Colgate-Palmolive's Q3 Growth Comes From Everywhere But Home, as North America Lags the Rest of the World

Colgate-Palmolive reported third-quarter net sales of $5.37 billion, up 4.6%, with organic sales growing 3.6% despite a drag from softer private label pet food sales. Gross margin expanded 80 basis points to 60.2%.

The growth was almost entirely international. Latin America led every region, with net sales up 12.5% and operating profit up 17% to $392 million, and Hill's Pet Nutrition grew net sales 5.6%. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, along with Asia Pacific, both posted modest gains. North America was the one region moving the wrong way, with net sales down 1.7% and operating profit down 11%.

The company narrowed its full-year sales guidance and raised its outlook for gross margin and earnings per share, which is usually the tell that management is more confident about the categories growing abroad than the one at home. For a company whose name is synonymous with the bathroom sink in half the world's households, a sluggish North America is the kind of problem that is easy to paper over with a good quarter everywhere else, right up until it is not.

Source: Colgate-Palmolive

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →