Campbell Soup Company (NYSE:CPB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And maybe that’s what’s most important,” I think what we continue to believe and what we saw again in this holiday is that when the chips are really down, the Campbell’s brands matter, and that is evident in the performance that we saw. I do think you point out a very good proof point and that is how our margins progressing. And I think the reality is in the first quarter, you did not see any type of material change in investment relative to promotion or trade. Our margins came in very much consistent with where we expected. We continue to do a very, very good job on our productivity and some of our other levers in managing costs. I think as we go forward, you will see us being very judicious, right? This continued balancing act that we’ve been talking about for a while of making sure that we’re affordable and that the price gaps are managed right when we most need them to be, along with ensuring that the margin and the volumes all kind of work together to give us this kind of optimal position, not easy to do.

And in a dynamic environment, we’ve got to make sure that we’re staying agile. But I would say so far, I see nothing on the horizon that suggests to me that there’s any variation from what we would have planned or expected, even though in certain periods of the year, you may see a sharpened price point or make sure that we’re strongest in a key week, but not outside of the precedence that we’ve set in the past or within the margin construct that we’ve laid out.

Operator: Your next question comes from a line of Ken Goldman from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Ken Goldman: Hi, thanks so much. Carrie, you mentioned the opportunity to manage discretionary spending maybe a bit more as the year unfolds. I’m just curious, is it possible to provide, I guess, some examples of where the biggest opportunities might be within discretionary spending. And I suppose I’m also asking for a bit of help with how you define discretionary as well. Thank you.

Carrie Anderson: Yeah. I would say a lot of that goes back to some of our enterprise-wide cost savings initiatives. So, we have a vast program that we look at opportunities to enhance business [capabilities] (ph), drive efficiencies in all parts of our organization that are part of our $1 billion cost savings initiative. So, I would say, it’s really across the board, not only in our COGS areas and our manufacturing facilities, but also going into the SG&A areas as well. And that’s where we’re seeing it across the board, some of those cost savings opportunities coming through.

Mark Clouse: Yeah. A lot of that, Ken, I would say, it would be in two big buckets. One is what we would call the non-working bucket. So that’s kind of think of it as production or materials or things that are not necessarily driving immediate impact in the marketplace. And then, secondarily, what I would call the non-people cost within our SG&A, where we’re looking at everything. I mean, I think in a world where we want to make sure that every dollar is working as hard as it possibly can in this moment, especially, as I said before, as we kind of wrestle with this balancing act, we want to make sure that we’ve got every penny possible available to either invest in the right areas and/or help us deliver the earnings. So, I think those two buckets are where we have been, although always vigilant, I would say, at a whole different degree of rationalization as we really make sure that we’re working as hard as we can to get those dollars to work hard.

Ken Goldman: Okay, thank you for that. And then, just a quick follow-up. It’s great to see the improving share data within soup, and thank you for the explanation as to what’s going on maybe behind the scenes there. I’m curious, do you believe your key customers are satisfied with overall category volumes with soup, right, sort of understanding that the comparison is challenging. You did talk about how maybe you expect shipments and consumption to kind of match in the next few months, and maybe that answers the question. But just trying to get any kind of sense of how those customers are looking at the category right now in the scheme of affordability and so forth?

Mark Clouse: Yeah. It’s a great question. And I do think it’s a conversation that we have frequently with our customers. And you’ve heard me talk about this before, and I’m always a little guarded, because it should come with the big caveat that we’re not going to do anything to undermine the long-term profitability of these businesses and margins. But I will say, it is important for us to ensure that the volume on these businesses continues to be in an appropriate range relative to ensuring that the health of the category and really the health of our overall network continues to sustain. And so, I think one of the other things you will see, Ken, in the holiday period, not surprising with the little bit of the disparity I shared between the unit share and the dollar share being a greater expansion in units, you will see a better step-up in units from where we’ve been on soup.