Nestle CEO says growth target conservative, margin more challenging

ZURICH (Reuters) – Nestle’s organic growth target of around 5% this year is “conservative” while the margin target has become more challenging due to inflationary pressures, the food group’s chief executive said on Thursday.

“Our start into the year was stronger than expected, and we believe that our organic sales growth guidance is conservative at this point,” Mark Schneider said in a call on the group’s first-quarter sales.

“At the same time, inflationary pressures have increased a lot since then and in ways that were not foreseeable at that time. As a result of this change in context, our guidance range of 17% to 17.5% for the underlying trading operating profit margin has become more challenging than before when we described it as conservative,” he said.

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Michael Shields)