(CercleFinance.com) – Nestlé reaffirmed its forecasts for 2024 on Thursday despite performance below expectations over the first three months of the year.
The Swiss agri-food giant still says it expects organic sales growth of around 4% this year, accompanied by a ‘moderate’ increase in its recurring current operating margin.
However, its organic growth in the first quarter only reached 1.4%, whereas analysts’ consensus was targeting +2.8%.
Mark Schneider, the group’s managing director, however, clarified that after a slow start to the financial year, Nestlé expected a strong rebound in its real internal growth in the second quarter.
Real internal growth, which measures the evolution of sales in volume, was negative by 2% in the first quarter, but it was able to be offset by a favorable price effect of 3.4%.
In a press release, Nestlé explains that its growth has been negatively impacted by North America, mainly in the frozen products category where the group says it has lost market share.
In total, its turnover stood at 22.1 billion Swiss francs in the first quarter, a drop of 5.9%.
Following this publication, Nestlé shares fell by more than 4% on Thursday morning, suffering the biggest drop in the SMI index of the Zurich Stock Exchange and one of the worst performances in the pan-European STOXX 600 index.
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