Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Colgate-palmolive
Search every verified Noel Wallace interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Noel Wallace, Chairman, President, and CEO of Colgate-Palmolive, discussed the company's performance and strategy during the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference on September 1, 2020. He highlighted the company's "growth mindset," focusing on premium innovation, opportunistic adjacencies, and agility in responding to consumer behavior trends. Wallace noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company saw increased demand for do-it-yourself teeth whitening solutions, antibacterial sanitizers, and mouthwash, and it launched products like the Colgate Optic White overnight whitening pen and Palmolive and Protect brand sanitizers. He stated that Colgate-Palmolive was "way under indexed" in premium growth segments and was pursuing innovation to capture that market, while deliberately avoiding deep discounting to maintain a healthier portfolio. Wallace also mentioned expanding into new channels and markets, including e-commerce. On the company's Q1 2020 earnings call on April 24, 2020, Wallace reported strong results but announced the withdrawal of full-year 2020 guidance due to uncertainty from the COVID-19 pandemic. He cited potential "second and third order effects" from economic stress and government actions as difficult to predict. Wallace noted that the company's cash flow priorities included capital investments, dividends (paid for 124 consecutive years), acquisitions to accelerate growth, and moderated share repurchases. He also reported that the Darlie franchise had returned to the number one market share in China, and Hills Pet Nutrition saw a 57% sales increase, driven by its science-based relaunch and online growth.
“the premium innovation is obviously driven by the shared growth that we're seeing in the categories and the dollar growth we've seen across almost all our categories has been driven by premium innovation and we're way under indexed in that space and so as a result we've obviously positioned ourselves moving forward to...”
“we're not looking to chase a lot of the deep discounting that's going on in the category and we've seen aggressive couponing that we have deliberately decided not to go after and obviously we've lost a little share as a result of that but the share that we've gained which is the growing part of the segment for us right...”
“despite strong q-1 results we have chosen to withdraw our annual guidance for 2020 this was not an easy decision for us however given the combined uncertainty surrounding the future impact of kovin 19 and government actions to stem the threat of the virus we believe this is the correct choice the second and third order...”
“we have historically generated significant amounts of free cash flow a tread net continued in the first quarter our priorities for uses of cash include capital investments for productivity and future growth paying dividends to our shareholders which we have done consistently for 124 straight years and acquisitions to a...”
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