Company: CHD
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-019801
Chunk: 166

Company: CHURCH & DWIGHT CO INC /DE/
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 7
Chunk 166
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 decreases in discretionary spending than other products, certain of our products, are more likely to be affected by consumer decisions to control spending.  Some retail customers have responded to economic conditions by increasing their private label offerings (primarily in the dietary supplements, stain fighters, diagnostic kits and oral analgesics categories), launching their own brands, and consolidating the product selections they offer to the top few leading brands in each category.  In addition, an increasing portion of our product categories are being sold by club stores, dollar stores, mass merchandisers and internet-based retailers.  These factors have placed downward pressure on our sales and gross margins.

We intend to continue to aggressively pursue several key strategic initiatives: maintain competitive marketing and trade spending, tightly control our cost structure, expand our online market share by continuing to invest in e-commerce (global on-line sales were 21.4% of consumer sales in 2024), expand our presence and product offerings to consumers outside of the United States, continue to develop and launch new and differentiated products, pursue strategic acquisitions, continue to grow our product sales globally and maintain an offering of premium and value brand products to appeal to a wide range of consumers.  Our global product portfolio consists of both premium (64% of total worldwide consumer revenue in 2024) and value (36% of total worldwide consumer revenue in 2024) brands, which we believe enables us to succeed in a range of economic environments.  We intend to continue to develop a portfolio of appealing new products to build loyalty among cost-conscious consumers.  We derive a substantial percentage of our revenues from sales of liquid laundry detergent. We continue to evaluate and vigorously address pressures on this business through, among other things, new product introductions and increased marketing and trade spending. 

Over the past two decades, we have diversified from an almost exclusively U.S. business to a global company with approximately 18% of sales derived from countries outside of the United States in 2024, and we believe ongoing international expansion represents a significant opportunity to grow our business.  We have subsidiary operations in eight countries (Canada, Mexico, U.K., France, Germany, China, Australia, and Japan).  We also export products to over 130 other countries through our Global Markets Group using a broad network of third-party distributors.  In 2024, we benefited from our expanded global footprint and expect to continue to focus on selectively expanding our global business.  

We also continue to focus on controlling our costs.  Historically, we have been able to mitigate