Stresses Importance of Near-Term Priorities of Employees, Consumers, and Communities
Today P&G reported results for the fourth quarter and full 2020 fiscal year.
“We are prioritizing employee health and safety, maximizing availability of P&G products, which play an essential role in meeting the daily health, hygiene and cleaning needs of consumers around the world, and helping society meet the challenges of the COVID crisis. We expect to grow through this crisis and come out even stronger on the other side. We delivered strong, balanced sales and profit results in fiscal 2020, both pre-COVID and through the balance of the year, meeting or exceeding each of our going-in targets, demonstrating the commitment and agility of P&G people and the robustness of our strategy,” said David Taylor, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Fiscal 2020 was a very strong year.
We grew markets and increased household penetration, driving top line growth, bottom line growth as well as market share.
Organic sales grew 6%, with growth in 9 of our 10 product categories, and e-commerce sales were up 40% for the year.
Core earnings per share were up 13%, and up 17% excluding the impact of foreign exchange. We increased our dividend 6% and returned $15.2 billion dollars of value to shareowners – $7.8 billion in dividends, and $7.4 billion in share repurchase.
On a two-year stacked basis – which shows the sales growth of both fiscal years added together – organic sales growth has accelerated from 3% across fiscals ’17 and ’18… to 6% across fiscals ’18 and ’19… to 11% over the last two years, indicating the underlying strength of our brands and the appropriateness of the strategy driving our business.
We built strong momentum in the year and a half leading up to the COVID crisis, with 6% organic sales growth in calendar year 2019, including 6% in the first half of fiscal 2020.
We maintained this strong momentum in the second half of fiscal 2020 while overcoming significant challenges, including lockdowns; closure of travel retail, specialty beauty, and other channels; operational challenges such as safely staffing our facilities and sourcing materials necessary to maintain and in some categories, significantly increase, production to serve heightened consumer cleaning, health and hygiene needs.
As a company that’s 183 years old, we have a long history of supporting employees, consumers and communities in times of need. These are our priorities right now: protecting P&G employees, serving consumers in a time of unprecedented demand, and supporting communities on the front lines.
- Our first priority in this crisis is to ensure the health and safety of the men and women we work with - our colleagues - around the world.
- Second, we’re maximizing the availability of products that help people and their families with their health, hygiene and cleaning needs, which have never been greater.
- Our third priority is helping society meet and overcome the challenges they face. P&G has a long history of supporting communities in times of need - with the products we produce and other forms of support.
Serving each of these three priorities are our strategic choices:
- A portfolio of daily use products, many providing health, hygiene and cleaning benefits in categories where performance plays a significant role in brand choice.
- Superior, science-based products delivered with superior packaging, retail execution, consumer communication and value…in all price tiers where we compete.
- Cost and cash productivity...up and down the income statement and across the balance sheet…to fund investments in superiority, manage macro headwinds and build profit margin.
- A mindset of constructive disruption. A willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. In this environment, that agility and constructive disruption mindset are even more important.
- A more empowered, agile and accountable organization with little overlap or redundancy, flowing to new demands, seamlessly supporting each other to deliver our priorities - around the world.
We have the right strategies in place, and we feel we have the right priorities to deal with the immediate challenges the Company is facing.
Credit for our results goes to the men and women of P&G, who have demonstrated incredible creativity, agility and commitment to serving consumers and customers every day during these unprecedented times.
You can read the full details in today’s news release. Slides with more detail and the webcast replay of earnings results are available at www.pginvestor.com/presentations-events/. And you can learn more about our robust COVID-19 response in the included infographic or at www.pg.com/covid19.
See www.pginvestor.com/presentations-events/ for P&G's full Q4 and FY 2020 earnings release issued July 30, 2020, the associated webcast presentation, definitions of non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to the most closely related GAAP measure, as well as cautionary information on forward-looking statements, which are based on current assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially.
