Nestlé S.A.
Q3 2005 Earnings Call Transcript

Published:

  • NESTLÉ S.A. 2005 9 MONTHS SALES CONFERENCE CALL TRANSCRIPT Conference Date:
    20 October 2005 Nestlé S.A.
  • Roddy Child-Villiers - Nestlé S.A. Head of Investor Relations:
    Slide 1 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Nestlé 9 months sales conference call. As usual, I will discuss the key numbers only, leaving more time for questions…. Slide 2 ... and I will take this first slide covering the safe harbour statement, as read, and will move directly to the highlights. Slide 3 The key message is that, even in a tough environment, our strategy is delivering, as demonstrated by an organic growth of 5.8%, and RIG, or real internal growth, of 3.8%. And this is not just due to our Pharmaceutical activities
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Sylvain Massot, Morgan Stanley:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Sylvain Massot, Morgan Stanley:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Questions on
  • Arnaud Langlois, JP Morgan:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Turning to Waters I can’t make any comment for you on the margin on Waters at this stage. In terms of North America the category remains dynamic, we seeing PET (category of small formats) up year to date by 25% the total category up about 14%, the performance is pretty broad based so I don’t think it is necessarily related just to the hurricanes. When I say broad based it is broad based in so far as it applies to Pure Life, and also applies to our international brands and the regional brands. I don’t think people would go out and by Perrier just because there is a hurricane. On the market share, our market share is up about 0.6% over the year. Questions on
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Question on
  • Martin Dolan, Execution Limited:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    And we are comfortable that we can achieve our EBITA margin improvement at constant currency. Question on
  • Julian Hardwick, ABN Amro:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Julian Hardwick, ABN Amro:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Julian Hardwick, ABN Amro:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Julian Hardwick, ABN Amro:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Questions on
  • Mark Lynch, Goldman Sachs:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Mark Lynch, Goldman Sachs:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Mark Lynch, Goldman Sachs:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Questions on
  • Alain Oberhuber, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Alain Oberhuber, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Question on
  • Thomas Schwarzenbach, Bank am Bellevue:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • John Cox, Kepler Equities:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • John Cox, Kepler Equities:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • John Cox, Kepler Equities:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Question on
  • James Amoroso, Helvea:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • James Amoroso, Helvea:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Questions on
  • John Parker, Deutsche Bank:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    In Europe I think the market as a whole was expecting ice cream to be better rather than worse this quarter, but we didn’t have much of an August here in Europe and that does have an impact, even if there is an easy comparison from last year. It is interesting that we do have some quite good performances in Europe and some less good performances in Europe and our SBU head puts that down to the difference between excellent in execution and good execution. And the other thing to say about Europe is that we are much more excited about the level of innovation in Europe for next year, than we had this year. As you know the US this year had a lot of innovation and we expect that level of innovation to be happening in Europe next year. In France I don’t know whether it is against the trend in terms of the pricing increases but we have certainly been able to take some towards the end of this year. There is also, I think, last year we had a negative price in this quarter last year. So, there’s probably a comparative effect, and that would have been because of the Loi Galland. It is important to remember that the pricing is always a comparison against the previous year, the same quarter, rather than against the same quarter of the same year. Questions on
  • Warren Ackerman, Citigroup:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Also performing well in coffee are the "three-in-ones" and the specialty coffees like Cappuccino. "Three-in-ones" is where we sell it with milk and sugar added. Chocolate has also continued to do very well, it is continuing to deliver double digit RIG, Aero is also being tremendously successful as well as KitKat. Important for the rest of the year, we are just coming into this peculiar Japanese season with the gift boxes, where people buy gift boxes of coffee and give them to their relatives, and this is a key part for us, because it is also very profitable. We have historically done very well in this sector and this is a key for us for the rest of the year.
  • Warren Ackerman, Citigroup:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Warren Ackerman, Citigroup:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Warren Ackerman, Citigroup:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Warren Ackerman, Citigroup:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
    Questions on
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Thomas Russo, Gardner Russo & Gardner:
  • Roddy Child-Villiers:
  • Closing words:

Other Nestlé S.A. earnings call transcripts: