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27.CTW20.Colgate-Palmolive2

Toothpaste tubes have long frustrated green-minded consumers. The hybrid composition that makes such tubes squeezable—a mixture of laminated plastic and aluminum—also makes it impracticable to recycle most of the 20 billion tubes that consumers discard each year.<br />
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Colgate-Palmolive, which claims 41% of the global toothpaste market, poured five years of research into this puzzle, and in 2019, the effort paid off. Colgate’s new recyclable tube is made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the recyclable plastic found in shampoo containers and milk jugs. (A key phase of the research: grinding down the tube prototypes and recycling them as new bottles.) This year, Colgate introduced the tubes in multiple brands and it will soon use them for Optic White, which alone accounts for 8.5% of U.S. toothpaste sales. The company aims to make 100% of its packaging recyclable by 2025. In the meantime, it’s sharing the HDPE design on an open-source basis, so others can adopt it too.

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Colgate-Palmolive, founded in 1806, manufactures and sells hygiene products in the U.S. and internationally. Its wide variety of offerings range from toothpaste and toothbrushes to hand soaps, shampoos, and household cleaners. Popular brands include Palmolive, Tom’s of Maine, Irish Spring, Softsoap, Speed Stick, and Fabuloso. It’s also the parent company of Hill’s Pet Nutrition, which sells its products through pet supply retailers and veterinary clinics.

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Colgate-Palmolive (CL): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Colgate-Palmolive

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Good morning. Welcome to today's Colgate-Palmolive first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded and is being simulcast live at www.colgatepalmolive.com. For opening remarks, I'd like to turn this call over to Executive Vice President, Investor Relations, Claire Ross.

Thank you, Drew. Good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings release conference call. This is Claire Ross, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations. Today's conference call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from these statements. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties and are made on the basis of our views and assumptions at this time. Please refer to the earnings press release and our most recent filings with the SEC, including our 2025 annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings, all available on our website, for a discussion of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These remarks also include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, which excludes certain items from reported results, including those identified in tables three and six of the first quarter earnings press release.

A full reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP financial measures and related definitions are included in the earnings press release. Joining me on the call this morning are Noel Wallace, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Stan Sutula, Chief Financial Officer, and John Faucher, EVP, M&A, and Special Projects. Noel will provide you with his thoughts on our results and on our 2026 outlook. We will then open it up for Q&A.

Thanks, Claire. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased with how we started the year as we delivered strong top and bottom line growth. Organic sales growth accelerated from the fourth quarter, driven by improved volume performance, particularly in Asia-Pacific. Excluding the impact of private label pet food exit, we grew both volume and pricing in all four categories in four of five divisions. Our sales growth was led by emerging markets, the regions where our strong global brands generally have higher market shares and the greatest scaled advantages. We believe emerging markets are accretive in terms of growth prospects and are investing in them accordingly. We used the strong net and organic sales growth to deliver gross profit, operating profit, earnings per share, and free cash flow growth while still increasing investment in our brands and capabilities.

This encouraging start to the year gives us confidence in our outlook for the balance of the year. Though significant increases in raw material and packaging costs, we have built into our guidance to reduce our expectations for gross margin for the year. When I spoke to you on our Q4 2025 call, I talked about the strength of our 2030 strategic plan. It's the choices that we made in building this plan, along with the flexibility we've built into our P&L that allow us to deliver short-term results in a volatile environment while simultaneously building for the long term. Best-in-class companies need to do both short-term results and long-term strategy. Our global brands are driving broad-based growth by geography, by category, and with volume and pricing.

Our investments in advertising through our omni-channel demand generation model keep our brands top of mind with consumers in the moments that matter, and we continue to drive higher ROI even as we increase spending. We have built our capabilities in areas like innovation, data, analytics, digital, AI, and will continue to invest behind them and scale them across the organization. This leaves us well-positioned to delight consumers with perceivable superior products to accelerate category growth and drive market share improvement. We believe our efforts in RGM, Promo AI, and funding the growth give us the ability to drive profit and EPS growth even in a period of significant cost inflation. Our Strategic Growth and Productivity Program is another great example of how we're working to deliver in the short term while building up for our 2030 Strategy.

This morning, we announced an update along with annualized savings target of $200 million-$300 million, with the majority of the savings focused in 2027 and 2028. This is not an extension of the program, as we still expect the program to be completed by the end of 2028. The savings will enable us to fund investments and capabilities to deliver on the 2030 strategy as well as to drive consistent compounded dollar-based EPS growth. More importantly, the changes we are making to our organizational structure by reducing complexity will help us build a more agile company that can thrive in an an omni-channel environment. There is still uncertainty in how the rest of 2026 will play out, where oil will be, what will happen with interest rates, how the consumers will respond.

I can tell you this, that we believe we've built a model that can deliver in this environment while setting us up for long-term success. With that, I'll take your questions.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit yourself to one question. If you have further questions, you may re-enter the question queue. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then one. The first question comes from Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Noel, just want to focus on volume mix. You clearly had strong results in emerging markets in Q1. Last year, you talked about reallocating marketing spend areas and opportunities. Wanted to get a sense of how tangible the payoffs are from those efforts. Is that showing up in the Q1 results? Really the question is how sustainable the volume strength in emerging markets might be going forward with those efforts, also if you're seeing any negative impact post Iran. Maybe while we're on the subject, on the other side, just North America continued to lag in Q1 in volume mix. You did talk about improvement in Q2 in the, in the published remarks, just wanted to get more detail on the plans there, the level of improvement that might be realistic in North America.

Yeah, thanks, Dara. Let me take the volume piece first. You know, clearly, globally, we're seeing volume still be rather sluggish in our categories. In that environment, you can imagine we're particularly pleased with the acceleration of volume growth in the quarter, certainly from the fourth quarter. We saw that across almost all divisions in all categories, which is particularly pleasing to us. The broad baseness of that growth, so to speak, is clearly showing up, in fact, that emerging markets have accelerated. Asia-Pacific was a big driver of that. We continue to see the interventions that we're taking with the Hawley & Hazel business pay dividends for us moving forward. I wouldn't say we're completely out of the woods yet.

The category continues to be pretty sluggish in China. Our business is executing better against the intervention strategies that we put in. The Colgate business continues to perform well. Latin America, from a volume standpoint, continues to hold its own, driving nice volume shares through the quarter. Africa, Middle East, and Europe continued to do better than we expected, quite frankly, given some of the pricing that we've taken in those regions. I think that's the other point. The strength of our brands is allowing us to drive that volume share. That, coming back to the initial part of your question, the fact that we've continued to sustain high levels of advertising investment, particularly in emerging markets, has allowed us to accelerate the growth. That combined with good RGM, we had a good balance, obviously, of pricing in the quarter as well.

Overall, we're very pleased with the volume results. Going on to North America. Listen, I was pretty clear on the fourth quarter call that North America was gonna take some time. The interventions are in place. I know John and Shane are working very diligently on a strategy reset for North America. That's gonna include some real brand interventions, accelerated innovation, more RGM, better execution, getting our promotion strategy right with some of the key retailers. There's a whole myriad of different initiatives taking place, and we started to see some of those come through in the back half of the first quarter. Volume was a little dampened by the fact that some of the shelf resets were later than we expected. The new product that we shipped in the first quarter came later as well.

We started to see that accelerate as we exited the quarter. Plans in place to address North America. Overall, quite pleased with the sequential volume growth across all of our business, particularly in emerging markets.

The next question comes from Filippo Falorni with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, everyone. I was hoping you can give a little more color on the cost inflation that is currently embedded in guidance. I know you changed your gross margin guidance to down year-over-year versus up previously. How much incremental cost inflation are you assuming? What are your assumption on kind of like the crude oil underlying? Maybe if you can talk a little bit about a high level of the potential offsets as you get into the back half of the year and as you start thinking about next year as well. Thank you.

Let me just address it from a macro standpoint. I'll let Stan provide some more details. You know, clearly the assumptions that we have embedded into our guidance for the year include the $300 million of additional raw materials. We're assuming oil roughly at around $110. I think importantly, strategically, as we've always gotten ahead of the cost environment, we need to ensure that our operating units are planning for these types of inflationary environments that are coming. Clearly, we'll wait and see. There's a lot of ups and downs moving around the world, so to speak, on oil pricing.

For us, strategically, it's important that the operating units start to build this into their strategies on how they want to execute some of the strong innovation plans we have for the balance of the year, how we execute funding the growth for the rest of the year. Again, we feel it's very prudent to get those numbers out there, and we built that into our guidance. Clearly, some of the inflationary environments is forced us to take the gross margin down for the year. Overall, we still feel we're well in line with our guidance on earnings per share. Stan?

Yes, let me pick that up. Our assumptions for the year embedded in our gross profit margin guidance includes oil at roughly $110 on average for the remainder of the year, and the associated impact that has on raw and packaging materials. Since the fourth quarter call, you know, we've seen an additional raw materials and logistics impact for the year of roughly $300 million. You should think of that as roughly 2/3 raw materials and 1/3 logistics. The biggest incremental impact, Filippo, is coming from oil byproducts, resins, petrochemicals, fats, and oils. We now expect that spending in those areas to be up more than 20% year-on-year for the full year. You can see the impact that that has. Our logistics costs are up nearly 10%, impacting both ocean and land freight.

That's what led us to take a look and put that into our guidance. Offsetting that is the work around RGM productivity across the entire P&L, which allows us to maintain our guidance.

Filippo, just one other point I'd make on that is remember, the logistics goes into the SG&A, not in the gross margin. There'll be an incremental impact in SG&A from that.

The next question comes from Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I guess I had a quick question on your guidance. You know, you maintain your top and bottom line guidance, you know, you highlighted gross margins will be more pressured. Maybe first, could you know, just maybe touch a little bit further on some of the key puts and takes on the gross margin headwinds, ultimately, I'm curious if you see scope for incremental pricing. Second, you know, you talked about, you know, the flexibility you have to potentially pull forward some cost savings or productivity initiatives. Any more color on that would be helpful.

You know, I'm thinking about in the context of your ability to deliver on the bottom line. I guess ultimately wondering if we should realistically think about, you know, your EPS coming in closer to the midpoint of your range or possibly below. Again, I'm just trying to understand how much flexibility you have there. Thank you.

Good morning, Bonnie. Thank you. Our guidance reflects what we believe is the increased volatility that we see today in the current environment. Clearly, we had a strong start to the year, so we've maintained our organic sales growth guidance in the 1%-4%, and we're waiting to see quite frankly, what impact that has on the consumer moving forward. I would say, currently, we're not seeing a significant impact, time will tell. From an earnings standpoint, we're watching oil and other commodities, as you can imagine, to see where these prices settle out, we feel very comfortable with our current range of low to mid-single digits. I would suggest you reflect the lower gross margin in your algorithm. It includes our increased oil and commodity assumptions for the balance of the year.

As Stan just mentioned, with oil at a price of $110 for the balance of the year, works out to an incremental $300 across the board, including logistics in that number. As you think of the rest of the income statement, understand that we remain deeply committed to offsetting as much of that as we possibly can. Clearly, the RGM efforts that we're executing across the world, we will possibly be taking pricing that will come through improved premium innovation as we execute some of the new product launches we have throughout the year. We'll look at price pack architectures as well. We'll look at mixed opportunities as we move through the balance of the year. As Stan rightfully called out, I mean, obviously, our SGPP program will allow us to offset some of that as well.

For right now, the clear indication that we have is margins will likely be down. We wanna be prudent in getting that number out there ahead of time. Stan, anything to add to that?

No, just, we have a regular productivity program outside of SGPP, and our teams do an exceptionally good job executing that. We'll be looking to drive that productivity. That is not just in the cost line. That also impacts SG&A. As we look to drive that productivity, that'll be one of the other flexibility points that we execute on.

The next question comes from Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys. Thanks for the question. Noel, I was actually hoping to pivot back to APAC. You called it out in your prepared remarks as a source of strength. In the prepared remarks, I think you noted India very briefly just as kind of the main driver. Hoping to unpack that a little bit more, just India growth in the quarter, and then any help around just whether GST is really aiding that business and what you've seen so far. Thanks very much.

Yeah. Thanks, Peter. I can't give a lot of detail on India. They haven't announced officially their numbers, but we did say obviously the growth in Asia-Pacific was strong, and you can clearly connect that back to the two largest markets, which were China and India. As I look at Asia-Pacific in general, I'm really pleased with the acceleration that we saw in the first quarter. As I mentioned, on the first question, you know, we're not out of the woods yet on Hawley & Hazel, but they're making some very significant improvements in their execution, and the strategic interventions we've taken over the last year are starting to take hold. One, we've accelerated innovation in that market. We're seeing that through the dual tube technology.

That's in some of the prepared charts that we shared with everyone earlier. Clearly, that's having a great impact. We're getting our omni-channel execution much more effectively implemented across the different platforms that exist, including Douyin. We feel good about where Hawley & Hazel is going. We've got some good brand work going on in the balance of the year. Investment levels continue to be strong. You couple that with the strength of the Colgate business in that market, which is executing very, very well. The Colgate business delivered mid-single-digit growth in a flat to declining market. Again, very encouraged by what we saw across China.

That being said, if you go across the rest of the region, Philippines performed well, Thailand performed well, Malaysia performed well, Australia a little softer than anticipated. Overall, Asia doing quite well, and clearly some of the volume drivers that we, volume acceleration we saw in the quarter was coming out of that region.

The next question comes from Peter Grom with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I was hoping to get some perspective on Latin America, another strong volume quarter. Can you maybe just give us some more context on category growth and market share performance in the region? Noel, you sounded pretty confident on emerging market growth from here in your response to Dara's question. Curious, just as you look ahead, do you expect this momentum to continue? Maybe specifically, do you expect to see continued balance from a volume and price perspective? Thanks.

Yeah. Good morning, Peter. Thank you. Listen, Latin America continues to execute very, very well. I was down in Mexico and Brazil and Argentina in the last month and really pleased to see how some of the strategic capabilities that we're building and driving from the center, Latin America is definitely at the forefront of executing some of those. Their omni-demand generation work is excellent. Some of the work they're using AI for is excellent. RGM continues to be best in class, and their in-store execution and driving numeric and weighted distribution across some of our adjacency categories looks terrific as well. Overall, they're executing terrifically. You saw the obviously mid-single-digit growth coming out of them, and particularly the growth being Mexico and Brazil driven.

Excellent results from that perspective. The innovation, I'll talk to for just a moment in Latin America, and we're seeing that across emerging markets. I talked a lot about that last year, how we're truly trying to step up innovation across all price points, and I think that bodes well as we set up an environment that will be more challenged from a consumer standpoint. We clearly will expect emerging markets to continue to drive the growth for the balance of the year, and that will be driven by some of the changes that we've made on accelerating innovation at the lower price points and mid-price points while continuing to see the biggest strategic growth opportunity to be in the premium side. You'll see that unveil.

The Purple launch that we had in Asia that we've carried through Latin America now is doing very, very well. Our home care launch and some of the adjacencies that we've gotten into and the relaunch of our core business on Suavitel is performing quite well. The good news is we have ample opportunities across the innovation to continue to drive growth. I think some of the capabilities that we're executing from the center and LatAm taking on gives us great confidence that they'll continue to perform well in the quarter.

The next question comes from excuse me, Andrea Teixeira with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. I was just hoping to know if you can elaborate a little bit more on how competitive the U.S. oral care business is now. I understand there were some, you know, setups on the innovation side. Historically, you have had a higher volume share, which sets you well for this type of, like, more RGM-driven market. I was hoping to see how you left the quarter, you exit the quarter, as you said, those, if you see sequential improvement in market shares and how you're seeing that set up going to the balance of the year.

Thanks, Andrea. Yes, very much the case. We expect sequential improvement in North America moving forward. The innovation came late in the quarter. We're getting that executed, and some of the early signs are encouraging, but clearly a lot more work to do in North America. I have been through some of the strategic interventions that we're taking. I'm quite pleased with some of the decisions they're taking. The environment, to your point, is quite competitive. We see quite a bit of our competition spending a little bit more money on couponing. Nothing tremendously unusual, but one of our competitors certainly trying to drive more volume in that regard. We will step up our investments in North America.

Clearly, as we look at the balance of the year, that's a strategic growth opportunity for us, particularly in toothpaste. The toothbrush business continues to perform very well. We're starting to see nice growth with some of the other categories as well. We've taken a much more aggressive stance on innovation, both in home care and personal care, and particularly the early signs on home care are encouraging. Sequentially, the business should improve as we move through the balance of the year, and shares should come right behind that.

The next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much for the question. Just given the inflation is picking up over the course of the year, I just wanted to see if this adjusts or alters your plans for pricing, you know, perhaps specifically in emerging markets where pricing can move a bit quicker and whether that's factored in your outlook. You know, just as a follow-up on North America, the margins were a bit light this quarter. Any context on that and how you see those, you know, tracking from here? Thanks so much.

Yeah. You know, we'll watch the consumer very, very carefully. We've seen that obviously lead to a little bit more of the sluggishness we're seeing in the categories, but the categories have not worsened. In fact, we think emerging markets are picking up a little bit. We're gonna watch that very, very closely. That being said, I mean, the key focus for most companies today is the inflationary environment. Your ability to get pricing in the category continues to be critically important to maintain the margin dollars and the spending in the categories. I think you'll see pricing still come through as we move through the balance of the year. That needs to be coupled with strong innovation.

If we have the right value proposition across our different price points, consumers are willing to pay more. We've seen that coming out of COVID when we saw the inflationary environment then. The key for us is getting the innovation executed and maximizing the opportunities we see both at the top end of the market and premium, as well as making sure that we have choiceful offerings at the bottom end of the market. The answer to your question on pricing, we will take pricing where we see the opportunities. More of that will be innovation-led as we move through the balance of the year. Part of the reason why we wanted to get the raw materials into our guidance is to make sure the operations are planning accordingly.

We wanna be very, thoughtful about them thinking about where the cost environment is going so they can maintain the investment in the P&L moving forward.

I'll pick up the gross profit margin piece on North America. Their margins obviously are significantly pressured by tariffs on a year-on-year basis. If you recall, there was minimal tariffs in the prior year, but North America incurs the vast majority of them, and obviously higher raw material costs. We are lapping the highest gross profit margin quarter last year with no incremental tariffs, and that year-on-year impact we expect will be less going forward. Within North America as well, you know, the actions that we're taking, the raw materials is the biggest impact that we have. We will continue to drive the productivity to look to improve that margin, and then the tariffs will normalize as we go through the year.

Yeah. The other thing I would add is the cost environment obviously is an industry issue and impacting everyone. My sense is you will see some pricing move through the categories over time as people try to offset the inflationary environment moving through their P&L. You know, for us, being proactive is very important to ensure that we protect the margin lines in the P&L to ensure we maintain the investment.

The next question comes from Robert Moskow with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, Noel. I was wondering what made you decide today or just recently to expand the scope of the SGPP program to $350 million-$500 million? What held you back last year from making that your original recommendation to the board? Does it have anything to do with the higher cost environment that we're in now?

No, it, I mean, the latter part of your question, no. I mean, clearly we've been very proactive on putting that program together, and these programs are complex. I mean, they involve a lot of different inputs and a lot of different assumptions, which the team here painstakingly goes through to ensure the assumptions are correct. I think what's so pleasing about the program, the fact that we got ahead of it, is that we've seen the execution from our teams on the ground be a lot better than we expected. A lot more ideas have come to the table as they've thought it through in terms of the opportunities they have to simplify the operational structure of our business and drive more accountability across the enterprise.

We're pleased with the fact that the programs have come in better than we anticipated, and there's been a lot of very interesting ideas that came through. You don't necessarily always know those. You know the big ones from the start, but the more important ones are how the operations are thinking about structuring themselves in a more efficient manner, and those seem to be coming through. Let me turn it over to Stan, who's been driving this from the top and doing a wonderful job in making sure the teams are really proactive in thinking about the opportunities that we can go after.

Thanks, Noel. First of all, the strong execution from the teams. When we first went in, this program is a little bit different to some of our previous ones, that it was addressed a little bit more methodically on addressing structure through spans and layers and items like that. The strong execution has gotten us to the high end of the initial targets. As Noel mentioned, we've identified additional opportunities since that launch of the program as teams look to simplify the operations, enhance the efficiency of how we operate day to day. Importantly, we're not extending the program, this is going to still end by December 31st, 2028. As a result of these actions, we now expect that we'll be able to generate $200 million-$300 million of savings over the term of the program.

The majority of those savings, we expect, will flow through in 2027 and 2028. I think also an important note, as we said when we launched this program, we'll utilize these savings in two primary areas: to fund incremental investments, accelerating growth as part of our 2030 strategy, and then, of course, bottom line contribution. We'll balance those based on the opportunities that we see and the overall market conditions.

The next question comes from Olivia Tong with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. You flag that even with the cost inflation headwinds, your plan to stay disciplined on brand spend. Clearly, a lot of your peers feel the same. I'm wondering how your strategy and management of brand spend potentially pivots given the cost environment, you know, looking for additional efficiencies, for example. What's your view also on how this could impact the promotional environment?

Yeah. Listen, I think most of us in the industry understand that innovation is a clear driver of sustainable long-term growth. The exciting aspect for us is the flexibility that we have in the P&L to ensure that we're supporting our innovation in a meaningful way. That will continue to be the strategy that we adopt. That's been successful for us over the last couple years, and we'll continue to execute that. The combination of our strong funding to growth, our RGM, and the productivity initiatives that Stan just took you through give us confidence that we can continue to invest at healthy levels behind our brands, and that will help drive category growth in the long term. Clearly, we see an opportunity to elevate top-line investment.

I talked a lot about omni-demand generation, we're putting a significant amount of time within the company to truly understand the pressure points in omni-demand generation and making sure that we have the appropriate understanding and insights to drive persuasion and excitement behind our brands. That might include different platform advertising. That might include increased focus on social commerce or agentic commerce. We clearly are understanding where the profit pools are, the revenue pools are, so to speak, in using our money wisely. We're spending significantly more time understanding ROI as more of our money moves into digital advertising. Overall, we feel the increased advertising is something that will benefit us, benefit our brands. We're not necessarily suggesting that's going into promotion at all.

Quite frankly, on the contrary, we expect our advertising, our thematic brand-building work to be much more effective as we move forward, as we accelerate advertising, particularly in some of the key geographies where we need more aggressive intervention relative to the success we're having. We also have brands where the advertising is driving real momentum across the world. Hill's is a great example of that, and we'll continue to accelerate growth in that part of the business where we're seeing great returns on that investment.

The next question comes from Robert Ottenstein with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Great. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about Hill's, which, you know, has largely gone unnoticed so far on this call, except for your last mention. You know, first off, how is the category doing? Is there any signs of improvement? Second, you know, following on that competitive activity, how your innovations are going, how household penetration is, and then taking out the private label side, would you expect the core business to accelerate as the year goes? Thank you.

Good morning, Robert. Thanks, and thanks for bringing up a, you know, a wonderful business that continues to perform exceptionally well. They had an impressive quarter in arguably what's a tough market. We delivered solid organic, I would say, both volume and price, ex private label, you know, at 4.8%. The U.S. grew at 5%. Excellent growth on top line basis, way outperforming the market, which is roughly flat right now. As you saw in the prepared remarks, private label is at 260 basis points negative. That will continue to taper off. It'll probably be on the total company, 20-30 basis points of negative impact in the second quarter, then we should be out of that by the back half of the year.

Our volume continues to be impressive on that business. Excluding the impact of private label, volume was up 1%, which is terrific. We're seeing Science Diet and Prescription Diet continuously grow. Particularly the Prescription Diet business had an exceptional quarter. We had double-digit growth in some of the areas that we wanted to go after, particularly on some of the strong indications that we're focused on. Importantly, as I mentioned on the fourth quarter call, we're seeing broad-based growth across that business, across all of the key growing segments. The only part of the category that's suffering more than others is dry dog. We've seen that category continue to slip, and our growth was not where we'd like it to be.

Across the growing segments, whether it's wet, whether it's cat, whether it's Small Paws, we continue to see nice growth. We're gaining share across almost every single channel, across the innovation that we put into the market, which is terrific. We're gaining shelf space based on the strong growth that we're bringing to our retailers. Overall, we feel very good about the business. We feel very good about the innovation cycle coming through the balance of the year. The supply chain, as we've talked about a couple times, continues to perform exceptionally well, giving us a lot more flexibility and leverage as we move through, as we look through the P&L. Overall, business in good shape. We'd like to see the category turn a little bit more.

I think that's gonna take some time, but we feel we've got real growth opportunities in some of those segments I mentioned that we continue to be under-indexed in.

The last question will come from Michael Avery with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Just actually wanted to come back to Hill's, I know you gave a lot of color just then, but was wondering if you could unpack that consumer a little bit and, you know, just maybe what, if any, risk from higher gas prices on how they think about, you know, maybe trading up or, you know, getting a pet in the first place or just some of the kind of ways you see where that consumer sits in some of the various markets, and if there's ways to think about how sustainable the momentum is from their point of view.

Yeah. Thanks. You know, recall and remember that we compete at the super premium end of the market on Hill's, and clearly, we'll continue to focus on real value-added innovation, particularly on the Prescription Diet side, which is an area where when you have a sick pet, you're very apt to spend more money to address those issues. The Prescription Diet formulations that we have are absolutely outstanding in addressing a lot of the health concerns that pet owners have. Given the vet endorsement that comes behind that brand, that allows us to continue to justify the premium price, obviously delivered by the strong efficacy that's delivered through that product.

We're not immune, obviously, to the compounding inflation that will likely come in the market over the next 6-9 months based on where energy prices are today. As I mentioned up front, and no different on the Hill's business, we have to continue to drive real value-added innovation into the category, innovation that means something to the consumer. The Hill's business clearly is, at the center of that is the science. The science that we bring to the market is clearly differentiated in a very meaningful way. Hence, we have such strong endorsement from vet professionals to recommend the product. That's the case across all of our advocacy-driven brands, whether it's oral care, whether it's skin health or others. We'll continue to drive real science-based innovation to make sure that we're bringing real value.

You balance that with the strong innovation across some of our big core businesses around the world, we find that we'll figure out ways to at least address some of the inflationary concerns to the consumer. We're not immune to it, and we're going to have to watch that very carefully.

Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate it, everyone, thanks for listening in on the call today, and your interest in the company. I hope you share our confidence that we have the short-term plans in place and more importantly, investing in the long-term capabilities of the company to continue to drive superior returns in what is obviously a very volatile operating environment. I want to make sure I thank the 34,000 Colgate people around the world who are doing just extraordinary work in a very difficult environment to deliver strong results, their tireless effort needs to be recognized and thanked. Look forward to our next discussions. Thanks, everyone.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect.

Colgate-Palmolive (CL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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