With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

AI is a major force shaping this year’s list—but it’s far from the only story.

World's Most Admired Companies

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Leaders in all industries rely more than ever on Big Tech—and appreciate the giants that deliver, at scale, without drama.

Industries included in the sector are home equipment and furnishings and household and personal products.

Fortune Sector Leaders: Household Products

The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 26th edition of the list shows how much esteem Big Tech giants command among other business leaders.

The 25th Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies list suggests that tech giants’ peers respect them as much as ever.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-325-Newell Brands

The consumer goods company is the home base for more than four dozen brands including Rubbermaid, Crockpot, and Yankee Candle.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500 2020 316 Newell Brands

The global company's brands include Rubbermaid, Paper Mate, Sharpie, Graco, Calphalon, and many others.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2018 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

Everybody loves an up-and-comer: 2018's top three-year performers in revenues, profits, and stock returns.

100 Fastest-Growing Companies

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2017 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2016 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

Fastest-growing Companies

Headquarters

Industry

Sector

Current Streak

Years on List

Website

Revenue, Net Income

Revenue past four quarters ($M)

Net Income past four quarters ($M)

Growth Rates And Ranks

Revenue 3 Yr Growth Rank

Revenue 3 Yr Annual Growth Rate

EPS 3 Yr Growth Rank

EPS 3 Yr Annual Growth Rate

Total Return 3 Yr Rank

Total Return 3 Yr Annual Rate

Beat S&P 500 3 Yr Return

Estimated P/E Ratio

Current All-Star Rank

Previous All-Star Rank

Industry Rank

Previous Industry Rank

Overall Score

Innovation

People Management

Use of Corporate Assets

Social Responsibility

Quality of Management

Financial Soundness

Long-Term Investment Value

Quality of Products/Services

Global Competitiveness

Key Financials (last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

Earnings Per Share (last Fiscal Year)

Earnings Per Share ($)

EPS % Change (from prior fiscal year)

EPS % Change (5 year annual rate)

EPS % Change (10 year annual rate)

Total Return

Total Return to Investors (last year)

Total Return to Investors (5 year, annualized)

Total Return to Investors (10 year, annualized)

Founded in 1903, Newell Brands designs, manufactures, sources, and distributes products in three main areas: home and commercial solutions, learning and development, and outdoor and recreation. Its home and commercial products include Rubbermaid, Crock-Pot, Mr. Coffee, Oster, and Yankee Candle, while its learning and development products consist of brands including Elmer's, Paper Mate, and Sharpie. In its outdoor and recreation segment, Newell provides products under the Coleman, Contigo, and Marmot brands. It distributes to warehouse clubs, department and drug/grocery stores, home centers, specialty retailers, office superstores and supply stores, e-commerce retailers, and sporting goods stores, as well as directly to consumers online.

Q1 2026

Q4 2025

Q3 2025

Q2 2025

Q1 2025

Q4 2024

Newell Brands (NWL): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

legacy

Newell Brands

newell brands

Good morning, and welcome to Neulah Brands Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After a brief discussion by management, we'll open the call for questions. In order to stay within the time scheduled for the call, please limit yourself to one question during the Q and A session. Today's conference call is being recorded.

A live webcast of this call is available at ir.newellbrands.com. I will now turn the call over to Joanne Freiburger, SVP, Investor Relations and Chief Communications Officer. Ms. Freiburger, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Newell Brands' fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings call. On the call with me today are Chris Peterson, our President and CEO and Mark Erceg, our CFO. Before we begin, I'd like to inform you that during today's call, we will be making forward looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially, and we undertake no obligation to update forward looking statements.

I refer you to the cautionary language and risk factors available in our earnings release, our Form 10 K, Form 10 Q and other SEC filings available on our Investor Relations website for a further discussion of the factors affecting forward looking statements. Please also recognize that today's remarks will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures, including those referred to as normalized measures. We believe that these non GAAP measures are useful to investors, although they should not be considered superior to the measures presented in accordance with GAAP. Explanations of these non GAAP measures are available and reconciliations between GAAP and non GAAP measures can be found in today's earnings release and tables that were furnished to the SEC. Thank you.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Thank you, Joanne. Good morning, everyone. During our call this morning, we would like to do several things. First, we will walk you through the substantial and impressive progress we made against our 2024 business and financial priorities, which was driven by the disciplined implementation of our new corporate strategy, operating model and culture transformation. Second, we'll provide some additional perspective on tariffs and how we are approaching both the challenges and opportunities they present us with.

Third, we'll share our business and financial priorities for 2025. Finally, after my prepared remarks, Mark will provide additional perspective on our twenty twenty four fourth quarter and full year results and share our preliminary financial guidance for 2025. Let's start with an update on how we performed against the five key business and financial priorities we established at the start of 2024. As we look back on the year, we believe we have successfully delivered against our top priority, which was to fully operationalize our new strategy and operating model while strengthening our culture. At this point, our strategy has been rolled out to all business segments, regions, brands and functions.

We have fully implemented our new operating model with brand management in place for our top 25 brands, one new geographic go to market organizations in place and all supply chain and back office functions centralized and largely integrated. We have upgraded talent in key roles and strengthened our culture, which is focused on high performance, innovation and inclusion. Doing so has allowed us to make significant progress toward unlocking the full potential of the organization and our portfolio of leading brands. Although we still have work to do, the new strategy, operating model changes and cultural transformation are clearly yielding positive results as evidenced by the fact that we reported another strong quarter with all key financial metrics in line or above our guidance range. Improving top line performance was a key objective for 2024.

And against that goal, we made noteworthy progress. Fourth quarter and full year core sales growth was in line with our expectations with sequential improvement in the second half versus the first half of twenty twenty four. Importantly, core sales trends improved across all six business units with three turning positive for the year as innovation drove annual core sales growth in the Baby, Writing and Commercial businesses. In fact, both the Learning and Development segment and our international business as a whole have positive core sales growth in all four quarters of 2024, which we believe is solid evidence that our One Dual operating model is working. While we are pleased with the strong progress in 2024, we are not satisfied with a 3.4% core sales decline for the company even as we continued to experience category contraction.

We remain laser focused on returning the company to sustainable and profitable growth and more broad based share gains and that is precisely why we have been moving swiftly in implementing our strategy. Dramatically improving the structural economics of our business was our third top priority and there we drove exceptionally strong gross and operating margin improvement. Normalized gross margin improved sequentially each quarter and increased four sixty basis points to 34.1% for the full year compared with 2023. Outstanding productivity, pricing and product mix delivered the highest full year normalized gross margin reported since 2018. Normalized operating margin of 8.2% improved by two ten basis points, which was driven by improved gross margin and was partially offset by higher A and P spend, incentive compensation and wage inflation.

Since introducing our new corporate strategy in June 2023, we have reported six consecutive quarters of year over year gross margin improvement and five consecutive quarters of year over year operating margin improvement. Newell's strong margin performance helped drive substantial progress across our fourth key priority for 2024, which was improving cash flow and strengthening our balance sheet. Strong double digit normalized EBITDA growth and an eight day improvement in our cash conversion cycle generated nearly $500,000,000 of operating cash flow, which in turn allowed us to reduce debt and delever the balance sheet by nearly one full turn, allowing us to end the year with a leverage ratio of 4.9 times. Our last stated goal for 2024 was to reduce complexity through business process redesign with a focus on simplification and accountability, technology standardization and enablement and continued SKU count reduction. Consistent with this objective, we further consolidated our ERP environment, eliminated 35 legal entities, reduced brands from 80 to about 55, rationalized almost 2,000 additional SKUs bringing us below 20,000 versus over 100,000 in 2018 and we reduced the supply base by 25% over the past two years.

Notably, we also reduced the number of distributors across Latin America, Europe and Asia by 33% last year. And finally, we dramatically exceeded our weighted forecast accuracy target, which helped us achieve a 95% global fill rate, the highest in Newell's history. Now, let's shift to the elephant in the room, which of course is tariffs. As we've discussed previously, Newell has been actively pursuing a tariff mitigation strategy for some time, which we discussed at length during our second quarter earnings call and which we believe leaves us better positioned than most to navigate both the challenges and opportunities being presented by recent announcements. As a reminder, we manufacture about half of our products and source the remainder.

For the last few years, we have been primarily working to reduce our dependence on China sourcing. We began accelerating our efforts about a year ago and we are continuing to pursue the following actions. First, where economically feasible, we in sourced production from China and invested in Newell's existing manufacturing network. We've already completed multiple in sourcing projects, including both finished goods and raw material components in the writing, baby and home businesses. Second, we have been shifting production out of China and into alternate geographies through both existing and new suppliers, which we have been proactively qualifying for major purchase pools.

At this point, we have evaluated country of origin for all Chinese suppliers and are not signing on any new suppliers that do not have existing or defined plans already in place to establish manufacturing capabilities outside of China. As a result, sourced finished goods that Newell imports from China to The United States now only account for about 15% of the company's total cost of goods sold, including a large portion of baby products that are currently exempt from three zero one tariffs to provide relief for young families. Importantly, based on the work already in progress, we are on track for this exposure to imports from China to be less than 10% by the end of this year. With respect to Mexico and Canada, we are monitoring the situation closely. Imports from Mexico to The U.

S. Represent about 5% of Newell's total cost of goods sold, while imports from Canada are negligible. While we recognize this will likely be an area of ongoing uncertainty, we also believe it can be a potential source of competitive advantage. For example, there are several categories where competitors continue to source from China, while Newell has significant U. S.

Manufacturing capability, including writing, coolers, food storage and candles to name a few. Our strategic shift in 2023 to a one Newell supply chain model and continued investment in Newell's expanded U. S. Manufacturing footprint positions us to be competitively advantaged in certain product categories and we are currently having active dialogue with several strategic retailers to ensure they are aware of our strong U. S.

Manufacturing footprint, which has some additional capacity, which can be quickly brought online on a first come, first served basis. Turning to 2025, we expect the macroeconomic backdrop to be dynamic. Lower income consumers remain under pressure from the cumulative impact of inflation over the last several years. The recent substantial appreciation of the U. S.

Dollar along with evolving tax policies and potential tariffs and trade regulations in The U. S. Contribute to a fluid and complex operating environment. Within this context, we plan to drive continued strong progress on the turnaround agenda and have established five major priorities for 2025. First and foremost, our goal is to return the company to top line growth through continued execution of the corporate strategy with emphasis on product and commercial innovation, distribution expansion and international growth.

On the innovation front, we are launching and investing behind an increasing number of Tier one and Tier two mid and high priced new products across the business. I'll share a few examples of these with you today. In the baby business, we launched the Graco SmartSense Soothing Bassinet and Swing, which detect and respond to babies' cries in seconds with soothing sound and motion in the second half of twenty twenty four. The product is off to a strong start and we plan to expand distribution and fully support it throughout 2025. Just last month, Graco launched the new EZ Turn three sixty two in-one rotating convertible car seat that will help parents easily get their little one in and out of the car.

The seat features a three sixty degree one hand turn and has a slim design to save precious space in the car. In our writing business, building on the successful first year of Sharpie Creative Markers, we are excited to expand the line with 12 new earth tone colors and a new fine tip for enhanced precision and outlining. These new products also provide the vibrant paint like ink in the control of a marker that consumers love. Our research confirms that creative enthusiasts are eager for even more color variety and this expansion delivers exactly that, offering new ways to blend, layer and express creativity. Another important writing business innovation launch will be with Expo, the leader in presentation markers.

We developed a proprietary ink designed to enhance vibrancy and color on Expo dry erase markers. This new ink improves readability from across classrooms and conference rooms, while expanding usability beyond traditional whiteboards to glass, plastic and other clear surfaces. In addition, we are launching a new wet erase liner under the Expo brand that creates a whole new segment of semi permanent markers. Rubbermaid Commercial Products will be launching the first of several new Brute farm products, a line of animal feeders that are extremely durable and easy to clean. Importantly, this product line is based on significant front end consumer research as our team spent time talking to and visiting hundreds of farmers over eighteen months and incorporated this insight into the product development.

These animal feeders have a market leading ten year warranty and are made in The USA. Our kitchen business launched the Oster Extreme Mix professional blender with first to market patented titanium coated blades. This lab tested powerful 1,600 watt high performance motor and reversible motor technology unique to the Oster brand processes even the toughest ingredients in a matter of seconds. Oster Extreme Mix will be available in both The U. S.

And Mexico. Later this year, the kitchen business will launch Rubbermaid EasyStore food storage, which builds on years of consumer feedback to deliver a durable and easy to use solution that stacks simply and is built to store your way. This product will offer a secure grip lid that opens with ease, yet seals securely and comes in several shapes and sizes to efficiently store all of your leftovers. In our home fragrance business, this is an exciting year for Yankee Candle as we continue to innovate and elevate our brand. First, we are revitalizing our core portfolio with the Yankee Candle relaunch, introducing a soy wax blend for a cleaner burn and an even better fragrance experience for our consumers.

These year round favorite fragrances are still housed in our iconic apothecary jar vessel now enhanced with beautiful new label designs that further reinforce our fragrance first strategy in home fragrance. We are also introducing Yankee Candle Premium, a sophisticated new line designed to attract a younger consumer in our aesthetic admirer segment. We know this consumer is willing to pay more for high quality products and this collection delivers featuring custom glass vessels with artisanal watercolor graphics, proprietary soy wax blend and seven new fragrances designed by Master Perfumers. Within the Outdoor and Recreation segments, the main product innovations are targeted for 2026. We have some 2025 commercial initiatives with exciting influencers, namely Ali Love, renowned fitness expert for Contigo Brands and country music sensation, Kane Brown for Coleman brands.

These are just a few examples of the increased innovative product launches for 2025 that we expect to drive our first priority of returning the company to top line growth during the back half of this year. The second twenty twenty five priority is to drive operating margin improvement well ahead of our evergreen financial model, which calls for a 50 basis point improvement each year. By building on the meaningful gains achieved in 2024, we expect the continuation of our fuel cost savings program and other cost savings initiatives to more than offset the impact of inflation and the increase in A and P we have planned to support our innovation program. Third, continue to delever the balance sheet and improve the cash conversion cycle. Within this, we are planning to fully fund all the necessary high return capability improvement and restructuring projects to build a multi year productivity improvement runway.

Fourth, drive operational excellence via complexity reduction, technology standardization and enablement and continued SKU count optimization. And lastly, advance our transformation into a high performance, innovative and inclusive culture by exemplifying our values leadership, passion for winning, integrity, ownership and teamwork. In summary, during 2024, amidst a challenging operating environment with contracting categories, foreign exchange headwinds and continued inflation, we delivered significant year over year sales performance improvement as we strengthened the company's front end selling and marketing capabilities, drove very strong gross and operating margin improvement, while purposefully increasing our level of A and P investment and we meaningfully delevered the balance sheet through both debt reduction and EBITDA growth. While much work remains and the macroeconomic backdrop is still uncertain, we are laser focused on returning the company to sustainable top line growth, continuing to drive above algorithm operating margin improvement and strengthening the balance sheet. Finally, I want to recognize and thank our incredible team for their hard work and dedication in delivering our twenty twenty four goals.

Their contributions have been pivotal to our success and we deeply appreciate the commitment, grit and passion they bring to Newell Brands every day. The measurable progress on our strategy and turnaround agenda enhances our confidence that we are taking the right actions to strengthen the organization, improve its financial performance and create value for our shareholders. With that, I'll now hand the call over

Thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. As Chris indicated, we believe that Newell's new corporate strategy is is driving positive momentum and laying a strong foundation for continued growth. Consistent with this, fourth quarter core sales were minus 3% with pricing in international markets being a meaningful contributor to Q4 core sales performance.

While we will not be satisfied until we are consistently growing core sales, we were still encouraged by this result for two reasons beyond the ones Chris already cited in his prepared remarks. First, it was comfortably within our guidance range, which shows our ability to accurately forecast the business continues to improve. Second, this brought Newell's twenty twenty four back half core sales rate to minus 2.3%, which represents another half year sequential improvement in top line core sales trends. Recall that during the first half of twenty twenty three, which immediately preceded the development and adoption of our new corporate strategy, Newell's core sales run rate was minus 14.7%. In the three halves since that time, namely the second half of twenty twenty three, the first half of twenty twenty four and now the second half of twenty twenty four, core sales have been minus 9.3%, minus 4.5% and minus 2.3%, respectively, which we believe represents good progress in Newell's turnaround story.

Net sales in the fourth quarter included a 2.6% currency headwind and about 0.5 of category exits, divestitures and store closures. Turning to gross margin, Q4 represented another quarter of significant expansion. Normalized gross margin expanded three fifty basis points to 34.6, which represented our sixth consecutive quarter of year over year improvement. Productivity savings and positive pricing more than offset headwinds from lower sales volume, inflation and foreign exchange. Importantly on a two year stacked basis, fourth quarter normalized gross margin was up 800 basis points, which we believe is clear evidence that the transformation of Newell's structural economics envisioned six quarters ago when our corporate turnaround was initiated is proceeding at pace.

During the fourth quarter, Newell's normalized operating margin rose 70 basis points compared to the previous year reaching 7.1%. The increase versus last year was due to higher gross margin and ongoing organizational restructuring related savings, which were partially offset by a nearly 20% increase in year over year A and P investments in dollar terms and higher incentive compensation costs. Net interest expense of $72,000,000 represented an increase of $2,000,000 from the prior year period and a normalized tax benefit of $4,000,000 was recorded in Q4. Q4 normalized diluted earnings per share came in at $0.16 which was above our guidance range of $0.11 to $0.14 Before moving to the 2025 preliminary outlook, there are just a few things in the full year 2024 financial results we'd like to comment on, the first of which is gross margin. Since the Jarden acquisition in 2016, Newell Brands normalized gross margin has declined every year up to and including last year when normalized gross margin dropped from 30.2% in 2022 to 29.5% in 2023.

However, during 2024, normalized gross margin positively inflected in a dramatic way, expanding by four sixty basis points to 34.1%, allowing new brands to quickly regain multiple years of gross margin loss. The sharp reversal and normalized gross margin was made possible by the development and implementation of a highly focused and compelling corporate strategy that was underpinned by a comprehensive capability assessment was clearly delineated where to play and how to win choices, which among other things called for the prioritization of top brands and top countries, targeted pricing actions, active base business mix management and the development of consumer driven MPP and HPP product innovations. These actions when coupled with another year of world class productivity efforts by our supply chain and procurement experts was the catalyst that sparked Newell's gross margin recovery and provides a clear roadmap for continued margin expansion. Another area that Warren is mentioning is 2024 full year operating cash flow results. Newell generated $496,000,000 of operating cash flow in 2024, which was driven in part by an eight day improvement in our year over year cash conversion cycle.

The nearly $500,000,000 of operating cash flow was fractionally below the guidance range provided during the third quarter earnings call due to a proactive decision to temporarily increase inventory levels in anticipation of a potential port strike, which fortunately was averted. Strong operating cash flow provided the funds necessary to hundred and $75,000,000 This reduction in net debt in conjunction with a 15% increase in our full year normalized EBITDA dropped Newell's leverage ratio by nearly one full turn to 4.9 times at year end. The last thing to touch on prior to discussing twenty twenty five's preliminary outlook is the debt refinancing transacted during the fourth quarter. Specifically, $1,250,000,000 of upcoming maturities were refinanced into two new tranches, $750,000,000 due in 02/1930 and $500,000,000 due in 02/1932. The offering was six times oversubscribed, which allowed us to capture an attractive all in blended rate below 6.5%.

Out of the original $2,000,000,000 of debt, which was maturing in April of twenty twenty six, '1 point '2 '5 billion dollars is still outstanding. Our intention is to refinance that balance at some point during 2025, likely in two new roughly equally sized tranches maturing in 02/1931 and 02/1933 respectively. This would take advantage of two open rungs on our debt maturity ladder and leave us with a very logical and we believe manageable debt horizon. Typically during our fourth quarter earnings call, we provide a 2025 outlook, which we will once again do today, but this time with an important caveat, namely the discussion which follows is best characterized as being a preliminary 2025 outlook. This is because Newell Brands has a large global geographic footprint across which we purchase, manufacture and sell billions of dollars with the raw materials, component parts and finished goods.

As such, we are subject to direct impacts from changes in global trade policy and tariffs and any associated second or third derivative effects, such as currency movements or shifts in consumer purchasing behavior, which would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to accurately predict. Therefore, we have chosen to provide preliminary 2025 guidance without including any impact from the recently announced 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, which were postponed for thirty days to allow for further negotiations or the 10% tariff enacted against China earlier this week. As trade policy decisions come into view and solidify throughout the year, updates will be provided as appropriate. With that understanding, we expect the following for 2025. Core sales are expected to be between minus 2% and plus 1%.

Since we continue to measure our progress in halves instead of quarters, we expect sequential improvement with the first half being down low single digits and the back half turning slightly positive. Within this core sales range is approximately one point of low margin business or residual tails of non strategic brands we've chosen to proactively walk away from. Net sales are expected to decline between 42% with an anticipated 2% to 4% headwind from unfavorable foreign exchange and business exits. Importantly, we expect both learning and development and international to have a second consecutive year of core sales growth and home and commercial to return to core sales growth in the back half of the year. We expect outdoor and recreation to improve in 2025, but a return to core sales growth is unlikely until 2026 when several key innovations are expected to launch.

This outlook assumes that Newell's categories improved from a low single digit decline in 2024 to essentially flat in 2025. We also believe retailers will continue to manage inventory tightly in durable and discretionary categories, but that said, this should not cause any meaningful destocking or restocking during the year. We expect normalized operating margin between 99.5%, which at the midpoint represents roughly 110 basis point improvement from 2024 and is more than double our evergreen target of a 50 basis point improvement each year. The increase in normalized operating margin should be driven by higher gross margin and lower SG and A costs. Within SG and A overhead costs should be down in 2025 both in dollar terms and as a percentage of sales, but we are once again planning to invest more A and P to both absolute dollar terms and as a percentage of sales.

The intention to support higher levels of A and P in 2025 versus 2024 should be interpreted as confidence that more investable opportunities are now at our disposal because the structural economics of the base business are considerably better and a stronger innovation funnel is starting to come online. Interest expense in 2025 is projected to step up by somewhere between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 and Newell's effective tax rate is being planned in the low to mid teens. Please note that this compares to a normalized tax provision of $21,000,000 in 2024. All in, we expect normalized diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.7 to $0.76 At the midpoint of this range and on a tax equivalent basis, this represents an 18% increase versus 2024. For the year, we expect to generate operating cash flow of four fifty million dollars to $500,000,000 which assumes a high single digit days reduction in Dual's cash conversion cycle.

During fiscal twenty twenty five, we plan to invest between $250,000,000 and $270,000,000 in capital expenditures, most of which will be spent on either high return and cost savings projects or to support upcoming consumer product innovations, the preponderance of which will be an MPP or HPP propositions. Putting all this together and combining projected cash flow and EBITDA growth should translate into a year end 2025 leverage ratio of about 4.5 times, which is roughly one half turn better than where it sits today and moves us closer to our longer term ambition of being an investment grade debt issuer. As it relates to the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect a store core sales decline of 4% to 2% with net sales down 8% to 5%. Please note that foreign exchange and to a lesser extent category exits and divestitures accounts for the relatively large difference between core net sales in the first quarter. Normalized operating margin in Q1 of twenty twenty five, which is typically Newell's smallest quarter of the year due to seasonality and as a result is generally not indicative of full year margin trends is expected to be between 24%.

Gross margin productivity should remain strong, but the recent material strengthening of the U. S. Dollar has created a significant foreign exchange transaction headwind. We are in the process of taking appropriate pricing actions to offset this impact, which should more than counteract this headwind over the remaining three quarters of the year, but first quarter operating margins will be negatively impacted. Finally, we expect a small year over year increase in interest expense, a slightly normalized tax benefit and a normalized loss of $0.09 to $0.06 per share in Q1.

In closing, we are excited by the results Newell Brands highly dedicated and skilled employees delivered in 2024 and are eager to build upon the strong foundation our new strategy and subsequent results have established. We will also stay agile and connected as U. S. Economic policy unfolds to take advantage of opportunities for growth, while minimizing potential negative impacts. Operator, if you could, please open the call for questions.

you. Our first question comes from Bill Chappell with Chappell with Chappell Securities. Your line is open.

a focus on organic or core sales growth for 2025 and just trying to understand your assumptions of the category growth and across the board, would you expect them to be growing and you're growing with them? Or is this where you think you can actually get market share gain? And kind of the same question for outdoor and rec, I mean, I understand that there are new products and innovation not coming till '26, but is this just you can't maintain share until those products come or is there any way that business could actually be flat this year? Just after two, three years of declines, you would think it flattens out at some point?

Yes. So let me try thanks, Bill. Let me try to take those in turn. So I think from a core sales guidance, we guided the year minus two to plus one on core sales for 25%, which is a significant sequential improvement from this year. And I think as we said in the prepared remarks, we expect the first half of the year to be down low single digits and we expect the company to return to positive core sales growth in the back half of the year.

If you look within that, we're sort of projecting the categories from everything we can see to be about flat. The other important point that Mark mentioned is, there's still about a point of business headwind that our businesses that we proactively chosen to walk away from that are a headwind within core sales that we have not excluded. So if you were to exclude that point of headwind of businesses that are sort of tail businesses that we discontinued, our core sales guidance excluding that would be minus 1% to plus 2% for the year is I think another important point because that one point headwind is sort of one time in nature. We don't expect that as we go into 2026. Relative to the business units, learning and development has returned to core sales growth.

That's important because it's our largest most our largest profit segment. We've delivered core sales growth in that segment all four quarters of this year and we expect that segment to deliver core sales growth in 2025. The international business also has delivered core sales growth every quarter of 2024 and we expect that to continue in 2025. I think the big thing is with the innovation pipeline ramping up and I mentioned a number of the initiatives in my prepared remarks, we're expecting Home and Commercial to move into positive territory as a segment in the back half of the year. And then I think on O and R to your point, O and R is our smallest segment that represents only about 10% of the company's revenue and less than that of the company's profit.

On that business, we expect core sales trends to improve sequentially in 2025 versus 2024. But because the innovation pipeline, as we've said for several quarters now, doesn't really hit until the 2026 season, we're in active discussions right now with all of the major retailers selling in those products for the 2026 season. We think that that business is unlikely to turn positive on core sales this year, although we do think it's going to sequentially improve, but we do think that we are lined up to have that business turn positive in 2026.

Okay. Thanks for the color. And then, Mark, just looking at interest expense, I guess, trying to understand what's factored in for this year, you said $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 increase, but that's before the next refinancing. So is that partially baked into that guidance or that would be incremental interest expense?

What I would tell you is a couple of things. So if you look at our year over year interest expense, while we had a very successful refinancing endeavor, some of that debt that we were pulling down, the $2,000,000,000 that was sitting out in April of twenty six, was initially coupon at 4.2%, but because of step ups, it was actually effectively yielding $5,700,000,000 So when we refinanced, obviously you saw a bit of a step up on that and that's going to carry over for the full year. Now we are actually very excited because the 2030s and the 20302s that we issued at 6.375 and 6.625 respectively, if you take the midpoint of the bid ask on both of those, the shorter duration is actually trading 35 bps better and the longer duration is actually trading 25 bps better. So obviously, I think people are looking through the business results and seeing the turnaround that's underway and feel very good that the credit metrics are improving at Newell. And so obviously when we reenter the markets to dispose of the remaining $1,250,000,000 of the April 26 notes, We expect to be able to do that at attractive rates.

As far as the other piece of your question,

yes, I think our guidance incorporates the projected refinancing about mid year. So we've already factored that into the guidance. That's not an incremental headwind that we would expect.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Lauren Lieberman with Barclays. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. I was curious as I know on tariffs you guys were proactive in offering and kind of framing exposures or lack thereof and it was nothing inconsistent with what you guys have shared before, but thanks for just laying it all out. I was curious if maybe hard to say, but would you think that ultimately over twelve to twenty four month period of tariffs go in, is it a net positive or a net negative for you?

Because I think the competitive dynamics situation in The U. S. And where this would favor you is something that's probably pretty underappreciated. So I was just wondering if you could comment on that. Thanks.

Yes. It's Lauren, it's a good question and it's one that we spend a lot of time as a leadership team talking about. There's and it's hard to predict. What I will say is there is reason to believe that it could be a net positive for us over the midterm because we have a very significant U. S.

Manufacturing base that we believe is competitively advantaged in many of the categories that we're competing against. If you think about half of our business is manufactured and the biggest part of our U. S. Business we manufacture in The U. S.

And we compete against a number of players that are not manufacturing in The U. S. We've already started to get a little bit of traction in the back half of the year. We haven't really fully baked this in yet around going out and talking to retailers about shifting their promotion slots to made in The USA product as a way to insulate the retailer assortments from tariff potential. We've also talked to retailers about changing their shelf sets to favor made in The USA product and discontinuing some of their particularly on some of the categories where they're bringing private label in from China, we think they should shift and discontinue that product and put our brands in place.

I'm selling a little bit on that as we have those discussions, but we're getting some traction and that traction is increasing. And so that will be a tailwind for us. On the flip side, as we've mentioned, there is some headwind that we can face from China tariffs, from Mexico and Canada potentially retaliatory tariffs. And so how that fully nets out is just very difficult to predict, which is why we when we gave our guidance, we said it was preliminary. But I do think we've got a lot of opportunity in this environment because of The U.

S. Manufacturing base. And one of the things that we went back and looked at was if you look at what's happened in the Newell U. S. Manufacturing base since 2017, since the 2017 tax cut initiative was put into place, Knowles invested close to $2,000,000,000 in U.

S. Manufacturing. And we think that that is sort of unique relative to our competitive set. And so we're trying to figure out how do we leverage, how do we scale up. We can hire more workers.

And as we scale up those U. S. Manufacturing plants, that comes at a very high incremental profit rate as well because it carries fixed overhead. So it's a long way of saying we don't really know because it's hard to predict what the outcome is, but we do have an underappreciated to your point positive tailwind from our U. S.

Manufacturing. And the question will be how does that compare to the headwind potential from tariffs on the sourced business that we may be facing.

Okay, great. And let me just one more thing and I apologize if I missed this in the prepared remarks for Mark, but Q1 core sales just wide we knew we'd expected it to be down, it's just a bit more than I had anticipated and I know it's a really small quarter. So I just wanted to know if there was more clarity on the driver of that 1Q core sales?

I think on Q1, and you rightly pointed it out. Q1 is always our smallest quarter of the year because we have a number of seasonal businesses and it's the smallest season on every single one of our businesses. And so, I don't read too much into Q1 as an indicator of where we're headed for the year. If you looked at Q1 this year versus Q1 last year, our guidance, although it's minus two to minus four this year, would be an improvement versus even at the low end versus how we started last year. And so, that's what I would say about Q1.

Yes. The only other thing I would offer on Q1 is the fact that there's very little innovation that typically across our categories gets launched in the quarter. We feel really good that our innovation funnel is continuing to build out. And in fact, our twenty twenty five Tier one and two innovation funnel in terms of something we call GRAC, which is gross revenue after cannibalization is actually three times the size of our 2024 funnel. So we've been building that front end capability and that will be coming online.

The other thing I'll say about Q1 is obviously the normalized EPS guidance, minus nine to minus six might have caught people a little bit by surprise, but there's a big currency dislocation taking effect, as we sit here now based on the tariff discussions that have been obviously very public. And if you look into our Q1, there's probably about almost nearly a nickel of transaction impact on EPS in the quarter, which we are taking actions now to remediate over the balance of the year and are very confident that we will do so. And if you look at our full year EPS guidance at the midpoint, we're projecting to be up 18%. So we feel really very good about the plan. We think the company is continuing to put strength after strength.

Okay. Maybe one other thought on that. Just Mark makes a good point. If you go through that list of innovation that I went through in my prepared remarks, the vast majority not all, but the vast majority of that innovation is launching sort of in the season, so this summer. And that innovation, we think, based on the feedback we've heard from retailers, is going to be very well received in the market.

So, it's what gives us confidence that we're going to return to core sales growth in the back half of the year.

And we continue to make difficult choices on low margin business. Chris said that for the full year, there's about a point in there. I would contend that that's much more heavily weighted towards the front end of the year than the back end of the year. And if you look at the trade off that we've been making there, I think it's a fair trade, right, because our two year stack

our normalized gross margin in the fourth quarter was up seven ninety basis points. And second half two year stack was up 700. So that's a trade that I think is more than reasonable for us to be making. I mean, our 2024 net sales were $550,000,000 less than 2023, but our trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA was up $120,000,000

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone. I just wanted to follow-up on that line of thinking actually. Newell has been divesting and shedding businesses for some time even before the Jarden acquisition, but obviously it accelerated since then. And it continues to today. Obviously there are gross margin benefits.

Is this just going to be something that is just going to be a part of the story on an annual basis and there's going to constantly be some revenue headwind and a gross margin offset. How close do we how close are we to the portfolio that we'll probably see over the longer term? I realize there's always going to be decisions here and there, but just the durability of it, number one. And then where should we be thinking about this as to your point about you're going to see better margin benefits and perhaps earnings? So, just any thoughts on the cadence of this and the durability?

I think that dynamic that you're talking about, '25 is likely to be the end of that dynamic and we will not have that dynamic in the same way as we head into '26. And the reason why I say that is, recall that when we started the strategy eighteen months ago, we had 80 brands. We ended the year in 2024 with 55 brands. So we've already gotten 25 out. Of those 55 brands, there's maybe five or so that we still are likely to exit that are relatively small, but that we expect to do that kind of in the first half of this year.

And so we think we're going to be at a portfolio of 50. We think that portfolio of 50 is now the right portfolio going forward. And recall that our strategy is to focus on the top 25, which represent 90% of the sales and profits of the company. But I don't think the tail cleanup is going to be as pronounced going forward. We have had that as a headwind to your point.

But I think when we get into 2026, that point of headwind that we talked about that's embedded in our core sales guidance for 2025, I don't expect us to be talking about that being a headwind for 2026 as we go into 2026.

Okay. All right. And the only the other question would be from a category growth perspective. How would you assess your visibility across your major categories? There are a number of categories across consumer that are seeing sluggish growth right now.

So like what's the rank order where pretty good visibility here, but you could be exposed a little bit on the tail and then how are you thinking about ring fencing some of that exposure just given the volatility that we've seen in category growth in recent times? Thanks.

Yes. Category growth is a little bit more of an art than a science to predict. What I would say is, as we started 2024, we said that we were expecting in 2024 categories to be down low single digits and they did turn out to be down low single digits. So, we hit the forecast in 2024 that we were expecting. As we head into 2025, our forecast is for the category growth rate to be about flat.

And when we talk about the category growth rate, we're talking about the global category growth rate, not just The U. S. Category growth rate. And so we use a number of different sources to try to make that projection. I think we've gotten better at looking at data sources, whether it be from companies like Circana that issue a forecast largely for the U.

S. Euromonitor, we look at what retailers around the world are saying. We look at macroeconomic forecasts. And then we look at history of these categories as well. And we sort of triangulate to try to get to what we think the forecast is likely to be.

There are likely going to be some puts and takes in that forecast. There'll be some geographies that we expect will grow and some categories that we expect will grow and there'll be others where we'll see a bit of a headwind. But so far, there's nothing in our forward looking lens that would cause us to come off of that forecast of categories improving in 2025 versus 2024 and being about flat in total.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Brian McNamara with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the questions. First, I was hoping you could comment on, I guess, what I'll call your practical tariff exposure to China. I know a good portion, as you mentioned, is Graco, where you've had kind of waivers in the past. So assuming those waivers continue, where do you kind of see those percentages landing, the 15% current and the 10% by year end?

Yes. So let me start with that. As you rightly point out, 15% is where we are today. We expect to be at 10 by year end. By year end of that 10 by year end, the majority of that is related to the baby business.

So certainly more than half of it, maybe 60%, seventy % of it is baby related. That is currently exempt from three zero one tariffs. Now I will say the most recent tariff announcement that the government has announced of 10% applies to all China goods irrespective of exemptions or not. We'll see whether that sticks and how that applies, but that would be the exposure on China. In most cases, where we have China exposure, we are not competitively disadvantaged in a significant way because the industry is dependent on China for those categories, is the first point.

The second point is we are not exposed at all for retaliatory tariffs from China. And so there is nothing that we manufacture in The U. S. That we import to China. We do have a China business that's a fine writing business behind Parker and Waterman, but those products are made in Europe and sold into China.

So we have sort of a one way exposure on China that is from China into The U. S.

Got it. And then quickly a second question, one we get often from investors is, what drives the return to core sales growth? Is it simply lapping easy comps, lack of headwinds from kind of SKU reductions in brand exits, innovation, which we've seen as a template in learning and development or maybe something else? If you can kind of rank order those in buckets, I think that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Newell Brands Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript | Fortune

Companies

John Kell

How brokerage Compass sold its 83,000 real estate agents on the use of AI

/2026/09/23/compass-ai-assistant-real-estate-agents/

Phil Wahba

Steve Jobs made Apple iconic. Tim Cook made it a $5 trillion behemoth

/2026/09/22/tim-cook-apple-ceo-legacy-stock-price-growth-services-supply-chain/

Indrani Sen

Apple’s first 50 years: Charts show how the iPhone maker became a $4.85 trillion giant

/2026/09/22/apple-first-50-years-history-iphone-mac-services-revenue-growth-timeline/

Fortune Editors

Fortune 500 Power Moves: Which executives gained and lost power this week

/2026/09/18/fortune-500-power-moves-september-12-18/

AI agents are going rogue. CIOs are racing to put guardrails around them

/2026/09/16/ai-agents-are-going-rogue-cios-are-racing-to-put-guardrails-around-them/

Fernanda Tronco

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.

Newell Brands (NWL) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Company Participants