Colgate-Palmolive Q1 Profit Down, Backs FY26 Earnings, Sales Growth View; Stock Up

(RTTNews) - Consumer products major Colgate-Palmolive Co., while reporting weak profit and higher net sales in its first quarter, on Friday maintained fiscal 2026 earnings and sales growth outlook. Meanwhile, the firm trimmed gross profit margin guidance.

In pre-market activity, the shares were gaining around 3.1 percent, trading at $88.00.

Noel Wallace, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "While we expect the volatile macroeconomic conditions and slower category growth to continue in 2026, we are aligned behind our 2030 strategy to deliver consistent, compounded earnings per share growth..."

For fiscal 2026, the company continues to expect double-digit earnings per share growth, and low to mid-single-digit Base Business earnings per share growth.

Further, Colgate-Palmolive now projects gross profit margin on a reported and adjusted basis, to be down than last year, compared to previous view of a growth.

The Company still expects net sales to be up 2 percent to 6 percent, including a low-single-digit positive impact from foreign exchange. Organic sales growth is still projected to be 1 percent to 4 percent.

For fiscal 2025, Colgate-Palmolive had posted sales of $20.382 billion.

On Thursday, the Board of Directors approved an expansion of the SGPP to continue to align the company's operations to drive future growth and support the 2030 strategy.

Substantially all of the charges will be incurred by December 31, 2028. As a result of the expansion, cumulative pretax charges related to the SGPP are now estimated to be $350 million to $550 million, increased from $200 million to $300 million expected earlier.

In the first quarter, net income attributable to the company came in at $646 million, lower than $690 million a year ago. Earnings per share dropped 6 percent to $0.80 from $0.85 last year.

On an adjusted basis, Base Business earnings per share were $0.97, compared to $0.91 a year ago.

Gross profit margin and Base Business Gross profit margin decreased 20 basis points year-over-year to 60.6 percent.

The company's net sales for the period, however, rose 8.4 percent to $5.324 billion from $4.911 billion last year.

In Oral, Personal and Home Care segment, sales increased as weak sales in North America was more than offset by growth in all other regions. Pet Nutrition sales also increased in the quarter.

Total organic sales increased 2.9 percent, including a 0.6 percent negative impact from lower private label pet food sales.

Colgate-Palmolive noted that net sales and organic sales grew in every category and in four of five divisions with a nice balance of volume and pricing growth.

The company said its leadership in toothpaste continued with its global market share at 41.1 percent year to date, and manual toothbrushes at 32.6 percent.

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