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Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2018 Prestige Brands Earnings Conference Call.
(Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.
I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Phil Terpolilli, Director of Investor Relations.
Sir, you may begin.
Philip David Terpolilli - Director of IR
Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone on the phone.
Joining me on the call today are Ron Lombardi, our Chairman, President and CEO; Christine Sacco, our CFO.
On today's call, we'll cover the highlights of our fiscal 2018 fourth quarter and full year, review the financial results, provide our initial fiscal '19 outlook and then take questions from analysts.
We have a slide presentation, which accompanies today's call.
You can access it by visiting prestigebrands.com, clicking on the Investor link and then on today's webcast and presentation.
Please remember, some of the information contained in the presentation today includes non-GAAP financial measure.
The reconciliations between adjusted and reported financial measures are included in today's earnings release and slide presentation.
During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements around risks and uncertainties, which we detail in a complete safe harbor disclosure on Page 2 of the slide presentation accompanying the call.
Additional information concerning risk factors and cautionary statements are available in our most recent SEC filings and the most recent Prestige Brands' 10-K.
I'll hand it over to our CEO, Ron Lombardi, to walk through the highlights of our fiscal fourth quarter performance.
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone.
Let's flip to Page 5 of our earnings presentation, which contains an overview of Q4 results.
In summary, our fourth quarter results were largely in line with our expectations.
Highlights for the quarter include a net sales increase of 6.4% to $256 million, driven by growth across our core portfolio.
Pro forma for Fleet, revenue growth was a solid 2.4%.
Also, our International business continued to experience strong gains, especially in our Care Pharma portfolio, resulting in sales growth of over 10% versus the prior year.
Gross margin in Q4 was 55.2%, improving on a sequential basis versus Q3.
We are making solid progress against the higher freight and warehouse costs discussed last quarter, and I'll provide additional detail later on.
We reported adjusted EPS up 15% to $0.62 during the quarter, while adjusted free cash flow came in at $52 million in the fourth quarter, and it continues to benefit from our industry-leading EBITDA margins, low capital spending and low cash tax rate.
This strong cash generation enables us to rapidly delever along with creating capital allocation opportunities, such as today's announcement of a $50 million stock buyback program.
Turning to Slide 6, we have an overview of our full year results.
In fiscal '18, performance reflected progress against our long-term strategies and positive momentum in many key areas of our business.
We generated revenue growth of 18% versus the prior year with pro forma growth at about 2%, trailing consumption trends by over a percentage point due to continued retailer destocking.
Most importantly, we continue to win market share with consumers, which we'll talk about in coming slides.
We delivered full year adjusted EPS of $2.58, up approximately 9% versus the prior year.
We generated adjusted free cash flow of $208 million in the year.
This strong cash generation was used to rapidly delever our balance sheet in fiscal '18, and to successfully improve our debt terms and profile during March's refinancing.
Now let's turn to Slide 8 for a more in-depth review.
We continue to position our company to be successful in a challenging environment by focusing on growing categories and building brands in our core OTC categories.
2018 is another excellent example of execution against this strategy.
In 2018, our diversified leading brand portfolio grew consumption at the high end of our long-term target.
We worked with retailers to grow categories, and the result was increased market share for our consumer health care portfolio.
We invested meaningfully to support long-term growth of our core branded franchises.
This included investments around the Fleet transactions, Summer's Eve brand as well as ongoing investments in our legacy OTC brands such as BC and Goody's.
This brand success in our financial profile continued to translate into strong and consistent cash generation.
These 2018 bright spots offset some temporary challenges we faced from lingering retailer destocking efforts as well as higher freight and warehousing costs in the second half of the year.
Let's discuss each of these in more detail, beginning on Slide 9. Slide 9 gives us a big-picture view of our brand-building efforts and success.
In fiscal 2018, our domestic portfolio grew well ahead of both category and private-label growth.
The chart on the left-hand side of the presentation shows that our overall company achieved growth of 2.1%, which was almost double category growth.
On the right side of the slide, you see that our core brands grew 3.4%, which is almost 1/3 better than category growth.
It's also worth noting that private-label growth trailed both category growth and growth of our core brands over the last year, 12 weeks and 4-week periods.
As we've discussed in the past, our brand-building methods are wide-ranging to drive this growth.
Let's turn to Slide 10, and discuss a timely example, BC and Goody's.
Our BC and Goody's headache powders are truly iconic brands with over 100-year history in the Southeastern United States.
They essentially represent the entire powdered analgesic category.
BC and Goody's are great examples of achieving success through our proven brand-building playbook.
Since our acquisition of these brands back in 2012, we've strategically expanded distribution to better reach loyal customers, we've enhanced the connection with consumers and retailers by leveraging strategic partnerships, such as our partnerships with Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
and Minor League Baseball in the region.
We have also launched numerous new product innovations, including BC cold and sinus, new flavors and other extensions with the focus on growing category and meeting consumer preferences.
In over 6 years of ownership, we've driven meaningful growth.
We've grown the combined brands over 25% since ownership, well ahead of analgesic category growth.
In fiscal 2019, this brand-building strategy will continue.
After extensive consumer marketing tests and feedback, we have created a new way to reach a larger audience.
We're in the process of launching a new, refreshed packaging format that moves from a wrapper to a simple-to-use stick pack.
It's the same product that consumers know and trust in an easier-to-use package.
The packaging change will take an iconic brand and make it even better and help set the stage for future growth.
This rollout will take place over the next year, and Chris will comment on some additional details.
Now let's turn to Slide 11 to discuss Fleet.
Acquired in January 2017, we have now completed over 1 full year of Fleet ownership.
It was the largest transaction in our history and one that positions us well for long-term growth.
In our first year, we applied our brand-building formula to its largest brand, Summer's Eve.
As a reminder, Summer's Eve is a perfect fit with our targeted brand positioning.
It's a leading brand with a #1 market share, representing over half of the feminine hygiene category and has the ability to benefit from long-term brand-building investments.
In fiscal '18, our formula was successful.
We grew the category for retailers and grew market share through a wide range of brand-building efforts, including a number of new Summer's Eve products.
We also quickly executed integration efforts with the vast majority of supply chain integration completed by the early spring.
In summary, we had a successful first year of ownership and are excited about continued brand-building and investment opportunities going forward.
Now let's turn to Slide 12.
It's important to remember the unique characteristics of our portfolio and how it has us well positioned against a challenging retail environment and resulting retailer destocking efforts.
Our portfolio is advantaged in many ways.
We are a market leader in a wide range of categories with approximately 60% of sales coming from #1 market share brands.
These brands often represent the branded category, and we, therefore, spend our efforts on working to grow categories rather than taking competitive share.
We built off this idea through consumer insights, where we look to engage consumers and understand opportunities to enhance our brand efficacy and consumer experiences.
Our needs-based OTC portfolio also helps drive traffic for retailers, ultimately adding basket ring and increasing our long-term value with our customers.
So in summary, we have leading brands that get to focus on growing categories and are a valuable traffic driver for retailers.
This is evident in our fiscal 2018 results.
We experienced company-wide consumption growth of nearly 3%.
Although consumption rates remained partially disconnected from revenue growth in the year, our portfolio remains well positioned to win with the consumers over the long term.
With that, let's turn to Slide 13.
Higher freight and warehouse costs were a headwind we faced during the second half of fiscal 2018.
Beginning in Q3, we had 2 distinct incremental costs to our business.
First, there was high turnover levels at our third-party warehouse that resulted in the use of an experienced, but higher cost third-party workforce.
Second, we incurred higher freight cost beginning in the third quarter as we expanded our pool of freight carriers to maintain our service levels with customers.
This was a strategic decision following the tight freight market we began to experience back in September of 2017.
Although these costs persisted in Q4, we are making substantial progress against these temporary impacts.
We are taking steps to improve our cost structure with the intent to return to a long-term normalized level for these costs.
On warehousing costs, the third-party site has fully transitioned away from the high-cost temporary workforce as of April 1. We are pleased with the hiring of an incremental local workforce and expect, over the next couple of quarters, for this staff to increase efficiencies.
On freight, we've taken a number of positive steps.
First, subsequent to Q3, we began to improve pricing as we negotiated carrier rates.
Fiscal '19 we'll continue to execute freight cost improvement programs, including a shift away from higher-cost broker usage.
For fiscal 2019, we expect to see continued improvement around both of these factors.
Now let's turn to Slide 14.
This slide is a reminder of the proven history of cash flow growth that we have achieved in the resulting delevering.
Our brand- building and resulting sales growth continues to be a significant driver to the consistent cash flow trends shown on the slide.
We expect fiscal 2019 to continue this proven algorithm of cash generation and deleverage and expect to reach approximately 4.7x net debt to EBITDA by the end of fiscal '19.
The cash generation also enables our ability to do such things as today's announced stock buyback, while simultaneously delevering.
Let's turn to Slide 15 to sum this section up.
Over the last 6-plus years, we've delivered impressive top and bottom line results.
Our 3-pillar strategy has driven revenue results, and we've successfully allocated capital in a variety of ways as we've transformed our portfolio through M&A, reduced leverage and invested behind brand building.
Now let's turn it over to Chris, who will walk us through the Q4 financials in detail.
Christine Sacco - CFO
Thank you, Ron, and good morning, everyone.
As Ron reviewed in brief earlier, I'll walk through our fourth quarter and fiscal year results in greater detail and offer some context around our expectations for fiscal '19 by line item.
On Slide 17, you can see our high-level fourth quarter and full year results, which include total revenue growth for the quarter of 6.4% and adjusted EPS growth of approximately 15% to $0.62 per share versus the prior year.
Q4 included pro forma revenue growth of 2.4%, which benefited from continued consumption growth for the company's core OTC portfolio as well as strong performance across the Fleet portfolio.
A&P was 13.8% of sales, which was in line with our expectation, but declined versus Q4 fiscal '17, as the prior year was affected by the transition period of a partial quarter of Fleet results.
Now let's turn to Slide 18, where I'll discuss consolidated fiscal year results and provide some incremental context to our fiscal '19 outlook.
As a reminder, the information in today's presentation includes adjusted results that are reconciled in our earnings release.
For the full year 2018, our net revenues increased 18% to approximately $1.040 billion.
These results were driven by continued strong consumption trends in our core North American and International OTC businesses, as Ron mentioned.
Pro forma with Fleet.
Our full year 2018 revenue growth was 1.7%.
Adjusted gross margin came in at 55.7% for the full year, reflecting the expected impact of the Fleet sales mix, which has a lower gross margin than the overall portfolio and heightened freight and warehousing costs in the second half of the year, which Ron discussed earlier.
Looking ahead, we expect full year fiscal '19 gross margin to approximate fiscal '18.
For modeling purposes, we would anticipate a first half 2019 gross margin similar to that of Q4 2018, with gradual improvements surrounding freight and warehousing costs to be partially offset by transitionary costs related to our BC and Goody's packaging update, which are expected to impact both net sales and gross margin, as the newly launched SKUs replace the legacy product.
In terms of adjusted A&P, we came in at just over 14% of revenue for fiscal '18, which was similar on a percent basis to prior year, but grew in dollars as we continue to invest behind our core brands.
For fiscal '19, we expect A&P to be just over 14% of sales.
A&P is expected to grow in dollars versus fiscal '18, as we actively seek opportunities for long-term brand-building and top line growth.
We also expect cost savings in our nonworking dollars in fiscal '19, which will be reinvested in higher levels of working A&P spend.
In terms of cadence, we would expect the first half A&P spend meaningfully above second half due to the timing of marketing initiatives.
Our adjusted G&A spending came in at about 8% of total revenues for the full fiscal year, and we expect similar G&A on a percent of sales basis for fiscal '19.
For fiscal '19, we estimate our depreciation and amortization expense, not included in cost of goods sold, will be approximately $30 million.
Now let's discuss below the line items.
As discussed last quarter, the enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act meaningfully lowers our ongoing tax rate and will generate incremental cash flow in 2019.
We continue to estimate an effective tax rate of approximately 26% in fiscal '19, down approximately 10 percentage points versus fiscal '18.
We are anticipating approximately $106 million in interest expense.
Finally, our adjusted EPS grew about 9% for the full year.
Let's turn to Slides 19 and 20 to discuss our fiscal '18 cash flow and a review of our capital allocation priorities.
Starting on Slide 19, you'll see we generated $52 million in Q4 adjusted free cash flow and over $208 million for the full year fiscal '18.
We continued to reduce net debt, finishing the year with just under $2 billion and a leverage ratio of 5.2x at year-end.
As Ron highlighted earlier, we executed debt transactions in March to help mitigate the impact of rising interest rates.
Our term loan rate is now LIBOR plus 200 basis points, while our debt is approximately 50-50 fixed to floating, with the add-on of $250 million of unsecured debt to our 2024 bond.
The refinancing enabled us to increase our ratio of fixed debt with no material incremental cost to fiscal '19.
Turning to Slide 20.
Let's review our capital allocation priorities.
As we've discussed in the past, our company has a consistent and repeatable 3-pillar strategy.
The third pillar of this strategy is capital allocation, which is being disciplined capital allocators of the free cash flow we generate to maximize shareholder value over time.
Our strong cash flow generation provides us multiple avenues to allocate capital to create value.
We concentrate our efforts on the first 2 chart points.
It is paramount to our success to continually reinvest in our portfolio of brands to drive long-term connection with consumers.
And we'll continually delever our balance sheet to build capacity to provide further allocation options.
Although M&A has been a key allocation over the last 6 years as we've transformed our portfolio, we continually assess our use of capital and how to maximize value for shareholders.
As we look to fiscal '19, we believe there is a unique opportunity to deliver value to our stakeholders beyond M&A by returning capital to shareholders through the announced $50 million share repurchase.
We see this as an incremental way to add shareholder value without inhibiting our long-term ability to invest in brand building, delever and pursue future M&A opportunities.
I'd like to now turn it back to Ron for a discussion surrounding our fiscal '19 outlook and some closing remarks.
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Thanks, Chris.
Let's continue on Slide 22.
Our multiyear results continue to highlight the success of our strategy and how our business is well positioned for long-term value creation.
Our strong needs-based brands continue to be well positioned in a dynamic retail and consumer environment.
Retailers, in general, continue to reduce inventory levels, which we expect to continue going forward driven by retailer consolidation and shifting consumer channel shopping trends.
This expectation is incorporated into our fiscal 2019 organic sales growth assumption.
For net sales, we anticipate fiscal '19 organic revenue growth of approximately plus 0.5 point to plus 1.5 points or $1.046 billion in sales to $1.056 billion.
This net sales number incorporates destocking as well as an impact from the launch of BC and Goody's new packaging.
We expect revenue growth will be stronger in the second half of '19 versus the first half, owing primarily to BC and Goody's restaged packaging that Chris described earlier and a change in accounting policies around revenue recognition.
For profitability, we anticipate EPS to be in the range of $2.96 to $3.04 or plus-15% to plus-18% year-over-year.
We expect EPS growth to be largely concentrated in the second half of fiscal '19, as we invest behind our brand efforts, including the upcoming BC and Goody's packaging transition.
Regarding cash flow.
For the full year, we expect free cash flow of $215 million or more for the full year.
Although we always focus on the full year, we'd like to note we anticipate a slight organic revenue decline and flat year-over-year EPS in Q1.
The revenue forecast is driven by our most difficult revenue comparison of the year, a change in accounting policies for revenue recognition and BC and Goody's quarterly variability as we launch our new stick pack.
EPS is impacted by this revenue projection along with still-elevated freight and warehousing costs versus prior year as well as the timing of A&P investments in the first 2 quarters.
In closing, I'd like to leave a few reminders for investors, which are summarized on Slide 23.
Our long-term performance continues to be driven by our 3-pronged strategy that starts with a focus on growing our business by winning with consumers.
From there, we take our financial profile's strong cash generation to reinvest behind brand building and use the remainder for strategic capital allocation.
It's is an effective, proven and repeatable model that's helped drive the results of the last 6-plus years.
In total, we are taking share in the OTC marketplace on a multiyear basis, which is a testament to our sales and marketing investments and long-term approach to brand building.
We look forward to delivering against this strategy again in fiscal '19.
With that, let's open up the lines for questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Joe Altobello with Raymond James.
Joseph Nicholas Altobello - MD and Senior Analyst
So I guess, first question, in terms of the outlook for revenue growth this year, you mentioned, Ron, that you do expect additional destocking.
I mean, is it fair to say that we should just assume in our models destocking is going to be about a point to 1.5 headwind, at least for the foreseeable future going forward?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes, I think that's a reasonable estimate, Joe.
We saw about a point in fiscal '18, which was up over what we realized in fiscal '17.
But we continue to feel that we'll be impacted by these trends at least in fiscal '19.
Joseph Nicholas Altobello - MD and Senior Analyst
Okay, great.
And in terms of your pricing, you mentioned earlier you're not really seeing much in the way of private-label encroachment, by private label, it sounds like, is losing share in your categories.
But are you feeling any pricing pressure in your categories from retailers looking to drive traffic at all?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Not necessarily, Joe.
And again, it's really a function of the fact that we have leading brands in categories.
So we're not facing the same kind of pricing headwinds that you hear many other CPG companies talk about.
So we're not necessarily realizing that.
Joseph Nicholas Altobello - MD and Senior Analyst
Okay, great.
And just one last one, if I could.
The target leverage ratio, I think, you mentioned today, you want to get down to about 4.7x by the end of fiscal '19.
Does that assume any share repurchases?
And what's sort of the long-term target there, given the fact that we're in a rising-rate environment at this point?
Christine Sacco - CFO
Joe, this is Chris.
Yes, the 4.7 does contemplate a $50 million share repurchase.
And I think, longer term, as we've discussed in the past, in this interest rate environment, we're certainly conscious of operating and likely to operate at lower leverage levels than we have historically.
We focus on -- our #1 priority for our free cash flow is to delever.
And so while we don't sit here and set a target leverage because we wouldn't want to pass on an opportunity.
If it's positioned us well for long-term brand building, certainly we're going to be conscientious of that as we move forward.
Operator
And our next question comes from Jon Andersen with William Blair.
Jon Robert Andersen - Partner
Thanks for sharing the consumption data, the 52-week data for the categories that you compete in and in your own brands.
I'm wondering if you can talk at all about what you've seen maybe closer in.
I know, short term, we -- a lot of things can move around on a short-term basis, but maybe if you could talk a little bit about 6 months to date or the last 3 months, if there's has been any kind of change to your own consumption trends, private-label performance or share within your target categories?
Or if it's kind of steady as she goes?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes.
So a couple of questions.
And I guess, first, in terms of consumption trends for the business.
If you go back and look over a long period of time, you'll notice that we do get variability from quarter-to-quarter, from year-to-year, in consumption trends across our portfolio.
We do have a number of brands that are incident driven.
For example, Monistat.
A few years ago, we did see a decline in incident levels that impacted consumption, because it was fewer people suffering from the affliction.
So we do get variability.
Our long-term trends continue to be above the categories that we compete in.
We continue to grow share.
So it really is pointed up over the long term for us.
The next question you had in there was around private-label trends.
Again, in the categories that we compete in, we have been meaningfully outpacing private-label performance for quite a while, not only growing our share, but just as importantly, like we emphasized, growing the categories in which we compete in.
Jon Robert Andersen - Partner
And then on the inventory destocking, there's a theory out there, I guess, one theory that you're experiencing some inventory destocking, because you may be losing shelf space.
I know -- I think the industry destock issue is a industry-wide phenomenon.
And Proctor commented, I think, even this quarter, about 100 basis points of inventory destock.
Is what you're experiencing, from a destocking perspective, in your opinion, a broader -- a function of kind of broader retailer efforts to become more efficient across the chain?
Or is it -- is there anything company-specific to it or category-specific to it with respect to your brands and your business?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes.
so for starters, again, number of topics in there.
We have a detailed way to go in and track consumption versus our shipments into the retailer.
So it's not an opinion-based position on destocking impacting our business, it's factual.
So that's the first part of it.
The second is, you made mention to a concern out there about the loss of a SKU at one of the drug retailers.
Those kinds of things happen all the time where retailers look to make a change that might be in line with their strategic focus of what they're trying to accomplish.
It happens all the time, and they come and go.
The net of them for us continues to be positive, where we're adding SKUs over time and increasing our presence at shelf.
So that's the first part of it.
Jon Robert Andersen - Partner
And coming back to Joe's question on pricing, because it's such a important topic and one that you look so focused on.
When you think about your individual brands on kind of a like-for-like price basis, you're not -- it sounded like you're not experiencing pressure on your own list prices at this point in time, given the nature of the categories and the strength of the brand -- your brands within them.
Is that a fair point?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes, that's a correct statement.
Jon Robert Andersen - Partner
Okay, last one for me.
The A&P spending at 14% of sales this year, any thought in a tough retail environment to step that up to even higher levels?
Or you're -- and what's the thought process behind that kind of debt level of A&P ratio?
And is there any thoughts to even stepping it up higher to try and drive stronger organic growth in what is a tough kind of retail backdrop?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Sure.
So first of all, our dollars are up next year in terms of what we -- our outlook is.
And the dollars are up more than it would appear, as we've had a number of cost savings opportunities, again, largely linked to the Fleet integration that we're plowing back into the -- into A&P spending.
So we're actually taking our dollar spending up more than it would appear.
And second is, we build our marketing in a -- and industry plans for brand-by-brand detail up.
So we look at the opportunities that are out there available to us, and how we can execute against them.
So we're continuing to look at opportunities where increased spending may be beneficial in terms of top line gains.
Operator
And our next question comes from Steph Wissink with Jefferies.
Stephanie Marie Schiller Wissink - Equity Analyst
I'd like to dig into BC and Goody's rebranding or repackaging.
Can you just share with us a little bit of how that works at retail.
Is there a period or a lull where the retailer downstocks existing packaged goods?
And then as you introduce the new packaging, they ramp back up?
Is that what we should expect to see over the course of the next few weeks?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes, that's a good way to start the description of it, Steph.
So we're going to be introducing brand-new SKUs across the year, and the retailers have different timing based on their resets.
So it's going to take the whole fiscal year to have this roll out across our retailer customer base.
So the retailers, as they get ready to transition to the new package, will stop ordering the old packaging, and they'll bring their inventories down to a certain level, and then they'll start to reorder the new packaging.
So that's one part of the impact that we'll realize on sales from quarter-to-quarter.
The other is, is that we'll also get some returns from our largest customers as well as slotting charges and other chargebacks from the retailers as they implement this new packaging.
So that's the other part that will hit not only net sales, it's a gross-to-net item affecting sales, but it also affects our gross margins as we have a dollar-for-dollar hit there as we incur those transitionary costs.
This rollout is something we're really excited about.
If you look at the page in the deck, on the left side, we have the packaging, I think, literally from the 1920s from advertising that we found out on the web.
This packaging hasn't been changed for literally 100 years kind of thing.
So we think this is going to continue to better position the product for continued growth.
Stephanie Marie Schiller Wissink - Equity Analyst
And Ron, is there any pricing advantage that comes along with the rebranding or a repackaging?
How do you think about the post-relaunch pricing structure of those brands?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes, there's really 2 parts of it.
First is, the pricing proposition around it, which we will address over a longer period of time as we roll this out.
And then secondly, we're transitioning to a new manufacturing process that gives us added capacity as well that over the long term, will help improve our cost position versus the existing packaging.
Stephanie Marie Schiller Wissink - Equity Analyst
All right.
Then my final question is just on the cadence of the year.
I think you've said numerous times, second half stronger than the first half and clearly, your Q1 being down a bit.
Can you talk a little bit about what the key drivers are that are loaded into the back half, maybe outside of BC and Goody's, what you see as the ramp in some of your other key brands?
And what we should be looking for as kind of milestones within the consumption data to validate that back half acceleration?
Christine Sacco - CFO
So Steph, this is Chris.
Maybe just some broad comments around the cadence as we think about fiscal '19.
From a top line perspective, you mentioned, obviously, BC/Goody's, and Ron mentioned expecting that to flow through the entire year.
Just given the magnitude of each retailer and their percent of sales, if you will, that's contributing to the first half, second half as well.
The second, as we mentioned, the change in our accounting policy regarding revenue recognition.
That essentially pulls forward certain trade spends into the first half that in fiscal '18 were recognized the second half of the year.
And then we mentioned, also, the third factor, just to remember our tougher comps, specifically around Q1, which is our toughest comp of the year.
And then as I work down the P&L, we also talked about our gross margin for fiscal '19 anticipating gradual improvements around freight and warehousing costs, and then Ron made mention of the transition costs for BC/Goody's that are going to flow through various lines of the P&L.
Also, the timing of our A&P spend heavily weighted in the first half.
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Steph, one other comment.
At the end of your questions there, you made the comment of tracking consumption.
What I'd like to remind you is, is that these generic monthly consumption reports that come out have a long history of being disconnected from the actual results of the company for a number of reasons.
The first is, it doesn't track all of our business.
It doesn't track any of our International business.
It doesn't track Canada.
It doesn't track all of the channels in the U.S., especially the fastest-growing ones, which are the online.
Our online business doubled this year from $10 million to $20 million, which added about 1 point of growth that is completely untracked as well as disconnects.
As we launch new products, there is often a delay before the reports are accurate as they flow into the systems.
And so BC and Goody's, we expect a disconnect.
So -- and this isn't a new phenomenon.
It seems like I've been addressing this question of why is there such a big disconnect for the 8 years or so I've been here, every single quarter or often from investors we meet with.
And what I'll remind you is, to use it as a data point, but don't rely upon it as the data point and a singular correct piece of information that we'll provide you insight on how the business is tracking.
Stephanie Marie Schiller Wissink - Equity Analyst
I appreciate that.
Can I just ask as a follow-up, maybe visually than at retail, what we should be looking for from -- again, some of your key brands outside of BC and Goody's in terms of initiatives?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes.
So continued ongoing brand-building efforts around TV and digital placements, continued new product rollouts.
In fiscal '18, we had very successfully launches Summer's Eve, Compound W and Nix and BC sinus and daytime cold.
So those will continue to build on momentum in fiscal '19.
We expect them to.
In addition to that, we've got a number of other new product developments we anticipate launching this year.
And again, it's something we don't talk about prior to them being launched at retail for obvious reasons.
But really, it's more of the same, Steph, in terms of day in and day out, blocking and tackling around brand-building and marketing efforts as well as a focus on continuing to launch new product and bringing innovation to help focus on growing categories.
Operator
And our next question comes from Linda Bolton-Weiser from D.A. Davidson.
Linda Ann Bolton-Weiser - Senior Research Analyst
So first of all, can you give me the actual, like, the unadjusted free cash flow relative to the $208 million in FY '18?
What it was if you included everything like in...
Christine Sacco - CFO
So Linda, if you go to our adjusted, you can see a non-GAAP free cash flow number for the year of $197.6 million, which is in our -- one of our adjusted free cash flow table in the back of the earnings report.
Linda Ann Bolton-Weiser - Senior Research Analyst
Okay.
And then in terms of your projection for free cash flow for the next year, will there be a big gap between the GAAP and non-GAAP free cash flow?
Christine Sacco - CFO
At this point, we don't anticipate any adjustments to GAAP free cash flow, if you will, for fiscal '19.
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes.
And again, the adjustments in '18 were largely associated with the integration costs associated with the Fleet acquisition.
Christine Sacco - CFO
Yes.
Linda Ann Bolton-Weiser - Senior Research Analyst
Okay.
And then, Ron, I was just sort of thinking here, I mean, if your organic top line growth is sort of 1%.
And then you've got -- in the past you always said that your margins are really high already and not to really expect margin expansion over the long term, so your EBITDA margin is flat at best, maybe.
So it really -- the algorithm is not for a lot of EBITDA growth here over time and perhaps even declines, if you get spikes and even cost inflation like we've just seen.
So if you have sort of a declining EBITDA, I mean, kind of how do you think about that long term?
And do you think maybe there are some opportunities to bring ongoing productivity into the company, and not to just reactively respond to inflation, but to actually look for ongoing productivity that might help you stabilize an EBITDA margin rather than experience some declines of margin going forward?
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Yes.
So first of all, in fiscal '18, right, we realized an EBITDA margin erosion that was largely attributable to the freight and warehouse issues that we've talked about, right?
In the reduction and gross margin.
So we expect, in fiscal '19, to recover those and get back to a normalized level.
In addition to that, in fiscal '19, as we talked about earlier, we expect an impact from rolling out the new BC and Goody's packaging that would go away for fiscal '20.
So if you look out to fiscal '20, we would expect, based on those 2 factors, that we'd be able to recover some of the EBITDA margins going forward after fiscal '19, is the first part.
The second part is, we actually have had, for a very long time, gross margin and other cost reduction initiatives in place.
And historically, the way we've looked at that is trying to improve gross margin as the way to find additional resources to increase A&P over time and keeping a stable level of EBITDA margins, which were at the high end of the industry.
So clearly as we react and recover the freight and warehousing costs and deal with the costs associated with the BC and Goody's launch, we would expect that to go away and go up and that we would continue to focus on improving margins over time, the gross margins.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from Frank Camma with Sidoti.
Frank Anthony Camma - Analyst
There's a lot of questions about private-label pricing and to me it seems like investors really still misunderstand your business model brands and even the fact that you sell over-the-counter health care products.
And that's an observation, not a question.
My only question is, how much of your debt is floating?
And I mean, the actual dollar amount?
Christine Sacco - CFO
Yes, Frank, about $1 billion, we -- since the refinancing we did back in March, we're about 50-50 fixed-floating.
And as a reminder, we plan to use the majority of our free cash flow, absent the repurchase we just announced, to rapidly get that number down about half a turn a year as we go forward.
Frank Anthony Camma - Analyst
Okay.
And what's that priced at, Ron?
Christine Sacco - CFO
So we have the $1 billion of floating, majority is priced at LIBOR plus 200 basis points, which came down from LIBOR plus 250.
Frank Anthony Camma - Analyst
Okay.
So about 4.5%, right, roughly?
Christine Sacco - CFO
Currently standing around 4%, yes, and will be expected to increase throughout the year, yes.
Frank Anthony Camma - Analyst
Okay.
So in today's credit market, if you were to buy swaps to fix that, how much would it cost you?
Christine Sacco - CFO
So the biggest factor -- obviously, the pricing and the interest rate environment is factored into the pricing on a swap.
I mean, the biggest thing for us as we think about our capital structure is how quickly we can delever and how much free cash flow we generate.
So going out and locking in fixed to swap today for, say half of the $1 billion that's floating, I'm going to pay that down in just under 2 years.
And so we're continually looking at our cap structure.
We're conscious of our floating debt in this environment.
And when opportunities arise, as they did in March very rapidly, we take advantage of it, and we'll continue to do that.
Operator
And I'm not showing any further questions at this time.
I would now like to turn the call back over to Ron Lombardi for any closing marks.
Ronald M. Lombardi - Chairman, President & CEO
Great.
Just like to thank everyone for joining us today, and have a good day.
Thank you.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference.
This does conclude today's program, and you may all disconnect.
Everyone, have a great day.