Church & Dwight (CHD) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Rick Durker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Church and Dwight. Please go ahead, sir. 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 and 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 we'll turn the call over to Lee, Exchezny or CFO. And when Lee is 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 and 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 of 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 proved 5.8%, almost six, 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 mixed 1.5%. Adjusting growth margin was 45.4% up 40 basis points, and adjusted EPS was 89 cents above our 88% 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 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 over the next 12-18 months. In the second quarter, Miss Mouth's consumption grew over 50%, and gained almost three and a half share points. And 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 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 and delight. 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 itself, 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 U. S. 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 Theraprep, mouthwash, and toothpaste, hero, Armand Hammer Cat litter, and zykem. The Armand Hammer brand had another quarter of growth, with laundry maintaining record shares across total laundry. Armand Hammer laundry detergent consumption and category consumption grew about 1% in the quarter, despite a step up in competitive promotions and a lower level for Armand Hammer. The values segment of laundry continues to grow. Next up is litter, continued fantastic results. As Armand 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.

Armand Hammer Cat litter launched dual defense for Microbond, clumping litter earlier this year, and that launch continues to do very well. Hero and Therapress continued to contribute considerably to overall performance. Therapress achieved another quarter of record share gains, jumping 4.5 points to 25.3% share, and further solidified our number 2 position in total mouthwash. Even with that growth, household penetration remains relatively low at only 14%, compared to the 5%. Our Therapress toothpaste launch continues to perform well, and it's still early in the launch. It's off to a great start with a one-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.

Our 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 to new categories, and future distribution opportunities continue to give us confidence in this brand as we look to 2027. Global Ecom was once again a strong contributor. Global Ecomers 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%. It's 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 U. S. acquisitions are paying dividends across the world in a big way, where brands like Hero at their breadth are driving outside its 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. We're getting 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 works surrounding Armand Hammer, our acceleration plans for oral care behind Theraprep and a pipeline for M&A within the international business, are just a few examples. I'll provide a detailed update in early 2027, but I'll say more, but I will say, I'm more optimistic about the future than I've ever been.

I'm also very proud of our church and white team as we continue to execute well in a volatile environment. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Lee for more detail in 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 and white 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 EPS, adjusted EPS with 89 cents, exceeding our outlook of 88 cents, stronger than expected sales and continued growth margin improvement, fueled the results, and enabled increased investments in our brands. Organic sales in the second quarter grew 5.8%, well above our outlook of approximately 3%. And 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 our 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. Our results were driven by 150 basis points from productivity programs, 110 basis points from a higher margin acquisitions combined with the impact of our success of 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.

And similar to our strategy and 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 outlooks, 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 the lower interest income compared to last year. Let's now turn to cash flow. Cash flow remains a significant strength of the company and for this first six months of 2026, cash from operations is 462 million, an increase of 10.8% versus the prior year as we delivered improved cash earnings and executed discipline 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 our outlook to the outlook for 2026. And 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. And 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. And separately on a positive note, we expect to receive approximately $15 million of phase two tariff refund benefits during the second half of 2026. We will invest these proceeds in primarily customer 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 continuum momentum across the portfolio during the second half of 2026. And we now expect to adjust gross margin expansion of approximately 100 to 120 basis points of the year. And marketing investments is now expected to be at or above 11% of sales as we invest behind our brands and continue supporting our growth finishes. We are raising our adjusted EPS outlook to a growth rate of 6% to 8% versus a prior expectation of 5% to 8%. And we also now expect cash from operations of approximately 1.17 by 1.175 billion up from 1.15 billion. In turning to the third quarter, we expect organic growth sales growth of approximately 3% and the 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.

So to conclude, we are very pleased with our first half performance and our confident in our ability to deliver 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.

Yeah, thanks Rupesh. The good news is it was pretty broad-based, but as we said in the release, I think, Aerobreth, Cat litter, I'd say Armand Hammer laundry was kind of flatish. Anything else you would add, Lee?

So I think it's pretty broad-based. Home care, personal care, across the globe, and 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.

Yeah, I think it's a little early to do that. I mean, 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. And I don't think we've been more excited about an acquisition in a long time. There's, you know, five individuals that came over, they've talked right into our fabric-serve business. We know fabric-serve really, really well. And retailers, our internal sales force, are clamoring for this brand. And so 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. But I just go back to household penetrations three. 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 this mouth.

Yeah. Anna, your second one. Are you talking about Therabrath? Are you talking about Tesla? Oh, sorry. Therabrath. You're right. Okay. Well, 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 and laundry. The category was up 200 basis points.

Hinkle was up 1100 basis points, and Proctor was up almost 200 basis points as well. Church and Dwight was down 300 basis points on promotion. And so despite that, the value segment grew, and we maintained our share. So, you know, just the world we live in these days, the Armand Hammer is just so well positioned for growth. There's a lot of couponing that happens off of the off-channel as well, and our competitors are spending on couponing, of course, as well. So, Armand 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. So, a lot of optimism on Armand Hammer laundry, especially behind our innovations. Like, we have a good, better, best strategy, and I'd say each of those tiers with a laundry are doing well. Even our sheets, you know, as Tydiva launches and takes shelf space and money behind it, you know, we're the number two player in the sheet space. So, our sheets are up 30% as well, and we're going along for the ride, which is great. So, that's on Armand Hammer.

Laundry, on Therabreath, I would say, again, number two mouthwash, lots of runway, consumption grew 20%, plus. We grew four and a half share points to 25%, we're less than 1,000 basis points from the market leader who's listed in our household penetration 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. Like, 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, and 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 one share point.

So, I couldn't be more optimistic about our oral care franchise behind Therabreath.

Some of the key drivers that work organic sales, is that something that we should be mindful for going forward, given the quite robust personal care and applied organic sales number this quarter that I have a follow-up? Yeah. Therabreath pace is off to a good start, is what I would say. And 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. So, yeah, I mean, for the quarter, Therabreath pace was a contributor to net sales, for sure. Did it over deliver 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. It's early days. And it was a bit of a contributor, a bit more than expected in Q2, if I heard all that correctly. Yeah. Just interrupt me. Yeah. Yeah. And you really had asked in terms of the growth initiatives. It's kind of early to talk about how it's doing first, the growth initiatives, but it's laying the groundwork is what I would say.

Not just in oral care, but all the urban hammer stuff, too. But that groundwork and the momentum that we're starting to build is fantastic.

Good morning, Chris. So keep in mind when we talked about the 25 to 30 million dollars of kind of Middle East derived inflation, our outlook in QQ said it was going to be higher in QQ. There is some transportation costs that were going to happen right away and then you can get time to respond to it. Our productivity issues that we we kicked off, accelerated to mitigate that, we definitely would be more back half. But so there's a combination of two things. Yeah, that number should drop down because there's just some anomalies in the second quarter. And then, you know, we have essentially more productivity in the back half. So, you know, we have this outlook of 100 to 120 basis points of growth margin improvement.

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

On the price volume mix, you know, that's a good number. Obviously, you know, we always say never overreact to one quarter. The first quarter is slightly negative. You know, our mindset is, you know, to drive volume growth. And, you know, we do drive positive mix. That's part of our algorithm. And then, our mind, you know, this year we do have the benefit of the portfolio action to help as well. And that will be a benefit all year.

Yeah. And I'm probably saying the quarter, you know, when we don't spend as much on promotion on laundry, that helps, you know, every year a little bit on the price side of it too.

Thanks, Bonnie. It's a good question. I would say, you know, look back at our track record over the last one, three, five, 10 years. What do we do when we feel like we're over delivering and performing well against our expectations and against the industry as we tend to to spend back like 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 investment. And so, we want to make sure that flywheel is going that virtual cycle happens and we keep getting share and shell space and support the innovations that we're launching. We all, so beyond marketing, we're also going to spend, 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. You know, one of our core competencies and I think competitive advantages is really our speed and agility. And so we're going to go try to adopt and adapt faster than most people.

All right.

Yeah, I mean, the short answer is we're still still assuming around 2 percent 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 were fantastic.

You know, June was 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. So I would say we did that fantastic growth without really with flatish impact from one of our larger businesses. So I'm just, again, consumption is going really well. Shares are doing really well. It's broad-based, to my first answer to kind of Lopez's question early on. So there are a lot of things that are going right. So this is the right time for us as a company, especially because we're not distracted with some of those businesses that we've sold, Peter.

We have the time to focus on the future. And so we're laying the groundwork for those three growth initiatives that we've talked about again and again and again. So a lot of internal time is being spent on the future right now.

So maybe putting that all together, can you maybe just discuss why you're as optimistic as you've ever been and maybe what that means as a protagonist to top and bottom line growth.

Yeah, I don't know if I'll go to top and bottom line growth yet, but I'll tell you, like we're doing all this category, working arm and 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 their breadth and its success. And meanwhile, internationally, that brand, along with Heroes, is really developing a business of tens of millions of dollars. So there's good global expansion going on. And the third growth initiative was was really international growth. And a piece of that is international in Monet. And we've been talking a lot over the past few years about, hey, we have people here now. We have a process here now, but it's starting to go from theoretical to practical. And we've filtered through 100 deals over the last six to 12 months now internationally. And so 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. So those are some examples.

Yeah, I think it's a fair question, Olivia. I would just tell you though, look at our track record over the last not one or five decades or two of how we compete in household, right? And we have a great ability to do that. And sometimes it's trade promotion, hopefully usually it's innovation, hitting the right price, the right price pack architecture and sizing. You want to deliver, you know, like I said in my remarks, a great high quality at a value price for the consumer. And it just so happens that our brands are the intersection of that, naturally. And so they have to, competitors have to compete a lot harder than we do, because we naturally fall in those intersections.

Yeah, it has the ability to do all that. When really you have a brand that's driving category growth, driving usage occasions, driving new consumers and young consumers of that into the category, you know, it has a magic moment. It's actually not even the same consumer as Oxycle, you know, Oxycleans a little bit more broader base, but Miss Mouth is really higher end and just a great see something, do something in terms of the stain. It is, 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 it has the right to, where consumers say it has the right to go, because it's going to continue to broaden on forms and maybe even adjacency.

Yeah, I would say consumption and organic, you know, there is no real disconnect. It's around, it's around 5%, you know, 5% or so on, on both. So there's great moment in that what we experienced in the first half. In the second half, we expect a lot, a lot of that to continue. I think even, like, we, I think we pulled the data on a two year stack, as an example, and a two year stack for organic growth is 5% in the first half and 6% in the second half. So again, just really broad-based, more than just one thing going on as a tailwind for the company. And you're right, I kind of referenced a little bit, maybe a bit of a pullback in promotion that we had.

I wouldn't need to say a pullback. I'd say we were at a certain level and there was an acceleration by other competitors. So I don't know about a year, you know, much year-over-year change from a price mix perspective, but a little bit from help from laundry. But there are other things happening at Portfolio. You know, as, as we have these higher margin products like a Therapreath or like a Hero or even like a Miss Mouth, as they continue to grow, that's going to be a favorable flow on, on mix.

Leaning anything you would add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think you're excited.

Well, I mean, we focus on volume growth.

If you look at our history on, on price mix, it's, you know, new to positive. You know, it's just a little bit slightly higher in, in the second quarter, so that's a little bit of a year-over-year. So you look forward, that's going to be the equation. It's going to be a volume-driven and, you know, we'll benefit from the right things we're talked about, you know, the way we're positioned. We, you know, we will do what we do on discounting, but we don't have to do as much as the others do.

And 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 your, from the way you're talking about it now, the excitement is building, anticipation is building. But I guess, as you, if you learned anything in terms of, I mean, the opportunity has been there on paper for a long time, but it's also, you know, take a little while to manifest in a transaction. Is it, if you learned anything, that 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?

Yeah, you know, 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, we initially, we added, you know, M&A people and a person in Europe, for example, and, 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 six to eight months ago. And we said the management teams are responsible, and the M&A person supports that. And so the M&A, all of a sudden the, the international management teams, you know, the country director and his, his or her staff, you know, Australia, the same thing and, 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, from the bankers or for our M&A contact, but where do you want what brands would you like to go and look at? And that has, when we made it, I guess, their objective and they owned it, I'd say that was the unlock for us. And of course our M&A team is, is enabling and helping, but I think the, we went into like, you know, we went right from first to third gear since we did that.

All right. So I'll take the first question.

Yeah, just to answer the question, we had just slightly higher transportation cost than in the second quarter, even a little bit higher than we thought, but as we talked about for the year, you know, we're still at $30 million. So same type of impact. And then on Tuckland, 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 year. And then we have a lot of work going on on innovation. And as we said before, another category or two, and some other distribution opportunities plus international expansion.

I think that's a little bit of a regulatory perspective that that's going to start hitting in 2027 as well. So that should be a tailwind.

So what does it mean right now, given how the oil is trending, do you have you seen any change, given that the category is so slow so she can clarify that a little bit? Yeah, no, it's a good question, Javier. And look, I think I said last quarter, like when commodities are high and they stay high for a while, what tends to happen? Promotions tends to kind of dial back a bit. That is not what happened this past quarter. You know, 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, Armony 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.

And so we held share, which is fantastic. And as we increased 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 15, 20 years, gain share in Armony Hammer year after year.

So any heading into back to school, any change in distribution, particularly in this business, if you can comment on that, thank you.

Yeah, I would say litter is doing extremely well. You know, to have seven and a half percent consumption growth and almost a full share point gained is great. And we're doing that the right way. We're doing that the way we've always done it, which is innovation. Armony Hammer cat litter is just known for innovation. Our new one this year on dual defense with microband is a great example of that. And, you know, some competitors are spending a lot. We're within historical levels and we're doing all the right things. And we've talked before about, you know, some of the attributes of why Armony Hammer does so well. We have the orange box, we have the black box, we have premium values.

So just again, litter is doing great.

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 that we can't overcome. So there's I would say some movements, but overall in material. The second one is on touch land. 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 a lot of the support that we have in the back half with displays from these retailers.

So yeah, so the touch land, can you be optimistic about it?

Yeah, 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 their breadth and hero. And very early for touch land. I think we're hitting number one share positions in many, many countries all over the world. We have great retail, retailer discussions about how we're growing kind of the acne category with hero. And of course, the mouthwash rollout is a little bit slower than the acne rollout, but they're both doing extremely well. And once they get in market, these brands, because they are a problem solution, because consumers can see them working, because their premium brands for retailer driving category growth.

Once they're in market, it starts to become kind of a virtuous cycle.

And I'll just pick up from there. Certainly, hero, the tastes of the great driver in the quarter for us. And then you think about that, we're taking those across the globe. That's what we do really well. So you ask, which part is doing well? Quite frankly, very broadly. Europe, for example, Europe, because it as 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. So you said this in the first quarter, first quarter had a little bit of impact in 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. And it was great to see another strong quarter from them.

Yeah, so thanks, Andrea. You know, 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%. So we were double what most people were getting. And 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. So I think laundry, I don't have it in front of me, but I would guess it was high single digits for for Arm and Hammer. So that all was kind of towards the front part of the year. So it takes a while for that to reset.

But so that's, you know, into next year is what I would say all those TDP results help with.

And then I think you went live on the ERP didn't you in April. I'm looking back at what sort of you talked about it being an engine of growth in the future, at least rated who implementing it. And I just wonder, Rick, is you know, the clear optimism you feel about the outcome for the business. How much does this new sort of upgraded ERP sort of feed into that optimism?

So 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 their breath 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 five and a half percent. We grew closer to two percent from consumption. So we lost a little bit of share, 1.4 percent. That was closer to four or five 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 or early next year on sizes and offerings and price-packed architecture. So we have some great innovation queued up and just a lot of confidence in the Batiste brand. So that's not something I really worry about long-term. The ERP system, I think it's an under-appreciated 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. And just to give you a real-life example, we closed on Miss Mouse, I think around June 1st or so, and we're going to be fully integrated by end of August.

Like that is lightning fast, even for us. And so that capability is, I think, again, just a great advantage for us.

Yeah, thanks, Kevin. You know, my answer isn't really changed a lot from what I talked about last quarter, and I think in this environment, consumers are pressed, and we see that. Like when you see stuff go on promotion, you know, I would say elasticies are higher than they normally would be. So consumers are pressed, and so our job is to help offset that as best we can, and 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, and that's still true.

We believe, we hope, that this higher inflation environment isn't permanent. But meanwhile, we're fighting it with productivity, we're fighting it with trade and promotional optimization, and so far we're winning. I mean, look at our gross margin expansion as an example. I think a lot of our peer groups are going backwards on margin. So for a long time, typically what you see is when inflation happens, promotional levels of bait 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 to other manufacturers, and they're competing that away a bit. So that has to play out a bit. Kevin is my short answer to you, but we're in a great position to win either way.

I will now turn the call back to Mr. Rick Derger for closing remarks. Okay, thanks everyone. Looking forward to talking again in the third quarter, and meanwhile, have a great rest of the summer.