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Consumer Defensive - Household & Personal Products - NYSE - US
$ 169.54
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$ 399 B
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29.23
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EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2018 - Q2
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Executives

Jon Moeller - CFO.

Analysts

Wendy Nicholson - Citi Olivia Tong - Bank of America Merrill Lynch Bill Chappell - SunTrust Steve Powers - Deutsche Bank Lauren Lieberman - Barclays Ali Dibadj - Bernstein Dara Mohsenian - Morgan Stanley Bonnie Herzog - Wells Fargo Kevin Grundy - Jefferies Jonathan Feeney - Consumer Edge Research Andrea Teixeira - JPMorgan Joe Altobello - Raymond James Jon Andersen - William Blair.

Operator

Good morning and welcome to Procter & Gamble's Quarter End Conference Call. P&G would like to remind you that today's discussion will include a number of forward-looking statements.

If you will refer to P&G's most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K reports, you will see a discussion of factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these projections.

Also, as required by Regulation G, Procter & Gamble needs to make you aware that during the discussion, the company will make a number of references to non-GAAP and other financial measures.

Procter & Gamble believes these measures provide investors with useful perspective on the underlying growth trends of the business and has posted on its Investor Relations website, www.pginvestor.com, a full reconciliation of non-GAAP and other financial measures. Now, I will turn the call over to P&G's Chief Financial Officer, Jon Moeller..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

superiority, productivity, organization and culture when we're together in a few weeks at CAGNY. Let me move now to guidance for fiscal 2018. We're maintaining the organic sales growth guidance range of 2% to 3% which will require further top-line acceleration in the back half of the year in a highly competitive and dynamic marketplace.

We expect fiscal 2018 all-in sales growth of around 3%. This includes a modest net benefit from the combination of foreign exchange and acquisitions and divestitures. We're raising the top end of our core earnings per share guidance range shifting from a range of 5% to 7% to a range of 5% to 8%.

We're raising the upper end of the range by a point to reflect the benefit from the Tax Act which I outlined earlier. It's not entirely clear what competitive dynamics are going to be in response to the Act. We're maintaining the bottom end of the range to reflect that uncertainty that still exists around these dynamics in our categories.

We now expect the core effective tax rate on the year to be in the range of 22.5% to 23%. Looking further forward, we expect ongoing core effective tax rate in the range of 21% to 22% starting in fiscal 2019. As I've indicated earlier, the changes included in the Tax Act are broad and complex.

The charges we have booked for the non-core impacts and the core effective rate may ultimately differ from our current estimates and require true-up. There is still potential for changes and regulatory interpretation of Tax Act Provisions.

There may be legislative actions that arise because of the Act and our estimates of the impacts may change as we refine our calculations for earnings and exchange rates for our foreign subsidiaries. Now as you think about top-line for the remaining two quarters, please remember that the Gillette price reductions won't anniversary until Q4.

We're also facing several additional near term top-line pressures including the Algerian ban on finished product imports that I mentioned, and recent VAT increase, an increase in reduced subsidies for energy and utilities in Saudi Arabia, one of our top 15 markets which will pressure near term consumption as we have clearly seen in the month of January.

As you think about our earnings per share for the remaining two quarters, there will be little to no impact, little to no benefit from tax reform. The benefit from the phased-in tax rate will be offset by lost credits and deductions in higher interest and operating expenses.

On a before tax basis we expect much stronger earnings growth in Q4 than in Q3. Recall that the third quarter base period benefited from several non-recurring gains including the sales of an office building in Mexico and transition services income from the beauty divestiture.

We plan to deliver another year of 90% or better adjusted free cash flow productivity. This includes CapEx in the range of 5% to 5.5% of sales. We will continue our strong track record of cash returned to shareholders. We expect to pay nearly $7.5 billion in dividends this year.

We're increasing our fiscal '18 share repurchase outlook from a range of $4 billion to $7 billion to a range of $6 billion to $8 billion, reflecting strong operating cash flow, continued working capital progress, and the cash benefit enabled by the Tax Act.

Combined we will return between $13.5 billion and $15.5 billion of value to shareowners this fiscal following $22 billion last year.

Our efforts to focus on strengthening our portfolio to extend our margin of competitive superiority to transform our supply chain to enhance our industry-leading margins to simplify our organizational structure and increase accountability are all aimed at delivering balanced top and bottom line growth that creates value over the short, mid, and long-term.

Our results for the second quarter were in line with our expectations and keep us on track for the fiscal year. As I just mentioned we're maintaining top-line guidance reflecting the help from the Tax Act and the guidance range on the bottom line and are increasing our share repurchase assumptions. With that, I would now be happy to take questions..

Operator

Thank you, sir. [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Wendy Nicholson with Citi..

Wendy Nicholson

Hi good morning. Could you address the Baby Care business specifically, the weakness there surprised me because at least in track channels, your market share has actually looked pretty good.

So I'm wondering number one was the weakness more international specifically can you talk about how the diaper launch is doing in China and what your plans are specifically in Baby Care to get volume growth growing again? Thank you..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Sure, Wendy. Let me start with China. Our plans there behind the new initiatives are largely on track. We built share during the quarter in the Premium segment of the tape form and we continue to do very well both in the premium priced tier and the mid priced tiers with the pants business.

We've grown from number five player on pants to the number one player on pants which is by far the fastest growing form of the category. As you know in China, we had a large mid-tier business and that business is declining versus year ago.

We've taken some actions recently to adjust the rate of that decline but we've made some specific choices in terms of putting our priority in those premium segments and in the pant segment which are growing real faster over the long-term and are more profitable.

In the U.S., as we've talked before which is obviously the largest market for us in diapers along with China, there continues to be significant retail competition which is forcing prices down to consumers while that doesn't change the price that we necessarily sell products through to these retail channels it starts driving price points in the marketplace lower which affects businesses like Luvs.

So Luvs has much more competition than it has historically had and that's been coupled as well by strong pricing, strong price points on the behalf of branded competitors. So we've made some changes in our Luvs pricing as well to respond to those realities. We have a pretty exciting second half in terms of innovation in Baby Care.

I talked during the call about the Pampers Pure launch which we're very excited about and we're continuing to drive innovation in the Pant segment across the world. So work still to do, I think the China dynamic will remain with us for some time, we will continue to grow faster at the top end in pants.

Over time, offset in mid-tier particularly with some of the actions we've taken will diminish. We hope to be growing that business by the end of the fiscal year and clearly we hope to be growing Pampers on a global basis as we complete the year..

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Olivia Tong with Bank of America Merrill Lynch..

Olivia Tong

Good morning, thanks. With respect to the tax benefit in the past you said you aren't suffering from a lack of ideas. So I’m a bit surprised that you're increasing the share repurchase plan.

So as you think about it what sort of the plan longer-term for some of the benefits that you get from a lower tax rate because as I think about where you could potentially put that and price actually turned negative for the first time in a while, so you're not under investing in price and then also within that, I'm just curious where M&A potentially fits in as well? Thank you..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Thanks, Olivia. We've been very clear about our intention to invest in superiority across the five touch points which we talked earlier today.

That's primarily going to be focused on product, package, communication, and in-store, but where we need to sharpen value equations either at the consumer at the retail level that could also be a target for investment.

We intend to continue to keep the bottom-line growing and to be growing margins through productivity which will both provide the fuel for reinvestment and for margin improvement. We really, as I've talked about many, many times before don't view pricing and promotion as high on the list in terms of our options to grow the business.

We'll do it when we need to do it but there's nothing proprietary in promotion, there's nothing proprietary in price. We would much rather invest in items that where we can derive proprietary benefits over long periods of time.

You mentioned the price impact on the quarter, we've held or grown price inclusive of promotion for 28 consecutive quarters until the one we just completed and for 13 consecutive years. So the preponderance of the evidence in terms of our intentionality around pricing remains.

Most of the impact in the quarter we just completed was Gillette which as you know, anniversaries itself in April. And then I talked as well in the answer to Wendy’s question about the pricing that we've taken on Luvs.

But generally we're going to be continuing to invest in the business, driving superiority, driving sustainable competitive advantage, doing it in a responsible way, driving margin simultaneously..

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Bill Chappell with SunTrust..

Bill Chappell

Thanks, good morning. Hey Jon going back, could you just talk a little bit more about the impact in the quarter on growth, I think you talked about a retail destocking in Algeria, just maybe a little more color on those two issues.

Would they have any impact as we move into 3Q or 4Q and do you see any other especially on the inventory destock affecting 3Q or 4Q?.

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Sure. So the first thing we mentioned was the pricing impact for Gillette which as you know will roll off in Q4 and that was 30 basis points of impact within the quarter. It would still be with us next quarter but then it will anniversary itself. The second thing we've talked about was 40 basis points impact of U.S. retail inventory reductions.

And I obviously won't get into specific customers but in one of our large customers for example spell through another words sale of their products in P&G, P&G Brands was up 1% in the month of December sales to that customer were down 3.5%.

So you see a significant contraction in inventory that's happening there and we're seeing that fairly broadly across the board. We expect that will continue into the next quarter because most of the retailer's fiscal year ends are in January.

Obviously that's not a well that's I wouldn't expect that trend to disappear, it's not it's largely a one-time item and shouldn’t be affecting us at that level of magnitude going forward. So there should be some pickup there.

The Algerian situation isn't a retail inventory situation, it's a government regulation situation where they have forbidden the import of finished product in our categories and most of our business in Algeria supplied through import.

We expect that situation but we're obviously working many alternatives and working very productively with the authorities but we expect that to continue to be a constraint in the third quarter..

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank..

Steve Powers

Great, thanks good morning. Jon I was hoping you could just unpack the negative margin mix a bit more in the quarter with China presumably better, Skin Care, SK-II better, baby worse are expected out of expected margins should be a bit better? Grooming declines notwithstanding.

So could you just I guess elaborate on where the incremental mix headwinds are coming from perhaps as it relates to the U.S.

inventory reductions but I'm just really trying to understand how mixes could evolve over the balance of the year and I guess above and beyond that whether what you called out as negative mix is maybe better described as another form of reinvestment above and beyond the pricing adjustments and the investments in innovation that you've mentioned.

So just I guess in a nutshell where is the negative mix coming from and how is it likely to evolve from here? Thanks..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Sure, Steve. The simplest way to think about it is at the level of geographic mix. We delivered over 2% organic sales growth on the quarter. The U.S. was about 1%, slightly over 1% with the balance obviously growing faster than that and as you know our margins in the U.S. are much higher than the balance.

We expect in the prior question I talked about, most of those headwinds being U.S. centric i.e. Gillette pricing and the retail inventory reductions. So we would expect absent any other changes to accelerate our growth rate in the U.S. in the back half which should mitigate may not eliminate but mitigate the margin difference.

Remember historically whenever we've been in a position where the balance of the world is growing at a faster rate than the U.S., there typically is a negative some element of negative margin mix.

Now we're working hard obviously from a productivity standpoint and in pricing where it's appropriate behind more superior offerings clearly doing that in China to mitigate that impact going forward. But in large part it was for the quarter geographic mix..

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Lauren Lieberman with Barclays..

Lauren Lieberman

I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the Gillette innovation.

I'm more surprised there is kind of no mention of it, so a lot of new products are unprecedented coming to market, if you could talk a little bit about retailers to port marketing plans when we should start to see that and particularly in terms of retailer anyone that's particularly getting behind it and what we should be watching for? Thanks..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

So first of all, let me just talk about the business in total in the U.S. in grooming, generally the intervention plan that we've put in place is working very well. We grew volume for the third straight quarter on the U.S.

male shave care business, quarter we just completed volume was up 6% for the category with male shave up 8% and the volume share trends are also improving with share growing 0.6 points in the last quarter.

We've just brought the new items to market and are beginning to the commercialization activities behind them; retailer uptake on those items has been encouraging, but really nothing to report from an off-take standpoint yet..

Operator

Next we'll go to Ali Dibadj with Bernstein..

Ali Dibadj

Hi guys. So I wanted to go back to pricing again and I totally appreciate we got to see the 28 quarters of flat to positive pricing.

But the pricing trend has clearly been a bit downwards and arguably you've been pricing below your combined kind of market inflation rates for years now? And then of course this quarter is a negative price, while commodities are going up.

And so this kind of pricing down and commodities up to be fair, isn't inconsistent with what we're seeing from your competitors either right, so I'm not blaming you just to be clear at least not this time. Your CPG pricing not keeping up with inflation seems to be kind of the trend now.

So I'm trying to get a better sense of from an industry perspective as you guys see it, what's driving that, I mean is it the retailers especially in the U.S. really pushing back, is that the consumer saying gosh these are commoditized.

Is it fragmentation or commoditization it's going to be combination of those but if you can elaborate and do you kind of think that's the new world we're living in here that's the new reality for CPG that that investor should be concerned about pricing power much less than it was before or do you think this is a transition and we're just going to get through this and everything's going to be fine later on.

So thank you for that..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Sure. There is a lot within that. Let me go piece by piece. As it relates to the relationship between pricing and commodities, well commodity costs are increasing and they are clearly affecting both our gross margin, our bottom line as we outlined. They have not increased to the point where typically pricing can be taken and hold and held.

We're still at a point where if we were to reflect the commodity costs and pricing they would result in price increases that would be relatively modest and that typically wouldn't either A be followed or B be pass-through on shelf.

So that's part of the dynamic that you're seeing there and I would assume that's true for other companies though that I won't -- I won't comment on that. In general, slow market growth which we currently face also leads to more competitive behavior in terms of pricing.

And that's why in many -- in many ways we've chosen to focus our portfolio where we have which is in categories where performance drives brand choice and why we're doubling down on advantage within those categories to ensure that that performance advantage is clear and noticeable to consumers.

We see in many parts of the world, including the U.S., including China, significant growth still at the high end of the market and many categories more growth at the high end than in the low end. So I think you're absolutely right to point to this as a pain point kind of in the immediate present.

I think our strategy is designed to find the best path to a better place which is higher category growth driven by products that deliver higher benefit for consumers and I don't see pricing as it's having gone through the sea shift that should reflect your view on the industry long-term..

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dara Mohsenian with Morgan Stanley..

Dara Mohsenian

Hey good morning. So Jon, if you look at divisional profit ex-corporate expense, it was flat year-over-year in Q2 after a decline in Q1.

As you just talked about pricing was negative in the quarter for the first time in more than seven years, so I think commodity pressure as you look going forward you guys have spent a lot of time, money and effort in turning around market share and driving improved performance there, is there any shift going forward in terms of how you drive profit growth.

Any strategy tweaks in terms of accelerating cost cutting, taking greater pricing et cetera, how should we think about sort of the balance between market share focus and profit growth going forward?.

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

We believe as you know in a balanced approach, we think it's the only way to sustainably build value in this industry over periods of time, we need to be growing our top-line both our markets and our market shares. At the same time, we need to be growing margin.

These strategic initiatives and focus areas that I talked about earlier both productivity and the doubling down on competitive advantage and superiority both works in our favor in that regard going forward. So everything that we're doing as I mentioned in the prepared remarks is designed to drive both in a balanced way.

We have more work to do as your question obviously points out, I mentioned for example going even much further in the area of advertising, strengthening our programs, increasing reach, but really making a serious effort to eliminate costs that just aren't serving anybody's purpose in that space.

We're doing that across the income statement, across the balance sheet, but it continues to be a very, very significant focus..

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bonnie Herzog with Wells Fargo..

Bonnie Herzog

Thank you, good morning. I have a question on your market share Jon, it does sound like broadly your market share losses continue to persist.

So could you update us on your thoughts as to when you expect to stabilize your shares and then ultimately to increase them, is it realistic to expect to see this by the end of FY '18? And then you did talk a lot about continued investments, so it does seem like you need to increase investments in R&D and then advertising to begin to gain market share and just if that is in fact true, could you just give us a sense to the expected increases for both? Thank you..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

We did increase advertising in the quarter to be clear, we're up about 2%, I continue to expect that we're going to be investing in both R&D and advertising, we're obviously just constructing our plans for next fiscal year. So I don't really have any specifics to share with you there.

But its part and parcel of again a very focused around on daily use categories more performance solves -- drives brand choice and product solve problems. We want to be in a superior position both from a communications standpoint and from a product efficacy standpoint in each of those.

And as I've indicated, I do believe that our productivity efforts give us the ability to do just that while simultaneously building margins.

In terms of market share, we expect to be growing, if you just look at the guidance we've delivered call it 1.5% organic sales growth to-date to get to the 2% to 3% guidance range for the year requires acceleration in the back half. Our markets are growing about 2.5% on an average, so we would expect to get there in the back half of the year.

Obviously though what you're going to see which you're painfully aware of may look something somewhat different than that not in terms of aggregate results but in the track channel numbers simply because there's so much more growth occurring in the non-tracked channels where we're building a disproportionate share.

But of course we our objective is to hold and build share in all channels..

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Grundy with Jefferies..

Kevin Grundy

Thanks, good morning, Jon.

I wanted to pick up on the last question with respect to category growth which it sounds like you still expect 2.5% so that's unchanged in the prior call? Could you talk a little bit about emerging markets broadly, it sounds like some of your competitors are talking about perhaps we found a bottom here if not some slight improvement but that doesn't sound like your expectation.

So maybe you can talk a little bit about that and then just secondarily do you expect any benefit from a consumer perspective with respect to individual tax rates moving lower and given the company's premium SKUs. So any commentary there would be helpful? Thanks..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

Sure. If you look at developing market category growth, it's around last quarter was around 5.5% and that's up a little bit, we saw an increase an uptick in December. We saw the same thing in developed markets.

So I'm hopeful though I don't have any kind of a crystal ball here in front of me that that maybe we have seen the nadir in terms of market growth rates. With the growth of the global economy is pretty much everywhere which of course can come unhinged at any moment.

That also bodes well but we're basically forecasting market growth in line with most recent history i.e. the last couple of quarters and will be beneficiaries if it comes in better than that. But I don't get too excited obviously over a move in one month i.e.

the month of December but if you had to state the future on that one month, it is a slightly better picture than I've done the case previously.

Obviously to the extent that disposable income increases as a result of the Tax Act for some consumers, we would hope that that plays through into higher consumption and we do think that that there's a chance we could disproportionately benefit from that given as you rightly point out that many of our products do require slightly higher outlay..

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Feeney with Consumer Edge Research..

Jonathan Feeney

Good morning, thanks very much. It’s with great reputation that say I’m following up on Ali's question but going after pricing a little bit, I wanted -- you look at your strategy it seems to be kind of somewhat of a counterpoint to a strategy that's prevalent in food and particularly 3G and Kraft Heinz, which has been whole wave.

Many other areas are staples too. You could look at and Anheuser-Busch taking price at the expense of volumes, segmenting the market reaching more for premium consumers and trying to get people to pay more and there is a lot in there, there's relationship with retailers. Why I ask right now is this segmentation which it appears to be in U.S.

grooming seems to set you up to do something like that in that particular category and I'm wondering if that's a fair interpretation where you can now maybe price a little bit better, it may reach and try to grab more of that value to consumers presumably you're bringing a lot more value to and are there other pockets of your maybe portfolio where similar strategy is warranted or maybe I'm even off base in interpreting that way? Any comments you have would be helpful on all those lines.

Thank you..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

I don't think you're at all off base and again our strategy which focuses on building advantage should allow us to do exactly which you described and you see that playing out through many parts of the product portfolio.

If you just look at some of the examples we talked about earlier that's Tide PODS or scent beads or dryer sheets those are all premium offerings on a price per use basis.

The same is true with the item that we're dramatically changing the category growth rate within adult incontinence which is this new boutique underwear, I mean that's a clear move to further capture more value in the category.

So the strategy sets us up very well to do exactly what you describe we need to do it in an intelligent way, we need to do it in a way which builds value for shareholders, the combination of price and performance and we'll continue to get out that.

I mean you don't build price for 28 consecutive quarters and then walk away from it, that's not we're headed here but there will be times when again in response to other moves that have been made, we need to maintain our competitiveness in the market and we're just not going to accept significant share loss from not doing that..

Operator

Next we'll go to Andrea Teixeira with JPMorgan..

Andrea Teixeira

Hi, good morning. So Jon, I just want to go back to exactly this question. And just to balance the top-line growth and the margin and can you please comment on the additional cash investments on that line on pricing and price mix.

From your new EPS guidance that now includes a much lower tax rate, it seems that you became more conservative on how the cost saves will flow into the bottom line. So especially in the core operating margin perspective as you take out obviously as you decompose your guidance, is that a reflection of this competitive environment U.S.

Baby and the destocking from retailer that you just mentioned, so or EM is taking longer to show results despite a pickup in beauty. So I just want to -- so I just want to think about strategically as you step back and you're going to invest more in prices in other categories should recovery share besides what you did for grooming and Luvs.

So wanted to kind of elaborate more on that? Thank you..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

First of all any Tax Act related impact is future focused, this is only effective as of January 1st and we're sitting here today talking about results through December 31.

If you just think about where we've taken our guidance as a result of the tax change, we took it from 5% to 7% to 5% to 8% up so there is no change in terms of the inherent amount of reinvestment that's planned. All we've changed in our guidance number is reflects the fact that there's a lower tax rate.

Our strategy has not changed in terms of how we intend to compete, how we want to be building markets not diluting markets, nothing there has changed. Broadly the competitive environment is not significantly changed.

I mean for example just look at private label as a metric as to whether there's a big trade down that's occurring within the consumer set, private label last three years in Europe has been flat as a pancake.

That's the largest private label market in the world, there are categories where it increases from time to time but generally we're not seeing a reason to chase lower prices as a result of private label.

In North America, over those three year periods private label is up 0.2 share points, it's up in three categories currently and in two of those categories we're building share.

So I do not see, I do not expect at all a change in our focus and strategy to deliver value accretive offerings which drive market growth and our market share disproportionately as part of that, all while increasing margins..

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Altobello with Raymond James..

Joe Altobello

Hey guys, good morning. Just a couple of quick ones, I guess first on China, I'm not sure Jon if you gave us a growth number for this quarter.

I think last quarter was up eight but that had about two points of pull forward ahead of the Singles' Day? And then secondly in beauty clearly a standout this quarter, how sustainable is the positive mix benefit you're seeing in the beauty segment? Thanks..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

So China up, you rightly pointed out was up eight last quarter, it was up six in the quarter that we just completed and some really strong so well on track for our mid-single-digits estimate for the year.

Some really strong progress in parts of the beauty business, some really strong progress in grooming, strong progress in laundry, feminine care was up double-digits, so overall very, very good. In terms of the positive mix or let me take the question a different way, do we think that SK-II growth is sustainable certainly at attractive levels? Yes.

More importantly, the balance of the beauty business continues to be very healthy. I mentioned Olay growth -- or I may not but Olay grew 3% in China for the quarter. Overall global skincare growth was up every part of our beauty business was up versus year ago, hair care was up 3% as an example with all brands up with one exception which was Vidal.

So very broad progress in beauty across geographies.

So I think that that is sustainable, the main inflection point going forward is to address a couple of the items that that we've talked about on this call and that you've asked about which are grooming and the big help from an index standpoint there just ahead of us and to address some of the issues in baby care which we're being very proactive about..

Operator

And your final question comes from Jon Andersen with William Blair..

Jon Andersen

Hey good morning. Thank you for the question.

I think you indicated earlier that you're building share disproportionately in non-tracked channels and I'm wondering one you said did I interpret that right is that accurate and then if so what have you been able -- how have you been able to kind of accomplish that? I mean, what is it about the way you're positioning your brands, the investments you're making in non-tracked channels or the consumer within those channels that's kind of enabling you to do that and I know there's an online component and there may be some other non-tracked channels that are large that you're having success in.

Thanks..

Jon Moeller President, Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board

First as it relates to ecommerce, we're building share broadly across our large markets in ecommerce and we've built share in 8 out of 10 categories in the last quarter. So that continues to grow disproportionately. I mentioned, I think in the prepared remarks for example Olay growing 80% in ecommerce in China for the quarter.

More broadly as you talk about non-track channels and we've talked about some of this before, If you look at this, let's just take the U.S. as an example what's really happening from a retail standpoint or one could argue is happening from a retail standpoint is that shopping is moving to more limited assortment channels.

So the club channels growing very quickly, the discounter channel, small format stores and online which we would argue is a very limited assortment shopping experience, there's obviously a broad array of assortment that's available but the amount of that assortment that's actually access and considered in a typical ecommerce shopping trip is extraordinarily low.

And generally, we do well in low assortment environments, you want to feel, if you're going to carry a low assortment or if your shopper is going to expose themselves to a relatively limited assortment, you want it to be that assortment which drives your business as a retailer and that tends to be leading brands.

So you see in ecommerce, a disproportionate appearance in the first and second page of a search for leading brands in many of our categories. You see in discount channels a willingness to carry branded products in some categories but typically only, only one or two brands or the market leader.

So I would expect and that doesn't mean that we have any inherent right to win in those channels, we need to be very, very competitive and are focused in doing that wherever consumers want to shop. But those dynamics have tended to work in our favor and I would expect would continue going forward..

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect. Have a great day..

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