General Mills, Inc. (GIS) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

General Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS) Q2 2022 earnings call dated Dec. 21, 2021

Corporate Participants:

Jeff Siemon — Vice President, Investor Relations

Kofi Bruce — Chief Financial Officer

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Analysts:

Ken Goldman — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Andrew Lazar — Barclays — Analyst

Nik Modi — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Robert Moskow — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Jason English — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Steve Powers — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Wendy Nicholson — Citigroup — Analyst

Pamela Kaufman — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

David Palmer — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Chris Growe — Stifel — Analyst

Michael Lavery — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the General Mills Second Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Tuesday, December 21, 2022 [Phonetic]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Siemon, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jeff Siemon — Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, Savannah, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our Q&A session on the second quarter results. I hope everyone had time to review our press release, listen to our prepared remarks and view our presentation materials, which were made available this morning on our invest Investor Relations website.

It’s important to note that in our Q&A session, we may make forward-looking statements that are based on management’s current views and assumptions, including facts and assumptions related to the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our results and fiscal ’22. Please refer to this morning’s press release for factors that could impact forward-looking statements and for reconciliation of non-GAAP information, which may be discussed on today’s call.

Here with me are Jeff Harmening, our Chairman and CEO; Kofi Bruce, our CFO; and Jon Nudi, Group President of our North America Retail segment. So we’ll go ahead and get to the first question. Savannah, can you please get us started.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Certainly. [Operator Instructions] And our first question is from Ken Goodman with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question. Good morning, everybody. You highlighted that you’re actions offset supply disruptions in logistics issues that are starting to bear fruit. Great to hear, obviously, but we’ve sort of been seeing similar pattern from the whole sector for a while now, like what is, I guess, “hidden costs arising”, management team think the worst is over and then the next quarter unfortunately the pattern repeats. So I guess my question is, in the wake of these exogenous issues continuing to crop up, this guidance has any sort of bigger cushion in it, bigger than usual to kind of account for the potential that some of these logistics and supply shortages worsen once again in the back half of the year?

Kofi Bruce — Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Ken. This is Kofi. I appreciate the question. As you can obviously see we gave a little bit wider guidance on operating profit and we did on the top line and EPS as a result of the operating profit guidance which reflects, I think what you’re alluding to, which is the underlying volatility in this environment, right? And the root cause of this we see about eight to tenfold increase in the amount of disruptions in our supply chain. So the predictability in that it has been linked to quarter, but some — what we provision and expect in the back half is is not as much of an improvement, to be candid. So as you think about it in relation to last year, we saw a ramp up in the external supply chain costs in the back half of the year. We don’t expect these costs that we’re seeing for disruptions to really materially change in the balance of the year, but just to replace the ramp up in those based on the supply chain costs. And the lighter guidance reflects that the volatility can [Indecipherable]

Ken Goldman — J.P. Morgan — Analyst

Okay, thank you for that. And then quick follow-up. On your cereal business, obviously you’ve taken a great deal of share from your larger competitor that’s having some unfortunate issues of its own right now. Can you just walk us through a little bit where your plants are in terms of utilization in case that the demand for your products continues to grow over the next few months.

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Hi, Ken, it’s Jon Nudi. I will tell you we feel really good about our cereal business and certainly understand some short term dislocation from our major competitors. Our performance [Indecipherable] longer time, in fact over the last four years we had really strong performance. As we look at short term [Indecipherable] we need to continue that, investing in our brands and we can innovate and can we expect to grow share and in the category back as well. So, short term, we feel good about our [Indecipherable] business and we continue to do what we’ve done over the last four years, that’s like continuing with the category.

Jeff Siemon — Vice President, Investor Relations

Please allow me to go to the question.

Operator

Certainly. Our next question is from Andrew Lazar with Barclays. Please proceed.

Andrew Lazar — Barclays — Analyst

Good morning. Happy Holidays everybody. Thank you. Jeff, I’m curious how General Mills thinks about sort of the balance between, let’s say shorter-term profitability given the dramatically higher cost to serve currently versus the potential for longer-term benefits from sort of — sort of stepping up and servicing the customer and consumer in this difficult environment. So I guess — I guess what gives you the confidence that fulfilling this excess demand at this higher cost is sort of worthwhile, and like what is the cut-off and where you would decide to like forgo a sale, not suggesting we’re kind of at that point yet?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Andrew, I mean one of the main reasons, we spent quite a bit of time looking at the trade-offs between things like customer service and margin and sales growth and that sort of thing. And you know, we always try to make sure we play the long game at looking at these things. We’ve been around for 155 years because we play the, we play the long game. You know what I would say, in this environment there is a huge trade-off, but I’m not sure there is a trade-off between higher service level cost and that’s because if we were to take or put off the gas on service, what you would probably find is that we create more deleverage and we would incur fine because and be more [Indecipherable] for our retail customers because the more efficient and then we’d be shipping truckloads of stuff that we’re probably most efficient, and so there really isn’t a cost trade off. So I don’t — we would not be making more money if we look less at our service. We feel its our responsibility at the end of the day is to the end consumer and making sure they have the products they want to our retail customers and by filling that we’re doing our job. The only thing we would gain by lessening service on margins look at the moment better, but our sales will be down, but we wouldn’t make any more money for General Mills’ shareholders, we certainly are going to generate more cash then we’re generating now either.

Andrew Lazar — Barclays — Analyst

Got it, got it. And then thanks. And then Kofi just a quick follow-up. In the outlook, I think you say General Mills expects back half EPS growth to be more weighted to the fiscal 4Q. Does this mean you see some, even if modest EPS growth in 3Q and just far more in 4Q, or do I not have that right Thank you so much.

Kofi Bruce — Chief Financial Officer

I appreciate the question. But it really reflects is our expectation that we will see an improvement off of the margin decline that we just posted in Q2 and sequential improvement on that as we work around it from Q3 to Q4.

Andrew Lazar — Barclays — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Nik Modi — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and happy holidays. I guess the question Kofi is, if you can just give us some context on the inflations, delta in terms of the guidance? Where were things worse than you expected? And then the other question I had just around price elasticity. I mean, we’ve heard a lot of companies talking about things are better than expected, but it just seems like the retailers aren’t passing all the pacing on. So I wanted to get your thoughts around that as we kind of go forward over the next few months of the quarter.

Kofi Bruce — Chief Financial Officer

Sure. And let me — let me start with your first question. So just as a reminder on the frame here, about 55% of our input costs are sitting in raw packaging materials, 30% in manufacturing and the remainder in logistics. And what we really saw that kind of accelerated was in particular our raw and packaging material moving out to double digits, logistics which we now expect to was already in the double digits, continued to survive the loss of that base, and in fact the remaining in the low single digits, in particular, as we look at sourcing and packaging in our aluminum resin, fiber, raw materials, fats and oils, and these are particular pressure price as well as pretty feel honestly look at logistics structure.

And then on your second question in relation to last [Indecipherable]

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

So, one of the things we are really pleased with is our strong capabilities that we’ve built over the last five to six years and got a lot more data analytics as we [Indecipherable] So we’ve been closely monitoring, obviously the pricing [Indecipherable] and understand the market and that’s really meeting our expectations at this point. We have seen in the last few season its something better than what we wanted historically to date as we go the back half, we expect to see a bit more elasticity and we’ll continue to monitor capabilities [Indecipherable] on a daily basis.

Nik Modi — RBC Capital Markets — Analyst

Great, thanks a lot guys.

Operator

Our next question comes from Robert Moskow with Credit Suisse. Please proceed.

Robert Moskow — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Hi, thanks. Hope everyone’s well. I wanted to know in you’re raising your prices, Jon, and you’re showing customers your inflation and your ingredients like 8% to 9%, do you also show them the supply chain disruption costs that you’re incurring? And is it possible to justify the pricing based on this? Because, like, a customer could argue that maybe some of that’s transitory. So I want to know how that conversation goes?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

So, I mean for a long time [Indecipherable] conversations are no easier than they have been in the past. I think everyone recognizes is [Indecipherable] are justifications, so we spend a lot of time. Most of that case has been built around inflation and market basket. So I think with that we will stick over a longer period of time. Certainly retailers are very aware in the short-term supply chain costs that we’re incurring and they are incurring the same and cost, but at this point really don’t understand the conversations, again really focusing on some of the more macro factors and inflation to justify the pricing.

Robert Moskow — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Yeah, so that’s kind of my question, Jon. So, is it more difficult than to factor in supply chain disruption as justification? So like the pricing that you’re taking, is that designed to offset a 8% to 9% inflation longer term or is it also designed to offset some of this disruption as well?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Yeah, so if you look at — if you look at our pricing as well [Indecipherable] inflation, its really the short-term supply chain costs, obviously that really the bogey for us and that is our composition of the retailers. And again, we want to make sure that we price in a way that is right for our consumers as well, so we’re balancing how much pricing we could take, how much is wanted and then really leveraging these restaurant capabilities. So we’re trying to take a long view from a pricing standpoint and clearly there is some short time [Indecipherable]

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

But you know, Robert, I think you bring up a good point, Jon — Jon answered it well. But you know that some of these supply chain disruptions they will be transitory and we would expect them to improve for the rest of our fiscal year as noted by Kofi earlier. But over the longer-term, I mean the supply chain will get more efficient. We had a terrific Asia now productivity capabilities and so we are highly confident that these costs over time are costs that [Indecipherable] we are confident that over time once the — once the market stabilizes, these are costs that we can improve.

Robert Moskow — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Got it, okay. Thanks a lot.

Jeff Siemon — Vice President, Investor Relations

This is Jeff Siemon. I have one more point to add to, maybe hit the nail on head. While we don’t expect these disruption environment necessarily to improve meaningfully in the back half. As Kofi said, we do expect our margin performance year-over-year to improve, which is really all about the comparisons will get quite a bit easier as we have more of the supply chain costs in the back half of last year. So the cost that we’re seeing this year on a year-over-year basis will be less of a headwind, which is, which really drives gross and operating margin improvement in the back half.

Robert Moskow — Credit Suisse — Analyst

Okay. Actually I have more questions, but it’s Christmas. So this is my gift to you is to not ask [Speech Overlap]

Operator

Our next question is from Jason English with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Jason English — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Hey good morning folks and happy holidays. [Speech Overlap] Jeff, you just clarified one of my questions with Kofi. But I going to still ask the question with the final point. Year-on-year, obviously the gross margin pressure is going to subside just given the comps you have, but you’ve got price mounting climbing to the quarter — the rest of the year and also inflation coming. As we think about sequentially, your gross margins dipped down in the second quarter. Is this a floor level based on what you know today? Could we expect — should we expect sequential growth in gross margins?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

I think I think what you can expect is we will see improvement off of the decline and sequential improvement as we move through from Q3 to Q4. And then, yes, that’s about as far as we’ve implied in the guidance.

Jason English — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Okay, okay, so implicitly that 3Q margins could be weaker than 2Q. Next question. The U.S. consumer is still obviously very flush with cash. But one of your competitors has already noted that trade down began to resume in categories like cereal. Are you seeing something similar across any of your categories? And what are you planning for in regards to trade down behavior, price elasticity, etc., as we begin to cycle a pretty big stimulus early next year.

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

This is Jon. We have [Indecipherable] when we look at our business, most of our categories in our business is strengthening. As we look at share versus private label, private label [Indecipherable] continue share and we’re continuing to monitor that. We believe in building brands and innovating and doing what we know best. We’re driving our business and if you look back historically during the times of recession, our brands performed well. So at this point we haven’t seen any change in dynamics.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I would add on that Jason. We haven’t seen in Foodservice either. We haven’t seen in pet. We haven’t seen in Europe. We don’t see in China or Brazil. So we simply haven’t seen that here.

Jason English — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Yeah, I haven’t seen it either. I was surprised by your competitor noting it, which is why I asked the question. But, thanks a lot for the clarification guys. Happy holidays.

Operator

Our next question is from Steve Powers with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Steve Powers — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Yes, hey, thanks, and good morning from me as well. On the supply chain disruptions that you’re seeing and labor shortages, etc., taking all your prior comments in context, I guess are there — are there — is there a cadence that you’re expecting or you’re places where you’re a little bit more optimistic whether categories of bottlenecks or geographic overlays, is there a — there are places in what you’re facing now where you’re — where you’re relatively more optimistic versus not in terms of finding that release? I’m just curious yeah.

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Yeah, hey Steve, it’s Jon. One of the challenges right now is the destructions are and really, really across the entire supply chains, on some cases its really impacting the category, in other cases where capacity is constrained which is extremely a challenge for all of our businesses. I think in one area that we do believe will get better is move to back half is internal discussions and that due to the actions we’re taking, we’re bringing on alternate suppliers where in the past not even single source in the region [Indecipherable] team has been doing a great job really [Indecipherable] us through Q2 and I think that’s the one area that we do expect to get a bit better. We do expect our service levels to remain challenged in the back half of the year with the Q3 will look a lot like Q2, with the Q4 will get better but look more of a Q1. So an average, we think our services will look similar in the back.

Steve Powers — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Okay, great. Just to be — just to clarify that. So you’re expecting that relief to come in the ingredient sourcing but more because you’re diversifying less because the conditions get better?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

That’s fair and today we’ve not seen a huge improvement and availability across materials and we see something about our [Indecipherable]

Steve Powers — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Okay, great. And then the other question I had was just on Europe and Australia where the margin pressure is obviously exceptionally acute. Just as you go into annual price negotiations there, just your — based on what you’re talking about so far, just your relative confidence that that will be a source of relief — a further relief in the fourth quarter as those negotiations take effect?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

I think you you’ve outlined the constraints on pricing in that environment. There is a pretty firm negotiation window for pricing. I can’t comment on anything forward looking, obviously, but what I will confirm is that, that’s why you’ve seen our margins on [Indecipherable] under a little bit more pressure than the rest of the segments, and in particular, as you look at pricing as a contribution onto to sales growth, you will see that reflected there. So we’ll leave it there and it’s [Technical Issues] small business, so its 5% 10% of our total sales.

Steve Powers — Deutsche Bank — Analyst

Yeah, understood.

Operator

Our next question is from Wendy Nicholson with Citigroup. Please proceed.

Wendy Nicholson — Citigroup — Analyst

Hi, good morning. My first question has to do just in terms of the magnitude of the pricing that we should expect to see on shelf. I think the last few months you said it was 9% average increased at retail in North America. Can you give us a sense for how high you think that would be maybe over the next six months.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I think w generally don’t comment on forward-looking pricing and just know that we have pricing already in the marketplace that we’ve already announced to our customers and so we’re confident that, that it will be higher in the second half of the year, but we don’t comment on the specifics of forward-looking pricing.

Wendy Nicholson — Citigroup — Analyst

Okay, fair enough. But I guess my question is with regard to the competitive activity, I know you said private label really isn’t a threat and they’re not gaining shares, but sort of over a longer term basis your share trends have been neutral effect, but I assume at some point competition is going to sort of fight back harder and maybe in terms of cereal your competitor — your major competitor has their hands tied behind their back a little bit from a supply perspective, but can you talk about what you’re seeing maybe from some of the other branded guys in North America in your other categories, are they being as equally aggressive on pricing? Do you expect them to step up promotion in an effort to gain share? Just maybe what you’re seeing kind of in the store right now.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

I think, I think it’s probably best that our competitors talk about what their pricing is going to be and what their outlook for the business is. One of the thing that I’m most proud of Wendy that you did note that I’m glad you noted is that we’ve gained share over a long period of time and we’ve been, we’ve been doing in North America Retail with multinational retailers. We’ve been doing in our Pet business. We’ve been doing it in Europe and China and Brazil. And so one of the things I’m most proud of here in this tough environment, we continue to keep very, very effectively and I think that’s a sign of the quality of our execution and our customer service levels. And so no matter what and that was happening before the pandemic, its happened through the pandemic, its happening now. And so I think that is the most important thing. A lot of the time our competitors we’re not constrained by supply and that did not have material disruption. And so those things come and go and we take them as they come and go. But one of the things I am most pleased about is our performance. They have been able to do all of that while reshaping our portfolio and so we’ve added pet brands and this worked really well. We’ve divested our yogurt business in Europe and now announced a dough business and restructure our organization. So we’ve been able to have all this competitive quality with that, while navigating a lot of changes internally as well as externally.

Wendy Nicholson — Citigroup — Analyst

And just in terms of the North America business I assume one of the big contributing factors to your market share being has been the innovation we’ve seen, which has been terrific, seemingly across the portfolio in North America Retail. But I assume innovation kind of comes in ways. Some quarters are stronger than others. And I’m not looking for specifics or things you haven’t announced yet, but just generally can you comment kind of thinking maybe about calendar 2022, if you think the innovation pipeline things to come or as strong as you’ve launched over the last six to 12 months, just sort of conceptually as innovation still set to be a good a strong driver of hopefully more, even more market share gains. Thanks.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, sure. Hi Wendy. As Jon noted, we’ve been performing well over a long period of time and to the point is really by focusing on the fundamentals and one of those fundamentals is innovation. So brand building and innovation are key to our brands over time and one of the things is that the pandemic pulled back on innovation that we kept updating and our customers really appreciated that. We’ve kept the it down. So as we move into calendar year 2022, we’d expect see some of levels of innovation versus what we saw in the past year, in case we got some better ideas and are quite excited about. So and the other thing, whether there is inflation or not, the fundamental is about building our brands and innovating and we’ll continue to that as we move forward.

Wendy Nicholson — Citigroup — Analyst

Terrific, thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Pamela Kaufman with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Pamela Kaufman — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Good morning. Happy Holidays. During the quarter, in North America, you mentioned that your shipments lagged consumption by about 2% because of the service challenges you experienced. Can you just elaborate on what some of the dynamics were that contributed to that? And would you expect this to continue into the back half of the year? And I guess as a follow-up, is that — is it related to inventory levels and do you feel like you have adequate inventory levels to meet elevated demand into the back half?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Yeah, Pam, clearly as we talked about lots of challenges in supply chain and those have impacted our ability to service our customers or service levels, during the quarter when the low mid teens versus high 90s targets as the result and e couldn’t ship to all the demand that we saw, so a result retailers drew down a bit of inventory in the quarter and that was the gap that you talked about. As we look to the back half, we do expect our service level to be similar to the front half. We wouldn’t expect to certainly close that gap as we move through the back half of our fiscal year. Clearly, our goal is to continue to strengthen our supply chain as we get into fiscal ’23 and beyond, we do believe that we’ll be in better shape and yield service all above that that is there.

One of the things that we pivoted to is a new [Indecipherable] we think that’s really important. And while it’s certainly not where we wanted be is those of our competition, our share of sales in Q2 now being as lower than our competition as well and that’s where the customer trust supply chain and the great job that we are doing and the communication we have with the customers.

Pamela Kaufman — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Great. thanks. And can you talk about what short-term initiatives you have on the operational side to manage the disruption that you’re experiencing in the supply chain? And I guess over the longer term are there any changes that you’re making to operations or increasing investments and capabilities or automation in response to the current operating environment?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Yeah, for sure. In fact, one of the practices that we put in place at the beginning of the pandemic, so one of the things we have are daily [Indecipherable] supply chain together and we get together with all of our senior leaders across the business, talk about these issues and trying to help our team work through some of the challenges that are out there. We’re leveraging data analytics one of the things just and continue for a long period of time, is really increasing our investments and our capabilities there, and that’s starting to bear some fruit. So if you think about the number of trucks we are running across North America, as we can show that they are more full than they are currently, that’s good for us to confirm business, good for our customers, good for our margins. We’re seeing the leverage in that technology. We have a host of other initiatives from a data standpoint, analytics standpoint and supply chain will also tighten and we’re also giving a look at our distribution centers and [Indecipherable] Some of those facilities where we’re challenged right now from a labor standpoint. So we have a host of things happening. But at the end of the day, our communication is probably the most important way of communication with our vendors to make sure the ingredients will be given and then we on a lot of time meeting of our customers have all been tighter from a supply chain standpoint. Really wanted to know in real time where we are and [Technical Issues]

Pamela Kaufman — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from David Palmer with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

David Palmer — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Thanks, good morning. Happy holidays. Just looking back at your presentation Slide number 32, which is that gross margin waterfall chart. Thanks for that. There is no numbers on some of those steps in the chart, but it looks like the supply chain disruptions, deleverage and other is a large part of the, or the majority of the decline, if you net out everything else. In other words, about 300 basis points. Maybe you can confirm if that’s at least ballpark correct? But also, obviously these effects are not new to the quarter. I mean, how would do you think about that same line item, supply chain disruptions, deleverage and other through the year, and what’s implied in the guidance for the second half?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah so, let me, let me. So thank you for the question, David. Let me start with Q2 and then I’ll talk about what to expect going forward. So I think your read is about exactly like. So just to be very certain, I think you got is about 300 basis points or so related to the combination of those disruption factors and the H&M [Phonetic] and price mix in the quarter offset the impact of the inflation. But I think going forward what you can expect as you move into the back half is a step up starting in Q3, the contribution from price mix. I would expect inflation to be roughly equal front half, back half. So this is pretty evenly spread across the quarters and so nothing material there.

And then in easing in the drag of the headwind from the other supply chain disruption costs, not because the cost of salaries, but because as you think about the comparison in the last year, we saw a ramp up in other costs, primarily driven by our step into greater external supply chain costs. So, and we don’t expect these costs to ease. We expect them to replace the amount of those cost we saw last year. So effectively, that’s how to think about the back half of the year and what drives the margin improvement as we step from Q3 to Q4.

David Palmer — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Great, that’s helpful. Thank you. And then you mentioned in one of your remarks that you thought the price elasticity would perhaps get a little less good, but lag and less favorable later in the year, and what is your thinking there? I think it was Jon that made that comment. I mean, how much — we had something we’ve been thinking a lot about, is it the lapping of stimulus for greater availability of private label or value brands that have perhaps been more supply chain constrain. What you’re thinking about price elasticities as you get further into say calendar ’22? Thanks.

Kofi Bruce — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So let me start firs. I think I might have just spoke. I said inflation will balance — inflation actually stems out in the back half on amounts as balanced. But to your question on elasticity, we are assuming a moderate increase in price elasticity, although still below our historically levels in the back half. So that’s what is contained in our sales and profit guidance.

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

I think we’re just trying to be pragmatic right. So all the things you mentioned are real, sometime snap benefits are decreasing a bit, although still elevated since 2019 levels. So [Technical Issues] things play out.

David Palmer — Evercore ISI — Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from Chris Growe with Stifel. Please proceed.

Chris Growe — Stifel — Analyst

Hi, good morning. Good morning. I’ll lend my happy holidays as well. I had just two questions. The first one was just the, in relation to this incremental $500 million in inflation from your initial expectations, I’m just curious if you could frame how much of that is cost inflation and how much of that is the pricing? I think you said that’s incorporated into that figure. Just to get a sense of like what’s ongoing [Indecipherable] hopefully will be transitory?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Its a great question, Chris. I’ll, let me take a crack at it. So as you think about the $1 billion of increased cost that came in since the start of the year in our expectations. About half of that, a little less than half of that is sitting in inflation. So which we’re now estimating to be 8% to 9% for the full year, and that implies in obviously double digits in that — in the back half. The other half is really relating to those factors in the disruption in the supply chain, most of which is driven by a direct costs that things that Jon alluded to inefficiency in trading, supply all the things that we’re doing in this environment to ensure in key customer service levels.

Chris Growe — Stifel — Analyst

Okay. Thank you for that color there. And then just a follow-up question. I think that today’s question, but, so this quarter had a stronger pricing performance than I expected but the gross margin was weaker. And I’m just try to understand the incremental inflation you’re feeling that did more of that as you think about for the year and more of that come through in 2Q causing that weaker gross margin. I’m trying to flip that with your comments about second half inflations that we have versus first half. So, but in the quarter was that a more heavy — a heavier drive on the gross margin?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

The drag came from a combination of inflation and really we saw a step-up in the cost of disruption in Q2 as in Q1 and Q2. And so was actually a bit more of the driver as we look into the quarter. And then I think as we go forward, as I alluded to, we expect our price mix contribution from actions that we’ve already announced and negotiated with customers to start probably mid quarter and then ramp fully into Q4.

Chris Growe — Stifel — Analyst

Okay, thank you for your time.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris.

Operator

And our final question will be from Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. Good morning.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Michael.

Michael Lavery — Piper Sandler — Analyst

You’ve obviously talked a lot about the disruptions in the various stages of supply chain. Can you just give us a sense in your guidance what you’re assuming relative to a vaccine mandate and what that might do at impact the labor market or testing costs or both?

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

We actually don’t have a specific provision for vaccine mandate, I think obviously its still working its way through, but we aren’t expecting it to have a material impact on our guidance beyond what we already picked up.

Michael Lavery — Piper Sandler — Analyst

So if it did stick, you’ve got — the incremental cost would be pretty modest or just capture again what you already allow for.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I think it’s far more of the second, Michael [Indecipherable] gives us coverage.

Michael Lavery — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Okay, great. And then on the North America Retail components, you’re snacks business is pretty significantly outperforming. But the — it had been for a while one of the laggards. Can you just maybe give a sense of what’s really given that a boost. And if it’s related to a better ability to supply product or is there, is it more innovation than some other factors?

Jonathon J. Nudi — Group President, North America Retail

Yeah, hi Michael. So we see the grain category and the bar category really great during the lockdown and people get back to be being more mobile. So the categories [Indecipherable] of 16% in Q2. Just not quite as much of the categories and we’ll continue to stay focused on building the brands, we’re still the the number one brand in the category [Technical Issues] So that’s probably one area that we’re loosing a better share. But overall, we like with competing in bars and just focus mitigation, brand building. There are new snack products in our category we would like through snacks and spend and many category for us over the last four to five years are big challenges than keeping up from a capacity standpoint. We continue to be challenged from capacity standpoint, we get more coming a lot in the back half and we’ll continue to grow that business nicely, double digits, which is really exciting. So we like our snacks business and our performance.

Michael Lavery — Piper Sandler — Analyst

Okay, great, thanks so much.

Jeffrey L. Harmening — Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Okay, I think that’s all the time we have this morning. Appreciate everyone’s interest and good questions and discussion. Thanks for sticking with us during the holiday week. We wish everybody a restful holiday season and before we catching up in the New Year. Thanks so much.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]