Nestlé Petcare Half Year Results

Compared to last year Nestlé has had lower revenue growth in the first half of 2015. According to Nestlé, “The results of the first half allow us to reconfirm our outlook for the full year: we aim to achieve organic growth of around 5% with improvements in margins and underlying earnings per share in constant currencies, and capital efficiency.”

• Sales of CHF 42.8 billion (Convert to USD), 4.5% organic growth, 1.7% real internal growth
• Trading operating profit margin 15.0%, up 20 basis points in constant currencies
• Underlying earnings per share up 7.3% in constant currencies

Petcare in North America showed good growth, in spite of the negative impact from the Beneful case. Among the drivers were Fancy Feast cat food, the Pro Plan platform for dog food, and cat litter. Petcare continued to be a growth driver for Latin America and will benefit from new production capacity in Argentina and Mexico.

For Petcare, the half year sales were $5.465 billion CHF with an organic growth of 4.9%. Trading operating profit margins were 21.0% with an increase of 110bps from the first half of 2014.

READ THE 2015 HALF YEAR PRESS RELEASE

Lawsuit Claims Purina's Beneful Is Poisoning, Killing Dogs

A recent lawsuit filed against Nestle Purina PetCare Company is claiming that one of the company's most popular dog food brands contains toxins that are poisoning and even killing people's pets. 

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court last month by pet owner Frank Lucido, alleges that thousands of dogs have become ill or died as a result of eating Beneful dry kibble dog food. Lucido, whose three dogs all suffered symptoms synonymous with poisoning, is one of more than 3,000 complaints consumers have made online of dogs becoming ill and/or dying after eating the kibble. 

"There are no quality issues with Beneful," said Purina in a response statement. "We believe the lawsuit is baseless, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves and our brand. Beneful had two previous class action lawsuits filed in recent years with similar baseless allegations, and both were dismissed by the courts." 

READ THIS NBC NEWS ARTICLE FOR MORE INFORMATION