New Delhi: Swiss packaged foods company Nestle SA highlighted India for the first time in its post-earnings call as a market with "strong performance and good momentum," amid unprecedented challenges the company is facing globally. Another European company with a strong presence in the country, Reckitt Benckiser, cited India "as a standout market but disrupted by goods and services tax (GST) changes."
Nestle global CFO Anna Manz told analysts on the company's earnings call, "Outside of China, we've got some really good momentum and that's because of the investments that we've been making in those high priority investment areas. We're really seeing that show up across strong performance across India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan."
Last week, the multinational's India unit, which makes Maggi noodles and Purina pet food, reported a 10.8% year-on-year increase in domestic quarterly sales to ₹5,411 crore, which it said was "its highest-ever quarterly sales led by broad-based volume growth." Nestle is among the first large FMCG companies to declare earnings for the September quarter, which saw the rollout of a revamped GST that led to a slash in levies on thousands of daily use products.
Globally, for the first nine months of 2025, Nestle SA's sales fell 1.9% year-on-year to $82.8 billion. The company has seen the exit of chairman Paul Bulcke and the termination of two chief executives--Mark Schneider and Laurent Freixe--within one year. Nestle SA's new global chief Philipp Navratil announced 16,000 worldwide job cuts in the earnings announcement, describing it as a "hard but necessary" decision.
On Wednesday, Reckitt Benckiser said the three-month period was a "sell-out" quarter in India but added that revenue growth was impacted by the GST change in September, resulting in a shift of trade orders to the fourth quarter.
Emerging markets "had a standout performance, growing 15.5% in the quarter," said Kris Licht, chief executive of the British consumer healthcare firm that makes Dettol soap and Lysol disinfectant. "This reflects broad-based growth across all categories and continued strong in-market performance in India and China."
The September quarter saw Reckitt report like-for-like net revenue growth of 7% across the group, led by emerging markets, which saw like-for-like net revenue growth up 15.5%.
India posted low single-digit growth in the quarter for Reckitt, said CFO Shannon Eisenhardt. "We've talked about the impact in Q3 of GST phasing being low to mid-single digit and that our India like-for-like was low single digit in Q3," he said. "India's delivered high single-digit growth previously, and we expect this to simply be phasing. We expect India to continue contributing in that way going forward."
Hindustan Unilever, Godrej Consumer Products and Dabur too have flagged short-term impact on sales and profitability in their September quarter updates, which they attributed to GST-related disruptions, citing the lag in new orders by trade for clearing existing stock and delayed pantry buying by consumers.
Addressing an analyst query specific to emerging markets, Licht said: "We have a very successful business in India... delivering great performance now for a long time. We have a big opportunity to take the next tranche of markets to that level of excellence and execution, and that's a big focus at the moment in our emerging markets portfolio."
Nestle global CFO Anna Manz told analysts on the company's earnings call, "Outside of China, we've got some really good momentum and that's because of the investments that we've been making in those high priority investment areas. We're really seeing that show up across strong performance across India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Pakistan."
Last week, the multinational's India unit, which makes Maggi noodles and Purina pet food, reported a 10.8% year-on-year increase in domestic quarterly sales to ₹5,411 crore, which it said was "its highest-ever quarterly sales led by broad-based volume growth." Nestle is among the first large FMCG companies to declare earnings for the September quarter, which saw the rollout of a revamped GST that led to a slash in levies on thousands of daily use products.
Globally, for the first nine months of 2025, Nestle SA's sales fell 1.9% year-on-year to $82.8 billion. The company has seen the exit of chairman Paul Bulcke and the termination of two chief executives--Mark Schneider and Laurent Freixe--within one year. Nestle SA's new global chief Philipp Navratil announced 16,000 worldwide job cuts in the earnings announcement, describing it as a "hard but necessary" decision. On Wednesday, Reckitt Benckiser said the three-month period was a "sell-out" quarter in India but added that revenue growth was impacted by the GST change in September, resulting in a shift of trade orders to the fourth quarter.
Emerging markets "had a standout performance, growing 15.5% in the quarter," said Kris Licht, chief executive of the British consumer healthcare firm that makes Dettol soap and Lysol disinfectant. "This reflects broad-based growth across all categories and continued strong in-market performance in India and China."
The September quarter saw Reckitt report like-for-like net revenue growth of 7% across the group, led by emerging markets, which saw like-for-like net revenue growth up 15.5%.
India posted low single-digit growth in the quarter for Reckitt, said CFO Shannon Eisenhardt. "We've talked about the impact in Q3 of GST phasing being low to mid-single digit and that our India like-for-like was low single digit in Q3," he said. "India's delivered high single-digit growth previously, and we expect this to simply be phasing. We expect India to continue contributing in that way going forward."
Hindustan Unilever, Godrej Consumer Products and Dabur too have flagged short-term impact on sales and profitability in their September quarter updates, which they attributed to GST-related disruptions, citing the lag in new orders by trade for clearing existing stock and delayed pantry buying by consumers.
Addressing an analyst query specific to emerging markets, Licht said: "We have a very successful business in India... delivering great performance now for a long time. We have a big opportunity to take the next tranche of markets to that level of excellence and execution, and that's a big focus at the moment in our emerging markets portfolio."
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