NWL - Newell Brands Inc. (NWL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2024-04-26 12:14:08 ET

Newell Brands Inc. (NWL)

Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call

April 26, 2024 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Sofya Tsinis – Vice President-Investor Relations

Chris Peterson – President and Chief Executive Officer

Mark Erceg – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Lauren Lieberman – Barclays

Bill Chappell – Truist Securities

Andrea Teixeira – JPMorgan

Peter Grom – UBS

Olivia Tong – Raymond James

Chris Carey – Wells Fargo

Filippo Falorni – Citi

Brian McNamara – Canaccord Genuity

Presentation

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Newell Brands’ First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After a brief discussion by management, we will open up the call for questions. [Operator Instructions] 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 Sofya Tsinis, VP of Investor Relations. Ms. Tsinis, you may begin.

Sofya Tsinis

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Newell Brands first quarter 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 the course of 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 we refer to as normalized measures. We believe 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 and available 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 now I’ll turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Peterson

Thank you, Sofya. Good morning everyone, and welcome to our first quarter call. Newell’s turnaround gained momentum during the first quarter with results ahead of plan across all key metrics. Core sales performance improved sequentially and versus year ago gross margin increased for the third consecutive quarter, normalized operating margin nearly doubled with normalized EBITDA growing over 30% and we meaningfully increased operating cash flow. We made excellent progress on the five major operational and financial priorities that we established for the year. First, during the quarter, we operationalized the new operating model and continue to execute our strategy, which focuses on disproportionately investing in innovation, brand building and go-to-market excellence in our largest and most profitable brands and markets while driving further standardization and scale efficiencies across the supply chain and back-office functions....

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