McCormick
Q4 2022 Earnings Call
Jan 26, 2023, 8:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Kasey Jenkins
Good morning. This is Kasey Jenkins, chief strategy officer and senior vice president, investor relations. Thank you for joining today's fourth quarter earnings call. To accompany this call, we've posted a set of slides at ir.mccormick.com.
With me this morning are Lawrence Kurzius, chairman and CEO; Brendan Foley, president and COO; and Mike Smith, executive vice president and CFO. During this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The nature of those financial measures and the related reconciliations to the GAAP results are included in this morning's press release and slides. In our comments, certain percentages are rounded.
Please refer to our presentation for complete information. Today's presentation contains projections and other forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or other factors.
Please refer to our forward-looking statements on Slide 2 for more information. I will now turn the discussion over to Lawrence.
Lawrence Kurzius -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Our fourth quarter concluded a challenging and volatile year that impacted our ability to deliver on our expectations and our financial performance. At the same time, we ended the year with positive momentum with consumer consumption trends and flavor solutions demand, stabilized service levels and supply, and meaningful progress in starting to reshape our cost structure.
And more work remains to be done. Our confidence in our outlook for 2023 and beyond are strong. Our organization is focused squarely on executing on the priorities I just mentioned, all of which are important drivers in the successful execution of our strategies and the delivery of stronger results. Turning to Slide 5, in our fourth quarter results, our sales declined 2% from the year-ago period, including a 4% unfavorable impact from currency.
In constant currency, sales grew 2% within our implied fourth quarter guidance range but below our expectations. Greater-than-expected COVID-related disruptions in China unfavorably impacted our expected sales growth for both total the quarter and the consumer segment by approximately 2%. Fourth quarter sales would have grown in the range of 4% with constant currency, excluding the impact of China on our results. We even anticipated even higher growth.