International Flavors & Fragrances Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Yes. Thanks for the question, Matthew. As you probably know, I've been on a listening tour or a discussion tour since right after the January 11 announcement of the change of my joining IFF. And it's been really great to hear from our employees all around the world and our customers all around the world. And what I've discerned from that is that we've had multiple companies coming together with different operating models, different philosophies. And there was significant uncertainty about the organization structure and how we were going to do things. And what we've done is the executive leadership team has come together very nicely, and I'm very proud of the team, and we've been able to together clarify the structure and operational model that we have going forward and the four pillars that we're focused on to drive our performance. We've had town halls all around the world, both live and by video.

We've touched all our employees. We've spent special time with our leadership. And I think we've gotten really clear on how we're moving the company forward. And what I love about it is I feel the engagement of our people around the world. I feel their energy growing. I think there's great acceptance and enthusiasm for the empowered business unit model, for the focus on customers that the job of all of us is to support our teams to win with customers and help us profitably grow our market share and then also drive our innovation that, at the core, we're an innovation company, and we need to make sure that we have leading innovation that we're bringing to our customers, and it's innovation that customers value. And then finally, that we also have healthy productivity, productivity that helps us strengthen the company and invest more in growth and in innovation and doing that with smart productivity, things like reducing consultants, reducing layers, driving functional shared service centers, where it makes sense, using technology, information technology. So my feeling is that there's great capabilities, great people in this company. And the executive leadership team is coming together to try and do all we can to unleash that full potential of our people all around the world. Thank you.

Okay. I'll start and then hand it over to Glenn. And thanks for the question, Nicola -- or questions. So on the portfolio, first of all, the Pharma Solutions business will be with us for another year. And we see a lot of opportunity to further strengthen the performance of Pharma Solutions over the next year and then beyond that with Roquette. But then we have the other four business units that we're going to really focus on driving forward, of course, with Nourish, both the Flavors and the Functional Ingredients. We have the Scent business and we have the Health & Biosciences business. All our focus now is on supporting those businesses to perform well, to drive profitable market share growth, to drive healthy productivity, to make sure that we're bringing leading innovation and deliver the best performance we can in the second quarter, full year 2024, but do it in ways that strengthen us for '25 and beyond.

We're also going through a strategy review process for each of the businesses. And we'll take a look at what it takes to win in each of those businesses in the coming years and what we have to do investment-wise and making sure that each of the businesses has the right portfolio to win going forward. So you'll hear more about that in the coming quarters and years. But right now, our focus is all on making sure we've got the right strategy, the right capabilities in each business, the right collaboration, culture across businesses and are winning with customers by bringing leading innovation. Glenn?

Thanks, Erik. Thanks for the question, Nicola. We're actually trending more favorable in terms of our full year outlook for free cash flow and adjusted as well. As mentioned, a combination of earnings momentum -- actually, working capital is actually performing better than planned, and we expect actually some improvement and then just some timing on taxes. We're probably going to be closer to $600 million versus the $500 million. I would note that, that also includes higher Reg G costs related to pharma. So we gave you a $200 million number in Feb that did not include pharma for obvious reasons. The heavy lifting, as Erik mentioned, is the balance of this year separating systems, legal entities, etc. That's roughly about $100 million. So on an adjusted basis, $900 million on a free cash flow reported basis, directionally, $600 million. Thanks for the question.

Thanks, Josh. And let me start and then Glenn can give you more details. But as I see it, still fairly new coming into the company, clearly, CPG company volumes are still soft in the U.S. and the EU. And so we can't expect a whole lot of market tailwind growth. I do think we've seen the end of most of the destocking outside of Pharma Solutions. And Glenn alluded to the Pharma Solutions destocking, both a market destocking and our change in channel strategy. But bottom line is we can expect a lot of growth from the marketplace, although there are some emerging markets that we're going after that are seeing very attractive volume growth. But overall, our focus has to be growth through bringing leading innovation and winning business with customers. And I've heard a lot already about commercial projects that we're winning. But we're also going to increase the focus and understanding the projects that we didn't win. Why didn't we win them? What does it take for us to be even more successful with our customers and win even more projects and bring that leading innovation so that customers are growing their market share profitably and we're growing with them? Glenn?

Thanks, Erik. Again, Josh, I think, as Erik mentioned, until we see a strengthening in the consumer environment, which has yet to appear, and until we have a few more months underneath our belts, it's sort of hard for us to be sort of incredibly optimistic on the second half. As a reference point, the first half volumes of circa 4% to 5% and the second half, basically 1% to 2%. As a reminder, the first half of last year, because of the aggressive destocking, was down 9% and the second half, down 5%. So a little bit of it is the lapping as well as we sort of think about providing guidance. But I think the end market, as Erik said, we need to see greater strength there before we're sort of more confident in higher volume growth in the second half.

Thank you, Mike. So good question. So 20% for Q1, sort of the implied balance of the year is around 18.5%. That 150 basis points of change, half of that is related to volume and mix, inclusive of LMC. So LMC, you take out about $12 million per quarter and about $25 million of revenue. So it's relatively high margin. So everything normalized, that gets you from the 20% down to basically 19% in a quarter. The residual 75 basis points really is a little bit more net price-to-cost realization in Q1 versus the forecast and then just some timing of expenses. But to answer your direct question, if volumes were to maintain, then we should be somewhere in the 19%, probably 19%-plus range, for the balance of the year.

This is Eric Zhang on for Patrick. What are your expectations for price/cost for the full year? The price guide seems to be a bit -- seems to be a small net positive if you net out FX. Are there any areas where you're getting structural pricing? Or is this just less giveback than you expected?

Yes, Eric, you're right. I mean, the full year, we're expecting a small net positive, as I mentioned, little more biased towards Q1 than the balance of the year. Our pricing actions, which were largely givebacks this year, were highly focused in the Functional Ingredients space. We are tracking well against the expectations that we set for the year. We do believe that the improved performance in the business is in part related to these pricing actions on top of the other actions.

And we don't see sort of any additional kind of pricing for the balance year at this point in time. And then in general, if we look at sort of the inflationary environment for the balance of the year, it's pretty stable. I think commodities are flattish to maybe a tad up. Generally, energy is trending down, particularly in Europe. And logistics is trending slightly up, particularly ocean freight, given what's happening in the Red Sea. But generally, stability and, as we mentioned, a little more positive net price in the first quarter than the balance of the year. Thank you, Eric.

Thanks for the question, David, and glad to be back with you again after some years. Absolutely, it marks the beginning of improvement in the Functional Ingredients business and very pleased to see that after a long, tough spell. And what I would say is that we are putting more focus on the Functional Ingredients business. And I'm very pleased to see the start of what the team are working really hard to make a sustained turnaround. And in addition to better execution, which is happening, we are doing a strategy refresh and looking at all the product families and our systems approach across the Functional Ingredients business.

And we are focused very much right now on delivering a strong improvement in 2024 but also what it takes to make sure that, that improvement continues into 2025, starting with the second quarter '24, then the third quarter, but the full year of this year, but doing -- making sure that we're doing the right things to strengthen for '25 and beyond. And you'll hear more about that in the coming quarters. But it is the start of a turnaround. I'm very pleased with the progress that the team is making, the actions they're taking both with customers and on productivity. And we'll see how good we can do in '24 and then we'll focus on 25, but making progress.

Yes. And I would just add to that, David, as we've mentioned in the past, we've stated we didn't think we're going to get to sort of full recovery until '25. We're pleased by the start of this year. A lot of the service elements are 100% back to where they should be. Pricing actions have been effective, more innovation in the pipeline. The last piece of the equation is on the cost side. And we're going through a very extensive review of our manufacturing and procurement operations. That probably will be implemented late this year into early next year as the final piece to get to the margin structure in terms of where we need to be. Thanks for the question.

Adam, good question. Regionally, we have seen greater strength in the combination of Asia and LatAm, so more of the emerging markets from a volume standpoint and sort of across the board, generally a little softer in North America and in EMEA. That's probably not dissimilar than what others are seeing in the marketplace. If we look by business, Scent had a phenomenal start to the year, 9%-plus volumes, Nourish and H& B in the 4% range.

As we think about the balance of the year, we're not planning on Scent continuing at these very, very high levels, so some softening from these and then a little bit softer for H& B and Nourish and then pharma actually improving because they were down about 9% in Q1 and actually getting to flattish as we move into Q2 and the balance of the year. But generally, where we're seeing the regional balance, more emerging market, we're expecting that to continue at least through the second quarter.

Well, thanks for the question, John. And I think it's a really important one. To me, the most important thing we do as leaders is make sure that we have the right talent in the company, that we develop the right talent and we give them the opportunities through promotion to continue to advance their careers. And so I always prefer internal promotions. But sometimes external talent needs to come in to fill gaps or when we don't have the right talent inside.

But I can tell you that, like at Syngenta, I very much want to have my successor come from inside when I do retire at some point. And also, I'll just point out that the one significant executive leadership change that we've made so far was Ana Paula Mendonca being promoted to run the Scent division as President of Scent. And if you look at her background and if you talk to the people across the company and customers, there was great enthusiasm for her promotion, and I like that. So I will continue to work with the executive leadership team and with the Board to make sure that we're developing the right talent inside the company to make sure that we promote from within wherever we can.

Thanks, Laurence. It's also good to be back with you. We had some history that dates back quite a ways. The way I would say it is that in the businesses that are remaining, we've got a lot of great innovation capability and a lot of really terrific people that understand customers, have consumer insight capability. So we have the people and the capabilities, including the innovation capabilities, to be very successful. And what I would say is -- and even talking to our people but also our customers, we haven't realized our full potential.

And that's what it's about. It's the leadership team working to unleash the full potential by making things, decision-making clear, by having businesses be end-to-end, be able to drive clarity in their strategy and then clarity in their execution, but at the same time, having a collaborative culture so that we can collaborate across businesses, wherever it makes sense, to enhance our ability to bring solutions to customers or to drive healthy productivity.

And so I believe that we're doing well with that, but we've got a lot more potential to unleash. And I think if you talk to people across the company, I think you'll find a lot of enthusiasm about what IFF is doing and what more we can do going forward. Specifically on Scent, I think Scent has been a unit that has stayed focused largely on customers, that has brought a lot of innovation to customers. I've spent a lot of time with the perfumers in this company. We've got world-class perfumers. And I just am so proud to be part of this company with such great perfumers that our customers value. I've spent time with CEOs of leading CPG companies that have named our perfumers by name because they're so important to their success.

And so making sure that we're bringing not only our perfumers but the whole team around the perfumers to help co-create great new fragrances and fine fragrances or great new consumer products, whether they're shampoos or detergents, laundry detergents or dishwash detergents or floor cleaners or body wash, whatever it is, the scent, I've learned, is such a critical part of the success of the consumer product. And our great perfumers and the teams around them, bringing great scent technology and great formulations to help the customers develop leading consumer products, has really been what's driven the growth. So I expect under Ana's leadership and with the super team that she's got, I expect that continued strong performance to continue.

Good question, Salvator. We are trending at around $200 million full year in terms of productivity and, hence, some of our commentary about guiding towards the higher range of our EBITDA guide. And that's about $50 million per quarter. So it's fairly ratable in terms of kind of the achievement. I would note, as we've said in previous calls, we have made tremendous progress with our operations and procurement leadership teams in really driving a very disciplined approach that is taking cost out, everything from SKU rationalization to literally looking plant-by-plant in terms of best practices. And behind that -- and by the way, there's plenty of additional opportunities. As I mentioned, we're taking a zero-based approach to our ingredients platform, which will provide additional opportunities. And behind that, we've really been looking at opportunities within RSA that have been focused on leveraging our global shared services, really focusing on our indirect spend, so getting every dollar out we need and then continuing to advance technology as a way to basically automate eliminate work. So that piece of it is actually picking up speed as well. So we feel very good about $200 million. And I would suggest, as we look out into the future, we're going to continue to deliver pretty strong productivity numbers. Thanks for the question.

Sure. Lisa, this is Glenn. So we're in the early innings of deciding sort of our liability management strategy. As you know, we will bring in circa net proceeds of $2.4 billion from pharma. Coincidentally, we have maturities cumulatively for '25 and '26 that are $2.4 billion. But we're actually taking a more holistic look, and we're actually going to be balancing the trade-off between interest cost savings, notional debt repayment, so how we think about basically bringing in some of the cheaper debt, as well as refinancing risk. So we'll think about bringing some towers down as part of that. So there'll be more to come as we get closer to finalizing the close of the deal. But we are sort of thinking about not just the immediate maturities but how to optimize the structure going forward. So with that, Erik, I'm happy to take the next question. Do you want to take the next question?

Yes. So on the functions feeding into the business units, reporting into the business units, it's clearly being done so that the business units can drive their performance. And there will be no changes to the 2024 plan because everybody is set and clear about it and we're not making changes. But effective in 2025, those functions that we're reporting corporately that will be reporting into the business units will be incentivized on the business unit performance. As a large part of their incentives, they also, of course, continue to have a corporate element to encourage overall corporate performance and collaboration across business units. And the more senior level the people are, the more their corporate component. But clearly, what we want to drive is business unit alignment and everybody on that business team driving their business unit's performance but also collaborating to enhance their business unit's performance and the total company performance. I would also say that there will continue to be corporate functional leadership that ensure that we're doing functional best practices across the business units and that each of the functional people have great career opportunities across the company. So it will be a combination. But clearly, each business unit is going to be highly incented to drive the performance of that business with collaboration that enhances their business performance and the business performance of the other businesses.

Yes. So your second question, Mark, hard to definitively understand kind of what's going on downstream in terms of the supply chain. However, I think in general, there was a little bit of volume that went from Q4 into Q1, but directionally probably less than 0.5 point. We were reducing prices, as you know, in certain segments. So customers decided to push some orders into Q1. But I think it's fairly de minimis. In general, the feeling is that there's not any restocking in the marketplace. There's an absence of destocking. But there's no view, I think, generally, in terms of the customers are restocking at this point in time. In terms of your question on Scent volumes, Scent had a very strong first quarter. Note that it was stronger in consumer versus fine. So that makes that sort of mix-neutral versus the enterprise from the standpoint. And as mentioned, we just -- we're not anticipating that those high single-digit volume gains will continue through the balance of the year. So that is a piece that's basically reflected in our balance of the year guide being lower from a volume standpoint.

No, no, I'll start and then Glenn can add to it. First of all, in the organization structure, the idea was to have market-based organization structure. So for example, Health & Biosciences would have been split up into four different units. As we've come together as an executive leadership team and talked about it, the belief is that you gain the most by having -- making sure that your innovation, that your R& D engine is -- stays within the business and the manufacturing and the commercial so that you have that end-to-end and you're going to customers with expertise that they can connect all the way back to R& D and what we call IC& D, the innovation, creation and design capabilities that we bring, that really needs to stay within a business and be there end-to-end. Now we have different businesses that hit the same markets.

So Home & Personal Care, both our biosciences business and our Scent business have a lot in common with customers. So we'll continue to have a global key account leader for large accounts that will represent the company, but then we'll have experts from the business units coming into that account and working with that account, which is what the accounts want. They want both that overall IFF relationship, which by the way, will include the presidents of the businesses, will include me and others, but that coordinated. But they want to see the experts that really know the innovation details that can bring that innovation to them. And that's what these end-to-end business units will enable us to bring.

Yes. So if I can add, the original premise, which actually predates me, Lauren, was that combining Flavors and Ingredients would represent a significant "revenue synergy opportunity" through cross-sell. And the axis was put on synergies as opposed to how do you optimize the individual businesses. That is being shifted the other way, where the reality is these businesses will run much, much better with a single focus either on Flavors or Ingredients. As Erik said, there are other mechanisms to help cross-sell, particularly with the global key accounts, as a way to develop long-term plans, etc. But we've seen it just firsthand in terms of the more that we get our Ingredients team sort of focused on only Ingredients, it does deliver results. So I think that's the big shift from three-plus years ago, when the view was put together. And to your first question, very early innings, by the way, although cautiously optimistic. Our trends in terms of our Flavors business were four-plus percent volumes and the Ingredients business were 3.5%. From what we can measure in terms of our competitive set on both sides of the house, we feel that we're at parity or gaining share based on the quarterly results. I would caution, particularly on the Ingredients business, it is early. There's a lot of remediation in that business. But it's encouraging that we're starting off relative to our peers in a good place.

And what I would just add to that is, I think Flavors, it was really a good pipeline that the commercial team was able to land. And in Ingredients, it was a combination of a strengthening pipeline but also pricing actions that led to regain some share that was lost due to overpricing increases. And now we've recovered some of that with some price givebacks.

So in the last -- since I've joined, I think I've met with more than 20 customers, maybe 30 customers. And very consistently, what we're hearing back is that they're pivoting from being able to grow with price increases to now needing innovation and innovation being more important than ever. And that's a good part of why it's so important for us to have end-to-end business units that can bring that innovation quickly and aggressively because that's what our customers want so that they can continue to profitably grow their business. They have to have more innovation. That's what they're looking for, that's what they need and that's what we're going to deliver. So that's how they're going to grow and that's how we're going to grow.

And Jeff, that second part of your question, was it Q4 to Q1? What was your reference point?

Yes, yes, yes. Well, there are a number of timing elements in the fourth quarter and sort of the mix of the business in the fourth quarter vis-a-vis Q1. Generally, the productivity and net price dynamics are very similar, so I'd say the fundamentals were. But you really have some mix dynamics and then some one-time items related to that as we think about Q4 to Q1. Yes, you referenced, I think, the decline. Decline sequentially is about $100 million from Q1 to Q2. About 1/4 of that basically is associated with the absence of LMC in the mix. The other part is just sort of the outlook in the business, a little bit of seasonality in terms of the business as well. Versus prior year, to remind you, this time last year, we had savory solutions, we had FSI. We also had LMC in the mix. So there's a pretty substantial sort of reduction in revenue on a year-over-year comparison. Volumetrically, your question about what we're seeing in the second quarter, we're obviously well into the middle of the quarter at this point. We're anticipating a 5% to 6% all-in volume growth versus the 4% for Q1. April was an extremely good month. But last year, it was an extremely lousy month. So there's a bit of an overlap from that standpoint. But May and at least the June book at this point is trending towards that basically sort of, call it, 5%-plus in terms of the performance for the quarter. Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you all for joining today. Let me just close with two comments. First of all, Glenn did announce his pending retirement. But I just want to make sure, he's not leaving yet. There's lots more work to do. And we're enjoying him as part of the ELT, executive leadership team, to get us unleashing our full potential. Second point is it's really great being part of Team IFF. We've got terrific people, great innovation capabilities. And we're going to do all we can to unleash our full potential and try to delight our customers, our employees and our shareholders. Thank you very much.