Greetings, welcome to the General Mills fourth quarter and full year fiscal 23 earnings Q&A webcast. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, June 28, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Siemon, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, Malika. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today for our Q&A session on our fourth quarter and full year fiscal 23 results. I hope everyone had a time this morning to review our press release, listen to our prepared remarks, and view our presentation materials, which were made available on our investor relations site. It's important to note that in our Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. Please refer to this morning's press release for factors that could impact forward-looking statements and for reconciliations of non-GAAP information, which may be discussed on today's call. I'm here with Jeff Harmening, our Chairman and CEO; Kofi Bruce, our CFO; and Jon Nudi, Group President for our North America Retail segment. Let's go ahead and get to the first question. Malika, can you please get us started? Certainly. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, once again, if you would like to register for a question, please press 1 followed by 4 on your telephone. You will hear a 3-tone prompt to acknowledge your request. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press 1 followed by 3. Once again, that is 1, 4 to ask a question. Our first one question is from the line of, pardon me, John Baumgartner with Mizuho Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Good morning. Thanks for the question. Good morning, John. Maybe just to start off, just big picture, Jeff, I wanted to come back to this transition you're speaking about in the environment in this new fiscal year. You know, last year, we made some pretty material investments back into the business, and with those now in the base and conditions getting back to normalizing, how are you sort of, you know, adapting and evolving those resources? I know there's a lot there. There's innovation, quality, promo, productivity, but how do we think about the next steps for growth and what a more offensive strategy looks like for Mills going forward? Yeah, Jon, thanks for the question. I mean, as you look at our last year, I mean, I think it's important to remember that we grew sales at 10%, operating profit at 8%, and EPS at 10% while investing in the business, double-digit growth in marketing and double-digit growth in capabilities. So, you know, as we look ahead, our guidance also reflects our continued investment in growth. If you look ahead, we're going to be on track on all of our metrics on sales and operating profit and EPS and ahead of our long-term algorithm for dividend growth, which reflects the strong year we just had, as well as our confidence in the year ahead. So, you know, as we... You're right, we've been investing for growth. We'll continue to invest for growth while we continue to drive higher levels of productivity, which you saw in our release, and while supply chain disruptions get less, which again, allow us to drive gross margin, which creates a really good flywheel for growth. As you take a step back from, you know, last week's Nielsen data or what happened this last quarter, we feel great about the year that was, and we feel confident about the year that's going to come up. I think that confidence stems from the fact that we have been agile the last few years. It's not an accident we've grown share in the majority of our categories each of the last five years, and it's been hard work and good marketing. As we look at the growth ahead, one of the things we're excited about is that, you know, the freeing up of supply chain and the normalization of supply chain gets us back to the kind of productivity we've been looking for, gets us back to getting rid of some of the pandemic-era costs, but more importantly, frees the rest of the organization up to get distribution, to drive the innovation. We've got really good new product innovation this coming year. Finally, lets our marketers market. We've got really good ideas. We feel good, and I appreciate the step back. Great. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Ken Goldman with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open now. Thank you, and good morning. I just wanted to ask a little bit about the decline in retail inventory. I'm just curious if we can get a little bit of color on which of the categories that maybe, you know, felt the biggest impact this particular quarter. I guess also, you know, it's certainly encouraging to hear that, you know, the worst is over, as you see it, when it comes to this particular temporary headwind. You know, I think for some of us on the outside, or at least me, it does feel like a little bit of a red flag, right? That maybe end-user demand isn't quite as strong as what you had hoped. You know, I appreciate that your customers are trying to get their inventories into a better place, and, you know, we're just not necessarily hearing that from many of your packaged food peers. I'm just curious, you know, what gives you the confidence that it's not necessarily a General Mills-specific dynamic that's happening there? Thank you. Ken, this is Jeff. Let me start out with kind of how I see this broadly, and then maybe Jon Nudi can provide some commentary specifically. You know, and look, I respect the fact that our inventories decline was a surprise to some, given our strong Nielsen trends, and we feel great about our movement trends. We did have a 5-point headwind in this quarter, and we didn't see that coming when the quarter began. That is true. What I'm pleased with is actually we were able to hit our guidance on profitability and exceed margins and EPS, despite the fact we had this big headwind. We don't see this as a General Mills specific trend, and we don't see this as something going forward. It truly is, you know, a couple of our big customers were trying to get their inventories back to a good place, and which I understand. The carrying cost of inventory is higher, interest rates are up. They're trying to work their balance sheets, so, you know, in retrospect, you know, perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise, but, you know, it certainly was an order of magnitude. I don't see it as a red flag for us, and I don't see it actually as a red flag for the industry as well. I want you to know that from my chair, it's something that's kind of behind us, and it's not General Mills specific. Jon, if you have any specifics you want to add? Yeah, absolutely, Ken. As Jeff mentioned, we did see a five-point gap between the Nielsen movement and RNS quarter. For the year, that was a two-point gap. It's not something that's new. We've seen this phenomenon for six of the last eight quarters. As Jeff mentioned, retailers are focused on inventory. One of the things they feel more confident about is being able to supply the business after all the supply disruptions in the last few years and feel like they don't have to carry as much safety stock. In addition to that, obviously, the inventory is more expensive, so working capital is a focus as well. As we look at the absolute levels of inventory, they're some of the lowest levels we've seen on a record. Again, we don't believe that we can go much lower. What we can focus on are the controllables, that's making sure that we have good marketing and driver baselines and are merchandising. We feel great about that. We feel really good about the movement of 10% Q4. Again, we feel like this was a one-time headwind. We're not expecting to rebuild those inventories, at the same time, we don't expect another leg down in fiscal 2024. Thanks. If I can just ask a very quick follow-up for Jeff. The pet business had a little bit of ups and downs during this past year. You know, a lot of which is sort of out of your control in terms of supply. Is it reasonable to expect that we'll see an acceleration in your organic growth this year, or is it still gonna be held back for most of the year by some of the supply issues that you have that are, of course, temporary? You know, we had a rough start to the first half of the year. There's no question about that, and the primary driver of that was lack of capacity. You know, what I feel very good about in our pet business is that we've rebounded, and our service levels are back in the 90s. The pet team worked very hard to get there. It's more expensive than we would like because we have to go outside for external supply chain, but we've rebuilt our capacity, so that's not a concern going forward. What I also feel good about is we did what we said we're gonna do. We said we're gonna grow at double digits in the back half of the year, and we have done that. You know, I would also say that our dry pet food business is getting better, and we thought that would be the first to recover, and it has. It's responded very well to advertising. Life Protection Formula, I think, was up more than 20% in the fourth quarter. Our treats business, we said would improve but would follow that, and it has, and it actually grew in the fourth quarter, and there's much more to do on treats. We can now market that business, and we have full capacity. Then we said our wet pet food business would lag, and unfortunately, we were right about that too, and it, and it did lag. You know, I think for our pet food business, I would characterize it, I feel good that we have improved, and there is more work yet to do. As we look at this coming year, our supply should not be an issue for us. It will come at a higher cost. I still expect us to grow our sales and maybe our profit a touch ahead of sales, but a big improvement in profitability I wouldn't think would come until fiscal 25, when we can internalize all of our capacity. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Great, thanks. Good morning. I guess in the prepared remarks, you mentioned that volume in fiscal 2024 should be improved relative to the decline you saw in 2023. Just to clarify, should we take that to mean volume is potentially still down year-over-year, but better than the minus 4% decline that we saw last fiscal year? If it is going to be a pricing-led, organic top-line growth sort of year in fiscal 2024, and I think most of it you said was from wraparound pricing from actions taken in the second half of 2023. I guess, you know, is there a possibility, and I'm just trying to think ahead here, that there's a period of time maybe where organic sales could even go negative for a bit later in the fiscal year until sort of volume catches up? Thanks so much. Yeah, Andrew, I'll take it, and then Kofi, you know, jump in if there's anything you want to add. You know, our expectation, you know, again, we don't give specific volume guideline growth, but having said that, we said our top line will grow 3% to 4%, and we'll have, you know, mid-single digit inflation, roughly 5%. We do see pricing this year. I'm confident that our pounds will be better in fiscal 2024 than they were in fiscal 2023, which is to say they'll certainly decline less. Whether they get to positive or not, we'll see. That's a really difficult thing to call, especially because of the mix factor involved. You know, I give you know, this last quarter in China, you know, our sales grew really nicely, but our pounds were down. It's because we sold more expensive, you know, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and less Wanc hai Ferry Dumplings. The same could be true, said, of our food service business, where, you know, we sold less flour and more of other things, so our pounds were down. Pounds are a little bit tricky because of mix, but in all, I would expect that our pounds certainly won't be as negative as they were, and they may be positive. We'll wait and see, but I think it'll be much more competitive on that front. For sure, we'll see some pricing because we still see inflation in the marketplace. Yeah. Andrew, this is Kofi. The only other thing I would add- Hi, Kofi. is just given the comps, we would expect a little bit more weighting to the front half on the growth profile versus the back half. Got it. Just super quick follow-up to, just to the inventory piece, just to put a sort of point on that. You know, with supply chain constraints easing and obviously, General Mills looking to get back to, you know, much more active merchandising and display activity and all of that. I guess I would have thought that retailer inventory reductions would be sort of counter, you know, to that dynamic, right? Wanting to get out there collectively and collaboratively and get going on merchandising and really driving volume and whatnot. I guess, what am I missing on that thought process? Is it just that retailers are so much more confident now that they can get what they need when they need it from you and others, that the safety stock that was more aggressive just isn't needed? Because I would think, you know, if, if it's the first time in a couple of years that you can get out and really drive the business, everyone would be, I don't know, maybe it's naive, but okay with a little more inventory just to make sure you have it on hand. Yeah, Andrew, this is Jon. I think it's a fair question for sure. I've had a chance to check in with a couple of our major retailers. Again, I think everyone's just trying to figure out the way forward. I think for the immediate term, and if you think about some of our big retailers, not only carry food, but they carry general merchandise, there's been a big focus on just making sure they get inventories in check, and they feel like when they're in check, they can then drive the business moving forward. I think they were definitely holding a bit more stock because even up until 6 months ago, we had supply disruptions throughout many of our categories. When they feel better about the supply, they felt like they could bring it down a bit. As we move forward again, I think as we get the bottom line, you know, the volume moving and it really get back to merchandising, we would expect retailers to certainly support that and bring it in. Again, I just think it was a point in time and not something that we're reading into the future. Again, as I talk to these retailers, I don't think that they plan to bring them down in the future. To the extent we can drive the top line, they'll continue to invest behind inventory as well. Great. Thanks so much. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Cody Ross with UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, this is Brandon Cohen filling in for Cody Ross. Thank you for taking our questions. You mentioned in the prepared remarks that with your current debt levels, you have more flexibility for M&A going forward. What categories are you targeting, and what are the main characteristics that you're looking for in an acquisition target? Thank you. You know, let me. It is true, our balance sheet is in great shape, thanks to the, you know, the profitability we've had for the last few years, as well as all the work we've done on payables and receivables and such. Our balance sheet is in really good shape. We do have a lot of flexibility. The first point, I would say that even though we have a lot of flexibility, we're still going to remain disciplined. To the extent we look at M&A, you know, we have about 50 basis points of growth we'd like to get from M&A over the coming years, both through acquisitions and divestitures. In general, we'll look for businesses that are creative to our growth and in categories we're already in or adjacent to categories we already participate, where we think we have a competitive advantage. To the extent we do those things, and they're both on acquisitions, we would expect some synergies to come with that growth. I'm not going to get into a specific category that we're looking at. You can probably guess them as well as anyone else, but I can say they'll be growth-oriented, and they'll be places where we think we have competitive advantage, and we can create value for shareholders. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Pamela Kaufman with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, good morning. Good morning. Your gross margin was a highlight in the quarter. Just wanted to get a sense for how you're thinking about gross margins in fiscal 2024. For the 5% input cost inflation outlook, I guess, could you just give us a sense for how you're thinking about the cadence and how that influences the cadence of your gross margin for the year? Pamela, first of all, thank you for asking about that. Gross margin was a highlight for the quarter, and it was a highlight for a year, and I think it'll be a highlight in the coming year as well. We're really proud of what we've been able to do on the gross margin front over the last couple of years. Probably turn it over to Kofi with more specifics, but appreciate the question. I would just add, I think we've made some really good progress in moving back towards our pre-pandemic gross margin. We still have a little bit of work to do, and obviously, if you read our guidance, you can expect that we expect to make further progress towards recovering our gross margin levels. I think the important thing to note in our guidance around in-inflation is that we see it moderating, but there will still be inflation above sort of the historic levels we would expect to see in our category. As we work through the year, you know, I wouldn't necessarily call out anything notable as you expect the quarterly flow to play out, other than the comments I made about sales and the expectation of the price mix and SRM actions and the interaction of those on the top line. I think the key thing for us, though, is that we do see a step-up in our HMM levels at 4%, a one-point step-up from the past couple of years where we've kind of underdelivered at 3%. With the moderation of supply chain, that we certainly have higher confidence in being able to pull that off, as well as, our confidence in our ability to take out some of the significant levels of cost and continue to take out, some significant levels of operating costs that we put into our business model to manage through service disruptions. All of those things give us the confidence that, we should be able to continue to drive back towards, that pre-pandemic level of gross margin. Thanks. My second question is just around the promotional environment and your outlook for promotions and brand building? ... How are you thinking about reinvestment levels in fiscal 2024? Any color on the mix between price promotions versus marketing and advertising? Thanks ould say on the as we look ahead to our marketing and our promotion environment, the first thing I would say is it's really important to remember that we still have inflation. I mean, there have been a lot of commentary about, you know, disinflation or going negative, but we don't actually see that. It's driven by labor cost inflating. I think that's the first and most important thing to remember as it relates to the promotion environment. We would expect that promotional frequency would increase a little bit, and importantly, that the quality of our merchandising, especially display merchandising, will improve. The reason we think that will improve is that retailers have more confidence that we'll be able to supply the business because our service levels are back in the 90s. When that happens, they're more confident in displaying. Display merchandising for us, you know, has very high returns, and it does for our retailer as well. We're kind of aligned in wanting to do that, and now we feel as if we can. As I look ahead, I'm not sure the promotion intensity is really gonna increase that much. I think it's gonna be, maybe a little bit of frequency and actually more quality, if you will, merchandising levels. As it relates to marketing, we really like our marketing across our biggest categories, and that's why we've been investing in it, and we'll continue to invest in it. I'm not gonna lay out a number, our marketing will improve X%, but what we have said is long term, our marketing spend will grow, you know, in line with our sales growth. Over the past few years, our marketing is actually up 35% versus pre-pandemic levels. We've actually done that, which will benefit us in this year ahead, because what I can tell you is that, you know, consumers in this environment and customers, they're all looking for new ideas and ways, and our customers are looking for ways to grow. We feel good about our marketing spend in the year ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Your line is open now. Thanks. Good morning. As you were setting your guidance for fiscal 2024, what were the biggest challenges to visibility or variables that you're thinking about for this year? Is it simply North America Retail consumer demand or other factors? Yeah, that's certainly the state of the consumer, the interaction of frankly, all the interest rate environment and the expectation of a potential economic slowdown on consumer behavior is certainly a variable that's at very front and center for us as we set the guidance. You know, obviously, inflation remains at least sticky and above expectations, and I think that the challenge of setting expectations in this environment that, you know, any one of those, and visibility into any one of those factors is hard enough. The interaction is what gives us sort of the challenge of setting the frame for the year. We're confident that kind of whatever operating environment actually shows up, that we will be able to respond and pivot as needed. Yeah. I wonder how you were thinking about that North America consumer demand, given, you know, the industry has been slowing on a multi-year basis right through the last month or so. I'm just wondering if you're assuming that that recent rate, I mean, we hesitate to use 4-week data to project anything else, but I also hesitate to use even 12-week when the multiyear has been breaking down for the industry. I'm wondering how you assume that multiyear trend and how you think about that demand in 2024, given the slowing in the industry when the consumer lately? No, I think that's, I think that's very fair, David, and I can understand your angst on this point. I guess I would do a couple of things when we talk about 3-week data. Last time I remember talking about 3-week data was back in December when there was a panic about what was gonna happen due to the timing of Christmas and New Year and Nielsen data, and then it turned out that it wasn't as bad as people thought. I think that's a cautionary tale about 3-week data. The other thing I would say is that if you look at 2-year comparisons over the last few weeks, what you'll see is that, you know, over the last couple of years, the trends haven't changed all that much. Having said that, I mean, as you look at the last 12 weeks, it's pretty clear that elasticity, volume elasticities have increased, and it's something that we expected, and we baked into our guidance for the year. Elasticities have not been zero, but they've been quite low. We would anticipate as the year goes on, that elasticities will increase, and that's what we have seen. I want you to know, we're not too surprised by the last quarter's trend, and it's anticipated in our guidance. That's what, but, you know, look, it's a hard period to model from that perspective, but that's what we think is gonna happen, is that, well, elasticities will increase, but that's accounted for in our guidance already. The last 3-week trends, I wouldn't follow those all the way out the window. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Max Gumport with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hey, thanks for the question. It's nice to see the recovery in dry pet food and treats. However, it does sound like the trends in wet pet food have been a bit challenged. From what I understand, it seems like maybe it's a mix of your own service levels as well as some category weakness as a result of changes in the consumer economic environment and consumer behavior as well. Hoping you could talk a bit about what you're seeing in that subsegment, and what you expect in terms of a recovery moving forward. Thanks. Max, I think you just summarized it. You summarized it nicely. You know, what we see there are a couple of different trends. Remember, the pet category is almost a $50 billion category, so there can be lots of trends going on at the same time. Importantly, there's still a trend toward humanization, which is why I think you see our dry pet food recovering so nicely and why you see our treats business recovering. At the same time, people are more mobile, and so they're not... In aggregate, the treats segment is down a little bit, and the wet segment is down a little bit because consumers are not home as much, and so they can't dote on their pets as much as when they were home all the time. On top of that, you know, as consumers are feeling the pinch from inflation, there is some downward pressure in several of the places on sales. I think you see that most pronounced in wet foods a little bit in treat. It's a tailwind for our dry pet food business, and so that's one of the reasons why we see that improving. But I think in general, you have the plot, which is that our wet pet food business has not recovered as fast as we thought. Part of it is due to mobility, part of it is due to service, and part of it is due to behavior in the current environment. Great, appreciate it. One follow-up would be on volume for fiscal 2024. You gave three reasons to believe we could see some improvement, at least in the rate of decline. We've touched on two of them on the call, but I was hoping to move to the capacity side regarding the constrained platforms, so pet, hot snacks, and fruit snacks. Any way you can help us get a sense for the increase in pounds that you might expect in fiscal 2024 on those platforms? Thanks. Yeah. you're right, Max. those 4 platforms, we do have significant capital investment coming online. The first 3, excluding exclusive of pet, we would expect to see some of that capacity impact this fiscal year. The pet capacity comes online really pretty late in the year, so it would have a very modest impact on our ability to internalize some of the supply for dry dog food. Max, I would just say, beyond capacity, supply disruptions are probably the biggest tailwind for us. Last year at this time, we had significant issues on things like yogurt and bars. This year, we're feeling much better about the way we're performing. At least for North America Retail, we feel really good that we'll be able to supply all of our businesses and merchandise behind them for the first time in several years, which we feel great about. Max, this is Jeff Siemon. I'd add one on pet. Kofi is exactly right that our internal capacity comes online in about a year, but we did add some external capacity in the last, you know, last couple of quarters. That will give us an opportunity to, and it has already given us an opportunity to improve service, both on our treats business as well as on our dry business. Great. Thanks very much. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Matthew Smith with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask a follow-up question on the pet business. The profit recovery there is underway, and there's been some commentary that you expect operating profit to grow a bit faster than organic sales in fiscal 24. Can you provide some color on the puts and takes for the margin recovery after a couple of years where we've seen the margin compress? I know you have incremental capacity coming online. It sounds like that's later in the year for external. Supply chain costs are lower across the organization, and you have some pricing there. What are the offsets benefiting or limiting that margin expansion in 24? I would say on the benefit side to margin expansion, we have some pricing that we have already taken that kind of wraps around in the current year, and you see that in the current results. You certainly saw that in the fourth quarter. You'll also see our productivity levels in pet are good, and the fact that our supply chain is not disrupted also helps bring down costs. All those things go to the gross margin level. You know, kind of what partially offsets that is the fact that we have external manufacturing and not our own internal manufacturing, and so the benefits of some of that will not be as great as they would have been otherwise. I would also say that we're really we, as much as we are focused on profit recovery on pet, we really want to drive growth. You know, we will invest in marketing and capabilities to make sure that we accelerate our top-line growth on pet. We may see a little bit more gross margin expansion than we do operating margin expansion, and that's simply because as we get healthier on supply chain, we'll reinvest some of those savings back into driving top-line growth on pet. The only other thing I would add is just, there might be a modest mix of, business headwind from, production of, just a little bit less wet, obviously, given the macro trends that Jeff referenced. As you take that, take that into account, that'd be a put. Thank you. I can leave it there and pass it on. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hey, thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Kofi, I just had two questions related to the cash flow outlook for 2024. You know, free cash conversion back to 95% versus 80%, is that mostly just working capital that'll drive that improvement? Yep. That is, that is the primary driver. That was also the primary driver of the miss that we had this year relative to our long-term target. Challenge, obviously, of the other side of the inventory reduction in the retail trade was unexpected inventory build as we went into the last few weeks of the year. As we step into next year, supply chain environment is more stable, gives us the capacity and the ability, frankly, to have more visibility and manage our inventory levels lower. We continue to make progress on our overall core working capital in our pet business. Those things should help us drive a more significant provision of cash from working capital next year. Okay. The bulk of it is inventory, right? Is that kind of the way to look at it, the majority- Yeah of the improvement? Year-over-year on a cash flow basis, that is a fair way to look at it. Okay. The second one is just, I know you've given the interest expense guidance, I'm sorry, and you called out having refinanced some debt at a higher rate. Kofi, is there any opportunity with, like, some of the shorter term, whether it's commercial paper or, you know, just shorter-term debt, is there any possibility to just apply some free cash flow to kind of take down some of that short-term debt in order to kind of relieve a little bit more of the interest expense pressure? Yeah, we do expect to be able to run with lower commercial paper balances. I mean, candidly, commercial paper rates and long-term debt rates at least in the middle of the curve, were somewhat inverted for periods of time as we looked at the tier two market in which we issue commercial paper. We actually could issue term debt more cheaply and did that here as we came out of the fourth quarter. Okay. So it doesn't sound like there's a lot that you can do to chip away at that. There's not. sort of guide not an immediate arbitrage. I expect, you know, look, this will be an adjustment factor as we see some of our term debt roll off as long as we're in this higher interest rate environment, that will be a modest headwind. It is manageable. We happen to have a fair amount of maturity concentration in this, call it, 2 to 3-quarter window, that which is driving our outlook for next year. Okay. All right. Thanks, Kofi. Thanks, guys. You bet. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Chris Carey with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hi, good morning. just a couple quick follow-ups for me. just number one, do you think that, you know, I guess, you know, inventory availability is, you know, impacting, you know, consumption that we can see in data at all, right? on-shelf availability, is that becoming a factor with these inventory cuts, or is it reasonable to assume that what we see coming through is, you know, kind of pure consumption? the second question would be just around, you know, kind of a follow-up around pricing for fiscal 2024. you know, the press release said that, most of the pricing in fiscal 2024 would be carryover. you know, obviously, inflation will still be quite a bit above historical norms. Are you embedding any yet-taken pricing into the fiscal 24 outlook? It's just, you know, overall thoughts on, you know, the potential to take incremental pricing, you know, not already in market. Thanks for those two. On the first question, on-shelf availability is significantly higher today than it was a year ago across most of our categories. Again, you know, everyone's gotten better. I think the supply situation has become more stable. As a result, retailers feel like they don't have to hold as much inventory to service the demand. The other thing I would tell you as we've invested in digital capabilities, so have retailers. I can tell you their inventory systems are much more sophisticated today than they were a few years ago. Obviously, their goal is to keep the shelves full, but at the same time, hold as little inventory as possible. At this point, we don't see inventory as a hindrance to us being on the shelf or getting the displays when we want them. Again, I think they're just focusing on their working capital and trying to manage it as efficiently as they can. Yeah, when it, you know, when it comes to pricing, you know, we're not going to comment specifically on forward-looking pricing. Having said that, we did say that the majority is in the, in the marketplace already. That is true. We operate in markets all over the world, some with different inflationary pressures than others. It's not really just about the U.S. We feel good about what we see right now with our pricing and the inflationary environment that we see, but we all know these things can change over time. We think we have most of what we need in the marketplace already, but there may be a category or two we need a little bit more, there may be a geography or two where we need a little bit more because the inflationary prices are different. Okay, thanks. One quick one, just and then I'll be done. Yeah, Jeff, you've been talking for a number of quarters now about, you know, promotional levels and how promotions would remain rational, and you've listed, you know, kind of a number of reasons why. You know, I just wonder, with supply chains coming back, and you've already commented it on, you know, the call today, but how do you think about, you know, the tools that you would have to reignite volume growth? Say, you know, obviously there's a concern about some normalizing of volume. Like, what are the kind of arrows in the quiver, I guess, right? Is it more promotion? Is it more advertising? Is it more merchandising? Can you just talk through maybe how you think about, you know, potentially lifting volumes? ... over the next 12 months if we, if we see any shifts in the consumer environment? Thanks so much. Yeah, sure. As I look at it, I mean, the first of all, the promotional environment has been quite rational, and, you know, I suspect that it will be going forward. I haven't seen anything yet to lead me to believe otherwise. As we look at the, you know, what's gonna drive growth, I think it'll be a number of factors. You know, one I would lead with is new product innovation. Even though our new product innovation has led our categories each of the last four years, it's still below what we would have expected normally. The reason is not because we haven't had good innovation, it's because, you know, some retailers were reluctant to bring it in because their own supply chains were pressured, our own supply chains were pressured. As I look at the year ahead, I like our new product innovation that we have to come, but I also think we're gonna get better distribution on innovation we've had over the last couple of years, where we didn't get full distribution, even though it may have warranted, given the quality and the innovation that we've had. I think that will be a driver. The same with distribution, and I look to our pet business, especially on our distribution levels of treats and wet, because we haven't been able to supply the business. If you can't supply the business, that means that you're gonna lack some distribution, you may have some distribution gaps. Distribution growth across a couple of our key categories in North America Retail, as well as pet, is certainly going to be an opportunity for us. Then with promotional spending, I think it's going to be the quality of our merchandising. You know, we have very good tools to understand what the return on investment are, so do our retailers. I don't know that it's gonna be a significant increase in the amount of merchandising. I think it's gonna be, I would hope, and I would certainly anticipate, an increase in the quality of the merchandising, which should be good growth drivers for our retail customers as well as for us. Because in our categories, they are really expandable consumption categories, and the more you have in your pantry, the more you tend to use. Those are some things that I think will be the drivers, along with increased marketing. Our marketing has been very good, and we have a lot of tools to ascertain where the best marketing spend is gonna be, and we've been investing in our brands. We'll continue to invest in our brands, and that'll certainly be a source of growth for us. Okay, thanks so much for the perspective. Appreciate it. Okay, Malika, I think we'll wrap up the questions there. Maybe I'll turn it to Jeff for some closing comments before we finish the call. I guess I'll end this call where we started, which is to say, as we take a quick step back, we're really pleased with the year that just happened. You know, 10% sales growth, 8% operating profit growth, that excludes the 3% headwind from divestitures, as well as earnings per share growth that are double digits. As we look forward, our guidance is to be in line or exceeding our long-term growth algorithms on sales, operating profit, EPS, and certainly on dividend increases. We are confident about the year ahead, and that confidence is driven by our ability to navigate a number of environments these past three years. Will this next year look different from the last? Of course, it will. We know that already, and we're confident that we have a team and brands and capabilities that'll thrive in the, in the year ahead. We look forward to keeping the conversation going. All right. I think we'll wrap it there. Thanks, everyone, for the time and attention, and we're available throughout the day for follow-ups, and we look forward to connecting again later on this year. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good day.