The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jim Hagedorn: So nobody is messing around here. I think the retailers wanted to work. We want it to work. We are spending behind it. We have got new talent on the sort of regular lawns advertising, we replaced Scotty the Scotsman with a new personality and the big event at the beginning of the season. So we are not — I think part of what we had happened last year, Jon, was we were sort of waiting for weather before we fire our activation dollars and we never just had that weather. And there gets to be a point where if people haven’t bought, it’s getting late in the year and the weather is kind of cool and wet, and people say, my lawn looks great anyway. There’s a big reason to get them out early. So it’s a little bit of a back to the future approach, but it’s very well coordinated and being spent against very heavily. So I think we feel pretty good about it, and the POS, so far, I think, says there’s no significant problem with the consumer at the moment.

Jon Andersen: Thank you. I will leave it with that. Thanks.

Jim Hagedorn: Thank you, Jon.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Joseph Altobello with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Joseph Altobello: Thanks. Hey, guys. Good morning.

Jim Hagedorn: Hi, Joe.

Joseph Altobello: I guess a question on U.S. consumer as well, retailer inventories, you touched on this. Sounds like they are a little heavy, how much of might that be to your shipments this year?

Mike Lukemire: To our plan, I would say that, there is no problem with that pump. And so we are just looking at, in our plants, we baked in that they may want bring them down based on POS a little tighter, but that’s a conservative look. So they have not really talked about they have a significant amount of inventory.

Matt Garth: Yeah. Joe and in my prepared remarks, what I said was, we came into the year with retailer inventories low and with the strong December that we had plus lower year-over-year POS, those inventories have come up. However, the retailer inventories are still below where they were last year.

Mike Lukemire: Yeah. I think we are at like 7% below last year at the same point.

Matt Garth: Yes.

Mike Lukemire: So.

Jim Hagedorn: And I think internally, Joe, the conversations here, clearly we had a positive first quarter, a lot of work went into that. I think Luke has been pretty clear that sales that came in he’s not really changing his first half load plan. So we are not assuming that its additive. So I think Luke has been conservative for the first time ever, but…

Mike Lukemire: I am worried about running out of product, because I think, it’s going to be good, but I don’t know.

Jim Hagedorn: That may be our biggest issue, Joe, is just that, we are just working really hard to keep the supply chain type.

Joseph Altobello: Okay. That’s helpful. And maybe on Hawthorne, three months ago, the outlook for that business was, call it, $700 million of revenue this year. Now we are looking at roughly $550 million. So it’s changed pretty dramatically here in the last couple of months. I guess, one, have things gotten that much worse or do you expect some sort of recovery, and two, assuming revenue of $550 million, what does that mean for segment loss in fiscal 2023?

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