GIS General Mills, Inc.

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General Mills, Inc. Q1 F2027 Earnings Call Transcript

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Warren
Conference Operator
Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to General Mills Fiscal 2027 Q1 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Jeff Siemon, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. Jeff, please go ahead.
Jeff Siemon
Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance
Thank you, Warren, and good morning to everyone. Thanks for joining us today for this live Q&A session on our first quarter fiscal 27 results. I hope you all had time to review our press release, listen to the prepared remarks, and view our presentation materials, which we made available this morning on our investor relations website. Please note that in our Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions. So please refer to this morning's press release for factors that could impact forward-looking statements and for reconciliations of non-GAAP information, which we may discuss on today's call. I'm here this morning with Jeff Harmening, our chairman and CEO, Dana McNabb, our COO, and Kofi Bruce, our CFO. With that, we'll go ahead and open it up for Q&A. So Warren, can you please get us started?
Warren
Conference Operator
We will now begin the Q&A session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays
Great. Thanks so much. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Nice to see some sequential improvement starting to show through. I guess I'd like to get a sense of the I know this quarter you saw retail trends improve sequentially. In 2Q, I guess, would you expect further sequential improvement from the minus 2% retail consumption that we saw this quarter? Or should we expect more of a stabilization at this point? And again, I'm talking about retail takeaway, which excludes all the timing issue and whatnot.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Good morning, Andrew. Thanks for the question. Our focus is really on continuing to improve dollar share trends. I'm not going to get into quarterly Nielsen estimates, but we are pleased with the improvement. We saw a two-point improvement in dollar sales. We did improve our share performance in the majority of our categories, but as you probably noticed, we're not all the way to growth yet, so we still have work to do. Where we're focused is really the first thing you'll see is we expect an improvement in price mix. If you recall in Q1, we hadn't lapped our base price investments yet. We will start to do that in Q2, and we like the plans we have against product mix, premium innovation, and price pack architecture. We also will see accelerated innovation and renovation, and we really like how our marketing is performing right now. We'll continue to focus on that. So again, we still have work to do. We had the Totino's business that was a problem for us all last year. We've cut those declines in half. That's an area we'll continue to focus on, and we expect to see improved dollar performance throughout the year.
Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays
Great. And then, you know, I guess focusing in on the share piece, In NAR a year ago, it seemed like General Mills was showing, you know, sort of negative volume and share really across a pretty wide swath of categories. What does that look like today versus a year ago? And if it's far smaller number of categories today where the issues are, what's the sort of the planned fix for those? Thanks so much.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Well, as you'd mentioned, we were in a tough spot last year, and this year we have seen pretty good improvement, and we're encouraged by the momentum. We saw improvement in the majority of our categories, and I'll give you a couple examples. I look at cereal. Last year in Q1, our share was down 0.9. This year in Q1, we're only down 0.1. Soup, another big business, we were down 0.4 in share. This year, we're only down 0.1. We really do like what we're seeing and we're not to growth yet. We know we still have more work to do and that's going to be an emphasis on price mix and innovation and renovation. The two spots that we're keeping our eye on where we need to see more improvement is Totino's, which I've already talked to. Pleased again that we cut those declines in half, but we have more work to do. We have really good product innovation, blasted roles. We have some better merchandising. We have strong renovation coming, so we feel good about that. And then we have some challenges on fruit snacks. Now, the category is growing remarkably fast. It's up about 13% in Q1. But we're really seeing some small insurgent brands enter and drive that with increased distribution. And so we need to up our game there. We're going to really leverage our Annie's brand. to bring some very strong new products to market. We've just launched Nature Pals, which is a high fiber fruit snack, great taste. We have some great renovation coming on our core business. So Totino's and fruit is where we'll focus on, and then we expect to see continued improvement in the rest of our brands.
Andrew Lazar
Analyst, Barclays
Got it. Thanks so much.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Peter Galbo with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Peter Galbo
Analyst, Bank of America
Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Kofi, I was hoping you could shed a little bit more light on the inflation guidance, obviously having moved kind of up towards the higher end of the four to five range. I think it might be helpful just to outline maybe where inflation came in in Q1 and then just how you kind of see it pacing over the balance of the year and where that kind of exit rate on inflation might be as things currently stand today.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Pete, thanks for the question. Just to give you some texture, we did see inflation roughly within the range, maybe a touch lower than we expected in Q1, but at the low end of our range, around 4%. Which if I look forward, you know, and take into account sort of our hedge positions, I would expect Q1, Q2, Q3 to be roughly similar and Q4 to be just a touch outside the range at around 6% based on everything in front of us right now.
Peter Galbo
Analyst, Bank of America
Got it. Okay, that's very helpful. And I wanted to dig in a little bit on PET. I know there were a couple of Timing Elements And I just wanted to pressure test a little bit on the go-forward. How much of that low single-digit headwind is maybe conservatism in pet versus Q1 being a bit of an anomaly from a retailer headwind standpoint? Thanks very much.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Let me start with Whitebridge first. I think as is consistent with most of our past acquisitions of any size, we generally are on a one-month lag until we hit systems integration. And then we do a catch-up that almost always The other point I would tell you is that it was worth about a point of growth on pet, maybe 15 basis points for the company, so not frankly all that large. On inventory, what I would tell you is, you know, this is, we've been doing this long enough and the challenge is just on pet, there's a lot of volatility quarter to quarter. I do think based on the customer mix progression that we still expect, you know, a low single digit headwind from inventory over the course of the year, mainly as our mix skews more and more towards customers who carry Your next question comes from the line of Robert Moscow with TD Cowan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Robert Moscow
Analyst, TD Cowan
Hi, thanks. I was hoping to drill down on the high single-digit decline in dog food. Love Made Fresh, I believe, was entirely incremental in the quarter. So, can you tell us how incremental it was? Because it wasn't in there a year ago. And what's driving the declines? Is it just wilderness or is there other factors?
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Hi, Rob. Thanks for the question. You're right. When you look at our pet business right now, we're really pleased with the growth that we're seeing on our cat business. Our treats business has inflected to growth, and we've seen significant improvement in Love Made Fresh. But the area that we're having challenges in our dry dog business. From a dry dog perspective, the category was down about mid single digits, as you said. Life protection formula pretty much hung in there with the category. And it was wilderness where we saw declines accelerate. And wilderness is a place you will have heard on the prepared remarks where we've actually applied our remarkable experience framework testing to that business to try and diagnose the challenges. And we see that we really have to relook at the entire proposition of the product, The packaging, the marketing, the communication, we have work to do. And we had the same challenge on our cat tastefuls business a few years ago and it took us about 18 to 24 months to improve it. And that business is back to growth now. So the main challenge we see is on wilderness and on life protection formula. We have some really good product news and renovation and new products coming in the back half. that will really emphasize our ingredient superiority with benefits we know pet parents are looking for. And I really like the plans that are coming in the back half.
Robert Moscow
Analyst, TD Cowan
Okay, just a quick follow-up. Wet dog food, small part of your business, but how's that doing? I heard that there might be some shelf changes at specialty retailers and wet.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Wet Dog Food is doing as we expected. It is down about 4%, but that is not worse than we had planned. And I'm actually not familiar with the challenges that you're talking to. As far as I know, our plans are on track. Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Leah Jordan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Leah Jordan
Analyst, Goldman Sachs
Thanks for taking my question. Good morning. It sounds like the step up in innovation and renovation you've done this year has been working. Just seeing if you could provide more detail on what's tracking better than expected and what is that telling you about the consumer? And then on the acceleration, Dana, that you noted that's still to come, you know, what should we be looking for? I think you called out cereal specifically for later this year, but any detail there as well? Thank you.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
So thanks for the question. From a new products perspective, we're really encouraged with what we're seeing. We've stepped up the amount of new products. We've increased by about 50% over the last two years, have gone from 3% of net sales to 5% of net sales. And we really are focused on bringing new products with benefits we know the consumer values and will pay for. So when we look at the new products that have launched in Q1, we've seen really strong performance behind our protein cereals, particularly Honey Nut Cheerios. Our blasted Totino's rolls that are bringing new bold flavors are doing really well. Our La Tiara launch is also working really well in the Mexican category. And of course, we've seen Love Made Fresh improve pretty significantly. So again, we're still one quarter in. But we're encouraged by the trial and repeat that we're seeing on those new products. And as we look more to the back half of the year, I already mentioned that Life Protection Formula has some great innovation coming with benefits. We know the consumer values. We are leaning into significant new products in our snacks categories. So our bars categories, we're going to lean into more protein innovation there on Nature Valley, on Larabar. We're scaling up our Ghost Bars business, and we're even launching a meat snack And then for a follow-up to Kofi, just seeing if you could talk about gross margin and maybe puts and takes as we go through the year, just putting together
Leah Jordan
Analyst, Goldman Sachs
The input cost inflation commentary you highlighted, which accelerated in fourth quarter. As you think about that balancing versus the productivity efforts you have on the come and any flow through, we should keep in mind that that mixed piece ramps. Thank you.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so in aggregate, sort of at the macro level, if you take our inflation guide and our guidance on HMM cost savings, those still roughly we expect to offset over the full year. Set aside any of the phasing commentary I gave you. I think the other important thing to call out are the mechanical factors around 53rd week, which will obviously have an impact on gross margins as we move through the back half of the year, just solely on that comparison. If you strip that out, actually, we would expect a gross margins net to be roughly flat. Very helpful. Thank you. You bet.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Chris Carey with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Chris Carey
Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities
Hi, everybody. Thank you for the questions. Dana, you mentioned that you were constructive about pricing. I can't remember exactly how you framed it over the course of the year. Do you have a different expectation for pricing relative to where you started the year? I'm just conscious that food service pricing came in better, pet pricing came in better, although I assume mixed was partly a factor there. So I'm just wondering if your pricing plans are similar, namely in the context of the current inflation backdrop, and then I have a follow-up.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Good morning, Chris. Thanks for the question. Well, as you know, we did a lot of work last year to adjust our everyday prices, and that was really important to stabilize our base volume and to help us get back to household penetration growth. And so with that investment behind us, as we move to fiscal 27, we're really focused on driving positive price mix. And that's with particularly strong contributions from product mix, From Premium Innovation, from Price Pack Architecture, and we're seeing that work on things like Cheerios Protein, Love Made Fresh, Chex Mix Tubs, etc. So that is where we're focused. As Kofi did mention in his prepared remarks, though, we expect input cost inflation in the higher end of what we previously communicated in the 4% to 5%. And as we always do, we're going to work on all levers to address higher costs, whether that's through cost savings or through price mix. So HMM is always our first defense against inflation. Then we have some transformation, but we have a very strong strategic revenue management toolkit as well. And given this level of inflation, I would assume all levers in that toolkit are on the table, trade, mix, list pricing, et cetera.
Chris Carey
Analyst, Wells Fargo Securities
Okay. Okay, thank you. The follow-up is the inflation outlook. Kofi, I think you had mentioned Inflation would be somewhat similar in fiscal Q1, Q2, and Q3. And then step up in fiscal Q4, clearly you have just nice hedging and good visibility over the course of the first few quarters of the year. And then that step up, I mean, this is way too early, but it's going to be such a strong year for HMM this year. Can you get ahead of delivering this level of performance as we think Thank you so much.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Yep, so look, obviously I'm not going to get into guidance for next fiscal year given we're still in the first quarter of this one. I would tell you our construct over the long term is still built around HMM being the primary bulwark against inflationary pressures. If I just take the last three to four years, we have Ron HMM at the high end of the 4% to 5% range. I have every confidence that that is the range that we would expect to carry with us as we go forward from here. Obviously, anything related to SRM and the combination of price and mix, we would expect to be in the mix of how we manage through the year and, frankly, how we drive growth at the top line. What I can't do is give you a sense of what 28 is going to look like from an SRM perspective, other than to just acknowledge what Dana said, which is we will use all the tools in our toolkit. And the environment remains, frankly, a little volatile with respect to costs. So it's probably a little early for us to get too deep into the discussion beyond that.
Warren
Conference Operator
Very fair. Thank you so much.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
You bet.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Alexia Howard with Bernstein. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Alexia Howard
Analyst, Bernstein
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the question. Can I just start with the marketing spend question? You said that the marketing spend was up significantly this quarter. How much is it up year on year? How do you expect that to play out over the course of the year? Is it going to stay similarly up for the remaining quarters?
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Good morning, Alexia. Thanks for the question. From a media standpoint, in Q1, we were up modestly in Q1, not significantly. And we are expecting our media spend to be up low single digits throughout the year. But what I'm most excited about when it comes to media is just how we're modernizing our approach to marketing and communications. We have stood up a content studio that's allowing us to make more content faster and at higher quality. We have stepped up our use of influencers to maximize reach and engagement, almost doubled that, and that will get even more used over the course of the year. We've brought on new creative agencies, and then we're also stepping up Our readiness for agentic and really accelerating in e-commerce. So while media spend is up modestly, I think what I'm more encouraged by is just the work that we've done in order to show up to consumers in a more relevant way in culture.
Alexia Howard
Analyst, Bernstein
Perfect. Very helpful. And then as a follow up, this is probably for Kofi, where are we at with leverage at the moment? I know that your goal is to bring it down to three times net debt to EBITDA. But will it tick up just because the EBITDA is obviously down year on year and how quickly do we expect that to come down towards that goal level? Thank you and I'll pass it on.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Appreciate the question, Alexi. I would expect it will take us on pace with the combination of all the work we're doing on HMM and transformation savings, at least a couple years to work ourselves back to our target of three times net debt, setting aside any impact from extraordinary items like, for example, In the course of the past couple years used to help reduce leverage. So all things equal, we expect to make sequential progress over the next couple years. I can't give you an exact end date, but just know that in the back of our transformation goals through 2030 is our planned reduction back to target.
Alexia Howard
Analyst, Bernstein
Thank you. And where are you at the moment? Is it a little over four?
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, yeah, just a touch.
Alexia Howard
Analyst, Bernstein
Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
You bet.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Scott Marks with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Scott Marks
Analyst, Jefferies
Hey, good morning, all. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I wanted to ask first a little bit about the transformation initiatives. I think in the prepared remarks you called out working with a partner to stand up a new packaging facility to help with some flexibility there. I wonder if you can just give us a little more detail around that as well as share any other plans that you're currently working through and how we should be thinking about the benefits flowing through over the next few years. Thanks.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Well, good morning, and thanks for the question. I think first, just stepping back, you'll remember in the prepared remarks that we committed to delivering $750 million of cost savings in this fiscal year and $3 billion in total by fiscal 30. And how that breaks out is $2 billion of HMM and $1 billion of transformation. And the way we're thinking about transformation is not just about cutting costs. It's about how do we get our organization to a place that's fit for future growth. Part of that will be reimagining our supply chain and that's looking at capacity utilization, our manufacturing network logistics, and part of it is the example that you just called out in terms of what do we need to stand up in order to get at growth faster. And so our way of doing packaging innovation today is quite inefficient. We have just recently signed on a partner, an external partner, in order to help us get more packaging innovation more efficiently and effectively and at better pace. And that will allow us to accelerate our growth in e-commerce, where we know the majority of the food growth is going. So we're still very early days. I don't have a lot more details to share with that, but I really like the approach the team is taking.
Scott Marks
Analyst, Jefferies
Appreciate the thoughts there. Next, I just wanted to ask a little bit about some of the price pack architecture initiatives, specifically in the prepared remarks you called out innovating the serial around lower entry price points as well as larger hubs and larger formats. Are there any other areas of the business where you've been that active with making those changes? And have you seen similar results as you have with the Cereal portfolio in NAR? Thanks.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Well, first, thanks for calling out the progress that you've seen in Cereal. We're encouraged by the two-point improvement we saw in Q1. And the team has done a very good job with packaging innovation. We have the cups that allow us to have an opening price point for consumers. We have large sizes. We have bags. We are launching granola in tubs. And all of this innovation just allows us to deliver unique benefits that the consumer is willing to pay for. And I would say we've taken that approach across every business. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Scott Marks
Analyst, Jefferies
Appreciate it. We'll pass it on.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Labrie with Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Michael Labrie
Analyst, Piper Sandler
Thank you. Good morning. Just wanted to come back to some of the cost side and drilling the wheat specifically. Obviously, we get your color on how it all rolls up into all the commodities, but How much or higher are wheat costs impacting you? How covered are you in terms of maybe, you know, how to think about, you know, if costs keep going up, when that might become a pain point and how conservative in your assumptions may be. And I know in food service, there's pass-through pricing for the flour. So maybe how much of a lift from wheat index pricing is there as well?
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
I appreciate the question. Wheat is a touch higher than our inflation expectations for the year, obviously, as part of the basket of things along with freight and fuel and fats and oils and maybe packaging where we're seeing that incremental pressure that puts us to the higher end of the range. I would say broadly on our food service business, This is a dollar margin neutral exercise where the wheat or the flour that we sell on the market effectively is index priced and changes on a pretty regular basis roughly weekly to market and was passed through straight just based on the commodity price. So that does have an inflationary impact. It's been about a low single-digit headwind the past year. We'd expect that to be flipped to a tailwind this year in a roughly similar range of low single digits. So that is probably still roughly unchanged, which is a touch higher, but we were expecting that coming into the year. I would expect, obviously, as we work our way through the year, we are mostly hedged on wheat, just similar to the rest of the commodity complex. We're about three quarters hedge through the year and have visibility that far out. And obviously beyond that, then the spot and future price has become a little bit more inflationary in the back end of our year.
Michael Labrie
Analyst, Piper Sandler
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Just one on the consumer and just how to think about maybe an AI piece of it. There's things like Instacart. AI sort of shopping list creator and Kroger's doing similar things now. It's all quite new, but in terms of just how consumers are making decisions and maybe not even getting to the physical shelf where point of sale activation is always important, how do you just think about making sure you don't miss opportunities there or you're kind of on the right side of getting picked by some of these AI-generated shopping lists, for example?
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Well, thanks for the question. It is an important one. I think first, let's start with e-commerce and omnichannel. We know that whether it's human food or pet food, e-commerce is driving the majority of the growth. We see that over 20% of sales in human food and at 30% in pet food, and we expect that to accelerate. And we've really been focused on making sure that we have stood up the organization with the capabilities necessary to win there. And so far in Q1, we saw our e-commerce positions and our improve even faster than bricks and mortar. As it relates to agentic, we are really working hard to stay ahead on that. We know just in this last month alone that 40% of consumers use an AI tool to make a purchase in food. And right now, I mean, who knows? But our early estimates are that agentic commerce will be about 20% of food sales by 2030. And so it's really about making sure that we are staying ahead on the basics. And that's about making sure that our products are discoverable. It's making sure that the information is accurate and that they're easy to buy. And if we focus on those three areas first, we will stay ahead. But again, it is still very early in the agentic space and we have lots to learn.
Michael Labrie
Analyst, Piper Sandler
Thank you.
Warren
Conference Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Nick Modi with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Nick Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Kofi, maybe I could just do a quick clarification on the inflation basket. When you think about the ag complex, given all that's going on with fertilizer costs and the super-aluminum, I just would love your thoughts on how we should be thinking about that or how you're thinking about that over the next 12 to 18 months. I know you're not going to get into your guidance, but just wanted to get your thoughts on how you see the implications. And then I just have a bigger picture question on PET.
Kofi Bruce
Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's a fair ask. Without getting too specific, what I would tell you is, you know, fertilizer costs, given where we are in the planting cycle, more likely to be a headwind and affect crop planting decisions as you go into late spring next year, next calendar year. So that would be the place where You know, as farmers are making trade-off decisions about their input costs, they might switch to lower fertilizer-reliant crops such as soybeans and swap out of grains, which, you know, obviously that affects the supply of some of the grain complex, which are more fertilizer-reliant. So I would expect that's how it plays out, and you'd start to see that pressure show up more. Maybe with more clarity as we work our way through and into the calendar year next year.
Nick Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets
Great. Super helpful. And then, Jeff, Dana, maybe on this pet, you know, there's obviously some macro dynamics going on. People feeling some pressure. Event appointments are down every year. But there's also, I think, some structural dynamics that I'd love to get your thoughts on, which is, you know, you have where a lot of the margins that big dogs obviously Many of them are passing away, right? And the older consumers that own them are not replacing them. And the younger consumer is taking on smaller pets like cats and smaller dogs. So just curious on your thoughts about that just general viewpoint and how you can manage the business over time to kind of protect margins and capitalize on growth in the smaller segments.
Jeff Harmening
Chairman and CEO
Yeah, Nick, this is Jeff. Let me let me take that one. You know, I think that I would start off by saying that the biggest trend in pet food is the same one that it has been for the last couple of decades, which is humanization. You know, which is why we're really thrilled with the development of Love Made Fresh and how that's worked, why We bought Tiki Cat, and that's grown double digits since we bought it. And again, it's growing strongly this year. We just gained distribution on that one. So that's really taking off. And we even have our treat business back to growth, and we've got a good fall lineup of innovation on that. So I think that the biggest trend, as we think about what's going to drive our business forward, is this humanization trend. And Dana mentioned briefly some innovation we have on coming up Thank you for joining us. We actually, Blue Buffalo actually over indexes the smaller dogs. And so we'll see how that plays out. But there are more cats. And certainly people return back to the office and the economics of cat works out. And we have a strong cat business. As I mentioned, I mentioned Tiki Cat. Dana referenced tastefuls earlier that You know, one time was a headwind for us, but we've kind of redone all the pieces of the remarkability framework and got that going again. And so as we think about our pet business, we're encouraged by the start of the year. There is work to do, certainly on wilderness, so we don't deny that. But we feel as if we've got good offerings and we see some momentum in places where pet humanization is taking place and where we like our innovation for the second half of the year.
Nick Modi
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets
Great. Thanks, Papasan.
Jeff Siemon
Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance
I think we have time for one more, Warren.
Warren
Conference Operator
Understood. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Gumport with BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Matt Gumport
Analyst, BNP Paribas
Hey, thanks for the question. So last year during the back half of the fiscal year, you observed consumers waiting to buy on promo, which brought along a higher cost to compete. I'm just curious for what the latest is on that front and to what degree that could present an easy comparison for the second half of this fiscal year if we've seen some relief there. Thanks very much.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Yeah, thanks for the question. I think this all stems from the fact that we still see the consumer being very stressed, especially the middle and lower income consumer. And how that translates into behaviors is, yes, they are still waiting to buy products on sale rather than waiting to buy them on everyday shelf price. We haven't seen that accelerate. We'd say it's pretty similar to what we saw in the back half of last fiscal. And so when we set our guidance for this year, we assumed that that would continue throughout the fiscal year.
Matt Gumport
Analyst, BNP Paribas
Okay, great. And then just to follow up on pricing. So clearly, last year was all about reducing base prices to get them in a better place. You've signaled it this year that you'll leave your list prices largely untouched. Obviously, you will leverage to some degree innovation, renovation, price pack architecture, and other strategic revenue initiatives to get some positive mix out of the business. But plenty of your peers are discussing this price increases that we might see as soon as next month. To what degree are you factoring in potential market charges that could come as the consumer shifts from businesses where there has been pricing taken to businesses like yours where there are stable list prices? Thanks very much.
Dana McNabb
Chief Operating Officer
Well, as you mentioned, we really focused on improving our base prices last year to bring more value to consumers, and we saw it worked. Our base stabilized, our penetration grew, but as you rightly pointed out, the environment is more inflationary, and so we operate in 25 categories, and each one requires a specific set of actions. So what we do is we use the remarkability framework, we'll assess the price value relative to the competition, and we'll continue to adapt as the environment adapts. and that's where as I've talked to our strategic revenue management toolkit is really important because we will lean and mix that's the primary lever we want to use but also we'll continue to evaluate both trade and list pricing going forward.
Jeff Harmening
Chairman and CEO
And I would say, just to add on to what Dana said, as we think about the momentum for the rest of the year, and she talked about our continuing momentum, the thing I'm most excited about really is that having got our prices in line is the rest of the elements of the remarkability framework, particularly our innovation and renovation on our core. I mean, our Pillsbury business, 70% of it's being renovated, and we've got really good innovation in the second quarter. We talked about life protection formula and the good innovation we have coming on that, as well Thank you for joining us. You know what we're doing on the rest of the elements of the remarkability framework that don't tie back to value. And whether it's more protein, as you talked about, whether it's bold flavors, or it's more fun on certain categories. So that's what got me excited about our ability to compete increasingly effectively as the year goes on.
Jeff Siemon
Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance
All right, I think that's a good place to end. Thanks, Max. And Warren, I think we can wrap it up here.
Warren
Conference Operator
Thank you. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call back to Jeff Siemon for closing remarks.
Jeff Siemon
Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance
All right, Warren, thank you. Appreciate everybody's good interest and discussion this morning. The IR team is available throughout the day for anyone that has follow ups. We look forward to continuing to show good traction as we go through the rest of the year. Have a great day, everyone.
Warren
Conference Operator
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.