Del Monte Foods F1Q10 (Qtr End 8/2/09) Earnings Call Transcript

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2009-09-03 09:30:45.0

Tags: Call Transcript, Earnings, Pricing Strategy, Pricing, Marketing Research, Marketing, Seeking Alpha, Del Monte Foods Co.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Karru Martinson.

Karru Martinson - Deutsche Bank

As the market leader on the consumer segment side, are you seeing private label follow you up on pricing or are you seeing an expansion of that price gap as the consumer continuing to trade down?

Richard G. Wolford

We’ve seen the price gap begin to narrow and we have seen the private label pricing begin to follow our price lead up and we would anticipate that that would continue to be the case. We certainly know that the private label manufacturers have experienced the same if not more aggressive cost increases than we have, and we would expect that -- and we know that that’s being passed on through. One of the issues at present with private label pricing is, as I had mentioned in the comments, that we see private label pricing being used as a strategic tool by select customers who are using the private label pricing to achieve their competitive goals of bringing customers in in the current economic environment and we anticipate that will continue but we believe that our promotional programs will provide our customers an alternative to that objective of attracting and driving good traffic.

Karru Martinson - Deutsche Bank

Thank you very much, guys.

Operator

Your next question is from Tim Ramey.

Timothy S. Ramey - D. A. Davidson & Co.

You were pretty explicit about what to expect on sales drive for pricing in the second half. Can you give us any sense of how you think volume will do once you don’t have the wrap-around effect of the price increase? Should we expect kind of the -- in your term, the elasticity to not be a factor?

Richard G. Wolford

Yeah, our elasticity will not be as big a factor and as we said on the investor day, we expect new product volume to contribute 1% to 2%.

Timothy S. Ramey - D. A. Davidson & Co.

Okay, and would your -- this increased level of marketing spending, should we think about that as mostly a 2Q event, or is it reasonably spread through the rest of the fiscal year?

Richard G. Wolford

It is spread throughout the fiscal year, Tim and one of the main objectives of that spending as we go through not just the second quarter but very importantly the second half is to ensure that we are setting up our brands and our products for strong growth in F11 and beyond. Our objective is not just to deliver this year but to ensure that we are investing in our brands to drive, to build our equity and drive growth and drive relevance to our consumers beyond the current fiscal.

 

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