Henkel records solid sales growth and boosts profitability in first quarter

"Henkel had a good start to the fiscal year in spite of a challenging and volatile market environment. We achieved solid organic growth and substantially improved our profitability," said Henkel CEO Kasper Rorsted. "All of our business sectors contributed to this achievement. Once again our emerging markets registered a strong development. Thus, we are confident of achieving our targets for 2012."

For the fiscal year 2012, Rorsted stated: "We expect that volatility and uncertainty will continue to influence our markets. Therefore, we will continue to adapt our structures and processes so that we can respond more quickly and flexibly than our competitors."

Henkel confirmed its guidance for fiscal 2012. "We continue to expect organic sales growth to be between 3 and 5 percent. For our adjusted EBIT margin we anticipate an increase to 14 percent and for adjusted earnings per preferred share we expect an improvement of at least 10 percent."

Henkel's sales in the first quarter of 2012 were at 4,008 million euros, an increase of 4.8 percent compared to the figure for the prior-year quarter. Organic sales, which exclude the impact of foreign exchange and acquisitions/divestments, again rose by 4.7 percent, a solid increase compared to the prior-year quarter.