Kimberly-Clark Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
October 24, 2021

Key Takeaways

  • Organic sales rose 4% in Q3, driven by strong personal care growth (up 11% in North America and 7% in Developing & Emerging markets) and successful pricing & volume strategies.
  • Margins and earnings declined as inflation in resin, pulp, labor, transportation, and energy costs outpaced expectations, pressuring profitability.
  • Persistent supply chain disruptions—including U.S. labor shortages, tight transport capacity, and surging energy costs in Europe—are adding incremental costs and limiting product availability.
  • Management is taking further action with additional pricing measures, $150 million in quarterly cost savings, and tighter discretionary spending while maintaining brand and innovation investments.
  • Full-year 2021 outlook was lowered due to Q3 performance and fourth-quarter headwinds, and 2022 guidance remains uncertain amid continuing inflation and supply chain challenges despite anticipated top-line momentum.
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Earnings Conference Call
Kimberly-Clark Q3 2021
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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience in holding. We now have your presenters in conference. Please be aware that each of your lines is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of this morning's short remarks, we will open the floor for questions, and at that time, instructions will be given as to the procedure to follow if you would like to ask a question. It is now my pleasure to introduce today's first presenter, Taryn Miller.

Taryn Miller
Taryn Miller
Head of Investor Relations at Kimberly-Clark

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Kimberly-Clark's third quarter earnings conference call. On the call with me today are Mike Hsu, our Chairman and CEO, and Maria Henry, our CFO. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings news release, and we also published prepared management remarks from Mike and Maria that summarized our third quarter results and full year 2021 outlook. Both documents are available in the investors section of our website. We hope you find it valuable to have our prepared remarks ahead of this call. In just a moment, Mike will share a few opening comments, and then we'll take your questions. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements. Please see the Risk Factors section of our latest annual report on Form 10-K for further discussion of forward-looking statements. We may also refer to adjusted results and outlook.

Taryn Miller
Taryn Miller
Head of Investor Relations at Kimberly-Clark

Both exclude certain items described in this morning's news release. The release has further information about these adjustments and reconciliations to comparable GAAP financial measures. I'll turn it over to Mike.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Okay, thank you, Taryn. Good morning, everyone. Before we get to your questions, I'd like to offer some perspective on our third quarter and further actions we're taking in response to this dynamic and challenging macro environment. Organic sales were strong, up 4% in the quarter, and included the impact of pricing actions implemented in the second and third quarters. In North America, personal care organic sales were up 11%, driven by mid-single-digit increases in both net selling price and volume. In D&E markets, personal care organic sales were up 7%. Organic sales increased double digits in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Eastern Europe, and South Africa. Our top-line performance was strong despite the resurgence of COVID, which impacted growth in ASEAN, Latin America, and Kimberly-Clark Professional. Our market positions remain strong and are improving, reflecting strong innovation and excellent commercial execution in nearly all key markets.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Our share positions in North America remain solid with good sequential gains in personal care. Our share performance in D&E markets remains robust, where we continue to strengthen our diaper leadership positions in key markets, including China and Brazil. We also continue to focus on cost, with our teams delivering solid savings of $150 million in the quarter. In addition, we reduced between-the-line spending. Clearly, our margins and earnings were disappointing as higher inflation and supply chain disruptions increased our costs well beyond the expectation we established just last quarter. I'd like to highlight the effect of three areas of volatility that are most impacting our business. First, as we noted in July and on the basis of external forecasts, we had expected commodity prices to ease in the 2nd half of 2021.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Instead, prices for resin and pulp increased further in the third quarter and are now expected to stabilize at a meaningfully higher level than our prior estimate. 2nd, a tight U.S. labor market and disruption in domestic and international transportation markets are having an elevated impact on our supply chain as we work to get our products to the shelf and meet consumer demand. Third, energy costs are up dramatically in Europe, where natural gas prices have risen as high as six times year-ago levels. Energy prices in North America are also up sharply, although not to the same extent. As a result, our margins are down, with declines only partially mitigated by the actions we've taken to date. We're not pleased with our results, and we're taking further action to mitigate the impact of higher input and labor costs.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

These steps include further pricing actions, additional initiatives to ensure we achieve our cost savings goals, and tightening discretionary spending. At the same time, we remain committed to investing in our brands and commercial capabilities. While we expect to see some benefit from these actions in 2021, we have further reduced our outlook for the year. This reflects our third quarter performance and our expectations for the fourth quarter. While we're not ready to call our outlook for 2022, I will offer perspective on key variables that will affect our plan next year. First, we continue to build top-line momentum. In addition, our pricing actions, brand investment, and commercial program should provide further benefit in 2022. 2nd, some discrete headwinds we face this year will be behind us. This includes the U.S. winter storm and presumably consumer tissue destocking.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Third, some headwinds we face this year may become more persistent. We're now expecting further inflation on several key commodities. We're also expecting continued tightness in the labor and transportation markets, which will continue to impact our global supply chain all the way to our customers. In addition, the going-forward impact of COVID on both demand and supply remains very unpredictable. We will continue to move decisively and navigate changing market conditions. We'll also continue to invest in our brands and capabilities to maintain brand momentum. Our strategy is working, and we remain confident in our future and are confident in our ability to create long-term shareholder value. Now we'd like to address your questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will open the floor for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by the one key, that is star one, on your touch-tone phone now. Questions will be taken in the order in which they are received. If at any time you would like to remove yourself from the questioning queue, please press star two. Again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question comes from Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Dara.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

Hey, guys. How are you?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Oh, good.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

So-

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Been better.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

Yes. Well, tough environment. You mentioned further pricing actions, Mike. Can you just be a little more specific there, maybe review what you've done globally in terms of percent of portfolio, magnitude of increases, generally, where you've taken increases, and maybe just some insight in terms of the forward pricing. Are you looking at it more on a product category basis, geographic basis? Just as you think about the forward pricing, any more insight would be helpful.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Okay. If you'll indulge me, Dara, maybe I'll start a little bit philosophically. I would say, based on our strategy, improving margins is a core aspect of Sustainability 2022 for us. We've taken further actions to offset inflation. I believe, margin improvement is a fundamental pillar of what we need to do for the company. We expect to fully offset inflation, with both pricing and cost reduction, so a combination, we expect to fully offset that over time. We announced some further actions in Q3. Year-to-date, our actions are fairly broad reaching, every region, every business, generally. Actually, not every single business, but generally across most markets. In Q3, we've announced broader actions in North America, professional and consumer, Latin America, and other markets selectively. I would say pretty far reaching.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

I will tell you, Dara, our earlier pricing actions are generally on track. As you saw in the release, we had 3 points of price factor in organic in the quarter. We have seen some other brands move, particularly in North America. Haven't seen significant movement in private label yet, although I'll note that that typically occurs a little bit later. We've had a little share of softness, but in general, I think our volumes are holding up well.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

Okay. On the advertising side, certainly you've cut back a bit in this higher commodity environment. Is there a point when you get concerned that maybe you've cut back a bit too much? Obviously, you mentioned the market share results remain healthy. How do you think about flexing that line item and where share of voice is today in the categories you're competing in?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. You could probably see it in the release. We feel very good about our organic performance. I think our brands are very fundamentally healthy, and I think our investment in both innovation and commercial programming, especially advertising, are working very hard for us. We're going to obviously work hard to make sure our margins improve, but we want to maintain that investment in the brands, especially where it's working. That said, we have made some adjustments in some categories where it felt like it was perhaps a little less effective in the current environment. To that extent, we've done that. We have trimmed our between-the-line spend a little bit, but I would tell you that's been more on the G&A front than on the A&CP front in the quarter. I don't know, Maria, if there's something you want to add.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

I think I describe it as we're being very pragmatic here. We had some challenges on the supply chain side that are affecting us, and so we have challenges getting the product to our customers. Where we've got higher demand than we can fulfill at the moment because of the supply chain challenges, we're really looking at what are the near-term returns on our investments, and we've been prioritizing those as we look at the current situation. We've trimmed the advertising investment a bit, but that's on the back of significant step-ups over the last two years. When I look at the year, our expectation is that, on a dollar basis, we'll be up nicely from where we were in 2019.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

Okay. Then last question, just as we look out, obviously there's a lot of volatility from a commodity cost standpoint, and things have been moving in the wrong direction, and you're taking a lot of pricing to help offset that. Is there a certain point you can look out to where you think the year-over-year pricing, at least based on the plans that are in place today, as well as spot commodities where we are today, where you're able to fully offset it on a year-over-year basis? Obviously, there's a big gap leaving this year. I'm wondering on more go-forward basis, is it more in the middle of next year when you think you have enough pricing to offset year-over-year commodity increases? Could it be earlier than that?

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

How do you think through that conceptually, understanding there'll be some gap leaving this year, but when on a year-over-year basis do we get to an ability maybe to offset some of these cost pressures from your vantage point?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah, Dara. That's why we've been saying we'll get our margins back in line and improving over time, with both pricing and cost reduction. I think the middle of next year is probably a good perspective for us because obviously, what happened this year was we saw the change in the commodity line, obviously coming out of the first quarter. We announced pricing that was effective, or we announced it at the end of the first quarter, and it was effective in our second quarter of this year. Certainly, commodities have moved significantly since then. We've made additional actions, and that's going to take us time to implement fully. That's one component.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

The other component I will tell you that looking forward is, and I think we indicated this about 2022, is the global supply chain's under pressure, and we do expect costs to remain elevated for a period. Not all costs. Certainly, I think there's some fundamentals in the eucalyptus market that would say, "Hey, there's more capacity coming along, so that should come back a little bit." The polymer-based products seem like they're going to remain elevated for a little while. We mentioned U.S. labor costs and pressures on transportation globally. I think that's going to remain elevated for a while because I don't see a fundamental catalyst to change that in the near term. That's why we're making some of our moves.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

I would add, it will depend on where commodities go and any pricing actions that we take from here. I might be a little bit more cautious than the middle of next year in terms of margin recovery. We'll have to see how the dynamics play out. I think at this point, it's too early to call. What I would say is we understand the situation, we understand what the drivers are, and we'll manage through it with an eye toward recovering our margins over time.

Dara Mohsenian
Dara Mohsenian
Managing Director of Equity Research at Morgan Stanley

That's helpful. Thanks. I'll get back in queue.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Lauren.

Lauren Lieberman
Lauren Lieberman
Managing Director at Barclays

Thanks very much. Good morning. I wanted to just focus in a little bit on the supply chain disruption. Mentioned briefly in the prepared remarks, you guys just spoke to it a bit. It's also impacting your sales outlook for this year. Was hoping you could give us a little bit more color on what categories are we talking about? Is it you're not able to procure inputs, or is it about not being able to get from your factory to the store effectively? Which element of supply chain is it that's under pressure, and what category should we be looking for that pressure in, particularly next quarter?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe I'll start, and Maria's probably got much more detail. I would just, not to be flip, Lauren, but it is affecting almost kind of all areas of our operation. Certainly, I think you can clearly see on fiber and resin-based, the commodity challenges, I think that's kind of well-established and visible for you all. I think what maybe is a little less clear is kind of how it's rolling through and what I mentioned, labor markets and the transportation markets, it ripples through. My take would be, it looks like COVID appears to have increased the demands for goods over the past year or so, and shifting has spended a little bit from services to goods. With that, the other effect of COVID is, and you've read all the articles about the great resignation.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Whether that's the case or whether it's more that there are a lot more options for hourly work, it has really tightened the hourly labor supply. Because of that pressure on both sides, increased demands means much more demand for containers or trucking. Less labor means fewer drivers to drive the trucks. Because of that, as you noted, even in our third quarter, while our service levels are improving significantly, we were not able to get all our orders out the door on the timeline that we wanted. Because of that rolls through in multiple ways. One is we pay higher rates for employees, higher wages. We're paying higher rates for transportation. It's rolling through, in some cases, our employee tenure has shortened dramatically, and so it's changing how we staff because we have to staff more people to get the product out the door.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

We've got production outages, missed deliveries, that ripples through with fines and everything else with customers. There's just the many ways that I think both this pressure on the labor side and the transportation markets kind of ripples through the cost. That's kind of why you're seeing a little softness in our FORCE delivery. Most of that was because of the elevated cost. I don't know, Maria, do you have more to add?

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

No, I think that was pretty thorough. It's basically across the board, getting supply into our mills, getting supply out of our mills, getting the products moved around the distribution network. Lots of challenges on the warehouse side. We need to hire. In a normal time, if we have 30 people, given the inefficiencies with the labor and turnover, we might need to have 40 people just to get the same amount of product out the door, as an example. It's across the board, primarily in North America. Although, in the U.K., there's also distribution challenges. That's another market where it impacted our sales in the quarter, and that also has to do with labor related to Brexit. I've never seen a supply chain environment like this, and it's affecting us across the P&L.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Lauren, the one thing I'll add is, I don't know that there's, I think we said in the notes, not a short-term solution here because it does feel like it's based on fundamentals, which is there's more demand for goods, and I think we're seeing that in many categories beyond consumer. Then it does feel like there's more options for hourly employment. Because of that's putting pressure on the labor markets, and hiring for the roles that we need, right?

Lauren Lieberman
Lauren Lieberman
Managing Director at Barclays

Yeah. Okay. When you also mentioned about, I think it was in the prepared remarks, that investing in the supply chain to meet demand, this is what we're talking about. It's just absorbing these higher costs. It's not structural CapEx type investment. It's investment, meaning in incremental workers and so on.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yes.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Right. It's the P&L investment. I think I've mentioned this, before in terms of overall investment and CapEx and where are those dollars going to, but part of the investment is in digital supply chain. That's been a driver of our CapEx and will continue to be for several years. Even when we look at things like the S/4HANA upgrade, we've wrapped a lot of supply chain digital capabilities into that program. That's not new news.

Lauren Lieberman
Lauren Lieberman
Managing Director at Barclays

Okay, great. I'll leave it there because that was a lot that you gave me. Thanks very much.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Okay. Thanks, Lauren.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Chris.

Chris Carey
Chris Carey
Equity Analyst and Head of Consumer Staples Research at Wells Fargo Securities

Hey, good morning. Thanks so much. A couple category questions, actually. On the personal care side, can you just maybe expand a bit on the strength that we're seeing in the business? There's been a lot of commentary around challenged birthrates, and yet the business continues to see strong growth. I think North America might've seen mid-teens volume this quarter. Are our forecasts just wrong for the birthrates this year? Are certain income classes doing better? Did stimulus offset the impact of the job losses? Just any perspective you might be able to provide around why that business seems to be doing better. I'll just add on the 2nd kind of category question here. I appreciate that the consumer tissue business is seeing difficult comps and continued destocking, but there has been some market losses. I wonder if you could just expand upon that as well.

Chris Carey
Chris Carey
Equity Analyst and Head of Consumer Staples Research at Wells Fargo Securities

There's one on the personal care side and then on the tissue side as well, please.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Overall, Chris, our brand fundamentals are strong and really improving. I think it's really based on differentiated innovation and excellent local commercial program, really the driver. I think our brands are about as healthy as I've seen for as long as I've been here. Obviously, not all of them are working the way that we would like them to work, but, in general, our brands are performing quite well. The birthrate issue you mentioned in diapers is real. Although there's a couple dimensions to that, which is one, certainly a big decline in birthrate in China. Five years ago, there were about 17 million or 18 million births, and this year, looks like there'll be about 10-ish. Somewhere in that range. That said, it's still going to be a big market. It's still the largest diaper market in the world for a long time.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

That's one that's on the downside. The U.S., on the contrast, because there was a little bit of decline in births last year that accelerated because of COVID, actually slightly up this year. Actually, we're seeing through the first couple quarters, and the projection is moving toward modest growth in the 2nd half. That's a bit of positive news. The overall, I think the reason why you're seeing strong performance on personal care is more what I talked about previously, which is strong innovation pipeline and strong local programming on the commercial side. What the teams will say, it's not any one thing, it's the combination of a plan, meaning great innovation backed with great marketing, with a great sales plan, and local execution all working together. I think the numbers you may have seen, but personal care is accelerating globally.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

It was up nine in the quarter with a strong recovery in North America that was up 11. We're continuing to see that strong performance across D&E in most markets. Making good progress in Kimberly-Clark Professional as well. That was up 12, with North America being up 16, and a healthy balance of both price and volume. Consumer tissue, although still down in the quarter, it was down six and down nine in North America, I'd say that was stabilizing. Our consumption in North America was better than our organic, and that's because we were cycling a big year ago customer or consumer inventory build that happened in the third quarter. A little bit happened in the fourth quarter last year as well. We're cycling that. I would say the good news on consumer tissue, globally, it feels like it's stabilizing.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

We have given up a little share in North America. We probably picked up a little share last year on bath tissue because we had a little more availability. Our teams were scrambling to put out as much output as we could, as we felt like there was a lot of consumer need for our products last year. We did that, and we probably gave back a little share. Again, I think overall, we feel like consumer tissue, certainly stabilizing versus what we saw in the first and second quarters.

Chris Carey
Chris Carey
Equity Analyst and Head of Consumer Staples Research at Wells Fargo Securities

Thanks for that. If I could just have one follow-up. Just on the pricing in consumer tissue, I was surprised to see it come in relatively low given the magnitude of the inflation that is historic, as you mentioned a number of times today. Is that just a function of timing? Was there a promotional event in the quarter that offset some of the pricing? Do you expect that to build significantly from here? Just any perspective, or is that a function of some of the market share issues you're seeing and maybe you're not pricing as much? Just any perspective you might be able to provide around the pricing in the consumer tissue business, and maybe how you see that shaping up in the very near term. Thanks for that.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Consumer tissue, particularly in North America, will build as the year goes and into next year. There was not that much in this year, and then we did have a little additional trade investment versus a year ago, and so that offsets some of it. We expect that to continue to build as the year goes.

Chris Carey
Chris Carey
Equity Analyst and Head of Consumer Staples Research at Wells Fargo Securities

Okay, thanks so much.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Great. Thank you, Chris.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin Grundy with Jefferies.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Kevin.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Great. Hey, good morning, Mike. Morning, Maria.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Mike, I wanted to come back just on market share. You didn't seem overly concerned about the U.S. As we look at the Nielsen data, it's down across the board for the most part, in the most recent four weeks and 12 weeks. To your point, Mike, it has been more pronounced on tissue and towel, but it's not entirely tissue and towel.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

I just wanted to kind of get your opinion, your view on where you stand in the U.S., your relative satisfaction, how you believe your supply chain may or may not be more impacted or impacted to a greater degree by some of the supply chain issues out there, and how you're thinking about, just broadly, to a question earlier, just pulling back on spending in light of some of the market share trends, which I suspect are probably not where you'd hope they'd be. I can stop there, and then I have a follow-up.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Thank you for keeping us honest on the shares. What I would say, we're improving from a tight supply situation. That's probably the big thing. We're recovering really well. I think we have for the year, up or even in four of eight categories in North America. That's a little less than kind of what I would like. Seven of eight sequentially, we're making progress. If you remember, Kevin, we had really tight supply situation toward the end of the first quarter, and that flowed through the whole second quarter. We were down mid-single digit share points, I think, in diapers at that point. The team has really done a nice job recovering.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

I think in diapers, we were up 340 basis points sequentially in the quarter, and just about even, maybe a little bit less than even, on share overall in the quarter. We feel good about the recovery. I think we're making good progress on adult care. Tissue, as I mentioned, on the bath tissue side, we're a little soft because we had maybe a little elevated share that I was hoping to hold on to, but we haven't held on to it. That was more due to availability. Kleenex is up pretty good, pretty substantially, and we feel good about that, although the category is down. On towels, yeah, we're down about a little over 1 point. The issue there is, given supply conditions, we have shifted some of our supply of production from towels to bath, and that's caused part of that.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Overall, I would say that the brands are moving in the right direction, not all, but we feel like we have the right plans in place and we're going to continue to make progress.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Got it. Thanks, Mike. A quick follow-up for both of you, just on trade promotion. Mike, I think you made a comment that the between the line spending was down, I believe that you said, or maybe down sequentially. Just clarify on that. It's not just Kimberly-Clark, but broadly for CPG, promotion levels are moving higher and understandably moving higher off of lower bases in the prior year. Sort of triangulating that with the cost environment, what is sort of the logic between the CPG companies and retailers at this point to move trade promotion higher? Is there a right level? Is the normalization, we want to get back to pre-pandemic levels? Sort of if so, why? What is the sense behind that, particularly in the current environment? I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Okay. Kevin, maybe I'll comment on the trade, and Maria, maybe you can comment on the between the lines. One, yeah, in North America in particular, I think the promotion levels have moved back to quote unquote "typical levels." As measured by percent promo sold on or percent sold on promotion was down 50% to 75% last year, as we all curtail promotions because of demand. At this point, I'd say it's returned to historical levels, both in personal care, which happened about the 3rd quarter of last year, and then in consumer tissue, this quarter or the 3rd quarter of this year. Philosophically, I do think retailers do believe brand switching occurs with brands, promotions continue to be important in our categories. There is potentially some share shifting.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Frankly, my emphasis would be on what I call the high road approach to growing brands, which is growing brands through great innovation and marketing, using trade and promotion as a fundamental element of that to support what we're doing from a marketing perspective. I don't really value share from promotion alone. In general, we're going to be focusing on being efficient with how we spend our promotions and being disciplined about it, especially, Kevin, as you might imagine, in this environment where certainly pricing and price realization is important given what's happening with the cost front.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Got it. Thanks, Mike.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

On the rest of it, just generally on between the lines for the quarter at 15.6%, that's low. The main driver of that is around incentive comp. As you can imagine, with the updated forecast, the incentive payments will be meaningfully lower. In the third quarter, we not only stepped those down, but we also had basically an accrual adjustment true up from the 1st half. There was a sizable benefit on incentive comp reflected in the third quarter. I will call out that we expect in the fourth quarter that between the lines will step back up. That's two things. We won't have the incentive comp true-up accrual, and seasonally, our SG&A runs higher in the fourth quarter than in the rest of the year.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Got it. Thank you both. Seemingly, Mike, it's the retailers that are driving more of this. Just not to put words in your mouth, but it seems like there's an appetite there among the retailers to normalize the categories. Is that fair?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

I wouldn't put it all at retailers. I think the manufacturers also rely on it as well. Certainly my kind of attitude or philosophy for it is, I think I've said it before, I don't like to rent share through promotion. If we can use promotion to drive the trial that we want on our innovation, I'm supportive of that. That's a little bit. I may have a slightly different take than others.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Sure.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

I wouldn't lay it all at the feet of our customers. They're great partners. Our categories matter to them, and obviously, they matter a lot to us. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Kevin Grundy
Kevin Grundy
Managing Director of Equity Research at Jefferies

Understood. Thank you for all the color. I appreciate it. Good luck.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Peter.

Peter Grom
Peter Grom
Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Hey, good morning. Maria and Mike, I just kind of want to go back to the 2022 margin recovery, and maybe just a housekeeping one first. Following up on Dara's question, the halfway through the year or maybe a little bit longer is when you expect margin expansion. Is that year-over-year, or when you expect margins to return to more normal historical levels? Is that gross margin or operating margin? My thought would be expansion in gross margin, but just wanted to confirm. Then this is a bit more conceptual, but I just want to understand how you think about adding back advertising next year, particularly as hopefully supply constraints get better and gross margin improves.

Peter Grom
Peter Grom
Equity Research Analyst at UBS

How do you balance a recovery of operating margins back to the high teens versus reinvesting back in the business to set yourself up for growth in years to come, particularly given the lower spend you'll be cycling this year? Thanks.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Sure. Peter, I'll start and then Mike can chime in. Next year we'll have some interesting dynamics, and it's probably going to be a bit of a tale of two halves when you look at the 1st half of this year and the 2nd half of this year. That's going to drive some year-over-year comps that will have some different dynamics. As I said, we'll have to see really how commodities play out and how pricing plays out. I would characterize it as we'll look to recover margins over time. We are very focused on margin recovery, and exactly when that's going to happen, I'm not prepared to say. We'll have a lot more to say on that in January when we have three months more of visibility and three months more of additional actions that we'll take as a management team.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

We're working through our 2022 planning cycle now, and so we're pulling that together. Given the volatility and the lack of visibility that we've had, it's too early to call the year, but we'll give you our best view in January. Mike, I think you can probably comment on advertising and how you see that unfolding.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Peter, we've actually increased our advertising investments significantly over the last few years. We feel good about that. Clearly, I think that's shown up in the numbers in terms of the organic growth and the overall health of the brands as I've talked about earlier on this call. We feel good about that. I would say at this point, we will look to continue to build that. We're probably operating kind of in the 5± range, 5% range of sales. It's still a little lower than our primary competitors. I would like that to be higher over time, although we probably never will match some of our competitors at the same level they will. I still think we can productively invest more and make that a win-win for the brand while growing our margins at the same time.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

The unique thing about advertising in this environment, or kind of as digital's unfolded, is that the returns are much better than they historically have been. We continue to improve our efficiencies. We're getting better at that. For us, we're going to continue to look for ways to grow the business. That's going to include through advertising investment. At the same time, Maria and I will also work to deliver a balanced plan that will deliver, as we just mentioned, margin improvement over time while delivering improved organic growth.

Peter Grom
Peter Grom
Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Great. Thank you.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

I'd add that even outside of advertising and when we look at between the lines of spending, I commented earlier, but embedded in there, I should note, beyond incentive compensation dynamics, we are reducing other discretionary spending, including in the kind of core SG&A. At the same time, we're continuing to invest primarily around IT, digital types of investments, and our commercial capability development. On the P&L, you don't see the full net effect of the actions that we're taking there because we are continuing to invest. The commodity inflation ran up on us quickly. It was far in excess of what we expected in the third quarter. We are continuing to make investments in the company for the long term, and we're very committed to doing that and focused on the long-term health of the company and the brands.

Peter Grom
Peter Grom
Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Great. Thank you so much, and best of luck.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Sure.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank.

Steve Powers
Steve Powers
Associate Director of U.S. Equity Research at Deutsche Bank

Yeah. Hey, guys.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Hey, Steve.

Steve Powers
Steve Powers
Associate Director of U.S. Equity Research at Deutsche Bank

Hey, Mike. Could you talk a little bit about FORCE savings? It's coming a little bit the lower end of your plan. Against the rising cost backdrop, I guess I've been sort of taught to think of those two numbers as positively correlated. As cost inflation goes up, your procurement savings tend to also increase. Obviously, we're not seeing that right this moment. What should I glean from that in the near term, and is it temporary? Does FORCE savings re-accelerate into 2022 because it's a timing issue, or is it some kind of indication that you're starting to run out of runway on FORCE?

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Sure. We're definitely not running out of runway on FORCE, and we continue to see opportunities in the supply chain and some of the digital supply chain investments that I referenced earlier in the call will help us unlock those opportunities. The FORCE cost savings for this year is really affected by the supply chain challenges that we've been facing, which are a headwind for our cost savings, and it's related to production and distribution inefficiencies caused by demand volatility and also the logistics issues that we've been talking about. The way that the FORCE cost savings program works is of the negotiated material prices piece of it, which I'll come back and talk about in a minute, and then we have core productivity in our supply chain operations as well as product revisions to achieve design-to-value savings.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

In the quarter, we had very good savings associated with the negotiated material prices. We also had benefits from productivity improvements and product changes, but not as much as we were hoping. You have to net positive in terms of total delivered cost for it to count as FORCE cost savings. As you have headwinds coming in, they offset the gross FORCE cost savings that we would report, and that's really what we're seeing now. The headwinds that are flowing through manufacturing are dampening the net results of FORCE, but there are strong growth savings there. The other issue that we've got on FORCE is our supply chain folks are very focused on managing through this near-term environment to get product produced and to get it to customers so it can get in the hands of consumers.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

That leaves less time for our employees to be working on productivity initiatives within the supply chain. It's really those two things that are lowering the FORCE cost savings number for this year. We have a healthy amount of room to go in terms of driving supply chain productivity as we move forward.

Steve Powers
Steve Powers
Associate Director of U.S. Equity Research at Deutsche Bank

Got it. Playing it back, as the bottlenecks on supply chain hopefully alleviate themselves, you have essentially some pent-up FORCE savings that should come to the surface.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

We do, and I should go back to the other part of your question. There's really two pieces of those FORCE cost savings. The negotiated material prices savings are much higher this year, given the contract structures versus the rapid inflation on the commodity side. Those contracts get reset on a regular basis, so it'll be reset at higher levels. When I look forward, I wouldn't expect as much benefit as we had this year. Because if you think about where we were coming into 2020 versus where commodities went, we got a sizable benefit in FORCE there this year. That's that piece of it. On the core productivity, I would expect us to have more savings on that part of it as we move forward.

Steve Powers
Steve Powers
Associate Director of U.S. Equity Research at Deutsche Bank

Got it. Okay, perfect. Then if I could pivot, we talked to incremental pricing, and Mike, you touched upon sort of the views on trade and promo in the conversation with Kevin. I guess I was looking to think about next year and whether the path to margin recovery is really list price focused or if there are sizable revenue growth management opportunities that you have around the list price. Just what the balance of that is as you start to think about just the building blocks into 2022.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

It's all of that. Great question, Steve, and great perspective. I think I would share yours, which is, I think it's a balanced deployment. Obviously, this year we went with list because it can be a little quicker and a little more efficient to implement for both us and our customers. That said, I think long term in our categories, I would say for us, it'd be a combination of list pack. Pack count and pack architecture, and sizing. Then also, promotion strategy. I think all those are fertile ground for us. I've been talking about a revenue growth management for a couple of years now. We're still early in the journey and getting better at it, but we have a lot of great tools globally that we're using to support our planning, and I think we're getting more and more disciplined about it.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

I think the balance across the levers will be important for us into next year, but I think going forward.

Steve Powers
Steve Powers
Associate Director of U.S. Equity Research at Deutsche Bank

Great. Thanks to you both. Appreciate it.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Nik.

Nik Modi
Nik Modi
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Thanks. Good morning. Mike, just a question on price elasticity is obviously things have looked pretty good. The consumer's in pretty good shape, but as stimulus kind of fades, all that cash these consumers are sitting on starts to dwindle as we get into 2022. How are you guys thinking about potential pricing and price elasticities? Just, I feel like more is going to need to happen because we all, I think, get the joke here that costs are going to continue to rise. I just wanted to get an understanding. Do you have any strategies in place to kind of minimize the amount of price shock that some of these consumers might feel as we get into 2022?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Nik, I was just talking about with Steve, again, I think we've invested in a lot of tools, and so at this point, I think our elasticity modeling is pretty good, fairly accurate. I would say given our categories, Nik, that the elasticity tends to be a little less when realized than what predicted, just because if you look at these, bath tissue, the consumption doesn't change that much. Maybe the value tier you purchase at may shift a little bit. There's that dynamic, but we are sensitive to that, and it's also why what's core in our strategy is developing a great value proposition to our consumer. We're always cognizant of that. I think one of the things that we've done in many markets around the world, is offer a great proposition on both the value side and also the premium side.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

While our strategy generally is to elevate our categories and expand our categories, I do think pricing on our categories or the premiumization of our categories is a little less than some of the others that I've worked in in the past. I still think there's room to grow. However, we want to be able to shift, and that's what we've done in a market like Latin America. One of the reasons why we've grown share this year is because we've been able to pivot between our premium tier and our value tier. For reference, two years ago, we were making a student body left to go premium, and we shifted a significant portion of our mix in Brazil from value to premium. Over the past 18 months, we've been shifting it back the other way because that's what the consumer needs.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

We're really cognizant of that. We're aware of the elasticities. Thus far I would say our volumes have held up. Although, I think what's really happening is we're seeing the intended elasticity, but we do have brand growth initiatives that are offsetting some elasticity impact.

Nik Modi
Nik Modi
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thank you. Pass it on.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

All right. Thanks, Nik.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason English with Goldman Sachs.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Morning, Jason.

Jason English
Jason English
Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Hey, morning folks. Thanks for slotting me in. Two questions. First, just a follow-up for clarification. I thought Dara asked when you expect price and cost to be effectively net neutral, not when. I don't think he asked when do you expect margins to be recovering. I think most of the answers have been around margin recovery, but can you clarify, you're not expecting price to be caught up with costs until the back half of next year or not even? Like even that's too optimistic. It's somewhere beyond the midpoint of next year when price actually catches up with cost, ceteris paribus.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

I think we'll hold on the 2022 comments until we get to January, then we'll have more to say about that once we have three months more visibility into what's happening in the commodity market, what's happening with price that's either in the market or will be in the market, and we'll give you our best view there. I don't think it's productive to speculate on that right at this point, given the volatility.

Jason English
Jason English
Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Yeah. I'm just trying to get you to tell me what you actually said, because I think I've heard like two different explanations on next year. You actually said a lot on 2022. I'm just looking for clarification on what you actually did say. I appreciate if you don't want to add more. Pivoting back to just the core business then, good momentum on personal care. You're getting the price. Your market shares are holding up. The business has turned back to a degree of profit growth. All pretty encouraging, but the tissue business looks very different, especially on the margin degradation side and the lack of price momentum. Can you elaborate on what's holding you back on price? What actions have you taken? What is in market now, and why have we not seen more momentum on price so far?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Again, I think what you're seeing in personal care, we did move very early on when we had our commodity forecast update in the first quarter, we did move on that. At the time, I think, the tissue side or the fiber side was less clear, I would say we probably moved a little slower on the tissue side. We have announced some broad pricing actions in multiple markets since then. That's why I said earlier, Jason, that I would expect our tissue price realization to continue to improve as the year progresses.

Jason English
Jason English
Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Have you raised prices in the U.S. in tissue?

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

We announced some price changes in August with our retailers.

Jason English
Jason English
Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Got it. Thank you.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Okay.

Jason English
Jason English
Managing Director of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Bye.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrea Teixeira with JPMorgan.

Andrea Teixeira
Andrea Teixeira
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I have two questions. One is a follow-up on the supply chain disruptions, looking ahead on availability of raw materials and transportation lines. Do you believe those will linger into the 1st half of 2022, setting aside the pricing commentary that you may not be ready to, just in terms of availability of raw materials and transportation? A 2nd one on the category growth between tracked and untracked channels. Do you just see bricks growing faster than e-commerce because of the tough comparisons in the quarter? Do you see the share issues that you alluded to in North America mostly due to the fact that your competitors took longer to take pricing, or is that more of a availability issue? Thank you.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

I'll start with supply chain disruptions. I don't see a near-term catalyst for them improving. I think the labor issues in the U.S. are very real, and that's where we are feeling the brunt of the challenges on the supply chain side. More globally, I mentioned the U.K. market, but also with global shipping, those issues are also quite challenging in a number of our markets. The most acute issues and meaningful cost increases versus what we had been expecting is in North America, and that the labor market in the U.S., I just don't see a near-term catalyst. I think the headwinds and the increased distribution costs will certainly be with us into 2022, and we'll have to see all of this plays out. It's not just affecting us, of course. It's affecting companies quite broadly, and we're all dealing with these challenges.

Maria Henry
Maria Henry
CFO at Kimberly-Clark

Mike, on category and share, I'll turn that one over to you.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Andrea, again, online continues to perform very well for us, and then untracked as well. I think that's probably why there's probably discrepancy in our view of our market share performance, which we see as a little stronger than maybe what you might see. Overall, we feel very good about that and the category growth, actually in both channels, and I think our brands are performing well. The issue that we've had on share, a couple different areas. In North America, it's primarily been an issue around supply. Even though we've made substantial improvement in our fulfillment throughout the course of the year, we're still not meeting all orders out there. Our share is still a little light from that dimension.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

In a couple other markets, again, I think it is, as you point out, maybe some relative price indices that have expanded a little bit in the short term. We've moved on pricing in most markets, and while we've generally seen moves from branded competition, we haven't seen that in all markets. There's still a little softness we're experiencing in Western Europe and in some markets in Latin America.

Andrea Teixeira
Andrea Teixeira
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Mike, I appreciate you both, just on the tracked channels and untracked, e-commerce, how much it grew this quarter vis-à-vis last year, and how much it represents now globally? Or if you have the U.S. number, that'll be helpful.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Yeah. Overall, globally, we're probably in the mid to high teens at this point. I don't have the growth rate offhand, but yeah, in the strong double digits is what I would say.

Andrea Teixeira
Andrea Teixeira
Executive Director at JPMorgan

On top of like, I would assume also a very strong performance last year.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Strong performance last year.

Andrea Teixeira
Andrea Teixeira
Executive Director at JPMorgan

last year you could have-- Yeah. Okay.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Right. With the great news being our fastest grower was our biggest market, so that was good last year. Again, online continues to be important and increasingly important, and we're operating very well there.

Andrea Teixeira
Andrea Teixeira
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Okay, great. Thank you.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. There are no more questions at this time.

Mike Hsu
Mike Hsu
Chairman and CEO at Kimberly-Clark

Okay. Well, thank you all for taking the time to be with us today. We're working hard to drive sustainable brand growth and taking further action to ensure that we improve our margins and earnings profile. Thank you all.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's teleconference. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Maria Henry
      Maria Henry
      CFO
    • Mike Hsu
      Mike Hsu
      Chairman and CEO
    • Taryn Miller
      Taryn Miller
      Head of Investor Relations
Analysts
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