The J. M. Smucker Company (SJM)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Nov 23, 2021

Operator

Hello, and welcome to The J. M. Smucker Company's Fiscal 2022 Second Quarter Earnings Question and Answer Session. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. During the Q&A, please limit yourselves to two questions and re-queue if you have additional questions. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Aaron Broholm, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Aaron Broholm
VP of Investor Relations, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning and thank you for joining our fiscal 2022 second quarter earnings question and answer session. I hope everyone has had a chance to review our results as detailed in this morning's press release and management's prerecorded remarks, which are available on our corporate website at jmsmucker.com. We will also post an audio replay of this call at the conclusion of this morning's Q&A session. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements that reflect our current expectations and future plans and performance. These statements rely on assumptions and estimates, and actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties. Additionally, we use non-GAAP results to evaluate performance internally. I encourage you to read the full disclosure concerning forward-looking statements and details on our non-GAAP measures in this morning's press release.

Available today on this call are Mark Smucker, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tucker Marshall, Chief Financial Officer. We will now open up the call for questions. Operator, please queue up the first question.

Operator

Thank you. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit yourselves to two questions and re-queue if you have additional questions. Once again, that's star one to be placed into question queue. If you'd like to remove your question from the queue, please press star two. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Andrew Lazar from Barclays. Your line is now live.

Andrew Lazar
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Great. Thanks so much, and good morning, everybody. I guess first one is on elasticity. Thus far, you know, volume elasticity has been lower than what you'd forecast and below, I guess, what you've seen historically, and we've seen that for the group more broadly. Sounds like for at least the way you're thinking about modeling for the fiscal second half, that you're building in somewhat greater elasticity than you've seen thus far, as pricing kinda kicks in, that could start to hinder volume growth a little bit more. I'm trying to get a sense whether this is more out of conservatism or if you've started to see maybe more volume impact from pricing more recently as it's kind of kicked in a bigger way.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Andrew, good morning. With respect to your question, we are increasing our full year net sales guidance by approximately $160 million or 2% at the midpoint. It really relates to half associated with over-delivery in our second quarter or $80 million. Of that $80 million, what we really saw was underlying business momentum against our brand and growth imperatives, along with better than anticipated elasticities from our initial round of pricing actions over the summer and early fall. As we think about the back half of the fiscal year, we are anticipating incremental growth of $80 million against our prior expectations. The predominance of that is coming from continued momentum of volume mix and those better than elasticities.

However, in our fourth quarter, we do have significant pricing actions, particularly in coffee and to a lesser extent in pet associated with cost inflation. As a result of that additional round of pricing that will take place in the fourth quarter, we have factored in elasticities against that pricing wave or action, and so therefore, that is all factored into our guidance.

Andrew Lazar
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Great. Thanks for that. Then, secondly, you recently announced the planned construction of a new facility for Uncrustables, which I think is expected to double brand sales to $1 billion in the next five years. You know, looks like that could essentially drive about sort of 1% sales growth for the overall company per year, I guess, or about half of Smucker's 2% annual organic growth target kinda on its own. Clearly, the brand is now big enough to sort of matter and move the needle. I guess my question is, with the brand now at about 70% ACV, I guess, how are you thinking about driving the growth in this brand in terms of incremental distribution opportunities, you know, at current customers versus or and expanding ACV by entering new customers? Thank you.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Hey, Andrew, it's Mark.

Andrew Lazar
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mark.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you for the question. You know, the first headline in response is that this is fundamentally about our strategy of investing where the growth is. In other words, we've talked about reshaping our portfolio, which is not only about M&A, but it's also about making sure that we're putting resources against our largest opportunities, and Uncrustables is clearly one of those. If you think about 30 consecutive quarters of growth, mostly and almost every one of those quarters has been double-digit. This last quarter was about 33%. We're gonna hit our $500 million target a year early, which is fantastic, and that has been supported by the investment in our second facility in Longmont, Colorado, which we continue to invest in and add lines there to support getting to, of course, over a $500 million .

Yes, you're correct, the investment in the Alabama facility, which we will break ground on in the next couple months, will support obviously further growth to what we believe to be north of $1 billion. The reason to believe is there's just a ton of runway on this brand. I mean, household penetration, number one, is still low. It's only about 11%. There's significant room for growth in household penetration. Number two, we have not invested significantly in marketing, and so we have not turned on any significant consumer spend. And then there is runway even just on our core peanut butter and jelly offerings, whether that's in specific places in U.S. retail, certain locations in away from home. We have not turned on Canada yet. Then there's opportunities in the convenience channel.

If you think about all of those, plus the fact that we haven't done any really meaningful innovation, we just think there's a ton of growth, opportunities and momentum for that brand.

Bryan Spillane
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Great. Thanks very much, and have a great holiday.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you. You too.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is coming from Ken Goldman from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now live.

Ken Goldman
Equity Research Analyst of U.S. Food Producers and Retailers, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Hi. Thanks so much.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Morning.

Ken Goldman
Equity Research Analyst of U.S. Food Producers and Retailers, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Quick question on free cash. I think the implication is that you're expecting maybe around $80 million less in operating cash flow than you previously expected, just looking at your guidance for that in CapEx. You had highlighted inventory as the biggest headwind. Can you just maybe elaborate a little bit on what's driving that expected inventory increase, and how long you anticipate it lasting?

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Good morning, Ken. So our free cash flow target for the fiscal year is now $700 million. Really what is driving that is the decrease in year-over-year earnings, along with the building of inventory associated with working capital requirements, as you've noted, inclusive of us taking up capital expenditures in support of the Uncrustables facility expansion. With regard to the inventory levels, what we're trying to do is make sure that we have the right, both raw materials and finished goods within our network in order to ensure that we are in stock and on shelf, and that we're also managing through supply chain challenges, shortages, along with business continuity. In the near term, we should expect elevated levels of inventory.

As we work through the balance of the fiscal year and think about next year, we can provide an additional update on sort of the longer term implications of inventory levels. Right now, it's just ensuring that we have product to supply.

Ken Goldman
Equity Research Analyst of U.S. Food Producers and Retailers, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Makes sense. Thank you. Just a quick clarification. I think you mentioned that productivity will help offset some of the inflation you're experiencing. Are you increasing the amount of cost savings that you were looking for, which I think was around $50 million? Has that number gone up or is that still around the same amount that we should be thinking about for the year? Thank you.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Ken, we are not changing our annual savings target of $50 million when we talk about productivity savings associated with cost inflation. What we are describing here is that we are seeing low double-digit year-over-year cost inflation that needs to be covered through rounds of pricing actions in this fiscal year. We also acknowledge that over time, to support both dollar profitability and percent profitability, we will need to continue to advance productivity in the form of savings across both our cost of goods sold and our SG&A environments to support the overall long-term health and profitability of the company, which we remain committed to.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Laurent Grandet from Guggenheim. Your line is now live.

Laurent Grandet
Managing Director and Lead Research Analyst Food & Beverages, Guggenheim Partners

Hey, good morning, everyone, and congrats on a strong quarter. My first question is really a follow-up from Andrew's question on Uncrustables. You experience very good and strong sales with that brand. But you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you will be finalizing the construction of the second line by the end of next fiscal year. Will that constrain Uncrustables sales in the short term or more into next fiscal year?

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Laurent, you are correct. We expect by the end of our fiscal 2023 to have the phase two of the Longmont, Colorado facility complete, and that will enable the ongoing expansion above $500 million sales target. We do not see a constraint in the near term associated with the continued growth of that brand and business.

Laurent Grandet
Managing Director and Lead Research Analyst Food & Beverages, Guggenheim Partners

Okay, perfect. Thanks. My second question is about the guidance. You are one of the very few food company to not only increase the top line guidance this quarter, but also, I mean, your EPS despite, I mean, a very volatile, I mean, environment. So what can give you that level of confidence or in other words, what's the level of caution you've got built in? Thanks.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Laurent, you are correct. We did raise both the low end and the high end of our guidance range by $0.10. That really is broken down as follows. We over-delivered our second quarter by $0.40, which was primarily driven by favorable business momentum and better than anticipated elasticities, along with some cost savings. We anticipate an additional $0.30 in the back half from that ongoing momentum being offset by $0.60 of additional costs, partially offset by fourth quarter pricing actions. That $0.70 over delivery or increase to our expectation is being offset by $0.60 of cost price impact, therefore supporting the $0.10 that we increase both the low and the high end of the range. We do feel that we have a balanced guide at the midpoint at this point from both the top line standpoint and the bottom line that gives us a balance in delivering the fiscal year.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Laurent, this is Mark. I might just add that just to your point about confidence, clearly we're operating in a very dynamic environment where there have been a number of challenges, whether it's supply chain related or inflation, what have you. I think fundamentally, the reason that we have continued to deliver is because our execution has been excellent. Our people have been extremely agile and been able to pivot and react, or in many cases, anticipate challenges before they happen. It's a combination fundamentally of detailed supply chain management and then the combination of both consumer and customer execution. Marketing and sales execution working together in concert along with our supply chain management, I think has truly allowed us to continue to deliver consistently over the last few quarters.

Laurent Grandet
Managing Director and Lead Research Analyst Food & Beverages, Guggenheim Partners

Okay, thanks, Mark, and keep up the very good execution. Thank you.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you for the support.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Chris Growe from Stifel. Your line is now live.

Chris Growe
Managing Director, Stifel

Hi. Good morning.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Morning.

Chris Growe
Managing Director, Stifel

Hi. I just had two questions, if I could. The first was just to understand in the quarter how pricing is keeping pace with inflation. If we were to look at PNOC pricing net of cost, would that be negative in the quarter? Are you seeing that catch up then in the H2 of the year where pricing should continue to accelerate? Or is it more so in the fourth quarter when more of that pricing kicks in?

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

As you think about the walk for the year, we took an initial round of pricing in the mid-summer timeframe that is really benefiting the back nine months of the year. That is coming in to help support sort of the initial look that we had of cost inflation coming into the fiscal year. When we came through our first quarter, we had additional cost increases that we were seeing that we have taken subsequent rounds of pricing that we will start to see benefiting primarily the fourth quarter, to your point. Lastly, we have seen increased costs since our last call, primarily in green coffee and in transportation, which is having us to take an additional round of pricing in our coffee portfolio and pet portfolio as well, and we believe that benefit will come through in Q4.

To your point, yes, we are seeing a predominance of the benefit coming through our Q4, and then we will pick up sort of the lapping effect into the balance of FY 2023.

Chris Growe
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay, that was helpful. Thank you. I had one other question perhaps for Mark, and it's, I guess I'm just curious, how you see the health of your core consumer today. I know it's a broad question and a broad view, but when we see the brands in general doing so well, your brand's gaining share, private label losing share. We had some IRI data to confirm that again today. This is all occurring amidst, you know, high level of pricing. So elasticities have been low and almost nonexistent for most companies. Does that change as we continue to move maybe into 2022?

Do you take a more, you know, conservative view of elasticity as a result of just all the pricing into the consumer and their what has been to this point very strong growth in the brands?

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Sure, Chris. You know, I think Tucker, in one of his previous answers, talked a little bit about some of our elasticity assumptions going forward. The success that we've experienced is a couple things. First and foremost is, it's what I just said when in Laurent's question about the firing on all cylinders of managing the supply chain, through all of its dynamic changes, as well as continuing to invest in our brands during this time, not cut marketing in a material way, but in continuing to invest. We've had some world-class, marketing campaigns, notably Jif, most recently, as well as just the store-level execution to make sure that we do our best work trying to keep our brands in stock.

I think it's those things plus what we believe is an ongoing tailwind of elevated at-home consumption, driven by the fact that folks are not going to go back to work the way that they once did. There is going to be, we believe, a hybrid work model that is going to keep people in their homes more than they used to. Since we clearly are, you know, breakfast and lunch-oriented, that is definitely gonna continue to support our business as well as you know, focusing on pet snacks. Milk-Bone alone was up 17% in the quarter. We've just had some very nice results supported by both our execution and then some of this what we view as a persisting tailwind of at-home consumption.

Chris Growe
Managing Director, Stifel

Okay. Thank you for that, and happy holidays.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you. You too.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Steve Powers from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.

Steve Powers
Equity Research Analyst and Head of U.S. Household, Personal Care, Food, and Beverages, Deutsche Bank

Hey, great. Thanks and good morning, everybody.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Good morning.

Steve Powers
Equity Research Analyst and Head of U.S. Household, Personal Care, Food, and Beverages, Deutsche Bank

Maybe just circling back to productivity. I think in response to, I believe it was Ken's question earlier, you said you were not taking up productivity targets for 2022. You have updated your SD&A forecast lower despite what I would assume is upward pressure on some of those components. Maybe you could just, you know, help me out there in terms of where those savings are coming from and if they're just sort of a pullback on discretionary items as opposed to corporate activity.

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Yeah. I think it's to the latter of what you said. It's more of a pullback on discretionary items and just year-over-year favorability. SD&A expenses are now projected to decrease by approximately 7%. That's really due to the benefits of our cost management and organizational restructuring programs that we initiated a year ago. It's also the benefit of lower marketing spend, and that's really because we're lapping a pretty strong fourth quarter spend from the prior year as well. Also it's from reduced incentive compensation and other reductions in discretionary expenses. I think it's more of the latter of what your question asked as opposed to the former.

Steve Powers
Equity Research Analyst and Head of U.S. Household, Personal Care, Food, and Beverages, Deutsche Bank

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. I guess maybe shifting gears, just if we could circle back to a topic that was sort of in focus last quarter and maybe just if there are any updates in your thinking around Nutrish on the dry dog food side and what you're planning to drive some you know future reinvigoration there.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Sure, Steve. So first of all, as we talked last quarter, this will probably be a little bit of a repetitious, our pet strategy you'll recall is really contingent on three legs of the stool. The first and priority is pet snacks because we are the leader in pet snacks and continuing to direct resources to our pet snacks business. Our cat food business where we are a solid number two and Meow Mix has experienced significant growth continues to see quarter-over-quarter growth even sequentially. Those two clearly where we have stronger leadership positions are our priorities.

Of course, the third leg is our dog food where we are not as much in a leadership position, and recognize that and acknowledge last quarter that we are not going to experience the same level of growth on our dog food business as we would on the others, but it still serves an important role. Nutrish specifically, albeit a relatively, you know, small portion did do well in the quarter with about 5% growth total over the entire brand. Actually dry dog saw about 1% growth, sorry, in the quarter. We did experience some growth, and we remain committed, if you recall, to the entire Nutrish brand, which includes both snacks as well as some wet products as well. Let me correct myself. I thought I was right, 4% was our growth on dry dog. We did have a solid quarter on dry dog on Nutrish this quarter.

Steve Powers
Equity Research Analyst and Head of U.S. Household, Personal Care, Food, and Beverages, Deutsche Bank

Very good. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Bryan Spillane from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Bryan Spillane
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Hi. Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Tucker, maybe just to follow up a little bit on the inflation, you know, we're at a, I guess now low double digit run rate year to date. I guess what I was trying to get some perspective or would like to get some perspective on, you know, do we think at this point that we're, you know, closer to a peak in terms of just where cost elevation goes? Maybe underneath that, just so we're thinking about maybe the next 12 months even, just what are the pieces that continue to be areas of pressure and may continue to put pressure and what might actually, you know, be a source of maybe more moderation as we look forward?

Just really trying to understand, you know, continues to elevate and, you know, what are the probabilities that that rate of inflation, you know, as we come back a quarter later, you know, continues to move higher?

Tucker Marshall
CFO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Bryan, good morning. You know, as you've noted, we are experiencing low double digit year-over-year cost of goods sold inflation. That's gonna equate, you know, over $550 million against our total cost basket at COPS. As the key elements of that that we've been pretty consistent since the beginning of our fiscal year are commodity and ingredient inflation, packaging and transportation inflation as well, and you are also now seeing some labor-related inflation as well. Part of that too is also just the discontinuity and the disruption of the overall supply chains that are factoring into that.

As we see the balance of our fiscal year, we think it still continues to increase, but it's sort of increasing at a decreasing rate and we're able to sort of get our arms around the balance of this fiscal year based on what we see to date. We continue to successfully execute and manage through this overall environment. I think looking much and beyond our current fiscal year is probably not prudent at this time, just as we continue to understand the signals beyond the current fiscal year. I just want to again acknowledge the tremendous work that our teams have done to manage this overall inflationary environment, not only on the price side, but also on the productivity and production front.

Bryan Spillane
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America Securities

Okay. Thanks for that. I guess, as we're thinking about the incremental pricing actions, right? You know, the incremental price that you're gonna take back half of the year. Are those price increases really matching the inflation that you know now? I guess, you know, if inflation continues to go higher, would it maybe suggest that, you know, at some point you'd have to come back for additional rounds of price increases?

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Yeah, Bryan, it's Mark. The short answer is, you know, our playbook fundamentally hasn't changed, and so the intent is to fully recover over time, acting as a leader in our categories, right? You know, list price movements, as we have seen over these last several months, are not unusual and because they are so ubiquitous, obviously the tide sort of raises all boats, so everyone is experiencing it. I would also just highlight that in addition to these list price increases and our intent to fully recover, within that, we can use other levers like optimizing our trade spend, and obviously some of the productivity initiatives that Tucker previously mentioned. Yes, over time, our intent is to fully recover. As you've heard us say over the last couple quarters, there is some timing lag from when those actions hit the marketplace.

Bryan Spillane
Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America Securities

All right. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Tucker. Have a happy Thanksgiving, both of you.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Same to you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Alexia Howard from Bernstein. Your line is now live.

Alexia Howard
Research Analyst of US Foods, Bernstein

Good morning, everyone.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Morning.

Alexia Howard
Research Analyst of US Foods, Bernstein

Two questions here. First of all, if the guidance for fiscal 2022 has obviously changed quite a bit over the last couple of quarters, and now there's a modest guide down for the third quarter, and things should get better with pricing in the fourth quarter. There's a lot of moving pieces here. If you had to summarize the key uncertainties, sort of, you know, what are the biggest uncertainties here, in your mind as we look out for the remainder of fiscal 2022 and even into 2023, how would you rank order them?

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Alexia, it's Mark, and I'll start here. First of all, I think it's what we've been saying in terms of just the supply chain uncertainties, how dynamic that is. Some of the labor challenges that exist across multiple industries. I think if you think about those components, those are probably going to persist, you know, for the foreseeable future. I think that's been a pretty consistent theme. The way I would describe it is, when I say dynamic, what we mean is the challenges that exist can change week- to- week, month- to- month. It could be an ingredient or a packaging component. At one point, it could be some isolated labor challenges in a particular geography. It really is somewhat of a moving target.

The fact that we, you know, about six months ago did actually change some of our organization structure. We became a flatter organization, which truly has allowed us to be very agile and pivot to those to where we do see challenges very quickly. I think it is that ability to be agile and to respond to this very dynamic environment that has allowed us to stay on top of it and continue to deliver products ultimately to our end customers.

Alexia Howard
Research Analyst of US Foods, Bernstein

Great. Thank you very much. That's incredibly helpful. The follow-up question. You mentioned in, I think, the prepared remarks that you have an improved commercial model, and you have investments in data capabilities. Can you just describe what you can do now as a result of that you couldn't do before, so we get an idea of really how the capabilities are developing? Thank you, and I'll pass it on.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Okay. Sure, Alexia. Thanks for the question. The general headline is what I said before. It's just a combination of both consumer and customer marketing and sales execution. Those two things working together has been incredibly successful. If I recall, we may have spoken a bit at CAGNY last year about some of our new online capabilities that actually for.

Just that by way of an example, with our retail customers, we have rolled out a capability where we are able to actually see outages, for example, in store clusters or geographies, and are able to react to potentially those out of stocks quickly and make sure that if we're in, you know, say, a major metropolitan area with one customer, that we can actually go in and target specific groups of stores and actually ensure that we're getting product on the shelves, whether that's even out of the back room or not. It's truly very tactical, but we believe that that capability is one example of how we're able to quickly react, and we do believe that that's best in class.

Alexia Howard
Research Analyst of US Foods, Bernstein

Great. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Robert Moskow from Credit Suisse. Your line is now live.

Robert Moskow
Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail, Credit Suisse

Hi, thanks. One of the bigger surprises for me, and there were several of them, was to see pet snacks growth so strong in the quarter. The Nielsen tracking data doesn't really indicate that. I was wondering if you could be more specific as to which channels you're seeing the snacks growth come in. I had a follow-up on labor. When you talk about labor challenges, to what extent is that challenges within your own four walls, or is it really mostly at the distributor level and at the retail level? Thanks.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Rob, it's Mark. Let me start with your second question around labor. It is systemic, as you know, and as I mentioned, you know, to Alexia. It is a moving target in terms of where we might experience this certain labor shortages. I think it depends on the geography. Sometimes in certain geographies we may be competing for skilled labor. What I would tell you in general is that less skilled labor, which sometimes would be some, you know, in distribution centers, is the labor that probably moves around the most and we see probably the most turnover. Again, you know, I think we've been very agile at adapting to the challenges and been able to stay on top of things for the most part.

It is again, it varies and it can shift over time. Pet snacks, I think in terms of a little bit more specifics, obviously, we have been supporting our pet snacks business with advertising, which has been very effective. Again, some of the other capabilities around sales at the store level have allowed us to remain in stock. Milk-Bone specifically has been supported by some new innovation, which has actually done reasonably well also. It is a combination of all of those things that has been supporting our snacks business, as well as, you know, Milk-Bone specifically. The one other comment I would make is, you know, just from channels, I think we might have to follow up with you and get on the specifics of that.

What we are seeing in our numbers is that it's typically growth across all channels, and that the consumption growth that you're seeing is generally in line with our sales growth.

Robert Moskow
Senior Equity Analyst of Food and Food Retail, Credit Suisse

Okay. I'll follow up later. Thanks.

Operator

Thanks. Our next question is coming from Pamela Kaufman from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.

Pamela Kaufman
Executive Director and Equity Analyst of Packaged Food and Tobacco, Morgan Stanley

Good morning. I was wondering if you are making any adjustments to your marketing and promotion strategy through the year, given the stronger than anticipated demand that you've seen.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

No, we are actually moving forward and basically sticking to our guns on our marketing plans. Given the inflation across our portfolio more broadly, the percent of sales that you would see will be down slightly versus last year, but our marketing budgets are very much in line with what they were last year. Coffee is actually up slightly, and so we continue to invest in our brands.

Pamela Kaufman
Executive Director and Equity Analyst of Packaged Food and Tobacco, Morgan Stanley

Thanks. That's helpful. Clearly there's a lot of investment behind Uncrustables given the strong growth that the brand is seeing. Are there other products in the portfolio where you see opportunity to step up investment? Maybe you can touch on some of the innovation that you're working on. You mentioned in pet treats, but are there other areas where you see particular opportunity to step up investment and innovation?

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Yeah, sure. The Milk-Bone, for example, is really around premiumization, and there's a number of new Milk-Bone products. You know, think about biscuits being dipped in some other or product. Peanut butter, for example. You know, peanut butter on a dog biscuit is one. Those do very well, and those are relatively easy line extensions for us to do, and so we've done well on Milk-Bone. That's a really good example. Meow Mix, we've continued to invest in marketing there. So we've seen good growth on Meow Mix. Dunkin' and Bustelo in coffee both have maintained their households. In fact, what we're seeing is that they are the two brands in the whole coffee category that have maintained their households, both double digit, and so continuing to invest in those brands as well.

Then finally, just on Folgers. You know, as we know, the category continues to shift to K-Cups. Keurig has done a great job just in terms of selling more brewers, and we think there's gonna be probably a couple million more brewers coming online. Our Folgers brand has been doing fantastic in the K-Cup space. Just shifting our portfolio again to where the growth is going has really benefited us.

Pamela Kaufman
Executive Director and Equity Analyst of Packaged Food and Tobacco, Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Rebecca Scheuneman from Morningstar . Your line is now live.

Rebecca Scheuneman
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Morningstar

Great. Good morning.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Good morning.

Rebecca Scheuneman
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Morningstar

You know, in taking a look at Smucker's history of innovation, you know, Uncrustables has been a clear home run. There have been a few stumbles of late, and I'm just wondering if you could kinda share your product development process and what Smucker's does to set itself apart from others in this, you know, highly competitive industry.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Sure, Rebecca. The first is, you know, as you mentioned, we had been focused a few years ago on fewer bigger. You know, we did have a couple stumbles there. Our 1850 brand notably is still in the market and is sort of steady. Our 1850 brand, which was a relatively big launch in coffee as an extension of Folgers, has done decent and remains in market. What we learned through that process is that you have to have a combination of smaller and larger bets, and if you get the mix right, it works. I would highlight that even when we have had stumbles, our growth from new products has been consistent with our algorithm over time.

Even in the years where we feel like some of our larger bets may not have been as successful as we hoped, we still delivered against our growth algorithm on new products. We really feel like right now we've got the mix right. You know, I've already mentioned several times about some of the Milk-Bone and some of the other innovation that we've been seeing and just getting that mix right. Jif Squeeze is another really good example of just taking peanut butter and putting in a different, more convenient packaging has been very successful as well. It's just at the end of the day, it comes down to knowing your consumer and getting the balance right.

Rebecca Scheuneman
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Morningstar

That's very helpful. Thank you. It was about a year ago now at your Investor Day, you laid out your new plan to redesign your marketing model, and I was wondering if you could provide an update on how that strategy is progressing. As part of that, if you can share, like, what % of your media spend is allocated to digital media?

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

The last part of your question, it varies by category, but it's in the 60/40 to 50/50 range. What that means is mass media is important because it's all about reach. It's about reaching as many consumers as you can. Digital is more about targeted, so you already have consumers, and you're trying to make sure you keep them in your brand franchises. That's an oversimplification, but that's sort of how we think about it, so you have to have both. The question more specifically about marketing was, I'll try to do this in the broadest terms, we needed to fundamentally think about how we partnered with our external partners. We had many agencies. We essentially consolidated down to one. We partner primarily with Publicis on consumer marketing.

In doing so, it afforded us the opportunity to restructure how we are organized and line up with them, and maybe most importantly, really, making sure that we were giving our partners the license to create very bold and consumer-relevant creative. The example I would use again is Jif. You know, the most recent campaign where we have partnerships with Ludacris and Gunna, both rappers from two different eras. There was a TikTok rap challenge as part of that, which we actually earned 7 billion views, which is unbelievable and it's certainly a record for us as a company in terms of the number of impressions that we made, but also probably a record in a number. I think TikTok gave us. We were in the top 12 most influential campaigns this past year.

Clearly, this has been a journey over the last three years. It's the consumer marketing piece is definitely working, and now with the combination of a more focused and refined sales execution model, the combination of those two things is very powerful and again, a key to our success.

Rebecca Scheuneman
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Morningstar

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.

Mark Smucker
President and CEO, The J. M. Smucker Company

Well, first of all, wanna wish everyone a very happy holiday and a very happy Thanksgiving this week. Thank you for being with us this week. I know it's a holiday week, and I think the most important thing is just to pause and thank our employees who have truly done yeoman's work managing this company through a tremendous number of challenges and really delivering results. So thank you most of all to our employees, and thank you to our shareholders for your support.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

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