P&G beauty, hair care, skin care, and grooming sales all up, according to Q2 financials

24-Jan-2017 - Last updated on 24-Jan-2017 at 15:54 GMT

Late last week the CPG company announced quarterly earnings, and by CEO David Taylor’s own assessment, “delivered good results…in a difficult operating environment.”

Many financial analysts are focusing on the fact that P&G outperformed for the quarter in terms of anticipated sales and profits, and that the company has raised its own growth forecast for the full fiscal year.

Before this report P&G projected 2% organic sales growth for the year. Now the company thinks that figure could go as high as 3%; but to be realistic P&G’s new projected sales growth is 2% - 3%.“Stronger top-line performance in the first half of the fiscal year is enabling us to increase our organic sales growth outlook for the full year - another step towards the levels of balanced top-line, bottom-line, and cash flow growth that will consistently put P&G shareholder value creation among the best in our industry,” explains Taylor in a press release about the Q2 results.

Numbers

P&G reports that net sales for the second quarter of 2017 came in at $16.9bn. That figure is “unchanged versus the prior year,” according to the release. Organic sales were up in all business segments and up 2% over all.

Categories

The company attributes organic growth in the hair care category (part of the P&G beauty business segment) to the Pantene and Head & Shoulders brands, both of which benefited this quarter from innovation and marketing support, according to P&G. Skin and personal care (also part of the P&G beauty business segment) did well too. Organic sales growth in that category are attributed to the performance of SK-II skin care, a “super-premium” brand in the P&G portfolio. And the beauty business segment as a whole saw organic sales growth of 3% in contrast to last year.

Grooming didn’t do quite so well for the company. Organic sales were up only 1%. The company believes that sales volume in this category rose because of innovation in both shave care and appliances. “Organic sales increased low single digits globally in Shave Care as higher volume outside the U.S. from innovation and increased marketing support more than offset negative competitive impacts in the U.S.,” according to the release; while innovation “across the top markets” gets credit for low single-digit growth in the grooming appliance category.