where we stretch beyond our comfort zones, where we lose ourselves and find ourselves anew. Which is why Hydro Flask started Parks for All, and why we've invested $millions into creating, maintaining, and increasing access to outdoor spaces around the world. Because it isn't just parks for all, it's wellness, equity, growth, connection, joy, and a thriving planet for all.
As a designer and a manufacturer, it's our responsibility to look at how we make product. Many times, how you do something is just as important as what you do. How we make the product, how we treat the whole supply chain, from labor to the actual end consumer that gets the product, is critical. So we have put in a world-class factory code of conduct. This code of conduct talks about appropriate minimum wage for the countries they're in, maximum workweek, health and safety, the right to unionize or gather together, and we have a third-party auditor called WeEthic that goes around to make sure that the code of conduct is being adhered to. And that's just as important as the quality of the product you make is how you treat the people in the supply chain.
The future of the planet is in our hands. What if you could help increase organic farming just by peeling a potato? What if you could help build community parks simply by making dinner? Through OXO's partnership with 1% for the Planet , we're donating 1% of our annual sales to support environmental nonprofits. So the power to protect, grow, and help is in our hands.
As you saw, these three programs exemplify how ESG is embedded in our business. Our second strategy is engaging our people and our people and our communities. Across our company, we have associate community volunteer days to encourage our associates to engage with the communities where they work, live, and source. In addition, we proudly offer each associate two paid charitable leave days annually. As part of this program, we empower our associates to choose the charitable organization that they feel strongly about supporting. Here are just a few pictures of the invaluable work our associates do through this program. Finally, our third strategy is to enhance our products and brands. For example, our OXO Outdoor Campground French Press features a carafe made from 50% certified recycled content.
Osprey holds the prestigious Blues ign Approved status for the main body fabric on 95% of our fall 2023 season portfolio. This means that we meet strict ecological and toxicological requirements. Now, let me transition to talking about our new strategic plan. We call it Elevate for Growth. We thought about this plan as a 6-year time horizon, taking us out to fiscal 2030. The plan is ambitious, yet long-term in nature. We have achievable objectives, long-term targets, and a compelling and clear set of Where to Play and How to Win strategic choices that will guide us. Here's the leadership team who will be stewarding the company into the Elevate for Growth era. This group came together as an integrated and aligned team to build this strategy. We are all hands on deck and energized for a great future.
Please indulge me for a few minutes to brag on this team. We have a hugely talented group of leaders with a great balance of experience, continuity at Helen of Troy, some fresh perspective, and diverse skills and styles. To illustrate that balance. You'll see an orange circle around the team members who are new to the company or to the global leadership team in the last two years. I'm very proud to lead this terrific team, working collaboratively to bring out the best in each one of us. We are energized to elevate Helen of Troy to the next level of performance together with our global associates.
Our plan has the following targets: 3%-4% average annual net sales growth, 30-40 basis points of average annual Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, 10% or greater average annual adjusted EPS growth, and I think you won't be upset to hear that we're shooting for more internally. We are asking ourselves the question, what will it take to get to $3 billion in net sales, 300 basis points in adjusted operating margin growth, and $20 of adjusted EPS, all by fiscal 2030? Brian will share more details on the financials and our planned algorithm later in the presentation. As part of our strategic plan, we set out to deliver for all of our stakeholders. We defined an objective for all five of them as follows: The consumer, earn the consumer's vote.
We want to be, we want to be there for her as their first choice and their repeat choice. Associates, we want to be an employer of choice, one that our employees are proud to work for and would recommend to others. For our customers, we want to be a partner of choice for our retail customers. We want to create win-wins together. Communities, be a respected supporter and member of our communities, and this is defined as where we live, work, and source. And finally, our shareholders, deliver exceptional shareholder returns. It's the natural outcome of meeting the other four objectives. These objectives become our North Stars. By delivering on our ambitions and goals, we believe we will create strong value for all five of the stakeholders. So I'll now transition to the strategic choices that underlie this plan.
We have worked collaboratively as a team to develop a clear and compelling strategy comprised of Where to Play and How to Win choices, and we will walk through each now. We'll start with our four Where to Play choices. First off, is shape and invest in a growth portfolio. Now, I won't go through this slide in depth, but I do want to call out that we are very fortunate to have fantastic brands with strong leadership positions across many geographies and many segments, brands that have delivered very strong growth for us. So we have assessed our portfolio using timeless criteria. This allows us to identify the brands that are most financially attractive and have the greatest growth potential. This assessment will enable us to focus and prioritize how we allocate our resources.
Our approach is to disproportionately fund those opportunities that we think are most attractive, leveraging the following four criteria for each brand. Are they a differentiated marketing leader? Is there growth potential in core and in adjacent categories? Do they have higher margins than the fleet average, and are they asset efficient? This is foundational. Julien talked about these as the foundation of the pillar. So doing so produces our new brand portfolio classification. It's comprised of three categories. The first is Invest to Grow, our fastest-growing, most financially attractive brands. We expect to resource these brands so that they can grow faster than the category. Our second is Stronghold, our next tier of stable and growing brands. We expect to resource these brands so that they perform at least in line with the category. And third, Optimize, our tier of brands where we're assessing future action.
These brands may be a good source of cash if we can sustain our position with minimal resources, or we may be able to improve the financials through Design-to-value initiatives or margin-accretive innovation. But there's also another path. We may, as we've done in the past, consider assets for divestiture. The 2021 personal care divestiture is a key example of making a choice just like that. Zooming out, this portfolio prioritization is particularly critical right now as we look to reinvest back in the business. We're leveraging the incremental fuel generated by Project Pegasus with the brand portfolio classification to enable us to focus our investment on the most attractive opportunities. This allows that incremental funding to have a double benefit, more funding, but also more focused on the best opportunities and even further enabled with new ROI analytic capabilities that I'll touch on later.
This is a big moment for our brands, especially our Invest to Grow brands. We are looking to supercharge organic revenue growth in a way we haven't been able to before, leveraging the fuel from Project Pegasus. We will refresh the classification regularly as we make resource allocation decisions, taking into account the landscape, our market position, and any other changes that might impact a brand's margins or potential. Importantly, we want to remain agile as needed. This classification and the incremental funding are an important difference in Elevate for Growth that we believe will enable more and accelerated growth. Our second Where to Play choice is win with winning customers. Creating the North America Regional Market Organization, or the North American RMO, was one of the biggest choices in the organizational work stream of Project Pegasus.
We did this to build new and scaled sales capability, like joint business planning, and to identify opportunities for new growth via distribution in existing and new customers. North America sales teams now see across the full company portfolio versus only a portion. This means they can identify opportunities to leverage our scale and elevate our partnership with key customers. Ron Anderskow, our President of the North America RMO, has worked to prioritize the opportunities and retailers so that we disproportionately resource and prioritize the bigg est and most attractive opportunities. Let me invite Ron to join me to share an example of what he and his team are achieving.
Thanks, Noel. Good morning. My name is Ron Anderskow, and I lead the Helen of Troy North America Regional Market Organization. Prior to this role, I was the president of our global beauty business for the previous five years at Helen of Troy. Before joining Helen of Troy, I held various leadership positions at Procter & Gamble and OPI Products for over 30 years. This is a brand-new organization, started up in January 2023, to leverage the scale of our dynamic brand portfolio across all North American customers, with a dedicated focus on our top customers. This reapplies the proven concept we've been using internationally. I'm excited to share with you today an example of how my team is bringing to life our strategic choice to win with winning customers. Our framework to win with winning customers centers around customer joint business planning.
This is a holistic business planning approach that focuses on aligning our strategies with our customers' strategies. This partnership and alignment is proven to deliver superior business results for both parties. While the concept is universal, and we love all of our customers, we focus on implementing this approach with our very largest winning customers to ensure that we are capturing the largest growth potential. Now, let me share with you four examples of how this comes to life in the marketplace with one of our very largest retailers, Walmart. Our first example illustrates how we partnered with Walmart to deliver the right value to their key shopper. To start, we leveraged our shopper insight expertise to understand who their prime prospect was and how we could deliver on their value needs. We then aligned our top brands and the segments within those brands to Walmart's key prime prospect.
In this example, using Revlon Smooth Stay Hair Appliances, we partnered with Walmart to drive the right distribution and the right shelf placement to reach that key value shopper. This brand's attractive price point and high-quality performance meets this need extremely well. The result has been positive growth in the marketplace. The second example illustrates how we're partnering with Walmart to bring the right assortment of our winning brands to their shopper. The pandemic changed the way that the consumer shops. There's been a surge in the consumer preference for trusted brands, and consumers are shifting to stores closer to home for one-stop shopping. Based on these shopper needs, we believe that OXO would be a natural fit for Walmart as a very meaningful shopper destination. Earlier this year, we initiated an in-store test of our OXO SoftWorks line with them in store.
I'm very happy to report that Walmart and the OXO brand are very pleased with the initial results of this test. The third example that I'd like to share focuses on co-creating customer-specific innovation for our brands. In this example, we partnered with Walmart to expand one of their exclusive partnerships, Beautiful by Drew Barrymore, to a new category within their store. Specifically, we created a Beautiful by PUR collection, which combines PUR's strong brand equity and performance heritage with Beautiful by Drew Barrymore. Multiple SKUs and in-store displays were created to drive brand awareness and help bring in more shoppers into the Walmart stores and also into the PUR brand. Finally, this fourth example of customer joint business planning with Walmart involved aligning and optimizing key Vicks seasonal products and inventory levels.
In the seasonal cough and cold category, it's critical to ensure that their shoppers can always find the right Vicks product when illness hits. This is a challenging balance between having enough inventory to meet the shopper's need without running out of stock, yet also helping Walmart avoid having excess product. Our team has strategically aligned with them to create customized displays targeted to specific stores to maximize in-stock availability of Vicks for their shopper. This joint business planning approach drives the top-line revenue for Walmart, while the customization and the targeting minimizes both out-of-stock or excess stock situations. Again, this ultimately means win-win, more profits for both sides. I hope that you can see how the North American Regional Marketing Organization is bringing to life our choice to win with winning customers.
Thank you, Ron, and to the North America RMO team, who is energized and excited to be a driver of growth. Now on to our third Where to Play choice, strategically grow international. In the first half of fiscal 2024, about 22.5% of our total company revenue was from outside North America. That is up from just over 20% for the same period a year ago. While we have seen growth in our international sales, we see this as an opportunity to accelerate the growth. Like we have done with our brand portfolio, we have prioritized brand market combinations where we see high market attractiveness using criteria like size, growth potential, profitability, and ease of doing business. We've also looked at a strong ability for us to win using criteria like current market position, competitive intensity, strong internal or distributor relationships.
This enables our international RMO team to focus on the most attractive opportunities first. We will disproportionately resource these highest potential and most financially attractive brand and market combinations to build our scale and momentum. We have also identified the next tier of attractive market and brand opportunities. In those cases, we are evaluating our go-to-market partnerships to identify scaled partners so that we are set up for success to unlock these additional opportunities. Like the brand classifications, we will refresh the assessment regularly to identify which new opportunities we are ready to pursue and then allocate our resources accordingly. It's important to note, we will also continue to look to grow our international presence through acquisition. Osprey is a great example of this.
With 50% of sales outside of the U.S., it offered great additional scale in many markets and is opening up opportunities for us for Hydro Flask. Osprey performance internationally continues to be strong. This is a great segue into our fourth Where to Play choice: continue Better Together M&A. Helen of Troy has a strong track record of cultivating and acquiring attractive assets. We built our outdoor vector with Hydro Flask and Osprey and broadened into prestige beauty, including high margin and growing liquids with Drybar and Curlsmith. These are now some of our most known and highest growth potential brands in our portfolio. We will continue this winning M&A approach in Elevate for Growth. Specifically, we will continue the string-of-pearls strategy, looking for brands that complement our portfolio. We will also look, continue to look for opportunities that are better together. What does this mean?
It means better for both Helen of Troy and better for the acquired brand. Better for Helen of Troy means that the asset is accretive to our fleet average, has growth potential, and complements our portfolio and capabilities. Better for the acquired brand means Helen of Troy can bring value and scale to enable more or faster growth and efficiency. This concludes our Where to Play choices. Now we'll move to How to Win. We've identified seven How to Win choices as part of Elevate for Growth. I will walk through each of them now. Our first How to Win choice is be consumer-obsessed. As a consumer products company, this is likely expected, but our intention is to elevate our consumer centricity, taking it to the next level, to a true consumer obsession.
As a reminder, another important choice we made in the organizational work stream of Project Pegasus is that we focused our business units on delighting consumers through developing strong brands and activating with brilliant innovation and marketing. This focus is an important enabler of being consumer-obsessed. So now let's dig further into consumer obsession. I'll start with what consumer-obsessed means for our people. I just talked about the BU teams focusing on consumers and brands, but this choice extends this consumer obsession to traditionally non-consumer-facing functions as well. We will do this by bringing the consumer into our company meetings, expecting everyone to do regular store visits, among other activities, so that they're closer to our consumer on a day-to-day basis. In other words, delighting our consumer is everyone's job. Importantly, I've also added a new member to the global leadership team, Chris Osner-Hackett .
He joined us about a month ago as our Global Chief Marketing Officer. He has over 25 years in the industry building capability and driving outstanding results. His remit is to build excellence and standardization in our approach to brand building, including championing deep consumer understanding, stewarding our Helen of Troy brand building framework, and improving our marketing activation excellence and measurement, all of this to build even stronger brands to delight consumers. Now, moving on to tools. We are in the process of sharpening our brand equities to ensure they're clear, distinctive, and inspiring. From this, we can develop end-to-end consumer journeys so that we can identify when and where our core growth consumers are most receptive to our brands.
We will also embrace marketing mix modeling and real-time performance data so that we can better Optimize our spend across the portfolio and across tactics in a more agile manner. Finally, we'll deploy new tools for social listening and mining ratings and reviews to unlock consumer insights. As a result of this, we believe we can build stronger brands through brand advocacy, market share gains, and improved return on investment on our commercial spend. When you get all this right, you develop brands and products that create passionate brand advocates. I would like to play a montage video to share some authentic examples direct from our consu mers on social media.
... Spoiler alert! I really liked it. It turned out to be really good.
Consumers like these are obsessed with our products because we're obsessed with delighting consumers.
If you're into making your own pizza crust or pie crust at home, you need this silicone dough rolling bag. I'm telling you, it makes your life so easy.
At Helen of Troy, we start with the consumer in mind in all that we do, listening to their needs and designing products to make their lives better.
Do you ever buy something, and you're just pissed that you didn't invent it first? That's exactly how I feel about this. This is a cutting board with two containers that are modular and fit inside.
Consumers are why we make all our products with care and precision, and why we take such pride that our well-recognized family of brands are widely trusted. We've been earning the consumer's vote for more than half a century.
I love OXO products, as you well know, if you've watched any of my other reviews. I don't know how many OXO products are in my kitchen, and these are now one of my most favorite things in my kitchen.
Whether the product is for outdoors-
The handle is perfect for walks.
... At home.
This thing's awesome.
Or for Beauty and Wellness.
This stuff is amazing for a blowout.
Consumers know they can always count on our brands for innovation and quality at a competitive price.
Fastest chopping of vegetables I've ever done in my life. Super happy!
Yes, we're obsessed with consumers, and the feeling is mutual.
Guys, this is literally the best thing I've ever got, so go order it, go buy it, go look at it. Just go.
Makes me smile every time. There's nothing better than hearing directly from your consumers, especially when they love your products. Our second How to Win choice is focused on strategically extending our brands to drive growth. Many of Helen of Troy brands have this kind of stretch potential. The key to successful brand extension is identifying attractive adjacencies with strong growth potential, where our brand has a strong right to win. Let's define right to win. We see right to win as ensuring that at least one of our brand's points of difference both matters to the consumer and meets a consumer need in that new adjacency. This means that we have a transferable point of difference that we believe will drive sustainable growth. To enable success, it is also important to assess the category dynamics to identify what capabilities and investment it will take to be successful.
Let me share a few quick examples where we believe we have done this well. I'll start with Braun. Internationally, we have extended Braun from thermometers into other at-home diagnostics like pulse oximeters and blood pressure monitors. These adjacencies leverage Braun's point of difference in precision into an attractive adjacent category, giving us a strong right to win. We also had the capabilities needed to win. In fact, the additional range helped us build strong brand blocks and scale in European pharmacies. Osprey's extension into travel is another great example. We're pushing deeper into the adjacent and attractive travel category, leveraging Osprey's technical prowess in carry, fit, durability, and use of sustainable materials, all points of difference that resonate with travel consumers. In doing so, we believe we can continue to drive strong incremental growth.
Finally, in our beauty portfolio, we recently extended the Hot Tools brand into liquids. The extension leverages the powerful consumer insight around the love-hate relationship women have with heat. Women know that heat helps to style their hair via the tools, but they also fear that the heat causes damage to their hair. Hot Tools, an expert in heated styling, addresses this insight with a line of liquids designed to protect the hair from heat. We're seeing this product line perform well at Ulta. Now, let me invite Larry Witt, our President, Home & Outdoor, to share one of our strongest examples with OXO. Larry has been a leader of this brand for several years and has been personally involved in many of these successful extensions. Larry?
Thank you, Noel. Good afternoon. Almost good afternoon. I think we're still good morning, seven minutes to go. I have been part of Helen of Troy since 2004, with Helen of Troy since 2004, with OXO since 1994, and I will celebrate my 30th year with OXO and my 20th year with Helen of Troy next year. Thanks. I, by the way, have been leading the Home and Outdoor division now since 2017. Time flies. When we think about strategically extending our brands across our portfolio, we look towards OXO as our North Star. OXO has been successfully extending into new categories for decades. If you don't know the history of OXO, it all started with a carrot peeler, this simple little thing.
The founder, Sam Farber, set out to create kitchen tools that would be more comfortable for users like his wife, Betsy, who had arthritis. Over the past few decades, OXO has extended beyond just kitchen tools and gadgets, which has fueled the growth of the brand. We extended into multiple new categories such as food storage, Tot, kitchen and bathroom organization, cleaning, and most recently, outdoors. Today, OXO has over 1,200 unique products across 20 different categories. Let's talk about our newest entry, Outdoor. Like all our extensions, this one also started with numerous consumer insights. The lines between inside and outside the home have been blurring for decades. The addition of outdoor kitchens remains a growing trend, while car camping, glamping, RV, and van life further extend the concept of home.
Our team of marketers, engineers, and industrial designers worked collaboratively to uncover meaningful, unmet consumer needs and then set out to design and engineer rugged, high-performance solutions. We launched a line in partnership with REI in the summer of 2021, and in just the last two years, we designed over 40 unique tools. OXO moving into cleaning and bath was fueled by learnings in kitchen sinkware and kitchen organization. When we looked at the needs of consumers outside of the kitchen, we saw a similar need for thoughtfully designed products in other rooms of the home. We studied how people clean their showers, their floors, and yes, even their toilets. We observed how they organized their kitchen, their cleaning closets, as well as their under sink cabinets.
We even gained insight to the difficulty of installing shower caddies, leading to design solutions, extending the brand into new rooms in the home and new aisles in the store. One last example I will touch on is OXO Tot. This line focuses on toddlers. We recognize that most infant and toddler products created added levels of stress and frustration for new parents. We set out to solve these pain points across a wide range of products related to bath time, feeding, meal prep, and cleanup, as well as on-the-go, through thoughtfully designed products that are highly functional, safe for both parents and children alike. These are just a few examples to illustrate our way of working at OXO, and this same approach to consumer-obsessed innovation is practiced across all of Home and Outdoor segment, as well as Beauty and Wellness.
We are always looking for new places to play, where unmet consumer needs provide the opportunity for us to design and engineer solutions with winning points of difference, and doing so allows us to strategically expand our brands to deliver against our business, customer, and consumer objectives. To close, I'll share a brief video that captures this, as well as OXO's history of innovation and award-winning product design.
This is a story about OXO, a brand committed to making every day better. It involves people, curious people, problem solvers. At OXO, better always starts with an idea, and they know an idea is only as good as what you do with it. They look at things from every angle. They challenge convention. They test and they test. Then they bring the idea to life and into homes everywhere. Over time, OXO explored new ways to solve familiar problems. Some ideas stuck. Some ideas had them jumping out of bed in the morning. Some changed the game and people's perspective.
Yes!
In those moments, lightning struck, and that's what kept them going. Looking ahead, thinking and rethinking. And making better decisions for a more sustainable future. So how does this story end? Here's the thing about a brand obsessed with making things better. It doesn't end. It's just getting started.
Thank you. I'm going to hand it back to Noel. Thank you.
Thank you, Larry, and I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Larry and the team for the numerous awards OXO has received extending into new categories. What a remarkable brand! The third How to Win choice has two components: be and win where the shopper shops. Let me break this down. Be where the shopper shops is all about distribution. It may sound obvious, but we have to be on shelf, whether physical or virtual, where our shopper is shopping. Win where the shopper shops means that once we're there, we must execute brilliantly to earn the purchase. Being where the shopper shops is all about distribution, whether on the physical or virtual shelf. This is a key objective for the North America RMO. That growth can come in two differ ent ways.
We can expand distribution across more of our portfolio in existing customers, or expand distribution in new customers where the category may be developed, but our Helen of Troy brands aren't currently playing. We've gone through a rigorous process to understand the opportunity across channels, customers, and our portfolio of brands, as you can see here. Our categories are down the left side and the channels across the top. This enables us to identify the white space and then mobilize a plan to get after it. We have already seen some success stories, including PUR in the value channel and OXO in Mass and Club. We also expect further wins in the coming months in channels like hardware and department stores across several of our brands. Once we are in distribution, we have to execute with excellence. This is the win where the shopper shops.
Winning execution means great shelf presence, strong merchandising and display, great in-store education to drive interest and trial. Here are a few examples. You see great displays with our colorways on Hydro Flask, strong shelf presence on Osprey with a variety of packs for all shapes, sizes, and needs. Drybar and Curlsmith displays, including in-store trainers who help educate retailer personnel so that they can recommend the right products and answer shopper questions. And finally, OXO displays in a prominent UK department store that show the array of options to help shoppers relish in the joy of cooking. When it comes to e-commerce, our ambition is to go from good to great. The key ingredients are A+ content scores across the portfolio, the right assortment, Optimized search and media across platforms, and finally, strong participation in the big events, for example, Prime Day.
Our fourth How to Win choice is fully leverage operational scale and assets. This pertains to both our assets, like our Tennessee Distribution Center, but also in how we work. As Julien mentioned in his remarks, through the organizational work stream of Project Pegasus, we embrace the next level of centralization in fiscal 2024. We want to fully embrace and leverage our new operating model that enables our business units to 100% focus on delighting consumers with our brands and innovation, our regional market organizations to focus on unlocking new and bigger opportunities in our markets and with our retail partners, and finally, our centralized global shared services to bring scaled excellence to enable success in all that we do. This enables us to be an empowered but leveraged operating company. We expect to see continued benefits from our new organizational structure.
In addition to this, we want to leverage our assets fully. As a prime example, we invested in a new state-of-the-art distribution center in Tennessee, as many of you know. To share more about this incredible facility, I'd like to invite Jay Caron, our Global Chief of Operations, to tell you more.
Thanks, Noel. It's great to be here with you today. I've been with the company for seven years now and have over 30 years of transformational leadership experience in consumer goods, operations, and supply chain. I've been fortunate to have worked for names like Sony, Newell, Duracell, Gillette, Dorel Industries, and most recently with the Thule Group out of Sweden. In my career, I've had direct leadership roles with every facet of operations and supply chain, and I've led multiple strategic sourcing efforts, acquisition integrations, ERP implementations around the globe. Today, I'm excited to share insights on how we will fully leverage our operational scale and assets. As Noel mentioned, we opened our new state-of-the-art Tennessee distribution center in March of this year. We're on track to scale all automation solutions by the end of FY 2024.
We affectionately call it the Iron Giant, and I want to give you a quick look at the build process. We're very proud of the Iron Giant for several reasons. We have already enabled consolidation of 5 distribution locations in the network, and the 2 million sq ft facility is sized to meet our ambitious growth plans. The Gartner leading technologies are built for plug-and-play acquisition integration, allowing us to quickly and easily leverage our scale to improve acquisition margins. The automation solutions deployed are agile, allowing us to quickly flex to meet spike demands across all of our distribution channels without a heavy reliance upon labor. From Cyber Monday, direct-to-consumer spikes to Prime Day business-to-business builds, our solutions are designed to respond with automation, not temp labor. The cutting-edge automation is modular and scalable, providing future-proof expansion capabilities, allowing us to tailor fit the operation around our growth.
Finally, the project has been awarded LEED Silver Certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, the most widely used green building rating system in the world and an international symbol of sustainability excellence. We don't have time today to show you each of the supported distribution channels, but we do have a video that shows our direct-to-consumer capabilities by taking you through the consumer journey from the product order to order delivery. As with everything that we do, our work starts and ends with the consumer.
Let . Thank you.
Thank you, Jay. The capability and scale of Iron Giant is truly cutting edge. It's, it's a real wow! Our fifth How to Win choice focuses on embracing next-level data and analytics to enable enhanced productivity and visibility across the enterprise. This strategy stretches across all corners of Helen of Troy, enabling some of the earlier choices we spoke about, including bringing data to power business and financial forecasting and analysis, tools to gather and synthesize consumer insights, and analyses to drive marketing spend optimization. As a few examples, we're investing in enhanced marketing mix modeling capabilities to Optimize the ROI of our marketing investment across the portfolio and within each brand's strategic choices. We're developing dashboards across sales and operations to put data at our associates' fingertips. This will enable faster decision-making.
We will also further leverage the first-party data we have from our opt-in consumers to ensure we are leveraging it for rich insights and look-alike targeting within our digital activation. I'll double-click now on a marketing activation example from Curlsmith, our most recent acquisition, to show how our data-driven approach to audience targeting helps us reach the most qualified audiences throughout their journey. Let's start with awareness. We size the growth audience on Curlsmith and then seek them at scale by leveraging not only our first-party data, but also seeking to scale them, leveraging second- and third-party data. Now on to consideration. As consumers interact with any of our ads, we can begin to capture interest and where they are in their journey, so we serve the right content, fit for the moment and fit for the platform that they are in. Then on to conversion.
As they get closer to purchase in their journey, we ensure we reach them with shoppable ad units so that they can buy now. And finally, retention. We leverage first-party data to retain them as brand advocates with new product offers, subscribe and save, and repurchase reminders. Ultimately, this leads to greater brand advocacy, which results in higher conversion, greater retention, and increased repurchase rates. Curlsmith is delivering significant point-of-sale growth and is a strong example in our portfolio of the success we can realize with a data-driven approach to marketing. As part of our next level brand building work and embracing next level data and analytics, we will scale this approach more broadly across the portfolio. Our sixth How to Win choice is focusing on strengthening our end-to-end M&A capabilities. As outlined in our Where to Play choice, we will continue with our M&A string-of-pearls strategy.
This choice is all about strengthening our end-to-end capabilities, so we continuously learn to become best-in-class acquirers and integrators. While each process is unique, there are certain steps and certain capabilities that stretch across them. We believe we have an opportunity to continuously improve across the process. For example, in the strategy phase, we plan to conduct data-driven analyses to scan and prioritize potential new attractive categories that meet our better together criteria. In doing so, we'll continue to take a proactive approach to target identification, cultivating relationships with businesses we feel could be a good fit. This will help increase the likelihood that we're the buyer of choice. In the deal-making and integration phases, we'll work to build more institutional knowledge and capability through M&A playbooks and all of these things to drive continuous improvement. Our seventh and final How to Win strategy is perhaps our most important.
We need highly engaged people to be successful, so it's critical that we foster a winning culture. We have a great foundation to build on with our I-RISE values that I spoke to earlier and other foundational Helen of Troy culture initiatives. As part of Elevate for Growth, we want to take those tools to the next level. To do so, we identified new leadership behaviors needed to succeed in the Elevate for Growth era. First, be accountable. We want all associates to be outcome-focused, fully owning their delivery on the expectations that are set. Second, embrace agility. We want all associates to be curious, nimble, and able to adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace dynamics. Third, accelerate growth. The Elevate for Growth plan is all about growth, so we want our team to stretch and take calculated risks to deliver against our ambitious targets. And finally, take action.
We want our associates to be empowered to move forward and drive outcomes. To further enable these behaviors, we'll build additional training programs and invest in coaching resources to drive the change, and the GLT will lead by example from the top, living the I-RISE values and these four A's each and every day. Now, to wrap up our strategic choices, I'll close with what Elevate means for some of our associates.
To me, Elevate means it's time to rise up.
Elevate means creating change that brings positive, heightened results.
Elevate, to me, means reaching new heights together, accomplishing new goals with your team, learning new things together.
That relentless and constant pursuit for greatness, while also having the discipline to push past good to get there.
To me, Elevate means going above and beyond. It's going to the next level and pushing past your rivals. It's leveling up. It's getting to a higher plane.
To me, Elevate means going above and beyond, delivering more than what someone expects you to do.
Elevate means your focus is really taking good to better and better to best.
Couldn't have said it better myself. This concludes the review of the four Where to Play and seven How to Win strategies. We believe they represent continuity with some foundational strategies that have been successful for Helen of Troy in the past, but also importantly, bring some new ideas that will be critical to our success in the next era. Furthermore, we believe the choices are mutually reinforcing in a way that will help us deliver on our ambition. We also believe that the strategy has the right elements that will start the flywheel turning again. I touched on many of them, including our approach to drive growth through our portfolio strategy and incremental investment, and the advantages of our new structure and capabilities.
Brian will elaborate further on the other accelerators for our next level flywheel. Speaking of Brian, before he gets started, let me take a moment to again welcome him back to Helen of Troy. We shared in our Q2 earnings that the company and Brian have reached an agreement for him to stay on as our CFO. Many of you know Brian from his 15-year career at Helen of Troy, 7 of those as CFO. After retiring from the company in 2021, he came back as our CFO on an interim basis last April. I'm delighted Brian will remain on a more permanent basis to partner with me now and when I assume the CEO position next fiscal year. He's a terrific partner to me and the GLT. He brings strategic thinking, public company CFO experience, and deep company background and continuity. Brian, the floor is yours.
He's coming from the other side. That's not the way we practiced. Keeping me on my toes already.
Bio break. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you, Noel, for the kind introduction. Good to see some familiar faces. I gotta tell you, I didn't see this coming. When I came back in the interim role about seven months ago, the leadership team was already planning for this Investor Day, and I thought, "Oh, I'll be back in retirement by the time that occurs, so one less thing for me to worry about." I guess I was wrong about that, but I'm excited to be back with a clear opportunity to create significant shareholder value. With that, let's turn to the agenda for my remarks. I wanna give you some perspective on fiscal 2024 year-to-date performance and outlook. Next, I'll take a step back and review highlights of phase two of the transformation.
Then I'll lay out our vision for what we think is possible in Elevate for Growth. Finally, I hope to illustrate why Helen of Troy is poised to create next-level shareholder value. Let me start with a recap of the Q2 of fiscal 2024. I'm never satisfied with the year-over-year decline, but I believe Q2 revenue performance is a step in the right direction as we navigate post-COVID normalization and the pressured consumer environment. Just a reminder that the fiscal 2024 year-over-year comparison includes a full year drag of approximately 3.4% from the bankruptcy of Bed Bath & Beyond and our SKU rationalization efforts. If you were to make an adjustment for those one-time items, 2-year growth would be closer to 7% or 8%. We think this is a good start as we look to resume year-over-year growth.
Moving to cash generation, we are pleased with our free cash flow improvement ahead of revenue and earnings growth. Significant inventory and other working capital improvements have us back on track. Further inventory upside and a return to normalized CapEx spending provide opportunity for continued improvement in fiscal 2025 and beyond. We see signs of stabilization and underlying strength in our business. Starting on the left, we've begun to reestablish a track record of top and bottom line performance in line with expectations, not easy in this environment. Looking at the right-hand side, we are also improving underlying fundamentals with significant gross margin expansion and free cash flow growth. Now, looking at our recent performance on a trailing twelve-month basis, we believe key metrics show improving fundamentals and signal an inflection point. Gross margin improvement has been strong, with further expansion expected in fiscal 2025 and 2026.
We've been able to maintain Adjusted EBITDA margin despite lower leverage and a year-over-year incentive comp increase of over 80 basis points as we reinstate expense at target levels. We expect to expand EBITDA margin in the second half of fiscal 2024 as we realize the benefits of lower costs and our revenue trajectory improves. Free cash flow is back on track, and we expect fiscal 2024 to be a platform for continued improvement. And finally, we believe our double-digit free cash flow yield compares favorably to our peer set. Just wanted to take a moment to fully frame up recent changes from our our restructuring plan and our asset optimization initiatives. There's a lot here, but I'll just talk through the highlights. Let's start with restructuring on the left.
We've lowered our total estimated restructuring charges by $25 million-$30 million, while including the geographic consolidation of the U.S. beauty business in the plan. Taking a step back to look at Project Pegasus as a whole, its breadth and significance is substantial. We think it'll be a game changer in terms of fueling investment and accelerating growth. On the asset optimization side, to the right, we sold our El Paso, Texas, office and distribution facility for $51 million after the end of the Q2, and we expect to recognize a gain of $34 million in the Q3. As a result of these two actions, we've significantly narrowed the delta between GAAP and non-GAAP EPS to less than $2. As we discussed during Q2 earnings, we honed our outlook for the second half of fiscal 2024.
We maintained our full year outlook, but shifted revenue and earnings from Q3 to Q4. This reflects greater visibility on the puts and takes under our control, which include distribution gains layering in more fully in Q4 and an isolated supply pinch expected to hurt Q3, but should benefit Q4. It also factors in the visibility from certain key retailer expectations, which includes cautious ordering patterns in the short term, as certain retailers factor in student debt loan impact and manage their year-end inventory levels. Because retail inventory is generally at low levels, we expect Q4 ordering patterns more in line with the first half of the fiscal year....
We also called out the drivers of our expected second half performance: club channel phasing, better supply on key products with high demand, distribution gains set for the second half, and the full weight of new product launches during fiscal 2024. We expect the most Adjusted EPS improvement in Q3, which lines up well with the ease of the prior year comparison. We expect the most net sales improvement in Q4, which also aligns with the prior year comparison. Taking a step back, we thought it'd be helpful to review some highlights from the past five years and leave you with some takeaways as to why we think we're set up for success going forward. We are not satisfied with our recent year-over-year performance, but we are pleased with our overall Phase Two results.
Core business revenue is expected to end Phase Two with a 6.6% CAGR through a combination of organic and acquisition growth. As a reminder, our core business measures remove the impact of divested business from all relevant periods. Significant gross margin expansion in Phase Two, with the bulk of it coming from recent improvements, and we expect continued expansion going forward. We expect EBITDA margin expansion of 100 basis points despite significant recent macro headwinds. And finally, we expect a core business adjusted EPS CAGR of 4.4% through a period of extraordinary disruption. This is not how we originally wanted to end Phase Two, but this represents solid performance considering the environment. Our adjusted profit measures are back on track with high conversion ratios to cash. And when you line up our cash conversion with key valua...
Key valuation metrics compared to our peer set, you see that we trade at a discount to the peer median, yet we have much higher cash conversion ratios. We believe the strategic investments we've made over the last several years provide a platform for success going forward. First, we've been successful at acquiring high growth, high margin, and surging brands at attractive multiples. I'll do a deeper dive on this in a few slides. Second, Project Pegasus greatly improves our operating efficiency and provides fuel for growth. Third, Iron Giant establishes next level distribution capability and operating leverage for years to come. Impressive that a project of this size and scale was on budget and largely on time in a period of such significant disruption. These are just a few of the things I'm most excited about as we enter the Elevate for Growth era.
With that, let's talk more about our vision for Elevate for Growth. We estimate strong financial outcomes over the course of the plan, built with bottoms-up organic revenue by brand, acquisition and divestiture inputs, and required investment inputs. We consider multiple scenarios before selecting the one we believe is most representative of our potential outcome. We modeled reasonable acquisition impacts for illustrative purposes and are presenting with and without. We included Pegasus savings in line with our disclosures and assumed $100 million of share repurchase annually as a baseline. Finally, we assume commodity and freight costs will remain largely at current levels, slight moderation of interest rates beginning in fiscal 2025, and more normalized inflationary impacts beyond fiscal 2025. Here's how these assumptions translate to average annual organic growth rates.
Net sales growth of 3%-4%, which excludes acquisitions, divestitures, and material foreign currency fluctuations. Oh, sorry about that. Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 30-40 basis points per year. Adjusted EPS growth of 10% or greater each year, which excludes acquisitions, divestitures, and material foreign currency fluctuations, and includes share repurchases. Achievement of 18% return on invested capital by the end of fiscal year 2030. Reinvestment to earnings growth ratio of 2/3-1/3, compared to what we used in the past, which was 50/50, which we expect to result in annual growth investment of 9% of net sales annually. A key choice in Elevate for Growth will be to focus our investment and efforts on our Invest to Grow brands, while also maintaining sufficient investment to hold our position on Stronghold brands.
Our vision is to drive a 6% CAGR with the Invest to Grow portfolio, which has a current gross profit margin of 58%. We believe we can achieve a solid 3% growth rate with the Stronghold brands that have a current gross profit margin just a tick down from Invest to Grow. We think we've done a good job building the Invest to Grow portfolio with recent acquisitions, which helps drive our vision for a 6% CAGR. We've added value along the way by acquiring high growth assets at attractive multiples, then overperforming against valuation economics. In each case, we've been able to acquire the assets in competitive processes at or below our trading multiple at the time of acquisition. We've also realized results at or above the metrics implied in the asset's valuation.
In my experience, it's very difficult to win assets of this quality in a competitive process at a discounted multiple and then exceed valuation economics. Do it 4 successive acquisitions in a row, I would argue, is rare. But we're not just relying on recent acquisitions to fuel growth. We want to improve the core and add more. We intend to improve the core organically while continuing to shape the portfolio. As an example, our model assumes an illustrative divestiture at the beginning of fiscal year 2025. Excluding the divested revenue from fiscal 2024 results in a base business CAGR of 4.5% over the course of the plan. And then finally, we think we can continue to add more of the same type of assets we've acquired in the past to drive high growth CAGRs over the next 6 years. How will we drive our core growth?
This is an illustration of how we think it will evolve over the duration of the plan. Shorter-term growth will rely more on leveraging the distribution white space opportunity Noel shared, while we amplify our growth investment in brand building and product development. In the longer term, new product introductions and brand building will drive the vast majority of the growth, with distribution being much more supplemental in nature. Turning to performance improvement drivers below the sales line, we believe Pegasus will create many advantages that we will use for years to come. Here's a reminder of what Pegasus consists of and the results we expect to achieve. $75 million-$85 million of savings over a three-year period that we intend to use to amplify our growth investment, with the bulk of savings expected in fiscal 2025.
We intend to develop ongoing productivity initiatives that will supplement Pegasus savings in fiscal 2026 and later years. As part of our investment in Iron Giant, we've been busy assessing the optimal distribution network going forward. Our fiscal 2023 network is a combination of owned and leased facilities, quickly built up due to strong demand before and during COVID. Our vision is that the future network will consist of two core distribution locations at a significantly lower cost. We expect to scale and leverage this network for years to come, with expected distribution expense as a percentage of sales coming down from 5.3% to well below 4%, which we think is best in class. We like what we've been able to achieve through capital deployment.
The concentration of actions in fiscal 2022 and 2023, along with rising interest rates, set us back at the end of phase two, but we are quickly returning to a steady state of capital deployment. Our model assumes share repurchases of $100 million per year over the life of the plan as a baseline. We've also assumed two $300 million acquisitions and a return to more normalized levels of capital expenditures. Here's what that looks like in terms of accretion. We expect to drive significant accretion while also de-levering the balance sheet. As an example, we believe we could drive accretion of over $0.80 in fiscal 2025 just from share repurchase and debt paydown alone. Even with more extensive capital deployment, our model implies leverage at or below target range by the end of fiscal 2025.
Any deployment above what has been assumed in our model should result in upside. We believe we have significant earnings, earnings growth drivers that can fuel next level growth investment and EPS accretion. Let's walk through them. We expect Pegasus and ongoing productivity initiatives to be a significant driver. Next, we are expecting a margin benefit from a higher mix of Invest to Grow revenue. Portfolio and SKU optimization will continue to lift profitability in fiscal 2025. Next is the favorable impact from Iron Giant and the DC network consolidation I just discussed. And finally, we have capital deployment accretion and tax structure leverage, which gains efficiency with growth. So absent any reinvestment, we believe we could drive 26% earnings growth in fiscal 2025, but that's not the plan.
We expect to invest roughly 2/3 of that profit improvement back into brand building and new product development to feed the flywheel, which leaves roughly 10% for annual adjusted EPS growth. We think we can rinse and repeat each year during Elevate for Growth, adding in operating leverage as yet another driver beginning in fiscal 2026. We believe that rinse and repeat cycle will provide significant fuel to re-accelerate the flywheel, but also allow us to jump from roughly 6% of net sales to roughly 9% of net sales in terms of growth investment. Because of the fuel from Pegasus, we plan the majority of that jump to occur in fiscal 2025 and 2026, with maintained higher levels thereafter. Our ongoing reinvestment to earnings growth ratio would go from roughly 50/50 to 2/3 to 1/3.
We think that level of investment will drive strong results in the Elevate for Growth era. Just to get you grounded in the slide, all presented metrics include the assumption of a divestiture in the Q1 of fiscal 2025. Prior period as-reported results were not adjusted in this presentation, as we don't have certainty that a divestiture will occur. We also assume two acquisitions over the course of the plan, which are illustrated with the lighter color orange at the top of the bars. The illustration provides our vision for organic and inorganic CAGRs over the course of the plan. We believe we can achieve 3%-4% organic revenue growth over the course of the plan, with growth of 6.3%, including acquisition. We think we can grow Adjusted EBITDA at 5.5% organic CAGR, with over 8% with acquisition.
Using all the earnings growth levers we have, we think we can drive 10% organic adjusted EPS growth while making the increased investment I just discussed. With acquisition, we think we can drive EPS growth of 12.4%. Finally, we think we can achieve an organic return on invested capital of 18% by the end of our plan, or 16% with acquisition. Here's how our Elevate for Growth targets line up against the targets in phase one and phase two of the transformation. You can see that we are taking our targets to the next level. We're targeting net sales growth of 3%-4%, not including acquisition or divestiture.
We're setting an Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion target of 30-40 basis points going forward, as opposed to an operating margin target of 20-30 basis points used in the past. As mentioned, we are targeting 10% adjusted EPS growth, not including acquisition or divestiture. Our adjusted EPS target does include the assumption of share repurchases because it's an alternative to debt paydown. As discussed, we are setting a growth investment target of 9% of net sales annually. Our return on invested capital target is slightly lower than our phase two target, which largely reflects a higher base of invested capital over the arc of time, but still reflects what we view as best-in-class. Finally, we expect to return to more normalized capital expenditures. With that, let's turn to our vision for next-level value creation.
We have a next-level strategy, and we've upgraded to a next-level flywheel. Here's the next-level flywheel we believe will drive the next virtuous cycle for Helen of Troy. We believe we've upgraded each element to fly faster and create more value. We've refocused our growth strategy and amplified our investment. We've upgraded our go-to-market structure with the creation of the North America RMO and added centralized marketing leadership to leverage best practices. We believe we've achieved best-in-class margins that we intend to leverage and expand further. We will also leverage our further operating integration, which includes the North America RMO, consolidation of Beauty and Wellness, further centralization of supply chain and finance, and centralized marketing and business insights leadership. We're very excited by our state-of-the-art distribution network and the leverage and opportunities it provides.
We have sustainable financial advantages, including a tax advantage that becomes more efficient as pre-tax income grows. We made a lot of progress with respect to balance sheet productivity, but have opportunity to further improve in this next era. Finally, we think we can drive even more value from capital deployment than we have in the past. Why invest in Helen of Troy? The reasons on the left we think are foundational. The reasons on the right reflect recent strategic and operational improvements that signal we are poised to create significant shareholder value in our next era. I won't touch on each of these points now, but I'll cover many of them in a few slides. Those are some of the qualitative reasons. Here are the quantitative ones.
We think we can use the combination of operating profit growth, tax efficiency, further working capital improvement, and significant debt reduction to drive best-in-class return on invested capital. Plan is laser-focused on improving our fundamentals and results to drive value creation, both in terms of EPS growth and multiple expansion. This is an illustration of the value creation possible with the accelerated sales and EPS growth in our plan, along with margins, cash flow, and return on invested capital we believe is best in class and worthy of a multiple expansion over time. I'll close with what I think are the key investment highlights for you to consider. Trailing 12-month trends and fiscal 2024 outlook signal an inflection point in fundamentals and operating results. Pegasus provides next-level reinvestment fuel, operating efficiency, and organizational capability.
Key metrics and related cash conversion ratios indicate that Helen of Troy is undervalued relative to peers. Recent strategic investments and initiatives provide a strong platform for growth. Rapidly improving balance sheet provides capital deployment optionality that can drive significant accretion. Multiple earnings growth drivers fuel the next level of investment and double-digit adjusted EPS accretion. Opportunity to establish an even better M&A platform with better capabilities. And finally, the Elevate for Growth plan has potential to produce strong financial results with upside from additional capital deployment. We expect 6% revenue CAGR with acquisition, 4% organic, 12% adjusted EPS CAGR with acquisition, 10% organic, 8% Adjusted EBITDA CAGR with acquisition, 6% organic.... 16% ROIC by fiscal 2030 with acquisition, 18% organic.
And finally, a fiscal 2030 implied share price of $300 with modest multiple improvement or $400 share price at our fiscal 2021, 2022 trading multiple. Now you can see some of the reasons why I'm so excited to be back at Helen of Troy. This concludes my review of the financials, and with that, I welcome you to join us at the innovation showcase in the next room.
Also, just a reminder everyone, after the innovation showcase, we'll be coming back here for Q&A. We've got about 30 minutes in there, and then we'll be back in here.
... Thanks for taking my question. Rupesh Parikh, Oppenheimer. So I guess just one clarification question. So I know this year your EPS guidance was $8.50-$9, and then you talked about an average growth of 10% in EPS over, I think, the entire timeframe of your targets. So just to confirm, the 10% we saw for FY 2025 does not imply 10% growth off of this year's numbers?
It is not our-
Say again.
It is not our guidance for fiscal 2025. I mean, you may say, "Well, you implicitly guided by saying you have 10% average annual growth rates over the course of the plan." Yes, that's correct. That's what we want to give the market as term - in terms of what's possible. I think we want the flexibility to shape the year and determine what priorities we have, what we want to invest in, and how flexible we want to be with respect to investment or earnings growth. Hopefully, you saw from the slide because it's, you know, kind of supposed to be the takeaway, we have the drivers, which means we have the flexibility. So we can toggle and pick and choose what we want to do and still get to the 10%, or maybe one year it's gonna be 11, and maybe one year it's gonna be 9.
I don't know. But, yeah, we are not guiding specifically to fiscal 2025 at this point.
Okay, great, and then my real question, the follow-up question is, you know, you had the different buckets: Invest to Grow, Stronghold, Optimize.
Yep.
Can you give some color in terms of the brands that go into each bucket or even at a high level, maybe the brands that you think can be more impactful in the coming years?
Yeah. So we're deliberately not sharing specifically which brands fall into which bucket, and we're doing that for a couple reasons. The first is, competitive reasons. I don't necessarily want to telegraph, you know, exactly where we're spending and how much, and which brands, et cetera. The second is, I mentioned in my remarks, we're gonna continually refresh it. So as part of... This will become kind of part of our annual planning process, where we take a good, hard look at each of the brands against the criteria that I had on the chart, and look at them, right? Because the-- in a given year, you could have a great design-to-value initiative that really dramatically improves the margins of a certain brand, that could go from an Optimize to a Stronghold or a Stronghold to an Invest to Grow.
You could also have a really margin-accretive innovation that meets a consumer insight and need that, you know, we lean into. So it'll, it'll ebb and flow with each year, and we'll allocate the resources accordingly. So you know, I think it's safe to say that the smallest bucket is Optimize, and then you know, the majority of the brands are kind of falling across Stronghold and Invest to Grow. Ann, are you calling on people, or do you want me to call on people?
Thank you. Peter Grom, UBS.
So maybe one—Brian, one question for you, just on the gross margin opportunity. I think the slide moved a little fast, so I apologize if I missed it, but I think you kind of touched on Invest to Grow as like a 58% gross margin and Stronghold was more like a 50% gross margin. Can you maybe, you know, sitting here at kind of this, you know, call it mid- to high 40% gross margin, like, how should we think about the long-term gross margin opportunity? You know, just given those two numbers, which are both currently, you know, pretty nicely ahead of your trailing twelve month.
Right. There's a third Optimized bucket, which is not, you know, where we'd want it to be in a perfect world, but we're also trying to improve that gross profit margin, and we're also looking at optimizing that portfolio to see if all the brands and businesses that are currently in there fit our profile. So we'll, we'll work gross profit margin that way, but I, I hope it came across that Project Pegasus, the, the scale of what we've already kind of teed up for fiscal 2025 and 2026, which is largely gross profit-based, is significant to drive, you know, much more incremental than what we've done, you know, through fiscal 2024. So because of that, we think it's sustainable, we think it will only expand.
The only caveat I'd put on that is commodity and freight rates are at a level now that I would call, you know, maybe beneficial to long-term freight and commodity rates. Now, if they were to swing in a different direction, that would be a headwind. But with the extent of savings we have teed up, I think we could expand margin even through a cycle like that. So it would depend on how much, and timing, and how it layered in with some of our cost savings. And then the last point I'll make is we're gonna continue to do this kind of SKU rationalization work that we did maybe more extensively this last year. We'll do it going forward less extensively. Hopefully, don't have a revenue impact to call out, we just have profit improvement to gain.
We'll continue to do that, and we think we can drive profit from that. Then, you know, just new products, you know, in the invest-to-grow brands themselves, will, that mix will also lift gross profit. So I feel very comfortable with our ability to keep expanding.
That's really helpful. I guess I was just following up on that. It seems like you have a clear line of sight into the cost component here, right? In terms of Pegasus savings and whatnot. Yeah, how would you characterize your line of sight in terms of getting to that 3%-4% top-line growth? And I guess, you know, I know you kind of outlined that one slide that kind of, you know, I know it's not 2025 guidance, but it showed kind of 10% earnings growth per year. Is there any sort of weighting we should be thinking about in terms of the next six years, in terms of that 3%-4% growth? Is it gonna be more, you know, back-end loaded, just given the environment we're in?
You wanna go?
No, you know, the only thing I would say is part of the line of sight to it is the Pegasus reinvestment that we have. You know, if we need that fuel to really reinvest back in the business and drive the growth, and we feel very good about, you know, the progress and where we are on track to pull that fuel out, to reinvest back into the business. 25 and 26 are kind of some of those key reinvestment periods, so I think that's key.
I agree with all that. How I feel about the 3%-4%, I mean, the way I look at it is, it's only slightly above where we were growing before. We're amping up our investment in brand building and new product development, and all those things significantly. So I actually got the question: "Well, why isn't your growth rate higher going forward if you're making all that investment?" Let's see what happens. At this point, this is what we're comfortable with in terms of a target, but we're not gonna stop at 3%-4% if, if we can get it.
Yeah, as I said, we're looking at how, how do we get even, you know, how do we grow even faster?
Bob.
Bob.
Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful presentation, and just, Julien, to your earlier remarks, it's worth coming to. It's fantastic. Very nice day. Great job by everybody. I'm Robert Labick with CJS Securities, and, you know, thanks for having me here. You know, part of the theme is reinvest in growth and taking it from a 6% investment into the brands, up to 9% over the, the, I guess, starting now and going forward. As a generalist, I don't know exactly how to think about that. Can you help us understand, does this mean more advertising and promotion? Like, does this mean more R&D for new product development, or how do you think about where the incremental investments are going and, and what you hope to achieve from them?
Yeah, it's a great question, Bob. I would say it's both and. It's both incremental marketing investment, as well as investment in new product development. And, you know, one of the things that we want to do is, in my view, as we look across our very diverse portfolio, it's not a one size fits all. Not every brand needs exactly the same amount of spend, which is part of the classification I talked about, and they don't all need exactly the same kind of spend, right? Some categories and brands need more marketing and maybe a little bit less product innovation, others might need the opposite.
So the work to be done as we cascade the strategy is for each of our brands and our categories to really look in a landscape sort of way and say: "Okay, what's it gonna take? If I'm an Invest to Grow a brand, and I wanna grow above the category average, what does it take from an innovation standpoint? What does it take from a marketing standpoint?" And then bring that proposal into the resource allocation process that we do as a collective leadership team to really decide where do we place those bets, and so on and so forth. And I don't think they'll all look the same, because each category and each brand we participate in is very different. Some are very competitive landscapes, and others may be a little bit less so.
And so that's the magic of being that granular and how we classify the brands, and then really looking deeply at each category and each brand that we play in.
Super. Thank you.
Yeah.
Hi.
Hey.
Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Thank you. I wanted to first ask, you know, if you could break down that 3%-4% target on top line a little bit between the Home and Outdoor and Beauty and Wellness businesses. Thinking about, you know, the innovation opportunity in both, and also thinking about, you know, the last couple of years and obviously replacement cycle and things like that. So that's my first question, then I follow up. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. I mean, we're not at a stage where we're breaking that out. We would obviously break it out when we give fiscal year 2025 guidance. I think as you would expect, you could assume a higher growth rate from Home and Outdoor than Beauty and Wellness. That's just kind of, you know, based on historical and, you know, it—it's a safe assumption for you to make, if you wanted to make that. Going anywhere past that, I don't wanna do that because we haven't really framed that up yet.
We, we do this process, which is long term, and then we do a robust budgeting process that's very specific to a year and the opportunities in front of us, the marketing plan that we just discussed, or new products that are rolling out, distribution gains, all that sort of stuff. So if I gave you a rate right now, I don't wanna do that, and even if I did, I'd probably be wrong because-
... things are going to change as we shape up next year.
If I could, yeah, on the breakout between the categories, you're certainly right that we're not at the stage of that level of guidance, but important to understand the secular categories themselves. When we bought into outdoor, we did it because it's a secular trend with a higher long-term growth rate, and I would make the same comment about prestige beauty. So it's naturally true that those categories are growing faster than the others. Then there's the efforts, and the innovation, and the spending that was just discussed, and the consumer-obsessed innovation to earn as much market share as possible, so you get a turbocharge effect. Those effects would be relevant in the Beauty and Wellness categories too, but not with the same secular growth rate.
Got it. Thanks. And then two things that you've talked about in times past, you know, obviously mixing consumers up, and having a sort of a tiered portfolio in terms of good, better, best. If you could comment on that in terms of your plan for the next phase of growth. And then also, we didn't really hear a ton about international today, so just wondering how that fits into the overall growth plan for the fiscal 2025-2030 targets. Thank you.
Yeah. So in terms of good, better, best, I think, you know, we do play well there. Our portfolio plays well there in a few different ways. If you look at our beauty portfolio, you've got brand differences there. You've got Revlon that kind of, you know, plays at the good area. Then you've got Hot Tools, that's a step up, and then you've got the prestige brands and Drybar and Curlsmith that play at that high level. So the portfolio spans in a really nice way, not only from a price point standpoint, but even a retailer standpoint in terms of where we're in distribution. And then you've got a brand like OXO, and Larry shared some of the example there of SoftWorks versus Good Grips, as another example.
So I think that that continues to be a really important part of how we think about growing these brands, and it comes back to really being consumer-obsessed, right? Understanding who the consumer is for these various different categories and brands, and how can we uniquely design the right products to hit the right price points to deliver against those, those given needs. International, so you asked about international. It was one of our key where-to-play choices, so, you know, the work that we've done there is to get more focused, is to really think about those brand-market combinations where we think we've got the highest right to win. I think, you know, it is an important growth driver for us in the future, and it has been a good growth driver.
But as, you know, I came in and started to work with Nicolas, who's here... Where is Nicolas? There he is. When I came in to work with him, we really looked at we've got the team spread across a lot of different priorities, and we were doing, you know, kind of spread a mile wide and an inch deep, and we chose very deliberately, part as part of Pegasus, as we were doing some of the organizational design work, to pick those places where we really thought we could make the biggest headway the fastest and then layer on additional choices as we go and design the organization structure around that. So that's the continued work that Nicolas will do with his team through the brand planning process as he cascades. He's already made some of those choices.
You see something like, you know, I've talked about it publicly, Osprey, and I talked about it today, continues to do very well. There's a natural fit between Hydro Flask, so you can picture outdoor as being a really key choice for us in international that's working well today and that we'll look to accelerate. Braun was another one I touched on today, is a really strong brand. About half of our total sales, I think, are international. So that's another platform that I think will continue to be the kind of choice that we'll double down on versus trying to grow everything.
Hello.
Linda.
It's Linda Bolton Weiser with D.A. Davidson. So, I was looking at the OXO display over there and just all the amazing expansions you've done into the categories, and I was trying to think of what's left, what categories they're not in, and it occurred to me one of the things was, I don't know, like B2B or a commercial-type product line. Is that something you would ever consider in OXO or really in any of your product lines?
So when you say commercial, you mean like for-
For-
A professional kitchen.
Yes. Yeah.
a back-of-the-house kind of thing?
I don't know. Larry, I'll let you talk to whether or not that's something.
I mean, it's an interesting idea. We, years ago, and I'd say 15, 20 years ago, actually used to, we used to attend the Restaurant Show in Chicago.
And it's an interesting market. We initially thought, "Oh, wow, all these kitchens are using kitchen tools and gadgets, and why not ours?" 'Cause if you're a professional chef, you typically choose OXO product and use it at home, and, and yet what we found is it's actually a pretty small market, oddly enough.
And in part, really, most restaurants don't want to spend a lot of money on that stuff. Chef may want to use it, but he knows that the people who work for him are gonna take it home. So-
... it didn't end up being much of an opportunity, and it typically goes through distributors, so there's a distributor layer there.
... that adds some margin compression as well. I think when you talk about, you know, potential opportunities for us to expand, I mean, OXO kind of looks at the world as its oyster. The design principles we have can be applied to just about anything. We're just choiceful in terms of what stone we step on next. But plenty more where that came from, or what we've been up to. Thanks.
One, one build that I would say is, you know, we just talked about the Chefs in Residence program we have. What I think is really important for OXO is building on what Larry just said-
... is the credentialing-
... that chefs bring to the OXO brand in terms of kitchen tools. So that program works very well for us. We'll continue to do that, and that's, I think, a way to leverage the credentialing without necessarily thinking that that's a big business market for us.
Mm-hmm. And then, my second question was on just the acquisitions. So Brian figured them in as just roughly in the plan there. But I'm just curious, Noel, what, what are you, you thinking about what types of businesses you would prefer to get bigger in? I mean, clearly, you wanna kind of upscale the portfolio, and your background is in a lot of consumables areas, food and beauty, and things like that. So what, what would you like to pursue in terms of what types of acquisitions?
Yeah, we talked about the better together, you know, the better together notion that we have had at Helen of Troy, and I think we'll continue to have going forward. And so I do think looking for brands or businesses that complement our portfolio. We have a very diverse portfolio today. And so ideally, I—you know, I like brands that fit in well with the portfolio we have. You know, we've got prestige beauty and outdoor. As Julien said, those are secular growing categories, so we want growth categories, but ideally, brands that fit in well to the capability that Ron has, for example, you know, with the North American RMO. Ideally, if we can find something that goes through some of the channels and the customers that we're already in, that only leverages the synergy and scale.
Take Jay's Iron Giant example, same thing. We've just invested in some incredible capability in that facility, so finding businesses that can leverage the capability we have will only make an acquisition even more attractive to us. So those are some of the things that are in my mind. But when it comes to consumables, look, consumables, no big surprise, consumables have a higher margin, at least, you know, most of the time, than some of the durables, and they've done quite well for us. So the prestige beauty move that we made with Curlsmith and then the piece of Drybar that's there are very interesting to us, as are the Vicks consumables that go along with the Vicks devices that we have.
So finding those opportunities of consumables that complement our portfolio is a very interesting place for us. Can't promise we're gonna find it, and meet all the criteria that we have, but I would definitely say that that would, in the margin attractiveness, that's gonna pop up to the top fairly naturally.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Small build on the consumables. Back to Peter Grom's question about gross margin. The consumables not only carry higher gross margin, but they have a repeat cycle, and to Noel's point about buying into them in a complementary fashion, I would point to the liquid side of the Drybar products, the Curlsmith acquisition, and the Vicks VapoSteam arrangement as examples of this that have been good for us. That gross margin has gone from the high 30s to now the high 40s. Peter's question was: Can it get north of 50 and grow from there? Brian's answer was yes. We do believe that. The consumables will also help in that regard. It was very strategic to climb those 1,000 basis points. The next 500-ish basis points not only are possible, but consumables can help us get there.
Hi, Susan Anderson, Canaccord Genuity. I'm curious just on the distribution network and consolidation there. It looks like you guys plan to kind of do it slowly each year, just based on the percent of the expenses. So I'm curious, do you plan to, you know, move everything all at once, or will it kinda happen slowly over the several years, and the cost saves kinda flow at the same rate?
Yeah, I would say, you know, we, we've already made some moves there. As Jay mentioned, as he was doing his presentation, we had some non-owned incremental distribution facilities that we brought online during COVID, and we've already been able to consolidate those as we've brought our inventory levels down and had the capability and the capacity that Iron Giant brings. So that... Many of those moves have happened already. I would say from a remaining moves... And then we just made the El Paso move, right? So that was another one that we've already made. So the next set of moves, I think, will be largely tied to some of the conversations that we've been having on the potential divestiture.
That will help us understand kind of when and at what moment is the right time to make those next set of moves. Is there anything you wanna build on?
Yeah, I would just build. I agree with everything, but build that the efficiency that you're talking about and kind of the longer step down in that is really about just building efficiency within the network, and then, you know, as we can move some footprint maybe out of the mix, again, just getting more and more efficient. I would argue we're not highly efficient right now because we have duplicative distribution, you know, amongst three distribution centers. Future state, we could get that to two and be highly efficient, and then, you know, turn on all the robotics and automation and artificial intelligence and all of that thing that we have teed up in Iron Giant, which we're still working on getting, you know, perfect. I don't know you wanna-
The volume, yeah. And the volume growth also absorbs more-
Right
... right? So we don't add more fixed overhead as we continue to grow volumes, which is the beauty of it. It just continues to get better.
So that's why it kind of ramps.
Great. And then maybe one more for Brian. I'm curious if you factored in any consumer slowdown into the guidance, or is that where kind of over the years you have kinda like one number, and it could be more growth or less growth in certain years?
I would say we've not factored in anything, you know, to the downside from where we are today, but, nothing to the upside either. So, you know, kind of steady state in that regard, which is a, you know, tough environment. So, yeah, that's, that's how I'd frame it up.
Great, thanks.
One in the very back. Allison.
Allison-
Allison, there's one in the, in the back.
Hi, Shivani Chatterjee from Cook & Biele r. Can you speak more regarding the divestiture for fiscal 2025? How big of an impact on sales are you expecting?
Cool. Do you wanna start?
Well, I would just— You know, from a starting standpoint, we're not quite ready to give more information. We will, as soon as we've moved further along. What we've said is, you know, we're actively working on it, and, you know, we think we're moving in the right direction, and we're targeting... I think Brian put in the financials, we're targeting Q1 of fiscal 2025, but that's still not certain quite yet.
So true.
Thank you.
Any others? Anyone else?
Online ones.
I think there might be an online question that-
Chris. We have Chris in the meantime.
Oh, here, Chris.
You didn't give a lot of detail today explicitly on online sales versus offline. Just would be curious on any updated thoughts there, particularly now that you have the Tennessee facility. How big a percentage of sales do you think that could become over your six-year plan? Any other areas around that would be useful, too. Thank you.
Yeah, I would, I would say, look, online continues to be a really important part of the business. Obviously, we, like many companies, saw a really big surge in online sales during COVID that has normalized out a little bit. It's still probably higher, and as many reports have said, you know, the COVID sort of accelerated the growth rate of that adoption in a way that was unusual, but it has normalized out a bit. But I do believe, especially for some of our brands, that direct-to-consumer and/or e-commerce, you know, we kind of look at them collectively, will continue to be an important part of the business.
We haven't set a specific target yet, and I would say, as we do year-to-year planning, we'll get to that level of granularity, and not unlike what I talked about on the brand building or the new product innovation. I don't know that it'll be a, you know, one size fits all, right? There's some products in our portfolio, like a Hydro Flask, especially if you want it customized and things like that, that's very dependent and very interesting from an online standpoint. And then there may be others that are need-based, like a Braun thermometer, that not to say that you would never buy it online, but a lot of times that's, you know, an urgent need basis that if you've got a sick kid who you don't-- can't find the thermometer, you're going out to the store immediately to buy it.
and so I don't think it'll be one size fits all. I think, again, we'll get quite granular across the, the portfolio. The capability that, that Jay has built into, and the team have built into Iron Giant, really makes that a very interesting proposition for us. So you saw some of that in the, in the video that he shared that was Hydro Flask specific. A lot of automation in there that makes that a much more financially attractive thing for us to do for those brands where it makes sense.
... Just like the work leading up to becomes an acquisition opportunity. Sure. Just, maybe just want to build on that, if I don't get myself in trouble. When you think about D2C, I mean, the work we did in the last year or two on building a consistent platform for all of our sites to live on, Magento, call it the Gold Project internally. That's what connects into Jay's beautiful machine, and it'll become a very impressive tool for us to apply to a business. We make an acquisition, it's now a capability we can bring to that business, where in the past it's been a capability we couldn't necessarily bring in, in some cases, you know, created some challenges for brands we acquired. So that'll be an asset for us going forward.
Could I tag on to that too, with your answer, Julien? Domestic versus international, should we think about the online as being primarily North American at this point, or not so much?
No, I wouldn't say so. I don't know if you... Yeah, I think it's really an opportunity, both domestically and internationally, you know, both... And again, our direct-to-consumer and e-commerce business is well-developed and a key growth driver for us in Noel's regions, just like it is domestically. So I don't see a difference. You—I see you nodding, so you must agree with me, Noel. Yeah.
Yeah, and my, my only build on Larry's, because it's broad across the whole company. He was talking specifically about DTC, 'cause that was the question, but there's three words that I think are important for this group on all of the major system initiatives in the company: scalable, lower cost to serve, some kind of new capability. So in the case of Gold, scalable in the way that he talked about, some kind of new capability, CRM and end-to-end visibility, and then the math of lower cost to serve. That's true on all that Noel said about HOT Way or Helen of Troy Way.
It's also true about standardizing, simplifying, and synchronizing our systems, and then all the new systems that are being put in the company have that same general threesome that we're trying to build, and that makes the company scalable and have a lower cost.
Thank you.
I'll just take the opportunity to ask one we have from online, Daniel Grossman, and probably direct it to Brian and Jack, as it relates to our acquisitions and our tax structure. So the question really is, you know, how much of the profit on sales is significantly tax-free, as in the case with Hydro Flask? And when is this not doable, as in the case of Osprey? And if not tax advantage, are there other ways that Helen of Troy's lower tax rate can be partially taken advantage of? So truly, the tax and the acquisition question.
There's a part of the question that talks about tax-free. I mean, nothing's tax-free. But the question is directionally correct in that with respect to Hydro Flask, we were kind of able to fully integrate it into our tax structure, and there have been other acquisitions where we can't fully integrate it. Doesn't mean we can't get tax efficiency.
... through components of it, if we can't get full integration. So we look to splice apart the benefits in our tax structure and take advantage of the pieces that we can. Osprey was. Well, what drives the success rate on that is really what we're buying, what jurisdictions it's in, what the legal structure is of it when we acquire it, because there's in certain cases, we can't fold it into our structure without an adverse tax impact. So there are a lot of different elements that go into it. We try and maximize the advantage to the greatest extent we can on every acquisition, but ones like Osprey, we couldn't get full integration just because of the way it was structured, honestly. The legal entity structure, we couldn't move assets and other things around like we would like to.
Our Senior Vice President of Tax is here judging me as I answer that question.
So, I just wanted to follow up on Rupesh's question earlier on 25. I mean, the slide showed building blocks to 26% growth, at least in terms of these tailwinds. So-
EPS.
EPS. Is there any sort of reason why it shouldn't be at least 10% growth?
Look, again, there's a lot of things that have to play out as we assess next fiscal year. We approach any forecast from multiple directions. We do ground up, we do top-down, look at it all sorts of different ways, and so we really need to do that for fiscal 25. But I do not think the illustration is misleading at all. We know we have those drivers in place to do that and, you know, but we might have more investment we wanna make. I think fiscal 25 is an important year for us to really accelerate things and make those investments. So, look, I think it's gonna come down to flexibility and choice. We might choose not to get 10% EPS growth next year. Hopefully, it's a choice, it's not something that happened to us.
You wanna change anything there?
No, I agree. I think, you know, the way we built these illustrations was very much from a top-down strategy level, right? We looked at the strategy levers we walked you through, and then Brian modeled off of those. Now we've got to do the bottoms-up work as we cascade this, which, you know, each of the, the business units and the RMOs come back and say, "Okay, based on all of this, here's kind of what that bottoms-up looks like." But I think many of the drivers that he touched on in that kind of build chart, are things we've got good visibility to.
Any other questions?
All right.
Good. We have a few closing remarks-
All right. I'll-
Take those?
Yes. Sure. All right, I will wrap up today, and I wanna leave you with just a few key takeaways. You know, Elevate for Growth takes proven successful themes from the past and builds on them. All right. Concurrently, this plan brings new choices to our organization that I firmly believe will help elevate us to that next level. Next, a key choice of this plan is for all associates across the company to be consumer-obsessed in everything that we do. This greater understanding and discipline will help guide next-level brand building across our amazing portfolio of brands. Leveraging this next-level brand building and the fuel generated through Pegasus, we're able to deploy even more investment dollars into our brands, accompanied by sharper, data-driven investment choices.
We want to expand our distribution so that we're more available where our shoppers are shopping. And finally, we're leaning into our next level centralization of shared services to leverage our functional expertise in all that we do. With all the choices in Elevate for Growth, plus a passionate and motivated leadership team and global associates, Helen of Troy's future is bright. We'll step up to deliver significant value creation. And that concludes our presentation today. Thank you all for joining us. We appreciate you being here.