Henkel Reaffirms 2013 Guidance Following Strong Q1

Reporting strong earnings growth for first quarter 2013, Henkel reconfirmed its 2013 guidance figures and announced Q1 2013 results. Sales rose 0.6% to €4.033 billion, an organic increase of 2.5%, and adjusted operating profit was up 8.9% to €600 million. The company also recorded strong sales growth in emerging markets, with organic growth increasing 8.2%.

“We increased both sales and earnings in the first quarter of 2013 despite a challenging market environment with declining markets in Western Europe and weak global industrial demand,” said Henkel CEO Kasper Rorsted. “Both laundry and home care and beauty care outperformed their relevant markets while our adhesives business was affected by weaker than expected demand from industrial customers. Nevertheless, we were able to substantially improve the profitability of all our business sectors.”

Commenting on fiscal year 2013, Rorsted said, “We expect the global economic environment to remain difficult. However, we anticipate industrial demand to improve during the second half of the year. Given the challenges in our global market environment, we will continue to further simplify and accelerate our processes in order to increase our flexibility and efficiency.”

Rorsted also confirmed Henkel’s previously stated outlook for fiscal 2013, saying, “We expect organic sales growth for the full fiscal year to be between 3–5%. We expect our adjusted EBIT margin to increase to around 14.5% and adjusted earnings per preferred share to grow by about 10%.”

Specifically for the beauty care business sector, Henkel achieved solid organic sales growth amounting to 4%.