Thank you. Good morning everyone.

Thanks for joining the call. We had a strong second quarter and first half, and I want to start by thanking all of our Church & Dwight employees all around the world for executing so well in a challenging environment.

I'll begin with some thoughts in the broader environment, and then a review of our Q2 results, and then I'll turn the call over to Lee, Rick McChesney, our CFO, and when Lee's done, we'll open it up for questions. Starting with the broader environment, conditions remain dynamic.

However, our categories are growing ahead of our original expectations, and Church & Dwight is growing even faster. Consumer spending remains resilient.

Our teams are executing with excellence, and we remain focused on offering high-quality, solution-oriented products to consumers at the right value. Our brands continue to perform exceptionally well, driving a second straight quarter of industry-leading organic sales growth.

Turning to the quarter, net sales increased 1.6%, which was ahead of our outlook, and organic sales grew 5.8%, almost 6%, well above our 3% outlook. This growth was broad-based across all three divisions and was primarily driven by volume growth of 4.3% and positive price/mix 1.5%.

Adjusted gross margin was 45.4%, up 40 basis points, and adjusted EPS was 89 cents, above our 88-cent outlook. Overall, this is a great result, and with the first half of the year behind us, it gives us great confidence to raise our sales, EPS, and cash flow outlook for the full year.

In Q2, we also completed the acquisition of the fast-growing Miss Mouth's brand, the number one stain remover brand on Amazon. We're encouraged by the strong initial sales results from the brand since the June acquisition, and I'm especially excited about the growth opportunities for Miss Mouth's over the next 12 to 18 months.

In the second quarter, Miss Mouth's consumption grew over 50% and gained almost 3.5 share points. We think this is just the beginning, as household penetration for the brand is currently just 2.5%, compared to the category which is 50%.

Additionally, ACV for Miss Mouth's is only 35%, compared to 80% for the category, which again indicates plenty of room to run on distribution. Innovation and distribution gains remain a significant competitive advantage for Church & Dwight.

They were a major contributor to our industry-leading growth. We're confident that our relentless focus on innovation will continue to drive strong growth, distribution gains at shelf, and market share expansion.

New product launches this year are expected to account for about half of our organic growth as we innovate in key categories across the portfolio. Consumption across our largest categories grew at 2.7% in the second quarter, which exceeded our category growth expectations of around 2%.

Now I'm going to turn my comments to each of the three divisions. First up is the US business.

Domestic organic sales increased 5.1%, with sustained growth in both of our household and personal care portfolios. Growth was driven by volume and favorable price/mix with strong performance from TheraBreath mouthwash and toothpaste, Hero, ARM & HAMMER cat litter, and Zicam.

The ARM & HAMMER brand had another quarter of growth with laundry maintaining record shares across total laundry. ARM & HAMMER laundry detergent consumption and category consumption grew about 1% in the quarter despite a step-up in competitor promotions and a lower level for ARM & HAMMER.

The value segment of laundry continues to grow. Next up is litter.

Continued fantastic results as ARM & HAMMER cat litter consumption grew a robust 7.5%, and share increased 0.8 points to reach 24.5. While category promotional levels declined slightly, they remained at historically high levels.

ARM & HAMMER cat litter launched Dual Defense with Microban clumping litter earlier this year, and that launch continues to do very well. Hero and TheraBreath continue to contribute considerably to overall performance.

TheraBreath achieved another quarter of record share gains, jumping 4.5 points to a 25.3% share and further solidified our number two position in total mouthwash. Even with that growth, household penetration remains relatively low at only 14%, compared to the mouthwash category of 65%.

Our TheraBreath toothpaste launch continues to perform well, and it's still early in the launch. It's off to a great start with a 1-point share in total toothpaste despite only just fully entering brick and mortar in the last several months.

Hero consumption outpaced the patch category, and with the cleanser launch just starting now, we're confident in Hero continuing to gain share in total acne. Facial cleansers represent a $650 million category and accounts for approximately 30% of the total acne category, lots of runway, as Hero has, again, relatively low household penetration at 10%, compared to the category of 30%, which gives us confidence in the continued growth of this brand.

For Touchland, sales grew in the second quarter, and with back-half weighted innovation, new collaborations, and activations, we expect continued sales growth in the second half of the year. Looking forward further, our international expansion, our innovation into new categories, and future distribution opportunities continue to give us confidence in this brand as we look to 2027.

Global e-com was once again a strong contributor. Global e-commerce grew 22.7% in the second quarter, and global online sales now represent 25.5% of total consumer.

Turning to International, Q2 is another great success with our international business delivering organic sales growth of 9.1%, driven by higher volume and favorable price/mix. Our great international brands are leading to share gains and growth that outpaced local countries' GDP.

In addition, our recent US acquisitions are paying dividends across the world in a big way, where brands like Hero and TheraBreath are driving outsized growth. Our ability to scale brands to so many countries so quickly is getting better and better.

Overall, our international team is executing very well. Our Specialty Products Division also performed well, organic sales growth of 2.8% due to a combination of higher volume and higher price and product mix.

I'll close by saying that we were very pleased with the great first half. The benefits of our strategic actions in 2025 are enabling greater focus on our growth initiatives.

I am especially pleased with the time the entire organization is spending focused here on the future. Momentum is building.

The category work surrounding ARM & HAMMER, our acceleration plans for oral care behind TheraBreath, and the pipeline for M&A within the international business are just a few examples. I'll provide a detailed update in early 2027.

I will say I'm more optimistic about the future than I've ever been. I'm also very proud of our Church & Dwight team as we continue to execute well in a volatile environment.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Lee for more detail on the quarter.

Thank you, Rick, and good day everyone. We appreciate you joining the call.

As we now enter the second half of the year, we are encouraged with the results fueled by innovation and share growth, which provides us the momentum to deliver strong Church & Dwight Evergreen model results. The second quarter demonstrates the strength of our portfolio of categories, our leading levels of innovation, and the execution capabilities of our teams around the globe.

Similar to Rick, I also want to recognize our teams across the globe for their focus and execution this past quarter. Very well done.

Let's get into the details. We'll start with EPS.

Second quarter adjusted EPS was 89 cents, exceeding our outlook of 88 cents. Stronger than expected sales and continued gross margin improvement fueled our results and enabled increased investments in our brands.

Organic sales in the second quarter grew 5.8%, well above our outlook of approximately 3%. Growth was broad-based across the business and primarily volume-driven, with volume growth of 4.3% and positive pricing and mix of 1.5%.

Our power brands once again gained share fueled by well-received innovation and a robust distribution wins with our commercial partners. Strong organic growth and the contributions from our acquisitions more than offset the impact of our 2025 business exits and led to reported net sales growth of a positive 1.6% in the quarter, ahead of our expectations.

Let's now turn to gross margin. Our second quarter adjusted gross margin was 45.4%, an increase of 40 basis points versus last year.

Results were driven by 150 basis points from productivity programs, 110 basis points from our higher-margin acquisitions combined with the impact of our successful portfolio actions, and 180 basis points from the combination of volume, price, and mix. These factors offset the headwinds from inflation, tariffs, and transportation of 400 basis points.

We continue to invest in our brands in the second quarter as marketing expense was $165 million, up $8.2 million or 40 basis points versus last year. Similar to our strategy in past quarters, when our sales and gross margin results exceed our original expectations, we will utilize those opportunities to invest in our brands.

Adjusted SG&A was $241.4 million or 15.8% of net sales, a 220 basis point increase versus the prior year. As we've noted in our 2026 outlook, SG&A in the first half of the year is primarily growing to the inclusion of Touchland's SG&A in amortization expense.

Adjusted other expense increased by $9.2 million due to lower interest income compared to last year. Let's now turn to cash flow.

Cash flow remains a significant strength of the company. For the first six months of 2026, cash from operations was $462 million, an increase of 10.8% versus the prior year as we delivered improved cash earnings and executed disciplined working capital results.

Capital expenditures were $61.8 million in the first half, and we continue to expect full-year capital expenditures of approximately $130 million or roughly 2% of sales. Let's now turn to the outlook for 2026.

As detailed in our press release this morning, we are increasing our sales, earnings per share, and cash flow outlook despite the challenging macro environment. This improvement reflects the strength of our operating fundamentals, which is led by volume-based organic growth, steady market share gains, and management's focus on gross margin expansion.

Our outlook continues to reflect the impact of transitory cost pressures that developed over the past 100 days. Our latest outlook of approximately $30 million reflects raw materials, transportation costs, and various premiums resulting from the conflict in the Middle East.

This outlook assumes a crude oil price of approximately $90 a barrel. Our teams have acted to fully mitigate this headwind this year through increased productivity.

Separately on a positive note, we expect to receive approximately $15 million of Phase 2 tariff refund benefits during the second half of 2026. We will invest these proceeds in primarily consumer-facing business activities.

We are raising our full-year organic sales outlook to approximately 4% to 5%, up from the prior outlook of 3% to 4%. The improved outlook reflects the strong first-half execution and the continued momentum across the portfolio during the second half of 2026.

We now expect adjusted gross margin expansion of approximately 100 to 120 basis points for the year. Marketing investments is now expected to be at or above 11% of sales as we invest behind our brands and continue supporting our growth initiatives.

We are raising our adjusted EPS outlook to a growth rate of 6% to 8% versus our prior expectation of 5% to 8%. We also now expect cash from operations of approximately $1.175 by $1.1- $1.175 billion, up from $1.15 billion.

Turning to the third quarter, we expect organic sales growth of approximately 3% and adjusted EPS of approximately 89 cents per share, representing approximately 10% growth versus the prior year while we also invest at approximately 12% rate of marketing as a percentage of sales. To conclude, we are very pleased with our first-half performance and are confident in our ability to deliver our improved outlook for the balance of 2026.

Our portfolio remains strong, our brands continue to gain share, and our teams are executing well in a dynamic environment. Operator, we are now ready for questions.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Also, congrats on a nice quarter.

Just going back to the organic sales growth delivery for the quarter. Just curious, at a high level, what are some of the areas that drove the significant upside that we saw on that line item?

Yeah. No,

thanks Rupesh. The good news is it was pretty broad-based.

As we said in the release, I think TheraBreath, cat litter, I would say ARM & HAMMER laundry was kind of flattish. Anything else you would add, Lee?

I think as Rick said, it's pretty broad-based, home care, personal care, across the globe. Really good to see international at 9% as well, and that was pretty broad-based across both Europe and Asia and Latin America as well.

Great. Then my follow-up question.

Just on the Miss Mouth's acquisition, sounds like very strong consumption that you guys are seeing right now, but as we look out the next couple years, I know you guys talked about this business growing double digits, but is there any more granularity you can give in terms of the types of growth rates you expect for the business?

I think it's a little early to do that. We just bought it in June, early June.

I would say a lot of work is going on to integrate and then accelerate this business. I don't think we've been more excited about an acquisition in a long time.

There's five individuals that came over. They've tucked right into our fabric care business.

We know fabric care really, really well. Retailers, our internal sales force are clamoring for this brand.

It's already at a 13 share at a major retailer and it's only been in there for a few months as one example. I just go back to household penetration's 3.

It's 50 for the category. Probably the right time to talk about our North Star on growth ambitions is probably early 2027, but we think there's a lot of enthusiasm around Miss Mouth's.

Great. Thank you.

I'll pass it along.

Hi. Good morning.

Thank you so much for the question. I was wondering if you could comment on the success you're seeing across ARM & HAMMER laundry.

Wanted to follow up on the fact that you mentioned in the beginning of this year where you surpassed high traditional on wash load volumes, and where are you seeing now the share gains for ARM & HAMMER across the value, mid-tier, and premium tiers? Then on the premium side for the brands, you touched on Touchland earlier in the call and the expansion to toothpaste with the rollout.

Wanted to see how you're thinking about this expansion as we move forward this year. Thank you.

Yeah. Hey Anna, on your second one, are you talking about TheraBreath or are you talking about Touchland?

Oh, sorry, TheraBreath. You're right.

Yeah. Okay.

On laundry, look, laundry in general, the good news, or really the great news, is despite a significant increase in promotion, I'd say we're back to historical levels of promotion in laundry. The category was up 200 basis points.

Henkel was up 1,100 basis points and Procter was up almost 200 basis points as well. Church & Dwight was down 300 basis points on promotion.

Despite that, the value segment grew, and we maintained our share. Just the world we live in these days, ARM & HAMMER is just so well-positioned for growth.

There's a lot of couponing that happens off of the off channels as well, and our competitors are spending on couponing, of course, as well. ARM & HAMMER to hold share in an environment like that is fantastic.

We, over time, will make sure that we're at historical levels of promotion as well. A lot of optimism on ARM & HAMMER laundry, especially behind our innovations.

We have a good, better, best strategy, and I'd say each of those tiers within laundry are doing well. Even our sheets, as Tide evo launches and takes shelf space and money behind it, we're the number two player in the sheet space.

Our sheets are up 30% as well, and we're going along for the ride, which is great. That's on ARM & HAMMER laundry.

On TheraBreath, I would say, again, number two mouthwash, lots of runway. Consumption grew 20% plus.

We grew 4.5 share points to 25%. We're less than 1,000 basis points from the market leader, who's Listerine.

Our household penetration's still relatively low at 14, compared to the category at 65. That is enabling us to go into other parts of oral care like toothpaste.

We never deserved the space that we got for TheraBreath toothpaste, but because of the success of the mouthwash, we got some premium, great shelf space. As a result, we have a great brand with a great value proposition on fresh breath and cleaning, and it's doing extremely well and it's already at a 1 share point.

I couldn't be more optimistic about our oral care franchise behind TheraBreath.

Great. Thank you so much.

Very helpful.

Hey Chris, you might be on mute. Oh, there you go.

Can you hear me? How about now?

Yep.

We can hear you.

Great. Sorry about that.

I wanted to start with the oral care portfolio and specifically the TheraBreath rollouts. You said that you're getting more than your fair share out of the gates.

I was wondering how you think you're tracking relative to the ambitions that you outlined at the investor day. I think it was an incremental $0.5 billion.

You feel like you're starting out stronger than expected, and was that shipment for that launch a bit stronger in the quarter than perhaps what you anticipated? I was surprised you didn't call it out in some of the key drivers of organic sales.

Is that something that we should be mindful for going forward, given the quite robust personal care implied organic sales number this quarter? Then I have a follow-up.

Yeah. TheraBreath paste is off to a good start, is what I would say.

It's meeting or slightly beating our expectations. I think there's a lot of great conversations in the works with additional retailers to get behind it, which is fantastic.

Those conversations are easier when you have a TheraBreath mouthwash brand and business that's just, again, growing so fantastically well. For the quarter, TheraBreath paste was a contributor to net sales for sure.

Did it overdeliver a little bit? Maybe some.

What was the other part of the question, Chris?

I think that was about it. It started stronger than you expected, its early days, and it was a bit of a contributor, a bit more than expected in Q2 if I heard all that correctly.

Just interrupt me if...

You really had asked in terms of the growth initiatives, it's kind of early to talk about how it's doing versus the growth initiatives, but it is laying the groundwork is what I would say, not just in oral care, but all the ARM & HAMMER stuff, too. That groundwork and the momentum that we're starting to build is fantastic.

Okay. The second question is, I think, this is one of the highest inflation numbers that we've seen over the past four years or so.

How quickly did that develop for you? Was that freight and logistics inflation that happened quicker than you anticipated, and should we be expecting about that kind of number as we go through the rest of the year, or was that Q2 more of an anomaly?

I'm also struck just by a bit stronger price/mix contribution to both top line and gross margin. Is there a bit of a step change in thinking about how you're going to be covering inflation this year with pricing, or is there a bit of a mix dynamic in that number as well?

Thank you.

Yeah. Good morning, Chris.

Keep in mind when we talked about the $25 to $30 million of kind of Middle East-derived inflation, our outlook in 2Q said it was going to be higher in 2Q. There are some transportation costs that were going to happen right away, and then you get time to respond to it.

Our productivity initiatives that we kicked off, accelerated to mitigate that would definitely be more back half. It's a combination of two things.

That number should drop down because there's just some anomalies in the second quarter, and then we have essentially more productivity in the back half. We have this outlook of 100 to 120 basis points gross margin improvement.

You can see where we are halfway through the year. That implies that the gross margin will expand over 100 basis points in the back half of the year.

On the price/volume/mix, that's a good number. Obviously, we always say never overreact to one quarter.

The first quarter was just slightly negative. Our mindset is to drive volume growth, and we do drive positive mix.

That's part of our algorithm. Then a reminder, this year, we do have the benefit of the portfolio action, help as well, and that will be a benefit all year.

I'd probably say in the quarter, when we don't spend as much on promotion on laundry, that helps year over year a little bit on the price side of it, too.

Great. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, and good morning everyone.

I just had a question on your improved outlook for the year. You took up your top-line growth guidance by a point and now expect higher gross margins.

While you did raise the lower end of your EPS growth guidance, you kept the high end of the range. Wanted to understand the drivers of that, and maybe how much further you plan to step up reinvestments to drive sustainable top-line growth ahead.

Also, if you could provide some examples of these investments and any changes you might be making to your strategy given the pressured macro environment would be helpful. Thanks.

Thanks Bonnie. It's a good question.

I would say, look back at our track record over the last 1, 3, 5, 10 years. What do we do when we feel like we're overdelivering and performing well against our expectations and against the industry is we tend to spend back.

We could in theory beat earnings and EPS in any one year, but we choose to spend more on marketing, or we spend more on investments. We want to make sure that flywheel is going, that virtuous cycle happens, and we keep gaining share and shelf space and support the innovations that we're launching.

Beyond marketing, we're also going to spend, and we've also started to spend money behind AI, and there's some initiatives we have in place where we're going to pull some of those forward as an example so that we can scale faster. One of our core competencies and I think competitive advantages is really our speed and agility.

We're going to go try to adopt and adapt faster than most people.

All right, thank you for that. I'll pass it on.

Great, thank you. Good morning, everyone.

You mentioned that consumption in your largest categories, I think grew 2.7% in the quarter, above your expectation for 2%. Obviously a lot of moving pieces within the quarter itself.

Kind of curious if you could speak to what you saw throughout the quarter and maybe more specifically the exit rate, and just kind of as you think about the back half of the year, what are you embedding in terms of category growth?

Yeah. The short answer is we're still assuming around 2% for category growth.

We continue to do better than that, as you saw in the last couple quarters. I think that's a good, in general, walking-around number for a while.

Our monthly consumption numbers in Q2 were just fantastic. June was also good, with the exception of laundry as we didn't repeat some promotions in laundry.

Sometimes we choose to do that. We also had a club promotion that we didn't do in the quarter as well.

I would say we did that fantastic growth with flattish impact from one of our larger businesses. Again, consumption's going really well, shares are doing really well.

It's broad-based to my first answer to kind of Rupesh's question early on. There are a lot of things that are going right.

This is the right time for us as a company, especially because we're not distracted with some of those businesses that we sold, Peter, we have the time to focus on the future. We're laying the groundwork for those three growth initiatives that we've talked about again and again and again.

A lot of internal time is being spent on the future right now. That makes sense.

Then,

Rick, you mentioned we're going to get some more color at a later date, but you did say that you were more optimistic than ever. I guess just looking at the guidance in the 4Q implied exit rate would suggest some pretty nice momentum heading into next year.

Maybe putting that all together, could you maybe just discuss why you are as optimistic as you've ever been and maybe what that means as it pertains to top- and bottom-line growth?

I don't know if I'll go to top- and bottom-line growth yet, but I'll tell you we're doing all this category work on ARM & HAMMER. We're getting real consumer feedback.

We're getting real good buy-in from some retailers on the ideas. We're making great progress on how and why they have a reason for being and have a right to win in a certain category.

It's obvious why we're happy about TheraBreath and its success, and meanwhile, internationally, though that brand, along with Hero, is really developing into a business of tens of millions of dollars. There's good global expansion going on.

The third growth initiative was really international growth, and a piece of that is international M&A. We've been talking a lot over the past few years about, hey, we have people here now.

We have a process here now. It's starting to go from theoretical to practical.

We've filtered through 100 deals over the last 6 to 12 months now internationally. We're being as picky and as fussy as we always would be with any deal, but now we're starting to see the deal flow, which is great.

Those are some examples.

Great. Thank you so much.

I'll pass it on.

Great. Thanks.

Good morning. Regarding the competitive backdrop, you mentioned the promotional environment, everyone's obviously talking about their various investments in affordability.

I realize this isn't new to you, though perhaps there are more tools out there now, whether it's leveraging retail relationships, AI, and other tools. To the extent that your competitors continue to invest in some of the affordability initiatives that they're pushing, can you provide a little bit more in terms of how you think about combatting those, particularly if they start to continue to increase?

I think it's a fair question, Olivia. I would just tell you though, look at our track record over the last not 1 or 5, but decade or two of how we compete in household, right?

We have a great ability to do that. Sometimes it's trade promotion, hopefully usually it's innovation, hitting the right price pack architecture and sizing.

You want to deliver, like I said in my remarks, a great high-quality at a value price for the consumer. It just so happens that our brands are the intersection of that naturally.

Competitors have to compete a lot harder than we do because we naturally fall in those intersections.

Got it. Then on Miss Mouth's, sort of similar to Hero, TheraBreath, Touchland, I know it's early days, but what do you think Miss Mouth's can bring to you in terms of discussions with new retailers, new categories, geographic opportunities, as you sort of assess the ability to grow that business beyond where it sits right now?

It has the ability to do all of that. When really you have a brand that's driving category growth, it's driving usage occasions, it's driving new consumers and young consumers at that into the category, it has a magic moment.

It's actually not even the same consumer as OxiClean. OxiClean is a little bit more broader based, but Miss Mouth's is really a higher end and just a great see something, do something in terms of the stain.

I don't want to get into too much detail. I would just say it is additive for every retail conversation that we have, and we're working hard to not just do current capacity, but also what the future of that brand and where consumers say it has the right to go because it's going to continue to broaden on forms and maybe even adjacent spaces.

Understood. Thank you.

Hey, great. Good morning, guys.

To start, I think year-to-date, Rick, the results you've put up around 5% volumetric shipments both for the total company and, I think, even in the consumer domestic business, I guess how does that compare to your views on consumption year-to-date, and how does that inform your back-half thinking? I guess juxtaposed against that, it sounds like you've made some choices this quarter that benefited the price/mix line that seem kind of unique to the quarter.

I guess as I think forward, do we see sort of a return to a more full promotional stance in the back half as well?

I would say consumption and our organic, there is no real disconnect. It's around it's around 5, 5% or so on on on both.

There's great momentum that we we experienced in the first half. In the second half, we expect a lot a lot of that to continue.

I think even like I think we pulled the data on a two-year stack as an example, and the two-year stack for organic growth is 5% in the first half and 6% in the second half. Again, just really broad-based, more than just one thing going on as a tailwind for the company.

You're right. I I kind of referenced a little bit maybe a a bit of a pull back in promotion that we had.

I wouldn't even say a pullback. I'd say we were at a certain level and there was an acceleration by other competitors.

I don't know about a year-over, much year-over-year change from a price/mix perspective, but a little bit from help from laundry. There are other things happening in the portfolio, as as we have these higher-margin products like a TheraBreath, or like a Hero, or even like a Miss Mouth's.

As they continue to grow, that's going to be a favorable flow on on mix. Lee, anything you would add to that?

I think Rick said it well. We focus on volume growth.

If you look at our history on price/mix, it's neutral to positive. It's just a little bit slightly higher in the second quarter.

That's a little bit of year over year. You look forward, that's going to be the equation.

It's going to be volume-driven. We'll benefit from the things Rick talked about, the way we're positioned.

We will do what we do on discounting, but we don't have to do as much as the others do.

Perfect. Perfect.

Then, Rick, I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about international M&A. As you said, you've been talking about it for a while.

It seems from the way you're talking about it now, the excitement is building, anticipation is building. I guess, have you learned anything?

The opportunity's been there on paper for a long time, but it's also take a little while to manifest in a transaction. Have you learned anything in terms of where it's harder, just or not?

Just any perspective on kind of the opportunities you see it today versus when you set out to focus on this initiative?

I think we were busting our pick on it for a little while, and it was all about people and structure. It wasn't a bad approach, but we initially added M&A people and a person in Europe, for example, and I would say it was a little bit disconnected from the management teams, and it was almost like a Center of Excellence on M&A.

We changed that approach about 6, 8 months ago, and we said the management teams are responsible, and the M&A person supports that. All of a sudden the international management teams, the country director and his or her staff, Australia, the same thing, and Southeast Asia, the same thing, and Latin America, the same thing.

You have a right to go and an obligation to go look at not just what you hear from the bankers or for our M&A contact, but what brands would you like to go and look at? That has, when we made it I guess their objective, and they owned it, I'd say that was the unlock for us.

Of course, our M&A team is enabling and helping, but I think we went right from first to third gear since we did that.

Yeah. Perfect.

Thanks so much. Pass it on.

Great. Thanks.

I had two questions. First was at the risk of being redundant, because I got a little bit confused on Chris's question and the answer was just the gross margin this quarter.

I know you gave the bridge, but in total, it did come in below your expectations, and there wasn't a huge change on the inflation guide as you guys pointed out. Just curious on the slight shortfall on gross margins this quarter.

Then my second question was just about how Touchland is trending, sliding to organic sales going forward from here, just wanted to get an update on that brand. Thanks.

All right, I'll take the first question. Just to answer the question, we had just slightly higher transportation costs in the second quarter, even a little bit higher than we thought.

As we talked about for the year, we're still at $30 million of all in, same type of impact overall. Then

on Touchland, I think my comments were really we had sales growth in the second quarter. We have a lot of back-half weighted innovation, new collaborations with other brands, and some activations up and down the channel.

We expect sales growth in the second half of the year. Then we have a lot of work going on in innovation into, as we've said before, another category or two, and some other distribution opportunities, plus international expansion.

I think that's a muscle that we've built really well through these brands now. Takes a little bit regulatory perspective, but that's going to start hitting in 2027 as well.

That should be a tailwind. We'll take next question.

Hi. Good morning.

I guess the punchline in laundry is that ARM & HAMMER is holding share without promoting or promoting less and while the others promote. I don't know whether I heard this correctly because it sounded like a big number, but did you say that Henkel increased promotional activity by how much?

Is that... I said 1,100 basis points.

That's high. What does it mean right now given how the oil is trending?

Have you seen any change given that the category is so slow, if you can clarify that a little bit?

Yeah. No, it's a good question, Javier.

Look, I think I said last quarter, when commodities are high and they stay high for a while, what tends to happen? Promotion tends to kind of dial back a bit.

That is not what happened this past quarter. My belief is a lot of people got tariff refunds, and they're spending it back and trying to drive volume.

The good news for us is, again, ARM & HAMMER is at that intersection of value and just quality, and we don't need to promote as much in order to hit that kind of price point. We held share, which is fantastic.

As we increase promotion a little bit at historical levels, of course, I tend to think that we're going to continue to do what we've done for the last 15, 20 years is gain share in ARM & HAMMER year after year.

Thank you. My second one is in cat litter.

Continue doing really well. You mentioned in Q1 that you got the strongest TDP growth in HPC and we are seeing it.

Heading into back-to-school, any change in distribution, particularly in this business, if you can comment on that? Thank you.

I would say litter is doing extremely well. To have 7.5% consumption growth and almost a full share point gained is great.

We're doing that the right way. We're doing that the way we've always done it, which is innovation.

ARM & HAMMER cat litter is just known for innovation. Our new one this year on Dual Defense with Microban is a great example of that.

Some competitors are spending a lot. We're within historical [laughter] levels and we're doing all the right things.

We've talked before about some of the attributes of why ARM & HAMMER does so well. We have the orange box, we have the black box, we have premium and value.

Just again, litter's doing great.

Thank you.

Thank you. One of the many positive surprises here is there's no mention of retailers reducing inventory in your categories.

My first question is how do you think you dodged that bullet? Do you think it's because of the categories, or do you think it's just because you, in particular, have the right inventory levels?

Then I had another question on Touchland. You mentioned that it grew, but there's not a lot of commentary on how much it grew.

Is the pace of growth decelerating compared to first quarter? Can you be more specific for us?

Thanks. Yeah.

Let's see. The first question is on retail inventory.

Look, if you look back at all of our transcripts, probably for the last 10 or 15 years, we've talked about retail inventory maybe two or three times, and two of those times were earlier in 2025. There's always dynamics that are happening with retail inventory, but we never believe they are impactful enough for us to comment on or something that we can't overcome.

There's, I would say, some movement, but overall immaterial. The second one is on Touchland.

I would say the business is growing, and our outlook for that is probably high single digits these days, but, again, we're really comforted by the fact that we have this great innovation lineup. We have this great collab lineup coming.

A lot of the support that we have in the back half with displays from these retailers. Touchland continue to be optimistic about it.

Thanks.

Hi, good morning everyone. I wanted to ask about the international business, solid performance there.

It's now continuing to deliver on pretty tougher comparisons. Maybe can you give us a sense of what regions are driving the growth there, where you're seeing the strength?

Then the second part of the question, as you think about the opportunity for some of the recent acquisitions like TheraBreath, Hero, Touchland, how much more opportunity you see for expansion of those brands internationally? Thank you.

I'll take the brand one and then I'll let Lee talk about kind of the countries and the regions, but we are still in early innings, for baseball analogy, for TheraBreath and Hero, and very early for Touchland. I think we're hitting number one share positions in many, many countries all over the world.

We have great retailer discussions about how we're growing kind of the acne category with Hero. Of course the mouthwash rollout is a little bit slower than the acne rollout, but they're both doing extremely well.

Once they get in market, these brands, because they are problem solution, because consumers can see them working, because they're premium brands for a retailer driving category growth, once they're in market, it starts to become kind of a virtuous cycle.

I'll just pick up from there. Certainly, Hero, TheraBreath, the piece was a great driver in the quarter for us.

Then, if you think about that, we're taking those across the globe. That's what we do really well.

You ask which part's doing well. Quite frankly, very broadly.

Europe, for example, Europe is economy wants to be slower. We're growing at the levels you see at the total level here, doing really well in Asia and Latin America as well.

We said this in the first quarter. First quarter had a little bit of impact from the Middle East.

You take it out, it was growing towards mid- to high single digits. The outlook for the business is to be high single digits.

That's what it is in the Evergreen model. It was great to see another strong quarter from them.

Great, thank you, guys.

Thank you, operator. Hi everyone.

I just wanted to go back to what you mentioned about TDPs right in one of the categories. I was hoping to see if you can explore a little bit on the TDPs on the laundry side and how we're cycling that.

You just say that you're not engaging, your promo levels are below, just curious, and you're still getting share. Just curious to see the volume if you think about volume share, if you can talk about that.

As well as how to think about TDPs for laundry and in general in the US for the remainder of the year. When you're cycling that, you see that cycling some of the TDP growth into next year, or you're cycling some of it in the third quarter?

Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks Andrea. Really remember last quarter, we kind of talked about our industry-leading TDP growth, and it was I want to say around 11% or 12%, and most of the industry average was at 5% or 6%.

We were double what most people were getting. At the time when we talked about TDP growth, I said it was very broad-based.

It was across brands and across channels, and that was entirely true. I think laundry I don't have it in front of me, but I would guess it was high single digits for ARM & HAMMER.

That all was kind of towards the front part of the year. It takes a while for that to reset, but so that's end of next year is what I would say all those TDP results help with.

We'll go to the next question.

Thanks very much. Just a couple from me, please, Rick and Lee.

Just on Batiste, I guess one of your power brands, it a bit of a tricky 2025 for you in the US, and you call out strength in the international, but I just wondered how things are going in the US for Batiste. Is it a category challenge you're facing there, or is it more of a brand challenge?

Then, I think you went live on the ERP, didn't you, in April? Looking back at what sort of you talked about or on the investor day, talked about it being an engine of growth in the future, at least way that you're implementing it.

I just wonder, Rick, as the clear optimism you feel about the outlook for the business, how much does this new sort of upgraded ERP sort of feed into that optimism? Yeah.

Thanks Ed. For Batiste, we've talked about this it's really a tale of two cities.

Batiste internationally is doing phenomenally well. It's growing double digits.

It's one of the main drivers of growth behind TheraBreath and Hero behind innovation, the right pricing strategy. Our international Batiste business is doing extremely well.

Batiste in the US is growing. We're growing a little short of the category.

Category grew 5.5%. We grew closer to 2% from consumption.

We lost a little bit of share, 1.4 4%. That was closer to 4 or 5 share points in prior quarters.

We were making great headway on Batiste. I've seen the inflection.

I'm not worried about Batiste. We have a great set of actions that are already in market or lined up for market in late this year, early next year on sizes and offerings and price pack architecture.

We have some great innovation queued up and just a lot of confidence in the Batiste brand. That's not something I really worry about long-term.

The ERP system, I think it's an underappreciated fact that we have a North American ERP system, and so as we do acquisitions, it is one of the things that enables us to do acquisitions so flawlessly and seamlessly. Just to give you a real-life example, we closed on Miss Mouth's, I think, around June 1st or so, and we're going to be fully integrated by end of August.

That is lightning fast, even for us. That capability is, I think, again, just a great advantage for us.

Next question, please.

Great. Thanks.

Morning, everyone. Two questions for me, Rick, related to the pricing environment.

Where it would certainly seem like the cost environment, cost inflation, would justify additional pricing. A lot of discussion about brand strength broadly, from Church and from some of your peers, but it doesn't seem like in certain cases that the industry is looking at pricing as a lever to offset the cost inflation, where there's a clear justification for that.

Like for Procter, it's a more premium portfolio than you, Clorox, sort of well-documented what's going on from a market share perspective. I'm just trying to square some of the brand strength discussion and what would certainly appear to be a clear cost justification for additional pricing in this backdrop of a softer consumer environment, particularly in household products, and some of the decisions not to take additional price.

What's different in the current environment versus past, where the industry seems more inclined to move on price. Just your thoughts there, Rick, on retailer's openness for additional price in your portfolio, how you're thinking about it for Church, and what you've included in your outlook.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Kevin.

My answer doesn't really change a lot from what I talked about last quarter. I think in this environment, consumers are pressed.

We see that. When you see stuff go on promotion, I would say elasticities are higher than they normally would be.

Consumers are pressed. Our job is to help offset that as best we can.

We said last quarter we were going to do that with productivity, and we were fighting hard to do that, and we've largely done that, which is great. We said that if we couldn't do that, and this inflationary environment stays higher for longer, then we would look at pricing eventually.

That's still true. We believe, we hope, that this higher inflation environment isn't permanent.

Meanwhile, we're fighting it with productivity, we're fighting it with trade and promotional optimization, and so far, we're winning. Look at our gross margin expansion as an example.

I think a lot of our peer groups are going backwards on margin. For a long time, typically what you see is when inflation happens, promotional levels abate as a first step.

That's not what's happening right now. Like I said before, I believe that a lot of tariff rebates are happening, from retailers and other manufacturers, and they're competing that away a bit.

That has to play out a bit, Kevin, is my short answer to you. We're in a great position to win either way.

Good. Thank you.

Thanks everyone. Looking forward to talking again in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, have a great rest of the summer. Bye.