Estee Lauder Companies’ fiscal third quarter earnings surpassed expectations, on the back of strong revenue from Asia and several beauty brands. For the three months ending in March, the skincare and cosmetics company’s diluted earnings came in at $1.51 per share, which beat analysts’ estimates of $1.30 per share.Total group sales increased +11% year-over-year to $3.74 billion – also higher than analysts’ estimates. For the full-year 2019, Estee Lauder predicted that its adjusted earnings would range between $5.15 and $5.19 per share, up from its February projection of $4.92 and $5.00 range. CEO Fabrizio Freda highlighted the Asia/Pacific region, the skin care brands, the Estee Lauder, La Mer and Tom Ford Beauty brands, and travel retail and global online channels as the main contributors to growth for the quarter.

Procter & Gamble beat  earnings estimates for the latest quarter, and raised its outlook on full-year sales. The consumer staples giant reported earnings of $1.06 per share for the three months ended March, surpassing the Street’s  expectations by 2 cents.The figure is +6% higher compared to the year-ago quarter. Total revenue increased +1.22% year-over-year to $16.5 billion, while beating analysts’ estimates of $16.37 billion. Procter & Gamble revised its forecast for the full year organic sales growth to around 4%, compared to a prior forecast of between 2% and 4%. The company plans to distribute over $7 billion in dividends this year, in addition to buying back around $5 billion in shares.

Procter & Gamble Co’s quarterly revenue and profit beat Wall Street estimates, boosted by higher prices and more demand for its premium fabric care and beauty products.  For the third quarter, P&G posted a 5% rise in organic sales, a heavily watched metric that excludes the impact of acquisitions, divestitures and currency effects.Net income attributable to the company rose to $2.75 billion, or $1.04 per share, in the quarter ended March 31, from $2.51 billion, or 95 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned $1.06 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.03 per share.

According to the Wall Street Journal, personal care and household products company Helen of Troy Ltd is looking to exit the mass-market beauty segment amidst the company’s overall shift towards more niche personal care brands and products. The beauty business segment that makes Revlon hair dryers and Pert shampoo is likely to sell this beauty segment at an estimated $300 million.The proceeds will go towards housewares and health businesses. Being the smallest business segment, HELE has been struggling as its sales from this division came at $356 million, down 18% from the $435 million it made in 2015. Majority of the market shares has been taken away from the company by speciality beauty stores like Sephora and Mac that also sell their products in drug stores and discount retailers. In the fiscal 2018, half the company’s revenue was made by its health-and-home unit, which features PUR water filters and Vicks humidifiers.

Helen of Troy Limited is reportedly considering a sale of its beauty segment. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company wants to focus more on its health and household products, and is therefore looking to divest its beauty division.The sale of the segment, which supplies Revlon hair dryers and Beadhead TIGI shampoos among other products, is estimated to fetch $300 million in proceeds (according to the Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter). While health and housewares made up more than half of Helen’s revenue as of 2018, its beauty unit is quite small in comparison.

Consumer goods company Procter & Gamble wants to help people with household chores by doing their laundry.READ MORE...

The company apparently faced headwinds from tariffs, inflation and currency exchange rates. For the full year 2018, Newell incurred a net loss of -$6.9 billion for the year, compared to net income of $2.7 billion in 2017.Its net sales for the year declined by -9.6% to $8.6 billion, from $9.6 billion in 2017.  As for the company’s projections for 2019, it expects adjusted earnings per share in the range of $1.50 to $1.65 – compared with FactSet consensus expectation of $1.91.

Avon Products reported earnings (adjusted for non-recurring items) of $0.07 per share for the fourth quarter 2018, falling short of Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.08 per share.It was also lower than the yer-ago quarter’s $0.12 per share. The cosmetics company's sales of $1.32 billion for the quarter missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 8.30%.  Revenues were also lower than the year-ago period’s $1.57 billion. According to Zacks Investment Research, the current consensus earnings-per-share estimate for Avon is breakeven on $1.24 billion in revenues for the next quarter, while the consensus projection for the current fiscal year is earnings of $0.12 a share on $5.23 billion in revenues.

Strong Chinese demand for luxury products helped French cosmetics maker L'Oreal post its strongest sales growth in a decade during 2018. Read More...

The beauty company reported adjusted earnings of  24 cents a share for the three months ending December, beating analysts’ estimate of 22 cents a share.However, the adjusted per-share earnings were lower compared to the year-ago quarter’s 32 cents a share. The company’s total revenue of $2.51 billion for the fiscal second quarter, beating Wall Street's forecast of $2.47 billion. Coty CEO Pierre Laubies said in a statement, "I must stress that while we are confident that we can return Coty to a path of sustainable growth, we are also realistic that it will take time to achieve this outcome.

Avon Products said that it plans to reduce its global workforce by 10% this year. The cosmetics and personal care company expects the employee retrenchment to save about $97 million (before taxes) by the end of this year."Decisions like these are always difficult, however, we must take the actions necessary to improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in our transformation initiatives and fuel our future growth”, said Jan Zijderveld, CEO of Avon. Avon is also cutting back on its Stock Keeping Units (or SKU codes) by a quarter to save on long-term costs. 

Unilever reported lower-than-expected sales growth in the fourth quarter, owing to weakness in Latin American markets. The consumer goods company’s underlying sales increased +2.9% year-over-year in the quarter , compared to consensus estimate of +3.5%. Net profit in full-year  was 9.8 billion euros ($11.21 billion), compared to 6.5 billion euros in 2017.  

The company also lowered its projection for the full year profit, citing pressures from increasing raw material costs and dollar appreciation. Apparently compelled by higher transportation/commodity costs to hike product prices in  Brazil and Argentina, Colgate suffered lower demand from these regions.Keen on boosting advertising in fiscal 2019, the company still portends challenges from currency exchange rate uncertainties and higher raw material costs – headwinds that the firm expects would drag down earnings per share by a mid-single-digit for the year.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. missed earnings estimates for fourth quarter, leading to a -2.2% decline in its stock price during pre-market trading on Wednesday. The personal care company’s adjusted earnings-per-share was $1.60, falling short of the $1.65 FactSet consensus.FactSet consensus is $6.66 per share. The company expects 2019 sales to dip 1% to 2% from the prior year’s $18.49 billion.

On Wednesday, Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) raised its outlook on its full-year organic sales and reported better-than-expected earnings and sales for the fiscal second-quarter. The consumer goods behemoth had an adjusted earnings per share of $1.25 for the quarter, beating Wall Street estimate of $1.21 (according to a survey by Refinitiv).Its beauty products, health care and fabric and home care businesses were strong performers. Strong organic sales in the second quarter boosted P&G’s expectation for the full year.

Friday’s trading saw an interesting pattern form on consumer staple stock Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL).The pattern is known as a shooting star pattern in candlestick charting and it is considered a bearish reversal pattern. What happens with a shooting star is that the stock opens slightly higher, jumps considerably higher during the day, and then falls to close at a similar level that it opened at. The thinking behind the pattern is that the bulls have been in control and have driven the stock price higher.

Looking through thousands of charts each week, it is hard to find many stocks that have been able to maintain any kind of upward momentum in the last six months.One stock that I took not of last night was Church & Dwight (NYSE: CHD).

Walker & Co, a startup focused on making health and beauty products for the African American market, on Wednesday announced it has been acquired by consumer giant Procter & Gamble. Founded by Tristan Walker around five years ago, Walker & Co. will function as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the American consumer goods multi-national corporation, with Walker continuing to serve as CEO.Walker & Company will also move its headquarters from the heart of Silicon Valley in Palo Alto to Atlanta along with the entire 15-member team. With venture capital investments in Walker and Company estimated to be around $40 million, analysts assume that PG must have paid somewhere between $20 million and $40 million for the startup.

Unilever wants to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s Indian Consumer Healthcare business. Unilver will spend £3.1 billion ($3.9 billion) to merge its Indian unit, called Hindustan Unilever (HUL), with GSK Consumer Healthcare India.Unilever also plans to acquire GSK's business in India's neighboring country Bangladesh as well as nutrition brand rights for "certain other territories" at a price of £566 million ($723 million). The deal is awaiting approvals from the shareholders of Hindustan Unilever and GSK India, as well as from Indian regulators.

Paul Polman is resigning from his role as CEO of Unilever, after 10 years of leading the company. Unilever is a consumer goods behemoth owning brands like Lipton, Dove and Ben & Jerry's.The multinational company credits a large part of its performance to Paul Polman – during his tenure as CEO, shareholders received a return of 290% according to the company. Unilever has long been using London and Rottendam as its headquarters.