Colgate-Palmolive Company - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning! Welcome to today's Colgate-Palmolive 2023 second quarter earnings conference call. Now for opening remarks, I'd like to turn this call over to Chief Investor Relations Officer and Executive Vice President, M&A, John Faucher.

John Faucher (Chief Investor Relations Officer, EVP, M&A)

Thank you, Allison. Good morning, welcome to our second quarter 2023 earnings release conference call. This is John Faucher. Today's conference call will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from these statements. Please refer to the Q2 2023 earnings press release and related prepared materials and our most recent filings with the SEC, including our 2022 annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings, all available on Colgate's website, for a discussion of the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. This conference call will also include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, including those identified in tables 4 , 6 , 7, 8 and 9 of the earnings press release. A full reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP financial measures is included in the Q2 2023 earnings press release and is available on Colgate's website.

Joining me on the call this morning are Noel Wallace, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Stan Sutula, Chief Financial Officer. Noel will provide you with some thoughts on our Q2 results and our 2023 outlook, and we will then open it up for Q&A. Noel?

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Well, thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. So a few quick thoughts this morning on our strong quarter of top and bottom-line growth and clearly, along with the improved 2023 outlook we provided. On the first quarter call, you'll recall I highlighted 3 priorities for the year: driving organic sales growth as we face tougher comparisons, executing on productivity and revenue growth management to fund brand investment, while also delivering on our earnings targets and improving our cash flow performance. Well, not without its challenges, in Q2, we made strong progress on all three of these. On organic sales growth, Q2 showed the strength of our global portfolio as we delivered our strongest quarterly growth on a 2-year stack basis since Q3 2008, with both organic volume and pricing growth accelerating on a 2-year stack basis.

We delivered organic sales growth in all 6 divisions, and in each of our categories grew in the mid-single digits or higher. We are laser-focused on returning to balanced organic sales growth and we believe the investments we are making, combined with easier comparisons, give us a path to improved volume growth going forward as we leverage increased brand support and innovation while still delivering profit growth. The strength of our revenue growth management efforts, combined with our progress on Funding the Growth, drove improvement in our gross margin, both sequentially and year-over-year. Our base business, SG&A, was down 30 basis points in the quarter as strong sales growth, lower logistics costs, and the benefits of our 2022 global productivity initiative drove operating leverage, even as we increased advertising spending by 20%.

Combined with our gross margin expansion, we delivered 60 basis points of operating margin expansion in the quarter. This enabled us to deliver upside versus expectations in the quarter, despite continued pressure from below-the-line items, including the impact of higher interest rates and tax. As you've heard me say, it's this virtuous combination of growth-driven leverage, revenue growth management, cost containment, and productivity to drive investments in capabilities and brand building, which drove the strong quality of this quarter's results. We believe it also lays the groundwork for our performance across the balance of the year and into the future. And finally, our strong cash flow performance continued in the quarter, which is helping us offset some of these below-the-line headwinds.

Free cash flow was up more than 50% in the quarter and is up more than 80% year to date through net income growth and improved working capital performance, and pleasingly, particularly in inventories and payables. So I'm pleased with how we started the year, but I'm also well aware of the challenges and uncertainty ahead of us. Our goal is to deliver consistent, high quality, compounded top and bottom line growth to drive shareholder value. I believe Colgate-Palmolive has the brands, the global footprint, and the people to deliver. With that, I'll turn it over to the Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Our first question today will come from Dara Mohsenian of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Dara Mohsenian (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning, guys.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Hey, good morning, Dara.

Dara Mohsenian (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Another impressive quarter of organic sales growth, and as you mentioned, the CAGRs accelerated on a multiyear basis, but it was driven by pricing, more than entirely; and obviously from here, we're going into a period where we're cycling higher pricing. So can you just talk about, conceptually, at a high level, how you think about the balance of organic sales growth going forward, you know, level of visibilities that, that volume can come back as pricing drops off?

And maybe within that question also, if you could just touch on the global oral care share and the performance in the quarter and prospects going forward, that'd be helpful also. Thanks.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Dara. Let me go back to a couple of the comments I made in my opening statement and really talk about how we're trying to work to improve the quality of the P&L, which puts us in the best position to drive compounded long-term balanced growth, top and bottom line, which is what we've been talking about for quite some time. As you know, we're coming out of what has been the worst raw material environment in decades. So our plan is with a combination of the revenue growth management we talked about and the discipline that we're putting across the company in that area, more pricing and productivity, we can restore our gross margins, and that's been the key focus.

We believe that if we exit this type of environment with a structurally lower gross margin, you're going to be in a hole that's very difficult to dig yourself out of in the future, particularly because you need the gross margin to fund the investment in capabilities and the brand building, which you certainly saw in the quarter. We want to grow margins while still investing behind our brands and sustain a consistent organic sales growth, which we're clearly demonstrating. The key to do this is getting pricing in the P&L. We certainly focused our teams on the ground in that area, because the depth and duration of this cost inflation that we're experiencing has been an issue, and you simply can't do it with one round of pricing. It needs to be consistent and deliberate and purposeful.

And now, as we look at cost inflation slowing overall, there are still places where we see margin pressure. So of course, we need to take additional pricing, and this has had an impact on the volume. Maybe a couple examples -- China is a good example. We've taken pricing on our Hawley and Hazel joint venture in order to improve profitability long term, to drive the necessary investments in digital, the premium innovation required in that market, and a continued shift to e-commerce. And as you know, China is a very difficult market in which to take pricing and in the short term, that's had an impact on our volume through lower promotions and wholesaler inventories as we look to set the new pricing in the market; but the long-term implications of not restoring margins are more problematic.

I'd go on to North America as well, where we're working to improve the health of our business and our brands through shifting more consistent brand support from above the net revenue line to, obviously, into margin expansion. This will improve health of our brands and our P&L. We're seeing this play out in our non-promoted share, which is growing, which is a healthy way to grow the business. In the short term, was the volume impact from reduced promotions more than we expected? Yes, it was; but the good news is we've adjusted the P&L, we've strengthened it, and we can adjust moving forward as we see the opportunities provide themselves. So while we're delivering both sales and profit growth, along with increases in brand support in the middle of the P&L, it's clearly a healthier way to drive the business.

If I look at the Hill's business, we're still seeing high levels of cost inflation, as you've heard us talk about in the first quarter, and gross margins are still down year-over-year. So we've taken additional pricing to get the right margin structure for this business for the long term.

Much of the Hill's volume decline in the quarter was in emerging markets, as much of the time is due to go-to-market changes or shipments that we had. The good news is EMEA, our Europe business, and particularly there, we, we were strong. U.S. volumes were only down slightly in the quarter against a very difficult comparison with pricing, as you saw, up in the teens. We're focused on getting Hill's back to volume growth the right way. This is a business that responds very well to science-driven innovation and strong advertising.

We want to make sure that it's well-funded and through the gross margin expansion that you've seen. Hill's saw the biggest advertising increases in brand building in this quarter, and we'll continue to fuel that investment.

So I understand the importance of gaining volume growth, as you asked. We know we're all focused on that and as, as you are, but as I said, we want to do that in a way that sets us up structurally for long-term, profitable growth. That means a good visibility towards restoring our gross margin to previous levels, to revenue growth management and productivity that we've been talking about, well-funded advertising and the ability to drive operating leverage with the strong innovation that we're bringing to the market and healthier brands. With a lot of great work by Colgate people, we have gross margin, overheads, and logistics trending positively.

We just finished the first half where we increased advertising by 17%. We have put additional pricing in place. We have strong innovation across all the divisions and categories, and we have second-half volume comps that are easier by about 500 basis points. We feel we're very well positioned. So with that, let me, let me turn it over to other questions.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Filippo Falorni of Citi. Please go ahead.

Filippo Falorni (Director of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning. Good morning, everyone. Just a follow-up on the prior question, Noel. You mentioned the need to take incremental pricing. Can you give us a little bit more color, which category, country combination are you taking more pricing? What has been the response so far? And generally, like the magnitude relative to the prior price increases. Thank you.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Sure. Let me just come back to a quick finish on Dara's point. He asked about market shares, Dara. Market shares, global market shares are up on toothpaste around the world. Strong growth, obviously, in Europe, a little softness in North America, as you've seen in the scanner data, and we're, we're obviously addressing that as we go into the back half -- Latin America shares look good; Asia shares are good; Africa shares look really, really strong; We're up or flat in all 11 markets where we read shares there. Overall, toothpaste shares look pretty good.

Filippo, on your question with regarding the pricing, certainly in some of the higher inflationary markets -- we will probably still see pricing in the back half of the year. Take Turkey, take Argentina, take Pakistan, and some of the other higher inflationary areas around the world; we took pricing in the second quarter in North America, obviously, that had some impact on volume in the quarter, but we'll see deliberate and very focused pricing where we have margin pressure.

On the Hill's business, clearly, we've seen ag prices accelerate through 2022 and into 2023, so we're taking pricing commensurate with that as we move into the back half; but it'll be more isolated and targeted. The bigger price increases are in the P&L; and as you heard us talk about, we took a lot of pricing in 2022 -- about 58% of the pricing in the P&L this year is flow-through, from last year, so we still have a little bit to go, but most of it is in the P&L already.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Bryan Spillane of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Bryan Spillane (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hey, thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Hey, hey, Noel, maybe this kind of ties back-

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Hey, Bryan.

Bryan Spillane (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Maybe this ties back to Dara's question, but, you know, in the prepared remarks, you talked about on a percentage of sales basis, SG&A would be up in North America, Europe and Hill's, you know, to support volume acceleration. And I guess as we look through the results, you know, it looks like it's been pretty good in Europe, like, you've, you've gained share. So maybe if you can, you know, for some context, in terms of that investment, you know, how much of it is... You know, like, where is each, each, each of those geographies, you know, progressed relative to the investment; You know, is it right to read that, you're having an impact in Europe, and you still have some catch-up to do in North America?

Just want to get some color on that.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

No, absolutely. Thanks, Bryan. Yeah, I'll start with Europe. Obviously, we've increased investment there, and we're seeing terrific response to particularly the Elmex and Meridol brands -- where we've elevated our investment there, but likewise on the Colgate brand. A lot of the efforts that we've had on premium whitening have played out to drive incremental share in, in Europe. That investment across that business is certainly playing out. But importantly, the investment in Europe is broader based than just oral care -- we've, we have a wonderful relaunch on Sanex that's underway across Europe, and we're, we're putting investment behind that. We relaunched our Soupline business in France, which is a big business for us, and we've launched the Suavitel , the Soupline Hearts, which we're putting investment behind that.

I think what's important is, with operating margins back to growth, it's giving us a lot more flexibility to support a wide array of brands, particularly in Europe. That would be the case likewise in Latin America, where we've obviously seen a little pickup exchange.

On a local currency basis, we're getting more advertising; and i'd also point to the fact that we're getting more efficient and targeted with our advertising with some of our digital skills that we're implementing across the world -- North America, it's taking a little bit more time; you certainly have seen the, the promoted share fall off, but as I mentioned in my comments to, to Dara, the, the important thing is our non-promoted volume share is growing, and that's a clear reflection of the fact that we've increased support on the brand and building the health of the brand and if you look at the attributes of the Colgate brand, particularly in North America, we're seeing good movements in terms of how we, we, we measure the health of the equity.

So good news there -- Asia, likewise, good response. We've obviously seen a fall off on our biggest business, which is Darlie, due to the price increase, but the Colgate business overall, where we've, we've added more support similarly, is responding very, very well.

And we couldn't be more happy with the progress we're seeing in Africa on the oral care business with the elevated increase that we're seeing. You know, advertising doesn't respond immediately. It takes, it takes quarters-after-quarters of consistent growth. And what's important, back to the quality of the P&L, is that with the quality of the P&L where it is, it allows us to sustain that advertising and in this quarter, you obviously saw us increase it, and that's clearly the strategy, because over the long term, consistent levels of advertising play out for brands the best.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Andrea Teixeira of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Andrea Teixeira (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning. Noel, you mentioned the balanced volume and pricing, obviously impressive to see some of the green shoots in Africa and Eurasia. Can you talk also about the brand support above the line you mentioned in North America and elaborate more on that? And obviously, that has been a main drag to global volumes. And I understand it takes time, of course, to see volume share rebound, but do you see in terms of, like, when should we see some improvement there as you talk to your customers? And then, sorry to get a second part of the question, but I want to understand also your impressive rebound in margins in the quarter came through.

Even looking at your prepared remarks, you mentioned raw material and packaging is still had a 540 basis points negative impact. So I'm thinking about the cadence of this inflation, if you can comment, and then how we can expect that from here; I know you reiterated margins up, but I just wanna see through the P&L, what would be the puts and takes there. Thank you.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Andrea, and good morning. On above line expenses, obviously, when you're in an environment of, of inflation and recovering costs and taking pricing either through list prices or, or revenue growth management -- it involves a reallocation of your promotional dollars for 2 reasons: 1 -- you want to ensure that when you're taking list price increases, you see that pricing in the market and you get consistency of implementation around, around the retail environment; so that was an important part of, of the second quarter pricing we took in North America.; to do that, you need to pull back on some of your promotional volumes. That was done, one, because some of those promotional volumes are unprofitable.

As I mentioned earlier, we are very focused in North America on building brand health and getting back to consistent delivery of share growth with advertising innovation, through and simply taking some of the reliance on promotions away; did we pull back a little bit too much? Perhaps, but we're gonna be very thoughtful moving forward on how we put gross to net back into the North America business to ensure that we continue to grow margins and obviously grow share at the same time; but we will ensure that that happens in the back half, but I can tell you that we're gonna be very thoughtful on how we approach all the categories relative to promotions to ensure we maintain the margins in the P&L.

Around the world, I think we were quite consistent with the above the line, where we had list price increases, we were managing promotions -- We'll have a little bit easier comps, as we've talked about on pricing, harder comps on pricing in the back half, but easier on volume so I think we'll see a better balance between our organic growth as we move through the back half of the year, but we'll still see a little bit of pricing moving through as I mentioned upfront.

On the margin line, you know, clearly, very pleased with the progress that we're making -- both at the gross profit level and the operating margin level; I remind everyone that our gross profit does not include logistics and cost of goods; If you take logistics, obviously, we had a very strong quarter relative to gross profit acceleration and our SG&A was down, despite the fact that we took a 20%-- we implemented a 20% increase in advertising. Let me turn it over to Stan. He can give you a little bit of color of how we're thinking about raw materials, phasing out through the balance of the second half.

Stan Sutula (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Noel. So raw materials, as we look towards the second half -- we will see these moderate, but there are pockets that actually are going up, and predominantly, they're impacting Hill's. So around ag and proteins, those continue to escalate; so while on a year-on-year basis, these, these will moderate slightly coming off of the first half, they still will be a headwind in the second half of the year.

Now, we continue to drive Funding the Growth savings. The teams have done a really nice job on driving that productivity, and we will carry that through the back half of the year as well; so we do expect margin to improve in the second half and continue that momentum.

Then, obviously, you know, just as we look at FX, you know, it's, it's gonna bounce around here a bit and in particular, we've seen, pressure in Africa, Eurasia countries, as well as, Asia Pacific; so overall, we do expect margins to improve in the back half of the year.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Olivia Tong of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Olivia Tong (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Great, thank you. First, can you just elaborate a little bit on what, what the impact of logistics is, just so we can kind of compare you to your peers? And then specifically on the U.S. , could you just talk about the path forward? I mean, we, we talked about the, you know, what, what's driven some of the, the challenges so far in terms of volume, but, you know, could you talk about the actions that you're planning to take for the second half -- whether it's some relaxation in terms of the, the pullback and, you know, reinstating perhaps some of the promotion or other actions that you're planning to take with respect to the U.S. ? Thank you.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Sure. Thanks, Olivia, and good morning. I'd ask you to reference the 10-Q on, on details on logistics -- there's a lot more detail in there and if you're not finding what you need, obviously follow up with John and Stan afterwards. On the volume cadence, you know, certainly as you look at the back half, as I mentioned -- the comps get much easier; but despite that, we're, we're going to be very deliberate in how we think about volume creation in the back half -- we're gonna be thoughtful, as I mentioned -- continuing to focus on the structure of the P&L, which we believe is absolutely imperative for the long-term sustainability of the company; we think that we can keep the gross margin accelerating, we'll keep the advertising in the P&L and not simply chasing unprofitable volumes.

We're gonna be very focused on that. That being said, we do expect a slightly heightened promotional environment in the back half; as costs tend to level out, we'll see probably a little bit more promotions. I will say that around the world today, we have not seen an elevated promotional environment; we are recently starting to see more volume being sold on promotions, but not the frequency of promotions or the depth of promotions in the market; so that's an important aspect, but we're gonna be very deliberate in how we think about the promotional cadence in the back half. Probably a little bit more in the U.S., but the rest of the world will be very targeted, where we see competitive needs to put more money there.

So far, it's been quite constructive, and we continue to believe pushing our brands through innovation and advertising is the healthiest way to grow the business longer term.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Jason English of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jason English (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning, folks. Thanks for swapping in. Stan mentioned earlier the, the elevated degree of inflation that's continuing to impact, but also the, the new price increases -- How should we expect them to translate into margins? I mean, it's, it's good to see the moderation in gross margin expansion this quarter, but we're still down a lot from where we were. What, what is, what is the right level of profitability for that business on a normalized basis? And what is the pathway to getting there?

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Jason. Good morning. Again, you know, we are, we are taking aggressive pricing in, in, across the Hill's business -- as you've seen through the, the recent quarters, and we continue to see some inflationary prices on ag prices -- Do we think that's gonna continue into 2024 Unlikely ; but we want to sure we continue to take pricing this year to recover that. Is there a number that we're targeting? No. We wanna continue to do this in a very thoughtful way. We see real opportunities to continue to grow both gross profit and operating margin at, at, at Hill's in a healthy way, quarter to quarter, moving out, particularly given the pricing that we'll see flow through the back half of the P&L and hopefully a more benign cost environment.

We also have mixed opportunities that we're very focused on as we get the new Tonganoxie plant up and running and we get wet capacity building, that will allow a little bit of margin accretion on mix. We're, we're, we're pleased with that.

We're getting the productivity through the plants operating more efficiently, so we'll see that and obviously, as the private label business comes off, that will be a natural organic accretion to both gross profit and operating profit at, at, at the end. You know, good, good aspects to as we see the business projecting over time ; We're gonna ensure that we're competitive with relative to pricing in the market. We're gonna continue to ensure that we keep the high levels of advertising there on the Hill's business, which you saw in the quarter.

Overall, we feel pretty good about the, the phasing of, of gross profit accretion moving forward.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Steve Powers (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks, and good morning. I, I wanted to ask more of a, a general question on the state of the advertising industry as you see it. You talked, obviously, making increases, the 20% increase this quarter. I guess the question I, I, I'm left with is just how you're seeing the efficacy of that advertising. Do you, do you, do you believe the efficacy is up, you know, commensurate with the increased dollar investment? Or you know, is there inflation or other dynamics cutting, cutting into that efficacy, just as you, as you, as you, as you see the environment today, as you plan ahead?

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Steve, and good morning. You know, I'll take you back to CAGNY, when Yves presented a lot of our digital advancement and the digital transformation, and ultimately how our focus on digital advertising is yielding a much higher ROI (return on investment), and we have the ability to analytically measure that much more effectively than we have in the past; our copy effectiveness is getting much better, so we're seeing the efficacy delivered there through the brand health measures that I talked about earlier -- we're obviously spending more money on generating first-party data that allows us to obviously look more holistically across the market and get more targeted media that's more personalized and effective, which has been terrific.

As I mentioned up front, you know, the non-promoted volume share in the U.S. is a big metric for us because that clearly indicates that our advertising is driving more non-promoted share; so we were up about 100 basis points in non-promoted share and that's excellent -- that's exactly what we want. We may have pulled back, as I mentioned, a little too much on the promotion, but we'll get the balance right as we move forward. The efficacy overall, we're very pleased and that's clearly demonstrated in some of the market share performances we have around the world, where we've had elevated advertising to support that, particularly across some of the brands, non-Colgate brands. I mentioned Sanex in Europe; We talked about the Suavitel business and the Axion business in Mexico, which is obviously well supported.

Overall, we see a more, a more healthy balance of advertising across our categories, and over time, this is gonna lead to more sustainable growth.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Robert Ottenstein (Senior Managing Director and Partner)

Great, great. A quick follow-up, my other question: Where your volumes are down, you know, particularly in the U.S. , has that gone to competitors, or is it more of a function of consumers postponing purchase or orders being postponed? That's just kind of the follow-up. My main question is, is where you see yourself in digital and e-commerce? Arguably a few years ago, you, you were unsatisfied and have made a lot of investments, and, and they're certainly panning out, particularly in, in China. Do you believe that you're kind of where you need to be, to be fully competitive globally in, in digital and e-commerce now? Thank you.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Rob. Good morning. On the volume, you know, particularly in the U.S. -- as I mentioned already, we saw our promoted share fall off across a couple of our categories in the U.S. as we pulled back on some of the promotions and established some of the new pricing. Where it's gone to is a multitude of the competitors, obviously, where they have not pulled back on their promotional levels as much and therefore, we saw a little bit of migration to them; clearly, that consumer typically responds to promotions, whether it's couponing or otherwise, and they're not that difficult to get back.

We wanna get back, we wanna get those consumers back in a much healthier way moving forward so the overall structure of the U.S. P&L improves, and that's pretty consistent around the world. When you pull back on promotions, you're gonna have a highly driven consumer that looks at pricing and value, and you need to ensure that you're obviously providing that value moving forward. We'll get the balance right. Our digital, on that, we've talked a lot about our digital transformation -- 3 years ago, we weren't where we needed to be and I would say we're very, very pleased with where we are today. We do an external study with BCG, which assesses all of our, our peer group vis-a-vis their digital capabilities, and 3 years ago, we were below the peer group.

Today, we are above the peer group, and we're not best-in-class yet, so we feel we've got more room to go. Brigitte and Diana and, and Prabha and, and all the operating units are very focused on this, and we feel we've got good plans in place to continue to advance that, and our goal is absolutely to become best-in-class.

Operator (participant)

Next question is from Lauren Lieberman of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Lauren Lieberman (Managing Director)

Great, thanks. Good morning. I was hoping you would maybe talk a little bit about Latin America. I know it's a market where you've been putting a lot of premium innovation in place. It's been a core part of the strategy, particularly in oral care, and yet there's, you know, significant inflation in some markets. Just curious for an update there, maybe on, you know, premiumization versus affordability, what you're seeing in terms of consumer trends, you know, outside of just the reported results, but kind of what the dynamics are from a consumer environment standpoint and how you're managing those 2 ends of the pricing ladder? Thanks.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Lauren, and good morning. You saw the results, another really strong organic sales growth for Latin America. And pleasingly, you know, after 5 quarters of double-digit pricing, we saw volume improve in Latin America. I think this is a good proxy for as we think about pricing in other markets and coupling that with strong advertising, ultimately, the volume will come back. It's a quite resilient consumer. They're accustomed to inflationary pricing, but as long as you're bringing a collection of strong innovation and continuing your brand support, which is vitally important to come out of these tougher times with stronger brands, you see the volume return to category. Both Mexico and Brazil delivered volume growth in the quarter and both had very strong growth organically, given the fact that they also took pricing.

Overall, really pleased with what we're seeing in Latin America. Likewise, we're seeing the velocity and the turns improve more than we anticipated, given some of the inflationary pressures in those markets. Now, we shall watch it very carefully as the inflation continues to mount, but overall, structurally, the P&Ls are in good shape, and the consumer seems to be quite responsive to the innovation and the pricing that we're putting in the market. Overall, we feel we're in a pretty good place.

Operator (participant)

Question is from Mark Astrachan of Stifel. Please go ahead.

Mark Astrachan (Managing Director)

Yeah, thanks, morning, everyone. Wanted to ask a question on, on the Hill's business. Again, just maybe thinking about category and then in your business. How are you thinking -- or what are you observing from a category standpoint? We can obviously see somewhat U.S. data, but curious how you think about it around the world, that volumes overall are a little bit weaker. How much of that is a reflection of just all the pricing that you and your competitors are taking? Is there, you know, some of just sort of pause within the category over the-- after the last couple of years of really strong growth and adoption levels?

Then, longer term, how do you think about -- and maybe this goes to Jason's question a little bit, but how do you think about the contribution to price and, and mix and, and volumes for that business over time, and how does that contribute to improving margins relative to where we are? Thanks.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Mark. Clearly another strong quarter for Hill's. Double-digit organic sales growth, despite lapping, and I remind everyone that we're lapping 18% growth in the year ago period, so obviously a really strong quarter and the quarter a year ago was mid-single digit volume, so ultimately, a good quarter, and on a 2-year stack, we're up, so looking, looking quite strong. Categories softened a little bit towards the end of the category. I mean, excuse me, the end of the quarter. You would expect that given the amount of pricing that's gone into that over the last, three or four quarters. Overall, Europe continues to be very strong, U.S., strong, despite, you know, very high comps.

We anticipate that we'll see a little bit of sluggishness as we move forward in the categories, only because of all the pricing that's been taken, but that'll be more around the discretionary items in, in pet specialty than food. Nutrition seems to be okay. I walked stores with some of the CEOs of the big pet specialty retailers recently, and they seem quite bullish relative to the nutritional and particularly the premium segment of the market, where you don't see a lot of elasticity in terms of when consumers trade off of diets, particularly on our prescription side. We're gonna have to watch that quite carefully because there's been a lot of pricing that's going into the category. Emerging markets continues to be a real growth opportunity for us. It's small for us right now, but we need to continue to focus on those opportunities, particularly in Latin America and Southeast Asia to a certain extent.

Overall, you'll see us focus on, on, on those moving forward , the categories continue to be quite robust, particularly given the growth headwind -- growth headspace that we have in emerging markets, given we don't have high penetration there. Overall, we feel pretty good, but we're cautious on ultimately how the category continues to evolve, from a volume standpoint, as we see a lot of pricing going in those categories. Again, getting the P&L structured right, getting gross margin up consistently over the next couple quarters will be very important for us to maintain the high advertising levels that are so critical to drive penetration in that category.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is from Christopher Carey of Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead.

Christopher Carey (Senior Equity Analyst and Head of Consumer Staples Research)

Hi, good morning, everyone.

Just, just a couple quick follow-ups from me. You know, just -- just apologies for asking a North America question. This is more about making sure expectations are set and, and we know how to think about this going forward. You know , a little bit of promotion, you know, come back in, but you're, you're really focusing on, you know, a, a more sustainable total P&L. Could still see some volume pressure, you know, for, for a bit until you lap, you know, some of these, your strategy adjustments that you've made and by the time we get beyond that, perhaps, you know, the volume starts to smooth out a bit more. So, am I characterizing that correctly? Then second, just, you know, quick clarification or follow-up.

You know, Olivia asked a question about freight. I think the 10-Q just says the year-over-year change. Stan, you had said 9.5% of sales was the, you know, freight number in Q1, and you expected it to trend low 9s for the rest of the year. Did that come through in the quarter? Thanks so much on, on those 2 items.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Let me -- let me Stan, answer the logistics question, then I'll get back to your North America question.

Stan Sutula (CFO)

Yeah. logistics is playing out, like we expected, and it improved slightly from, from the previous quarter, and we expect that that improvement, will also continue in the second half.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Chris, on North America. I, I think you said it well. I mean, we're looking very deliberately to improve the structure of that P&L as we move forward. Again, it's -- it's the inherent objective there is to improve brand health. We will clearly continue to fund advertising. We will be very choiceful on where we we start to look at elevating promotions to recover some of that promotional share. Our focus is driving non-promoted share moving forward, but we need to be careful that we're not pulling back too much there. So, we'll monitor that moving forward.

We'll see, you know, I think from quarter to quarter, there will be a little bit of volatility in the gross margin lines as we move forward, as we see costs ultimately level out and where the pricing and the mix ends up. We feel good about the back half relative to our ability to continue to drive operating margin expansion. You know, I remind everyone that North America's -- the North America HPC business is about 20% of our total business and what is so nice about the Colgate business is that we have such diversity of business around the world, that as we need to fund opportunities in North America or Asia, we have the ability to pull from certain regions around the world.

We're well-balanced in that regard, and I think North America has, has a good plan for the back half and will be very deliberate on their spending and their focus on recovering some of the share loss that we've had in the quarter.

Operator (participant)

Our last question will come from Peter Grom of UBS. Please go ahead.

Peter Grom (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, operator, and, and good morning, everyone. I wanted to just circle back to the, to the top line growth, which, you know, the 2nd half organic sales guidance is, is still relatively wide and, and implies a decent slowdown, which, which makes sense as you start to cycle pricing. Can you maybe just talk about the moving pieces that would put organic revenue growth at the higher end or the lower end of that range as we move forward here? Maybe specifically, you mentioned several times throughout this call, the sequential improvement on, on a 2-year stack for volume. Just given the stepped up in investment and innovation, you know, should we expect that trend to continue as we move into the back half of the year? Thanks.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah, it's tough to, you know, to nail down exactly how the, the balance will end up. I mean, we'll have to watch it very carefully. It's gonna differ by category and by geography. But clearly, the comps get easier from a volume standpoint in the back half. You heard me mention around 500 basis points, so that will certainly be a nice tailwind for us. And obviously, the comps on pricing get a little bit more challenging in the back half as we move forward. We feel very good relative to the guidance that we've provided and comfortable that we can achieve that. We'll see how the categories behave as the consumer continues to be rather fickle around the world.

As I mentioned, it's been very constructive promotionally, and so far, the resilience, particularly in markets like Latin America and to a certain extent, Africa, have been very, very good where we've taken a lot of pricing. We'll watch North America quite closely, and we'll obviously, we think we continue to have a lot of head space on the Hill's business as we continue to drive penetration and share growth, which incidentally, I didn't talk shares on Hill's. They continue to respond very, very well with share growth in the quarter across most of our recipes, which is terrific. We, we feel good about where we are on the guidance, and we'll see where it ultimately ends up.

Obviously, if there's upside, we'll take it, but we feel good that we're in a range, that is responsible to continuing the structure to keep the structure of the P&L the way it is. Relative to, the, the second part of your question -- was on advertising, Peter, or what was it on?

Peter Grom (Equity Research Analyst)

No, it was just the sequential, you know, improvement on a 2-year stack base. It just should, you know, you know, recognizing that the comps get easier, if the 2-year stack improves, what does that actually imply? Because it would seem to imply if it does improve, that there could be some nice improvement in the return to volume growth in the back half of the year.

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Yeah, exactly. You said it well. I think we'll start to see a return to volume growth in the back half, in the back half of the year. The 2-year stacks, as I mentioned up front, have continued to accelerate. We'll have to -- my expectation, if I see that moderate a bit as we move through the back half, volumes will improve and as I mentioned, we still have some pricing coming through that we've taken this year, we'll see the benefit of that and a little bit of the flow through from last year. Overall, I think we'll have a more balanced composition as we move through the back half of the year.

Operator (participant)

[Crosstalk]

Noel Wallace (Chairman , President , CEO)

Okay, I think that's Great. Thank you, everyone, thanks for, for, for the questions this morning. We continue to appreciate your interest in our company. Clearly, we had a strong quarter and I hope you agree the strategies and the plans in place to deliver consistent compounded profitable growth are there, that will allow us to drive increased shareholder value. We couldn't do this without the incredible efforts from Colgate people all over the world who continue to focus on execution of our strategy and the consistency of delivery. I thank them look forward to talking to everyone in the third quarter.

Operator (participant)

Conference has now concluded. We thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your line.