Are PG's Beauty and Health Units Driving the Next Leg of Growth?

The Procter & Gamble Company PG plays a pivotal role in enhancing health and beauty through its product innovations and purpose-driven corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts to ensure global well-being. Spanning health, hygiene and cleaning, PG’s products are indispensable to the daily routines of consumers across the globe. 

Management sees power oral care as a significant opportunity to boost consumers’ health, with the launch of iO2 converting manual toothbrush users to electric toothbrush users. There’s a $5-billion growth opportunity that the company can capture in this field. Management looks forward to doubling down on innovation and new jobs. Amid the near-term volatility, PG seeks to safeguard long-term investments in brand equity, innovation and demand creation. 

With regard to beauty, Procter & Gamble is focused on skin care and other parts of specialty beauty. The company is making constant innovations across its beauty portfolio for super-premium offerings, strengthening its department store footprint and investing in beauty counselors. PG is strictly focused on its brands, including Head & Shoulders, Pantene and Rejoice.

In third-quarter fiscal 2025, Beauty, which constituted around 18% of the quarterly sales, registered an organic sales increase of 2% year over year. Hair Care organic sales were flat as higher pricing in Latin America and North America, and favorable premium product mix were offset by lower volumes mainly in Greater China. Personal Care organic sales grew high single digits on innovation-led volume growth. Skin Care organic sales decreased low single digits on soft volumes and unfavorable geographic mix.

The Health Care segment, which accounted for roughly 15% in the fiscal third quarter, posted an organic sales rise of 4%, with oral care organic sales improving low-single-digits on product mix from premium innovation. Personal Health Care organic sales increased high-single-digits on solid volumes and higher pricing, particularly in Latin America and Europe. Our model expects an organic sales increase of 2% year over year in Beauty and 5% in Health care segments in fourth-quarter of fiscal 2025.

In a nutshell, the company looks to offer superior-quality assortments across its health and beauty portfolio, hence supporting the communities with programs like hygiene, health education and overall empowerment. This is likely to drive sustained growth and profitability.

PG’s Competition in the Beauty & Health Arena

Colgate-Palmolive Company CL and The Clorox Company CLX are the major companies competing with Procter & Gamble.

Boasting a leadership position in oral and personal care, Colgate’s business strategy focuses on strengthening its key product categories through core business innovation, pursuing growth opportunities in adjacent categories and expanding presence across new markets and channels. The company’s oral, personal and home care, which accounted for 77.6% of the total sales in first-quarter 2025, includes toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash, bar and liquid hand soaps, shower gels, shampoos, conditioners, deodorants and antiperspirants, skin health products, dishwashing detergents, fabric conditioners, household cleaners and other similar items. We project oral, personal and home care’s organic sales growth of 2.5% for the second quarter of 2025.

Clorox places strong emphasis on health and wellness categories. It looks forward to positioning itself as a health and wellness company via constant efforts in cleaning and disinfecting, and innovations coupled with a broader range of initiatives supporting overall health-being. With respect to Healthcare, CLX offers science-based disinfecting solutions to hospitals and healthcare facilities, preventing the spread of infections. CLX’s Health and Wellness segment, which contributed 37.8% to the overall quarterly sales, delivered net sales growth of 3% in third-quarter fiscal 2025. This was backed by higher volumes on increased consumption in cleaning, partly offset by an adverse price mix. We anticipate organic sales growth of 6% for the fourth quarter.

PG’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Procter & Gamble’s shares have lost around 3.7% year to date compared with the industry’s 0.7% dip.

From a valuation standpoint, PG trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22.94X compared with the industry’s average of 20.46X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PG’s fiscal 2025 and 2026 EPS indicates year-over-year growth of 2.9% and 3.6%, respectively. The company’s EPS estimate for fiscal 2025 has been stable while the fiscal 2026 estimate has moved northward in the past 30 days.

Procter & Gamble carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). 

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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