The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 31, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Aimee DeLuca – Head-Investor Relations
Jim Hagedorn – Chairman, President and CEO
Matt Garth – Chief Financial and Administrative Officer
Nate Baxter – Chief Operating Officer
Chris Hagedorn – Executive Vice President and Division President-Hawthorne Gardening Company
Conference Call Participants
Joe Altobello – Raymond James
Peter Grom – UBS
Jon Andersen – William Blair
Andrew Carter – Stifel
Chris Carey – Wells Fargo Securities
William Reuter – Bank of America
Aimee DeLuca
Good morning and welcome to Scotts Miracle-Gro’s Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Webcast. I Aimee DeLuca, Head of Investor Relations. With me this morning our Chairman, President and CEO, Jim Hagedorn; and Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Matt Garth. Jim will provide an overall business update, followed by Matt with a review of our financial results. During our review, we will make forward-looking statements and discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please be aware that our actual results could differ materially from what we share today. Please refer to our Form 10-K filed with the SEC for details of the full range of risk factors that could impact our results.
Following the webcast, Chief Operating Officer, Nate Baxter; and Hawthorne Division President, Chris Hagedorn, will join Jim and Matt for an audio-only Q&A session. To listen to the Q&A, simply remain on this webcast. To ask a question, please join via the audio link shared in our press release. As always, today’s session will be recorded. An archived version will be published on our website at investor.scots.com. For further discussion after the call, you are invited to email or call me directly.
With that, let’s get started with Jim’s business update.
Jim Hagedorn
Welcome everyone. At the start of our fiscal year, we outlined growth targets and financial metrics for fiscal 2024. With three quarters of the year behind us, we have greater visibility into how we’re performing against them. It’s clear we’ve accomplished almost everything we set out to do this year. Despite none, even in unsettled weather season, we will improve upon the financial metrics that matter when it comes to driving value and establishing a growth foundation for next year. They include market share, sales and point of sales at consumer level, free cash flow, debt reduction, leverage improvements, gross margin and EBITDA. We’ve also held the line on expense control and continue to operate as a leaner, more cost efficient organization capable investing strategically to drive volume and sales. To that point, we not only increased our media spend over prior year, but we also efficiently focused those dollars to maximize POS opportunities in response to external factors.