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Text: In addition, a slide deck providing detailed financial results for the quarter is also posted on our website.
This quarter, e-commerce data is not included in our category overview due to a restatement of the external validate.
Our team has moved with speed to address the ongoing challenges of operating in this environment, while continuing to focus on keeping each other healthy and safe.
As I will talk about in a moment, while the pandemic-driven demand is the main story, we remain focused on our business strategies to ensure that we are well positioned as the pandemic subsides.
Leading with innovation, operating with excellence, and driving productivity are the keys to our success both now and into the future.
Looking at the results for the quarter, we maintained our top line momentum with strong sales across categories and markets around the world, resulting in organic sales growth of 12.7% with battery up 11% and auto care up 27%, globally.
We delivered adjusted gross margin of 40.7% as we were able to meet the demand while incurring lower incremental costs than we did last quarter.
This combination of strong top line growth and improving margins resulted in adjusted earnings-per-share growth of 38% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 17%.
We were also able to take advantage of low interest rates to refinance a portion of our debt, which will result in significantly reduced interest expense going forward.
We are off to a solid start for the fiscal year.
With lower interest expenses due to the refinancing, we are increasing our outlook for the full year adjusted earnings per share to a new range of $3.10 to $3.40.
In a few minutes, Tim will provide more detail on the results for the quarter as well as our view for the full year.
Let me start with category trends where we continue to see strong consumer demand.
As Jackie mentioned earlier, our category data this quarter does not include e-commerce due to an external database restatement.
Globally, battery category value was up 6.9% and we continue to see consumers purchasing batteries for immediate use.
Consumers have increased the number of devices they own as well as their usage of those devices.
With a gain of 2.5 share points, Energizer is growing faster than the category, driven by distribution gains in the U.S. and in international markets, including Canada, France, Korea and the UK.
With auto care, the U.S. category grew more than 10% as a result of changes in consumer behavior, including an increased focus on cleaning and disinfecting as well as an increase in do-it-yourself activities.
During the quarter, Energizer's auto care share was flat.
Of note during the quarter, we did see strong growth in non-measured channels, including e-commerce, home center and international markets.
In auto care, we are meeting the needs of consumers by rolling out innovation and strengthening our product pipeline.
We recently launched an Armor All disinfectant, as consumers are more focused than ever on keeping their cars clean and disinfected.
We also acquired a small formulations business which to-date has primarily commercialized household disinfectants.
The robust portfolio of innovative cleaning, disinfecting and odor-eliminating formulations we've acquired is an extremely attractive addition to our R&D pipeline and is expected to enhance our leadership in auto care.
In looking at e-commerce, while we don't have consumption data this quarter, based on our sales, we continue to see solid e-commerce performance versus prior period.
Our investments and ongoing focus are paying off and positioning us to lead well into the future.
If we take a step back, the pandemic-driven demand in our categories has been and for the foreseeable future, will continue to be the main story, and while our priority will be to successfully navigate a very complicated operating environment in order to meet this elevated demand efficiently, we are also undertaking initiatives to emerge from this period poised for growth in the future.
As we are nearing completion of our integration efforts, including the recent bolt-on acquisitions, we are also undertaking several initiatives to modernize our core operational capabilities.
Let me take a moment to provide an update on these initiatives.
Despite the challenges of this past year, our integration activities for the battery and auto care acquisitions have continued and are scheduled for completion by the end of 2021.
In the first quarter, we realized $20 million in synergies and we remain on track to achieve $40 million to $45 million in 2021 and to deliver more than $100 million in total synergies.
We also closed on the acquisition of an Indonesian battery plant, which contributed significantly to our ability to meet the strong demand during the quarter and will enable further efficiencies in the future.
In addition to the integration activities, we have launched several significant projects to modernize our core, as the pandemic related shifts have shown very clearly we must become a more digitally advanced organization in order to ensure we can meet the demands of the consumer in a rapidly changing operating environment.
We are transforming our global product supply organization by moving to an end-to-end category structure, which will create greater agility within each category and closer connections to customers and consumers.
We are also investing in our business planning tools and supply planning analytics to provide more predictive insights, which are needed for today's environment.
The end result will be a product supplier organization that is better equipped to capitalize on opportunities while also enhancing our ability to navigate disruption.
These efforts are already paying off as we were able to meet the continued elevated demand, especially in batteries with lower-than-expected COVID-related costs.
This project will continue to be important in the near-term to meet demand and in the medium-term to take better advantage of opportunities across our business.
We are also investing in more advanced data and analytics capabilities, which will enable us to better detect and understand in near real-time, impacts to the business, from shift in consumer behavior and macroeconomic events, such as mix shifts in markets or products.
Armed with the most recent data and insights, our commercial and marketing teams can respond and more effectively connect with consumers and drive growth in our business.
These projects as well as other smaller ones will enhance our ability to operate more effectively and will also drive out costs from the business.
We are committed to the efficient lower cost operating model you have seen from us in the past, while being equally committed to ensuring we have the flexibility to invest in opportunities to drive future growth.
We believe these initiatives will allow us to do both.
Our strategic priorities of leading with innovation, operating with excellence and driving productivity have served us well as we navigated the pandemic and they will remain critical going forward.
However, 2020 also provided significant insight that will enable Energizer to emerge as a stronger, more resilient and dynamic company.
The pandemic reminded us that consumers are at the heart of what we do.
Fundamentally, it was consumer behavior that drove disruption.
As their habits and routines changed, they gravitated to trusted brands and engage with our categories in new and different ways.
They accelerated the changes in how they consume information and ultimately how they shop.
Our consumer insights, combined with our powerhouse brands, enable us to create value, for our retail partners by ensuring we are there to meet consumers where they are going.
Remaining consumer focused, investing in our brands and ensuring we can adapt at the speed in the marketplace are the keys to our success in the future.
We will leverage the best attributes of a large scaled organization with the mentality of a start-up, where small teams are unleashed to focus on critical initiatives.
With that, I will now turn things over to Tim, who will provide more details about our financial performance for the quarter, including our refinancing efforts, capital allocation and our outlook for the fiscal year.
As Mark indicated, our organic revenue growth of 12.7% coupled with cost controls and favorable currency tailwinds resulted in strong adjusted earnings per share of $1.17, adjusted EBITDA of $192 million and adjusted free cash flow of $90 million.
Taking a deeper look at the top line, both our Americas and International segments grew organically more than 12% with batteries up 11% and auto care up more than 27%.
As Mark mentioned, the categories in which we compete continued to experience elevated demand.
In addition, our organic sales growth also benefited from distribution gains that began last summer as well as some shifting of shipments between quarters.
Finally, the growth we are seeing this year is off of prior-year first quarter organic sales decline of 3.4%.
Adjusted gross margin decreased 110 basis points versus the prior year to 40.7%, although this represented a sequential improvement versus the last quarter.
Gross margin was impacted primarily by incremental COVID costs of approximately $12 million, largely related to air freight, fines and penalties and personal protection equipment necessary to meet the sustained elevated demand, end channel customer and product mix as well as increased operating costs resulted from increased tariffs associated with higher volumes, commodity cost and transportation cost, consistent with inflationary trends in the global market.
Partially offsetting these impacts to gross margin, the first quarter benefited from synergies of $13 million and favorable currency exchange rates.
As we exit the first quarter, we believe the incremental COVID costs from air freight and fines and penalties over the remainder of the year will significantly diminish.
However, like many other companies, we anticipate additional cost pressures from increased tariffs, commodities and transportation to impact us over the remainder of the year and we have includes these items in our outlook.
A&P as a percent of net sales was 5.8% versus 6.4% in the prior year, due primarily to the strong top line growth experienced in the current quarter.
Consistent with our priorities, we continue and invest, on an absolute dollar basis, in A&P to support our brands with total A&P up $3 million or 6%.
Excluding acquisition and integration cost, SG&A as a percent of net sales was 13.4% versus 15.1% in the prior year.
This was primarily due to the elevated sales experienced in the current quarter.
On an absolute dollar basis, adjusted SG&A increased $2.7 million, driven in part by higher overheads associated with the top line sales growth and the timing of costs partially offset by synergies of $7 million and lower travel expense due to COVID.
As Mark mentioned, we realized $20 million of synergies in the quarter with $13 million in cost of goods sold and $7 million in SG&A.
For the full year, we continue to expect to realize $40 million to $45 million of incremental synergies.
In total, we have recognized nearly $90 million since we completed the battery and auto care acquisitions and remain on track to realize in excess of $100 million by the end of fiscal 2021.
We also took advantage of accommodating debt markets to refinance our existing short-term secured debt and our 2027 unsecured bonds with a new $1.2 billion term loan.
Based on the new all-in interest rates, we anticipate annualized interest savings of roughly $25 million with about $19 million to be realized over the remainder of fiscal 2021.
We also amended certain covenants in our credit agreement, which will create additional capacity and flexibility in our debt capital structure.
Our net debt to credit defined EBITDA at the end of the quarter was 4.6 times, reflecting improved EBITDA performance and debt pay down during the quarter of $80 million, excluding refinancing activities.
At the end of the quarter, our total debt was approximately $3.4 billion, with nearly 85% now at fixed rates and an all-in cost of debt of approximately 4.3%.
And finally, we continue to drive shareholder returns through our balanced approach to capital allocation, by investing in our business through innovation, brand-building activities and the projects we mentioned earlier to modernize our core and drive cost out of the business, delivering a quarterly cash dividend of $27 million; repurchasing 500,000 shares for $21 million, representing an average price of $42.61; paying down $80 million of debt excluding refinancing activity; and finally, completing two bolt-on acquisitions.
As a result of our strong organic growth in the first quarter and the interest expense savings from the refinancing we undertook in December, we are updating our full year fiscal 2021 outlook for the following key metrics.
Net sales growth is expected to be at the upper end of the range of 2% to 4%, driven in large part by continued elevated battery demand in North America and favorable currency impacts.
Adjusted gross margin rate is expected to be essentially flat on a year-over-year basis in line with our previously provided outlook.
Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be at the upper end of our previously provided range of $600 million to $630 million and free cash flow of $325 million to $350 million remains unchanged due to working capital requirements, in particular, inventory, as we look to rebuild safety stock.
Adjusted earnings per share is now expected to be in the range of $3.10 to $3.40.
I would also like to provide a reminder regarding the quarterly phasing for the remainder of 2021.
Beginning late in our second quarter of 2020 and through today, we have seen elevated demand for both battery and auto care products due to the impacts of COVID.
In 2021, we expect to continue to see net sales growth until we lap those elevated demand, at which point, we will likely start to see year-over-year declines in net sales as we approach a more normalized level of demand.
We expect this will begin to occur toward the end of the second quarter in battery and late in the third quarter in auto care.
With respect to gross margin rates, we expect them to remain consistent throughout the year.
The gross margin rate in this quarter was better than our expectations due to lower than expected COVID costs, the timing of the realization of synergies and the impact of favorable foreign currencies.
While we are increasing components of our outlook for the full year, there remains a great deal of uncertainty over the balance of the fiscal year with respect to the pandemic and related macro factor and impacts, including currencies, commodities and transportation costs.
We have addressed the items that are within our control and continue to improve our execution.
Actions that we have taken, include continuing to drive increased distribution with strong organic growth across all categories and geographies; improving supply chains surety with expanded capacity and significantly reducing incremental COVID cost by the end of the first quarter; and finally, refinancing more than half of our debt portfolio over the past seven months through the accommodative debt markets.
We remain confident that continued focus on our strategic priorities and our balanced approach to capital allocation will allow us to deliver long-term shareholder value.
In the midst of a very uncertain operating environment, we will focus on meeting the demands of today, while building the capabilities we will need to succeed in the post-pandemic period.
Our operating performance in the first quarter is a testament to the efforts of our colleagues around the world to make, ship and deliver the products that our consumers need during this time.

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energizer holdings sees fy adjusted earnings per share $3.10 to $3.40.
sees fy adjusted earnings per share $3.10 to $3.40.
q1 adjusted earnings per share $1.17 from continuing operations.
organic net sales increased 12.7%, or $93.3 million, in first fiscal quarter.
energizer holdings sees 2021 outlook for revenue growth and adjusted ebitda to the high end of previously disclosed outlook range.

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