Well, good morning, everybody. I'm Steve Powers. I'm the head of Deutsche Bank's U.S. Consumer Staples team, and we are thrilled to welcome everyone to Deutsche Bank's 21st Annual Global Consumer Conference, in what has become a flagship event, not only for Deutsche Bank, but for the consumer industry broadly. Over the next three days, as is typical, this year's event will feature conversations between investors from around the world and a diverse array of management teams representing over 100 consumer companies from across the staples, luxury, apparel, retail, and restaurant sectors. This conference would not be what it is without the support and engagement of all of you, investor and management attendees, and so we here at Deutsche Bank would like to thank each and every one of you for your participation.
To lead us off this morning, I am very pleased to welcome a longtime supporter of the conference and one of the strongest and most consistently performing companies in the consumer goods industry, the Procter & Gamble Company. With us today from Procter & Gamble are Andre Schulten, Chief Financial Officer, and Shailesh Jejurikar, Chief Operating Officer. Both Andre and Shailesh will run us through a brief presentation, and then we'll open it up for some Q&A. And with that, I will turn it over to Andre.
Thank you, Steve. Morning, everyone. I'll start today with a review of results and an overview of our strategy. Then our Chief Operating Officer, Shailesh Jejurikar, will talk about superiority in Enterprise Markets and how Supply Chain 3.0 is enabling superiority and productivity. And we look forward to answering your questions after our prepared remarks. Starting with results, fiscal 2023 was the fift consecutive year, with 5% or better organic sales growth. Through March, organic sales are squarely in the middle of our 4%-5% guidance range for the year. Keep in mind, this includes headwinds such as continued market pressure in Greater China and softening underlying market trends in some European enterprise and Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa countries due to the heightened tensions in the Middle East.
We have broad-based momentum across the portfolio, with nine of 10 categories growing organic sales through the third quarter, and broad-based growth across the geographic portfolio. Organic sales in Focus Markets are up 4%, and enterprise markets are up 8%. six of seven regions are holding or growing organic sales through the third quarter. Global aggregate market share is flat or up over the past three, six, and 12 months periods. Fiscal year to date, 27 of our top 50 category country combinations are holding or growing share. Through the third quarter, Core EPS is up 15%, plus 19% on a currency neutral basis. Strong bottom line results driven primarily by productivity, which enables reinvestment in advertising and innovation to drive demand creation and category growth.
Reigniting underlying category volume growth in the categories we compete in is critical for balanced mid- and long-term growth, and catalysts for this growth are available to us even in the most developed markets. We have opportunities to drive incremental household penetration, identifying new jobs to be done with our consumers, and encourage incremental usage for better consumer experience. We continue to drive efficiency as we explore these opportunities. In North America, for example, over the past five years, we've step changed media execution as a driver for growth and widened P&G's advantage through analytics, technology, productivity, and people. Value creation accelerated by increasing our reach, effectiveness, and efficiency. Reach has increased in North America by 14 points. The advertising return on investment has improved nearly 40%. We've delivered over $1 billion in productivity through rate improvements, operational efficiencies, and applied analytics.
We were able to deliver these results despite an increasingly complex media landscape that presented both opportunities to widen our advantage and challenges we needed to offset. Moving to cash, we are continuing our strong record of cash return to shareowners. Over three quarters, more than $10 billion return to shareowners in dividends and repurchases. In April, we announced a 7% increase in our dividend, again, reinforcing our commitment to return cash to shareowners. This is the 68th consecutive annual dividend increase and the 134th consecutive year P&G has paid a dividend. Only seven U.S. publicly traded companies have paid a dividend for more consecutive years than P&G, and only three U.S. companies have raised their dividend more consecutive years.
Our objective is to return to our balanced growth algorithm across the top and bottom line, which includes consistent margin expansion, organic sales growth above the underlying growth rate of the markets. Historically, our markets have grown in the range of 3%-4%. Margin expansion to enable mid- to high single-digit core EPS growth, strong cash conversion of 90% or higher, free cash flow productivity. Balanced growth, top line, bottom line, and cash to deliver value creation for our shareowners. Now, we expect the environment around us to continue to be volatile and challenging, from input costs, to currencies, to consumer, retailer, and geopolitical dynamics. As mentioned earlier, this includes continued market pressure in Greater China and softening underlying market trends in some Europe Enterprise, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, due to heightened tensions in the Middle East....
We remain confident that the best path forward is to double down on the strategy that has enabled strong results over the past five years, and that is the foundation for balanced growth and value creation. A portfolio of daily use products, many providing cleaning, health, and hygiene benefits in categories where performance plays a significant role in consumers' brand choice. Ongoing commitment to and investment in irresistible superiority across the five vectors of product, package, brand communication, retail execution, and value for each price tier where we compete. We are extending our margin of advantage across all five vectors of superiority, which reflects the dynamic nature of our strategy. Raising the bar on superiority standards enables business growth. So let's look at an example. Nearly 70% of women worry about their feminine protection leaking.
These consumers want a better solution and are willing to pay more for the best protection, enabling category value growth. We leverage consumer insights like these to increase performance and delight consumers with superior performing products, such as Always FlexFoam. Through March, Always FlexFoam is contributing to mid-single-digit organic sales growth in North America fem care. In the U.S., P&G feminine care value share is up 1.4 points, and Always FlexFoam is contributing over three times fair share to pads category growth. Productivity improvements in all areas of our operations to fund investments in superiority, offset costs and currency challenges, expand margins, and deliver strong cash generation. We're encouraged by strong productivity results.
We've delivered over $1.3 billion of productivity savings and cost of goods sold through the third quarter, which puts us on track to exceed our commitment of up to $1.5 billion before tax of gross productivity savings for the fiscal year. Next, an approach of constructive disruption, a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. Finally, an organization that is empowered, agile, and accountable. We continue to improve the execution of the integrated strategy with four focus areas: strong progress on Supply Chain 3.0, digital acumen, environmental sustainability, and a superior employee value equation. These four focus areas are not new or separate strategies, they simply strengthen our ability to execute the strategy. Our strategic choices on portfolio, superiority, productivity, constructive disruption, and organization reinforce and build on each other.
When executed well, they grow markets, which in turn grow share, sales, and profit. In a moment, I'll hand it over to Shailesh, our Chief Operating Officer. As COO, Shailesh has P&L responsibility for our enterprise markets and functional responsibility for Product Supply, Global Business Services , Information Technology, Sales and Market Operations in all regions, and New Business Development. So, Shailesh, with that, over to you.
Thank you. As Andre said, I'll start with a look at enterprise markets. In fiscal 2023, enterprise markets were about $18 billion in sales, with average organic sales growth of 9% per year over the past four years. After-tax profits have been growing at double digits on average, driving margins to be approximately one and a half times higher than they were in fiscal 2019. Excluding foreign exchange, after-tax profits have been growing on average by nearly 40%. Structurally, we are break-even or better in most countries, with Argentina as a notable exception. Enterprise markets bring some unique challenges and volatility, such as foreign exchange, long supply chains, and markets with evolving demographics. The organizations in these markets are adopting new ways of working to consistently deliver results.
They've responded to demographic changes, introducing new offerings to some of these markets, while continuing to raise the bar on superiority, enabling a long-term play on consumption growth. All elements of the company's strategy, portfolio, superiority, productivity, constructive disruption, and organization, are just as relevant in enterprise markets as they are in the U.S. or Western Europe. I'll touch on portfolio and superiority. We're disciplined and active managers of our portfolio in enterprise markets. For example, you are aware of the announcement we made in December to change our go-to-market approach in Nigeria to further sharpen our focus and strengthen our value creation potential. We made the choice to divest our fabric and home care business in Argentina, which we completed in March. These examples demonstrate the dynamic nature of our strategy and our desire to aggressively allocate resources to where they create the most shareowner value.
Andre talked about our ongoing commitment to superiority. Let me share a few examples. Hair care is a growth engine for enterprise markets. In Mexico, Pantene has transformed what a great hair day means for consumers, with a portfolio that elevates the brand superiority across vectors and drives category growth. Superior products in the biggest benefit spaces consumers care about, such as hair repair and hydration, enhanced packaging design with conditioners and tubes and large sizes with pumps, superior advertising clearly communicating product benefits, superior in-store execution with strategic orchestration of products, and premium displays on and off shelf. Superior value equation across all tiers. Let's take a look at the copy.
[Foreign language]
Across the total portfolio, superiority has led to superior results. Hair care Mexico has doubled sales and quadrupled profit over the past four years, while driving category growth one and a half times its fair share. We've become the number one hair care company in value share, with Head & Shoulders at number one and Pantene at number two, growing in value and volume. In India, Gillette Guard is driving growth in growing the category. 10 years ago, Indian men were primarily using double-edged razors for their shaving needs and lived with the belief that nicks and cuts were just a normal part of shaving. Gillette Guard has changed the paradigm, proving shaving without cuts is possible and affordable.
A superior product delivering a shave that is safer for difficult zones, an open design for easy rinsing without running water, and a comb guard providing a better experience for long beard lengths. Superior packaging that clearly highlights the consumer value, and superior communication highlighting what it means to get a worry-free shave, utilizing cricket celebrity ambassador Sachin Tendulkar. Take a look.
[Foreign language] , Gillette Guard [Foreign language] free, [Foreign language] platinum coated blades [Foreign language] Gillette Guard.
Today, Gillette Guard is the biggest shave care brand in India with a 28% share. It's gone from zero to 50 million users over a decade. Grooming continues to grow double-digit year-on-year by trading up double-edged users and staying true to its promise of a safe shave. In Poland, where only one out of 10 consumers use power toothbrushes, Oral-B is the market leader and accelerating category value growth behind the launch of the superior-performing premium iO brush in 2021. iO delivers superior cleaning and a more delightful user experience for easier power brush habit adoption, helping to bring new manual brush users into the category.
Superior communication includes the mind-opening insight that manual brushes leave 50% of the plaque behind, but Oral-B iO delivers 100% more plaque bacteria removal versus a manual toothbrush because of its superior round head, which removes plaque in the hard-to-reach places. This educational message is at the core of both our advertising and our dental professional engagement. Seven out of 10 dental professionals use Oral-B in Poland. Let's watch the copy.
[Foreign language] Oral-B iO [Foreign language] Oral-B iO [Foreign language] 100% [Foreign language] iO. Oral-B iO, [Foreign language] .
Oral-B iO is helping consumers adopt healthier oral care habits by transforming how people brush their teeth. It has helped double the power market growth rate to 26% since launch, delivering 70% of the market growth, three times its fair share, with a strategy that raised the bar across all five vectors of superiority. Moving to Supply Chain. Andre mentioned one of my hats is P&L responsibility for enterprise markets. One of the others is functional leadership, including oversight of supply chain, which has historically been a competitive advantage for P&G. In the 1990s, we implemented a manufacturing-centric approach to operational excellence, driven by the implementation of our Integrated Work Systems in our manufacturing plants. We call this best-in-class operating system Supply 1.0.
Our next phase, Supply 2.0, followed with an integrated supply chain across suppliers, plants, customization, and distribution centers into one end-to-end network to drive optimization of all operations to respond to consumer demand. Our latest evolution, Supply 3.0, is a strategic framework to ensure we continue to deliver competitive advantage for P&G. It involves a supply chain and subsequent capabilities that can enable 98% on-shelf and online availability all the time, up to $1.5 billion before tax in gross productivity savings every year, and 90% or greater free cash flow productivity, all to enable us to meet or exceed our total shareholder return targets. To achieve these objectives, our supply chain requires even greater agility, flexibility, scalability, transparency, and productivity in a rapidly evolving landscape....
It's an optimized, sustainable, and flexible supply chain amplified by data and analytics, and enabled by an organization that is on the leading edge of transformation, mastery, and leadership. We are working in a new way with retailers on the totality of supply chain, end to end, versus simply trying to optimize each piece. Our team is focusing on the power of one supply chain, extending our focus beyond, beyond the customer door to the shelf and online. We're seeking to drive improvements in service, cost, and cash by optimizing not only P&G's cost of goods sold, but identifying jointly with customers and distributors, additional ways to drive further losses out of our collective supply chains. We believe this shift, which includes both physical flow as well as data, will be a way to unlock value and enable consistent productivity savings, while also creating a win-win for our partners.
One example that highlights this is a transportation partnership with one of our retailers in Canada, where we integrated our transportation networks to eliminate empty miles or trucks traveling with no load or product. You can see here that we went from our truck traveling to the customer's distribution center and then returning to our mixing center empty. Likewise, the customer's truck, shown there in yellow, takes freight from their distribution center to their store and returns empty. We conducted a pilot approach that started with a customer store near our plant. They would pick up their shipment and deliver to the closest distribution center, then repeat the process. The solution leverages potentially unproductive customer assets and maximizes utilization, driving profitability at the retailer and reducing costs for P&G.
The results of our pilot indicate an opportunity to reduce 100% of the empty miles, nearly 50% of the total miles, while also reducing transportation emissions. We see this approach as a win for the retailer, P&G, and the environment, while also helping us ensure on-shelf availability for the consumers. Automation technologies will play a key role in accelerating our supply chain progress as we aim to deliver supply assurance and significant long-term productivity savings, while also driving improvements in safety, quality, and service. Our initial focus is on North America, where we begin testing the use of driverless trucks. The test involved transportation between the plant and the warehouse on a private road, covering over 320 miles across 145 trips, while ensuring complete safety.
The insights gained from this test are being used to plan more comprehensive tests in the future. We're also undergoing the qualification of our automatic truck loading and unloading autonomous mobile robot at one of our mixing centers. This groundbreaking solution, developed in concert with one of our external partners, aims to load or unload a truck within 30 minutes, versus an average of 45-60 minutes today. We've also become much more efficient in how we are managing certified receiving. We certify P&G deliveries prior to shipping to retailers, which expedites the check-in process when a P&G load arrives. This enables low touch and no count receipts, which improves truck flows, labor savings, and cash productivity. The capability is enabled by mixing center automation, data synchronization between P&G and customers, technology and. Let's look at an example of Supply Chain 3.0 delivering results in enterprise markets.
From 2019 to 2024, we added $400 million of sales in India. Our cost to serve consumers improved by 150 basis points, and we improved cash by lowering P&G's absolute inventory by over $13 million. We did this by optimizing physical flow on an end-to-end basis, leveraging seamless data analytics and automation. We have designed a supply chain with 60% fewer touch points versus just a few years ago. With a more direct connection, we are also able to supply 90% of orders directly from the plant, allowing us to reach consumers faster via the 2.6 million high-frequency stores in India. We've coupled this physical transformation with digital supply chain transformation. Each of the deliveries made to stores served by distributors are geotagged, which provides daily data to all our systems via cloud computing platform.
We have also moved to an artificial intelligence and machine learning platform-based ordering solution for distributors, leveraging daily data. This smart platform helps us predict distributor shipments and replenishment allocation across different distributors. These are just a few examples of the interventions we are making to advance our supply chain. The most meaningful signs of the effectiveness of our interventions have come from our customers. Our top customers ranked our supply chain number one for the past nine years in the Advantage Monitor Survey. We've also been recognized again by Gartner as one of only four supply chains in the world in the category of Masters. This is meaningful, given it is based on votes of the leading supply chain analysts from companies across industries. To close, we have an ambitious program in place that is transforming our supply chain.
The improvements we have made in our systems over the past few years have provided rich learnings we continue to build upon, learnings that will enable us to sustain and extend our competitive advantage for many years to come. With that, Andre, I'll turn it back to you.
Thank you, Shailesh. In closing, we remain as confident as ever in our strategy and our ability to drive market growth and to deliver balanced growth and value creation to delight consumers, customers, employees, society, and shareholders. Thank you, and with that, we are happy to take questions.
All right.
All right.
Great. So picking up on that confidence that you have, probably the number one question I've been getting from investors these past few weeks leading up into the conference is just, can and will consumers in markets that have been resilient remain so? I think in general, across the consumer goods industry, and for you guys, that includes the U.S., that includes Western Europe, and Latin America, all have been drivers of growth. How are you seeing the consumer and the consumer trends up to date, both generally and as it relates to your business?
Yeah, maybe starting with the U.S., the market growth trajectory is exactly what we had anticipated. The market continues to chug along at 4.5%-5% value growth across our categories. It's now a healthy balance. Half of that is volume growth, and the other half is price mix. We are able to grow volume share and value share within that market growth by driving category growth across our categories in North America. So the consumer within our categories, the consumer that represents our consumption base, is actually holding up very well, Steve. There's no shift we're observing. We do not see a trade-down into private label as a good first high-level measure of, is the consumer choosing a different value proposition? They are not.
We are not seeing trade-down, significant trade-down within our brands, and actually, we continue to see, on a weekly basis, consumers trading up within the P&G portfolio, from powders, to liquids, to unit dose, and even to the highest form of unit dose, for example, in laundry. So every indication we see is a resilient consumer in our categories. Now, we see in other categories, obviously, we're observing, consumers trading into private label or consumers reducing larger expense items. We continue to be convinced that the categories we're in are important to consumers. They don't want their feminine protection products to not work. They don't want their diapers to leak. The cost of failure is so high that consumers are choosing a proposition that can ensure them, reassure them that it will work, and if that reassurance is there, they are willing to...
Where they are willing to pay, and they are not trading down. The same is true in Europe, and I think the success of P&G Europe is really grounded in that same logic, playing in categories where performance drives brand choice, that are non-discretionary. The consumer is not making different choices. Actually, our growth in Europe continues to be very strong. Our share performance continues to be strong for the same reason, Steve. So I'm not disputing that the consumer is under pressure, I just don't think that the consumer is making choices in our specific categories.
Okay. Shailesh, you want to talk about Latin America?
Yeah, I would say the same in Latin America. In fact, some of our stronger consumption has been in Brazil and Mexico.
Mm-hmm.
Argentina is a different story, of course, but if I look at most of the countries, even some of the smaller ones that we cover, consumption has been pretty strong. A lot of it is really dependent on how we drive those markets. I just shared the hair care Mexico example. Doubling a category like shampoos and hair care in Mexico over four years, not something you would normally expect it to, because it's a reasonably well-developed category. So depending on which trends we see and how well we capitalize on that, so I wouldn't say it's automatic, but I think where we have the superiority, superiority focused on category growth, that, okay, hydration is a big need, and then we have propositions that deliver on hydration, like we did in Mexico hair care, Clear. Downy Brazil continues to grow in very strong double digits, multiple years in a row.
That proposition is really strong. Still many consumers have not tried it. So we see upside, but it's not a given. I think we're seeing that where we do a good job with our superiority, we get the category growth.
Great.
Which I think is an important point, and maybe to complement, in the U.S., where we have our most value-conscious consumers, for example, in diapers, Luvs, which is a value tier-
Yep.
If we don't get that value proposition right, the consumers will leave us. So we're launching probably the strongest innovation bundle on Luvs to ensure that we deliver the value equation the consumer is looking for. So I think Shailesh's point is important. It's not an automatic... They won't stay with us, the consumers won't stay with us if we don't deliver the value.
When does that Luvs package launch?
In July, August.
Okay. Great, 'cause that, I mean, we have seen, and I know investors have picked up on, you know, within that overall strength, you know, some more evidence of trade down and some share loss for P&G in diapers. Laundry has also recently shown some share loss. That those trends don't concern you as harbingers of softness to come?
They always concern us, but there's a reason why we operate a portfolio of 10 categories and 99 brands. Not every brand at any given point in time will grow share. I think what is most important is that the culture is very embracing of those issues. So some of our leaders, the mantra they give out is, "Embrace the reds, don't deny them." If you have a business issue, face the business issue, deal with it quickly, and I think that's the dynamic we want to see. So that's why you see innovation strengthening, focus on market growth being the number one focus for the current year and for the next fiscal year.
Do you have the activity system to drive new jobs to be done, drive incremental consumption or trade consumers up into a higher dollar per use item? Do you have the media spending to communicate the message? Do you have the right copy quality?
Mm.
So all of those things, that's the daily job, Steve. So yes, they concern us, but they are temporary, and we know what to do.
Okay.
It's part of the portfolio that we play.
Yeah. We're talking consumption. I think the other, you know, shipments have been under a little bit of volatility as we've seen some inventory rebalancing, especially in personal healthcare in the U.S. Anything of note, you know, from a shipment versus consumption, inventory, trade inventory dynamic that's playing out as we go through the year?
No, other than healthcare, we have not seen that large. There are a few markets. I think India did have some retailer reduction, inventory reduction, but broadly, I think we are seeing that now balance out. I mean, the healthcare season will drive how that happens, but generally, we will see that. The other one is in China, of course. We have reduced the level of effort we are putting in the key consumption period, so that also is another factor that will smoothen it out moving forward.
Okay, and that's a good, that's a good segue 'cause I think the other, the other side of the coin is, you know, markets where we haven't seen as much strength, what are the prospects of recovery or further strength? And you mentioned, you know, Nigeria and Argentina and the Middle East, where I think we understand ongoing volatility persists, but China is a huge topic and huge focus, of course. How are you seeing trends in China, both in general and for your business?
Yeah, I would say, China, still consumer confidence is weak.
Mm-hmm
... is how we would put it. Our own business is sequentially better, but not yet in a position of growth. So we are seeing improvements. What we are finding is, again, going back to what I said earlier, where we are able to get the superiority working in the right way. Baby care is one where you would see the number of births have come down dramatically, and actually, it's one of our better-performing businesses in China because of the innovation program we've had there. So what we are trying to do in China is not waiting for the market to turn, which we hope it will-
Yeah
... eventually. But really look at in each of these categories, where are the opportunities to truly step change the level of offering to the consumers? And where we are able to do that, we are starting to see faster pace of progress. I think actually part of the hair care portfolio is another good one.
Yeah.
We're seeing good momentum on Pantene, and that's continuing to build. We're seeing Head & Shoulders get a bit better. So really, we are now focusing on what's in our control, how do we enhance the level of superiority there, and we have a good program in place. So I-
Yeah, that's an interesting point 'cause Pantene and the hair care in general, I think, has been an area you flagged as maybe sort of below targets on superiority. Where do you think you are in that journey in terms of getting that business back on a advantage footing?
In China?
Yeah.
I would say on Pantene, we are ahead now.
Okay.
I think we are growing very strongly. We see terrific momentum and a lot of upside with the propositions we have. Head & Shoulders, we made some big interventions in raising our level of superiority. We're seeing that improve over the last couple of months as we've made those interventions. Rejoice, we still have work to do, so which we're working on.
Okay. The other business in China that always gets focus is SK-II. We're heading towards the 618 holiday. Any updates or thoughts on, you know, that business or just the you know shopping holidays in general, and the importance of those?
Yeah. I think SK-II will continue to improve-
Mm-hmm
... and will continue to take time. As we said all along, I think consumer sentiment in more discretionary categories is weaker to begin with, and if you pair that with the anti-Japanese brand sentiment, which is improving, but it takes time to work its way through. Demand creation activation is underway. We see the perception of the brand improving, the equity of the brand improving. As we overcome the heavy social media coverage of the wastewater releases, that should give us better cover to increase consumption. Once consumption increase, we see shipments increase, but we don't expect that to happen within the next two to three quarters. This will take time.
Yeah. Shifting to productivity, you highlighted the successes that you've had after a couple of years where productivity was lagging due to supply chain constraints. I take from the presentation a pretty high level, a high level of confidence and a high degree of visibility on productivity into the future. Is that fair? And, you know, just relative to maybe historical benchmarks of your own-
Yeah
... just how confident are you in that pipeline?
Yeah. My simple answer is confident.
Yeah.
We're targeting about $2 billion a year, as we had stated a few years back. During the couple of years of COVID, we didn't have that, and we've rebuilt the muscle to get back. I think at Investor Day, we had talked about getting to $2 billion, back to $2 billion this year. We're on track for that, and I, I think we all feel reasonably confident about next year being good as well. And a lot of the work we've done on productivity, probably a few of the big changes we've done, is earlier we had a good productivity program, but we kind of almost hit a reset at the start of every year. We've made it much more a multi-year program, so it's ongoing. It isn't a start, stop.
So we have ideas for 20, the next fiscal, the fiscal after that, and that gives us much longer range ability to make systemic changes. So I feel very good because of that, that we have a very robust program, and the whole idea of looking at the supply chain in totality is throwing up tremendous opportunities.
Great. You know, we've got a couple of minutes left, and, and I know you're not going to give fiscal 2025 guidance, but it, it feels as though, you know, there's a general sense of, of, cautious optimism on, on top-line resiliency, and obviously a lot of, a lot of optimism and, visibility on productivity. So is the, the outlook at this point as you approach 2025 planning, you know, relatively front-footed, or are there, points of caution that you would flag as we think about 2025?
As always, it's a mixed bag, Steve. You started the conversation in the right place. The strong markets are still with us-
Mm-hmm.
But so are the problem markets. So both dynamics will play out next year. We see a relatively stable commodity environment. We see a relatively stable foreign exchange rate environment. So if you put all of that together, our objective always is to return to algorithm. mid-single digits on the top line, and, you know, mid-singles to high singles on the bottom line. With the productivity improvements, we hope to get there, but as you said, it's too early to give guidance. We'll get back to that in July.
Well, great. With that, we're right on time. I'd like to thank Procter & Gamble, and Shailesh and Andre. Pleasure, as always, and I wish everybody a great conference.
Thanks, Steve.