The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Linda Rendle : Yes. This fourth round was a bit more moderate than we had taken in July, if you recall, July was the largest of the four price increases. This one was around mid-single digits and fairly broad across the portfolio, but more moderate than we had taken in the past. And again, too early to judge on what the pricing looks like and what the impacts are. But this one was definitely more moderate than what we saw in July. And if you look at July, the elasticities are exactly in line with our expectations across categories. So we would expect our models to continue to hold in December, but it’s dynamic out there and consumers are certainly facing a lot of inflation in their broader basket. So we’re watching it closely.

Andrea Teixeira : That’s helpful. The — so the mid-single digits plus a high single, like in general, like on average, you’re probably running around mid-teens. And then so that implies in the midpoint of the range if the 0 to 5, you’re looking at 2.5%, you’re probably looking at elasticities running around 12, 13. Is that the way your model now calls for the second half?

Kevin Jacobsen : Yes. Andrea, what I would say in terms of elasticities, our expectation is elasticities for this December around or pricing would be very similar to what we saw in July, which is consistent with our historical levels of elasticities, you might remember in the first few rounds, we were seeing lower elasticities than historical levels. Consumers were less price sensitive. But now that’s really reverted back to historical level elasticity. And then I would say on the back half, be a little careful because we do have some shifting as we talk about between quarters. I think maybe a better way to look at that if you try to take out the noise of some volume shifting between Q2 and Q3, Q2, we had 4% organic sales growth.

You saw in my prepared remarks, you may have seen, we’re projecting 2% to 3% growth organic sales growth in Q3. Over that six-month period, we’re looking at organic sales growth a little over 3%. And so clearly, an acceleration of where we’ve been based on the fundamentals of the business we’re talking about. But consumers continue to be resilient. Our categories have been shown to be resilient to date, and I think that’s reflected in raising our outlook.

Andrea Teixeira : And the last, this is about 0.7, right, if my math sums me right on average on all the categories?

Kevin Jacobsen : Yes, Andrea, we don’t comment on specifically on elasticities. And as you can imagine, they’re quite different by category, by geography. And so it’s something we don’t comment publicly on the elasticities of the brands.

Operator: And our next question will come from Kaumil Gajrawala with Credit Suisse.

Kaumil Gajrawala : Everybody. Good afternoon, evening for us. Can you talk a bit about supply and about inventory? Maybe just a little bit more on your ability to supply through your various maybe digging into the categories a little bit? And then how do you feel about trade inventories as well as maybe inventories in the pantries?

Kevin Jacobsen : Sure. Thanks, Kaumil, for the question. On supply, I would say the supply chain, we’re definitely seeing improvements from the disruptions we’re dealing with over the last year or two. It continues to normalize, and that certainly helped benefit our inventory levels. So as you know, we have raised safety stocks to try to help manage the supply chain disruptions we’re dealing with and create less impact to our ability to ship product to our retailers. As the supply chain is normalizing, we are able to go back and reduce the safety stock levels. And so as an example, in Q2, this is a fourth straight quarter that we’ve been able to reduce the inventory levels. I think year-over-year, we pulled another 4 days out of inventory on hand, and that’s really a reflection of an improving supply chain.

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