The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 2, 2023

Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Clorox Company Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Release Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Ms. Lisah Burhan, Vice President of Investor Relations for The Clorox Company. Ms. Burhan, you may begin your conference.

Lisah Burhan: Thank you, Jen. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me today are Linda Rendle, our CEO; and Kevin Jacobsen, our CFO. I hope everyone has had a chance to review our earnings release and prepared remarks, both of which are available on our website. In just a moment, Linda will share a few opening comments, and then we'll take your questions. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements, including about our fiscal 2023 outlook. These statements are based on management's current expectations, but may differ from actual results or outcomes. In addition, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the Forward-Looking Statements section, which identifies various factors that could affect such forward-looking statements which has been filed with the SEC.

In addition, please refer to the Non-GAAP Financial Information section of our earnings release and the supplemental financial schedules in the Investor Relations section of our website for a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Now, I'll turn it over to Linda.

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Linda Rendle: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As I mentioned in our prepared remarks, despite persistent macroeconomic headwinds, we delivered better-than-expected Q2 results, with organic sales growth in three of four segments: gross margin expansion, and double-digit earnings growth. Our performance reflects the strength and superior value of our brands, strong execution across a broad set of actions and the benefit of some timing shifts. As a result, we've updated our full year outlook. During the quarter, we made good progress through building margin, driving top line momentum and executing against our Ignite strategy to strengthen our advantages and accelerate profitable growth for the long term. This includes advancing our innovation pipeline delivering cost savings and taking additional cost-justified pricing actions while maintaining record high consumer value superiority.

Overall, we feel good about our progress, but we're relentlessly driving additional improvements as we continue to invest in our brands, categories and capabilities. Looking ahead, we expect the operating environment to remain volatile and challenging, and we'll continue using all the levers under our control while protecting the value proposition of our products to recover margin and drive long-term growth for our brands and categories. We are confident that our leading product portfolio in essential categories, coupled with our proactive actions, will enable us to navigate this environment and return to more consistent profitable growth over time. With that, Kevin and I will take your questions.

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