Thanks, thanks so much for joining. So, you know, it's been a great conference, and nearing the end now, but certainly not done. We've got Prestige Consumer Healthcare, a hugely exciting place where we've had multiple companies emerge over the last few years. Perhaps more waiting in the wings. Delighted to be joined by Ron Lombardi, CEO, and Christine Sacco, CFO. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to them. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Ian, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming. Now, before we came in today, Phil and I, who's our VP of IR, were talking about how many of these I may have done over the last 13 or 14 years, and my guess was 100 plus. I think one of the things I've learned over those 100 + is, if your presentation is at the end of the last day, the crowds are thin, but they pay attention. So with that, we'll go from there. So, so Prestige Consumer Healthcare. Just get to the first slide here. I always like to start talking about the company with this, with this slide.
It's a great way to kind of introduce and reinforce what's important about our company and what really drives and creates value over time, and it's the breadth and the depth of connections that we have with consumers. On the next slide here in a minute, I'll get into some of our leading brands, but this is a great way to show the kind of connections we have. Between our Clear Eyes and TheraTears brands, we have over 12 billion eye drops a year to help people deal with itchy, red, or dry eyes. Luden's and Chloraseptic help treat 650 million sore and dry throat occasions. BC and Goody's, which are powdered analgesics, mostly found in the southern part of the U.S., although nationally distributed, treat almost 20 million pain occasions, including hangovers, every week.
So lots of deep and daily connections with consumers with those brands. And then Monistat helping to treat 8 million serious yeast infections a year. So this is just a sampling of the occurrences that our brands have with consumers and users during the year. One of the things that we like to spend time talking about is the diversified portfolio and how it helps us be positioned to be successful over the long term. So, on the left side, we've got our sales broken out by category. Women's health is our largest category, with Monistat and Summer's Eve. Up in the top right, GI is our second largest, and I won't read the rest of the categories. We summarize our brands into those categories, but it's not the way we think about managing our business.
We think about managing the leading brands that we have and helping them grow in the categories that they define. So for example, with women's health, Monistat and Summer's Eve couldn't be any two different brands if you tried. Monistat treats vaginal yeast infections. Summer's Eve is a wash and other treatments that help women treat hygiene or odor incidences. So very different. Each of them number one in their category, and they define the space that they compete in. For GI, we've got Dramamine and Hydralyte. Dramamine for motion sickness and nausea. Hydralyte for hydration occasions, and is primarily located in Australia and really is the anchor of our international business. For eye care, Clear Eyes for red and itchy care, TheraTears for dry eye.
Again, when the consumer goes to the shelf, they don't think about buying an eye drop to help treat their eyes. They think about a very specific occasion. Do I have red eye? Do I have allergies? Do I have itchy eyes? Do I have dry eyes? And that's what helps lead the consumer to choosing the brand and the product there. And again, down at the bottom of the page here, we've got BC and Goody's. They are the only powdered analgesics, and they define that form and has a long heritage going back about 100 years or so or more in helping people treat headaches and other ailments. So really important, we define the categories, we look to grow them, and it is the driver behind our performance.
So if we start down at the bottom, our total sales have grown about 5.5% over the last three years. Our organic growth has been about 3.5%, which is above our long-term algorithm of 2%-3%, is what we would expect. And we've been able to deliver EPS growth of about 12.5%, during that same timeframe. So the brands deliver fantastic financial performance, and it's really underpinned by our three-part strategy, right? The best way to create value is to grow the business you have, and that's the first part of our, of our strategy, is investing for long-term growth in our, in our brands. We have a proven playbook, which I'll spend some time talking about here next. But that's our first strategy.
It's what we come to work every day to do, grow the brands we have. We've got an industry-leading financial profile that delivers solid earnings and cash flow growth, which underpins the third part of our strategy, which is use our capital allocation optionality, that cash flow to amplify value creation. So, the way that we're able to get 12% EPS growth on 5% top line growth is by delevering. Paying down our debt allows us to have less interest expense and be a big driver there. So that's an element of value creation, which Chris will wrap up on one of the last slides here this afternoon. So let's spend some time on our brand building playbook, right? It's the single most important part of our strategy.
And today we're gonna talk about four elements of it, you know, and, and how we think about building brands. And it all starts with gaining consumer insights. And then the second part of it is being able to take those insights, get them real-time, and being agile and being able to change based on the environment that we're seeing out there. And the last three years, during the COVID environment, couldn't have been a better example of the need to be quickly reacting, understanding what consumers are looking for, and making changes in where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Second is being able to have broad distribution, having your products available where consumers choose to shop for them, right? E-commerce has been a big driver of growth for us.
And then finally, how new product and innovation plays a role in underpinning long-term brand growth. So we'll spend a couple of minutes on each of these four elements here. So Dramamine, great example of consumer insights, right? When we went and talked to consumers about motion sickness, what they often told us was, "Motion sickness, that's for little kids sitting in the back of a car or somebody that was on an amusement park ride. I don't get motion sickness, I get nausea. I get the urge to throw up, and that's what I worry about treating." So as we got that feedback, it enabled us, one, to further enhance the way we communicate with consumers. Just launched a Drama Llama TV campaign talking about avoiding the drama of motion sickness and vomiting when you travel.
But just as importantly, expanding into a new category. So, consumers said, "I give Dramamine permission to be in motion sickness. I also give it permission to be in nausea." So we launched a number of nausea products and very quickly became number one. So when we talk about growing our brand, expanding the brand into adjacent categories where the consumer gives it permission, is an important element of long-term growth. Because if we're just gonna stay in motion sickness, the Dramamine brand opportunity for growth long term would be more limited than if we expanded into new categories like nausea. Now, let's talk about growing brands and sales through increasing usage occasions. So when we talk to consumers, we may often get insights about how they don't treat for various reasons or they mistreat, as a way to address an ailment.
So when we talk about Hydralyte, we've been able to grow household penetration from 2% or 3% to nearly 10% today. We're just getting going. As we've launched different flavors, different forms. We have powdered, we have ready-to-drink, we have tablets, effervescent tablets that create an effervescent drink. And that, along with expanding the communication of, you need to think about hydration, not only when you've been vomiting or diarrhea, but when you travel, when you've been working in the yard, when you're out in heat, or when you exercise, which is a common thought of it. But really, it's all those occasions, expanded flavors and forms, as a way to get consumers to think about drinking Hydralyte more often.
If you go back and take a look at our international growth, it's been phenomenal over the last five years. Hydralyte has been a big driver of that because of this. As we've expanded household penetration, usage occasions, it's really fueled the Hydralyte brand and our international growth. Next, topic is, being available where consumers choose to shop. In the quarter- ended June of 2020, when COVID first hit and everybody went home and stayed home, our e-commerce business doubled in one quarter. It went from 4% or 5% of our sales to just over 10% of total sales in that quarter. When we had talked about our e-commerce strategy before that quarter, we had said, "We're ready.
We've made investments, so when the consumer shows up in increasing numbers, we'll be ready to fulfill it." We didn't know it would double in one quarter, but the proof was in the pudding. Our products were available, we had the information online, and consumers were able to find the trusted brands, their desired products. They clicked, and it showed up at their door or else the next day. The other thing that we talked about is how actively we manage the product offering to each channel, dollar, mass, club, e-commerce, convenience channel, such that gross margins are consistent. We doubled sales in e-commerce, and our margins were consistent during that quarter.
So lots of proof during that one quarter, but the importance of being there, having the right investments to support online store experience, working with our dot com partners, whether it's Amazon.com or Walmart.com, to help them understand what the shopper is looking for in our categories, so that they can be successful. Now let's move on to talk about expanding categories through new product development and bringing innovation. Again, it's another important part where maybe we're addressing the non-treater because they haven't exactly found what they were looking for in a product, or the mistreater, who didn't necessarily understand exactly what the product efficacy might deliver for them. So if you look on the left part of the slide, we've got a DenTek Ultimate Guard for bruxism or teeth grinding.
It was the best proposition out there in the category for helping people who grind their teeth when they sleep at night. Compound W Freeze Off. Again, nothing works better, outside of a doctor's office, for this product when we introduced it. And then finally, Goody's Hangover. When we talked to Goody's user, we heard lots of occasions of them using it to help treating the don't feel so great in the morning after a fun night out. So we launched, a Goody's Hangover with an extra kick of caffeine to help get you going, in the morning. So, you know, great examples of both technology with the DenTek, and the Freeze Off W, and a little bit of innovation around the product with the Hangover. And then on the right are some, more current examples of new products.
Clear Eyes Sensitive Eyes. When we talk to consumers, they say, "I've got all kinds of different problems with my, my eyes, but the most important thing I want to treat is my eyes are sensitive." So that was a learning that helped underpin that product launch. And then some Nix, not only cure lice, but prevent combo kit on the far, far right. So, you know, as I started off, the most important thing that we do is think about brand building. It's delivered great success on the top and bottom line. If you looked at our 10-year CAGR, our sales growth is even above that 5% on the top line, and our EPS growth is even well above that 12%.
So it's not a short-term results, but this long-term focus on brand building has helped us grow dramatically, and outgrowing the categories that we compete in, in particularly private label . You know, the private label question is a hot topic that we often hear from investors these days, especially as there's concerns about a slowdown in the economy or the recession coming in. Is there a lot of data people look to save a little bit of money in your category? And the answer is no. This is not the occasion that you're looking to save a dollar when you only buy the product every three years. When you're putting your kid in the backseat, meaning last time they didn't throw up, you're looking to save a buck, try private label , and it'll work, not in our category.
So on the right, you can see our oral care is, private label has, it has grown -1% during that, that time frame. Cough, cold, all the way to the right is the biggest example of private label, has been down 7%. Women's health down 7%, and you see the other percent. So we're growing the category, we're growing our share, and for a competitor who only brings price or some other limited proposition to the shelf, they're losing as our better product and our better communication and connections with consumers help us win by growing our share and our top line. So with that, let me turn it over to Chris. Thanks, Chris.
Thanks, Ron. Hi, everyone. So, I'm going to take you through a few slides on our financial strategy, our capital allocation. So we just came off of a really strong record fiscal 2023. We are a March 31st year-end, so I'll talk a little bit about our results for our first quarter of fiscal 2024. But as we wrapped 2023, you know, organic revenue up 3.5%. As Ron said, our evergreen model is 2%-3%, and I'll take you through that a little bit later in the presentation. EBITDA for us basically follows top line, and then we get the kicker, you know, the power of our cash flow, as Ron mentioned, by paying down our debt and leveraging that. I'll show you the evergreen model.
In a normalized environment, from an interest rate perspective, we would expect to see, some leverage on that, where you see bottom line growth 4-5 points higher than our, our EBITDA and our top line growth. This year, obviously, we don't know what happened with interest rates this year. The power of our cash flow was able to offset the impact of those rising rates. So we were paying down debt rapidly at the same time rates were coming up, and as a result, we were still able to grow our EPS, at 3.7% in fiscal 2023. So fiscal 2024, right? We're up June 30th, was our first fiscal quarter for, for 2024. Solid performance.
We were up almost 2% organically for the first quarter. Ron talked about our diversified portfolio, and it continued to play out through the ups and downs of COVID and continues to play out as we are working our way through fiscal 2024. Our guide for the year, fiscal 2024, is $1.135 billion-$1.140 billion. It's 1%-2% of organic growth when we exclude foreign currency. And we have talked about this year specifically exiting some private label business we were doing that was worth an additional point of growth. It was not highly profitable, and this year we were able to make the decision that we were going to exit that business. So diluted EPS at about $4.30 at the midpoint.
Again, we're going to talk a little bit about the Evergreen model and our ability to leverage our cash flow to grow the bottom line faster than the top line. And here's our free cash flow numbers, right? The guide for the year is $240 million or more. We'll continue to execute our disciplined capital allocation strategy, which I'll take you through in a couple of slides. And we're talking about expecting leverage to be below 3x as we exit fiscal 2024. And I'll take you through a little bit of that theory and thank you. So, our cash flow, right? A lot of folks talk about our cash flow. We like to talk about our cash flow. On the left is really the attributes of our business model and what leads to such strong cash flow conversion.
So it starts with low capital expenditures. We're manufacturing about 15% of our sales in-house. You know, our CapEx is about 1%-2% of our top line, which is obviously pretty modest for our company. Ron talked about our leading margin profile, right? We have gross margins north of 55%. We have EBITDA margins in the mid-30s. We've been able to consistently maintain those, even through the last three years of the inflationary environment we've been in. So, obviously, that helps as we work our way through the down cash flow. We have done a number of acquisitions as we were morphing our portfolio in years past.
Our GAAP cash, excuse me, our GAAP tax rate, effective tax rate is about 24%, but our cash tax rate is in the high teens because we are leveraging essentially amortization that we get from, for tax purposes from some of the deals that we have done, and we have several years left on that amortization. And then just our ongoing focus on profitability, right? We talk about wanting to maintain our EBITDA margins in the mid-30s, and we look for gross margin savings that we can put back into our people and into our advertising and marketing spend. So maintaining those EBITDA margins, which are industry leading, is important to us. And you can see the results over here on the right side of the slide, right?
Free cash flow conversion over 100% and about an 8% free cash flow yield. So on the left side of this slide, you'll see our free cash flow and how rapidly it's grown, how strong and robust it has been. In fiscal 2023, we talked about about a $40 million investment that we made in inventory in order to better service our customers, as we were coming out of a very lumpy COVID period, as was everyone else. And so, that was really the outlier in the top left part of this page. And you can see our leverage has come down. So years ago, as we were morphing the portfolio, we were operating at levels of leverage of 4.5-6 times. I think when I joined seven years ago, we were at 5.8.
We stepped down, we continued to pay down debt, and we started operating between 3.5x and 5x. Did an acquisition in there. Now we're approaching 3%. We were at 3.2x at the end of June, and we've set a new long-term leverage objective of less than 3x. Making a lot of progress there. On the debt side, we have about $1.3 billion in net debt, $1 billion of it is fixed, and our next maturity isn't until 2028. Well positioned in this environment, and they say timing is everything in life. You know, what are our priorities in terms of capital allocation? Ron, the best thing we can do is the best of the business we have, and that is our one piece of our capital.
We're going to continue to delever, right? A little more than $300 million of available debt on the balance sheet. We have about a year and a half left of free cash flow before we get those down. So, we'll continue to delever and build the basket for the third item on here, which is to pursue disciplined and accretive M&A. The last deal we did was less than two years ago. We bought the TheraTears brand, and within two quarters, our leverage was back down to pre-acquisition levels. So we're able to do multiple things with our capital allocation as we continue to delever and we get bigger. And then lastly, we've done some strategic share repurchases. Most recently, in our first fiscal quarter of 2024, we executed a $25 million buyback.
Modest, in terms of a percent of our free cash flow, right? Less than 10%. Still was able to offset our annual dilution from equity issuance. Good use of cash flow. You know, we put these numbers over here on the right because we get a lot of que- right after leverage, we get the question about M&A, which I always find comical, but the M&A you know, the pipeline is robust. People say, "You know, what are you seeing out there?" We continue to see and have a healthy stream of opportunities, from an M&A perspective. If you're not that familiar with the OTC landscape, it's highly fragmented, right? We always use the example: You don't go into a drugstore and ask for a skincare product.
You go in and you say, "I have a wart." You have a very specific ailment you're trying to treat, and so it's very fragmented. You can see here on the right side of this page how many brands are out there. This is in the U.S. alone. How many brands exist, at what size, and this is another scanner detail. There's a lot out there. There's strategic, large strategics looking to divest assets all the time. There are PE firm sponsors out there who are looking to keep turning over portfolios. We'll continue to look, and I think the biggest, the word I would remember with us around M&A is we're going to stay disciplined. We're always looking for long-term brand building opportunities, as opposed to an opportunity for some short-term growth.
And that's the number one reason we say no to deals. We're also looking for brands we can innovate, right? We wanna be a leader in a niche category, right? About two-thirds of our portfolio are coming from brands with number one positions, and often significantly high market positions, over 50% of the category. That enables us to use consumer insight, not just try to steal share from one person from one to the next, right? But we're trying to actually bring new users into the category and grow the category, and that makes us pretty valuable to the retailer. So lots of opportunities out there. We're positioned to do M&A, continue to do M&A, and we'll continue to look for the right opportunities for it. Okay, so a little bit about our outlook for fiscal twenty...
Excuse me, a little bit about why we think we're well positioned to deliver on our outlook for fiscal 2024. So Ron talked about we have a diversified portfolio of leading trusted brands. When we give people the example of some of the things that happened during COVID, you really get an appreciation for how diverse this portfolio is. Dramamine was almost nothing during COVID, right? Nobody went anywhere, and then we all broke out of our houses and couldn't wait to go somewhere. So we got in the car, and we went on vacations, and Dramamine went through the roof. And so, there's been some brands with large swings. Monistat did very well during COVID because no one wanted to go to the doctor's office. And so we've had some brands that really benefited and came back.
We've had some brands that didn't do well during COVID and really came back, you know, pretty robustly. Now, I would say the portfolio is essentially back, right? I'd like to see some more instances of highlights, but other than that, most of our brands are back to kind of pre-COVID levels, and so the crazy comps are kind of behind us. Second item here is organic growth playbook. Ron mentioned it, right? We can leverage the platform. We bring a brand into the portfolio. We know what to do with it, right? We're gonna go out, we're gonna get consumer insights, we're gonna understand why you're not using the category or how we can get you to use it more, and we're gonna execute on that. There are... You know, these aren't rocket science ideas, right? Dramamine for Kids, holy cow!
No kidding. But they didn't exist. They didn't exist under large, large, owners, and so, our focus on it and, and importance in terms of innovation plays out here. We're gonna continue to generate consistent cash flow. We're gonna continue to put it to work, and it's gonna kind of pile on itself, as we've seen, as our leverage came down from close to 6x to now heading towards below 3x. We think we have a scalable platform. You know, we have a playbook. When we put, it's not just that we have the infrastructure in place, it's that we have the playbook I just mentioned, which is the marketing team knows exactly as that comes on, okay, what do we need to do, and how are we gonna reinvigorate this brand and put some life into it?
And the last item here, just, you know, I'll take you through in a second our organic growth engine and how we believe we can create value, value just with our organic growth. And then we think of M&A as the kicker. You know, we don't have a target where we say we're gonna do this many deals a year. We're gonna do smart deals on brands that we think we can grow over the long term, and that should just continue to enhance the top line. With some of the stats that Ron gave you earlier, you can see how much, you know, the benefit that we've gotten off of doing some M&A and growing the portfolio. So this is our kinda evergreen model, right? We talk about organic growth of 2%-3%.
Ron showed you the CAGR a little while ago, and I mentioned the power of our cash flow in a normalized interest rate environment, which I imagine to be anything besides last year and this year in terms of comps, is gonna tick over another 4%-5% growth. It gets you to the bottom line of a 6%-8% organic. That's EPS of organic. These are organic numbers on the left, and then you can see over on the right our ability to create additional value is really to continue to do the repeatable, proven execute on M&A, which would represent additional upside to the model that you see here, which in the numbers that if you looked at them over a longer period of time, you would see that we have absolutely delivered on this model.
With that, I think we're heading over to a breakout room for Q&A, and if you wanna try Goody's Hangover because the weekend is approaching. I think we have some of our product, Dramamine nausea, and some hangover outside. But thank you for your time. Thanks for sticking around today.
Thank you.