Yahoo Finance Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. (NASDAQ:KDP) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 22, 2024
Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.55, expectations were $0.54. Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Keurig Dr Pepper's Earnings Call for the Fourth Quarter of 2023. [Operator Instructions] This conference call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce the company's Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Initiatives, Jane Gelfand. Ms. Gelfand, you may begin.
Jane Gelfand: Thank you, and hello, everyone. We appreciate your attention, recognizing that many of you are also attending an industry conference. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release detailing our fourth quarter and full year results, which we will discuss during this conference call. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that our remarks will include forward-looking statements which reflect KDP's judgments, assumptions and analysis only as of today. Our actual results may differ materially from current expectations based on a number of factors affecting KDP's business. Except as required by law, we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements discussed today. For more information, please refer to our earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our most recent Form 10-K, which will be filed with the SEC later this morning.
We will also discuss non-GAAP measures of our performance. Definitions and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP metrics are included in our earnings release. We will also speak about the concept of underlying performance, which removes the impact of nonoperational items in the current and prior years. These items include gains on asset sale leaseback transactions, reimbursement of litigation expenses related to the successful resolution of our body armor lawsuit, a business interruption insurance recovery and the change in accounting policy for stock compensation. Here with us today to discuss our results are KDP Chairman and CEO, Bob Gamgort; Chief Operating Officer; Tim Cofer; and Chief Financial Officer and President, International, Sudanshu Priyadarshi.
I'll now turn it over to Bob.
Robert Gamgort: Thanks, Jane, and good morning, everyone. 2023 was a year of significant progress for KDP as we grew share across the majority of our business, entered multiple high-growth white spaces, such as ready-to-drink coffee and sport hydration through highly capital-efficient partnerships, began to rebuild margins while simultaneously driving high-quality reinvestment, returned more than $1.8 billion to shareholders, including a 7.5% dividend increase in the opportunistic repurchase of 22 million shares and delivered our financial outlook, while significantly improving the composition of our earnings and strengthening our balance sheet. . Full year constant currency net sales grew nearly 5% and EPS advanced 6%. On an underlying basis, our EPS growth was even stronger and in the double digits as we largely eliminated the contribution from nonoperational gains that benefited the prior year.
Pricing actions and a near doubling of year-over-year productivity savings, more than offset continued inflationary pressure, supporting earnings growth even as we funded a double-digit increase in marketing. Our 2023 performance demonstrated the resilience inherent in our broad portfolio with continued momentum in U.S. refreshment beverages and international offsetting short-term pressures in U.S. coffee. We also initiated a thoughtful succession process that balances continuity and new perspectives across the company's most senior leaders. Tim and our refreshed executive team have merged seamlessly are building momentum and add to my confidence in KDP's future success. Our hard work in 2023 sharpened our strategic road map and bolstered our capabilities and financial profile providing a platform for growth and value creation in 2024 and over the long term.
Moving now to our fourth quarter results. A primary focus for us last year have been rebuilding our margin structure. We made impressive gains in Q4, driving the strongest quarterly gross margin expansion in our history and the fastest rate of operating margin improvement in multiple years. This improvement was broad-based across each of our segments and enabled us to deliver EPS above the outlook we shared last quarter despite the impact of some transitory top line headwinds. Q4 constant currency net sales grew 1.1%, with net price realization more than offsetting a volume/mix decline. This result is not representative of our ongoing momentum and was, in part, weighed down by short-term factors in our U.S. coffee business that we do not expect to persist.
We have good visibility to mid-single-digit consolidated net sales growth in 2024, which Sudhanshu will address in a few minutes. Q4 gross margin expanded 450 basis points, translating to gross profit dollar growth of 10% and helping to fund increased investments. Operating income increased at a high single-digit rate and EPS grew in the double digits. Notably, normalizing for nonoperational items in 2022, our Q4 underlying EPS growth rate was in the high teens. We continue to enjoy strong momentum in U.S. refreshment beverages. Net sales grew at a high single-digit rate in Q4, led by still very healthy net price realization and manageable elasticities with volume mix declining only modestly in the period, redouble focus on productivity and cost discipline along with strong C4 energy partnership execution, translated this topline to double-digit operating income growth.
Q4 segment margins expanded meaningfully even as marketing continued to grow. As we observed back in October, though consumers remain largely resilient, value is a key shopping consideration. Many consumers are making trade-off decisions to manage stretch household budgets. As a result, value-oriented channels, such as club stores continue to outperform and consumers are inclined to shop more during deal periods such as holiday weeks. Our U.S. refreshment beverages business model is well suited to a dynamic macro environment. The breadth of the beverage occasions we serve and the depth of our distribution allow us to spot changing consumer trends with speed. We then flex our plans to deliver on the key tenets of our growth strategy, driving category growth, market share gains and white space expansion regardless of the operating environment.
Fourth quarter was no exception with dollar sales growth and share gains across 85% of our U.S. refreshment beverages business. CSDs grew nicely, led by Dr. Pepper, which was the largest market share gainer among the top 10 category brands for both the quarter and the year. During Q4, we once again activated our Fansville marketing campaign, the fuel awareness and drive demand. And despite Dr Pepper's existing scale, we grew incremental display and ACV for key varieties and pack sizes. Dr. Pepper, strawberries and cream also remained highly resonant, finishing 2023 as the #1 innovation launch in the CSD category. In other parts of our portfolio, we leverage revenue growth management to ensure we are offering consumers continued compelling value across all channels and formats.
For instance, in Q4, we deployed more multipacks and tailored promotional and merchandising strategies by channel for core hydration and Avion. As a result, our premium water portfolio grew retail dollars and notched market share gains, overcoming some consumer trade down to mainstream water. Our pursuit of white space opportunities continued in Q4, wrapping up a very active year. We exited the first year of our sales and distribution partnership for C4 Energy with momentum. C4 commands less than a 3% share in energy today with meaningful upside ahead, and we have strong commercial plans to add significant further scale in 2024. We also just started shipping electrically through the KDP system, which will build our exposure to the fast-growing sports hydration category and multicultural consumers.
A full innovation slate adds to our 2024 excitement. These include the launch of Dr. Pepper Creamy Coconut, just in time for the summer season. Canada Dry Fruit/CSD, Apple Mini bottles, the restage of Buy Wonder Water, 4 hydration partnering with Teen USA Symnastics and the national U.S. rollout of Penafiel, our powerhouse mineral water brand from Mexico. We intend to leverage continued U.S. refreshment beverages top line growth to drive a balance of reinvestment and bottom line delivery in 2024. Over the past year, our commercial and supply chain teams have grown increasingly integrated, yielding significant efficiencies. As a result, our productivity savings run rate step changed in 2023, and we began 2024 with healthy carryover savings and a robust pipeline of additional projects to support P&L flow-through.
In U.S. coffee, we continue to control the controllables in the context of a still sluggish at-home coffee category. Our Q4 pod shipment trends improved relative to Q3, and we delivered another quarter of strong segment margin recovery and underlying operating income growth. We also ended this year having added approximately 2 million new households to the Keurig ecosystem in line with our target. That said, net sales declined 10% year-over-year as some short-term dynamics weighed on Q4 segment performance. As Sudhanshu will describe in detail, a combination of transient factors accounted for roughly half of the top line decline, and we expect these to dissipate in 2024. Bigger picture, volume consumption in the at-home coffee category declined about 3% in 2023 in IRi tracked channels gradually recovering from a mid-single-digit decline in 2022.
Q4 category trends were largely consistent with the full year. In both the quarter and the year, single-serve coffee continued to grow as a percent of total at-home coffee servings. And Keuring compatible brewers also gained meaningful share. 2023, 4 out of 10 brewers sold were Keuring compatible. And in Q4, that ratio approached 50%. These are clear indications of our ecosystem's ongoing appeal to coffee drinking households. While at-home coffee category consumption is taking longer than we anticipated to return to growth to the back half of '23 was clearly stronger than the first, and we expect the gradual recovery to continue. Our 2024 U.S. coffee strategy incorporates a balance between long-term growth initiatives and short-term actions that address current macro realities.
We will continue with high-quality brand and ecosystem building activities to drive incremental household penetration, increased pod usage among existing and new households and accelerate growth in ready-to-drink coffee. At the same time, we will emphasize affordability through revenue growth management initiatives such as engineering brewers to hit important entry price points. and highlighting the relative value of consuming coffee-at-home versus in coffee shops. For higher income consumers, we continue to build out super premium solutions. These actions should support a broader at-home coffee recovery and ultimately help return the single-serve category to its long-term growth trend. Even so, we are building our 2024 financial plans around more prudent category growth assumptions.
With more than 50 million coffee drinking households in the U.S. yet to convert to single-serve, there is significant runway to steadily grow penetration. We have an ambitious vision of Keuring future, some of which we will begin to share publicly starting this spring. At the annual Houseware Show in a few weeks, we will preview an exciting pipeline of disruptive innovation of Keuring brewers, and we will be making a public announcement about these innovation plans shortly before that event. Our 2024 pod program is equally robust. Innovation will span cold and hot occasions and a spectrum of brews and flavors. Along with incremental promotional and marketing support, these new products will directly bolster our owned and licensed brands. Products like refreshers will benefit our indulgent donut shop brand, while our high-profile collaboration with Kevin Costner will elevate Green Mountain.
This is Costner's first brand campaign in 30 years and will feature the co-creation of a unique set of blends and integrated marketing events to highlight our shared passion for coffee quality and sustainability. We remain focused on building out the super premium tier of pods, which reinforces Keurig's reputation for quality and supports premiumization in the category. Our latest activities began in Q4 with the introduction of lock alone licensed pods and continue in early 2024 with the conversion of Lavazza to a licensed relationship, which will unlock more growth and efficiencies for the brand. Our ready-to-drink coffee efforts are also gaining momentum. In Q4, we commenced our sales and distribution partnership for lock-on ready-to-drink coffee now with renovated products and packaging.
Wrapping up on U.S. coffee, while we are not satisfied with our 2023 performance, we are taking steps to support a stronger 2024. We are acting as a category leader to revive long-term category growth, thinking expansively and disruptively with the vision, capabilities and willingness to invest in the future growth opportunities for ourselves and on behalf of our partners. In other words, we are being open-minded and ambitious and positioning KDP to benefit from an at-home coffee category rebound, while also planning 2024 in a measured way. Moving now to our International segment. Revenue grew at a double-digit rate on a reported basis and high single-digit rate in constant currency with continued balance between pricing and volume mix. As with our other segments, operating income grew faster than net sales, resulting in significant margin expansion.
Our performance reflected healthy growth across country markets. Our results were led by strong trends across our cold beverages portfolio, primarily driven by Penafiel and Clamato in Latin America, Canada Dry and Dr. Pepper CSDs in Canada, and our continued expansion of our ready-to-drink alcohol and alcohol alternatives products. In our international coffee business, we delivered strong household penetration growth in 2023 and this will remain a 2024 priority. For that aim, we recently inked an agreement to make sure the official coffee maker of the NFL in Canada, capitalizing on the sports growing popularity. Our international momentum is supported by broad-based capability investments, including in areas such as distribution and consumer insights.
As in the U.S., our DSD system in Latin America represents a competitive advantage. During 2023, we bolstered our reach by expanding our routes and building out more dedicated coolers at retail and plan to do so again in 2024. Meanwhile, our innovation pipeline marries local expertise and enterprise-wide insights. For instance, the launch of Schweppes mocktails in LatAm will build on our experience in ready-to-drink low and no alcohol products in Canada. While the upcoming introductions of Dr. Pepper Dark Berry in Mexico, an expansion of 0 CSDs in Canada, leverage successful playbooks out of the U.S. Since merger, we have grown our international business at a strong double-digit CAGR from slightly over $1 billion in annual sales to almost $2 billion.
We continue to see outsized growth potential in this segment, and it will remain a meaningful contributor to KDP's total results in 2024 and beyond. Wrapping up, 2023 represented another year of delivering on our commitments while also advancing key strategic priorities. The operating environment is as ever demanding but our all-weather business model and energized teams are up to the challenge. Our focus remains on sustainably and thoughtfully extending our leadership position in the beverage industry while consistently delivering strong and predictable financial outcomes, including a return to our long-term algorithm in 2024. On March 19, we will be hosting a webcasted investor event to dive deeper into our strategy and the multiple value creation opportunities we see across the business.
We hope many of you will join or tune in. I will now turn the call briefly over to Tim, after which Sudhanshu will walk us through the detailed financial results and outlook.
Timothy Cofer: Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. After joining KDP in November, I've spent the past 3 months fully immersing myself in the business as Chief Operating Officer, and in preparation for the CEO succession later this spring. My onboarding has exposed me to nearly every aspect of KDP, and most importantly, to its people. At the top of that list, Bob, Sudhanshu, our Board of Directors and the broader executive leadership team, with whom I've already forged strong and collaborative partnerships. I've spent time in multiple KDP locations from our headquarters in Dallas and Boston to the front lines of DSD retail as well as our cold and coffee manufacturing plants. I've met with many of our customers and partners and above all, listen to the valuable feedback from our employees.
I also had an active hand in developing the 2024 plan that we're sharing with you today, and I echo Bob's confidence in KDP's ability to continue to deliver and create value for our shareholders. The investor event in a few weeks will be my first opportunity to share a more comprehensive view of my observations on the beverage industry, KDP as a market leader and our strategy to extend that leadership in the years ahead. I look forward to kicking off a deeper discussion at that time. For now, let me just say that I'm equally impressed by KDP's current strength as I am excited about the company's future potential. We are a leader in a very attractive industry. We steward many iconic brands that consumers love. Our commercial and distribution capabilities are differentiated.
We are a preferred partner and have demonstrated an ability to evolve our portfolio in a way that broadens growth exposure and accomplishes it with capital responsibility. Finally, one of our greatest strengths is that we act with a challenger mindset. This is an important cultural element that attracted me to KDP and one which we plan to build upon going forward. Although Keurig Dr. Pepper is still a young company, our track record of strong and consistent financial delivery over a historically dynamic past 5 years is testament to our resilience and potential. I'm honored to build on such a formidable foundation and look forward to partnering with the Board and my colleagues to drive the next chapter of KDP's success. We have strong alignment and our commitment to deliver value to all stakeholders, including our shareholders.
We're fortunate to have many long-term investors who have supported KDP since the merger, and we look forward to delivering for all of you in the years ahead. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sudhanshu.
Sudhanshu Priyadarshi: Thanks, Tim, and good morning, everyone. I will focus my remarks this morning primarily on our quarter 4 results and the 2024 outlook. Our Q4 performance demonstrated strong execution in a dynamic operating environment. We further rebuilt our margin structure, invested to seed future growth opportunities and delivered a strong EPS growth that was slightly ahead of our outlook. . Fourth quarter net revenue advanced 1.7%, with 1.1% constant currency growth. Net price realization increased 4.8%, which was partially offset by a 3.7% decline in volume mix. We enjoyed strong momentum across approximately 70% of our business namely in U.S. refreshment beverages and international, but our top line growth was pressured by temporary headwinds in U.S. coffee.
Gross margin expanded a record 450 basis points year-over-year, driven by a favorable net impact of pricing, productivity savings and moderating inflation. We also earned performance incentives relative to our strong commercial execution of the C4 partnership, which contributed approximately 100 basis points to gross margin. SG&A deleveraged 170 basis points, in part reflecting a double-digit increase in marketing. Total company operating income grew 6.5%, which, along with modest below-the-line leverage drove 10% EPS growth. Excluding the year-over-year reduction in nonoperational gains, EPS would have grown in the high teens. In 2023, we essentially eliminated nonoperational benefits. We now move into 2024, looking to build on this solid earnings base.
Moving to the segments. U.S. Refreshment Beverages grew net sales 6.8%, led by 7.5 percentage points of pricing. Volume/mix declined a modest 0.7% with manageable elasticities, broad market share gains and a healthy growth contribution from C4 Energy. As Bob discussed, in 2024, we will build on our commercial momentum with a robust slate of innovation though our cadence of launches differ slightly from last year. For instance, our Dr Pepper Creamy coconut rollout will begin in quarter 2 and gain steam into the summer as opposed to the very successful launch of strawberries increased in quarter 1, 2023. While the calendar difference is made temporarily weigh on our market share comparison early in 2024, we remain confident in another great year for U.S. substation Beverages relative market performance.
Segment operating income grew 20.2% in the quarter and margins expanded 360 basis points. This growth reflected the net sales momentum, a favorable impact of productivity net of inflation and the C4 performance incentives partially offset by higher marketing. In U.S. coffee, we made good progress across multiple dimensions. Share gains for the single subsegment, and for Keuring continued. We executed a successful holiday approval program to end the year with 40 million Keuring households and the segment margins came in at the highest level in 10 quarters. These markers survive, we do not view the headline 9.9% net-well decline in quarter 4 as overly indicative. With pricing, a positive contributor, just shy of 1%, segment sales were pulled down by a 10.7% decrease in volume mix.
Let me deconstruct drivers to give you a sense of why we see roughly half of the decline as transient. Brewer revenue decreased 21%, primarily due to a 14% decline in brewer shipments and reflecting a return of normal seasonal shipment patterns against a steadier point of sales trends. Looking at the back half in total is more telling with brewer shipments in line with point-of-sale purchases. As context, full year approval shipments in 2023 were 13% higher than pre-pandemic shipments in 2019, representing a 3% CAGR. Pod revenue declined 7% in the period, even with the continued impact from previously discussed private label exits, pod shipment trends sequentially improved as expected, down 3% in quarter 4 versus 8% last quarter. Pod revenue in the period was also unfavorably impacted by mix, given a lower percentage of sales from on in-licensed brand relative to last year.
The temporary headwinds in quarter 4 included the brewer decline, private label exits and a modest impact of lapping an extra week last year. Though quarter 1 will continue to reflect still sluggish category dynamics, we do expect these discrete factors to be less impactful beginning next quarter. Moving to segment operating profit and margins. Although quarter 4 operating income dollars declined 2.8% year-over-year, this was entirely due to the impact of lapping more than $50 million in nonoperational benefits. On an underlying basis, our operating income grew in the double digits. U.S. coffee operating margin expanded 260 basis points relative to the prior year. Drivers of this expansion included an improving relationship between pricing and inflation, continuous productivity benefits and overall cost discipline.
In 2024, reinvestment will be an important priority in the segment and will source from these margin tailwinds. International segment net sales grew 11.5% in the fourth quarter. On a constant currency basis, sales increased 6.5%, with pricing up 3.6% and volume mix growing 2.9%. We continue to deliver strong results across markets, despite tough year-over-year comparisons in Mexico from lapping the World Cup last year. Segment operating income increased a very strong 25.6% on a reported basis and 19.8% in constant currency terms, thanks to pricing, operating leverage and productivity mating favorably against iteration. As President of our International segment, I see a tremendous multiyear top and bottom line growth opportunities across this business, including in 2024.
Moving to balance sheet and cash flow. Our ongoing cash generation remains strong. However, we chose to deploy a significant component of our 2023 cash flow to strategically reduce our supplier financing program, a decision that optically weighed on our free cash flow even as it to strengthen our balance sheet. Put another way, our free cash flow for the year measured just north of $900 million, but included a $1.6 million use of cash from accounts payable, primarily due to our discretionary decision around the supplier financing program. Our business remains highly cash generative and on an ongoing basis, we continue to expect conversion commensurate with other leading beverage players. However, we will be below this long-term level in 2024 due to a continued a bit more modest impact from reducing supplier financing.
How we intend to allocate our capital remains very much intact. Our priorities include making organic and inorganic investments to support our growth further strengthening our balance sheet, consistent with our long-term net leverage target of 2 to 2.5x and returning cash to shareholders through a steadily growing dividend and opportunistic share buybacks. In any given year, we may over-index to 1 or more of our priorities based on short-term opportunities, but over time, we will take a balanced approach. For example, direct shareholder returns were a focus area during 2023, representing a cash deployment of over $1.8 billion. We saw value in our stock and repurchased 22 million shares during the year, including more than 8 million shares in quarter 4, with over $2.9 billion remaining on our buyback authorization, we will continue to be opportunistic.
We also raised our dividend 7.5% during 2023, marking our third consecutive annual increase. Moving now to our 2024 guidance. We expect to deliver mid-single-digit constant currency net sales growth and high single-digit EPS growth in 2024, consistent with our long-term algorithm. Based on our current FX outlook, we expect reported results to also incorporate roughly 50 basis points, top and bottom line currency headwind in 2024. Our plans reflect continued strong momentum in our U.S. Refreshment Beverages and international segments, while contemplating a relatively muted contribution from U.S. coffee. New strategic partnerships will contribute approximately 200 basis points to overall top line growth which will also benefit from the combination of carryover pricing and selected new price actions consistent with a more normalized inflationary environment.
We are projecting another year of robust productivity savings to help offset this more normal level of inflation. Even with planned reinvestments in our brand and capabilities, we expect healthy operating profit growth, reflecting net sales growth and full year operating margin expansion. However, we also anticipate some below-the-line headwinds primarily in interest expense. This will constrain some of the operating profit flow through to EPS, though we retain good visibility to bottom line growth within our high single-digit target range in 2024. Our full year outlook includes the following below-the-line assumptions. Interest expense in a $560 million to $580 million range, an effective tax rate of approximately 22% and approximately $1.4 billion diluted weighted average shares outstanding.
From a phasing perspective, we expect our top and bottom line momentum to build throughout the year. This quarterly EPS flow is typical for us and accounts for our innovation and investment calendar as well as building contributions from electrolyte and lacalome in the back half. Reflecting these dynamics and a slower start to the year in U.S. coffee, we forecast first quarter net sales and EPS growth in the low single digits. In closing, 2023 was a significant year for KDP. We grew share across most of our portfolio, increased gross margin through efficient pricing and record productivity, invested in key growth factors, improved the composition of our earnings profile and to strengthen our balance sheet. We expanded into attractive bite spaces through capital-efficient strategic partnerships and return a meaningful amount of cash to shareholders.
Our 2023 performance was the product of hard work and strong execution across our whole organization, which enabled us to achieve a good set of operating and financial outcomes that were in line with our original projections. Our results also underscore our proven ability to deliver consistently and predictively in a dynamic operating environment. We have strong confidence that we will do so again in 2024. With that, I will now turn the call back to Bob to close.
Robert Gamgort: Thanks, Sudhanshu. Five years out from having played a key part in creating KDP, my excitement about its future continues to build. Our performance track record speaks for itself. In the 5 years since merger, net sales have grown at a 6% CAGR and EPS at an 11% CAGR. We have generated almost $11 billion in cumulative free cash with roughly half redeployed to bolster the business through transformational capital investments and disciplined M&A and partnership deals, which further enhance KDP's growth profile. . We returned the other half to shareholders, enhancing our TSR delivery. We are looking forward to seeing many of you in mid-March and to sharing more about our go-forward strategic road map. KDP's priorities are very clear.
They reinforce our role as a disruptive and dynamic force within the beverage industry and lend visibility to continued delivery against our attractive long-term growth algorithm. My confidence is made all the stronger, given the refreshed management team now in place with Tim's vision and energy already taking root and propelling KDP into its next chapter. Thank you for dialing in during a busy day of cagny, we are now happy to take your questions.
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