Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG) Lowers FY Outlook

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE: SMG), the world’s leading marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products, today updated its financial outlook for fiscal 2017, lowering its full year guidance due to an anticipated shortfall in sales.

The Company now expects sales in its U.S. Consumer segment to be slightly down from last year, leading to expected company-wide sales growth of 3 to 4 percent, compared with the previous guidance of 6 to 7 percent sales growth. Management said it now expects adjusted earnings for the year to range from $4.00 to $4.20 per share compared to an original range of $4.10 to $4.30 per share (*** consensus is $4.19).

“Despite the challenging weather that has plagued the Midwest and Northeast nearly all spring, consumer purchases of our products were up slightly at home center, hardware and gardening stores entering June,” said Jim Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive officer. “However, performance at mass retail is down more than 10 percent from last year due to changes in merchandising strategies and tighter inventory management.

“While we still have 30 percent of the season in front of us, it’s become clear that we’ll fall short of our original plans on both the top and bottom line. The contingency plans we’ve put in place will help partially offset the sales shortfall we’ve seen thus far, but we are unwilling to cut too deeply if the impact begins to affect our planning for next season.”

Hagedorn said momentum in the Company’s Hawthorne Gardening business remains strong with sales up 17 percent on a year-over-year basis entering June.

The Company also said it has increased its share repurchase activity in recent weeks and expects to repurchase $250 to $275 million of its shares on a full-year basis. Additionally, the completion in recent weeks of two small acquisitions – one in Hawthorne and another in the core business – is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings, adding $0.05 to $0.07 to earnings per share on an annualized basis.

“The issues causing pressure this season in no way impact our confidence in the strength of our business and long-term opportunities to drive shareholder value,” Hagedorn said. “We continue to make outstanding progress at reconfiguring our portfolio, improving our operating margins and improving free cash flow in order to provide increased flexibility that drives incremental growth and returns cash to shareholders.”

Company management will provide a strategic update and elaborate on its expected fiscal 2017 results today, June 13, at 8:30 a.m. eastern time at the William Blair Growth Conference in Chicago. A live webcast of those remarks will be available at http://investor.scotts.com

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