The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michele Buck: Good morning.

Bryan Spillane: So two quick ones for me. One, just a follow-up on elasticity and another one on capital allocation. So first on elasticity, Michele, is there any pronounced differences across channels? So I guess small format immediate consumption versus large box, just anything there to call out in terms of where the — if there’s any differences in terms of elasticity across those channels or consumption occasions?

Michele Buck: I don’t think that we have seen anything significant across channels. No.

Bryan Spillane: Okay. And then, Steve, just on capital allocation, I noticed the dividend increase of 15% and that, obviously, makes the dividend more competitive, I guess, with interest rates going up. But just can you remind us, again, as we kind of think about, think over the next couple of years and as capital spending normalizes and again assuming that there’s not some major strategic event that would affect the balance sheet. Just how you are thinking about capital allocation and returning cash to shareholders going forward, and again, would it be more dividends, would share repurchases become a more pronounced piece? Just kind of how you are thinking about that as we think about it over the next couple of years would be helpful? Thanks.

Steve Voskuil: Sure. Yeah. I’d be happy to. No fundamental changes in our capital allocation philosophy that we talked about back at the Investor Conference. It is a great dividend increase. When you look at that and you look at our target for payout ratio and so on. We are still, even with this increase a little bit behind where we would like to be and where we have been historically. So that just reflects the great earnings progress over the last few years, but pleased with the 15% increase. And you are right, as we look forward, as capital spending moderates off some of the really high spending we have had here recently, we are going to look for other ways to be thoughtful with the capital and returning cash to shareholders through repurchases, for example, is our stop gap when we don’t have better-returning alternatives and so still that’s not going to change.

Bryan Spillane: Okay. Thank you.

Steve Voskuil: You bet.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Robert Moskow with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your questions.

Robert Moskow: Hi. Thank you for the question. Similar to Bryan about elasticity look slightly different. I want to know if you have seen any differences in elasticity within the portfolio, like, multi-serve bags versus single-serve, especially heading into Halloween, some of those bags can cost $20, $25 at retail. Have you seen any observations in consumer behavior about just the absolute price points affecting demand?

Michele Buck: So nothing material relative to the pack size piece. I mean, what we have tended to see over time is, seasons tend to perform better, to be less elastic and I think that’s just the nature of people are going to participate. So that’s the biggest difference that we see.

Robert Moskow: Okay. So — and any — so no real change in like single-serve demand affected by traffic or just the absolute price point of the bars getting up there?

Michele Buck: No.

Robert Moskow: Okay.

Michele Buck: We have not seen.

Robert Moskow: All right. Thank you. Yeah.

Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your questions.

David Palmer: Hi. Thanks. At your Analyst Day, you provided guidance of North America Confection organic sales in the low single digits including flattish volume. Could you remind us again of the drivers to sustain that sales growth with low single-digit pricing at flat volume as perhaps competition returns in a more fulsome manner? Thanks so much.

Steve Voskuil: Yes. I would say nothing fundamental changing in that algorithm the way we think about the sources of growth for U.S. Confection or the rest of the business. I mean we always expect it to be a competitive category over time and so we are looking at it the same way. There’s nothing that’s happening this quarter or even for the balance of this year that we think fundamentally changes any of that.

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