Nestlé announced that sales increased by 4 percent in the first nine months of 2013. Organic growth was 4.4 percent, composed of 3.0 percent real internal growth and 1.4 percent pricing. Acquisitions, net of divestitures, added 2.1 percent to sales. Organic growth for the group was 5.1 percent in the Americas, 0.9 percent in Europe and 6.9 percent in Asia, Oceania and Africa. Globally the business grew 1.1 percent in developed markets and 8.8 percent in emerging markets. Real internal growth was 2.0 percent in the Americas, 1.9 percent in Europe and 5.8 percent in Asia, Oceania and Africa.
Nestlé Waters delivered broad-based growth despite the intense competitive environment with a rebound in Europe and sustained growth in North America and the emerging markets. In North America growth was driven by Nestlé Pure Life and the continued strong performance in the premium brands S.Pellegrino and Perrier. The performance in Europe improved with market share gains helped by promotional activity in difficult trading conditions. The premium brands S.Pellegrino and Perrier also did well. In the emerging markets Latin America and Asia grew double-digit and the Middle East achieved healthy growth. Nestlé Pure Life as well as local brands such as Erikli, Al Manhal and Ciego Montero contributed.
Paul Bulcke, Nestlé CEO, said in a prepared statement, “Our real internal growth has regained momentum and is broad-based across categories, price points and geographies. Most notably, Europe continues to grow and Asia and Africa have picked up speed. Today’s challenging environment is the right time for us to further reinforce the fundamentals of our business: those which drive growth like innovation, distribution and consumer engagement, and those which drive operational performance like strengthening our portfolio, improving our resource allocation and increasing our structural efficiency. We expect our continued growth momentum to enable us to deliver around 5 percent organic growth for the full year together with an improvement in margins and underlying earnings per share in constant currencies.”
