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Text: These are important to review and contemplate.
As everyone on the call today is well aware, business environment uncertainty remains heightened due to duration and impact of COVID-19.
These impacts include an uncertain shut down timeframe for many areas of our economy, ongoing changes to consumer purchasing habits, the potential for a disrupted supply chain, heightened unemployment and many other economic factors.
This means the results could change at any time, and the forecasted impact of risk considerations is a best estimate based on the information available as of today's date.
Additional information concerning risk factors and cautionary statements are available on our most recent SEC filings and the most recent Company 10-K.
I'll now hand it over to our CEO, Ron Lombardi.
Let's start on Slide 5.
Last quarter, we were experiencing the very early innings of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, we outlined several factors our organization began focusing on in real-time to adapt to the changing environment.
As a result of these actions, I'm pleased to report a solid Q1 earnings results and better than expected revenues.
This is a testament to our preparedness and the strategy that we outlined.
For starters, our long-term strategy continues to work.
Our mission to provide consumers brands they know and trust is unwavering.
Even with the challenging environment being experienced due to COVID-19, our consumers continue to turn to our leading brands to meet their healthcare needs.
Second, our robust continuity plans continue to have us well positioned to service our retail partners.
Our investments in selecting the right manufacturing partners and maintaining ample inventory has paid off in this tight supply environment.
Third, embracing our company culture of leadership, trust change and execution has paid off in a big way.
It's allowed us to be agile marketers, pivoting quickly to efforts that optimize our brands in this very unique environment.
The end result is that we are winning and growing channels like e-commerce and our portfolio continues to be well positioned for the long term.
And finally, our strong operating model and disciplined capital strategy continue to reward stakeholders.
Our strong Q1 free cash flow and industry-leading financial profile enabled further debt reduction in the quarter.
In summary, we are not sitting still.
We are learning from what is happening and adjusting our go-forward strategy in real time.
We are doing this through the guide of our proven three-pillar strategy, which remains intact.
It drives our long-term success, and Q1 was yet another example of it.
I'll now hand it over to Chris to review Q1 financial results.
Q1 revenue of $229.4 million declined 60 basis points on an organic basis versus the prior year, which excludes the effects of foreign currency.
By segment, in North America, revenues were essentially flat, positively impacted by the Women's Health, Oral Care, and Skin categories, but offset by lower Cough and Cold, Eye & Ear Care, and GI shipments, as categories we participate in faced declines in incidence levels and usage rates related to COVID-19.
Our International business declined in the high single digits after excluding foreign currency.
This decline was attributable to both a difficult comparison in the prior year for a number of products as well as significantly lower sales of Hydralyte in Australia, as a result of COVID-19's impact to lowering both general consumer illness and activities such as athletics.
EBITDA and earnings per share for the first quarter grew 12% and 32% respectively versus the prior year.
Solid earnings per share growth was attributable to positive contributions across our operating expense line as well as lower interest expense and share count from our strong free cash flow and strategic capital allocation.
As I mentioned on the prior slide, first quarter fiscal '21 revenue decreased 60 basis points versus the prior year, excluding the effects of foreign currency.
Consumption declined just over 4%.
This was better than we had anticipated back in early May, driven by strong e-commerce growth as consumers continued to shift to online purchasing.
That said, we continue to experience consumption declines in certain categories as a result of COVID-19.
As expected, these consumption declines were partially offset by inventory replenishment efforts as retailers refilled their supply following strong March consumer demand.
Total company gross margin of 58.4% increased 70 basis points versus prior year's first quarter.
We experienced early benefits from the transition to our new third-party logistics provider that was completed at the end of fiscal '20, which offset negative product mix.
For Q2, we anticipate a gross margin of approximately 58%.
Advertising and marketing came in at 12.1% of revenue, down in dollars versus the prior year as expected, as we eliminated ineffective spending during the unique pandemic environment.
For the second quarter, we anticipate a more normalized rate of A&M spend of approximately 15%.
Please note, this line item was previously shown as A&P or Advertising & Promotion but has been relabeled to Advertising & Marketing to better reflect the nature of our long-term brand building expenses.
There have been no changes to what we are included in the numbers.
Our G&A spend for first quarter fiscal '21 was approximately $20 million or just under 9% of revenue, down from the prior year, owing to disciplined cost management and lower costs resulting from the current environment.
For Q2, we anticipate G&A expense of approximately $21 million.
Left, as stated on the prior page, earnings per share grew approximately 32% versus the prior year.
Lower operating costs, lower interest expense and lower share count were all factors to growth.
For Q2, we expect interest expense to approximate $21 million and a corporate tax rate of around 25%.
In the first quarter, we generated $72.6 million in free cash flow, which represent over 40% growth versus the prior year, driven in part by the timing associated with strong retailer reorders placed in April, following the March consumption spike.
For Q2, we would anticipate free cash flow below the prior year as we invest in capex of approximately $10 million.
Despite this, total free cash flow for the first half of fiscal '21 is expected to exceed that of the prior year.
In the first quarter, we continued to focus on debt reduction and paid down $111 million in debt.
At June quarter-end, we had approximately $1.6 billion in net debt, which equated to a leverage ratio of 4.4 times.
We expect to continue to prioritize debt pay down as our primary use of free cash flow.
Lastly, we would like to remind investors of our continued focus on liquidity in the current environment.
We ended the quarter with over $50 million in cash on hand with ample access to our revolving credit line of well over $100 million.
As I touched on earlier, despite the uncertainty caused by COVID-19, we are pleased with the plan we implemented and our results in Q1 performance to-date.
There are a number of important factors shown here, each of which underpin the financial results Chris just touched on.
We continue to prioritize putting our employee's safety first through various proactive measures.
We have numerous manufacturing partners which are all operating in a similar capacity.
All of these employees are the enablers to our success.
In the middle of the slide is our supply chain.
We've continued to work with our third-party partners closely on continuity of supply.
Although dynamic, we continue to avoid any material out-of-stock positions at retail.
The results of this is continued and reliable inventory supply and engaged workforce and committed partners, enabling us to maintain superior service levels with our retail partners.
In doing so, we have set ourselves up for both short- and- long-term success.
Investing in our leading portfolio of brands remains the number one principal in our three-pillar strategy.
Our leading brands have heritage in connections with consumers.
We are also diversified, which positions us well to navigate the impact of COVID-19, as we realized in Q1.
We continually invest in our key brands over the long-term through a wide-ranging brand building toolkit.
Critically, it features various efforts which differentiates us from other brands and private label.
This playbook has not changed.
What has changed, as outlined last quarter, is where consumers are shopping as well as which categories they are using with frequency.
This is truly a unique attribute of the COVID-19 pandemic versus prior recessions.
This impacts all of our brands in unique ways.
Just over one quarter into this new landscape, we are learning and adapting to the changes it brings for each of our brands in real time.
Where we've experienced the largest opportunities, at the right end of the spectrum, is from channel shifting into e-commerce.
Our early investments in this channel had us well positioned to capture growth as consumers transitioned to digital shopping during the pandemic.
The second opportunity our portfolio is experiencing is consumer focus on self-care at home.
Examples here include avoiding a doctor's visit and increasing focus on everyday hygiene and wellness.
Each of these factors are benefiting many of our brands shown toward the right of the slide.
We'll discuss a few of these in greater detail later on.
Towards the left, we highlight some challenges we are navigating due to COVID-19.
Many activities remain at suppressed levels including time spent outdoor, travel and sports activities.
Furthermore, less time spent with people means less overall illness, which is impacting certain brands such as Hydralyte, during Australia's winter season.
We've also seen reduced convenience channel traffic temporarily impact incremental to-go purchases like Clear Eyes Pocket Pal and powdered analgesics.
Despite these category challenges our brands maintain leading positions and many have actually expanded share in the impacted categories.
An example here is mix.
As the head lice category is currently declining due to children not in school or attending summer camps, our brand has expanded share through our ongoing brand building efforts.
With a wide range of impacts, it remains critical that we continually adapt to the changing conditions.
We are doing just that by allocating investments to the opportunities we have identified here.
As seen on the previous slide, our diverse portfolio positions us to do well even in this challenging environment.
Our marketing efforts have moved rapidly to target the shifting needs of consumers and help us to connect with them in a pandemic world.
The page here shows just a few of the many new initiatives that kicked off recently.
On the left of the slide is Compound W. We are focused on expanding our leading position with Compound W by using marketing that reminds consumers of the ability to treat warts rapidly at home.
We believe this message and our brands efficacy is resonating with consumers, further expanding our number one market position.
In the middle of the page is Clear Eyes.
We've had several new messages from the brand since the pandemic began.
Most recently, we are activating digital efforts focused on at-home usage and the feel-good benefit of having Clear Eyes for video calls.
The results are positive.
We're seeing higher than average click-through rates on Google and our brand remains as resilient as ever.
The last example we have here is BC and Goody's.
These brands, which are concentrated in the Southeast, historically focused marketing efforts in sponsorship activities like Southern League Baseball and NASCAR.
With these events abbreviated or temporarily suspended, we reallocated our spending into various digital opportunities.
Two examples shown here are a refresh of our web pages and marketing of new products like the recently launched Goody's Hangover.
In summary, we are quickly identifying opportunities like the ones discussed here through consumer insights.
From there, our nimble marketing strategy looks to address the shifting consumer habits.
It's all part of our brand-building playbook that is built for long-term success.
Investments in e-commerce has meaningfully paid off as we were able to successfully engage and transact with consumers as their spending patterns shifted online.
These investments began several years ago as we invested in digital content and bringing external resources in-house.
E-commerce traffic continues to increase.
And as a result of these actions, we believe our market shares are actually above our average brick and mortar share in many categories.
Our established business is a leader in e-commerce consumer healthcare and poised to continue benefiting from the growing interest in the channel.
In Q1, consumers increased online purchasing with the goal for many to minimize person-to-person contact during the pandemic.
E-commerce grew triple digits and now accounts for over 10% of our total retail sales with no signs of slowing.
This growth is broad ranging across many major retail partners.
It also does not include omnichannel solutions like click-and-collect, which have also seen impressive growth.
But we aren't sitting still.
We continue to reallocate investments into this opportunity.
Our three largest brands in the e-commerce channel are shown on the right side of the slide.
Each of the brands, Summer's Eve, Monistat and DenTek have unique strategy that continued to build successful momentum for each in Q1.
For Summer's Eve, consumers are at home more than ever.
They are exercising at home as well.
We therefore refocused marketing efforts around home workouts and highlight our recently launched Summer Eve's active products.
For DenTek, we recently launched a Beyond Brushing campaign that reminds consumers the benefits of a broad oral healthcare routine.
Beyond Brushing remains consumers the benefits of flossing, dental guards and other medical devices for self-care.
It's early, but the campaign is resonating with consumers as they shop online and elsewhere.
Left, for Monistat, we're reminding home shopping consumers about quick and easy shipping to the home.
Effective advertising has successfully reminded consumers of Monistat's largely superior proposition to an in-person doctors visit.
As a result, we are seeing a doubling of visits to our monistat.com website.
As consumers research the category, these digital investments deepen the incidence association with Monistat, consistent with our long-term strategy.
In summary, by being early and actively investing in the e-commerce channel, our brands are winning.
As the pandemic shifts consumer preferences, this provides a great positioning for our brands to benefit.
By continuing to execute our proven strategy and focusing on our leading brands, we are well positioned to continue to weather the storm.
For the second quarter, we anticipate revenue of $225 million or more.
Within this outlook, we expect consumption to decline low- to- mid-single digits due to certain categories that are being affected by COVID-19.
Despite this challenge, our brands continue to hold leading positions and many have expanded share in these declining category cases.
Most importantly, our investments continue to position these brands for the long-term growth and categories returned to more normalized levels.
Our assumption also includes a modest inventory reduction expectation at retail.
Over the last month, heightened week-to-week consumption variability has declined.
As a result, we believe certain channels and retail partners may begin to adjust their inventory levels to reflect this more stable performance.
We also anticipate earnings per share of $0.70 or more in Q2.
Our focus on cost management efforts along with the benefit of our capital allocation strategy and debt reduction is expected to more than offset the anticipated Q2 revenue decline compared to the prior year.
Left, our strong and stable free cash flow remains the company's strength.
Free cash flow is expected to increase for the first half versus prior year.
And as always, we intend to execute a disciplined capital allocation strategy with a near-term focus on debt reduction to drive shareholder value.

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q1 revenue $229.4 million versus refinitiv ibes estimate of $221.3 million.
sees q2 earnings per share $0.70.
sees q2 revenue $225 million.

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