Nestlé lowered its outlook again for 2024 and reshuffled its executive team on Thursday as the global food giant reported falling sales for the first nine months of the year.
The Swiss group, whose brands range from Nespresso coffee capsules to Purina dog food and Haagen-Dazs ice cream, said sales reached 67.1 billion Swiss francs ($77.4 billion), a 2.4% drop from the same period last year.
“Consumer demand has weakened in recent months, and we expect the demand environment to remain soft,” Nestlé’s new chief executive, Laurent Freixe, said in a statement.
Nestlé appointed Freixe, who headed its Latin America unit, last month to replace Mark Schneider following slowing sales and a series of product scandals.
Freixe said Nestlé now expects organic sales growth, which excludes currency fluctuations and acquisitions, of 2% this year.
The group had already cut its annual sales growth expectations from 4% to 3% in July.
“A very painful reset for Nestlé, unprecedented in recent history,” Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy said. “For a super-tanker like Nestlé, the miss in just a few months is enormous.”
Organic sales growth for the first nine months of the year reached 2%, compared to 7.8% over the same period in 2023.
Nestlé’s CFO Anna Manz highlighted during the earnings call that “consumer demand has been subdued.” Temporary delistings in Europe, geopolitical tensions impacting consumer behavior and election anticipation in the U.S. are some of the factors impacting the company.
The Swiss giant has leaned on promotions as a way to lure reluctant customers to buy more of its products after previously hiking prices to offset high input costs.
Nestlé highlighted that in the third quarter, “pricing increases in confectionery and coffee linked to higher input costs were partly offset by the impact of promotional activity in PetCare and dairy,” indicating that the company continues to grapple with a mix of headwinds.
Nestlé announced several changes in its leadership structure, including merging its Latin America and North America divisions into a single Americas unit.
Its Greater China region will become part of its Asia, Oceania and Africa zone, among other changes that include a reshuffling of the executive board.
“With these organisational changes, all the leaders of key units driving our performance and our transformation will now report directly to me,” Freixe said.
“This is crucial, as we sharpen our focus on consumers and customers and restore investment in our brands and in innovation to expand market share and accelerate our performance,” he added.
