What CPG Executives are Saying About eCommerce Today

Well well well. eCommerce finally has a seat at the table! I looked at recent earnings calls to see how many mentions CPG Executives had of the term "e-commerce" (or some variation of it). Below is a summary of the themes, the # of mentions, and actual quotes from the execs themselves.

Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling seeing so many of the worlds biggest brands finally taking eCommerce seriously.

Themes - Profitability. Double digit growth.

eCommerce Mentions in Latest Earnings Call-

The Procter & Gamble Co. - 16

The Hershey Company - 15

Central Garden & Pet - 8

JM Smucker - 7

Newell - 6

ConAgra - 5

Edgewell - 4

Clorox - 2

Mondelez - 2

JM Smucker - 

Q42020 Earnings Announced June 04, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 7

Executives: 

Mark Smucker, President & CEO

Tucker Marshall, Chief Financial Officer, no relation to the Marshall Tucker band.

In the quarter, our pure play e-commerce sales grew 66%, led by pet food with over 60% growth and coffee with more than 90% growth. Pure-play sales accounted for nearly 7% of total U.S. retail and beat our goal of 5% for the full year. Further, when accounting for total online sales, inclusive of omni-channel retailers, over 10% of our U.S. retail sales were through e-commerce in the quarter, with the largest driver of growth coming from click and collect purchases. We anticipate continued strong e-commerce growth as 5% of consumers expect to use digital shopping channels more frequently in the future.

Our sales team is incented to obviously sell profitably. And so we are focused on making sure that we are really getting the products where they need to be. If you think about e-commerce, what was interesting about this quarter was that we did see a large increase in click and collect sales, which tend to have profitability more in line with brick-and-mortar. I will also say that even our e-commerce, our pure-play e-commerce sales which are up significantly notably on smaller brands like 1850, we are making progress to ensuring that our profitability across all channels is relatively in line.

Newell

Q12020 Earnings Announced May 01, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 6

Executives: 

Ravichandra Saligram - CEO

Christopher Peterson - CFO, not on LinkedIn

Our global e-commerce penetration went up from 13% in the first quarter of 2019 to 17% in Q1 2020. Our online POS penetration in Q1 was up 30% -- was up to 30%, up 500 bps versus prior year .These trends have continued into the second quarter. We estimate that April penetration reached approximately 37%, up 900 bps, and that April online sales are up approximately 30% versus prior year. Year-to-date through April, online sales were up an estimated 20%.

The strength we have built in e-commerce is allowing us to leverage the accelerating channel shift to online post COVID. However, on the negative side, most secondary and tertiary customers, especially specialty retailers and department stores, have closed their brick-and-mortar doors, which has translated to a sharp decline in retail orders, more than offsetting the growth in mass and e-commerce.

And lastly, we are currently assessing ways to better leverage our already robust e-commerce capabilities where we believe we have a lot of run rate for growth across our portfolio. We believe we have a strong opportunity to grow with Amazon, where we're gaining market share, increasing penetration at key retailer .coms and expanding penetration into various specialty retailer .coms.

Conagra Brands

Q32020 Earnings Announced March 31, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 5

Executives: 

Sean Connolly - President, Chief Executive Officer, not on LinkedIn

David Marberger - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer

It’s important to note that demand has surged broadly across retail channels, including ecommerce as well as for pick-up and delivery, most of which are not reflected in this data. Similar to our measured channel retail business, our ecommerce business is also up in sales, outpacing the competition and gaining share.

Now because of this crisis situation, people are at home. As you know, everybody can see it, they’re stocking up and they’re stocking up with foods of all kinds, across all temperature states including categories like frozen, so just logically we know we are getting higher levels of trial here during this phenomenon.

In terms of data that backs it up, quite frankly it’s just too early to point to a lot of data points. The one place I can tell you that we do look, that tends to be a leading indicator, is ecommerce. In the world of ecommerce, what we are seeing is that we are reaching a large number of new triers that we had not reached previously.

Clorox Corporation

Q32020 Earnings Announced May 01, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 2

Executives: 

Benno Dorer - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Kevin Jacobsen - Chief Financial Officer

We’re seeing very strong growth in e-com, and we’re seeing very strong growth in club as consumers are even ordering from home or they’re trying to order in larger quantities. So we’re seeing those channels grow at an accelerated rate right now.

The Coca-Cola Company 

Q12020 Earnings Announced April 21, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 11

Executives: 

James Quincey - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

John Murphy - Chief Financial Officer

We've also seen a significant increase in e-commerce channels where we have been accelerating our presence versus the pre crisis.

We'll also embrace some seismic consumer behavior shifts that are taking place, especially in e-commerce. We believe the accelerating expansion of the channel is sustainable and we want to continue to be well positioned for long-term growth.

But it also sees a big step-up in e-commerce. We've seen a near doubling of our -- of the importance of the growth of e-commerce for us. So once we get past the lockdown I think, we'll see an environment through these graduated re-openings of society still with the spectre of the virus over us with a reality of an impacted economy.

And I think what we'd like to see is a step change in some already ongoing trends like a step-up in e-commerce. It is both economically attractive and kind of spectre of the virus friendly, so I think we'll see a lot more e-commerce.

e-commerce even though it's doubled in sales for a beverage category it's still a very small percentage of the total beverage category.

The Hershey Company

Q12020 Earnings Announced April 23, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 15

Executives: 

Michele Buck - Chairman, President, and CEO

Steve Voskuil - SVP and CFO

E-commerce growth has accelerated meaningfully, as many of you would expect and have likely observed yourselves, the number of consumers purchasing groceries online has increased significantly over the past several years. Our research indicates that 45% of consumers have used one or more online grocery options in the past four weeks, 23 points of them -- 23% of which use these services for the first time.

We’ve seen similar trends for confection with household penetration also doubling over the past month. Consistent with these broader trends, our overall e-commerce growth rate has accelerated significantly with growth over 120% in March versus 60% in January and February.

As we've shared in the past, profitability in this key e-commerce segment is relatively in line with total company average margins and that continues to be the case as trends have recently evolved. We believe we are well-positioned to capitalize on these trends given the strong investment and enhanced capabilities we have implemented over the past several years.

Edgewell - 

Q22020 Earnings Announced May 08, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 4

Executives: 

Rod Little – President and Chief Executive Officer

Dan Sullivan – Chief Financial Officer

As I mentioned earlier, we will be among the beneficiaries of increased consumer focus on health and hygiene and our continued investments in expanding our digital capabilities will serve us well, given what we believe will be an accelerated and lasting consumer shift to e-commerce.

E-commerce sales grew 63% in the quarter, reaching about 6% of total net sales with growth on the Amazon platform of 80%. As we continue to build our capabilities and focus in this channel, we obviously also benefited from the consumers’ efforts to pantry-load as part of COVID-19 responses.

Mondelez - 

Q1 2020 Earnings Announced April 28, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 2

Executives: 

Dirk Van de Put – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Luca Zaramella – Chief Financial Officer

In addition, we see opportunities in both revenue management and in e-commerce, where we can capitalize on increased demand from at-home shopping.

Strong execution in manufacturing, our robust DSD network and alternative channel growth in cloud value and e-commerce were critical factors in achieving this performance.

Central Garden & Pet

Q2 2020 Earnings Announced May 6, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 8

Executives: 

Howard Machek - Chief Accounting Officer

Tim Cofer - Chief Executive Officer

Nicholas Lahanas - Chief Financial Officer

John Hanson - President of Pet Consumer Products

J.D. Walker - President of Garden Branded Business

In March, we saw an increase in consumer spending as shelter-in-place mandates were rolled out. This was most pronounced in our e-commerce channel, where we have seen dramatic spikes, especially in pet consumables. Another favorable impact to our pet business has been the record level of dog and cat adoptions from shelters.

Addressing the needs of the pandemic has only reinforced the importance of evolving Central’s business. It’s more important than ever for us to continue to build core capabilities, including: e-commerce; digital marketing and innovation; invest in organic growth; and pursue strategic and opportunistic M&A that create further value for our shareholders.

We see, obviously, as you break down channel or customer, we see robust, quite honestly, explosive growth on e-commerce. We have seen some triple-digit growth weeks on e-commerce, particularly on our Pet side. And our Garden side off a smaller base is growing very strongly on e-commerce.

The Proctor & Gamble Company

Q3 2020 Earnings Announced April 17, 2020.

Mentions of e-commerce - 16

Executives: 

Jon Moeller - Vice Chairman, COO and CFO

Potential for a lasting shift for e-commerce, both etailers and omni-channel. Our experience to date makes us believe we are generally well-positioned in this environment.

The e-commerce business grew about -- globally about 35% in the quarter. It’s now about 10% of our business globally. As we’ve talked many times previously, we view ourselves as very well positioned within that channel and continue to strengthen that position. The two largest sources of growth by far are the U.S. and China with some categories growing in e-commerce in those two markets, as much as 50%. And obviously the at-home dynamics and the unwillingness to congregate in physical stores is driving a fair amount of that. We’ll have to see where that nets out, but I don’t think it all goes away. I think, we’ve seen a permanent shift in the percentage of business that’s going to be done in e-commerce and we view that positively. And when I talk about e-commerce, I’m talking broadly including omni-channel, click and pick, and all forms and varieties of e-commerce.