The Kraft Heinz Company - Earnings Call - Q1 2025 [Q&A]

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered mixed results: net sales fell 6.4% to $5.999B, with Organic Net Sales down 4.7% as price was +0.9 pp but volume/mix -5.6 pp; GAAP EPS was $0.59 and Adjusted EPS was $0.62.
• Versus S&P Global consensus, Adjusted EPS modestly beat ($0.62 vs $0.601), EBITDA beat ($1.464B vs $1.419B), while revenue was a slight miss ($5.999B vs $6.022B)*.
• Full-year 2025 outlook was lowered across key lines: Organic Net Sales to -1.5% to -3.5% (prior flat to -2.5%), Constant-Currency Adjusted OI to -5% to -10% (prior -1% to -4%), and Adjusted EPS to $2.51–$2.67 (prior $2.63–$2.74).
• Management cited higher COGS inflation (base 5% plus estimated 150–200 bps from tariffs) and a step-up in brand/marketing and product renovation as drivers; Q2 gross margin and operating income expected to be pressured near-term.
• Potential stock reaction catalysts: lowered FY outlook (broader range), tariff-driven inflation headwind, and a stepped-up investment cycle versus near-term margin pressure.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Free Cash Flow rose 1% to $0.482B; FCF conversion improved to 65% (+9 pp YoY), aided by lower capex and timing of variable comp cash outflows.
  • Emerging Markets showed resilience: Organic Net Sales +3.9% (price +4.3 pp, volume/mix -0.4 pp); segment Adjusted OI up 20.3% YoY (constant currency +28.6%).
  • Capital return continued: YTD dividends paid $477M; buybacks $225M; remaining repurchase authorization ~$1.7B; quarterly dividend of $0.40/share declared for June 27, 2025.

• What Went Wrong

  • Top-line softness: Net sales -6.4% with volume/mix -5.6 pp; North America net sales -7.0% and International Developed Markets -4.4% YoY; Easter timing (~90 bps) and Lunchables decline weighed on volume.
  • Margin pressure: Adjusted Gross Margin 34.4% (-10 bps YoY) amid procurement cost inflation and FX headwinds (0.8 pp), partially offset by efficiencies and lower SG&A.
  • Outlook cut: Lower FY 2025 guidance for Organic Net Sales, Constant-Currency Adjusted OI, and Adjusted EPS; CFO flagged COGS base inflation rising to ~5% plus 150–200 bps estimated tariff impact, concentrated in 2H.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings and Welcome to The Kraft Heinz Company First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Anne-Marie Megela, Head of Global Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Anne-Marie Megela (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Q&A session for our First Quarter 2025 Business Update. During today's call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding our expectations for the future, including items related to our business plans and expectations, strategy, efforts and investments, and related timing and expected impacts. These statements are based on how we see things today, and actual results may differ materially due to risk and uncertainties. Please see the cautionary statement and risk factors contained in today's earnings release, which accompanies this call, as well as our most recent 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filings for more information regarding these risks and uncertainties. Additionally, we may refer to non-GAAP financial measures, which exclude certain items from our financial results reported in accordance with GAAP.

Please refer to today's earnings release and the non-GAAP information available on our website at ir.kraftheinzcompany.com under News and Events for a discussion of our non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP financial measures. I will now hand it over to our Chief Executive Officer, Carlos Abrams-Rivera, for opening comments. Carlos, over to you.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Thank you, Anne-Marie. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. At Kraft Heinz, we are proud to be a trusted partner in kitchens everywhere, providing comfort and connections, particularly in these moments of uncertainty. Despite growing market pressure in the first quarter, we delivered top-line results in line with our expectations, with strong cash flow performance and a healthy balance sheet. We are also encouraged by the progress we're making in improving brand superiority. While these advancements are not yet reflected in the financial results, they do give me confidence that we are putting in place the right building blocks. Our commitment to making the necessary investments to deliver quality and value offerings to our consumers is unwavering. At the same time, we are closely monitoring market tension and have adjusted our guidance accordingly. With that, I have Andre joining me, so let's open the call for Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we pull for our first question. The first question comes from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please proceed.

Andrew Lazar (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks so much. Carlos, you mentioned in the prepared remarks that the revised outlook provides the necessary flexibility to dial in on investments as deemed appropriate. That said, this is not the first time, right? Kraft Heinz has sort of used this language around proposed investments. So far, it's not proved enough, although admittedly in a very dynamic consumer environment. Many industry players, I think, have taken the approach of kind of like increasing investments on what seems to be more of an incremental basis to see how the consumer reacts, almost like a sort of a test-and-learn approach. The magnitude of today's guidance cut is larger than previous ones, but I'm still getting a lot of questions from investors, I guess, as to whether this is more of the same sort of approach or if you see it as more comprehensive in some way.

Thanks so much.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Good morning, Andrew. Thanks for the question. First, let me just say we are continuing to invest in the business despite what we are seeing in terms of the macroeconomic uncertainty because, frankly, because we're confident in the strategy that we have. I think in moments like this, companies can be sometimes overly cautious and defensive or play offense. We are choosing to play offense with discipline. We are in fact prioritizing investments in marketing, R&D, and technology. The way we're doing that, Andrew, is we focus on increasing returns of our marketing dollars by shifting more towards a consumer-facing marketing. We're also making sure we're optimizing the location across the brands and media types so that, in fact, we make sure we have the best ROI with an improved quality of the messaging at the same time. I mentioned investing R&D.

We are going to continue to invest behind our innovation pipeline. We are making sure we are closing the gap to our investment levels that is the 1% of net sales. I mentioned technology. We are going to continue investing in our technology as well because that actually has helped us in terms of driving the efficiencies in the business by investing in things like automation and enhanced digital tools. I think you also spoke to why is this different, what's different now versus in the past. I'll tell you, one of the important parts of what is different is the fact that we're also investing through the Brand Growth System.

If you recall, the Brand Growth System is our repeatable global model for understanding how we see opportunities within our brands and how do we make sure we drive superiority on those brands through both products and packaging and making sure that every communication has the right brand resonance, value equation, and on the execution. It is not just what we are spending, but how we are spending too. We mentioned in the past that we had done this with about 10% of our brands in 2024 as a way to pilot. That is in fact now being scaled up to 40% of our business by the end of this year.

That idea of us having more confidence in us investing because now we have proven that the brand growth systems help us identify the right opportunities and allows us to make sure we take the right steps in order to fuel the investments, I think is part of why we're going to be playing offense with discipline. You'll see us actually step up our investments in marketing and also to make sure that as we renovate our products, we are supporting it with the right focus on the consumer communication. We invest behind the BGS. We make sure we have the great products, packaged quality, and then we make sure we have the right communication to support it and drive that forward. It's something that helped us work with our Philadelphia brand in 2024. It helped us in our Heinz U.K. business in the last year.

We are going to be seeing that across all of our brands as we move towards 2024, 2025 here in the U.S. Yeah.

I think good morning, Andrew. Just to add to Carlos. Remember that in our prior guidance, we already had contemplated a step up in price investments. Just roughly speaking, to the extent of 100 basis points on the top line, so it was a relevant investment and concentrated on those categories we have previously described. We also had in the prior guidance already contemplated a double-digit increase in media. We were still retaining our marketing percentage of revenue at 4.5% in the prior guidance. With that, by relocating expenses within the marketing bucket, we could free up a double-digit increase in media. Now, in this new guidance, we have opened the room to further accelerate our market investment.

Remember that in our long-term algorithm, we want to be approximate at 5%. We have in the midpoint of the guidance around 4.8% of market, so a 30 basis points step up. There is still this number might still fluctuate a little bit up or down, depending how the dynamics happen throughout the year, including final impact on tariffs. We want to accelerate the step up to reach the 5%. We also have in the guidance some impacting COGS linked to product renovation. As Carlos said, as we continue to deploy the Brand Growth System, we are seeing opportunities not only to improve quality of messaging and have more media pressure, but also to renovate the products and ensure a stronger superiority.

Andrew Lazar (Managing Director)

Great. Thank you both.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Thank you, Andrew.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Yasmine Deswandhy with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Yasmine Deswandhy (Equity Research Associate)

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question. I kind of wanted to dig in a little bit on North America and the organic sales guidance update for this year. Just for 2Q specifically, there's a few items here to consider. You talked about the Easter timing shift, and then there's a plant closure lap. There were also impacts last year on Lunchables from the Consumer Reports, and then you had the Capri Sun reformulation impacting consumption. Could you help size those impacts, if any, to the second quarter? If there's anything else that we should consider that will drive a gap between North America shipments versus consumption?

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Sure. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Look, we expect the second quarter top line to be better than the first quarter top line. The fact of Easter, as I have said before, is approximately 90 basis points, 100 basis points. That will be a tailwind in the second quarter. In addition to that, we have emerging markets, not part of the U.S., but we have emerging markets further accelerating from where we were in Q1. Inside the U.S., aside from Easter, we are going to see improvement in the accelerated platforms. Cream cheese and Ore-Ida, for example, declined in Q1, and this was totally expected because we were lapping competitors with out-of-stock issues last year. Now we restore growth, and we are going to see growth in those two categories in the quarter. To your point, we will see some improvement in Lunchables.

It's still not the levels that we believe we can achieve as the main renovation hits the market at the end of the second quarter. You should see Lunchables improving, particularly after mid-May and June, because that's when we really start to fully lap the Consumer Reports from last year. On the Muscatine, on the factory, we are lapping that as we head into the second quarter, taking to mind that the industry food service has slowed down quite a lot this year. We are not going to see necessarily a growth in away from home in the second quarter. Beyond that, you will see the accelerated platforms, sausage, cream cheese, meals, and snacking with a better performance in comparison to Q1.

Yasmine Deswandhy (Equity Research Associate)

Okay, great. Thank you. That's really helpful. A quick follow-up to that, just looking into the second half of the year, obviously understanding that 2Q will see some nice improvement on volumes given the one-time items that you just mentioned. Your organic sales cut was basically all volumes since the pricing contribution was left unchanged. Do you see a need for North America volumes to inflect positively in the second half in order to hit your guide? Do you expect growth in international, particularly in emerging markets, to be enough to hit your guidance for the year?

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

No, we don't need. In fact, in the midpoint of our guidance, total company does not get to positive in any quarter.

Yasmine Deswandhy (Equity Research Associate)

Okay, great.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

We don't need volume. Okay?

Yasmine Deswandhy (Equity Research Associate)

All right. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Tom Palmer with Citi. Please proceed.

Tom Palmer (Vice President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning and thanks for the question. I wanted to ask on the COGS inflation, the revised outlook, just any breakdown of how much of that is related to tariffs versus maybe other drivers of that increase, and then just the timing of when we really start to see that step up. Thank you.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Sure. In our prior outlook, we had inflation at 3%. Before any tariffs, our guidance is step up to 5% of COGS. Particularly in some commodities like coffee and meats, we saw a big increase in comparison to the rest of the last time we met. The base inflation was already up to 5%. Now with the tariff impact, I mean, obviously a lot of uncertainties still around that, but we do estimate with what we know so far an impact in 2025 of 150 to 200 basis points on the COGS. Timing-wise, look, we do not know for sure, right? We are assuming that this will be concentrated in the second half. Maybe there will be some impact in the second quarter. We built some inventory where possible in certain items as we anticipated that to happen.

That gives a little relief of a month, maybe two in some of the items, but the impact should be mostly concentrated in the second half.

Tom Palmer (Vice President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you for that. I noticed that there was not a change in kind of that pricing outlook, as Yasmin just noted. It sounds like there is price investment in some areas, and then there is incremental pricing in other areas. Maybe just any detail you can provide there.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

No, in the midpoint of the new guidance, we do not have further investments in price in addition to the approximately 100 basis points we already had contemplated in the initial outlook. The incremental investments, as I said, are mostly on marketing, particularly media, on product renovation. There are some sampling investments because we remember that as we renovate the products, including the ones that we have renovated last year, like Capri Sun, we really need to step up the trial curve. We are stepping up sampling investments heading into the summer.

Tom Palmer (Vice President and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you for the details.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question comes from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

David Palmer (Senior Managing Director)

Thanks. A couple of questions. You updated your inflation guidance, and thanks for your comments there on the tariffs being incorporated in that. I wonder how you're thinking about pricing offsets to that. When it gets to a certain level of input inflation and your willingness to price that away, are there levels where you have to be cognizant of rising price elasticity, perhaps over a few percent, for example, where you're more aware of any sort of list pricing, and you have to start moving towards other types of adjustments or offsets? Separately, and Andre, I know you've been very active in thinking about promotional activity and returns on that promotional activity.

When we look at our data, it looks like Kraft Heinz has been a little bit different than some of the other larger food companies in that it's well below 2019 levels in terms of its volume on promotion, whereas many, many years, if not most, other companies look like they're at those levels already and continuing to rise. I'm wondering if you kind of recognize that juxtaposition and how you think about the promotion strategy going forward. Is that something that you're noticing as well? Thank you.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Let me start with the second part, Carlos, and then have Andre kind of comment a little bit on the first part of your questions. First of all, what you're seeing is the fact that it follows our strategy. I mentioned earlier that we are going to continue to make investments and play offense with discipline. I think for us, it's the opportunity to make sure that when we are investing, we are doing this in a way that is thoughtful about the return of that investment, and that we are building something that supports our strategy and allows us to grow not only in the short term, but really in the medium and long term. When we invest in pricing for a promotional event, it's because we believe that actually creates the kind of base volume opportunities as we go post that particular event.

You'll see us continue to invest in times of the year that consumer needs us, whether that is now Memorial Day, whether it's July 4th, whether it's back to school. We're just going to do it in a disciplined way to make sure that, again, it's supporting the strategy that we have and not just chase a short-term volume that actually doesn't essentially all you do is kind of rent volume for a short period of time. The other piece that is important to note is that when we're making those investments, we're also doing it in concert with our brand growth systems investments.

That when we are going for a back-to-school time period and we have now a renovated new Lunchables, whether we have a renovated new Capri Sun, that's a moment for us to not only stimulate the demand, but also making sure that then consumers get to try the best product that we have ever made on those categories. I think it's that combination that is kind of guiding our principles versus kind of how competitors are playing at this particular time. They're choosing different strategy. We believe we want to make sure that we're doing things smartly because our focus is continuing to drive profitable growth for the future. Andrew, you want to comment on the first part?

Yeah. Hi, Dave. Look, on the promo side, Carlos said, we will continue to be disciplined and really seeking those promotions with good returns.

You will see a step up in promotional activity during the key windows, particularly now in summer. You will see that number stepping up as part of our initial guidance. Again, we have approximately 100 basis points of incremental price investment in the U.S. In regards to pricing the tariffs, look, we are trying to do everything we possibly can to minimize the amount of price necessary. Even things like to delay, we have anticipated some purchases. We are looking at alternative sourcing. There is opportunity for, in some cases, reformulation, which takes a little bit longer. There are opportunities on the mix side. There are certain SKUs within a category that are less impacted than others when it comes to tariffs. All of that is at play. We are stepping up productivity in the year. We started the year expecting 3.5% of COGS.

Now we're expecting a little more than that. We are taking all the possible levers, but pricing might be necessary. Again, I think this is a work in progress. Thank you, Dave.

David Palmer (Senior Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Chris Carey with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Christopher Carey (Equity Analyst)

Hi everyone. I wanted to ask a question about gross margins and just a follow-up elsewhere. From a gross margin perspective, specifically the Q2 weakness that you're expecting, and in the context of just how this typically works, is the primary driver of Q2 gross margin weakness coffee inflation? I guess I asked that question in the context of historically, this is really a pass-through category where pricing comes through to offset the inflation, understanding there's always going to be quarter-to-quarter volatility. Are you seeing perhaps less ability to pass through the coffee inflation just given the overall coffee inflation backdrop? Secondly, are there any areas within your portfolio or broader portfolio where you're seeing more bright spots from a market share perspective?

Because I think similar to last quarter, where we continue to struggle is the categories have clearly softened, but market share performance has come under more pressure. What are those things that you've been doing over the past few months, maybe specifically where you're saying, "Okay, that specific strategy is working to kind of right the ship here because it's been a bit harder to see in the data"? Thanks for those two items.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Sure. Thanks for the question. I will start with the Q2 margins. Basically, we do expect pressure on the gross margin in the second quarter, and there are a few different items affecting the margin. The first one is, as I just said in the prior question, we do expect a step up in the promotion activity as we start the shipments for the summer season. We will see a lower price in the P&L. The second, we are facing impacts of some hedge losses in the second quarter, and they are quite large. The good thing is that once they roll off, heading into Q3, we'll start to see some of those commodities that are starting to come down, like dairy, start to flow through the P&L. Third, to your point, there are some increases in certain commodities in Q2.

The way we see right now, some of them are going to reach the peak in Q2, and that issue starts to go backwards or decelerate, at least as you head into the third quarter. Those three elements are the key contributors for the gross margin pressure that we are seeing. There is a little bit as well of the product renovations that we're starting to step up. As a result of that, plus we're starting to step up investment in marketing, we do expect the operating income to decline double digits in the second quarter. When it regards to the bright spots, that's over to you.

Yeah. Listen, I think if you look at our year-to-date, our latest five weeks versus the year-to-date, you'll see us making progress in all of our accelerated businesses. Whether it's Taste Elevation, whether it's ready-to-eat meals, whether it is snacking. All those things are progressing. I think in Q1, obviously, we had the impact of Easter. I think as we are seeing now the data with several weeks of the Easter now read, you're going to continue to see that improvement. I think, for example, in a business like our Philadelphia cream cheese, which, as we now kind of pass the Q1 lapping of the private label not being on the business in the category last year, you see that continue to drive growth.

Whether you see that in our desserts business, that continues to drive growth after reformulations and focusing on better-for-you products in that category. You will see that many of the investments we're making will continue to play off as we go through the year. I mentioned that in the opening statement, which is a lot of the great things that we are seeing in terms of the building blocks and not yet all reflecting the data, but those are things that you'll see us as we continue to progress throughout the year. I'm also, frankly, very encouraged about the fact that some of the big innovations we have done have continued to now drive growth. A business like our Mexican strategy that we didn't have two years ago, we grew double digits last year, and we are growing double digits again this year.

That also gives me confidence, the fact that as we are building innovation, we're doing it with the right insights with consumers to drive growth that is sustainable and profitable for the long term. Thank you for your question.

Operator (participant)

Operator, we have time for one more question. Our next question comes from Megan Klap with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Hi, good morning. This is Alexia on for Megan. In the prepared remarks, you guys mentioned the wider operating income guide partly reflects changing policy landscape. Should we be thinking about that from a top-line perspective, or is that related to cost? Just any incremental color you could give there would be great. Thanks.

Carlos Abrams-Rivera (Board Member and CEO)

Thanks for the question. Look, there are, as you know, a lot of things being discussed and under consideration that might have implications on the business, positive or negative. Part of the reason why we have this wider range is to contemplate a whole different set of scenarios that can come into play. We are trying to just provide the flexibility, knowing that there is a number of things that are still volatile, but in a guidance, you'll see us that we are acknowledging some of those things, we're preparing for those things, and also at the same time, making sure that we have the right flexibility to invest back in the business in order to drive the trade that we have and then fuel the opportunities that we are seeing with our Brand Growth System to expand back in our brands.

That is all reflected in the way we're kind of shaping the year ahead. Thank you, Alexia.

Anne-Marie Megela (VP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Operator, that concludes our Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.