‘It’s still humans using our products’: How Tide maker Procter & Gamble is planning for the emerging AI universe

Procter & Gamble (PG) CFO Andre Schulten acknowledges that the company is entering a new world order for shopping as AI agents place orders for everything from Tide detergent to a T-shirt and as new AI models reshape the internet.

“I think the one fundamental thing that doesn’t change is the most important one to us. It’s still humans using our products,” Schulten said on Sozzi Unleashed. “So we need to understand how agent-to-agent marketing works, how we distribute the information on our brands in the right way. And we’re doing that very proactively,”

Schulten explained how tech is already adding efficiencies to areas like data collection, forecasting, and product development: “[T]he technology now available to us allows us to use the width, breadth, and depth of data that we have collected as a company over decades to do things way more efficiently. We can discover molecules in a fraction of time versus what we’ve been able to do over the last decade. We’re able to reduce internal workload because you can automate data extraction and analysis with simple algorithms. Forecasting is no longer a task that a human should do. It’s something that the algorithm can do more productively and more accurately and independently … There’s a growth component to it. There’s a consumer component to it, an innovation component to it. And then there’s an internal work process component that we’re focusing on all three.”

The Tide maker delivered a sales and profit upside for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday and maintained its full-year sales and profit outlooks.

“The US consumer is remarkably resilient,” Schulten said.

Procter & Gamble stock rose 5% on the session.

P&G earnings analysis

• Net sales: $23.28 billion, +4% from the prior year vs. $22.82 billion estimate

• Organic sales growth: +4% vs. +1.96% estimate

  • Beauty segment organic revenue growth: +5.4% vs. +3.58% estimate

  • Grooming segment organic revenue growth: +4.5% vs. +0.7% estimate

  • Healthcare segment organic revenue growth: +2.7% vs. +2.51% estimate

  • Fabric and home care segment organic revenue growth: +4.8% vs. +2.35% estimate

  • Baby, feminine, and family care segment organic revenue growth: +3% vs. +0.99% estimate

• Gross margin: 49.8% vs. 50% estimate

• Adjusted earnings per share: $2, +1% from the prior year vs. $1.89 estimate

What else caught our attention: A sustained outlook

Procter & Gamble reiterated organic sales growth of 1% to 3% for its fiscal year.

For the year, earnings are still expected to range from $6.89 to $7.11. Analysts were looking for fiscal year 2027 organic revenue growth of 2.19% and core earnings per share of $6.98.

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show and the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast, and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team.