Colgate-Palmolive's (NYSE:CL) Q4 CY2025 Sales Top Estimates

Consumer products company Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL) beat Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q4 CY2025, with sales up 5.8% year on year to $5.23 billion. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.95 per share was 4.2% above analysts’ consensus estimates.

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Colgate-Palmolive Company (NYSE:CL) today reported results for fourth quarter and full year 2025. Noel Wallace, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented on the Base Business fourth quarter and full year results, “We are pleased to have exited 2025 with accelerated growth momentum on both the top and bottom lines, even in the face of sluggish category growth in many markets. Net sales and organic sales grew in every category during the quarter, led by strength in oral care and pet nutrition, excluding private label.

Company Overview

Formed after the 1928 combination between toothpaste maker Colgate and soap maker Palmolive-Peet, Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL) is a consumer products company that focuses on personal, household, and pet products.

Revenue Growth

A company’s long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years.

With $20.38 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, Colgate-Palmolive is one of the most widely recognized consumer staples companies. Its influence over consumers gives it negotiating leverage with distributors, enabling it to pick and choose where it sells its products (a luxury many don’t have). However, its scale is a double-edged sword because there are only so many big store chains to sell into, making it harder to find incremental growth. To accelerate sales, Colgate-Palmolive likely needs to optimize its pricing or lean into new products and international expansion.

As you can see below, Colgate-Palmolive grew its sales at a tepid 4.3% compounded annual growth rate over the last three years, but to its credit, consumers bought more of its products.

This quarter, Colgate-Palmolive reported year-on-year revenue growth of 5.8%, and its $5.23 billion of revenue exceeded Wall Street’s estimates by 1.7%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 3.1% over the next 12 months, similar to its three-year rate. This projection doesn't excite us and indicates its products will face some demand challenges. At least the company is tracking well in other measures of financial health.

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Volume Growth

Revenue growth can be broken down into changes in price and volume (the number of units sold). While both are important, volume is the lifeblood of a successful staples business as there’s a ceiling to what consumers will pay for everyday goods; they can always trade down to non-branded products if the branded versions are too expensive.

To analyze whether Colgate-Palmolive generated its growth from changes in price or volume, we can compare its volume growth to its organic revenue growth, which excludes non-fundamental impacts on company financials like mergers and currency fluctuations.

Over the last two years, Colgate-Palmolive’s average quarterly volume growth was a healthy 1.2%. Even with this good performance, we can see that most of the company’s gains have come from price increases by looking at its 4.5% average organic revenue growth. The ability to sell more products while raising prices indicates that Colgate-Palmolive enjoys some degree of inelastic demand.

In Colgate-Palmolive’s Q4 2025, year on year sales volumes were flat. This result was a meaningful deceleration from its historical levels. We’ll be watching closely to see if Colgate-Palmolive can reaccelerate demand for its products.

Key Takeaways from Colgate-Palmolive’s Q4 Results

It was encouraging to see Colgate-Palmolive beat analysts’ revenue expectations this quarter on better-than-expected organic revenue growth. We were also happy its EPS outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this quarter was solid. The stock traded up 1.2% to $86.26 immediately after reporting.

So should you invest in Colgate-Palmolive right now? We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).