Newell Brands forecasts declining sales, CEO to retire

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss fourth-quarter earnings for Newell Brands.

Video transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

BRIAN SOZZI: Welcome back. Let's dive into a few hot Yahoo Finance tickers. We're watching Newell Brands as it reported another soft quarter, as people remain fully stocked with Rubbermaid containers from the pandemic. Also noteworthy here, CEO and friend of our show, Ravi Saligram, is retiring. So let's just start on the quarter here. A very challenging quarter for Newell Brands. Sales down across the board. Notably, in the home appliances segment, sales down 17.3%. The home solutions segment, which contains Yankee Candle, those sales were down 12.8%.

The company is now undergoing a restructuring plan, putting forth a couple of weeks ago by Saligram, who will be retiring. And we just had him on a couple of months ago, and a big push for Ravi was product innovation, rebooting the innovation pipeline for this company and doing things a lot better, coming out with cool stuff. And we actually-- he actually showed off one product he reinvented. Take a listen.

RAVI SALIGRAM: This is the Sharpie S Gel, one of my favorite products in our company. And Sharpie has been always known for permanent markers and really all about creative expression. But the brand has so much equity. So we launched this two years ago. And in two years, it's become a $50 million brand, and with great gross margins. And people absolutely love it.

BRIAN SOZZI: And, Brad, I know you're a big fan of the pen, big fan.

BRAD SMITH: I have the pen--

BRIAN SOZZI: You're still using it.

BRAD SMITH: --right here. Ravi, this one's for you. This is a solid pen, best pen I've used here on set before. And quite frankly, it's just smooth like butter.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: It might be smooth like butter, but their-- their numbers didn't look that great.

BRIAN SOZZI: Go ahead, Julie, [INAUDIBLE].

JULIE HYMAN: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

BRAD SMITH: The pen, it's about--

BRIAN SOZZI: We like Ravi. We like Ravi.

JULIE HYMAN: Of course, we like Ravi. He's a friend of the show. Unfortunately, his business is not doing that great. Appliance sales down 26% last quarter. Home solution sales down 16%. I don't know which of those pens-- which part-- which unit pens are in.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, the new-- [LAUGHS] the new CEO Chris Peterson, he was the interim CEO just before Ravi came into the company. So he's been around since 2018. Has a clear-- I guess he knows what's going on with the turnaround plan. He will be executing that as well. But importantly, he has a very strong understanding of the numbers, too, having been CFO.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, one of the interesting things that they called out, too, inventory levels-- higher inventory levels driven by a pullback in retailer orders, slowing consumer demands, lower accounts payable due to the timing of supply plan reductions as well. And they had reduced their inventories by about $400 million between the third quarter and the fourth quarter of last year here. So--

BRIAN SOZZI: It is a nice pen.

BRAD SMITH: It's a great pen.

BRIAN SOZZI: It is nice.

BRAD SMITH: Isn't it just--

JULIE HYMAN: It's a great pen. Maybe they can write a better forecast with--

BRIAN SOZZI: Oh! Jules!

JULIE HYMAN: Sorry. The forecast for the year is lousy. Their net sales are going to be, at most, 8.6 billion. Analysts were looking for 9.06 billion. I'm sorry, guys.

[BELL RINGING]

I got to-- I got to.