Good morning, everyone. This is Chris Jakubik, Head of Investor Relations at Kimberly-Clark, and thank you for joining us. I'd like to remind everyone that during our comments today, we will make some forward-looking statements that are based on how we see things today. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties, and these are discussed in our earnings release and our filings with the SEC. We will also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures during these remarks. These non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered a replacement for and should be read together with GAAP results. You can find the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations within our earnings release and the supplemental materials posted at investor.kimberly-clark.com. With that, I will turn it over to Mike for a few opening comments.
Okay. Thank you, Chris, and thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. Our first quarter results underscore the strong progress we're making toward creating a company unlike any other in our industry today. Our Powering Care growth engine is enabling Kimberly-Clark to continue building industry-leading base business momentum. We are delivering differentiated science-backed innovation at all rungs of the good, better, best ladder. In the first quarter, innovation helped fuel our delivery of solid organic sales growth with volume plus mix growth increasing to 3%. This builds on two consecutive years of broad-based volume plus mix growth. We're building market share across our key focus areas of baby care, women's health, and active aging, and with a second quarter launch slate that's one of our most active ever across the categories and markets where we compete.
Our supply chain team continues advancing our commitment to deliver the best product at the lowest cost. We generated another quarter of industry-leading productivity, enabling us to continue investing for impact. Our fast and lean operating model is making us more agile, navigating external turbulence. It's also helping us continue to bring the best of Kimberly-Clark to the world with speed and efficiency. We're still in the early innings of our potential, and we're well positioned to continue accelerating our virtuous cycle of value creation. We look forward to seamlessly plugging Kenvue brands and businesses into our proven, durable operating model. We're ready to raise the standard of care for billions of people around the world and deliver generational value for shareholders. I'm very proud of our teams for their passion and dedication as we work to make our bold ambition a reality.
With that, I'd like to open the line for questions, operator.
At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone keypad now. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Dara Mohsenian of Morgan Stanley. Dara, your line is live.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Morning, Dara.
First, maybe just a clarification on the full year guidance. Obviously, we're seeing commodity pressure today. You know, if oil stays what's now above $100 a barrel, you know, that's not officially in guidance, nor is the mitigating actions. You know, Nelson was just hoping you can walk us through the range of potential actions you would take to help offset any pressure on full-year earnings if oil stays up here, maybe rank order, how you think about pricing versus productivity versus flex on ad spend. Just conceptually, do you think it's realistic you can offset most of that if oil stays up here, understanding it's very volatile? Mike, if we can drill down a bit, I did wanna delve more into the pricing side in North America. We've obviously seen a pretty promotional industry environment the last couple quarters.
At the same time, you're generating very healthy volume growth on your portfolio within that environment, and now we have this unexpected cost ramp up externally. Just a lot of moving pieces, and I was hoping you could help us understand strategically how you plan to manage pricing in North America, given all those factors.
Okay. Thanks for the question, Dara. There's a lot to unpack there. Let me kind of give you kind of the overall framework of how we think about it, then I'll ask maybe Nelson to give you some of the details about how we'll process it and maybe ask Russ to click in on some of your questions about pricing. I'd say overall, Dara, I feel like we're making great progress creating a new kind of health and wellness leader. You know, we're really encouraged by the strong base business momentum we're seeing. 3% vol mix in the quarter builds on a, you know, it's, I think our sort of ninth or tenth quarter of solid volume mix growth, and so we feel great about that.
The important thing, I think as you kinda embedded in your question is that that volume/mix growth is being driven by innovation, right? We're not renting that through promotion. The promotion's supporting the innovation, that's kind of the big deal for us. On top of that, we feel like our supply chain is in full swing and generating industry-leading productivity, which we feel great about, and that enables us to reinvest back in the quality and the marketing of our brand. I think, you know, we're feeling good about our underlying base business momentum. I'd say the environment, you know, promises to remain turbulent, but we're gonna remain agile and disciplined. You know, we've been through a number of these things. Well, in my tenure in this role, right?
If you go through COVID and a few other wars, unfortunately, and other commodity or input cost situations. We've had a lot of experience navigating a lot of different disruptions, including this quarter. I'd say overall, our processes to remain very disciplined. One concept that, you know, we felt very important is PNOC or Pricing Net of Commodity input cost discipline. You know, we expect that to be at least neutral over time, and we're gonna leverage all the tools that we have to make sure that we continue to do that. I think the key thing for us is, you know, we have a lot of levers to pull in terms of how we're managing our cost profile, which Nelson's gonna talk more about right now.
I also say, you know, having that discipline on pricing net of cost is an important concept for us.
Yeah. Picking up where Mike left, Dara, a few things. As we look at the overall input cost inflation for the year and what we have factored into the outlook, I think it's important to bring up the last two years. For 2024, 2025, we faced right around $200 million of input cost inflation. As we got into this year in January, that was really flattish all in. We were staring at about a flat input cost inflation outlook. With the latest data and information that we've got, let me unpack what's in the outlook and what we've yet to build into the outlook, including the mitigation actions, as you stated. For the second quarter, a couple of things.
As we stated in the prepared remarks, we're going to be facing around a $20 million top-line impact from the California D.C. fire, which for North America would be in the 70 basis points - 80 basis points of headwind in the quarter. In the bottom line, we expect to have, in the second quarter, around $50 million stemming from the inflationary impacts that we're seeing as a result of the Middle East war and some of the impacts related to the L.A. D.C. fire, which, as you stated, we expect to recover that in the second half of the year.
If we look into the back half of the year and we assume that oil prices remain at around $100 per barrel on average, we will be facing potentially gross incremental input costs of around $150 million-$170 million. We've not built this into the outlook because there's a lot of moving pieces as we speak, we have also not built in any potential mitigations, which our teams are currently working through as we roll through the different scenarios.
It's important to highlight that we, as Mike said, have instituted this philosophy of pricing net of costs over time neutral, and this is really embedded in our integrated margin management process, which ensures that over time, we expand margins and keep on track with our plan stated at our Powering Care plan rollout back in March 2024. As such, we have several levers in there. First one, revenue growth management. Second one, a very strong pipeline of productivity initiatives. We've delivered two years of 6% gross productivity back to back, and this 1st quarter of the year, we're already at 6%, and our plans are to deliver for the full year 6%. The pipeline is very rich.
We're making significant investments in the North America supply chain with the $2 billion announced, you know, a few quarters back, and that's progressing as planned. Lastly is the whole strategic relationships with our suppliers in terms of pricing contracts as well as hedging programmatic elements that we've put in place. I'd also remind everyone that we've got a solid track record over the last four years of recovering any input cost inflation and actually expanding margins. If you look at 2023 through 2025, we expanded both gross margins and operating profit margins beyond the levels pre-pandemic. We're confident in our ability to cover all these input costs over time. We will be back with more news in our next earnings call.
All right. Dara, sorry, I'm keeping track for you. Sorry if our answers are a little full. I'm going to ask Russ to comment on the promotional environment.
Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks. Hey, Dara. I would say, you know, just underscoring what Mike said that growing volume and mix profitably while maintaining PNOC discipline really is the key focus for us, and innovation's really the key to that. Specifically within North America, if I were to just double-click on that, you were asking about the promo environment. I would say that our overall pricing was in line in the first quarter, as you saw. In fact, our overall weighted average promo intensity in North America is down versus pre-COVID versus category levels. That's because we're focused on driving innovation. You will see promotion tick up when we have a an innovation agenda that's really strong because we're trying to drive trial.
That's exactly what you're seeing in diapers, you know, right now. You know, we are using more promotion to drive, you know, trial, you know, we talked about that in the fourth quarter. We promoted Snug & Dry. We have a great innovation there that drives softness in our new absorbent core, we're pleased with the results there. We've seen household penetration and velocities up on that post-promotion. We've also shifted some investments across channels with surgical programming to ensure our loyal Huggies buyers can find us after the recent distribution changes we talked about in the last call in the club channel. I'd expect that to normalize as we go through 2026.
The bottom line is, in North America diapers, our 2025 promo was below category for the year, and it's below 2019 levels. Just to give you some context.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Okay, thanks, Dar.
All right, thanks, Dar.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Peter Grom of UBS. Peter, your line is live.
Great. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone.
Hey, Peter.
Hey, guys. You updated your outlook for category growth to 2.5% versus 2% previously. Can you maybe just unpack that a bit more? What regions or categories are you seeing stronger performance? I think in the prepared remarks, you noted stronger category growth in North America, call it I think it was 3.3%. Do you think that's a realistic run rate moving forward? Do you think we could see a bit of a step back just given the more uncertain operating backdrop? Thanks.
Okay. Hey, Peter, I'll start. I'll ask Russ to weigh in here. You know, I would say we're very encouraged by the resilience of our categories and the impact of our commercial programming. You know, I'd say notably, North America categories rebounded strongly in Q1. That was driven by some shifts in timing of competitor promotion activity, particularly in, I think, in the paper categories, but also, you may recall in Q4, I think the categories had slowed down to, you know, under a point. That was really related to, you know, I think some things that happened in the year ago, port strikes and all this other stuff that happened. We're cycling that.
You know, as we got into that, you know, end of the year, you know, it was still a little unclear whether the slowdown was gonna be endemic to the category or it was a one-off. It turns out it looks like, you know, having cleared the quarter with, you know, a strong kind of increase in the category and in our organic, you know, I think we feel like that was a one-off. You know, I think our outlook for the year, you know, on a rolling 12-month, you know, it's like 2.5% across our categories globally is what we have, and that's kind of the way we're looking at it, and so we feel good about the progress.
Yeah. Yeah, I just add, I think, Mike, you said it well. I just add, you know, we aren't really seeing any large-scale shifts in consumer buying behavior, and we are still seeing, you know, consumers under pressure, but that's not a new dynamic, you know? I think our, you know, trailing 12-month, you know, weighted average category growth is around 2.5%, and, you know, we don't see a reason for that to evolve too much. There's some puts and takes, as Mike mentioned, with respect to specific dynamics. But hopefully that helps.
That's great. Thank you so much. I'll pass it on.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Javier Escalante of Evercore ISI. Javier, your line is live.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. My question is on the merge entity. Mike, you laid out a new organizational structure, if you can help us understand it better. How will it help restore growth at Kenvue while preserving the competitiveness of the core standalone Kimberly-Clark? What are the biggest changes that you made? If you can explain how you see those working. Finally on the combination, if you can give us updates on the completion of the joint venture with Suzano. You may have some of it in the prepared remarks, as you can expand on that. What is the status of the approval for the merger? Thank you.
Okay. All right. There's a lot to unpack there. I'll try. You can remind me, Javier, if I'm missing something. You know, let me start with, you know, after, you know, working on this since November, I will tell you know, for me and our team, and I think the team on both sides, the Kenvue side and the KC side, I would say for all of us, even more conviction in the growth potential of the company that we're about to create. You know, Kenvue is gonna report their first quarter results in early May, and that's consistent with their typical timing. I'm not gonna, you know, Javier, pre-jump that, you know.
I will say, you know, you know, and we've been working through kind of in our preparation for integration planning some category reviews, Nelson, Russ and I, with the Kenvue teams. I would say our view is that the recent challenges, although widely reported, have been largely executional, and we don't see them as being structural. In fact, there are, you know, pockets or more than pockets of strong profitable growth throughout the company. I would say a lot of that's been overshadowed by a few notable large challenges. You know, I would say primarily North America skincare, North America oral care has been a challenge and some of their business in China.
I think those are notable, but I would say, you know, if you look at kind of how we've structured the management team, I think the management team and the combination of both K-C and Kenvue players reflects, I would say, the strong performance that I observed in the businesses on both sides. The other thing I'll say is, you know, Kirk and that management team at Kenvue have taken some strong positive steps. You know, we're confident that Kenvue will improve this year. You know, one of the moves they did make was adopt their operating model, and they announced that change back in February. I would say it's very consistent with our kind of market-centric balanced matrix approach to operating.
I think we're very encouraged with kind of the progress on their side and also in the integration planning. As, you know, you kind of raised, I'm very pleased with that, you know, we've been able to assemble what I would view as a world-class team to create, you know, the preeminent health and wellness leader. I think, you know, roughly the talent, the bench from both sides is about 50/50. The leadership team composition reflects strong talent that reflect that exists within both organizations. I think there's a great blend of market experiences, functional capability, and technical expertise. You know, we felt like it was important to retain kind of the knowledge and leadership of what's working and also retain the strong institutional knowledge that exists in both companies.
Like I said, I think if you look at the composition of the leadership team, it also reflects the strong performance in some of the Kenvue international markets. So, you know, I'm, I'm pretty bullish on kinda what this team's gonna do together. You know, I will tell you, the operating model is gonna be very market-centric but also leverage global scale. The, the culture, I think, will be ownership, speed, and competitiveness, and I think that does tells well, as I mentioned earlier, with what Kenvue's been doing. Maybe I'll I know I said a lot there, Javier, I think Russ has got some comments as well.
Good morning, Javier.
Hey, Russ. How are you?
Good. Doing well. Yeah, I was just gonna pick up on what Mike was talking about around execution. You know, I think that really has been something we've been building and strengthening at K-C for many years, as those who followed us know, you know, both in terms of how to drive growth, but how to drive productivity and SG&A efficiency, and by the way, doing all those at the same time. We've been basically taking that approach and applying it to the synergy process. You know, we now have over 40 integration teams that are working on planning the combined company post-close to build the future of the company to drive the synergies and ensure we can, you know, operate effectively together. That process, I would say, is going very well.
I've been very impressed with the actions that Kenvue's been taking recently. Mike talked about in their base business and what they're bringing to the table for how we're looking at the future together. We are seeing very good line of sight to synergies, you know, in all areas. You know, cog, I'll just give one quick example. You know, their product is pretty small and dense, and so therefore, they tend to weigh out their trucks, and ours is bulky and light, and we tend to cube out trucks. Hey, we're shipping to the same places, let's put them on the same truck. There's actually quite a lot of value there. SG&A, lots of examples, we could highlight beyond just duplication.
We're really looking at it as an opportunity to leverage the combined scale to work differently. That's, you know, simplification of the systems environment, SAP engine instances, application rationalization, consolidating processes, accelerating global business services using AI. Lots of things there. On the revenue side, we're really excited. I think there's tons of opportunities in distribution and leveraging commercial capabilities like e-commerce, all of which require, you know, getting the execution, you know, fundamentals in place. That's really what we're emphasizing. We're not waiting for the close. You know, we are working on those things, as Mike mentioned. I know Kenvue's working on them in their base business, you know, hard, and so is K-C. We feel like we're pretty well positioned to hit the ground running.
Great. Javier.
One thing. Go ahead, Mike. Just like a high-level thought, do you think that part of these execution issues on the Kenvue side had to do with the fact that the demerger from J&J, at a time of a great deal of retail changes, both in the U.S. and China? Do you think that that's what led to, you know, underperformance?
I don't think I know enough to comment on that, Javier, right? But all I'll say is running these kinds of businesses is hard. There's a lot of things that add up to being, you know, what feel like small decisions end up having big impacts. That's why, you know, as I met with some large investors, and that's the question they ask, which is why does quality of management matter so much? It's because these are arcane businesses that have a lot of operating and running rules, and they can be very difficult. Things that feel small, like small, inconsequential decisions, end up having, at times, a big impact.
Nelson and Chris and I saw plenty of those at Kraft back from when we were at that company back in those days. You know, I wasn't there for that, and so I won't comment, Javier, but I would just say, doing this is hard, and making sure that you're kinda lined up correctly across all fronts of operating a business is really important.
Thank much. I'll pass it along. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Lauren Lieberman of Barclays. Lauren, your line is live.
Great. Thanks so much. I was hoping you could just talk a little bit about the shipment timing that you mentioned in the prepared remarks on North America, because as category growth has accelerated, you know, I don't recall if you guys use Nielsen or Circana, but the Nielsen trends, including Costco, your business grew 5% and you reported sub-2%. Just if you could discuss kind of in what categories in particular you're seeing those headwinds. Is it an inventory kind of correction, or is it something that is timing related and kind of picks up in Q2? Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Lauren. A few things. As you say, you know, scanner data, consumption data, very strong. As we've seen in many years, many quarters, there's always going to be some noise within the quarter between shipments and consumption. The key is really consumption. Looking into North America consumer specifically, as you point out, consumption, you know, was ahead of shipments by around 200 basis points. Trying to piece through the entire noise, I'd say trade stocks inventory is not really the big thing there. It's more having to do with the fact that we had very strong activation programming in the first quarter, which started in January.
We had some shipments that came through in December, and that kind of anticipated what we went through. That had to do a little bit with what you're seeing there and the difference. I think it's also important to highlight that as we think about the second quarter, we do expect organic sales growth to be slightly below Q1. Two things to keep in mind on that end. The first one, we're gonna have the strongest comp versus 2025, in which for total enterprise, last year, we grew about 4%, and in North America volume, it was actually 5%. Again, that goes back to the quarter-on-quarter can be a little noisy.
In last year's situation had to do with the fact that we had a series of product launches, particularly in baby and childcare, which drove strong shipments in the second quarter. The other bit for the second quarter is we're gonna be having a little bit of a headwind from the distribution center fire in California, as Russ Torres had mentioned in his prepared remarks. That will be around $20 million or 70 to 80 basis points for the North America segment. As we go into the second half, we expect that organic growth to actually accelerate because some of these noisy elements, we don't project.
Okay. Is my line still open?
Yeah. Yep.
Oh, cool. Okay, awesome. Thank you. I think I checked before I started.
No, you're good. Yeah, yeah.
Before I started asking myself a question. Okay. The operating profit headwind that you talked about for Q2, which largely reflects the incremental inflation and also some of the pressure from the D.C. fire. You've included that, let's call it roughly $50 million for Q2. You've held the guidance for the year. What are the mitigating impacts for the inflation you'll feel in Q2 specifically? If you're, you know, handling it that way for Q2, you know, why not, let's just call it like complete the plans for the full year to talk about whether or not how you're going to be offsetting? Because the 6% productivity rate, while super impressive, you're already at that level, you know.
It doesn't strike me as an easy task to up that rate of productivity to deal with this incremental $150 million-$170 million of potential pressure in the back half.
Yeah, Lauren, maybe I'll just say one thing. I know Nelson's ready to pounce, but, you know, but here, the one thing I will say is the underlying assumption we're making is that we know what the cost impact's gonna be, and we don't really feel like we know that yet. It's early. We know what it is today. We don't know what it's gonna be tomorrow or through the balance of the year. That's kinda why we're kinda keeping the cards a little close to the vest.
Right. Building on that, Lauren, I mean, two things. As you say, the $50 million for the 2Q, we feel pretty confident we can maneuver through that. That's not, you know, something that again, we're bringing up as a major situation 'cause it's not. As a reminder, we're about 80% covered in the entire cost basket, between contractual arrangements, programmatic hedging, and other items we're doing. We've got the full set of toolkits within our integrated margin management approach, and it starts with the philosophy of pricing net of costs. If you think about that toolkit, it includes Revenue Growth Management, it includes the productivity, and yes, 6%, we're already at that level, but we've had quarters that have been ahead of 6%.
We have a very strong pipeline of initiatives, and our team's not sitting still as we're going through this. The reason why we didn't get into what would the specific mitigating actions be for the second half is that the teams are actually working through them today. We are having sit downs with all of our suppliers, where force majeure or surcharges are being enacted, we're sitting down and renegotiating and opening up contracts as need be. We're looking at price spec architecture, and, you know, we're looking at all other elements of the toolkit. As, as I said, in the last two years, we've faced about $200 million of incremental costs. If you add up what we sort of estimate right now, and it's a point in time, plus the $50, you're right around that level.
Again, as Mike said, we wanna take the time to do this right. We wanna see where things kinda settle because it's moving by the day. You know, we'll do what's right. We'll continue to invest behind the innovation. You know, to do revenue growth management, it takes a little bit of time, but it's something that we know how to do. We've done it in the past. It's gonna be part of the toolkit.
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
All right. Thank you, Lauren.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Anna Lizzul of Bank of America. Anna, your line is live.
Hi, good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Anna.
Thanks so much for the question. I was wondering if I could build on Lauren's question. Nelson, if you could comment, I guess, on the pacing of the top and bottom line as we move through the year with both the impact from the distribution center fire in Q2, and then as you were mentioning, the other impacts down the line, of oil and resin input costs. You know, on the margin side, if you could talk about maybe the impact between Q3 and Q4, that would be really helpful. Thank you.
Sure. A lot to unpack there, Anna, but let me kinda give you a little, you know, start with the top line. As we mentioned, strong start to the year, at the 2.5% organic growth. As we go into the second half, the second quarter, pardon me, we expect to be slightly below that for the reasons I explained in the prior question, largely with lapping the strongest quarter of last year at around 4% organic growth. North America volume 5.
Obviously the $20 million headwind that we'll face because of the distribution fire in California. Heading into the second half, we've got, you know, an acceleration in top line, and that's what's embedded in our outlook for the full year at this stage. As we look at the bottom line, a few things to unpack. First, you know, we expect overall margins to actually pick up as the year progresses. We had in the first quarter an expansion of gross margin sequentially versus Q4, and gross margin versus the prior year was slightly down 60 basis points. That was largely expected because we are, you know, at the last full quarter of an impact from our exit of the private label contract in North America.
Heading into the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, we're largely going to lap that. We expect gross margins to actually be expanding on a continuous basis for the balance of the year based on the outlook of what we have today. On operating profit margin, we expanded operating profit margins again this quarter by about 20 basis points, partly driven by the 90 basis point improvement year-over-year from overheads. Overheads of 13% and 90 basis points lower than the prior year. We're getting, you know, good traction on delivering the full $200 million or exceeding it in savings as part of our Powering Care program. We expect for the balance of the year to continue to see expansion in operating profit margins.
For the full year, we expect gross margin, operating profit margin to expand both in the vicinity of 70 basis points- 80 basis points. That's largely a construct of what we see between, you know, the following quarters and the first quarter for both top line and margins.
Great. Thanks so much. Very helpful.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Robert Moskow of TD Cowen. Robert, your line is live.
Hi there. Hey, I just wanted to test, you know, the overall theme of the call here that, you know, the business is truly resilient to all of these unexpected cost headwinds 'cause when I look back to 2025, you had the tariffs was the big unexpected factor. You know, even though tariffs were mitigated for the full year, you still had to lower your profit guide for 2025. You know, when I'm looking at this 2026 number, the $150 million, $170 million is actually higher than what the tariff headwind ended up being. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, how nervous to be about the ability to offset that much cost. Thanks.
Yeah, I mean, I think, Rob, I'll give you a little bit of historical background, and maybe I'll ask Nelson to comment. You know, I would say, again, if you look at our recent history back in 2022 and 2023, the business took on, I think, $1.6 billion of additional costs and $1.7 billion consecutive years. I, you know, you know, I'd say what we're looking at here is a, you know, a fraction of that, right? I think what happens though, those were like all-time high, I would say inflation super cycle for us.
While the costs haven't receded, we've been able to manage through that cycle with discipline on this pricing net of cost impact right or commodity impact. I'd say, you know, at the level we're talking about, you know, we feel like the business should be able to operate and manage through things. We'll let you know. Certainly, you know, I think one of the reasons why we're hedging a little bit here is because we don't know what the costs are gonna be. We know what they're gonna be as of today or what the outlook is as of today, but it's still kind of a moving target.
You know, I think our thing is, you know, I think since the 2022, 2023 period, I think we've developed much stronger cost management capability, which is why we're delivering industry-leading productivity. We've really enhanced our, you know, RGM or revenue growth management discipline. You know, we feel good about our capability. The other thing I will tell you is we feel very bullish about the base business, right? Our organic growth being driven, you know, by, you know, a rebounding category, but also hopefully you saw in that presentation the fact that we were up in 95% of sales weighted markets on share in North America and 84% in international. I think, you know, we feel great about that.
Just to give you a comparison on the old metric that we used, which is just a pure count of cohorts, we're up in about 80%, a little over 80% of cohorts, right? I think we feel good about the momentum of the business.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. Thanks, Rob.
Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Edward Lewis of Rothschild & Co Redburn. Edward, your line is live.
Ed, how are you?
Oh, very well, thanks. Thanks very much, everyone. Yep, just a couple of questions from me. Just be interested to hear how, if we think about the good, better, best, how you're performing on those. Is good doing better than better, or is better doing better than best? Just interesting to hear some commentary around that. If I look at the international business, you called out good share gains in some of the markets.
Just wanted to sort of get a sense check for how you're feeling about those markets, given what's going on in the Strait and the concerns people have about the impact in particularly in sort of the Southeast Asian region, from the slowdown in shipping or in, I guess, in tankers coming out of the Strait. Any update, any commentary there would be appreciated.
I'll ask Russ to comment on the good, better, best. I will say, you know, unfortunate situation that we're, you know, operating in yet another region with another conflict. You know, number one, Ed, I'll tell you know, thankfully all of our people and employees have been safe in operating through this. They've put up, you know, really kind of working overtime to make sure that we continue to kind of operate the business while keeping everybody safe. I will say, you know, business and performance has continued to be robust, especially in international markets. You know, I think, you know, in multiple markets, strong double-digit growth. Interestingly, Ed, especially in Southeast Asia.
Absolutely.
You know, our Vietnam business was strong double-digit growth, share up significantly. Russ, you may wanna comment. The thing I'll also hit is in developed Asian markets like Korea, we're seeing a baby boom. I think births were up 6.5% last year in 2025, and so the category was up 20% in Korea, where we have over a 60% share. That's pretty meaningful for us, Ed. You know, I think we're feeling very good internationally, and Russ, you may wanna comment a little further and then the good, better, best.
I agree. We've seen a lot of strength, especially in Southeast Asia, as Mike talked about, also India, Australia, you know, kind of across the board. We haven't yet seen a significant impact on the Strait of Hormuz impacts yet. It's not to say that it wouldn't happen, but we're feeling pretty good right now. You know, in terms of the good, better, best question, I would say the premium side of the business remains healthy and is continuing to grow, and it's the key to category growth. You know, the consumers with higher incomes have remained resilient. On the Good and the Better, we're not seeing any specific patterns.
I think what it comes down to is the strength of the value propositions within the tiers, and that really is what's winning. I think consumers are getting more choiceful for their money. I would note that, for example, in personal care, you know, the penetration of private label continues to fall overall. And what's winning is the branded value propositions that are offering compelling value for money, and those aren't necessarily in the lower price tiers. They're more in the mid-price tiers. They're just providing a great proposition, and consumers, especially in our categories, they are willing to pay. That's our focus is to have the winning value propositions in all the tiers and let the consumer, you know, choose what's most appropriate for them. We haven't seen very significant shifts into the good tier.
That's kind of where you were going. You know, it really depends on the specifics.
I think, Edward, interestingly, I think what's driven our growth over multiple years is the premiumization or kind of improving the product quality at the premium tiers and driving positive mix. That's been consistent for the past, I would say, seven years for us. I think what's changed, is that it's not a pivot, it's just that we're applying the same approach to the value tiers. Interestingly, you know, what we did in North America was bring some of our best product technology from China and implement it at first in the value tier. You know, it'll eventually go to all our products here in the U.S.
You know, again, I think the fact that, you know, I think as Russ says, we're bringing our best product at every rung of the good, better, best ladder is kinda the real core strategy for us.
Thank you.
Great. If we could take one more question.
No problem. Thank you very much. Our next question is coming from Chris Carey of Wells Fargo Securities. Chris, your line is live.
Morning, Chris.
Hey, Chris.
Hi, good morning, everybody. I just, you know, kind of to wrap up a couple key concepts explored on the call. You know, just number one, you know, I've gotten a decent amount of questions on the commodity outlook and mitigation as could be expected, but I thought I would just ask it this way, right? At the Investor Day, you had talked about, you know, changing your ability to, you know, confront different commodity cycles. Can you just, you know, give us a sense of how you feel differently right now, whether that's the time lag from when commodities hit your P&L, that's the mix changes from, you know, portfolio adjustments. You know, how are we different today versus, let's say, the last commodity cycle?
Secondly, just on the, on the conversation around PNOC, I think embedded in some of your comments is the prospects of potentially looking at pricing, or I think, Nelson, you said that RGM takes time, so maybe, you know, RGM is a, is a potential lever here. Do you think that, you know, incremental pricing or incremental RGM, you know, could disrupt some of the volume improvement that you've been seeing, which is, you know, partly helped by some of the, you know, the demand-building activity that you're doing? Do you think that you can continue to, you know, deliver volume even if you were to kind of lean in a bit more on price or RGM if you, if you wanna control PNOC if inflation stays higher? Appreciate those two.
Okay. Hey, Chris, let me start. Nelson's gonna wanna weigh in here on the commodity kind of management, but I would tell you know, in my tenure, everything's changed about commodity management since we've been here. I think, you know, in the past, I think we used to let things flow quite a bit. You know, I think I may have mentioned this, Chris, as we kinda looked at what was like holding the stock back, it was kind of the earnings volatility. When you looked at what's driving earnings volatility, it was input cost volatility, right? You know, with Nelson coming in, we made a very conscious effort to kind of reduce the volatility of input costs by using all available techniques to do that.
You can see, you know, that's in terms of how we buy and how we contract, but also in some of the partnerships that we've developed, you know, over time. You know, we feel very good about the progress we've made and hopefully. I think the facts are that the beta on the input cost volatility has reduced significantly in the last five or 10 years. Nelson, you may wanna come in.
Yeah, just building on that, Mike mentioned it before, you know, when I joined, we were getting into the second year of the heightened inflation related to COVID. That's the second year in which we faced $1.7 billion of costs. As I've said in some of the calls and in some of our investor meetings, we learned from that. We developed a lot of muscle around risk management over the last few years. We've instituted not just programmatic hedging, but also strategic relationships with suppliers that allow us to have more visibility into costs and allow us to have flex to manage through the whole process. Before, you know, four years back, we would probably been talking about a different number today.
Given what we've instituted on that end, this allows us to be able to manage any shocks much better. The other bit, it's not the commodity itself, but is how proactive are we on the rest of the toolkit. That's why we refer to the pricing at a cost philosophy and the integrated margin management approach, which is a philosophy that we've been embedding in the organization. It's very different. We're managing end to end. We're measuring the teams end to end, that leads to different outcomes. That's why, you know, our level of confidence in being able to manage through these cycles is much better at this stage, Chris.
Yeah. I'll remind you, we're not impervious to cost shocks, but I think we're in much better position than we were, let's say, five or 10 years ago.
Great.
Okay.
All right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us. For analysts that have further questions, Investor Relations will be around all day. Thanks very much and have a great day.
Thank you very much. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.