Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Terry Bivens - J.P. Morgan.
Terry Bivens - J.P. Morgan
A couple of things on the soup front as we enter the soup season, again, I know sometimes panel data can be somewhat misleading but I wanted to ask you two things. From our vantage point, it looks like Progresso, as we go into the series, appears to be a little more aggressive than normal, in some of the alt channels; I'm thinking there of Walmart.
And the other thing I wanted to ask you about is just the microwaveable line. I know it is just a portion of RTS but it seems to kind of continuing a slump. If you could address those two things.
Douglas R. Conant
I suggest if you want any help on the Progresso plants, I can give you a phone number in Minneapolis where they'll be happy to answer those questions for you.
We feel good, first of all, about our position here. Basically, as we said, we reported very good sales growth this past year in U.S. soups, and we also mentioned, separately, that retail inventories are down a little bit.
And what that is suggesting is that it translated into very good consumer takeaway, all in. I wish we had a solution to help you between panel data, IRI, Nielsen, to make this more transparent. And I do want to mention that we are working against a goal of doing that.
But overall, we feel very good about our sales and our consumer takeaway in U.S. soup. As in all soup seasons, there are ebbs and flows to our performance and our competitors' performances. We were very aggressive kicking off Select Harvest last year and so comparing our latest 4 or 12 weeks versus last year is not going to be particularly useful to you.
In terms of microwavable, it is a segment that is premium-priced, by and large relative to the canned products, and it has been adversely affected as people have made more value-oriented choices, which have benefitted the canned businesses. For the whole segment, not just Campbell's.
And as a result, the segment has struggled a bit. But the convenience factor is still valued. It is still driving incremental sales. And so we are comfortable with where we are. We expected to do better this year. But it is the one modest watch-out on an otherwise very positive story for our soup portfolio, a story that quite frankly, has never been better across all segments.
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