Procter & Gamble Company Barclays 19th Annual Global Consumer Staples Conference

Look, the strategy we are executing is the same strategy this company has been on for 189 years now, which is grounded in understanding the consumer better than everybody else in categories where we can truly add value. The categories we are in are the right categories. We know how to play in them. We have the R&D capabilities, the supply chain capabilities, and the consumer understanding to win. They are expendable categories, daily use, and performance makes a difference, so our capabilities are relevant to the consumer. We know how to deliver superiority. We know how to define it. We know how to measure it. Better understanding the consumer and then delivering against those needs is the way that we grow categories, we grow share, and we grow our business on a sustainable way. We need outstanding productivity to fuel that momentum consistently, and that productivity muscle is well developed.

Lastly, we need an organization that is capable and enhancing themselves to continue to develop against those core elements of the strategy. None of that needs to change because everything is very basic. The art in the strategy is not the articulation, the art in the strategy is the consistent execution. While we are not changing the strategy, we are changing every piece of wiring under the hood. That is really what it is all about. How do we act faster when we recognize that our propositions are not superior? How do we cut through functional barriers in that conversation so it doesn't become an R&D versus supply versus go-to-market versus marketing conversation, but an integrated conversation on what does the consumer need and how do we get there quicker?

That was one of the fundamental decisions we made is to declare the moment you do not grow users, you are not superior. We do not care whether it is one, two, three, four, or five of the vectors, but you, dear general manager, are uniquely responsible for fixing that superiority. That has been the success model in where we see turnaround in the business. Literally every category-country combinations where we have declared you are not growing users and the organization has accepted the diagnosis and then gone into deep dive of what is the consumer part of the value equation that we are missing, addressed it, the business turns, and it does not turn in 12 months, it turns within 60 days, 90 days. We are building capabilities to do that even better by having more data easier available to the organization on every KPI that determines what we call superiority.

We've talked about our data lake. We talked about the capability that we have in extracting data from that. Now the potential of making that data available using technology, using AI to help us analyze data quantities that otherwise we weren't able to at that speed with that precision is a whole new world for us to better understand and even faster diagnose where the consumer need is that we haven't met. Reducing internal work processes, everything that has to do with reporting, forecasting, stewardship, internal analysis, all of that we're automating, digitizing, which frees up the organization to focus externally on those opportunities.

Supply Chain 3.0, we've been talking about that for a year and a half, is in full execution, meaning maximum automation of the supply chain, integrated digital capabilities from quality measurement and execution to inventory management to warehouse execution, unattended shifts that will give us productivity runway for the next 5 to 10 years. Integrated in that superiority conversation is R&D capability, where we're using technology to discover new elements in the innovation toolbox. Molecular Discovery Suite is one of those elements, where we're using AI to just get access to new technologies faster and scale them faster.

To get back to the question, Lauren, the core strategy is not changing, but how we deliver against that strategy is fundamentally shifting, and I think every element of the company is gearing up to leverage technology to go faster, be more agile in diagnosing and addressing potential outages and delivering the productivity we need as a fuel to actually be able to afford all of that while delivering.

I think it's still the right timeframe. We all wake up every morning and something else happened. Certainly those headwinds that I think everybody's seeing don't help, category growth being one of them, cost and commodity pressures being another, transportation cost increases due to driver shortage. You name them, you've heard them all. I don't think it changes the ambition. The ambition is to return this business to strong growth, in that 12 to 18-month timeframe. If I quickly walk around the regions, enterprise markets are consistently in the 4%-6% range. China is growing share and now growing five quarters in a row, low singles accelerating to mid-singles. Europe is slow in terms of growth. Market growth is only 1%, but we're growing share. I think we're on path to re-accelerating. In the U.S., we now stabilized share category growth around 2%.

We're growing at around 2.5%, on a consumption basis. I would say this quarter, next quarter, we're solidifying the base. I think that gives us confidence that, in half two, we can start growing in the U.S. more consistently, and Europe should be re-accelerating. I think we're on that trajectory. As you know, Lauren, there are many things that can happen, so there's never a guarantee. But if I look at the trajectory the business has been on, if I look at the patchwork of category country combinations that we are fixing one by one, the total patchwork gets greener, and the greener it gets, the more comfortable I get that that sustained momentum will only accelerate.