P&G offers many excuses for Gillette’s ongoing sales collapse in regulatory filing; Omits one very big reason
[Buck Throckmorton]

In early 2019 Gillette released its infamous “toxic masculinity” commercial which effectively accused its loyal customer base of being bullies and sexual predators. That ad sparked an angry backlash of men who are fed up with SJW attacks on them, and who vowed to stop buying Gillette products. (I’m one of them.) Six months later Procter & Gamble had to take an $8 billion impairment charge due to Gillette’s declining sales and the declining book value of the Gillette brand, which caused P&G to have an overall $5 billion loss that quarter.

We don’t know how many millions of men quit buying Gillette products after it went hyper-woke, because P&G isn’t telling us. But the Securities and Exchange Commission does require P&G to document problem areas and potentially impaired assets.

Procter & Gamble’s 10-K published in August for the fiscal year ending 6/30/2020 is a long slog of a report, but in summary, things are going well for all P&G units except “Shave Care”.

The COVID-19 pandemic that occurred during the second half of fiscal 2020 [This means January through June 2020 because P&G’s fiscal-year-end is June 30 - Buck] resulted in a reduction in shave incidents by consumers and a weakening of certain currencies relative to the U.S. dollar, which led to a reduction in net sales for Gillette-branded products.

So Covid caused the continuing erosion in Gillette’s sales?

The duration and severity of the pandemic could result in additional future impairment charges for the Shave Care reporting unit goodwill and the Gillette indefinite-lived intangible asset.

It’s weird, but as I perused this 10-K report, I found that there is only one P&G unit that may have an upcoming impairment charge, and that one unit is its “Shave Care” unit. Covid apparently isn’t having an impact on Old Spice sales (Old Spice is part of P&G’s “Beauty Care” division), but those same men still buying Old Spice aftershave have stopped buying Gillette razors. Yeah right. Or maybe it’s because P&G hasn’t yet run any commercials where it slanders its Old Spice users as bullies and sexual predators.

Has P&G identified any reasons beside Covid that might cause consumers to stop buying Gillette products? It has. And it’s missing one very big reason.

Net sales and earnings growth rates could be negatively impacted by more prolonged reductions or changes in demand for our shave care products, which may be caused by, among other things: the temporary inability of consumers to purchase our products due to illness, quarantine or other travel restrictions, financial hardship, changes in the use and frequency of grooming products or by shifts in demand away from one or more of our higher priced products to lower priced products.

Wow, P&G listed a lot of reasons why consumers might not buy Gillette products. In fact, given that “travel restrictions” is included as a reason, it seems kind of significant that P&G chose not to mention that there is a nationwide boycott of Gillette products. P&G would certainly never lie to the Securities and Exchange Commission in their 10-K, would they? No, they must have simply omitted mention of the Gillette boycott to shave one or two sentences from this 75-page document.

P&G can spin the collapse of Gillette sales all it wants. It can even be evasive in reporting Gillette’s collapse to the SEC. But it can’t spin or evade the fact that Gillette is now a toxic brand. Get woke go broke.

Reminder [ace]: People remember the Gillette ad attacking men, but they tend to forget the P&G series of ads attacking white people as racist monsters.

posted by Open Blogger at 02:22 PM

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