Newell Brands (NWL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 10, 2023 8:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Newell Brands' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. A live webcast for this call is available at ir.newellbrands.com.

I will now turn the call over to Sofya Tsinis, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Tsinis, you may begin.

Sofya Tsinis

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Newell Brands' Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Call. On the call with me today are Ravi Saligram, our CEO; Chris Peterson, our President; and the newest member of the executive team, Mark Erceg, our CFO.

Before we begin, I'd like to inform you that during the course of today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to update forward-looking statements. I refer you to the cautionary language and risk factors available in our earnings release, our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other SEC filings available on our Investor Relations website for a further discussion of the factors affecting forward-looking statements.

Please also recognize that today's remarks will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including those we refer to as normalized measures. We believe these non-GAAP measures are useful to investors, although they should not be considered superior to the measures presented in accordance with GAAP. Explanations of these non-GAAP measures are available -- and available reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in today's earnings release and tables as well as other materials on Newell’s Investor Relations website. Thank you.

And now I'll turn the call over to Ravi.

Ravi Saligram

Thank you, Sofya. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our year-end call. Fourth quarter results were in line with our expectations and brought to a close a difficult second half. The business continued to be impacted by a tough operating environment, including slowing consumer demand for general merchandise categories as well as inventory reductions at retail. Our team remains focused on executing our strategic priorities with excellence while navigating these challenges. They did a great job in reducing inventories in the fourth quarter and drove sequentially stronger cash flow performance.

For the year, Core sales declined 3.4% against a very demanding year ago comparison of 12.5% growth and soft volumes more than offset favorable pricing. 2-year stacked growth exceeded 9%. The Writing and Commercial businesses delivered core sales growth in 2022, while core sales for the other businesses declined. The company's core sales and domestic consumption exceeded 2019 levels even as Home and Outdoor categories are continuing to normalize from peak pandemic levels. Many of our major brands such as Rubbermaid, Sharpie, Paper Mate, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Ball, EXPO, Elmer's and Campingaz showed strength. Despite a much tougher than anticipated operating in macro environment in 2022, which weighed heavily on the company's results we made tangible progress across a number of focus areas.