Susan Anderson: Okay, great. That’s really helpful. And then just really quick at retail I guess on the Sun category. I think it ended up maybe being a little bit better at retail. So, do you guys feel like the inventory did you end the quarter in a much better position than when you started? Or is there still some to clear through there? And then also just on the Fem Care side, if I understood it right, it sounds like maybe a little bit too much inventory there also at retail. Was that a category because I know there was obviously some supply chain issues. Did the retailers kind of restock too much and now just kind of need to level that out?
Dan Sullivan: Yes, I’ll start with the Sun Care point. And I think you’re right. Look the category came back quite well in the fourth quarter. It was up 11%. And you saw the good weather across most of the US and consumption followed that. What we saw in — we called out lower replenishment orders anticipating this in the quarter. That was largely a Walmart discussion. And Walmart performed quite well in the Sun Care category. We lost share at Walmart. We lost share in the quarter and yet we held share total retail in Q4. So, I think it speaks to where we were on shelf, where we had adequate inventory the consumer responded quite well. To your point on total inventory levels, we feel quite good. We’re exiting the year in a really healthy spot going into next year’s sun season.
So, no expected overhang there. On Fem Care, yes, I think it’s a good way to think about it. There was a small sort of take down of inventory on shelf mostly around Playtech sport. But again, I think we entered the year maybe not in a perfect inventory position because we still cycle through this choppiness around supply and demand in the broader category but in a healthier position than a year ago.
Susan Anderson: Okay, great. Thanks so much for all the details. Good luck for rest of the year.
Dan Sullivan: Thank you.
Rod Little: Thank you, Susan. Operator, next question please.
Operator: The next question comes from Chris Carey of Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.
Chris Carey: Hi, good morning guys. So, just on this inventory dynamic. So, can you just maybe help us understand volume cadence through the year confidence around volumes? And then, how much is dependent on better sell-through such that you can get back to shipping in line with consumption gas? Just any sort of help on volume assumptions. And how we should be thinking about selling or sell-through which is typically I think what comes to mind when we hear inventory corrections and these sorts of things.
Rod Little: Yeah. So — Chris, Good morning, we don’t have an inventory issue. I don’t think at retail or in our own system. I think we finished fiscal 2023, in a very good position. And as you know, we took some very aggressive steps within fiscal 2023 to address the situation specifically in Japan, where we right-sized the inventory that was out there with wholesalers and retailers in Japan. It was a material impact three points of growth on quarter four for example, that we cleaned up in 2023. That wasn’t in our original guide by the way, when we put that out there. So we cleaned that up and there were other cleanups that we did around the world. Headline here is from an inventory perspective of what we know is at retail, in every category and every country.
And what we have in our system here we’re clean and good. There’s no inventory bubble or issued to correct as we get into 2024. As you look at volumes, and you get into where we’ve come from in fiscal 2023, we delivered our 4% with roughly 500 basis points of pricing volume down 100 basis points. So that’s what’s happened over the past 12 months. As we now flip into what we have line of sight to for 2024, as Dan referenced earlier in our three points at the midpoint projection for net sales growth on an organic basis we have about 100 basis points of that being volume and 200 being a combination of price revenue management mix all of those things. And so it’s effectively a 200 basis point step-up in unit volume. And it’s a combination of everything.
You have to look category, by country. It’s a very different outcome, as you might imagine, as you look at it. But broadly, as we have less pricing in than we did a year ago, we see some volume recovery as we play that out. I think we’re confident in our forward-looking 3% and how it builds out. Dan, I don’t know if you have anything.
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. No, all good comments, Rod. Chris, I would add a couple of things. Just on our volume outlook. I think it’s — there’s two fundamental drivers to this call it one point of growth that we’re going to anticipate in organic. So I think one of the drivers is some of the new and exciting brand portfolio product that you heard us talk about in the prepared remarks whether that’s innovation in Sun, whether that’s the new Carefree master brand launch both of which we think come with incremental distribution or whether it’s the Billie play now, as it moves into its rightful place outside of Shave also new distribution. So there’s volume growth in for example, in those three specific areas. And then, kind of the second piece is what Rod alluded to, what we’re cycling which is Japan in the fourth quarter where we made the decision to take distributor inventory out.
You put those two together that leads to what we would consider about a point of organics coming from volume. How it flights during the year pretty consistent other than the fourth quarter when we step up in volume growth year-over-year again, because we’re cycling in Japan. The only other comment I would make is and I think maybe this is just to avoid any confusion that this is — we’re sort of talking about, inventory levels on shelf and also inventory levels for us across the enterprise. We are structurally taking inventory out of the system next year. We have that opportunity now that we’re sort of past the COVID time of disruption and supply chain challenges and the like. We think we can deliver the same level of high-service at lower cost and lower inventory burden.
So we will do that to the tune of about 10 days, but that’s different than the comments Rod was making around retail shelf inventory levels which are far more normalized than they’ve been. Hopefully, that’s helpful.
Chris Carey: That is helpful. One follow-up would be, I believe you said, that you’re expecting SG&A leverage in fiscal 2024, so SG&A as a percentage of sales down year-over-year. You had mid-single-digit growth in fiscal 2023 and it was up. Is the volume leverage a key component of that? Or are there other factors that you have in your control like savings or other initiatives that are giving that confidence? Thanks.
Rod Little: Yeah. So good question on G&A, because I think there’s been some math challenges here. I think total G&A for the year 2024 on a dollar basis, Chris we’re profiling basically flat dollars. And the way that we get there is factoring in all of the inflationary challenges continued merit increases and everything that comes with that, being offset dollar for dollar by structural cost reduction, part of our continued efforts to become more productive and more efficient. And we feel pretty good about that. The work has been done. We have a line of sight to the savings. We’re actually executing many of these steps this week. So you’ve got a model that says inflation is getting offset dollar-for-dollar by structural cost reduction.
