Hi, everyone. Our next presenter is Kimberly-Clark, which is currently in the midst of one of the largest transactions and biggest corporate transformations in CPG history. The team is led by Chairman and CEO, Mike Hsu. Since taking the helm as CEO in 2019, Mike has been reshaping the company, building a veteran leadership team with extensive experience in key areas, and reshaping the portfolio to become a leader, a global leader in branded personal care. Under its Powering Care strategy, Kimberly-Clark has been one of the few in the industry to inflect positive volume-driven organic growth while expanding profit margins from strong productivity. Today, we look forward to hearing how the company will continue the momentum it's built and how it can bring that to Kenvue when the transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026.
Following the presentation, members of the management team will be available for Q&A. Please ensure to make your way outside during lunch to their signature island. And a big thank you to Kimberly-Clark for sponsoring today's lunch. So just a reminder, the breakout will be at lunch. With that, it's my pleasure to hand it over to the company. Please welcome Mike Hsu, Chairman and CEO of Kimberly-Clark, who will be joined today by Russ Torres, President and COO, Craig Slavtcheff, Chief R&D Officer, Patricia Corsi, Chief Growth Officer, and Nelson Urdaneta, Chief Financial Officer. Thanks, Mike.
Inventors that care about people, that's who we are. Creating inventions to care for people throughout their lives. But when you look at life, where does our innovation fit in? At birth, where nobody even knows they're parents, we're there with Huggies that feel like a hug. As they learn to walk, we're there, helping to enable that milestone. When a child wakes up in a dry bed, we're there, reassuring that bedwetting happens, but embarrassment doesn't have to. These are moments of transformation, and they happen across a lifetime from beginning to end. That same child soon becomes a woman. As she grows, she'll have good moments and bad ones, all stories Kleenex can absorb. When motherhood and menopause transforms her body, with [audio distortion] she can adapt with life. This life is just one of millions.
By showing up in moments of transformation, emotional storytelling, we'll be invited into these lives. People will thrive, laugh, and see our products not just as tools, but as companions to life transformation, forming a lifetime bond. We said, "Yeah, we do care about people. That's what we do.
Okay, that was a little bit about us. For K-C'ers, this is a powerful reminder of our mission. This is why we do what we do. We provide the best, most innovative solutions to deliver better care to our consumers every day. This is what makes K-C'ers tick, and it's precisely what makes Kimberly-Clark a very special company. For more than 150 years, Kimberly-Clark has been there for people at their most important moments. People place their trust in us. From the beginning of life to the very end, consumers invite us into their lives, and we're proud to be with them every step along the way with innovative products that solve their most intimate challenges. Babies with Huggies Pull-Ups, young women experiencing their first period with Kotex, adults with incontinence, living fully with Poise and Depend.
Everyday essentials like Kleenex and Cottonelle, our iconic brands deliver for our consumers when they need it most. So by caring for people throughout the journey of life, Kimberly-Clark is there for moments of connection. We form deep connections with consumers that establish brand preference for years and decades. We reinforce that brand love with powerful, consumer-inspired innovation and storytelling that resonates emotionally. Moments of connection are how we drive brand love and lifetime bonds that translate to superior lifetime value. Now, our presentation today is about the operating model we've built, the momentum we've established, and how it positions us to capture the generational value creation opportunity we have as we prepare to integrate Kenvue. Our products are everyday essentials that serve one in four people every day in categories, for the most part, we invented.
We have $6 billion global brands and leading positions in over 80% of our key markets. We're pivoting the portfolio towards personal care categories with attractive long-term growth potential and where we're executing at a high level. Powering Care has established industry-leading momentum. We're performing while transforming in a difficult environment by accelerating pioneering innovation, optimizing our margin structure, and wiring our organization for growth. Our momentum is reflected in our financial performance. We've delivered two consecutive years of broad-based volume plus mix growth and accelerated our rate of growth in 2025. We're delivering that level of growth in categories growing on average about 2%, and we're excited about the opportunity to accelerate growth in Kenvue categories, many of which are currently growing faster than 2%. We're on a sustainable path towards the margin milestones we established two years ago.
Industry-leading productivity gains are funding investments to improve our brand propositions, drive brand love, and enhance our commercial capability. We've also made significant investments in our capabilities and our infrastructure. Those investments set us up for where we are today, ready to capture a generational opportunity with the acquisition of Kenvue. Powering Care is our proven and sustainable value creation engine. This approach is designed to generate a virtuous cycle of growth. The components of Powering Care are mutually reinforcing and designed to drive durable, sustainable, and profitable growth, even when the environment delivers the unexpected. Powering Care is enabling us to make the best, most innovative products for the lowest cost, build brand love, and drive robust volume plus mix growth. Today, we're going to double-click on out-innovate and out-market, and we'll illustrate how we pull them all together to create lasting impact for our consumers.
Science is our competitive advantage. Our innovation approach uniquely pairs our scientific expertise and our obsession with solving the consumer's most important problems. This approach has accelerated our pace and impact of innovation. We focus on the most important consumer needs in our categories: leak-free confidence, garment-like comfort, healthy skin, and sleep full night. This focus drives us to deliver these benefits with compelling offerings and value at every rung of the good, better, best ladder. Our innovation has delivered category-shaping performance. We've led the premiumization of our categories by redefining the boundaries of what performance means. As we look ahead, we're excited about our innovation pipeline and have conviction that our next 10 years will be even stronger than our last 10 years. We build brand love by visualizing our groundbreaking benefits in the context of life's most intimate moments.
We're leveraging content at scale that builds brand love to extend our category leadership. We've experienced notable successes across Depend, Poise, and Kleenex, not to mention Huggies in North America. We've built a unique and advantaged digital commerce engine in China, a market that is comprised of some of the world's most discerning consumers and a leading-edge demand ecosystem. This is the platform for our digital commerce engine that fuels KC globally. We've also been thinking outside the box and built differentiated in-house creative capability that is generating award-winning creative. We're breaking stigmas and building deeper brand connections. At retail, we're fostering better, frictionless shopper journeys, online and offline, and backing it with flawless end-to-end execution. We've strengthened strategic customer partnerships through joint business planning over an extended planning horizon, and this approach has been recognized by all our top customers.
We're supporting them to help shape the future of physical commerce. Powering Care is a repeatable growth by our acquisition of Kenvue. Like us, Kenvue's iconic brands form lifelong, bonds with consumers. Together, our powerful stable of brands will raise the standard of care for billions of people around the world. And I should know, like many of you, I was a Johnson's baby. The earliest memory I have of my mother is of her washing my hair with Johnson's Baby Shampoo. Joining forces with Kenvue presents a generational opportunity to create the preeminent personal wellness company that provides extraordinary everyday care. Together, we'll have leadership positions in many of the industry's largest, most attractive categories. These categories have favorable growth and penetration trends across baby care, women's health, and active nature. We'll be uniquely positioned across these core groups to grow as they grow.
We'll earn the trust of more people by helping them raise their children, care for themselves, and care for their loved ones. In doing this, we'll create durable value for our shareholders. We're ready to accelerate into our next chapter, and so today, we'll highlight those capabilities and how they set us up to hit the ground running with Kenvue. We have a generational opportunity before us. We've established strong, repeatable growth momentum that's grounded in a fast and agile operating model. It's driving a successful transformation, building differentiated capability and core financial strength.... It's a repeatable, durable model that Kenvue will seamlessly plug into. So next, Craig, Patricia, and Russ will illustrate how we out-innovate, out-market, out-activate, and deliver the best product at the lowest cost to our consumers and customers.
Thanks, Mike. Hello, everyone. I'm Craig Slavtcheff, and I lead research and development at Kimberly-Clark. You know, at our core, we are a company of inventors, and discovering science that serves consumers, as Mike said, is our competitive advantage. It's what energizes our 1,300 scientists and engineers around the globe, solving for the biggest consumer challenges. And we've built a system that turns that into profitable growth consistently. Today, I'm going to walk you through the transformation that has put us on a new path, one that out-innovates, out-markets, and out-activates the competition, and delivers real, measurable results. So how do we do it? Well, it starts with our innovation ecosystem. We have transformed against three simple pillars. First, consumer intimacy that leads to insights that then frame the need states to solve against. Second, connecting our efforts on short, medium, and long-term innovation through our matrix wiring.
Then doing so allows us to aggressively scale innovations in the short term, accelerate the launch of large technology platforms in the medium term, and drive our future disruptive thinking in the form of moonshots. And lastly, we have embraced agile design methodology across the organization in support of pipeline execution, allowing us to put our best minds on the biggest technical problems we see, shifting our project delivery to months from years. So, as I said, it's all consumer insight. Now, these consumer need states are the demand signals that direct all of our future innovation, marketing, and activation. Now, some of these are intuitive and a bit obvious at this high level. Leak-free, fresh and odor-free, etc. But double-clicking on each reveals a richness of category-specific insights that are the genesis of our pipelines.
Broader insights allow us to innovate in non-obvious category areas and therefore premiumize the category to grow value. It's globally relevant, drawn from jobs to be done, shaped by emotional and functional drivers, and weighted by how dissatisfied consumers are with what's currently available in the market. Those need states don't just shape our product roadmap. They direct us to where we push the science. Now, Kimberly-Clark has a long history of pushing the boundaries of science. That hasn't changed, but how we direct it has. Our scientific discovery is laser-focused on five areas, all driven by foresight and deep consumer understanding. Like our global need states, there are some usual suspects here on this page. For example, next-generation absorbent systems and materials designed to bend the performance curve of our personal care products.
Others push the boundary of the premium benefits we seek to deliver to our consumers, most notably the advancing science of the human microbiome and its impact on human health and skin physiology. Because really, every one of our products is used on skin that is vulnerable to insults, and our goal is to bring the latest science to maintain health and comfort. But breakthrough science only matters if we can get it to every market and price point where our consumers live. That's where our wiring comes in. Our wiring gives us something powerful, visibility and access to the best technology and consumer insights across the globe, leveraging the latest AI tools and our matrix structure to do so. That's how we drive portfolio harmonization. Now, here's what that looks like in practice.
In baby and childcare, across the 55 countries that make up our enterprise market segment, we went from 300 individual and independent projects to 11 scalable benefit platforms, all within 12 months. Then we deployed best performance and best cost technology into each market to make sure we were delighting consumers everywhere we compete. And at the end of 2025, after 12 months, we had moved 70% of our geographies to winning product designs, with plans to close the remaining 30. That wiring also allows us to drive connectivity between short, mid, and long-term technology efforts into one integrated system with commercial governance across all three. Near term, we're scaling aggressively. Our three-year pipeline has benefited from over $500 million in incremental net sales from scaling launches alone.
Midterm, we're investing in a simple list of four technology platforms that will shift performance curves across our categories in the next three to five years, and we're getting new platforms to market in as little as 18 months. Long-term, five simple but stretching moonshots over the next five to 10 years, constructing not only category-bending science that will direct the future of our categories, but new green space to continue driving premiumization. What does it all add up to? Let me show you. Kimberly-Clark's growth in 2025 was overwhelmingly boosted by innovation. This isn't a one-year story. Our innovation portfolio has overindexed on contribution to organic growth for over three years running, and it continues to be margin accretive. The numbers tell the story.
Over 75% of volume plus mix-led growth came from innovation, and the innovations we launched posted average margins that were 285 basis points accretive. Looking ahead, the pipeline is extremely healthy. Our FY 2026, FY 2028 pipeline is 160% the size of our pipeline in 2020, and the average margin of our full pipeline is 670 basis points accretive to our current base business. This system is working, and will build. So scaling innovation in multiple markets increases the ROI on our innovation investment. And to be candid, historically, our global scaling efforts were slow. Our generous absorptive core, worldwide, 20 years, only three launch countries. Since then, we have flipped that entirely. In Baby care, our Cloud Waistband premium feature wraps a baby's waist in a plush, cushiony cloud that moves when they move.
It was launched as a premium feature in top-tier diapers initially. Fast forward, global wiring, three years, 57 launch countries. That's what the system delivers. Now, speed is one thing, but we also need to make sure innovation reaches every consumer at every price point. The key part of our out- innovate is continuously scaling premium innovation features down through the value tiers, driving towards best product, lowest cost. We take premium features and value engineer them to scale across better, best ladder. Cloud Waistband is a great example. As I said, we started with the most premium design at the top tier, engineered information of that feature, at 75% lower cost, 75% lower capital, and more asset, expanding our launch dramatically. Most notably, in years three through seven across the globe. That's how we scale. Let me share a example.
Kotex Gravity is a breakthrough that delivers a step change. Consumer testing [audio distortion] superior cleanliness, dryness, and comfort, driven by a proprietary absorptive core technology that rapidly pulls fluid away from delicate global skin. Compare core gravity, 120% faster, 60% less fluid residue, 30% improved dryness, and at the same time, can absorb 20 times its weight in fluid. Now scaling across 27 markets with strong IP protection, Gravity strengthens competitive advantage for Kotex and elevates the standard of menstrual care for women worldwide. Pretty awesome. Consistent with our playbook, we are building premium on top of this scale technology. One of our newest innovations, Kotex Bio-care, was built off of traditional period pads can disrupt intimate skin's natural barrier, trapping excess moisture, increasing pH, leaving skin susceptible to irritation and discomfort.
Kotex Bio-care's pH-proactive, proprietary technology designed to help protect it and support a healthy pH and help defend against odor and irritants. This is a game-changer for the category. Biocare takes our winning, globally scaled Gravity core and builds a premiumization benefit on top of it. You all will have a full pack of Bio-care before it's available in the U.S., in effect, out in the lobby. So now, remember I talked about longer-term disruptive technology. One of our five moonshots is called Sleep Uninterrupted, and as part of that, we asked a bold question: How much could diaper actually improve the baby's quality of sleep, and by inference, mom and dad's quality of sleep? Well, we tested it. We proved just how much it matters.
In China, the Deep Sleep Master launch is our hero, with consumer tests showing significantly more total sleep and significantly deep sleep time, delivered through faster absorption, better breathability, better leak protection. This launch has led to 210 basis points of share gain in the very competitive top-tier diaper market in China. That's what happens when future-directed science meets a consumer insight no one else has solved before. But we're not just meeting needs, we're anticipating them with proprietary solutions, no competitor to match. But breakthrough innovation is only the first step. Innovation creates the substance, creativity creates the connection. That's where my partner, Patricia, comes in with marketing. Over to you, Patricia.
Thank you, Craig. Good morning, everyone. My name is Patricia Corsi. I'm the Chief Growth Officer at Kimberly-Clark. Out-innovating with our products is just one of the powerful tools that we have in our toolbox. Today, I want to share with you another two, out-market and out-activate. We have a disciplined approach to leverage these three pillars and unlock long-term growth. We are going to focus on these three key areas: Holistic blueprint for growth, Brand lab, and Digital transformation. With those, we are going to deliver end-to-end superior experience to our customers and deliver best-in-class performance results. We are well-positioned in our categories to benefit from demographic and population shifts. We are seeing healthy growth categories and in the rates that are much higher than historical. The acquisition of Kenvue will give us further relevance, moment of connections with well-known and loved brands globally.
To fully benefit from positive trends, we will apply our Holistic blueprint for growth. This is a systematic, consumer-grounded, and repeatable approach that focus on how to unlock the biggest opportunities.... it, simplify it, and we make it actionable in the marketplace. With more users, usage, and locations, we will continue to unlock growth. And in our categories, there is a wealth of opportunity ahead of us. And I'm going to show you just a couple of examples, starting with this one with baby and childcare, with innovation and non-innovation-led growth opportunities in the different pillars, also in different geographies. In an increasing bifurcated world, this allows us to serve better and more consumers. And this is just another example from feminine care category, just to showcase to you that we are implementing this in all our categories and geographies.
And as you can imagine, there is much, much more behind these boxes than you can see today. And we are building brand love, and you heard Mike talk about it. Our transformation does not only rely on data. We are building brand love and building a generational value for Walmart. We are grounding ourselves in consumer-differentiated insight, and we will continue our product superiority focus while building much, much stronger brands that consumer love and admire. And this is not marketing fluff. It is important. And why it's important? Because building brand love drives loyalty, repeat, trial, and brand advocacy, and all of this deliver much stronger results. And I'm going to show you some examples, starting with the baby and childcare category. And by the way, all of them, I'm going to show you the results that we are getting in the marketplace.
Some marks are cute, diaper marks aren't. Introducing new Huggies Quilted Protection, the diaper that leaves no marks.
It's a perfect example from our home where product insight was translated into communication, leaving parents free of worry of diaper marks. This showcases how our end-to-end approach yields superior results. Let's start with market share gains, almost 300 basis points, and we reach over 1 billion media since the launch. This is an end-to-end because we have launched new product innovation, new packaging, visual identity, and also the communication campaign. From Brazil, we moved to Indonesia, and I'm going to do a little bit of round two. This was our previous Sweety brand packaging in Indonesia. Let me show you what we have done last year. New product, winning concept, new design, new... And of course, the results show 34% growth in the segment.
Not only that, the consumer response as well, 4.9 stars on TikTok, number one premium seller on Shopee, and 5 stars in Lazada. Now, let me go to the last example on BCC category. Video, please.
Huggies Little Movers. Big moves, even bigger protection.
I'm sure you agree with me that it has nothing to do with the traditional diaper advertising, and this is how you're transforming Kimberly-Clark. Another example, this time from the U.S. end-to-end, new product, new brand, visual identity, a new campaign, over 1.8 billion impressions, and around 30% better return on investment. When I say it's not marketing fluff, it's really not marketing fluff. And share gains again. So this is how we are delivering it in BCC. Now moving to adult care, showing that we can use creativity to build brand love, but also deliver better consumer experiences. Impactful creativity, even more needed in categories that are so stigmatized. Over 1/3 of the men in here and in the world, and 2/3 of the women will suffer bladder leakage at any point in their lives.
This is a topic that you can imagine nobody wants to talk about... But we are here to help that discussion to start. In Australia, you can see the new packaging design that helps to clarify what the product does; we are taking the stigma off the shelf. In the U.S., we partner with, and we are helping women to stop whispering in transit and digital content. In both cases, you can see market share gain once again. My last one on this pillar, very close to my heart, this has just been launched last week in the U.S. It's a new Kotex. I'm going to let you see for yourself. Well, I think you would agree with me that putting this back where it should be. This is from where we were, and this is where we are going to go.
We are completely relaunching Kotex in the U.S. New product, you have heard from Craig, with Gravity technology, bamboo, and Bio-care. We have new packaging design, end-to-end consumer discovery on shelf and online. This is a global platform. This is going to go to multiple countries across the globe, showcasing that what we are doing is a repeatable model and it delivers economic value. So I'm going to move now to the third and last part, but before that, I'm not going to have the chance to show all the transformation that we have been doing in the past 15 months. Next, Boy, and Upfront have also been recognized not only externally, but have been delivered with brand love and outstanding creativity, household penetration gains, market share gains, and also sales growth. You will have the chance to see it during lunch on our screen.
Now, I'm going to move to the last and third pillar of my presentation today, digital transformation. We continue to elevate our capabilities on digital transformation, with important strategies, AI, data, social, and authentic format. I'm going to show you today examples on how this is already delivering results in the marketplace. I will start with China, and as Mike said, really important market, and digital is leading there. We are leading in social commerce with superior results, with our best-in-class social-first model. This includes co-creation of products and designing concepts in social platforms. We have placed big bets on creators, and we are doing partnerships that build content that is both journey and occasion-led. With that, again, I know that I'm sounding like a broken record, market share gains, with 190 basis points and 60% lower cost per view.
I'm going to show you just very short videos on how does it work in digital and China. And the next one, needless to say, that can be applied to any country. I think in Brazil it's with Caramelo. And if we move to the next one, this model continues to be expanding. In Indonesia, it has delivered exactly the same outstanding results, and soon it will scale up to Brazil. And lastly, we are coming to e-commerce. In the U.S., our business benefits from 700 BPS share in online versus offline. And because of that, one of... this is one of the reasons why Kimberly-Clark West was selected by a Key e-commerce player as a beta partner for its new Gen AI capability. With this platform work that previously took two weeks, now takes two days.
We have piloted with Huggies and Lazada, and we are going to scale this up to all our brands. This data-driven approach is really transforming category discovery and has delivered over 200 basis points of share growth in this critical channel. And this is how we are transforming Kimberly-Clark from a company of inventors, to a company that has brands and innovation that transform and improve consumer lives. With our holistic blueprint for growth, building brand love, and with digital transformation, this is our playbook to win with consumers and customers. Over to you, Russ.
Okay, so I know lunch is next, so I'm going to bring us home. I'm Russ Torres, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Kimberly-Clark, and I can tell you, I've spent a lot of time with our teams and customers around the world, and what is unmistakable, the incredible momentum we have here at KC, and our people are the key. They possess a sense of purpose that's not just cultural. It's a competitive advantage that powers our execution every day. Mike outlined the Powering Care strategy. Craig talked about driving pipeline strength and product superiority. Patricia just showed you how we're unlocking brand love and driving growth in users and usage.
Now, I'm going to talk about our focus on volume growth, our drive to be the lowest cost producer and accelerate investments, and how our operating model brings it all together to help us win in the markets. We are seeing results of Powering Care in top-tier volume plus mix-led growth, 2.6% in 2025, eight consecutive quarters of solid performance. It's also showing up in our share. Even in a dynamic consumer environment, we have driven share gains in 2/3 of our key category country cells. A key differentiator for us is driving the best product and the lowest cost. We want both. We're focusing on driving to the lowest cost with three pillars: Value Stream Simplification, Optimizing our Global Network, and Scalable Automation. Those pillars are delivering. We've had two years in a row of 6% productivity.
We're 50% of the way towards our $3 billion productivity commitment, and that's well ahead of schedule, and we have strong visibility for our future delivery. We've done it all while improving product performance and dramatically increasing the pace and the quality of our innovation. These capabilities are going to drive about 1/3 of the cost synergies we expect to deliver from the Kenvue asset. And we're driving this approach in North America. Our new Mega Plant in Warren, Ohio, will serve as a productivity engine capable of delivering best-in-class throughput, enhanced product performance, and significantly lower unit costs. We're going to cut miles on the road by 22%, reduce the number of DCs we have, double the volume we're directly shipping to our customers, and dramatically improving our automation and therefore our converting costs.
We've got visibility here again to a consistent stream of strong productivity gains in the years to come. Let me bring this idea of best product at lowest cost to life with an example, and that would be Vietnam. Already a relatively sizable but fast-growing market for us, our local team was faced with increased competition from Chinese OEMs, and they were targeting growth amongst value-seeking consumers with offerings at significantly lower prices than our premium Huggies products. So we assembled a cross-functional team of experts to leverage the best of KC and build a solution. And in just five months, we launched a high-performing diaper under the Sweety brand, and we believe we now are the lowest cost producer. In fact, we were able to create a 25% conversion cost advantage versus those Chinese OEMs by leveraging our global capabilities, but also high-speed automation.
The results, a $0.07 diaper that is preferred by 2/3 of consumers, and most importantly, at attractive margins because of that cost position. In the marketplace, Vietnam gained 50 basis points of share in the fourth quarter, in part due to that activity. We're really excited about the potential to replicate this concept of best product at the lowest cost across the world, and we can't wait to bring that mentality to Kenvue. That growth and cost work is enabling us to reinvest a portion of those savings in impact to drive the cycle. For A&P, advertising and promotion, that means we invested $150 million more per year than we did two years ago. We're accelerating our capital investments as well to approximately $1.3 billion in 2026 to support our growth and transformation plan.
These investments, they're paying off, helping us drive the results that you're seeing today. Just as importantly, our Powering Care operating model has wired our teams together with a shared mindset, speed, accountability, and collective agility. That model also is a key driver of the momentum you see. Now, this matrix structure chart, you may look at it and say, "This looks like everyone else's." But the key driver of its effectiveness is the market-oriented way we run it. Our markets own the business end-to-end and are empowered to be locally agile. The role of those functions is to bring KC's best capabilities to the markets at speed to help them win. The goal is to bring global might to local fight. The two best examples of this are our two biggest markets, North America and China, and they strengthen each other.
The real unlock with Powering Care has been creating less friction for ideas to move between the two at pace and then scaling them throughout the rest of the world....China's digital and content commerce playbook is now flowing into North America, while North America's retail partnership approach and premium innovation and execution capability are being leveraged across IPC. Over the last several years, we've transformed our North America business from a cash generator to an engine for growth. We did it with four key actions. First, we invested heavily in improving innovation. We tripled our forward-looking innovation. We strengthened our consumer value propositions in every price tier. Second, we invested in building an advantage of digital engagement capability in North America, leveraging and adapting some of those capabilities from China.
And third, we built a world-class commercial execution, transforming our retailer partnerships and dramatically strengthening our modern marketing capabilities, especially in the areas of creative and social. And last, we improved our margins through stepped-up productivity, revenue growth management, and premiumization. So since 2021, North America has delivered a 3% organic sales CAGR with consistent volume plus mix growth, improved our operating margins by 300 basis points, all while increasing net marketing investment by 33%. We gained or held volume share in seven of eight categories in the year of 2025. We were leading the industry for three consecutive years, ranked number one in the Advantage Retailer Survey, and I believe the best is yet to come. China continues to be proof that our scalable, proven model works even in the most competitive market in the world.
Over the last decade, we've doubled revenue and tripled gross profit, and we have built an advantage digital capability. Our e-commerce share today is more than 2x our brick-and-mortar business. We've sustained incredible brand performance despite a very difficult competition. Huggies share is up more than 890 basis points, and Kotex share is up roughly 260 basis points since 2019. Those gains came from a strategy with four key elements: relevant consumer promises, science-powered innovation at pace, best-in-class digital engagement, and a premiumization engine that's fully integrated with the business model. This is scalable. It's not just the China or U.S. story. We're now lifting the elements of these capabilities into other priority markets to accelerate our growth. As you can see from the left-hand chart, across our international markets, we saw meaningful sequential organic growth acceleration last year.
On the right-hand side, we gained weighted average share across both focused and enterprise markets, with accelerating momentum across the year. The share gains are broad-based and are being driven by the playbook. As you can see, many, many markets are delivering strong gains despite tough competition. These elements are somewhat plug and play and can be leveraged by Kenvue as well across the world. Our pending acquisition of Kenvue is a really unique and exciting opportunity. Our integration machine is up and running. We have a Global Integration Management Office that talent from both companies, about 50/50, with over 30 work streams currently operating globally. The acquisition was overwhelmingly approved by shareholders of both companies, with well over 96% of the Kimberly-Clark shareholders voting yes.
We've secured regulatory clearance in the U.S., and we remain on track to close in the second half of 2026. We're using that time to drive to deliver $2.1 billion in total net synergies. On the normal SG&A synergies you might expect, we see future value creation coming from three big buckets. First, supply chain. This is going to include all sorts of things, like consolidating distribution to better fill trucks and ship more directly to our customers. We think there's great opportunities here as well to take the proven three pillars I just talked about and apply them to Kenvue. The second big bucket, SG&A. We see opportunities in commercial spending optimizations, in scaling our functions, and optimizing our joint IT landscape to deliver even more value. We're really, really excited about the delivery of these. Let's give one example. India.
Kenvue has the potential to triple our distribution in the traditional trade, and we see similar distribution-based opportunities in Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, the United States, Eastern Europe, and more. We believe we can leverage many of the capabilities we've talked about earlier today within Kenvue to accelerate growth. For example, our top-rated sales team in North America or our digital commerce capability. We're also being deliberate about what we're doing because we wanna make sure that we stay focused on where the value is. We're being very choiceful about prioritization and sequencing, focused on the places where there's real, tangible value. In summary, we've built a company that knows how to execute with speed, discipline, and accountability. We have the will and the capabilities and the operating model to drive that into results.
We're seeing it in our performance today, and you're going to see it in the way we integrate and scale Kenvue on closing the transaction. And I believe we're still in the early innings of what this organization can deliver. Thanks, Mike. I'll hand it back to you.
Okay. Thank you, Russ. All right. For more than 150 years, we've delivered essential everyday care to improve the lives of our valued consumers. So today, we're better positioned to carry that out that mission than at any time in our company's history. Powering Care has created a virtuous cycle of value creation, driven by an innovation-led volume and mix growth model, industry-leading productivity, and an organization wired for local agility, global scale, and speed. Our acquisition of Kenvue builds on our successful transformation, and together, we will be a preeminent consumer health and wellness company, serving billions of consumers around the world across every stage of life. We'll be there for more moments of connection, delivering more innovation and growing brand love while delivering generational enhancement of shareholder value. So thank you for your time and interest in Kimberly-Clark.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us. We invite you to join us outside for lunch, where we'll have management there for you all to grill.