Earnings call transcript: Haleon Q3 2025 misses EPS forecast, cautious market reaction

Haleon PLC ADR reported its Q3 2025 earnings with an EPS of $0.1167, missing the forecasted $0.1261 by 7.45%. Revenue came in slightly below expectations at 3.71 billion USD, compared to the forecast of 3.72 billion USD. Despite the earnings miss, the stock showed a modest premarket increase of 0.33%, trading at $9.08, though it remains closer to its 52-week low.

Key Takeaways

• Haleon reported a 3.4% organic revenue growth, driven by price and volume mix.
• The company completed a £500 million share buyback for 2025.
• Strong growth in emerging markets, notably India and Southeast Asia.
• Challenges in North America and Respiratory Health categories impacted results.

Company Performance

Haleon demonstrated resilience with a 3.4% organic revenue growth in Q3 2025, despite missing earnings expectations. The company faced headwinds in North America, but emerging markets, particularly India and Southeast Asia, showed robust growth. The Oral Health and Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements segments performed well, while Respiratory Health struggled due to the previous year’s elevated COVID cases.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 3.71 billion USD, slightly below the forecast.
• Earnings per share: $0.1167, missing the forecast by 7.45%.
• Organic revenue growth: 3.4%, with price and volume mix contributions.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Haleon’s Q3 earnings saw an EPS of $0.1167 against a forecast of $0.1261, resulting in a negative surprise of 7.45%. Revenue also fell short of expectations, with a minor shortfall of 0.27%.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Haleon’s stock experienced a slight premarket rise of 0.33%, trading at $9.08. However, the stock is down 0.77% from its last close, reflecting investor caution amid the earnings miss. The stock remains near its 52-week low, indicating limited investor confidence.

Outlook & Guidance

Haleon expects full-year organic revenue growth of around 3.5% and is targeting high single-digit organic operating profit growth. The company anticipates North America returning to growth in 2026 and is optimistic about accelerating performance in the Asia-Pacific region in Q4.

Executive Commentary

"We delivered 3.4% organic revenue growth in the quarter, with a good balance between price at 1.8% and volume mix of 1.6%," said Dawn Allen, CFO. She noted the increasing consumer focus on health improvements and expressed confidence in clearing inventory levels by year-end.

Risks and Challenges

• North American market challenges and increased promotional intensity.
• Supply chain productivity improvements are ongoing but remain a focus.
• Macroeconomic pressures in Latin America could impact future performance.
• Respiratory Health declines due to previous COVID case comparisons.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about inventory management strategies and pricing approaches in North America. The company detailed its performance in key markets like China and India and addressed challenges in the Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements and Respiratory Health categories.

Full transcript - HALEON PLC ADR (HLN) Q3 2025:

Sarah, Moderator: Good morning. Thank you for attending today’s Haleon 2025 Quarter Three trading segment. My name is Sarah, and I’ll be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you’d like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. I’d like to pass the conference over to our host, Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations, Haleon: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Haleon’s comms call for our third quarter trading statement. I’m Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations, and with me today is Dawn Allen, our CFO. Just to remind listeners on the call that in discussions today, the company may make certain forward-looking statements, including those that refer to our estimates, plans, and expectations. Please refer to this morning’s announcement and the company’s UK and SEC filings for more details, including factors that could lead actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward-looking statements. Following Dawn’s remarks, we’ll take your questions. For those listening to our webcast who would like to ask a question, you can find the dial-in details on page three of today’s press release. With that, I’ll hand over to Dawn.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thank you, Jo, and good morning, everyone. We made good progress in the third quarter, driven by strong in-market execution and the continued rollout of our innovation pipeline, leaving us on track for our full-year guidance. We delivered 3.4% organic revenue growth in the quarter, with a good balance between price at 1.8% and volume mix of 1.6%. Looking across the regions, we saw consistent growth and sequential volume improvement across EMEA and LATAM and Asia-Pacific, with emerging markets in both these regions up 7%, led by India and strong growth in a number of smaller markets, including Thailand and Malaysia. In North America, despite the challenging consumer backdrop on consumption, we have outperformed the market each quarter this year, with particular strength in oral health, respiratory, and digestive health.

Oral health was once again the standout performer, as Sensodyne continues to drive penetration, with strong growth in a number of key markets, including the US, India, and China. In India, we are continuing to make good progress by expanding our reach through export coverage, which is up 70% since the start of the year. We are bringing new innovations, including Sensodyne ProNamel to market. Our Sensodyne offering for lower-income consumers is now in over 500,000 outlets across 10,000 villages. From a strategic perspective, we are making great progress against our objectives, as outlined at our Capital Markets Day. From a growth perspective, we continue to focus on driving category growth through innovation-led premiumization, with a number of new market launches in Q3 closing the incidence treatment gap.

An example is Otrivin Nasal Mist, which is seeing an over 80% repurchase intent amongst users and expanding reach to lower-income consumers, with household penetration gains in India and Brazil. We also continue to deliver against our value creation framework. Our supply chain productivity agenda continues to move at pace. We have made significant progress across service, cost, and inventory. Since the beginning of 2024, we have reduced the number of our SKUs by 19%, and we have improved overall equipment effectiveness by double digits. This improves both gross margin and results in better working capital and improved cash conversion. On AMP, we continue to invest at healthy levels, as well as making progress on effectiveness and efficiency, where we are focused on improving both contribution to revenue and ROI.

We also continue to be disciplined in our cost base and are on track to deliver the remainder of our £300 million target savings this year. All of this provides us with flexibility and agility in our P&L, enabling healthy investment in our brands and further strengthening our innovation pipeline to drive future growth. Finally, we are delivering on our capital allocation principles, having completed in the quarter the £500 million we allocated to share buybacks for 2025. Now let’s look at the quarter in more detail. Organic revenue growth was 3.4%, balanced between 1.8% from price and 1.6% from volume mix. Volume mix saw sequential improvement in the third quarter in EMEA and Latin America (LATAM) and Asia-Pacific. Reported revenue grew 0.7% in the third quarter, impacted by the drag from divestments of 2.3% and 0.4% from foreign exchange.

It’s worth bearing in mind that this is the final quarter with a drag on reported revenue growth from announced divestments. Now let’s look at the growth drivers, starting with our performance across the categories. Oral health continued to deliver strong growth, up 6.9% in Q3. Growth was underpinned by innovation-led premiumization and geographic expansion. The key drivers of this were penetration growth in more than 80% of our major brand market combinations, high single-digit growth on Sensodyne, more than two-thirds of which came from volume and innovations, including the Sensodyne clinical platform and ProNamel kits, and continued double-digit growth on Parodontax, driven by innovation and our continued successful rollout in China. With exciting plans for continued innovations across our oral health business, the runway for future growth is strong. BMS grew 4.9% in Q3, with double-digit growth in Centrum.

Key highlights were premium innovations, including Centrum Daily kits in China and Korea, strength in Philippines from increased distribution of lower-income consumer packs, and expanding distribution of local brands such as Caltrate in Latin America. In pain relief, we grew 3.7% for Q3. Panadol was up high single digit, underpinned by outperformance in the UK and Southern Europe. Improved consumption in Voltaren, supported by innovations including Voltaren and new natural herbal product. Growth in these brands was partly offset by Advil. Whilst consumption continues to improve following the activation of new campaigns, performance was impacted by short-term supply constraint on liquid gels, which has now been resolved. Respiratory health declined 1.8%, lapping elevated COVID cases in Q3 last year. The impact of declines in smokers’ health moderated in Q3 compared to Q2.

Otrivin continues to perform really well, with Nasal Mist bringing new consumers into the spray category in markets including Sweden, Poland, and the UK. Ahead of the start of the cold and flu season, we saw the sell-in of cold and flu products in Q3 at relatively normal levels. Digestive health grew 2.1%, including growth in TUMS thanks to innovations including TUMS Gummy Bites Plus, a strong performance in Benefiber from our Grow What Feels Good campaign, and an improved performance from ENO in India. This performance overall was partly offset by a decline in Nexium. Finally, therapeutic skin health and other declined 1.1%, with strength in Bactroban in China, offset by a decline in Fenistil from a weak mosquito season in Europe. Turning now to the regions, starting with North America.

In North America, we delivered organic revenue growth of 0.4%, driven by 0.7% price, with volume mix down 0.3%. In the quarter, we continued to drive market share, with our consumption outperformance widening as we progressed through the year. Organic revenue growth was driven by continued strength in oral health, driven by innovation, including Sensodyne ProNamel clinical enamel strength and successful activations, including gum export on Parodontax. A better BMS performance with Centrum growth and a strong performance from Benefiber and TUMS. All of this was partly offset by respiratory health, which declined due to the continued weakness in smokers’ health and from pain, with growth in Voltaren offset by a decline in Advil that I mentioned earlier. As we shared at half-year, we feel there is more growth to be had from our North America business. We are focused on a number of initiatives which will drive stronger results.

These include further strengthening our innovation pipeline, accelerating net revenue management through strategic pricing, price pack architecture, and channel mix, and reinforcing our relationships with partners through key activations. Collectively, these actions, combined with our focus on ensuring inventory is in an appropriate level by the end of the year, set us up well to return to growth next year. Turning now to Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, organic revenue increased 5.3%, with sequential improvement in volume mix of 1.8% and price at 3.5%. Growth was driven by innovation-led premiumization across the clinical platform on Sensodyne, ProNamel kits, and Otrivin Nasal Mist. A strong performance in VMS, with Centrum up double digit, underpinned by a number of new launches, including Centrum Vital Plus Nutrient. In pain relief, growth came from higher consumption of Voltaren and Panadol from innovation launches like Voltamed that I mentioned earlier.

Looking across the region, Europe performed well, with particular strength across the pharmacy channel, which makes up the majority of our revenue in the region. Whilst category growth slowed, we continue to outperform, given our innovation and excellent in-market execution. Latin America grew double digit, driven by Colombia and Mexico. This was partly offset by weakness in Brazil, given a softer macroeconomic environment impacting category growth. Finally, turning to Asia-Pacific, organic revenue increased 5.1%, with strong growth across India and Southeast Asia and sequential improvement in China. Across the region, volume mix, which was up 4.4%, and price was up 0.7%. With a relatively stable consumer market backdrop, we continued to drive category growth and expand our offering to lower-income consumers. India delivered double-digit growth. This was largely driven by strength in Sensodyne, as we further increased distribution and drive penetration.

We expect continued strong growth in the fourth quarter, driven by our salesforce investment and an improving macro environment. Also in the quarter, China saw mid-single-digit growth, with continued strength in oral health and VMS, supported by key innovations including Caltrate for Kids, Voltaren 2%, and Fenistil Gold. Across China, consumers continue to invest in health and wellness, and we are well placed to capture on this trend, given our focus on building trusted brands, closing the incidence treatment gap, and innovation-led premiumization. Our products are available across different channels, including pharmacies, hospitals, and digital platforms, ensuring we can effectively serve a wide audience with different shopping habits. Digital has been a particular strength, growing 20%, with our online-to-offline platform growing 25% and representing a third of our e-commerce business.

We have now fully integrated the OTC joint venture and are realizing the benefits of a more efficient route to market. We expect growth in China to improve further in the fourth quarter, helped by distribution and increased investment in the faster-growing e-com channel. Turning now to our 2025 guidance, we expect organic revenue growth of around 3.5%, assuming a normal cold and flu season. In North America, we expect growth in the second half to be broadly similar to the first half, with Q4 reflecting further action on inventory at slower-growing channels. We expect this to be completed by the end of the year. In Asia-Pacific, we should see an acceleration in Q4, driven by stronger growth in China and India. In EMEA and LATAM, we continue to expect a good performance, driven by Europe, with market share gains, offsetting a slightly softening macro picture.

In Latin America, we are closely watching the macro environment, given the consumer pressures in the region. Finally, the pace of progress on our supply chain productivity initiatives provides a strong underpin to our expectation of high single-digit organic operating profit growth. In conclusion, we delivered a good performance in Q3 and remain on track to deliver our full-year guidance. We are pleased with the actions we are taking in the US, which sets us up to return to growth next year. We’re continuing to invest behind our brands to build flexibility and agility in our P&L by unlocking productivity savings. Altogether, this should give us confidence in delivering against our value creation framework and our medium-term guidance. Now let’s turn to questions. Operator, please, can you open up the lines?

Rakesh: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To remove your question, press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you’re using a speaker phone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question. Our first question comes from Guillaume Delmas from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, Dawn, Jo, and Rakesh. Two questions for me, please. The first one on North America. Dawn, I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about your performance in the region in the third quarter, which was clearly better than expected. What were the main drivers behind this sequential improvement, and were there any one-offs or restocking benefits we should be aware of that may have flattened your performance in the region in Q3? Still on North America, looking ahead, your guidance for the second half to be similar to the first half seems to suggest around -1% organic sales growth in Q4. Maybe if you could talk a little bit about the reasons for this anticipated slowdown sequentially. Last question on North America, I know it’s early days, but for 2026, what would be your expectations?

Because looking at the last three years, you’ve been growing by an average of, let’s say, 1.5%. Wondering if your ambition is to materially accelerate next year versus this 1.5% run rate. The second question, shorter one, I promise, on Asia-Pacific, strong but decelerating sequentially despite India being in double digits. It would be helpful if you could shed some light on the main moving parts behind this slowdown. You sound confident about a Q4 uptake. Do you think you can maintain this momentum going into 2026? Thank you very much.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thanks, Guillaume, and good morning to you. Let me take your three questions in turn, and I’ll start with North America. As we said at the half-year, we expect half two to be broadly similar to half one, and we’re tracking in line with our expectations. As we know, it’s a challenging environment in the U.S. We have outperformed the market in terms of consumption every quarter this year, with particular strength across oral health and digestive. That gap has actually widened as we’ve moved through the year. In our results, that’s been masked by the inventory movements, the difference between selling and sell-out as retailers have managed their inventory and working capital. If we look at Q3, there’s a few moving parts. Of the 220 basis points swing from Q2 to Q3, there’s two main things to call out.

The first one is the drag from smokers’ health has halved. In Q2, this was 160 basis points drag. In Q3, it’s now 80 basis points drag. The remainder of the difference comes from better performance in oral health and digestive health, as I mentioned. If we then look forward to Q4, if we’re working on the assumption that we expect half two to be broadly similar to half one, that implies, as you said, around about 1% decline in Q4. That reflects tough comparatives from the prior year. We’re lapping the launch of Eroxon, and we have some further action to do in inventory. When we look towards next year, as I said, we expect the region to return to growth. You talked about where it had been historically. We would expect to get back to that level.

As I referenced in the overview, we feel really good about the actions that we’re taking in North America. Next year, we won’t have the drag between sell-in and sell-out. We would expect that drag to kind of disappear. As I said, with Natalie, I mean, Natalie is bringing deep consumer expertise and execution. We’re focused on net revenue management, got new innovations coming to market. We feel good about return to growth next year. If I step out of North America and the U.S. and talk about Asia-Pacific, I’d say overall we’re really pleased with our performance in Asia-Pacific. We’ve got double-digit growth in India. We’ve got mid-single-digit growth in China. In those markets, we continue to perform incredibly well. Yes, we are lapping some phasing in the prior year in terms of North Asia, particularly given the price increase phasing that we put through in Japan last year.

Actually, given the momentum in that region, given that we expect the macro environment to improve in India in Q4, you know, on the back of GST and on the back of tax changes, as well as our activations and expanded distribution, I think we feel really good about that. I’d say the same in China as well.

Dawn, just to follow up and to confirm, no one-offs in the third quarter in your performance in North America?

I wouldn’t say that. I’d say in Q3, that’s the quarter where we sell in ahead of the season. We’re obviously shipping in in terms of the season. We have a price increase that goes live early November in the US. Quarter three is still, there’s still quite a big time lag between those two pieces. If you remember, in terms of tariffs, we always said that they were in the low tens of millions, and we’re taking supply chain actions to mitigate that. The other piece, obviously, that we see is the pricing, the pricing action that we’re taking.

Thank you very much.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Oliver Nicolai from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Dawn, Joanne, and Rakesh. Just two questions, please. First of all, at group level, you had a strong pipeline of innovation across many categories in this year, in 2025. Looking at next year, how do you see the strength of the pipeline? Is there any RX to OTC that we should expect as well for full year 2026? Just going back to your guidance, I know it’s early stage, but you did mention that you assume a normal cold and flu season. I know that the U.S. does not provide data at the moment, but perhaps anecdotally, how do you see things for the coming cold and flu season?

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Let me take the innovation pipeline question first, Oliver. As I said, across actually all of our categories, we’ve seen real strength in terms of our innovation pipeline. From an oral health perspective, the clinical range on Sensodyne continues to perform really well in terms of bringing new users into the category. We’re actually gaining or holding share in more than 80% of our brand market combinations on Sensodyne. If you think about on clinical, we’ve got five variants. On average, you’ve maybe got two of those variants in a market. There is huge runway in terms of oral health. I also talked about nasal mist in terms of respiratory, in terms of Otrivin Nasal Mist. That innovation is recruiting new users into the category. I referenced purchase intent is now over 80%, and we’ve obviously got further rollout behind that. Maybe just to mention another one in VMS.

On Centrum, we have a new claim in terms of slowing cognitive aging that we’ve just launched, as well as Centrum Essentials and Daily Kit. Across all of our categories, we have an incredibly strong innovation pipeline that’s actually performing really well, not only for us, but is also growing the categories where we’ve launched it as well. I think in terms of switches, we’ve always said that would be on top. We don’t need switches in terms of our growth forecast. I would focus more on the innovations that I’ve talked about in terms of driving growth. We have two that we’re progressing, but it just continues to progress. I wouldn’t take that into account in terms of our growth at the moment.

If we look at the second question, your question in terms of cough, cold, and flu, and our guidance, it’s fair to say we have a great portfolio in cough, cold, and flu. It’s an attractive and relevant category for consumers. As you know, it’s more seasonal. We have shared in the pack, you’ll see in the appendix, we’ve shared our normal chart that we show for the U.S. in terms of incidences. What you will see from that chart is no two years are the same. It depends on the size of the peak and the timing of the peak. Sometimes it can be in Q4, sometimes it can be in Q1. If you remember, about a third of our business for cough, cold, and flu is in North America. We’ve got about half in EMEA and LATAM.

The thing I would say about that is the variability of when that peak happens and the size of the peak, that’s the variability around the 3.5% guidance for the year. We plan for a normal season, but we obviously stay agile from a supply chain point of view in terms of is it better or worse?

Thank you very much.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from David Hayes from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning all. I’m just going to follow up on Guillaume’s question about Canada and the U.S., just to maybe quantify or get the dynamics a bit more. Just to be clear, you’re saying there wasn’t really any pre-buying into the price increases that you’ve taken in oral and cough and cold in the quarter. Is that a fair summary? In terms of the channel dynamics, can you talk us through maybe the growth rate comparisons in new channels, if we call them that, like Amazon and Walmart versus the pharma channels? Is there an element of, as the shift continues to happen, Amazon and Walmart are stocking up more as they’re getting more of the market, or is there no real offset in that sense? The second question is just on the supply chain cost savings all running to plan and very extensive.

Is there any incidents or evidence that affects the service levels, the sales performance at all? Is there an inevitability that as you go through some of those changes, there are some hindrances that will dissipate, or would you say it’s a completely separate dynamic? Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Yeah. Hi, David. I think, you know, I obviously talked about the pricing piece coming early November. Let me talk a bit more about some of the other moving parts in terms of inventory and the channel dynamics. As you know, we work closely with our retail partners on inventory levels. There isn’t a one size fits all, and it obviously depends upon consumption. For example, in the drug channel, our inventory is down double digit compared to this time last year. Obviously, in faster-growing channels like DCOM, actually, our inventory levels have increased, as you would expect, on the back of more traffic and stronger consumption trends. Just to say, there’s obviously more work to do in Q4 on inventory, as I referenced. Our objective is to exit the year in a clean place on inventory, you know, and obviously grow on the back of that next year.

I think from a channel dynamic, we continue to see really strong growth in the US, actually, on digital. We’re growing, you know, kind of double digit on Amazon. I think we continue to partner, continue to partner really well. In terms of your other question, in terms of supply chain, as I talked about in the brief, we’re actually making progress across service, cost, and inventory. The reason that we’re doing that, A, we’re working closely with our customers, but also we’re rolling out new supply chain, new systems and processes in terms of improving our forecast accuracy. That’s also helping us not only to reduce inventory, but also to improve service.

Thank you.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Jeremy Fialko from HSBC. Your line is open.

Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I know we’ve had quite a lot on the US, but I wanted to ask one more, but more a general question on the consumer, because it feels like it’s a very bifurcated environment where you’ve got certain things that are doing well, certain things that are struggling. Perhaps you could sort of break your business down a bit and explain from a consumer standpoint, you know, what stuff is going well, or what things are going badly and why that’s the case. Secondly, you could talk a bit more about China. As you say, you’re kind of most of the way through this merger of the sales forces from the two businesses that you’ve brought together.

Perhaps you could just talk about the progress that you’ve made there and how you think that you can be more effective over the coming quarters as a bigger combined organization. Thanks.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. Let me talk about the U.S. first. I think from a consumer perspective, we have seen consumption in the market track down this year. As I said, we are outperforming the market on consumption, and that gap has widened. In Q3, we’re outperforming around 100 basis points versus the market. I think we’re tracking well. From a consumer perspective, what’s important for us is that we are across all channels, which we are, so that we are where consumers are shopping. We have seen types of behaviors that we’re seeing. We’re seeing consumers buy either larger packs where the unit price is lower. We’re also seeing consumers buy lower price point packs, for example, from dollar stores. We’re seeing them adjusting their purchasing behavior across the piece.

As I said, what’s important to us is that we are across all channels so that we can cater for that behavior and also that we have a variation around our price pack architecture. In terms of China, we’re really pleased with the joint venture. We have integrated the sales force. That means that we are able to optimize our visits to retailers. It also means that we are expanding our distribution to more tiers in terms of cities in China. We continue to invest in that space. I referenced it in the brief. We are across all channels in China, and we’re actually outperforming the market across every channel. I think there’s a real underpin in terms of excellence in execution in that market.

Okay, thanks very much.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Celine Payetier from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I have two questions, but I’m sorry, I just want to clarify something on the U.S. First of all, thank you for providing clarity on Q4 expectation. Just to put it simple, you basically are guiding at -0.5% for the U.S. this year. I think sell-out is somewhere between -1% and -1.5%. You’re saying that your sell-in has been better than your sell-out. Yet you talk about easy stock levels for next year. I just want to understand this part. Thank you. My two questions. First, on Latin America (LATAM) and EMEA, if you can talk about the pricing evolution. We’ve seen that pricing has been a bit weaker, and you were commenting about softness in consumer there. We’ve seen sequential pricing deterioration. Shall we expect that to continue?

Maybe as well, whether that pricing in Asia-Pacific, you were mentioning lapping Japan, would improve or not in the fourth quarter. That’s on pricing. My second question is on the outlook for the year. If I look at what you said for Q4, -1% Europe, U.S., EMEA good, and then an acceleration in Asia-Pacific, I get to a growth rate that’s lower in Q4 versus the nine months. Is that the right level? Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Let me take the middle question first in terms of pricing. What we always see when we see a softer consumption environment is the competitive pressure increases, the promotional activity increases. As I talked about, we see a shift in terms of consumer behavior, either buying larger packs, cheaper unit price, or smaller packs in terms of smaller initial outlay. That obviously impacts pricing. The other thing I would say is actually in EMEA and LATAM, we have seen sequential volume improvement this year, which I think is good. The other thing to say is, whilst we are seeing softness in consumption, actually, in Europe, we’re pretty resilient. I’d say we’re holding our own. Oral health is the one category that is not seeing the same level of softness.

The other thing to say in Europe is, given our strength in pharmacy channels, we’ve also got the resilience around that as well. When I look at the outlook for the year, I talked about an acceleration in Asia-Pacific, particularly in India, and strong continued growth in China. In Europe, I talked about challenging consumption in some categories, but actually a resilient performance from us in terms of holding up. LATAM, we’re obviously looking at, we’re obviously monitoring the macro environment. Whilst we had a good performance in Q3, driven by Colombia and Mexico, that macro environment, we’re watching that. We’re watching that closely. I’ve talked through the moving parts in North America, and what’s important there is that half two is broadly similar to half one. In terms of consumption in the U.S.

and sell-in and sell-out, what I would say is, we said at the beginning of the year, we had roughly 200 basis points difference between sell-in and sell-out. We’ve seen that gap narrow as we’ve progressed through the year. As I talk, that’s been different across different channels, depending upon the consumptions in those channels. The other thing to say within that, oral health continues to be strong consumption. We continue to see strong growth. In digital channels, I talked about our continued strength. Our top 18 brands, for example, that are on Amazon, 16 of those, we have a higher share online than we do offline. I think that reflects the strength in that channel. As I said, Q3, we always have the sell-in of cough, cold, and flu. As we look to Q4, we want to close that final gap in sell-in, sell-out.

I’d probably think about that, depending upon consumption. It’s probably broadly another week, I think, to come out. As I said, what’s important for us is that we exit the year clean and that we return to growth in North America next year.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Carl Zuetz from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open.

Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I have a follow-up question with regards to the contribution of innovations in the third quarter and how that might look going forward, because you highlight a lot of things that you’re enthusiastic about. Part already answered on it, but can you quantify a bit more the contribution during Q3, some of the listing of it, and then how that might develop in the quarters thereafter? Yeah. The second question is on pain. The pain franchise looked better, but the U.S. was quite soft. Can you speak about your pain franchise, what goes well, and how should we look at the U.S.? Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Yeah. Let me take the pain question first. I think, look, we’ve talked about Advil. We launched our No Pain, More Gain campaign in July this year. That has, you know, we have seen improvement in some of our key metrics. Purchase intent is up. The messaging around relevancy is also up, and actually, ahead of the benchmark. Yes, we did see some supply issues in the third quarter in terms of Advil liquid gels, but that has now been resolved. I think, you know, on Advil, what I would say is, whilst it’s early days, we are seeing green shoots in terms of some of the metrics on Advil. I think that should give us confidence, but it is early days. I think when we look at innovation, I talked about it. We had a number of new market launches in Q3.

That’s making a good contribution in terms of our growth and market expansion. I talked about some examples earlier in terms of our clinical range, Otrivin Nasal Mist. If I give some others, I mean, across pain, if I reference pain a bit more, I mean, Voltaren 2% in China, our natural Voltamed products in Germany, and also on Panadol, in terms of whether it’s dual action or whether it’s our Panadol forecount in Indonesia. What you see is, across every category, innovation plays a really important role in our growth strategy, not only in terms of reaching lower-income consumers, but also in terms of driving premiumization through innovation. I think that the science and the strength of the product differentiation is also what’s setting us apart in terms of driving growth. This is a really important growth lever.

The contribution to growth varies across the categories, but we have significant headroom in terms of continued rollout across all of the pipeline of innovations that we have.

Thank you.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Mitch Omanescu from BNP Paribas. Your line is open.

Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first one would be on how you view the category in general terms. From the moment that Haleon came to market, you were saying that consumer health is relatively insulated from downtrending pressures. This is a category where brands matter a lot. Has 2025, and particularly the U.S. market, the evolution there changed your view in any sense on this category being not so much affected by downtrending? I guess a follow-up question on that is, in the plus $4 to $6 million-term growth target, has the regional composition of your growth expectation changed compared to 2022? Do you expect less growth to come from North America and more growth to come from the other two regions or not? Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thanks, Misha. I think in terms of consumer health and in terms of our categories, there’s incredible growth opportunity across all of our categories that we talked about at Capital Markets Day, whether it’s broadening our reach to lower-income consumers, driving premiumization through innovation, or closing the incidence treatment gap. I think we continue to see huge headroom in terms of category growth. Consumers are increasingly more aware in terms of health. They’re more focused on health and improving kind of daily lives in terms of health. I think that continues. I would say, also, compared to other categories, we are a lot more resilient. You see that. If you think about oral health, it’s been pretty resilient this year in particular. Obviously, we’re not immune to the macro environment. Of course, that will have an impact. What’s important is the relative resilience versus other categories. That is important.

I think that would be one thing to say. In terms of our regional expectations, we continue to see runway in terms of emerging markets growth, and you see that in our performance. In terms of North America, the size of the North America consumer health market, the consumer trends that underpin it, we do see growth potential in North America. We have said that we think there’s more runway to go in terms of what we’ve seen versus our historic performance. That is the proactive actions that the team are taking to ensure that we unlock that growth and that it plays an important role in terms of our 4 to 6%. I think we feel really confident in terms of our medium-term guidance of 4 to 6% growth.

Very clear. Thank you.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Morning, everybody. Sorry, I’m going to flog the US horse again. Just in terms of the drag from the drug channel in Q4 versus Q3, are you expecting that drag to be similar? In terms of the budgeting for next year on the drug channel, are you saying that your inventories are in the right place for the existing drug channel footprint, or are your inventories below where they would normally be because you’re expecting the drug channel sell-out to be worse next year? Please, just on China, sorry, I may have missed what the offline/online exposure you have is. Sorry, whether you gave the sort of old ECOM versus sort of DN live streaming, new ECOM split, if it’s possible to have that, please. Are you targeting 11/11 in a different way to last year?

That seems to be quite important to the Asia-Pacific or China pickup, please.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Yeah. Let me take China first. As I talked about, we are present across all channels in China. ECOM represents broadly a third of our business. Within that, in terms of the different parts of that channel, obviously, Doyen, we’re growing, that channel is growing very fast, and we are growing incredibly fast on the back of that. Online to offline actually also continues. We have a strong presence there. That also continues to drive strongly double-digit growth, and the same on ECOM. I think we see growth across categories driven by innovation on Parodontax and VMS in terms of DCOM in China. I think we’re well placed to unlock that growth. In terms of 11/11, you’re right. It is an important event. It’s a good growth driver.

We are increasing our investment in that in the quarter, and that is one of the reasons that underpins our confidence in terms of Q4 growth in China. I think in terms of the U.S., I talked about it. We’re working closely with retailers across every channel in terms of ensuring that we exit the year with the right level of stock so that we can grow next year. Obviously, it’s not an exact science because it depends on consumption. I think what we’re demonstrating is that we’re working closely. We’re being agile to what’s happening in terms of the different dynamics. The other thing I would say is this dynamic is not new.

We have been dealing with this dynamic for a number of years quite successfully, and we will continue, we’ll continue to work with that dynamic in terms of where we’re seeing stronger growth in some channels and where we’re seeing less growth in other channels. As I said, I think what’s important for the U.S. is that we expect to see a return to growth next year.

Sorry, Dawn, just on that, just the drag from Q4 versus Q3, is that viewed as being similar in the US?

Yeah. I think, as I referenced earlier, in Q4, we still got more work to do in terms of ensuring that inventory lands in the right place. I talked about, depending upon consumption, the way to think about it is broadly another week to come out in terms of inventory.

Okay, thank you.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you. Our next question is from Warren Egerman from Barclays. Your line is open.

Yeah. Good morning, Dawn and Jo. It’s Warren here at Barclays. I got kicked out for a little while, so I didn’t catch everything that was being said. Can I just clarify a couple of things? On the oral care business, the 6.9% in the quarter, that was a bit lower than consensus, Dawn. Is there anything weird going on with Aquafresh and the denture business outside of Sensodyne that’s worth calling out this quarter? That’s the first one. Secondly, are you able to say something about the kind of promo environment that you’re seeing in, say, U.S. VMS and maybe in Germany? Our data is showing both are ticking up quite substantially. I’m just wondering whether you’ve got any comment on that.

Finally, on the inventory side of things, you said that the, and again, you might have answered this already, you said that you’re outperforming the market in the U.S. by 100 bps. I think you said the 100 bps. We can see that the U.S. sell-out this quarter is down 1.5%. If you’re outperforming by 100 bps, are you saying that the U.S. market sell-out this quarter is down 2.5%? If that is the case, are you able to maybe sort of highlight why the, you know, where the market in the U.S. has slowed sequentially? I’m still not 100% clear on that piece. Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Yeah. Let me talk about oral health. I think you’re right. We have seen a softer performance from Aquafresh, from DentureCare, and obviously, we’re lapping the phasing pricing from the prior year in Japan. As I said, I think we feel really positive about oral care. We’re performing incredibly well. Yes, in markets, as I talked about, where you see increased competition and promo, we’re seeing some of that, particularly, you referenced VMS. When consumption is soft, competitive intensity increases, and alongside that, often promo increases. We are seeing that in VMS in the U.S. In terms of the inventory piece, yes, you’re right. The consumption has continued to drop in North America. The number that you quoted in Q3 would be broadly consistent with what we’re seeing. As I said, we are outperforming the market by around about 100 basis points in the quarter.

The main drag that’s coming from, you talked about it, VMS, we’re seeing increased promo. That’s one of the main reasons why the category is coming down. The other category to talk about would be respiratory, because if you remember, we’re lapping a COVID spike last year. I think between those two categories, they’re probably the biggest drivers in terms of why would the total market consumption be lower in Q3 or worse in Q3 than Q2. As I said, in terms of our performance, we continue to outperform in terms of consumption, and that outperformance has improved every quarter this year in the U.S.

Okay. Thank you. Can I just clarify one other thing, Dawn, just quickly? Just the sell-in, sell-out thing. The sell-out, we think, or we can see, was down 1.5% this quarter on the scanner data. You’ve printed 0.4% organic growth. That looks like a 200 bps restock compared to a 200 bps destock in the first half. Sequentially, that’s 400 bps. That includes the pharma destock. If you actually look at the kind of gross restock, it’s probably even higher than 200 bps, maybe 250, 300 bps. You’re saying, I think, that a lot of that is not one-off. It’s due to the fact that your inventories are naturally going up more in the faster-growing retailers like Amazon. Can you just clarify that, that actually that is the case rather than there’s been buying ahead of pricing or any kind of weird kind of really early ordering?

I’m just, I’m still not quite clear on that piece. Thank you.

I think there’s a couple of things to say. I referenced that different channels were in different spaces. I talked about, you know, we’d reduced inventories in drug channel versus the prior year, and we’d also seen an increase in inventory in growing channels like Amazon, which is up double digit in the quarter. The other thing to say, obviously, in Q3, you’ve got the sell-in of cough, cold, and flu. I think that muddies the water a bit in terms of sell-in and sell-out. Obviously, as that stock sells through, as we progress through Q4.

Sarah, Moderator: Obviously, depending upon the season, we’ll see the restock. I think the important message around this is that we are making progress in terms of reducing the gap between sell-in and sell-out. We expect to finish the year in a clean position, and we expect North America to return to growth next year.

Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations, Haleon: Got you. Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thank you. Our next question is from Edward Lewis from Rothschild and Carl Redburn. You may ask your question.

Rakesh: Yes. Thanks very much. Just two quick ones from me, I guess. Just looking at volume mix growth in Asia-Pacific, I think it was up 4.4% this quarter, on the 7.1% growth in the prior year. I guess there would have been some headwind potentially from GST in India. It would be interesting to hear, Dawn, just the difference there between volume mix breakdowns. Just on the SKU reduction, I see that’s down to 19% now against minus 16%, I think it was at H1. How much impact would that have had in the quarter on volumes, if any at all? Do we expect more SKU reductions going forward?

Sarah, Moderator: Yeah. If I take the volume mix, the mix question first in Asia-Pacific, if you look historically, three-quarters of our growth, two-thirds to three-quarters of our growth in Asia-Pacific is volume-led. I think it’s a strong, strong quality growth, and we continue to see that. That’s an important piece in terms of reaching lower-income consumers, broadening distribution. That is driven by India and China, and we see double-digit volume growth in China. In terms of the SKU, in terms of the SKU piece, you’re right. We are making really good progress on this, and that is a key driver in terms of our productivity agenda. What we are doing as part of that exercise, whilst we are reducing the number of SKUs, what we’re also thinking about is how do we ensure that for the consumer and for the shopper, a few things.

One is that we have the range of our portfolio in terms of what the consumer wants. The other thing that we’re doing is ensure that we’re improving the shoppability of our displays, and our products are easier to find on shelf. Yes, there’s an efficiency play with the SKU reduction, which is helping to take cost out, remove complexity in our supply chain, reduce inventory. There’s also a consumer benefit in terms of shoppability, improvement on shelf, and being really clear in terms of what are the range of our products. As I say, from a volume perspective, I think we’re managing that, we’re managing that really well. As we’re taking SKUs out, what we’re seeing is increased sell-out of kind of our main runners or our top SKUs, which is what you would expect to see.

I think in terms of GST in India, actually, we didn’t see a negative impact from that. It’s an incredible job that the Indian team have done in terms of managing the execution of this across all of our packs at short notice. It’s a reflection of the close partnership that we have with our customers, with our distributors, and the team have managed it incredibly well. As I said, you would expect the benefit from that in terms of consumer offtake as we move into Q4 and as we move into next year as well.

Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations, Haleon: Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thank you. We have a follow-up question from David Hayes from Jefferies. You may ask your question.

Hello. I’m afraid I’m going to have to just flog this North American horse one more time if I can, just in terms of just getting into the fourth quarter guidance of minus 1% and some of the context that you said. Broadly speaking, and I know I’m trying to simplify it probably too much, but broadly speaking, is the assumption that consumption will be basically flat year on year, and then the one-week reduction in the pharma channel will be, let’s say, 100 basis points of headwind, and that’s how you get to the minus 1% if you’re thinking about the offtake shipment levels? Is that broadly the picture? Thank you.

Sarah, Moderator: I think consumption’s quite difficult to call. I think there’s a few moving parts. The first thing is, obviously, we’ve got a price increase, a modest price increase going live early September. We obviously need to see how the season plays out. We’ve talked about the variability in the cough, cold, and flu season, and what we’ve said is, globally, on a full-year basis, that could be, in terms of the variability, either side of a normal season, that could be in the region of 50 to 100 basis points. I think that’s probably a big swing factor. I think you’ve got the price increase. We could assume, in that number, no change in consumption, but honestly, depending upon what happens with cough, cold, and flu, as I talked about, there could be some variability around that.

As I said, I think the important message on North America is that we expect to end the year with clean inventory levels and get North America back to growth next year.

Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Warren Ackerman from Barclays. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hi, Dawn. Again, it’s Warren here. Just on pricing, are you able to kind of indicate to us, Dawn, roughly when your pricing lands in North America, how much pricing you’re taking, and you know, how you feel your pricing timing, I guess, relative to peers? Are you building in any kind of elasticity assumptions on the volume elasticity assumptions on that pricing that you’re taking? That’s just a one follow-up. The second one, you may have mentioned this already. On Brazil, did you break down or can you break down what you’re seeing in Brazil by category in terms of like the market’s obviously slower, but is there any kind of specific kind of category callouts where you’re seeing kind of more local competition or any other kind of sort of change in trend in that country? Thanks.

Sarah, Moderator: Yeah. I think in terms of the pricing, as I said, the pricing goes live. It’s effective at the beginning of November. It’s across parts of our portfolio. It varies across SKU, but I’d say low, low single digits. It’s mainly across oral health and cough, cold, and flu. I think, given that the market has moved and the others have taken pricing, it’s hard to call on elasticity, but I’d say given that the market is moving, you would expect to see a lower level of elasticity. As I said, the strength of our brand, why do consumers buy our brands? They’re buying it in terms of the science, the strength of formulation, and the differentiation in terms of the delivery of our brands. Obviously, the pricing is related to tariffs.

As I said, we’re mitigating the tariffs through supply chain initiatives, and then there’s a small amount of mitigation coming from price. If I think specifically about Brazil, it’s well-documented in terms of the macro environment in Brazil in terms of interest rates and the challenge for consumers. I think in Brazil, we have a strong performance. We’re outperforming the market in terms of pain and VMS, but the market is soft. The area of weakness is specifically coming from ENO, actually, in Brazil. As I say, across LATAM, we have a strong performance in Q3 of double digit. We continue to outperform. We are watching the macro environment in LATAM because it is changeable. I think long-term, LATAM remains, and will remain, a key growth driver for us.

Jo Russell, Head of Investor Relations, Haleon: Super, Dawn. Thank you.

Dawn Allen, CFO, Haleon: Okay. Thank you. There are no questions waiting at this time. I’ll turn the conference back over to Dawn Allen for any further remarks.

Sarah, Moderator: Thank you, everyone, for your time and interest in Haleon. We look forward to meeting a number of you at our up-and-coming conferences. Our next formal update will be our full-year results in February. If you have any further questions, please contact our Investor Relations team. Thank you.

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