Henkel delivered strong organic growth of 3.9 percent in the third quarter. Sales figures reached 5 billion euros and all business units contributed to the good performance.
Commenting on the results, Carsten Knoble CEO Henkel said, "The organic sales development in the third quarter reflects our robust, diversified portfolio with successful brands and innovative technologies for our customers in the industrial and consumer goods business. We are particularly pleased that all our business units showed a positive development. This was partly due to catch-up effects from the second quarter, which was heavily burdened by the corona pandemic. We expect to feel the negative effects of the pandemic in the fourth quarter as well, but in our forecast for the year we are not assuming a further extensive lockdown, as we saw in many countries especially in the second quarter. All in all, we are convinced to be on the right track with our strategic focus on purposeful growth and to emerge stronger from the crisis. Our special thanks go to our employees around the world, whose great commitment is making a decisive contribution to this."
Based on the preliminary business performance in the first nine months of 2020, Henkel has provided a new guidance for fiscal 2020, following the withdrawal of its full-year guidance in April 2020 due to the high level of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the Group, Henkel now expects organic sales growth of between -1.0 and -2.0 percent in fiscal 2020. Despite strict cost control, the earnings development in the full year will be relatively more affected than the sales side, due to the significant decline in demand in the industrial business and the Hair Salon business, as well as higher growth investments in marketing, advertising, digitalization and IT. On Group level, Henkel thus expects an adjusted EBIT margin in the range between 13.0 and 13.5 percent. Adjusted earnings per preferred share (EPS) are expected to decrease in the range between -18 and -22 percent at constant exchange rates.
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