Nestlé nine month sales: full-year outlook confirmed

In the first nine months of 2013, Nestlé's sales increased by 4.0% to CHF 68.4 bn, impacted by negative foreign exchange of 2.5%. Organic growth was 4.4%, composed of 3.0% real internal growth and 1.4% pricing. According to the company, acquisitions, net of divestitures, added 2.1% to sales. Organic growth for the Group was 5.1% in the Americas, 0.9% in Europe and 6.9% in Asia, Oceania and Africa. Globally the business grew 1.1% in developed markets and 8.8% in emerging markets. Real internal growth was 2.0% in the Americas, 1.9% in Europe and 5.8% in Asia, Oceania and Africa. In the confectionery sector sales increased by 0.8% to CHF 7.2 bn. Organic growth was 6.1%, real internal growth was 3.5%.

Paul Bulcke, Nestlé CEO: "Our real internal growth has regained momentum and is broad-based across categories, price points and geographies. Most notably, Europe continues to grow and Asia and Africa have picked up speed. Today's challenging environment is the right time for us to further reinforce the fundamentals of our business: those which drive growth like innovation, distribution and consumer engagement, and those which drive operational performance like strengthening our portfolio, improving our resource allocation and increasing our structural efficiency. We expect our continued growth momentum to enable us to deliver around 5% organic growth for the full year together with an improvement in margins and underlying earnings per share in constant currencies."

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