Beiersdorf reports high sales growth for 2007

In preliminary financial results, the maker of Nivea skin care products reported sales of €5.5bn for the fiscal year, which adjusting for currency translates into a 9.1 per cent increase on 2006. Meanwhile, operating profit jumped 14.4 per cent to €683m excluding one-off expenses related to the realignment of the supply chain. The Germany-based company has benefited from high sales in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia. It has consolidated its European production facilities and focused its energies on China building a new factory in Shanghai in August and buying an 85 per cent stake in leading Chinese brand C-Bons hair care for €269.5m. "It proves to be strategically right to position Beiersdorf worldwide as a company for skin and beauty care,"​ said the company's CEO Thomas-B Quaas. Beiersdorf has worked to expand its presence in the global personal care market by promoting its flagship brand Nivea, which launched a global marketing campaign last summer that intends to cover 64 countries by mid-2008. ABN AMRO analyst Jeremy Fialko told CosmeticsDesign.com that Beiersdorf had made pretty good progress recently although the latest numbers were a little light on expectations. He said the company had successfully marketed its newly launched products and its restructuring efforts had brought costs down and widened margins. Looking at the results by business segment, sales for the company's consumer division, which represents around 85 per cent of total group sales, rose by 9.3 per cent for the year. Sales at Beiersdorf's consumer goods labelling business, Tesa, which accounts for the remainder of its sales, increased 8.1 per cent.