Good morning, everyone. I'm Dara Mohsenian, Morgan Stanley's household products and beverage analyst. Just before we begin, a quick disclosure: please see the Morgan Stanley research website at www.morganstanley.com, research disclosures, for our research disclosures. And if you have any questions, you can reach out to your Morgan Stanley representative. With that, I'm very pleased to welcome Chris Peterson, Newell Brands President and CEO, and Mark Erceg, CFO, to the fireside chat today.
Thank you. I have a forward-looking statement as well that I'd like to read before we get started, which is, "Today's remarks will contain forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to update such statements. I refer you to the risk factors in our SEC filings. Today's remarks may also include non-GAAP measures, for reconciliations can be found on our website.
Great, so with that, maybe we'll first start off with there's been a lot of change in Newell over the last couple of years here under your leadership: organizational realignment, Project Phoenix, One Newell, etc., etc. Can you just provide us a bit of an update here on where you stand organizationally? Have you sort of seeded or made most of those changes internally at this point? Are there still operational changes left, and what's left from here as you think about the organization going forward, both culturally and from an organization and the way you're set up standpoint?
Great. So I've been the CEO for 18 months. When I was named CEO, we undertook a broad-scale capability assessment where we looked at every capability that was required to win in this industry and sort of rated ourself versus best-in-class competitors. And what we found was we had some significant gaps in parts of the business, and some parts of the business we were doing okay. That led to a new corporate strategy that we unveiled about 18 months ago. From that new corporate strategy, to enable that, we needed to change the operating model in the company to better align with the new corporate strategy. Some of the big operating model changes that we made were instituting brand management, which the company did not have, so we now have brand management fully in place for our top brands. We also created a centralized U.S.
selling organization to leverage our scale as we go to market in the U.S. We created a new business development group. We created a One Newell International structure where we now have country leaders for the major geographies in which we compete outside the U.S. Previously, we had gone to market by business unit, by country. This is a much more simplified and streamlined structure, and importantly, we centralized fully the supply chain and the back office functions to drive cost efficiency and scale. All of those changes at this point have been implemented. From that new structure, it became clear that we needed to make talent upgrades to meet the new structure. Most of those talent upgrades have been now completed and in place.
If I think about brand management, we've had the brand management teams in place for about 12 months now, and those teams, many of which were hired from the outside, are now fully operational, up and running. From that new operating model, we then also needed to change the culture of the company. We had a culture and a set of values that were focused on really integrity and teamwork, which was good, but we felt like we were missing sort of a competitive edge. So we added, in addition to keeping the integrity and teamwork values, we added passion for winning, leadership, and ownership as values. And I think we're driving that across the organization, trying to move to a high-performing, innovative, and inclusive culture.
We've instituted a performance management system this year for the first time where every single employee headed into 2024 had a very specific set of goals. Those goals were directly tied to the company's strategy, so we have the entire organization now working against the strategy. The two big programs that we implemented from an organization change standpoint, from a restructuring standpoint, to accomplish this were Project Phoenix and the organization realignment project. Those projects targeted overhead cost takeout of $285-$340 million, and we are very much on track with that. Most of that has been completed at this point. So where do we go from here? We've had five quarters since we've put the strategy in place. At the time that we unveiled the strategy, we had a strategy and a sort of trust me message.
Now we've got five quarters of results, and I think the results are pretty good. We've taken gross margins up 400-500 basis points. We've grown gross margin five quarters in a row. We've improved the company's cash flow significantly. We've delevered the balance sheet. Our trailing 12-month EBITDA is up 22% in real dollar terms, and our rate of core sales growth has improved sequentially every period. There's still more work to do. As the teams fully get operational and fully get up to speed, the biggest thing that's still ahead of us is the improvement that we're making on the front end in terms of consumer understanding, innovation, go-to-market, which we think will lead the company back to sustainable, profitable top-line growth over time.
Great. That's helpful. So let's stick to that top-line growth theme. Obviously, a lot of internal changes. What I'm interested in is sort of the benefits from those internal changes versus the external environment.
Sure.
There's a lot of volatility, both in consumer demand, retailer inventory levels, and volatility on both those fronts. So just taking a step back, when do you think you can get back to consistent top-line growth? Is there a line of sight there as you look out over the next few quarters, understanding it's a volatile environment here?
Yeah, it remains a volatile environment. However, I think our visibility is improving because of a lot of the complexity reduction and operating changes that we've made. So if I step back and think about the market dynamics to start, in 2023, the markets we compete in were down high single digits as the markets were coming off of a COVID surge period and were normalizing during that period. In addition, in 2023, there was retail inventory reduction that impacted that year. As we headed into 2024, we said that we expected the markets to improve and be down low single digits, and we also expected really no further retailer inventory reduction. And as we sit here today, that has proven to be a pretty good call because that's what we've seen in our results. So we have not experienced retail inventory reduction this year.
That was behind us in 2023, and the markets were down in 2024, sort of low single digits, and as we go forward to next year, our belief from everything we see today is that the markets are going to improve a little bit next year. We think the markets are going to be relatively flat next year, so a little better than the down low single digits this year. At the same time that this is happening from an external standpoint, the capability investments that we're making on our front-end capabilities are starting to come online, and so we're starting to get stronger in terms of new product innovation, better marketing campaigns, stronger go-to-market execution.
So as an example, one of the changes that we made when we put the new strategy in place was to put an innovation process at sort of the company level in place, which we didn't really have. And we put in place a tiering system for innovation where we rate all of our new product initiatives: tier one, tier two, tier three, and tier four. In 2023, we had one tier one in innovation. In 2024, we've launched eight. Next year, we're going to launch 15. And so it gives you a sense that the new product innovation is ramping up across the company, and that's what we like to see. We're not done with that, but we are making progress.
I think the company execution in terms of market share is on an improvement path, and that's why we believe at some point next year the company will turn positive in terms of core sales growth.
Great. That's helpful. And maybe we can break that down into how you think conceptually about volume versus mix with that innovation versus pricing. The answer will probably be a little different domestically versus internationally, and understanding FX volatility plays into that. But maybe just give us some framework for how you're thinking about those three line items, both domestically and internationally.
Yeah, you know it's interesting. So I think in the U.S. business, which represents about 60% of the company's business, we don't see significant input cost inflation. Our input cost inflation has been running low single digits. That's sort of what we're expecting next year. Our productivity improvement actions have been more than offsetting that, which in combination with other actions is what's allowing us to drive gross margin improvement. So as we head into next year, we don't see significant pricing action in our top-line plans for the U.S. market. On the international business, obviously the dollar has strengthened significantly since the election results. And so we are starting to look at pricing in the international markets, particularly for transactional impacts, not so much translational. That's a little bit tougher.
You'll probably see us begin to, in the first half of next year, put pricing in place in some of those markets for the transactional impacts. Relative to other sort of growth drivers, I think that means that the growth drivers for us are going to be mix, which we think is a big one because we are, as part of our strategy, mixing to more MPP and HPP products and less OPP. So as we're launching this new innovation that I'm talking about, those tend to be higher priced items, and that, even with constant unit volume, drives top-line growth. I don't expect there to be retailer inventory change next year. I think the retailer inventories are in pretty good position broadly. So that's how we're thinking about it.
Great. We talked about the volatile external environment. Maybe just a little bit of state of the union on the consumer here. Are you seeing any changes in the consumer? There's been weakness the last few quarters. Any changes post-election where, in theory, there might be a pickup? And just any signs of improvement or sort of green shoots as you look out to 2025? And maybe just an update also on trade down in your categories, which has been fairly benign, I think, so far, but would love to get an update on what you're seeing there.
Yeah, you know it's very interesting, and we've been talking about this with some of our top retailers recently. We've got some of our categories that are more durable and discretionary, like the Kitchen business and the Outdoor business. We're seeing a bifurcation of behavior among consumers. And so what we're seeing is that the $100,000 plus consumer is buying a lot more units today versus what they were buying pre-pandemic, and they're spending a lot more dollars today in our categories. And we think that's because they have benefited from stock market appreciation, home price appreciation, and so their balance sheets feel very good. At the same time, the $50,000 and below consumer is choosing not to participate as much in the categories. And so it's not that they're trading down. They're just not buying at all.
And so the net result is the category mix is actually moving higher, not lower, but it's being driven by the $100,000 plus consumer. So we were looking at the Kitchen business the other day, and the $100,000 plus consumer part of the market in the U.S. is up 150% in dollars today versus pre-pandemic. And the $50,000 and below is basically flat. And now the $100,000 plus consumer represents two and a half times the volume or the dollars of the category versus the $50,000 and below consumer. And so I think our strategy of trying to move into MPP and HPP products is very much in line with what we're seeing from a consumer dynamic standpoint.
Great. And just looking at sort of the competitive environment in your categories, obviously it's going to be different category by category, but any update on the promotional environment in light of some of that consumer volatility?
Yeah, in general, we're not seeing a big pickup in promotion. We're also not seeing a big pullback in promotion. So the promotional environment, I would say, is relatively consistent with prior periods. And I think that's a function of people looking still to recover for some level of input cost inflation, retailers getting tougher in the U.S. about taking new price increases. And so it's not that there's a big pot of money that people are looking to go spend on incremental promotion dollars.
Okay, great. That was a pretty thorough view of top line. The one area left is inventory, right, and what's happening at retail. And maybe it's a chance, Mark, for you also to talk about opportunities from a working capital standpoint, longer term, and inventory in and of itself. But just, we obviously have seen a pretty significant drawdown in inventory at retail over the last few quarters. Does that create sort of an easier base for next year as you look out to your business? And then again, maybe we can get an update on internally at Newell, the working capital efforts and opportunity over time.
Yeah, the retail inventory positions we feel very good about today. We don't think retailers are overstocked or really dramatically understocked, and we haven't really seen retail inventory actions in this year be a meaningful either tailwind or headwind like they were in 2023. There are a couple of minor exceptions to that that I'll just mention, so in the Outdoor and Rec business, there was a PFAS regulation that came into effect that required companies to basically eliminate all PFAS product. That created sort of a surge of inventory of everybody trying to eliminate the PFAS product by the end of this year. We have now done that, so we don't have any PFAS inventory. We're fully converted, and we've worked that inventory through retailers at this point.
That may create a little bit of a little base period bounce for us as we head into next year on the Outdoor and Rec business because we liquidated that inventory to get out of it before the deadline. But that's a smaller impact relative to the total company macro position. But I'll let Mark talk about working capital.
Yeah, inventory is actually in pretty good shape as we sit here today. Chris talked about the COVID surge, and then there was always those supply chain disruptions that followed on. And I think we made it a point to really drive our inventory levels back down to a more sustainable point. And you saw that from 2022- 2023, we had a $1.2 billion improvement in our operating cash flow. We also took out 23 days of our cash conversion cycle, and year to date, we're down another nine. Now that said, we're still at 87 days at the end of the third quarter, right? We think we have a lot of opportunity to drive that lower, which is one of the reasons why we feel really good about our 90% free cash flow productivity target as part of our evergreen model.
We are also making a real focus with our demand planners to get our weighted forecast accuracy up. And as we do that, that should allow us to take our inventory buffer stocks down as well. Also driving fewer bigger innovations makes it easier to forecast as well. And if you drive the velocity on your A SKUs, that also helps your overall cash conversion dynamics.
Right. Okay, great, and on the retailer inventory front, obviously cuts over the last year and a half here, but some of that was in response to lower consumer demand, so I'm curious, are retailers now operating at lower levels of inventory, or was this more just sort of a catch-up versus some of the unexpected consumer spending pressure?
Yeah, I think retailers are some of it was normalizing for retailers that didn't call the sort of the drop from the after post-COVID era appropriately, and they wound up with too much inventory. But I do think retailers have reset their inventory levels a little bit lower than where they were pre-pandemic. And so if a retailer typically might carry eight-to-ten weeks of inventory, they might now be carrying six. And it's hard to go below six without having major out-of-stocks. That's why we feel pretty good that there isn't going to be a big retailer inventory headwind or anything like that next year. Could there be a retailer inventory tailwind? Possibly. The scenario that would cause that, I think, is more related to tariffs and geopolitical and people looking to stock up prior to tariffs being implemented and those types of things.
But we can talk more about that in a minute, I think.
Okay, you actually segued perfectly into my next question. So obviously some uncertainty here post-elections. Tariffs is probably the key subject. We spent a little bit of time on the pricing internationally in response to FX. But just can you review where you stand from a sourcing standpoint, plans over time, which you talked about a bit on the Q3 call, and just how you think strategically about managing supply chain in light of the tariff situation, understanding there's a lot of volatility and uncertainty?
Yeah, I think we're in a pretty good position from a tariff standpoint, although it's hard to predict where it's headed. I don't think anybody knows where it's headed at the moment. But we started an effort about three years ago to decouple and de-risk our supply chain, particularly related to Chinese sourcing. So as a starting point, about a little over half of our business, we self-manufacture in our own manufacturing plants. We are a large U.S. manufacturer. So we have the largest writing plant in the United States that's in Tennessee. We have Rubbermaid Food Storage that's made in Ohio. We make our Yankee Candle in Massachusetts. We make Coleman coolers in Kansas. We make Rubbermaid Commercial Products in Virginia in large U.S.
Manufacturing facilities, which we think is actually a strategic advantage because in many cases, the competitors that we're competing with are not making product in the U.S., and in some cases, the retailers in those categories are sourcing their private label products from China. So in those categories, we're actually excited about the prospect for high Chinese tariffs because we could ramp up and take the volume if that happens, and we've started to talk to retailers about our ability and how fast we could do that depending on how this nets out. Relative to China and the sourced part of our business, which is a little bit less than half of our business, we used to, three or four years ago, have about 35% of our products sourced from China for the U.S. That number today is down to 15%.
By the end of next year, it'll be 10% or lower. The primary product that we're making in China of that 10% is baby products, car seats, the Graco business, which are fully exempt from the 301 tariffs. We were able to get that exemption the last time the tariffs were implemented in China. Hard to predict the outcome, but we feel like we're well positioned to go and make that pitch again to exempt the Baby business from tariffs. We'll see whether we're successful or not. The balance of the sourced products, we have moved some of them into the U.S., some of them into Mexico, and a lot of them into other markets in Southeast Asia, whether it be Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, or the primary markets where we're sourcing from.
Great. And a couple of follow-ups there. Number one, maybe you can just talk about shelf space opportunity and distribution opportunity broadly for your business. But also the reason I bring it up is I'm curious if the prospects of tariffs and some of your competitors being exposed more to sourcing from some of these geographies like China, if that gives you more of a selling point to retailers in the near term ahead of what may potentially happen.
We have started selling. Actually, I was in Bentonville making this pitch on Monday, and we were with other retailers making it right before Thanksgiving. So we've got a big map that shows where our U.S. manufacturing plants are, what we're making in the U.S., and how we think this is an opportunity for retailers to mitigate their risk of Chinese sourcing by shifting their shelf space to us in a bigger way. Those conversations are just starting. I think retailers are still waiting to see kind of what the outcome is from the tariff discussion. I don't think anybody knows, including the major retailers, where this is headed. But I can tell you we're in active discussions on it. And so that's why I feel reasonably good because I think there are a number of businesses where we could be advantaged.
Our thought is if you take the Writing business, for example, which is our most profitable business, where we have the only scaled U.S. manufacturing plant in the United States, if tariffs go into effect, we could choose to take price because we could, or we could choose not to take price and take volume share. I think our intent would be to take volume share in that scenario rather than take price because we can. And I think that position is a fortunate one. There'll be other categories where we're sourcing from other markets that may be affected with tariffs where we're going to have to react, but we think we've got a pretty balanced starting point.
Great. And I'm assuming with the innovation focus, maybe with this opportunity we just discussed, shelf space gains are probably a reality at the corporate level next year. Do you think that's the case? And maybe also you can just update us on Mexico sourcing given some of the news flow there lately.
Yeah. So on distribution, it's interesting. So number one, as part of our new strategy, we've started tracking distribution. So we were not tracking distribution as a company, believe it or not, up until putting the new strategy in place. We now have a specific tracker in the U.S. that we look at. If you look at distribution broadly in 2024, we lost distribution in 2024. Most of the distribution loss in 2024 was a deliberate result of businesses where we were not making money that were structurally unprofitable, which we chose to walk away from. And that's partly why you've seen our gross margin go up. That's partly why you've seen our EBITDA dollars go up 22% on a trailing 12-month basis. We feel like we've made that structural reset.
If we look at 2025 and we look at what we're expecting from a net distribution standpoint, we've had a lot of our line reviews completed already for 2025, and as we sit here today, our forecast is showing that we are going to gain distribution in 2025 on a total company basis in the U.S. market, so we're going to go from 2024 where we lost distribution to 2025 where we're gaining distribution, which is a good sign. We also know that many of our brands, which are leading brands, our distribution retail is below our market share on many of those brands, so we think we've got an opportunity to go and actually pitch for much more distribution because we are undershelved relative to our market share.
And so we're beginning to work with some of the large retailers on things like aisle reinventions, where we're the category captain because we believe that we can make the shopping experience easier. We can drive a better overall assortment with fewer brands and more focus on the market-leading brands. And we think that can lead to stronger category growth. We are in test with about three or four retailers on aisle reinventions on the writing category as we sit here today. And those tests are looking promising relative to category growth and Newell Brands' market share as a result of that.
Great. And that's another good segue into gross margins where Mark, Chris mentioned a couple of times a nice recovery in gross margins recently back to that mid-30s level from the high 20s level if you go back to 2023. So give us some perspective on the path back to high 30s gross margins longer term. If that path is visible and in sight, what some of the key buckets are as you think about it, understanding there's some volatility in some of the individual dynamics, but how you think through that over the next few years.
Yeah, gross margin is an area we're really excited about because every year since the Jarden acquisition, our gross margin deteriorated. And that was true all the way through last fiscal as well when we ended at 29.5%. As we sit here today and you look at our Q3 print, we were at 35.4%. We were up 470 basis points versus the prior period. And if you look at the last four quarters, it's over 500 basis points, right? So an $8 billion enterprise moving its gross margin up by 500 basis points is a pretty meaningful feat, particularly when you think about the fact that it's all structural because this has happened when the top line has been compressing and it's been happening when we've been bleeding down inventory levels, right? So our capacity utilization across our factory base is in the high 30s, low 40s.
We've invested a great deal of money in automation. Okay? We've been able to drive that level of gross margin expansion despite the top line being down and despite the fact that our capacity utilization levels are very low as we sit here today. On a going forward basis, we think we have all kinds of opportunities to continue to access higher gross margin rates. One is as we get additional throughput through our factories, and Chris talked about some of the things that could drive even more domestic production through our facilities, those should monetize at a very high rate. We're also just starting to really get actively into mix management where we have a tremendous opportunity because we do have a wide range of gross margin structures across our existing product base.
The innovation funnel is being specifically geared towards MPP and HPP, as is our mixed management. There you will also see that the gross margins will be accretive, which will be really, I think, meaningful in the years ahead. Pricing and promotion is an area that we haven't spent as much time on in the past, but we now have very sound pricing and promotion strategies for every brand. We also are bringing trade fund management tools to bear to drive a performance-based trade fund system, which should also be accretive to gross margin. The idea here for us is to get to that 37%-38% gross margin range. If we do that and have about 6%-7% in A&P, and then we get our overhead down into the 17% range, we'll then have an op margin that's in the low teens, right?
We're going to finish this year probably somewhere between 8.1% and 8.3%, which is up about 200 basis points. But if you think about finishing this year at 8% and then having a clear line of sight to get to the low teens, that will be additional monies that we can use to fund the business, drive our EPS growth. The trailing 12-month EBITDAs, Chris mentioned, was up 22% despite the top line being down. So if you think about it in an electoral context, we have a lot of path to victory as it relates to our gross management and our gross margin plot. So we're pretty excited.
Great. That's very helpful. Maybe we could shift to some of the business segments, Learning and Development. I'd love to get an update there. Maybe we can start with the Writing business. You've had great market share performance over a longer period of time here in that business. Category growth has been a bit more volatile year to year. So help us understand the growth prospects going forward, the strategy there, and the room for market share improvement for your business.
Yep, so we feel very good about the Learning and Development business. It's our most profitable business as a total company, and we've returned the Learning and Development segment to core sales growth for the past three quarters, so that business, and it's important from a context standpoint to understand when we put the new strategy in place, we were operating previously business by business, and each of the businesses was in a different starting point relative to their capabilities. The Writing and Baby business, as part of Learning and Development, had the strongest capabilities relative to consumer understanding and innovation. We have ramped those capabilities up. You've seen us launch a number of innovations already this year, which have gone to market and done very well. We extended the Sharpie brand with a set of Creative Markers that we launched earlier this year into the paint marker segment.
Sharpie did not compete in that segment prior to the launch of the products. The products are superior to anything you can buy in the market. And we've captured 35% market share of the paint marker market in the first year of the innovation launch, which is a pretty remarkable achievement. We've also launched, extended the S-Gel pen franchise with metal barrel. And most recently, we launched a copper S-Gel pen. This is a good example of what we're talking about from a trade-up. So when we launched the initial S-Gel pen, the S-Gel pen, which was a terrific writing experience, sells for about $1 a pen. The metal barrel we launched is $2.50 a pen. The copper pen we just launched is $10 a pen. And so we're driving category growth through trade-up for the first time through that type of innovation.
On the Baby business, we've also come with strong innovation. The most recent one that we've launched in the last couple of months is the SmartSense Bassinet and Swing, which is a bassinet and swing that when baby cries, responds with a rocking motion and different music to put the baby back to sleep. Some of you, we've been working on this for a while. Snoo came out with the first one. The Snoo product is $1,500. Our product is $400. We believe our product works as well or better than the Snoo product at a dramatically better value. We've just launched it a few months ago. It's off to a fantastic start. So we feel good about the innovation, and that's the model that we're trying to move to across all of our businesses where we're driving new product innovation that's offering new benefits to consumers that are superior.
When we do that, we see consumers respond because these categories that we compete in and the brands that we sell are highly responsive to innovation.
Right. Okay. Maybe we'll stick with innovation. You talked about the tiering strategy earlier. Obviously, that's been an important part of how you've changed your innovation process. But just give us a state of the union on how you've changed innovation in the last couple of years. Is it people, dollars, tiering? What are the key priorities there?
I think, as I said, it's a little different by business. Some businesses were in a better shape to start with, like writing and baby. Some were not in good shape. If I take the one that was the most challenged, it would have been the Outdoor and Rec business. And I think the businesses that were not in good shape had devolved fundamentally into going and asking the retailers, "What do they want?" And when you go and ask the retailers what you want as the start of your ideation process for innovation, typically what they give you back is a private label spec where you're going to make no money. And our team sort of fell into that trap in the U.S. market. So we've stopped that. And part of the new strategy is we are no longer going to innovate against the retailer buyer request.
We're going to innovate against the consumer because if we innovate against the consumer, and it sounds simple, but it requires a whole different set of capabilities, approaches, because you need to have things like ethnography where you're going and interacting with consumers and watching how they use products, seeing what the unmet wants and needs are. You then need to develop products and prototypes that solve unmet needs. You need to understand what the competitive landscape is so that you're developing products that are differentiated and have a claimable superior advantage in some way. And so that's where we're headed. We've got a very strong innovation pipeline. It's the strongest since I've been with the company. And that's why you're seeing the Tier 1 numbers go up. I feel very good about learning and development for the writing and Baby business continuing to drive strong momentum.
We've had good results this year, as I mentioned, and we're expecting good results in those businesses next year. I think the Home and Commercial business will be the second business that sort of follows from a ramp-up. The Outdoor and Rec pipeline is good, but those products in that pipeline are really targeted to come to market in 2026, and so we're going to be on a sort of a multi-year journey here to get fully right on the innovation pipeline.
Great. International growth has been a priority under your leadership. Can you give us a bit of an update on where we stand, the biggest areas of opportunity as you look out over the next few years there?
Another strategic choice that we made. We have on-the-ground operations in 42 countries around the world, probably too many. But 10 of those countries represent 90%, coupled with the U.S., represent 90% of our sales and profit. And so we made a choice to focus on the 10 largest countries as our top priority because we thought the return on investment at growing those markets and disproportionately allocating resources to those markets was a good choice. The second thing that we've done, and I mentioned it earlier, is we've changed our operating model internationally. And this is a big unlock. So we used to go to market by business unit, by country. So if you think about, for example, in Europe, we had six clusters and we had six business units. So there were 36 financial reviews every month.
We now have six financial reviews because we don't go to market by business unit, by cluster. We go by cluster only. And we now have country leaders in place. We did not have country leaders. So we now have a head of the UK and Ireland, One Newell. As a result of that, we've been able to integrate sales forces. We've gone from four sales forces to a single sales force. That's creating big opportunities for us to cross-sell and gain distribution in the international markets and leverage our scale, much like what we did with the Ovid program in the U.S. And so we're on a journey in the international markets to fully implement that One Newell approach. We're seeing already strong results. So the international business in total also has returned to core sales growth this year in 2024. So we are back to core sales growth.
We think the international business over time is going to be a growth driver for the company and grow faster than the U.S. business because we've got a lot of white space and market share positions that are underleveraged relative to what we think is possible. The other important point about that is in the international business, we didn't fall for the opening price point trap the way that the U.S. business did. And as a result, the gross margins in our international business are actually higher than they are in the U.S. business. And so we think it's a good mixed tailwind as well if we grow international faster from a margin standpoint.
Great. That's helpful. I'm going to slip in one last question here before we run out of time. Just capital allocation here. You talked about the strengthening financial profile of the company. Are you happy with the portfolio here today? Any room for maybe further pruning? Any thoughts of adding to the business profile in different segments over time? How do you think about that at this point?
Yeah. With respect to capital allocation, I think I'd say a couple of things. First and foremost, we need to support the business. And we do that principally through our CapEx spend. We'll probably spend somewhere between $250 and $275 million this year and probably next year as well, driving a lot of that fuel productivity savings through our supply chain and our distribution networks. We feel really very good about that. We have a very high internal threshold of roughly 30% as an ROI that we target for those types of spend dollars. And we feel really good about what's happening with respect to that. Our next priority, frankly, is to continue to delever the company, right? We've taken a turn and a half off in the last four quarters, but our leverage is still too high. It's 4.9 because we sit here today.
We need to drive that lower. Our long-term ambition is to get that around to two and a half times so that we can be investment-grade once again. You know we took a very bold action with respect to the dividend. We dramatically reduced that when Chris came on. In fact, it was the first thing he did on the very first morning of his very first day. We now have a $0.07 quarterly dividend. That comes out to $0.28 for the full year. If you look at our guidance this year from $0.63-$0.66, and you kind of midpoint that, it says our dividend payout ratio right now is in the low 40s. We said our target ratio is in the 30%-35% range. So we don't see ourselves increasing our dividend anytime soon.
We will grow into that dividend payout ratio over the next many quarters. And our real focus right now will be on driving leverage down further. You saw that we did a debt refinancing recently. It was very successful. It was oversubscribed by a factor of six. We have a little bit of money out there in April of 2026, which we'll have to address at the appropriate time, which we're very confident we'll be able to do. And as far as the portfolio is concerned, we don't envision any meaningful acquisitions or divestiture activity in the near term at this point. Yeah. We're generating free cash flow after dividends of $200 million. And we're using that for debt reduction. And when you put that debt reduction together with the EBITDA growth, that's what's allowing us to take the leverage ratio down.
Mark mentioned it, but when we put the strategy in place, we were at six and a half times leverage, which was high. Going in 18 months from 6.5- 4.9 is pretty good, I think. And I think you'll see us continue to make progress each period here.
Great. That was a very helpful overview. Gentlemen, thanks there. Thank you
Thank you.