A：Procter and Gamble's second quarter top line results were heavily influenced by underlying market trends and the impacts from base period dynamics. These base period impacts, related to trading and consumer pantry loading due to port strikes and hurricanes in October and the fear of additional port strikes in December, were particularly concentrated in the US market. However, the balance of the company outside the US grew organic sales nearly script.

A：Organic sales growth in the second quarter was observed in aircare, skin and personal care, personal health care, home care, oral care, and a few other categories. Grooming and fabric care remained flat with year-ago results, while baby care and family care were down low singles, with family care also down approximately 10% due to base period dynamics.

A：Procter and Gamble's international sales performance was highlighted by strong growth in the Europe focused market region, up 6%, and a middle 1% growth in the global Agg market share. Specific regions like France, Spain, and Italy showed strong growth, while Germany had a softer period. The enterprise markets grew mid single digits, and Latin America organic sales were up ed with solid growth across Mexico, Brazil, and other smaller markets.

A：Procter and Gamble's diluted earnings per share were a dollar 88, which was in line with the prior year on a currency-neutral basis. Core EPS was a dollar 85, and the company's growth margins were down 10 lyric points and core operating margins were down 13 basis points. The company also reported strong productivity improvements and adjusted free cash flow productivity of 88%, returning $4.8 billion of cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

A：Procter and Gamble is confident that its interventions and investments in near-term performance will be improved by strong innovations supported by sharper consumer communication and retail execution. Examples include China's baby care category making a step change and leading the premium and super premium segments of the market, and Mexico's fabric enhancers team disrupting the category through deep consumer understanding.

A：Procter and Gamble is looking to reinvent its business by embarking on the next phase of constructive disruption to create and extend competitive advantages. This includes a focus on accelerated results in various business segments, as well as a long-term reinvention that involves improving near-term results while working to disrupt itself to stay ahead of industry trends.

A：The essence of Procter and Gamble's integrated growth strategy is to deliver products in categories where performance drives brand choice, using product, packaging, communication, retail execution, and value to drive market growth and create value for the company and its retail partners.

A：Procter and Gamble's competitive advantage comes from its people, with deep connections to consumers and an industry-leading innovation capability. The company benefits from an enormous wealth of consumer data, continuous data flow, and a team that connects with consumers across many touchpoints. It has unique innovation capabilities and integrates these to launch new technologies and products, powered by advanced technologies like AI.

A：The role of brands in Procter and Gamble's future strategy is to consistently build the strongest brands in the industry, using superior data, technology, and capabilities to deliver consumer-relevant superiority. This will involve a consumer-centric approach, leveraging integrated data platforms and technologies to enhance brand building.

A：The key strategies for building brand relationships in the new media environment involve creating a realistic connection with consumers, integrating across various touch points, utilizing AI and Gen AI capabilities to discover consumer-relevant insights, and reinforcing brand performance and value through individual touch point experiences. These ideas are communicated across different platforms such as connected and broadcast TV, online video, social media, e-commerce sites, and in stores.

A：Integration with retail partners enhances value for brands by connecting consumer understanding and brand building capabilities from initial impulse to purchase transaction with each retailer's category strategy and business model. This enables the creation of value across all retail formats and includes activating brands in retail media to convey superiority and value messages close to the point of consumer purchase decision.

A：The significance of the supply chain capability lies in its industry leadership and the ability to drive a complete system connection from purchase signals through inventory systems to production planning and material ordering. This ensures that consumers find the product they want each time they shop. The company has built a structured data lake with petabytes of relevant data, data platforms, AI capabilities, programmatic shelf tools, and media creation and evaluation systems. The supply chain platforms can now operate autonomously, reacting to retail demand signals, consumer innovation needs, or productivity opportunities faster than ever before.

A：The next step in the company's strategic plan is to connect the dots and integrate the identified consumer friction points to product ideas, product design, supply, creative concepts, purchase transactions, usage in home, post-use evaluation, and to close the loop. This is expected to create a different S curve for future growth and value creation centered around the consumer.

A：The key components of the company's future growth strategy include inventing the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) company of the future, focusing on stronger integrated execution, and delighting consumers with superior products at a superior value. The company plans to leverage industry's best insights, assets, capabilities, and people to return to levels of growth and market leadership that are expected.

A：The factors contributing to the confidence in the company's growth forecast for the fiscal year include the strength of the business outside of the US, particularly in Latin America, Europe, and China; the impact of restructuring and exit strategies; underlying acceleration in the business; the execution of innovation, commercial strategies, and high-quality execution; and the success of product launches and campaigns. These elements, combined with the expectation of improved execution across all retail channels in the US and leveraging the strength of brands, contribute to the growth forecast confidence.

A：The company is focusing on integrating and bringing together efforts in innovation, insights, technology platforms, applications, and execution across the portfolio to create a cohesive strategy. This includes enhancing consumer engagement and creating a unified brand campaign. The strategies are being applied consistently across every part of the portfolio.

A：The company expects progress and sequential improvement across several segments, particularly laundry, baby care, and perhaps even skincare. At a global level, baby care is already showing growth in share and is expected to continue with ongoing work on the mid-tier proposition. The company has strong innovation in laundry and fabric enhancers and is preparing for new product launches that are expected to improve market share. Additionally, personal care products have momentum in the U.S. and globally.

A：The anticipated timeline for achieving a future state of even distribution of growth is expected to be from 12 to 18 months, with growth being uneven but not occurring overnight. Some businesses and regions may progress ahead of others, but the goal is for consistent improvement across the portfolio.

A：The restructuring program announced in June is expected to cover most of the necessary organizational and portfolio changes, potentially allowing the company to grow without additional investments in organization or people once implemented. This should lead to disproportionate sales growth per head. Investments over the next few years will focus on capacity building in a way that leverages automation and digitization. There are not expected to be significant changes to the underlying technology or data infrastructure, which has already been heavily invested in.

A：To drive execution and reaccelerate organic sales growth in the U.S. market, the key priorities include addressing changes in the retail landscape and consumer environment, as well as focusing on the media landscape and its dramatic changes, especially those influenced by COVID-19. Adjustments to brand building plans to leverage new media consumption habits are among the short- to mid-term interventions being focused on.

A：Adjustments are being made to focus on a 'stronger core and bigger more' approach to innovation, changing how brand campaigns are conducted, and ensuring better consumer value to reflect the new media landscape and retail dynamics.

A：Strengthening the core brand by improving performance and claims is considered the best approach for the entire portfolio. It is suggested that when products appear online, they should be presented strongly. In the US and other countries, this strategy is expected to lead to significant value improvement across categories without necessarily changing prices. Additionally, looking into online businesses and the willingness of consumers to purchase higher-priced items presents an opportunity for innovation, especially in categories like hair care and skin care.

A：The company sees opportunities in online businesses to innovate with stronger core and bigger more premium-priced products. This is particularly noted for categories like hair care and skin care, where small brands tend to play at the higher end of the spectrum in terms of price per usage.

A：Winning in fast-growing segments, whether they be channels or parts of the market, is a strategic priority. This can lead to dramatic growth in market size and category growth, as evidenced by the significant e-commerce growth in India, which is about as fast as offline retail and represents nearly 60% of offline business there.

A：The company aims to recover share and improve performance by playing in daily use categories where performance is critical, which aligns with their total strategy. They are making progress in laundry, and the recovery in the second half will include both base period effects and share recovery. The objective is to leave the fiscal year with share momentum in the US and globally.

A：The assessment of the current portfolio strategy is positive. The company is playing in daily use categories where performance is essential and feels confident about this choice. They are also continuously reviewing the right segments and whether they are playing adequately in higher growth areas. Additionally, they are ensuring presence in growing segments such as social commerce and exploring opportunities for greater strength in health and beauty categories. Overall, the company seems pleased with its portfolio and its alignment with total addressable markets and potential for stronger growth.

A：Investors should expect a slight headwind from inventory as there is not expected to be significant inventory built in the second half, and some inventory efficiency is anticipated.

A：While margins will be an outcome and cannot be provided with certainty, it is expected that there will be an improving margin trajectory driven by the ability to continue investing in brands and focus on top line and EPS growth.

A：The company will not provide specific margin guidance but plans to tactically maneuver investments for the strongest possible growth, focusing on top line and EPS. The investment areas include innovation launches, media spend for consistent communication, and trade-related spending for trial and in-store visibility.

A：The weakness in volumes and the margin contraction are attributed to the slowing of volume growth, which affects the high-margin business. The timing of grooming business initiatives, particularly the phasing of various initiatives, is a driver.

A：The segment is expected to see modest acceleration in the second half, with the biggest opportunity for the grooming business lying in the continued activation of the portfolio in the US and quality of execution in US stores. There is also potential upside in regions like Lys and Lys percent growth in female grooming and appliances.

A：The trend in usage volume in households has been slow to flat, with a focus on reaccelerating household penetration and user growth, rather than just price-driven growth.

A：The category growth assumption includes the potential for stabilization or share gains, but it also acknowledges the possibility of trade-down within the brands. The company aims to grow share through growing more users and households, focusing on the balance between productivity and top and bottom line growth.

A：The company aims to grow more users and households through investments in productivity, flow-through, and promotional activities. The balance between top line and bottom line growth depends on execution and various external factors, and investments will be made more aggressively if there is conviction in the right programs and plans.

A：The company expects to continue delivering within the range of productivity and pricing they have demonstrated. They are confident in their ability to drive productivity and are optimistic about top-line growth, which is crucial for growth in earnings per share (EPS). The risk of needing to adjust investment levels relates to delivering on these productivity and growth objectives without additional headcount. The guidance assumes strong margin leverage, but the potential need for adjusting investment levels is acknowledged, particularly as it relates to delivering on their approach to pricing and productivity.

A：The company plans to drive organizational effectiveness through restructuring programs, changes in organization design, integration of technology, and reduction of functional barriers. These strategies are expected to free up team capacity to focus on consumer innovation and execution. The speaker expresses strong conviction in these plans and their potential to enhance organizational effectiveness.

A：The company recognizes that the data showing a higher percentage of sales on promotion is a competitive, retail, and consumer dynamic that they expect to normalize over time, returning to pre-COVID levels. The current promotional read does not capture the full market reality as it overlooks forward gift cards and layered couponing. While acknowledging the increase in promotion volume and the intention to continue creating trial through promotions, the company aims to also grow users and usage, which includes generating trial as part of category growth. However, there's a strategy to strengthen product propositions to reduce dependency on promotions as the propositions get stronger.

A：The company's strategy for the regional mix of the business includes focusing on the US while also capitalizing on opportunities outside the country. They aim to grow faster in the US and are identifying specific markets with potential for growth, like Latin America, where they've made changes to their business model and organization structure to become more consumer-focused. The company is particularly excited about the growth in Brazil and Mexico and the potential in India. China is also seen as a significant market with unique growth drivers. The company's ability to grow in these markets is supported by a strong margin structure in enterprise markets that allows consistent investment without being dilutive.

A：The company's strategy for delivering value to consumers involves having a diverse portfolio that includes options at various price points, ensuring product accessibility. This strategy is particularly evident in their approach to baby care and laundry products. The company believes that strengthening product propositions is crucial, and significant progress has been made, especially in the laundry segment. The goal is to deliver value through a balance of portfolio strategy and product performance enhancements, rather than solely relying on consumers upgrading to premium brands or private labels.