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Q4 2013 Earnings Call
Good morning. My name is Audrey, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome under stairs storage everyone to the Tupperware Brands Corporation Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rick Goings, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I'm in Rome, Italy, after a week at World Economic under stairs storage Forum in Davos. I'm here with our Country President, Michael Tziallas. We're in the midst of a 4-city sales force seminars all over Italy and down into Sicily. Later in the call, I've asked Mike to talk with us about what he's been doing to bring new levels of growth through our Italian business. Mike Poteshman, our CFO; and Teresa Burchfield are there at our headquarters in Orlando. Forgive me if you hear sirens from time to time. This is Rome. And if we get cut off for any reason, Mike, as always, under stairs storage I would ask you to just continue the call. We have -- sometimes things work wonderfully under stairs storage well here, and not so good at other times.
If you'll turn to Slide 3. The top line of the fourth quarter we were pleased came in with another quarter of growth, 5% in local currency. There were, as always, puts and calls. I'll get into those. And -- But as a group, what you see is the strength under stairs storage of our emerging markets contributed 63% up in the quarter -- excuse me, 63% of our sales and up 12% in the quarter. Established markets, while they were down a bit, they did improve sequentially to minus 5%, because they were down about 8% in the third quarter. And from an earnings per share standpoint, under stairs storage we came in at $1.81. That was $0.02 off the low end of our range that we gave. But we had $0.03 more negative hit from foreign exchange, so we did come in within our guidance.
And I must comment here, we manage our business in local currency. We pay incentives to our management in local currency. And then we work our butts off at our headquarters and our regional offices to mitigate the negative foreign under stairs storage exchange under stairs storage translation effects. Mike will get into that.
We're pleased with our full year cash flow. Came in at $263 million. Was way ahead of our guidance. And also particularly pleased in the way we're returning cash to our shareholders. And this combination under stairs storage of doing it by raising dividend and share repurchase, often on these individual meetings, you'll ask why we have this particular kind of mix. And it's -- it basically is for this reason. You don't do it all in dividends because I never want to have a time we reduce -- have to reduce the dividend, because things are happening in the world that you can't support it. And yet, if we feel that we get to a certain point and there's enough cash, we'll buy in shares. It gives us a relief valve and management the flexibility of what to do. Mike's going to give you more texture on that in just a minute.
On Slide 4. As you see, currency has an impact on our top and bottom line results. under stairs storage Got to keep in mind, over 90% of our sales and earnings were generated outside the United States in this past year. And in line with our continuing effort to provide transparency to our business, with a lot of input from many of you as we've done one-on-one IRs, we said, "Hey, how do we help?" And you've asked, "How can we help keep you more informed on the translation impact?" So we started providing monthly guidance in November with our close, and we update that at the end of the fiscal month. And we've had a lot of positive feedback on that because we see which markets and which currencies. And we want to give you that update on a regular basis. So we hope you find it as useful as we believe it is.
Let me comment on the results by first discussing our total sales force, which is the driving metrics of the direct sales company. under stairs storage We ended the year with, knocking on the door of 2.9 million sellers, up 4% versus 2012 [ph], and that was a 4% improvement over where we ended the third quarter. And this puts us in a much better position coming out of the gate in 2014. Sales force size continues to be the driver of sales.
In Slide 5. I wanted to give you a little bit more texture on what we do with regard to moving our sales force ahead in the future. Really there are 4 elements that really contribute to this process. We basically call it ROAR: recruiting, onboarding, activation and retention. Now I briefly commented in the third quarter on this, but let me just spend a couple more moments. Recruiting is, and always is, the lifeblood of a direct selling company and a key focus. There was a 4% improvement in the quarter. Longer term, though, we need and want to see it higher. We're really working like mad to get it into the mid- to high-single-digit range and then to really bridge over into double-digit growth. So that's behind the scenes what we're working on. But it's not enough just to bring an individual into the business.
Q4 2013 Earnings Call
Good morning. My name is Audrey, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome under stairs storage everyone to the Tupperware Brands Corporation Fourth Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rick Goings, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I'm in Rome, Italy, after a week at World Economic under stairs storage Forum in Davos. I'm here with our Country President, Michael Tziallas. We're in the midst of a 4-city sales force seminars all over Italy and down into Sicily. Later in the call, I've asked Mike to talk with us about what he's been doing to bring new levels of growth through our Italian business. Mike Poteshman, our CFO; and Teresa Burchfield are there at our headquarters in Orlando. Forgive me if you hear sirens from time to time. This is Rome. And if we get cut off for any reason, Mike, as always, under stairs storage I would ask you to just continue the call. We have -- sometimes things work wonderfully under stairs storage well here, and not so good at other times.
If you'll turn to Slide 3. The top line of the fourth quarter we were pleased came in with another quarter of growth, 5% in local currency. There were, as always, puts and calls. I'll get into those. And -- But as a group, what you see is the strength under stairs storage of our emerging markets contributed 63% up in the quarter -- excuse me, 63% of our sales and up 12% in the quarter. Established markets, while they were down a bit, they did improve sequentially to minus 5%, because they were down about 8% in the third quarter. And from an earnings per share standpoint, under stairs storage we came in at $1.81. That was $0.02 off the low end of our range that we gave. But we had $0.03 more negative hit from foreign exchange, so we did come in within our guidance.
And I must comment here, we manage our business in local currency. We pay incentives to our management in local currency. And then we work our butts off at our headquarters and our regional offices to mitigate the negative foreign under stairs storage exchange under stairs storage translation effects. Mike will get into that.
We're pleased with our full year cash flow. Came in at $263 million. Was way ahead of our guidance. And also particularly pleased in the way we're returning cash to our shareholders. And this combination under stairs storage of doing it by raising dividend and share repurchase, often on these individual meetings, you'll ask why we have this particular kind of mix. And it's -- it basically is for this reason. You don't do it all in dividends because I never want to have a time we reduce -- have to reduce the dividend, because things are happening in the world that you can't support it. And yet, if we feel that we get to a certain point and there's enough cash, we'll buy in shares. It gives us a relief valve and management the flexibility of what to do. Mike's going to give you more texture on that in just a minute.
On Slide 4. As you see, currency has an impact on our top and bottom line results. under stairs storage Got to keep in mind, over 90% of our sales and earnings were generated outside the United States in this past year. And in line with our continuing effort to provide transparency to our business, with a lot of input from many of you as we've done one-on-one IRs, we said, "Hey, how do we help?" And you've asked, "How can we help keep you more informed on the translation impact?" So we started providing monthly guidance in November with our close, and we update that at the end of the fiscal month. And we've had a lot of positive feedback on that because we see which markets and which currencies. And we want to give you that update on a regular basis. So we hope you find it as useful as we believe it is.
Let me comment on the results by first discussing our total sales force, which is the driving metrics of the direct sales company. under stairs storage We ended the year with, knocking on the door of 2.9 million sellers, up 4% versus 2012 [ph], and that was a 4% improvement over where we ended the third quarter. And this puts us in a much better position coming out of the gate in 2014. Sales force size continues to be the driver of sales.
In Slide 5. I wanted to give you a little bit more texture on what we do with regard to moving our sales force ahead in the future. Really there are 4 elements that really contribute to this process. We basically call it ROAR: recruiting, onboarding, activation and retention. Now I briefly commented in the third quarter on this, but let me just spend a couple more moments. Recruiting is, and always is, the lifeblood of a direct selling company and a key focus. There was a 4% improvement in the quarter. Longer term, though, we need and want to see it higher. We're really working like mad to get it into the mid- to high-single-digit range and then to really bridge over into double-digit growth. So that's behind the scenes what we're working on. But it's not enough just to bring an individual into the business.
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