Persil-maker Henkel has withdrawn its financial forecast for 2020 citing economic uncertainty due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The consumer goods giant said that at present it is not possible to predict the future business performance of the company in 2020.
“As the COVID-19 pandemic has worldwide reach and its further development is impossible to predict, we currently cannot make reliable projections for our business performance in 2020,” said Carsten Knobel, CEO, Henkel.
“But with our committed global team, their resilience, and capabilities, as well as our strong balance sheet we are confident to master the crisis in the best way possible and to emerge stronger from this crisis.”
Response To Crisis
Headquartered in Germany, the company added that the company is responding to the crisis by implementing specific measures across all business units and functions.
“The world is going through a very challenging period. In this difficult situation, the health and safety of our employees, customers and business partners have the highest priority for us," he added,
“We have taken early action and measures to protect them while ensuring business continuity under these unprecedented conditions.”
Laundry & Home Care
Henkel expects its overall organic sales growth to decline by 0.9% in the first quarter of its financial year, according to preliminary results.
Thanks to strong demand for Laundry & Home Care products, Henkel expects that the business unit has achieved organic sales growth of 5.5% in the first quarter, the company said.
Beauty Care is expected to report a decline in organic sales of -3.9%, it added.
While the hair salon business was significantly impacted by the closure of hairdressing stores ordered by many authorities, the organic sales growth of the retail business compared to the previous year was stable.
Henkel will publish its financial results for the first quarter of 2020 on May 11, 2020.
© 2020 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Donna Ahern. Click sign-up to subscribe to Checkout.
