• by Thom Forbes , October 14, 2015

As the lights fade on A.G. Lafley’s second performance as CEO at Procter & Gamble, he is hearing audible rumblings from the balcony seats occupied by regular shareholders. Lafley, who will hand over day-to-day leadership to David Taylor, the global head of beauty, grooming and health, on Nov. 1 to become executive chairman of the board, presided over his final annual meeting yesterday in Cincinnati.

“Shareholder Karen Mayer bemoaned the company's swooning shares that nearly hit $94 late last year, but have since plunged more than 20%,” Alexander Coolidge writes for Cincinnati Enquirer. “‘Clearly, the people making decisions have driven the P&G bus into a ditch,’ Mayer said before asking Lafley what he'd do to his team if the company remained ‘in the ditch.’” 

Barrett J. Brunsman of the Cincinnati Business Courierpicks it up from there: “Her questions were met with applause from more than a few of the several hundred shareholders who gathered in the John Smale Auditorium at Procter & Gamble’s corporate headquarters. But Lafley didn’t flinch: ‘We are accountable, and the buck stops with me. There are tangible, concrete signs of improved operating performance across some of our biggest and most important businesses. …’”

Speaking of performance …

“‘Last year, we paid for non-performance,’ said Leonard Wykoff, who traveled from Pigeon Forge, Tenn., to attend his first P&G shareholders meeting,” reports Dan Monk for WCPO.com. “He was one of several who questioned the company’s business strategies and pay plans in a 40-minute Q&A session that forced Lafley to defend the ‘shrink to grow’ approach that defined his second term as chief executive.”

“We are transforming P&G,” Lafley replied. “We are leading the most comprehensive series of changes in the company’s history. We’re putting strategies and capabilities in place to transform P&G into a faster growing, more profitable and far simpler company.”

“Over the past year and a half, P&G has put in place plans to shed around 100 of its 165 brands, including Wella and Duracell, to focus its resources on growing core brands such as Pantene shampoo, Pampers diapers and Tide detergent. The company is also several years into a deep cost-cutting and restructuring plan,” the Wall Street Journal’s Serena Ng points out.

But so far “it has struggled to accelerate sales growth in an era of more frugal consumers since the 2008-2009 recession, and in its financial year that ended in June, the company's performance was particularly weak. Sales barely grew excluding the impact of foreign-currency swings relative to the U.S. dollar, though P&G noted that the 65 brands it is intending to keep did better than those it is in the process of shedding,” Ng reports.

A transcript of the meeting is posted on Seeking Alpha.

P&G’s business in India was also disappointing in 2014-2015, reports Sagar Malviya for TheEconomic Times, expanding at 12.7% — its slowest pace in a decade. “Experts said nimbler rivals with lower-priced alternatives found more takers as P&G focused on premium products at a time when consumers cut spends on discretionary products,” Malviya writes.

“P&G operates in several nascent categories which required higher marketing spends. But the company cut costs in terms of advertising and also was not clear whether it want to expand its rural presence with affordable products,” Nitin Mathur, research analyst who covers consumer companies in emerging markets for Societe Generale, tells Malviya.

Meanwhile, Women’s Voices for the Earth picketed outside the annual meeting yesterday morning bearing 35,000 signature on a petition that demands that P&G list all of the ingredients in its feminine care products and remove toxic chemicals from them, Dan Wells reports for Fox19.com. The group claims laboratory testing of Always pads it commissioned showed that they “emit toxic chemicals including carcinogens, and reproductive and developmental toxins.”

Damon D. Jones, director of P&G's global company communications, issued a written response saying it planned to meet with representatives of the group later in the day and would “reassure them of the safe use of our products and to listen further to their concerns.” He also pointed to FAQs posted on its Always and Tampax websites.