P&G CEO says ‘things are good’ even though profit missed estimates

Shares of Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE: PG) are down about 6.0% on Friday after the consumer goods company weaker-than-expected profit for its fiscal fourth quarter.

Highlights from CEO’s interview on CNBC

Versus the start of 2022, P&G shares are now down just over 15%. Discussing the earnings report on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, CEO Jon Moeller said:

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Organic sales growth of 7.0% was delivered in the context of a minus 11% in China and minus a significant number in places like Russia and Ukraine. 9 out of 10 categories grew sales in. We built aggregate market share of about 50 bps. Things are good.

He also confirmed that the Cincinnati-headquartered firm was not yet seeing a significant impact on consumer spending even though the U.S. economy is now in a “technical” recession. Detailing “price hikes” that Procter & Gamble executed in the recent quarter, Moeller added:

It was different across categories, but the aggregate was about 8.0%. Our primary goal, despite those increases, is to increase the value proposition. We’re working hard to couple innovation, which improves performance to help offset that pricing.

Procter & Gamble Q4 financial highlights

• Net income printed at $3.052 billion versus the year-ago figure of $2.906 billion
• Per-share earnings of $1.21 were above $1.13 in Q4 of the previous year
• Sales went up 3.0% YoY to $19.515 billion, as per the earnings press release
• FactSet consensus was $1.22 of per-share earnings on $19.405 billion in sales

Procter & Gamble’s guidance for the future

For fiscal 2023, Procter & Gamble expects flat to a 2.0% growth in sales on up to 4.0% increase in EPS. In comparison, experts had forecast a 2.3% sales growth on a 3.4% increase in per-share earnings.

Wall Street has a consensus “overweight” rating on P&G stock with upside to $161 on average.