Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience in holding. We now have your presenters in conference. Please be aware that each of your line is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of this morning's short remarks, we will open the floor for questions. At that time, instructions will be given as to the procedure to follow if you would like to ask a question. It is now my pleasure to introduce today's first presenter, Taryn Miller.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kimberly-Clark's year-end earnings conference call. On the call with me today are Mike Hsu, our Chairman and CEO, and Maria Henry, our CFO. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings news release, and we also published prepared remarks from Mike and Maria that summarized our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. Both documents are available in the Investors section of our website. We hope you find it valuable to have our prepared remarks ahead of this call. In just a moment, Mike will share a few opening comments, and then we'll take your questions. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements. Please see the Risk Factors section of our latest annual report on Form 10-K for further discussion of forward-looking statements. We may also refer to adjusted results and outlook.
Both exclude certain items described in this morning's news release. The release has further information about these adjustments and reconciliations to comparable GAAP financial measures. Now, I'll turn it over to Mike.
Okay. Thank you, Taryn. Good morning, everyone. Before we get to your questions, I'd like to offer some perspective on our results and outlook. In 2021, we continued to execute our strategy to elevate our categories and expand our markets. While our overall financial results were disappointing, we took decisive action to offset the impact of higher costs with significant pricing actions. These actions, which began in the first half, helped us deliver organic sales growth and improve net selling prices in the second half of the year, including strong fourth quarter performance. We continued to make significant progress accelerating organic growth in Personal Care. Through the year, our team launched strong innovation and supported it with superior local market execution, all of which contributed to strong share gains in numerous key markets.
We also strengthened market positions in several important growth markets by integrating Softex in Indonesia, commissioning a state-of-the-art production facility in Nigeria, and advancing our route to market in India. While we're encouraged with our top line performance and the way our teams executed in a very dynamic environment, our margins and earnings were negatively impacted by a challenging operating environment. Input costs escalated well beyond previous levels, and supply chain disruptions limited our ability to fully meet the growing consumer demand for our products. In 2022, we intend to accelerate organic growth further. We have strong brands and healthy categories. We'll continue to support our brands with breakthrough innovation, agile digital, and superior local market execution. We also expect performance in our tissue businesses to improve as we cycle the volatility and demand we've experienced over the past two years.
We are committed to recovering and eventually expanding our margins, and we expect to make progress this year. We've taken significant pricing actions and expect pricing to offset a majority of the impact of cost inflation. We're confident in our ability to restore our margins to pre-pandemic levels over time. We remain confident in the potential of our brands and categories and in our ability to create meaningful shareholder value while we work to achieve our purpose of better care for a better world. Now I would be happy to take your questions.
Thank you. Our first question will come from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.
Morning, Chris.
Can you just maybe to start just help frame the volume impact that you're expecting from the price hikes? I guess based on your comments around pricing that's gonna cover the majority of inflation. Seems like you're suggesting maybe 4%-5% range on pricing maybe volume's down about 1%. Is that fair? Then maybe where you expect the volume hit to play out. You know clearly there's some momentum in Personal Care. You know Consumer Tissue is coming off of a year where comps shouldn't really be too much of an issue. I wonder if you can just dimensionalize you know how that comment around pricing versus volumes and how you're seeing it play out and whether you could see some upside if elasticity stay where they are.
Yeah. I think that's a good push, Chris, and I think that's right. Overall, you know, we feel good about the momentum of our business overall. Personal Care, for sure, strong performance, and we're expecting that performance to continue. We've got great innovation coming and great brand support throughout the year on both our Consumer Tissue and our Personal Care businesses. I think we feel good about the commercial programming. That said, there is significant pricing in the plan, and so there will be an elasticity impact, which we have estimated. We have volume down a little bit, you know, offsetting some of the organic growth that's being driven by the commercial programming.
The reality is, you know, thus far, I would say, the categories, you know, our categories are essential, and I think, you know, the demand that we saw in the fourth quarter kinda highlights the essential nature of our categories. Despite the price increases, you know, we are seeing good volume performance. You know, I would love to see that our elasticity assumptions are a little conservative and, you know, potentially there could be a little upside. You know, generally in our categories, if the market moves in a direction, generally elasticities are a little lower.
Okay. Then, just yeah, no, that's helpful. Thanks. Just one follow-up on the outlook for input cost inflation. I think maybe that's part of the surprise today. Can you just maybe dimensionalize, you know, the significance of distribution and energy? You called out polymer-based materials. I guess pulp is secondarily, you know, a secondary impact relative to those. But can you just frame the relative impacts of these and whether, again, you know, the line of sight or whether you're just taking a bit more of a conservative view, cognizant of what you said in the prepared remarks that visibility is a bit lower in this environment. Thanks for that.
Sure, Chris. Let me spend a minute on our inflation outlook for 2022. You know, as you just mentioned, it continues to have volatility around it. For perspective, if we had given you our outlook on the October call, we would have been $300 million lower than the outlook that we're providing today. It's been quite volatile, and we're kind of calling it at a tough part of the cycle, hence the range around it. Let me talk about what we see. Approximately half of the inflation for 2022 is expected to come from distribution and energy.
Of the raw material component, the inflation will be led by polymer-based purchased materials, so things like superabsorbent and nonwovens, and then followed by pulp. Let me just spend a minute on the two areas that will make up our commodity inflation. Number one is what happens with market prices, and I'll give you a little more detail there in a minute. The second one is how inflation, commodity inflation flows through our P&L. As you know, we use contract structures to manage some of the volatility on commodities. Some of those contracts reset in the beginning of the year. They reset at higher prices this year. Some of them also have some timing lag built in.
Some of the high inflation that you'd see in the market in the fourth quarter will flow through our P&L in the early part of 2022. That said, on the market prices, I'll tell you what we're seeing. The market price in North America for eucalyptus will be down. The market price for softwood we're expecting to be down in a similar amount to eucalyptus. The full-year average polypropylene prices will also be down for market pricing in 2022. Those are the things you hear us talk about the most. Since the inflation is coming from other areas in 2022, let me comment on market pricing that we expect to be up. Fluff pulp, we expect to be up. Recycled fiber, expect to be up.
Nonwovens expect to be up. Superabsorbent up sizably next year. Distribution up, and energy up. The basket of commodities, while the traditional ones, thankfully, we expect to be coming down, and we're already seeing that in the fourth quarter. There's a you know meaningful portion of our basket that the market prices will be up on in 2022, and that's what's reflected in the outlook that we provided.
Yeah. Chris, maybe I'll just tack on. I mean, historically, you know, what we see is commodities, you know, a quick reversion in our commodities, like typically in 2018, right? The big driver of our increase was pulp, and that quickly receded in 2019 and 2020 to some extent. That's typically what we'll see in our categories. We will see reversion. It always happens in our categories, and I expect, fully expect over time pulp to come down and the resin-based, whether it's superabsorbents or nonwovens, to come back down. This cycle is a little different because the peak is higher, it's broader, and it's longer.
You know, regardless of what's happening with the cycle, you know, we are gonna restore our margins with both price and cost initiatives, and we expect our teams to cover the majority of inflation with pricing. That's part one. If we get a little more reversion, we're not expecting reversion this year. If we do, you know, then our recovery will be a little faster. That said, you know, there will be reversion at some point. Given the call, and I think what's maybe a little confusing to maybe some of the analysts and investors is, as Maria mentioned, it's a broader set of inflationary impacts than we typically talk about, which is typically, you know.
You know, energy is a big one, and labor and freight are big ones that we typically haven't talked about in the past, but are big ones for this year.
Okay. Thanks so much for all that perspective.
Okay. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays.
Lauren,
thanks.
Good morning.
Hi. I want to have a little bit about pricing. You know, in the release, there was a mention of the prepared remarks or the release, but about some incremental pricing. Simplistic question, are there new price increases, you know, that have been announced that we should expect to start flowing through? Perhaps more interestingly, I was curious about the ability to price for energy, for logistics, and then also for the fact that contracts are resetting higher. I was just wondering, is it more difficult if market pricing is down so that, you know, what your customers see is a better, relatively speaking, better environment, but you're talking about your contracts resetting higher and that being part of the difficulty here.
Is it more difficult to get incremental pricing through when that's kind of the construct driving inflation?
Yeah. Thanks, Lauren. Yeah, a couple things. You know, one, we've executed multiple rounds of pricing and I would say globally and generally our pricing is on track. You know, we announced. I'll just give you an example in North America. I think we announced in March, in August, in November, and then I think in we may have had another announcement in December as well. There's been multiple rounds. You know, I will tell you, and that's happened globally in most markets around the world for us. I will tell you in most markets, the trade discussions have generally been very constructive.
I think our customers are seeing the same things happen, especially as you mentioned in some of these other areas, they're more affected by freight and distribution and some of those things than we are since it's a bigger component of their P&Ls. I would say the discussions have generally been constructive. We've seen some movement in other brands, and some movement in private labels. You know, there is a little stickiness in some markets, like in Western Europe and Latin America for us. As I mentioned to Chris, you know, the consumer demand reflects the essential nature of our categories, and so, you know, we expect to make progress on pricing. We expect to make progress on recovering our margins.
And as a principle, you know, I would say, you know, we're expecting our teams to be able to price to offset the majority of the inflation.
Okay. Great. Just one other question I had was on cost savings. Their restructuring is complete. Now, you know, we have ongoing FORCE savings. The FORCE forecast of $300 million-$350 million is a little bit low by recent standards and, you know, I know, also in the prepared remarks or release, you mentioned less savings on the negotiated raw material prices. I think one thing we talked about last quarter, and I've talked about with other companies, is sort of the difficulty of achieving, you know, typical run-rate productivity in a constrained environment, whether it's because of labor, access to the plants with COVID and absenteeism, challenges throughout the supply chain.
I was wondering if you could comment a little bit on that, on the absolute level of FORCE savings for this year and just if these sorts of impediments are part of why the number might be a little bit lower than you might typically target in such a deeply inflationary environment.
Yes, Lauren, you're spot on with what you're hearing from other companies. It's the same thing that we are seeing. Within our FORCE cost savings, the negotiated material price component will be down meaningfully. If you think about that, the benefit of our contracts in 2021 was significant as those reset as we move forward, that's less of a benefit for us in 2022. We do still expect to see benefits from product changes and from ongoing productivity improvements. The other line that's in our FORCE cost savings is distribution. Under normal circumstances, we would be driving productivity in distribution expenses every year. Those are going the other way right now.
The distribution costs are up meaningfully, and they will continue to be, is our expectation in 2022. Then as you said, given what's happening in the supply chain where our demand is exceeding our ability to supply at the moment, taking any downtime on any of our machines is very punitive. Finding the time to do the work to drive the savings is a bit challenged, and that's really what's behind the range.
I will say that, the team kicked off a program in 2021 to really look at the multiyear pipeline that we have around FORCE cost savings, and we have better visibility today than we've ever had in terms of what those opportunities are and how we can unlock those, and that includes some investment behind the supply chain that you see showing up in other areas of the P&L. We've never had better visibility to what those opportunities are, and they continue to be meaningful for the company. When things normalize around supply chain, we'll be able to drive a higher number on that FORCE cost savings line.
Thanks so much. I'll pass it on.
Okay. Thank you, Lauren.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank.
Morning, Steve.
Yeah. Hey, thanks. Good morning. Maybe a little more clarity and color around your guidance, I guess from two perspectives. First is, you know, in the first quarter, your prepared remarks suggest, you know, incremental difficulty in that first quarter, with a sequential decline in earnings. I would think you might have some room for sequential acceleration on revenue, even with a higher FX burden. I'm guessing that incremental pressure is coming from, you know, cost pressure and margin pressure. Just, again, maybe you can dimensionalize that. I wanna juxtapose that against your, you know, the strategic ambition to restore margins. I'm really curious as to, you know, where you think you can get to on that objective by year-end.
I guess I'm trying to you know, get a little bit more picture in my mind about what the you know, what the kind of improvement curve looks like throughout the year as you slide south in one Q and then build back. Trying to get a sense of where you think the like, the exit rate is in 2022 as a base case.
Sure. I'll start, and then Mike will add some comments. Let me address the first quarter first. We usually don't give quarterly guidance, and even when you push us to do so, we generally don't do it. I think it's very important to understand what we think is happening in this quarter because we do expect that our earnings will be lower than they were in the fourth quarter, and that's driven by a few things. One, the commodity pressure will continue to be intense, and the inflation in the first quarter will be high. The pricing isn't fully in the fourth quarter. Then, we're in the midst of pretty acute supply chain disruption caused by Omicron.
We are seeing, as are other companies and as are our suppliers and as are our customers, but we are seeing higher absentee rates, which is stressing our ability to fulfill the demand that we see and get the products manufactured and get them to the customers and the customers to get them on shelf. That is all happening live right now. We're calling the year at a very challenging time to call the year, given the amount of volatility right at this moment. As I look at 2022 in total, we're expecting stronger second half earnings. We are expecting a ramp. What's causing the ramp? Some commodity costs are expected to ease.
While I talked a bit about contract structures and other things, we also have exposure to the spot market in on commodities. We are expecting commodities to ease. Then as you know, just on comparisons of the $1.5 billion inflation that we saw in 2021, $1 billion of that came in the second half. If you're looking year-over-year, you've got an easier lap in the second half. The other thing is we expect the pricing that we currently see to be fully in the market in the second half, and then our cost savings also ramp as we go through the year. Those are the factors that drive the ramp.
We are very focused on margin recovery, you know, recognizing what the $1.5 billion of inflation from last year and then the added inflation this year does to the margin structures. We are very focused on recovering the margins of this business to pre-pandemic levels and then expanding them over time. We expect to make progress on that as we go through this year. Again, we're calling the year in a very difficult part of the cycle. So, you know, when I look here today and say, "This is what our fourth quarter's gonna look like," you know, there's some volatility around that. So that said, with our current assumptions, we will make progress on the margin recovery through the year after the first quarter.
You know, we would expect to be in a better place by the time we exit this year and moving forward. Mike, I don't know if you've got some comments.
Yeah.
Well, yeah. Great question, Steve. Let me hit. There's really three strategic comparatives for us as a management team. I mean, number one is we gotta accelerate organic growth, and you can see all the work we've been doing the last, you know, several years doing that, and I think we're making progress. We expect our, you know, our tissue businesses to improve now that we've cycled a lot of the COVID demand volatility. That's part one. Part two, we gotta enhance margins. I'll come back to that in a second. Part three is I wanna reduce our earnings volatility.
Obviously, with this volatile environment, I'm not gonna talk much about that, but just you should know that we've got smart people working on that, 'cause I recognize that's a strategic issue for the company, and we do wanna reduce our earnings volatility over time. On the margins, you know, my goal is to enhance margins over time, over the long term, and that's kind of the basis of our elevate and expand strategies. The reasons why we wanna elevate our categories and expand our markets is to do that. That's a core component of it.
I will say, given the fact that we've taken on last year, I think 2x our previous all-time high in inflation, you know, obviously, our margin's taken a substantial hit, and we're very focused on the near term on margin recovery. I don't think we're gonna give you specific timing, but here's what I will say is I'm targeting for us to deliver in the upper end of our range. You know, I expect our teams to perform that way. If our assumptions coming into the year hold, you know, then we will have by year-end delivered a substantial improvement in our gross margin performance over the course of the year, and that's how I'm thinking about it.
You know, if we get a little reversion in the commodities, then that will accelerate that further.
Okay. Thank you. I mean, I appreciate the difficulty of trying to call the full year at this point. So thank you for that color. I guess maybe Mike, a little bit-
Yeah.
If I could just follow up.
Just on that, Steve, I'm.
Go ahead.
I think, Steve, the one point I would make is, you know, the COVID environment, while I would say the demand environment has kind of stabilized, you know, particularly in our tissue businesses, both KCP and Consumer Tissue. You know, as Maria talks about, the supply environment is probably more volatile now than we've seen throughout the whole COVID period, right? Because it's affecting absenteeism, whether it's in the distribution centers or the plants or our suppliers and, you know, missed appointments on pickups. It's a very volatile environment. I think you're seeing that more broadly as you kind of look at other industries.
Yeah, for sure. I think we'll continue to hear more about that in the coming days and weeks. Just, you know, on that demand environment, Mike, if I could just, I think you gave us some good color in the conversation with Chris about, you know, how you're thinking about volumes and reaction to pricing this year. But I guess I'm curious as to how the underlying elasticity assumptions, you know, compare with historical elasticity, just how you approach coming to that conclusion and, you know, just again, sort of what the basis for your assumed elasticity is and where maybe you're expecting more versus less. Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. You know, tough question because the trick of the elasticity modeling is, you know, we're beyond the range of estimation. So that's the difficult part of it, Steve. You know, you're kind of estimating what's happened historically, and the price points are higher than they've been. You know, that said, you know, our past experience is, you know, in our last round of pricing, elasticities have come back. The market generally moved in a direction, and elasticities were a little less than we initially estimated, and that's been our kind of recent history. That's what we're going on. I think the important thing is, you know, we've got very strong growth playbook. It's working hard.
We've got very good commercial programming across both our professional and consumer businesses. There's really good underlying brand momentum. We expect that to continue. We recognize that, you know, we are, you know, putting significant pricing out there. You know, I think as I mentioned earlier, you know, we're seeing the impact of the essential nature of our categories.
Okay. Very good. Thank you so much.
Okay. Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin Grundy with Jefferies.
Hello, Kevin.
Hey. Thanks. Morning, everyone. Hi, Mike. Hi, Maria. Question for Maria, I think, on the outlook first, and then I have a follow-up, which is sort of the guidance and how you pulled it together. Maria, how would you characterize the level of conservatism in the outlook? Or I guess said differently, just given the volatility and sort of the unprecedented cost pressure, and I'm not asking you to review at all the earlier question on what's embedded around commodities and input costs.
But have you built in sort of additional cushion than you typically would, just given the volatility and how challenging 2021 was and the number of downward revisions, additional cushion built in than you typically would, so, you know, investors can get some level of comfort as best we can in this environment that this is hopefully sort of a low point?
Yeah. It's a great question. You can imagine we've spent considerable time getting our arms around our own plan for calendar 2022 and what we're gonna hold ourselves accountable from a you know an internal plan standpoint. As we reviewed that and as we pulled together our internal plan what I would tell you is at this point in time here in the middle of January it's tilted more toward risk. For all the reasons we talked about and I won't repeat them it is tilted more toward risk. That's how we put the guidance range together.
We've got our internal plan, which is what all of our teams are focused on, either delivering or beating, and then looking at the risks and opportunities, it is tilted to risk, and that's what we use to influence our guidance range, if that's helpful.
That is helpful. Just sticking with that for a moment, I guess, the other area which was a little bit surprising to me, I guess, like where our model was the level of OpEx inflation. I think there's been a great deal of time around modeling COGS and gross margins for all the reasons that we know. I think the level of OpEx inflation was also a little bit surprising. Maybe just, if you wouldn't mind, and then I'll pass it on, spend a moment on that and how much is sort of fixed versus variable, where sort of if need be, there's an opportunity to sort of tighten a little bit and pull on the strings to offset further inflation that's not currently anticipated.
I think it's a very important area to talk about. We are continuing to invest in our business. We are bullish about our long-term prospects, and we think the investments that we have been making and that we've ramped up over the last several years since we kicked off K-C 2022 Strategy are paying off. They're working. We talked about advertising and what we're doing to support the brands with effective marketing. Those investments go beyond just advertising. We've talked about investing in innovation. We've talked a lot about investing in our commercial capabilities, and we're gonna continue to do those things because they're working, and they're paying off, and the ROIs are there.
It's those investments that are helping us have meaningful growth especially in our Personal Care segment of the business. When we look at 2022 versus 2021, we've also talked about the benefit that we had in our between-the-lines spending in 2021 due to lower variable compensation expense that normalizes for 2022. The last area I'd comment there on between-the-lines and investments is we're also making a few what I would call foundational investments, and we're very committed to those as we think that they're very meaningful to the long-term health of the company.
First, we're opening our North America commercial center in Chicago this spring, which we're very excited about, and our North America team is handling that transition quite well. Early signs are very positive, but it is an investment. The other one I would call out that I mentioned before is we did start our program to upgrade SAP to S/4HANA. We began that last year. That ramps up even more in 2022, and that investment is showing up both in the P&L as well as in our capital expenditures. We're sticking with the investments that we know are working and that are fueling the top line.
We've got some foundational investments, and then we have some expenses that were lower in 2021 that will step up in 2022 around employee costs. That, that's really what's behind it. Mike?
No, just important, they're important investments. The SAP, obviously, that investment is gonna fuel our cost savings for the future too. We feel very good about those, and we're gonna continue to be very disciplined about our spending. We feel like we're making the right investments for the long-term health of the brands and also for the organizational health.
Got it. Thank you both. That's great color. Good luck.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrea Teixeira with JP Morgan.
Morning, Andrea.
Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. My question, Mike, and I guess, Maria, if we should expect nominal pricing to be in the mid- to high single digits when it's all said and done, at the mid- to high-single-digit range, or pretty much what you're expecting for sales on the 3%-4% in nominal. In that case, it implies that probably you're getting additional pricing in the spring reset. I just wanna confirm that because you did imply, obviously, FX being a negative and then negative volumes. Related to that, are you seeing private label getting some, I mean, some of the categories obviously had a lot of shelf space during the pandemic, but some of the other categories did not.
I was thinking, are you seeing private label, in particular in diapers, coming back, as we go into that, and that is what is informing you not only about demand elasticity, but also in terms of availability of the product that you may wanna brace for, you know, some private label concessions here? Thank you.
Hey, just on the pricing, Andrea, you know, I would expect over the course of the year, you know, mid- to high-single-digit increases on pricing. You know, and that could vary a little bit based on conditions, but again, that's kind of what we're marching against. You know, and thus far, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we've executed multiple actions, and they're generally on track. You know, we feel good about that progress, and obviously, we're keeping a close eye on that. In terms of private label, you know, I think, and I'll maybe talk North America differently. I'd still say private label is still down in most categories.
I think it was up a little bit in Bath tissue, but down in most of the other categories. It's something we're gonna continue to be very focused on, but you know, we're very pleased with our brand momentum. I think, although we're making progress in organic in North America, you know, some of that's still muted because we're still working through supply challenges. As you recall, we had significant challenges in the first half because of the storm down here in Texas. We recovered very well from that, and so really saw our service levels improve throughout the course of the year.
I'd say even in the fourth quarter, as Maria mentioned, we undershipped demand, because, you know, we're having difficulty getting carriers or getting supplies and all the other things that are associated with what's happening with Omicron and COVID. You know, we're keeping a sharp eye on private label, but we're really focused on driving our business, and we feel good about the progress we're making.
In terms of like when you said mid-single digits on top of like, low single digits, call it 3%-4%, you already implemented, is that the way we should be thinking? It's in total between 2021 and 2022, you're gonna hit high single digit price increase. Is that the way to think?
Yeah, in general. Again, yeah, we've again, as I mentioned, we've made multiple rounds and, you know, if you could go back and look at our, you know, kind of maybe what's happened in pricing in North America already, pretty significant moves.
Okay, great. I'll wrap it all. Thank you so much.
All right. Thank you, Andrea.
Thank you. Again, as a reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a question. Our next question comes from Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley.
Morning, Dara.
Hey guys. Good morning. Just to follow up on Andrea's question, can you give us a little more granularity on what product categories and geographies incremental pricing that's coming in 2022 will be focused on? Is it more just sort of across the board in everything? Are there specific areas where there's more aggressive pricing posture, again, in terms of the incremental increases in 2022? And then given a lot of these categories we're talking about multiple times that you take incremental pricing, can you just talk about your experience historically when you've been in situations where there's multiple rounds and how the elasticity might be different than in situations where you've just had one round of price increases that's been necessary?
Hey. Yeah, Dara. Yeah, just as a policy, though, I'll just clarify. I'll talk about the pricing we've implemented. I will not talk about any future pricing actions. You know, although I'll say, you know, I think as a approach, I do expect pricing to offset a significant portion of inflation. That's just kind of a principle that I'll kind of put out there. I'll talk about what's already occurred, and I'll focus on North America as a starting point. You know, we announced mid- to high-single-digit increases in March, largely in our Personal Care business in North America, but in about 60% of our Consumer business last March. We took some further action, primarily in tissue, on count back in August, and that was effective this quarter.
Then we took additional actions that were announced in Q4, generally about a mid-single digit list increase across most of North American consumers. So that kind of should give you a sense of kind of what's been happening in the marketplace, at least in North America. I would say in international markets, similar, multiple rounds in Europe, multiple rounds, in some cases monthly, in Latin America, unfortunately, and of course, in Asia as well. It's pretty extensive.
Okay. It sounds like it's generally broadly across the board. I don't know if you wanna. It sounds like you don't wanna get into too much specifics, but, generally, we're expecting pretty broad increases in 2022 incrementally. Is that fair?
I think that's the case, and we're expecting this, the pricing that we have in to flow through, you know, substantively.
Okay. On the margin side, the comments about returning to pre-pandemic levels over time, can you just be a bit more specific on the timing of that? Is that possible at some point in calendar 2023, or is that more of a, you know, far out multiyear goal? How do you think about that? And also, does it require cost levels to come back down, or is it realistic if you're at current cost levels in terms of ability to recover fully through pricing offsets over time?
Yeah, Dara, I'm not gonna give a specific time frame, and I would say the driver of that is really the volatility around the factors that are causing the margins to be depressed in the first place. It's just too hard to call, you know, beyond 2022. What I can tell you, though, is that I'm very confident that we are taking, and we will take, the right actions to recover the margins of the business, whatever that looks like. We've shared with you what our assumptions are for 2022 in terms of all of the moving pieces. If it turns out to be different than that, if there turns out to be upside, that's great for all of us.
If it turns out that the environment's rougher than what we're thinking, we'll take the right actions. If inflation continues to run, we'll continue to price. We'll continually look at the cost structure of the business and take the right actions. But I can't today give you the exact timing of when we'll have the margin structure where it was in 2019 before the pandemic began.
The other thing that I'll comment on when we think about that and the actions and kind of managing through that, going back a bit to what Kevin was probing on in terms of the cost structure, this is probably the right time to call out. We did wrap up the global restructuring program that we kicked off in 2018, and we successfully delivered that with annualized savings of $560 million. Forty percent of those accrue to between the lines. When you look at our cost structure today outside of the supply chain, we really did restructure the between-the-lines spending of the company.
We took almost 200 basis points out, and then we invested back in the areas where we will have competitive advantage and differentiating capabilities. When I look at the cost structure between the lines today, we are in good shape, and we actually benchmark in the top quartile in terms of between the line cost structure. Feel good about where we are and that we are, we're optimized, and we're investing in places that have high ROI. I do wanna call that out as the environment changes over time, that part of the P&L, I feel good about.
Hey, Dara. The other thing I'll add is the fundamentals will suggest in our core commodities, there's gonna be reversion, but I do not want our teams waiting for commodities to come down to drive margin recovery. Our plan is to work to recover margins and then when they do revert, you know, then that'll change the timing and hopefully move it up.
That's helpful. Thanks, guys.
Okay. Thank you, Dara.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason English with Goldman Sachs.
Morning, Jason.
Hey, good morning, folks. Thanks for slotting me in and Happy New Year. I know it's late, but I still think it's still January, right? I can still slip that in. A couple of questions.
It's closer to Chinese New Year time, so yeah.
All right. Well, there you go. You got a big Chinese business too, so there we go.
Yes, exactly.
A quick question for clarification. In response to an earlier question, I think many people will have interpreted your comments to suggest that you expect to realize around 5% plus pricing this year. Many times throughout the call, you suggested that you expect price to still lag inflation and have a price cost deficit. If you got 5% flowing through the P&L, that would be almost $1 billion and would eclipse your cost inflation. Can you clarify what seemed to be two conflicting comments?
Yeah. I think the numbers that you quoted are right. When I look at currency, commodity price for 2022, that should be about even for 2022. The margin story is that that was not even in 2021, given the $1.5 billion of inflation that we saw. It was, I think, about a 30% drag to operating profit growth in 2021. While it's even for 2022, we haven't yet recovered the impact from the spike in inflation in 2021, Jason, if that's helpful.
Sure. No, it's really helpful because I think you said you expect to offset the majority of cost inflation next year, and you said it many times. The reality is you expect price to offset not just all the cost inflation, but most of currency, which is, I think, just a different conclusion. To get down to your numbers, really have to take an ax to volume if you're gonna get that much price. I guess my question is, where are you expecting volume to fall short? Because you're telling us that you undershipped this year, so at some point, hopefully you catch up and we replenish, we catch up on some of that, so you get a benefit.
Professional, I think, is still tracking down 16% to 17% volumetrically to pre-COVID levels . I would imagine that's gonna be a pretty strong tailwind, tell me if it's not. Where's the big offset?
Well, I think the key. Here's a couple things, and I think you're right, Jason. I think we're expecting improved performance and growth in both Consumer Tissue business and the Professional business. I think on Professional, though, I would not expect a snapback, right? Because I think what it has done is stabilize at a lower level. We're running below about 85%. Our washroom business is running at about 85% of what it had done pre-pandemic. That's because I don't know if you're in your office, but you know, we haven't seen a full-scale return to offices, and I don't expect that in the near term. We haven't seen a full-scale return to travel, especially business travel, and I don't think we're expecting that in the near term.
I think we are dealing with a professional business that's gonna grow, and we're pretty excited about the growth plans that we have this year, the innovation and the commercial trends we have in the business this year. It's not gonna revert to pre-pandemic levels this year, at least. That's part one. Consumer Tissue, same thing. You know, I think you know, there's been a lot of volatility the last couple years driven by you know, consumer stock-up and then destocking and so forth. When it all shakes out, it's a very stable business, probably one of the most stable businesses in consumer. In that, in the last couple years, a two-year stack of our fourth quarter would be +3%, right?
We're expecting solid growth on Consumer Tissue. Our Personal Care business globally is doing very, very well, as you can see in the fourth quarter, being up double digits, and we're expecting continued growth there. The offset really from us is, you know, we're pushing prices at a pretty high level, and that's gonna have an effect, and we hope that our elasticity assumptions prove out to be a little conservative.
Yeah. Right on. I'm gonna try to squeeze in one more real quick. A share repo, you effectively paused it back half of the year. You're guiding down free cash flow for next year. When should we expect to see you back in the market buy back stock?
Yeah. As soon as we've got the excess cash flow that will allow us to do it. You know, again, we're in the tough part of the cycle here in terms of capital allocation. Nothing on capital allocation, how we think about it, has changed and, you know, those steps are invest in the business. Look to grow the dividend, which I'm pleased to say we will do again for the 50th consecutive year. Then, you know, beyond that, with the remaining cash flow, we're always looking at M&A, but assuming there's nothing there, then it goes to share buyback. When the margins recover, you know. Let me start at the top, right?
We're expecting strong top-line growth in our business. We're expecting the margins to recover. When those two things happen, we will get back to the cash generation levels that will enable us to do share repurchases. You know, we're committed to shareholder-friendly capital allocation practices as we've done in the past. You know, we're at about. I think we finished with leverage at 2.3 x excluding restructuring. That's ahead of kind of the 2.0x that the agencies like to see for the single-A rating, and we do remain committed to the single-A rating.
You know, at this point in time, the way the numbers line up, we don't have the cash within the rating to do buybacks, but I very much look forward to being able to get back to doing so.
Understood. Thank you all. Be well. Bye.
Okay. Thank you, Jason.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS.
Good morning, Peter.
Hey, good morning, guys. So just a quick follow-up on Steve's question. I know you don't wanna give a specific timeframe, but I just wanna get some clarification around the comment, which I think was significant gross margin progress in Q4. Is that simply just margin expansion, or should we read that comment as a suggestion that it, you know, the fourth quarter is really when you expect to, you know, see margins return closer to those pre-pandemic levels?
Yeah. I think we do expect gross margin progress versus pre-pandemic levels to happen faster than on the operating profit line for the investment reasons that we talked about before. We are expecting to have progress. We're not expecting to be back to pre-pandemic levels. The actions that we've taken for the environment that we're in and that we think we're gonna be in during this year, as those materialize through the P&L during the course of the year, I think we're gonna be on a good path. If the environment is what we think it is today, which we know that it won't be, because it's too difficult to predict, especially with the volatility.
If it were, if I was able to hold that constant, I think we'd be on a good glide path. I say that recognizing with the volatility, I just it's too difficult to call what the environment will look like and exactly when those margins will hit the pre-pandemic levels. You know, again, we're taking all the right actions in the business to do that. You know, we talk a lot about margin, which we're very focused on because we're focused on the overall health of the financial structure of the company. It's appropriate.
You know, I would call out a few things, though that you know, getting back to Jason's question, what generates the cash so that we can provide healthy returns, you know, with actual dollars. When we look at operating profit growth, you know, that's very important, and I think it's worth noting a few things. First, on margin recovery, we'll get there faster on Consumer than we will on Professional because Professional, you know, today, we had a cost structure that was built for a business that's larger than what it's producing today. There's a misalignment between the revenue of the business and the cost structure of the business. We'll get that corrected, but that will take some time. The margin recovery will come faster on Consumer.
But then going to the profit dollars, you know, I call out, in 2021, Consumer Tissue, for all the reasons that we've talked about, that was 75% of the operating profit decline. there were very specific dynamics that caused it. It was the big driver of the profit decline. if you look at our Personal Care business, which is half of our company, you know, strong growth, strong market shares, it actually grew operating profit in the fourth quarter. It also grew in the third quarter. the second half of the year, the Personal Care segment, which is very healthy, is actually growing operating profit.
You know, in the near term, I'll take the dollars, recognizing in the long term, I have to get the margin structure to the right place. Just thought I'd give a little bit more color by segment there.
No, that's incredibly helpful. Then just, you know, completely shifting gears here, I would love to get an update on the performance in the D&E markets, like, which, you know, seem to perform quite nicely in the quarter. Can you maybe provide a bit more color around kind of the health of the consumer in those regions? Like, what is driving the stronger growth, whether it be category or Kimberly-Clark specific? Then I guess, you know, on pricing, you know, how have pricing actions been received in those markets versus what you see, or what you're seeing in developed markets?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Peter. Yeah, great performance in developed and emerging markets. Overall in the quarter, I think it was in our statement, but organic up 10 in the quarter and 8 for the full year. You know, that was composed of really a healthy balance of price, volume, and mix, importantly. Then we saw solid growth all regions, high single-digit gains in Asia and Latin America, and double-digit growth in EMEA. Then really strong double-digit growth in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, which are kind of the important future growth markets for us. We're really excited to see that. I think, you know, what's driving it is I've mentioned kind of in my prepared remarks, you know, really great innovation.
We're doing a really good job. Our teams around the world doing a great job of scaling really what I would call breakthrough innovation across markets. You know, we were up multiple share points in Korea in the fourth quarter. That is a version of the Chinese diaper technology that we've put out there, which is related to the diaper technology that we have in North America, which is the same technology that we put out in Australia, which was also up multiple share points. I think really good consumer-inspired innovation and then superior local market execution around digital marketing and sales execution. You know, it's kind of all the things and they're all working very hard for us.
You know, one of our business leaders you know calls it you know all oars in the water, meaning you know we used to be over-reliant on one thing to drive the business. You know, we're really part of our commercial you know capabilities that we're developing is we want everything out there working in the same direction. When we do that, you know, we tend to see the results that we think we're seeing now.
Thank you. Best of luck.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets.
Morning.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, Mike. So just two quick questions from me. Just on the upstream innovation agenda, Mike, can you just talk about what's going on there? I mean, has it had to take a back seat just given all the situations that you've been dealing with COVID, et cetera. You know, we talk a lot about labor and transportation and input costs, but you know, we don't talk a lot about retail or media, which seems to be a growing demand from your customer base. I was hoping you can provide a little bit of context on that and how that's hitting your P&L.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, great questions. Thank you. I think the flavor maybe you could have gotten from Maria's commentary earlier. I mean, we're continuing to invest in the foundational things that are gonna make this group business healthy for now and the long term. We recognize we're working through some choppy waters, but you know, we're committed to growing this business for the long term in the right way. You know, we're not pulling back on our innovation investment and our insight and our technology investments, and we're excited about it.
I think the reason you're seeing the results that we're realizing around the world is because we're just doing a better job of scaling big ideas and big innovations that are really grounded in great technologies. We're continuing to do that. Maria mentioned the visibility of our pipeline on cost savings is probably better than it's ever been. Well, the visibility of our pipeline of our technology innovation is better than it's ever been, too. That's one of the things as we, you know, coming into this role, we wanted the organization to work longer term. You know, we're here for today, and we're also here for tomorrow, and to be able to balance that.
You know, we're really pleased with that progress, which is why I would say, you know, we're confident that we're gonna, you know, continue to be able to invest and grow in our businesses, both in Personal Care, Professional and Consumer Tissue. That's one. I think with regard to retail media, yeah, it is becoming a bigger topic. I will say I feel very good about our digital capability, and we're very disciplined. And we have so much data around, as Maria mentioned earlier, digital ROIs. I mean, we know exactly what it is. We've made significant progress in ROIs over the course of the last three or four years, and we know what the investments are worth.
We're very capable, have the right sort of data, as you might expect, to be able to work with our retailers and make the right investments. Frankly, you know, some of those investments are really good for us, and we're really excited to do that with them. Others, we're gonna need to see a little more improvement. Overall, I think it's an operational issue and capability that our organization is really well equipped to deal with.
Great. Thanks, Mike.
Okay. Thank you, Nik.
Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I'll turn the call back over for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you. In closing, I'd like to really reinforce a few key points from my opening remarks. Three years ago, we launched our strategy to deliver balanced and sustainable growth, and that plan is anchored on our strategy to accelerate top line growth by elevating our categories and expanding our markets. Now to do this, we have invested in our brands and capabilities and our people. This growth is fueled by improvements to our cost base, delivering strong annual productivity through our FORCE and global restructuring programs. It's pretty clear we're executing our strategy in a very dynamic environment, and our teams have faced challenges well beyond what we or anyone else had anticipated, but that's our reality, and we expect the volatility in the environment to persist this year.
We're committed to our strategy, and we're executing well, evidenced by our growth in Personal Care, strength in market share performance, and the actions we've taken in a very volatile environment. We're excited about the potential of our brands and categories and our ability to develop innovative products that will enhance our portfolio and the value we provide our consumers. We're also committed to restoring our margins and expect to make progress this year. This commodity cycle is clearly different from past cycles, and the time to recover will be elongated due to continued inflation. We're confident in the actions we're taking and in our ability to create meaningful shareholder value over time. I'm especially grateful for the dedication of our talented teams, and we will continue to do all we can to ensure a safe and rewarding work environment in the year ahead.
Thank you all for joining our call today.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.