Procter & Gamble at 2025 dbAccess Global Consumer Conference: Strategic Restructuring

On Thursday, 05 June 2025, Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) presented a strategic overview at the 2025 dbAccess Global Consumer Conference. The company highlighted its consistent growth trajectory and unveiled a new restructuring program aimed at long-term profitability. Despite facing market challenges, P&G remains optimistic about its future growth, emphasizing a balanced approach to top and bottom-line expansion.

Key Takeaways

• P&G reported six consecutive years of at least 4% organic sales growth.
• A new two-year restructuring program will cut up to 7,000 non-manufacturing roles.
• Fiscal Year 2024 saw over $18 billion in sales from Enterprise Markets.
• The company plans to return significant cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.
• Tariff-related headwinds are expected to impact financial results in the near term.

Financial Results

Fiscal Year 2024 marked another successful year for Procter & Gamble, with the company achieving a 4% or better organic sales growth for the sixth consecutive year. In the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 2025, organic sales rose by 2%, aligning with company guidance. Core EPS growth stood at 3%, within the projected 2% to 4% range. The company returned more than $13 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, and announced a 5% dividend increase, marking the 69th consecutive annual rise.

Enterprise Markets were a significant contributor, generating over $18 billion in sales with an average organic sales growth of 8% over the past five years. Margins have improved significantly since Fiscal Year 2019.

Operational Updates

P&G’s new restructuring program aims to streamline operations by reducing up to 7,000 non-manufacturing roles, approximately 15% of the current workforce. This initiative is expected to cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion before tax, with about 25% being non-cash items. The program includes portfolio choices, supply chain restructuring, and organizational design changes.

In terms of portfolio management, P&G exited the Argentina market, restructured operations in Nigeria, and divested several brands in China and Latin America. The company also expanded its business in North America, growing the Native brand from $50 million to $750 million.

Future Outlook

P&G is focusing on growth opportunities across North America, Europe, and Enterprise Markets. In North America, the company sees a potential market growth of up to $5 billion by increasing household penetration. In Europe, there is a $10 billion opportunity by driving consumption and market expansion. Enterprise Markets present a $10 billion to $15 billion sales opportunity by increasing per capita consumption.

The company anticipates a slight slowdown in market growth rates, with a return to 3% to 4% value growth expected over the next 12-18 months. However, tariff-related challenges pose a potential headwind of $0.03 to $0.04 per share in the fourth quarter, with a $600 million pre-tax impact projected for Fiscal Year 2026.

Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, P&G emphasized that the new restructuring program is an extension of previous productivity efforts, aimed at accelerating growth investments. The company believes its current portfolio and strategy can deliver its growth algorithm, focusing on mid-single-digit top line and mid-to-high single-digit EPS growth. P&G does not see the need for major mergers and acquisitions, preferring bolt-on acquisitions in daily-use categories.

Retail inventory dynamics are shifting, with some channels maintaining lighter inventory levels. P&G is leveraging innovation and productivity to manage market volatility and tariff increases effectively.

For more detailed insights, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 2025 dbAccess Global Consumer Conference:

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: Okay. Good morning, and welcome to day three of the twenty second annual Deutsche Bank Global Consumer Conference. We’re we’re thrilled to have you all back, and we’re thrilled especially to welcome Procter and Gamble back to the conference. With us today from P and G are chief financial officer, Andre Shulton, and chief operating officer, Shailesh Jagerakar. Together, Andre and Shailesh will run us through a relatively brief presentation, and then we’ll use the balance of time for some q and a.

And with that, I’m gonna hand it over to Andre.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. I’ll start today with a review of results and then an overview of our strategy. Our chief operating officer, Shailesh Chajurika, will provide an update on enterprise market results and how our integrated growth strategy is improving performance in all markets to drive balanced top and bottom line growth, and then we look forward to answering any questions you might have. Starting with results.

Fiscal year ’twenty four completed six consecutive years of 4% or better organic sales growth. We delivered consistent growth pre COVID during the pandemic across periods of supply chain and inflation challenges and consumption slowdown in key markets. Market level challenges increased in fiscal ’twenty five with higher volatility in the consumer and retail environment. Through March, organic sales are up 2%, in line with guidance provided for the fiscal year in our Q3 earnings release. Growth has been broad based across categories, with nine of 10 categories growing or holding organic sales through the first three quarters of fiscal twenty twenty five.

Organic sales in focus markets are up 2%. Enterprise markets are up 1% fiscal year to date. Five of seven regions held or grew organic sales over this period with well documented market level challenges in Greater China, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Fiscal Year 20 20 4 was our eighth consecutive year of 2% or better core EPS growth, averaging nearly 8% over that period. Through the first three quarters of fiscal twenty twenty five, we delivered 3% core EPS growth at the midpoint of our 2% to 4% guidance range for the fiscal year.

We are continuing our strong track record of cash return to shareowners. Over three quarters, we have returned more than $13,000,000,000 to shareowners through dividends and share repurchase. In April, we announced a 5% increase to our dividend, again reinforcing our commitment to return cash to shareowners. This is the sixty ninth consecutive annual dividend increase and the one hundred and thirty fifth consecutive year in which P and G has paid a dividend. This is the type of long term balanced top and bottom line growth we strive to deliver, solid, consistent growth over time.

Not every quarter, maybe not even every year will be on algorithm, but we want to deliver consistent algorithm top and bottom line growth over two to three year rolling periods. As I mentioned, the point of volatility impacting our business have only increased as the current year has progressed and as we do our detailed financial plan for fiscal year ’twenty six. Catering growth rates in The U. S. Have slowed from around 4% last calendar year to about 2%.

A few European markets have seen similar trends. We’re closely watching China to see if trade tensions and lower exports disrupt the slow recovery we had been seeing. Finally, ongoing tensions in The Middle East, Ukraine and Russia continue to weigh on consumers. Tariffs introduced additional volatility we’re watching closely, including direct costs from moving raw materials and finished products across borders, impacts on foreign exchange and interest rates and potential impacts of nationalistic consumer behavior. Based on tariff rates in effect today, we now expect a headwind of approximately $03 to $04 per per share in the fourth quarter.

On a full year basis for fiscal ’twenty six and based on the tariff rates currently in place, we estimate the headwind to be around $600,000,000 before tax. We are confident in our ability to manage these near term headwinds with our objective of mid- and long term balanced growth and value creation foremost in our minds. As we discussed at our Investor Day last November, we see significant growth opportunities ahead. In North America, we estimate there is up to $5,000,000,000 of market potential in our categories simply by growing household penetration of our brands among currently unserved and underserved consumers. In Europe, driving consumption and growing markets across the region to best in class levels while just maintaining current market share in our existing categories is more than a $10,000,000,000 opportunity.

Enterprise markets have significant opportunity, Driving per capita consumption in our top enterprise markets to levels we currently have in Mexico is a 10,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000 sales opportunity. Positioning ourselves to best capture these growth opportunities and manage the increasing near term challenges benefits from disciplined execution of our integrated growth strategy and even more disciplined resource allocation, human and financial. We continue to be active and demanding managers of our portfolio. You saw examples of these efforts last fiscal year with our decision to exit the Argentina market and restructure our operations in Nigeria. You saw this with the divestiture of the Vidal Sassoon brand in China and a few other local brands in Latin America and Europe.

In parallel, we have acquired and successfully expanded new businesses, growing native from $50,000,000 to now $750,000,000 in North America, creating and expanding the Xevo brand and now launching the Spruce brand. Each of these steps improves our long term growth and value creation potential by focusing resources on the biggest growth opportunities. Another key element of mitigating cost challenges and funding growth opportunities is productivity. We have averaged $1,800,000,000 of productivity across cost of goods sold and SG and A over the past eight years. And we have created three year productivity master plans to support sustainable investment while delivering short term results.

We have piloted simpler, more streamlined organizing principles across markets and categories, creating smaller, more agile and focused teams. We have developed and qualified systems and digital capabilities to support these teams with automation, better data, insights and analytics. We believe we now have the opportunity to step forward to enable the tremendous growth opportunities we have with an even more focused and efficient portfolio, supply network and organization. In fiscal twenty twenty six, we will begin a two year non core restructuring program. This program includes three interdependent elements: portfolio choices, supply chain restructuring and organizational design changes.

The portfolio choices include exits of brands at the category, country and even product form level, which may include some brand divestitures. We are not announcing specific market or brand exits today, but we plan to have more details available on our fiscal year end call in July. We expect the brand and product form discontinuations will be a 30 to 50 basis point headwind to organic sales growth in each of the next two fiscal years. Brand divestitures, as always, will not impact organic sales growth and will flow through core earnings. These portfolio moves enable us to make related interventions in the supply chain, rightsizing, right locating production to drive efficiencies, faster innovation, cost reduction and even more reliable and resilient supply.

In addition, we are now six years into our new focus and enterprise market structure. We see more opportunities to make roads broader and teams smaller, making work more fulfilling, faster and more efficient, leveraging digitization and automation opportunities. In doing this, we expect to reduce up to 7,000 non manufacturing roles or approximately 15% of our current non manufacturing workforce. The productivity benefits from these steps to better focus the portfolio and to streamline our operations and the organization are incremental to what we outlined in Supply Chain three point zero. We estimate the total noncore cost of this program to be in the range of $1,000,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 before tax.

We expect around 25% of these costs will be noncash items, and we remain fully committed to continue our long track record of cash return to shareowners in the form of dividends and share buybacks. This restructuring program is an important step toward ensuring our ability to deliver our long term algorithm over the coming two to three years. It does not, however, remove the near term challenges that we currently face. All the more reason to double down now on the integrated growth strategy that has enabled strong results over the past six plus years, Executing our strategy and accelerating this opportunity, especially under pressure, is our path forward. These strategic choices across portfolio, superiority, productivity, constructive disruption and organization reinforce and build on each other, a portfolio across markets and brands in daily use categories where performance drives brand choice.

Our ongoing commitment to and investment in irresistible superiority through innovation across the five vectors of product, package, brand communication, retail execution, and value is unchanged. No one vector of superiority can carry the day by itself. It’s all five working together. Superior performing products and superior packages provide noticeably better benefits to consumers. They become aware of and learn about these products through superior brand communication.

This comes to life in stores and online with superior retail execution and delivers superior consumer value at a price that is considered worth it across each price tier in which we choose to compete. Delivering superiority across every part of our portfolio is the path to growing categories, providing value to consumers and retailers and creating value for shareowners. We must do this across all price points, all price tiers where we play, all retail channels and all consumer segments we serve. Productivity to fund investment in superiority, mitigate cost and currency headwinds and drive margin expansion. We have opportunities to drive efficiency up and down our P and L and across our balance sheet from cost of goods sold to marketing to partnering with retailers to drive in store and online productivity.

Our two year non core restructuring program will accelerate productivity in all areas of our operations, leveraging the tools and capabilities we have shared in our digitization and supply chain three point zero efforts, which Shailesh will talk more about a little later. We will continue the constructive disruption of ourselves industry changing, adapting, creating new ideas, technologies and capabilities that will extend our competitive advantage. Finally, empowering our highly capable, agile and accountable organization that is ready to step forward to create value for all our consumers, customers and shareowners. Again, we are evolving into the next phase of our organization design with the program that we have just announced today. The strategy is inherently dynamic.

It adapts to the changing needs of consumers, customers and society and the geopolitical dynamics around us. The steps we’re taking with our two year restructuring program accelerate improvements in each element of the strategy. I will now hand it over to Shailesh to talk more about our integrated growth strategy and how it’s improving our ability to deliver our objectives long term, balanced top and bottom line growth.

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: Good morning. I will start with an update on Enterprise Markets. In fiscal year ’twenty four, Enterprise Markets delivered over $18,000,000,000 in sales with average organic sales growth of 8% over the past five years. After tax profits have grown double digits on average over those five years with margins increasing over 1.5 times versus what they were in fiscal year twenty nineteen. Strong, balanced top and bottom line growth.

Growth has been slower in the current fiscal given market headwinds. Enterprise markets bring some unique challenges such as foreign exchange volatility, long supply chains, evolving consumer demographics, and fast changing retail dynamics. These markets require agility, adopting new ways of working to address volatility while continuing to raise the bar on superiority, establishing a long term play on consumption growth and value creation. The opportunity for enterprise markets remains huge as we focus on driving per capita consumption to Mexico’s levels, a 10,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000 sales opportunity with very healthy margin potential. Within this context, where the path to value creation is clear, we will double down on superiority to drive market growth and double down on productivity to fund superiority and improve profitability, not just for enterprise markets but for the total company.

Starting with superiority, to capture the huge market opportunities Andre mentioned across The US, Europe, and enterprise markets requires an elevated focus on absolute superiority in an effort to drive consumption with current consumers and attract more household users. Absolute superior products with performance better than any other alternative for the job to be done across all five vectors. What this means is better consumer insights on what’s required for the specific job to be done, integrated technical capabilities applied across formulated chemistry, assembled products and devices to deliver the superior solution, integrated communication across package, shelf, online and other channels, and at a value that balances price and performance for the consumer and the retailer. Let me share some of our best examples with recent innovations. Oral B, the global market leader in power brushing and the number one dentist recommended brand, launched its most advanced power toothbrush, Oral Bee IO10, early last year.

We followed with IO2, the first IO designed to incent trade up from a manual toothbrush to a power brush by removing the barrier of perceived complexity with a simple one touch start and an accessible price point. Let’s see how Oral B I o delivers a perfect clean for everyone’s unique smile.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: These are my See, a few overlap. Others are straight, crooked, and capped. Oral B electric cleans better with one simple touch. No matter what kind of teeth, you gotta brush. Oral B’s dentist inspired round brush head hugs them, cleans them, gets in between.

Going where regular brushes don’t reach, so teeth get a % better clean. These are my teeth, the key to my look. And here’s how I perfectly clean every nook. Your perfect clean starts with Oral B.

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: The combination of premium and entry point innovation is working well with global Oral B power brush share up 130 basis points and driving market growth of 6% current fiscal year to date. The antiperspirants and deodorants category is highly penetrated in Latin America with over 90% market penetration. Sprays represent the most relevant form across the region, accounting for approximately 60% of the market. However, seven out of 10 consumers claim that deodorant has failed them in the past two weeks. Recognizing this opportunity, we developed a strong innovation program for both male and female segments, delivering superior odor protection.

We commercialized this with superior consumer communication. Take a look. In the last five years, we have doubled our Latin American antiperspirant and deodorant business through excellent execution of our superiority strategy. We have gained value share while also being the top contributor to category growth, achieving three times more than our fair share over the past twelve months. SK II recently launched a supercharged product line called LXP.

It contains eight times the concentration of Patera and is positioned in the super premium segment of the prestige skin market. This superior product in a beautiful package sold online and in department stores with upgraded counters and beauty counsellors is a superior shopping experience and value for the Pitera loving loyal consumer. The superior LXP messaging has the added benefit of haloing over the total SK II brand and is building brand equity through consistent recognition from top beauty award groups. Since September, SK II’s domestic consumption in China is both ahead of year ago and ahead of the market and is accelerating in our recent Q3 results. SKTU continues to lead category growth, especially in key consumption periods.

While the China market challenges are not over, we are confident that our focus on superiority across the board will strengthen results going forward. Over the past few years, laundry loads in The UK have become larger, shorter and washed at colder temperatures. At the same time, laundry machines have gotten bigger, now often exceeding the capacity that single dose products were designed for. As a result, less than 25% of The UK consumers are satisfied with their current laundry cleaning results. To address the changing consumer needs, we recently launched Ariel’s Big One Pods.

The Big One Pods are larger and provide twice the stain and odour removal of regular Ariel Pods and with the added benefit of a built in pretreatment. Aerial’s big pods are designed to tackle tougher loads, offering the peace of mind that clothes will get the maximum aerial clean at all temperatures. We supported the launch of the superior renovation with superior communication, partnering with the local brand ambassador Peter Crouch, a British ex footballer, iconically known for his size, to spread the word that with Ariel the big one, big messes really are no big deal. Let’s watch.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: The big one from Ariel is way bigger than a regular pot. Big mess. Big deal. Big spill. Big deal.

Big land, him. Big deal. Big deal. The big one from Ariel. With double stain and odor removal, all those big messes really are no Big deal.

The big one, new from Ariel. Always keep away from children.

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: Since launch, we have seen Ariel, the Big One, grow to 10% of our pods business and contribute over 60% of the total category growth, and we are currently expanding to additional European markets. What these examples have in common is absolute superiority across all five vectors. To deliver absolute superiority at this level, we must continuously invest in our capabilities to create and extend Delight in the most efficient and effective manner. This is where superiority and productivity intersect in our integrated strategy. I’ll highlight a few capabilities we have built to be more efficient while also more effective.

Absolute superior brand communications requires superior reach, effectiveness and efficiency. We are increasingly using programmatic and algorithm based media buying to enable brands to reach the widest range of consumers where they are most receptive to our brand messages. Our proprietary Consumer three sixty data platform enables brands to use target audience algorithms to serve ads at the right frequency each week all year round, more effective reach and more cost efficient. As a result, in the past five years, U. S.

Average media reach has increased from 64% to 80% and Europe is up to 75%. We are driving advertising effectiveness starting with superior consumer insights and leveraging AI as a tool to deliver superior content creation. We’re improving efficiency using AI tools for ad testing, improving quality, cost and speed. ETS can now be tested and optimized in just a few days versus weeks at one tenth the cost versus prior methods. To deliver superior retail execution, we are combining a wealth of point of sale data with millions of retail shelf images to recommend optimized shelf design for retailers.

Our proprietary tools including programmatic shelf enable us to analyze assortment online and offline both to drive efficiency for retail and create a superior shopping experience for consumers. We are also using digital tools to optimize online content and to automatically adjust search ad buying. These tools are yielding stronger brand communication placed more efficiently and effectively close to the point of consumer purchase. Supply chain is critical to deliver superior quality products with superior execution to our retailers, while also being one of our biggest sources of productivity. Our Supply Chain three point zero efforts are focused on extending supply excellence from our suppliers to our customers all the way to retail shelves.

We are investing in advanced supply planning technologies to better anticipate consumer demand and adjust production and inventory levels accordingly, helping minimize stock outs, overproduction and waste. We have enhanced collaboration across retailers and suppliers through these unified digital platforms, facilitating real time information sharing and decision making, driving shelf availability, but just as important, building trust and enabling joint value creation for future years. Across our production lines, automation technologies continue to play a key role in accelerating supply chain progress in our manufacturing sites. We are now at the stage where real time vision cameras on manufacturing lines are able to capture visual data and apply advanced algorithms to analyze products for superior quality. Gone are the days when we could only check the quality of a case picked from the production line every half an hour.

An amazing opportunity to eliminate human touches and risk of error driving productivity while delivering superior quality in every unit produced. In our warehouse operations, we are on a multiyear journey to transform and connect our network of warehousing. In Europe, our warehousing center of excellence will serve as a hub for our 50 distribution centers, coordinating warehousing activity from the moment a truck enters the gate until it leaves. The central coordination is delivering 50% productivity on our indirect administrative work by eliminating redundant positions at each individual site. Let’s take a look inside the Orchestration Room.

Unidentified speaker: Great day today in Athens for our Greek and total beautiful European results. I’m sitting here in the Orchestration Room from which state of the art technologies, we are coordinating the supply of most of our distribution centers operation in a time, real time database manner, step changing our capabilities for wonderful growth and value creation in Europe. Proud captain of our Orchestration Room.

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: We have expectations for Supply Chain three point o. It targets 98% on shelf and online availability all the time with a runway of up to $1,500,000,000 before tax in gross productivity savings every year and 90% of free cash flow productivity, all to enable us to exceed our total shareholder return targets. Each of these superiority and productivity examples are important elements of our plans as we strive to deliver our top and bottom line growth objectives. Those, along with our focused portfolio, constructive disruption and agile and accountable organization, give us confidence in our ability to achieve our objectives. The two year restructuring plan Andrea outlined will serve to accelerate our progress.

Thank you. And with that, we’ll be happy to take your questions.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: Okay. Thank you both. Let’s let’s start with the the the new news. And, Shailesh, at at last year’s conference, I asked you about your confidence and line of sight into the company’s productivity pipeline, And the answer was you had high confidence and high visibility. And that, you know, that carried forward through your Investor Day.

So I my I guess my first question is, to what extent is this new program, you know, continuation of that and sort of evolutionary versus is really new and incremental and where it

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: came from? I think it came first and foremost, as we were talking earlier, Steve, from the need for growth. So when we look at what’s changed over the past twelve months, I would say there was a fair amount or at least some tailwind, you could argue, because of market growth. I think that’s kind of diminished to the point where I’m not sure there is a tailwind. You could argue there are more headwinds.

So the first need was, okay, what does it take to create our own tailwinds? And we have an amazing lineup of innovation portfolio opportunities. So the first thing was, okay, what does it take to accelerate and create our own growth, create our own tailwinds, and we knew we needed more, ability to invest. We had been working on all the things mentioned, whether it’s supply chain, whether it’s organizational construct and portfolio. In many cases, with changes in landscape, asking ourselves, if we were entering a market today, what would our portfolio look like?

So we had been working those different pieces, but the need to accelerate investment in growth accelerated the need on productivity. Got it.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: Got it. Your question, Steve, maybe just to add, Shneur, if I May. The program is incremental. Yeah. So everything we’ve outlined before, the 1,500,000,000.0 in cost of goods sold, half a billion in marketing media efficiencies, etcetera, are still there.

What we’re doing now is incremental to that because the growth opportunity at Shailesh, we see as largely significant, $2,025,000,000,000 market growth we need to capture. And the innovation pipeline to do that has never been strong. So just the opportunity to accelerate that innovation pipeline, make the right investments and capture that growth opportunity, I think, created the urgency in the organization to say, now is the time. Great.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: And part of it is evolution of the organizational framework and structure. I didn’t sense any change in the actual designation of focus versus enterprise markets. Just wanna confirm That is correct. Okay. Know, Andre, I think, you know, coming into the conference, there’s a lot of conversation around with respect to P and G around whether the superiority strategy that has been so powerful for seven years now had maybe run its course, you know, as people looked at the organic growth going from seven to four to two year to date and recent global market share performance being a little bit soft.

And that led to questions of its its runway and whether or not P and G needed to do something different, and that provoked a lot of conversation around transformational M and A and so on and so forth. What I heard today was, as I think you used the words doubling down, doubling or tripling down on superiority strategy. Maybe you could just, you know, address that and address as part of that, address your your your thoughts on M and A specifically.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: Well, I think to be clear, we believe that delivering our growth algorithm, mid single digits top line, mid to high single CPS, 90% free cash flow productivity or higher is is absolutely feasible with the existing portfolio and enabled by the current strategy. If you just look at our categories, so the the daily use categories we are in, the consumer satisfaction in those categories, while we believe we are probably at the upper end of delighting consumers, it’s not perfect or even close to perfect in any of these categories. In the fem care categories, more than fifty percent of of women complain about not feeling as secure as they wanna feel. Diapers still leak. More than thirty percent of diapers still experience leakages overnight.

Only 25% of consumers are happy with their laundry regimen in terms of cleanliness and order experience. So from a pure consumer standpoint, there is way more room to delight than we’ve even endeavored so far. That creates opportunity to drive household penetration. Our products, even in the most developed region, North America in The US, our home market, Tide, our biggest brand is only in 40% Bounty, 30% of households.

Cascade, a little bit above 30%. So the household penetration opportunity is huge. Enterprise markets, Shailesh mentioned, the opportunity there is even higher at very healthy margins. So consumer delight is a big potential. Household penetration as a result of delighting consumers better is a big potential.

And then I pair that up with the innovation capability that we have. You you recall we talked about resetting the base of superiority from 85% to 30%, and everyone was scratching their head, like, what what in the world does that mean? What that meant was a inspiration to the organization to go faster, innovate faster, fill the pipeline up with more ideas, more consumer insights, double down on friction points that we can solve for our consumers, and that’s what the organization did. And we are now in a position where when we look at that pipeline of innovation that we have, it is truly the best and truly tailored to those opportunities, so delighting consumers, driving household penetration. And then the only bridge we needed to build was how can we afford execution of that pipeline at an accelerated pace while delivering the EPS expectation that you all have of us.

And the only answer was accelerated productivity.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: Okay. And this and the stance of the company on on m and a?

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: I think m and a we will always look at m and a. We’ve done very successful bolt on acquisitions. I mentioned Native, which we acquired at $50,000,000 sales, and then we expanded to now 750,000,000. I think that’s the predominant strategy. Brands that are rooted in daily use categories that have a true benefit space that we can extend, that’s our path.

There is no need for transformational M and A in in our growth strategy, and you’ll notice it’s not part of our growth strategy. We don’t have M and A as a as a key building block, so it is not required for us to deliver our growth objectives.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: Great. Maybe in the time we have left, you know, when we last spoke to you in April, very dynamic environment, remains dynamic in different ways, but still dynamic. Maybe just update us on what you’re seeing kind of in the current environment, consumption trends. There’s a lot of retailer destocking concerns in the last quarter. Where we are as we roll through the fourth quarter?

Shailesh Jagerakar, Chief Operating Officer, Procter and Gamble: Yeah. So on on consumption trends, as Andrew mentioned earlier itself, I think we are seeing a slowdown in the market growth rates of anywhere from one to two points depending on the region. Definitely, US and Europe are about a couple of points lower than what they were six months or a year back. So that is definitely one of the factors that’s at play. Retail inventory, depending on except for something like healthcare, which is heavily dependent on seasonality, and there is some element of that which happens.

But otherwise, a big chunk of it is linked to changing retail dynamics, which means some channels are just lighter on inventory in the way they operate. And if they become larger, then the weighted average inventory is going to be lower. So we are seeing some of that happen as well and continue to happen in many places. So reorientation of the channel mix is a factor that’s playing up on inventory. And there is some element not on our categories, but generally of in some businesses, retailers stocking up ahead of tariffs.

And that puts some cash constraints. Okay.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: So I think short term volatility, as Shailesh said, is definitely there. Let me take the longer term part. Think our categories will return to 3%, four % value growth. That’s where they’ve been. I think we’ve seen a cycle of accelerated growth because of pricing dynamics and inflation dynamics.

We see now a deceleration because of uncertainty in the consumer space, all of the tariff conversations, geopolitical uncertainty. I think over the next twelve, eighteen months, we expect the markets to return to 3% to 4%. It won’t be steady by quarter, but on a year basis, that’s where we expect it to be.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: In in the couple of minutes we have left, you know, as we I far too early to pinpoint fiscal twenty six for sure. But as as you roll through the end of fiscal twenty five, can articulate a little bit about your just your approach to planning in this environment? And maybe provide any kind of framework for us as investors in terms of how to think about ’twenty six. I think the tariff number you cited today was about half of what you said in April. Obviously, that’s a moving target.

But just just any kind of building blocks would be great.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: I think the the biggest building block the the the best way to plan in a highly volatile environment like this is to maximize the levers that are in our control. And what that means is to maximize the amount of innovation that we can push out into the market with the right amount of pricemix behind better value for the consumer and for the retailer. And the second component is maximize the investment flexibility via productivity. That’s, I think, what you see in in our actions as we announced them today. And everything else, we will have to react to where the market is going.

If the consumption reaccelerates, fantastic. It gives us even more fuel to accelerate innovation and support the innovation as we go in market. If market consumption stays muted and tariffs increase, the productivity will help us to maintain the flow of innovation and deliver EPS. So that’s what we’re trying to do, create flexibility in the p and l so we can deal with either of these scenarios, and I think the range will be wide. Okay.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: Fair enough. We have one number in it. So in terms of the the the fuel that you’re creating over the next couple of years, what’s you know, when does this program start? When the when does the fuel build? You know, do we have how much fuel we have in ’26 versus fuel for ’27?

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: I think just logically, the intent of the organization, and this is not led by a corporate effort. This is run by every CEO, every business unit, every region. And the the the great news is every region wants to get through this as fast as possible. So I think the majority of this will be executed next fiscal year, which means the majority of the benefit, though, will flow into the following fiscal year. So that’s as much clarity I can give you right now.

But I think the really, the momentum is let’s get this going and execute it ASAP in fiscal twenty six. Perfect.

Steve, Host, Deutsche Bank: And with that, we’re right at time. So I wanna thank Andre. Thanks, Shailesh. Thank you all, and enjoy the rest of the conference.

Andre Shulton, Chief Financial Officer, Procter and Gamble: Alright. Thank you.

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