Reckitt Benckiser Group plc

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Reckitt's Q3 trading update. I'm here with our CEO, Chris Licht, and our CFO, Shannon Eisenhardt, who will take you through some prepared remarks, and then we will take your questions. Before we start, I would like to draw your attention to the usual disclaimer in respect of forward-looking statements contained on page seven of our results statement published this morning. With that said, I'll hand over to Chris to start the call.

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. We have delivered another quarter of strong execution and performance, with our third quarter results in line with our expectations, keeping us on track to meet our upgraded full-year guidance we provided in July. Core record delivered 6.7% like-for-like net revenue growth, with sequential volume improvement to 3.4%, and a well-balanced algorithm with positive price mix contributing 3.3%. This progress is being driven by the strength of our 11 power brands, with benefits coming from ongoing investment in premiumization and brand equity, innovation and new category creation, and continuously improving in-market execution. Core records year-to-date like-for-like net revenue performance now stands at 5%. As expected, our developed markets businesses in Europe and North America returned to growth during the quarter in what remains a challenging trading and consumer environment. Volumes improved sequentially in Europe, led by non-seasonal self-care and intimate wellness, and we delivered ahead of category growth rates in North America with a strong performance driven by Lysol, while seasonal OTC had a softer quarter. Emerging markets had another standout performance, growing 15.5% in the quarter. This reflects broad-based growth across all categories, double-digit growth in a number of smaller but high-potential markets, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Colombia, and continued strong in-market performance in India and China. Let me now talk a little bit more about China, a market where we have delivered nine consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. This consistent outperformance is driven by the following. First, we are focused on consumer health at a time when the Chinese consumer is very engaged and knowledgeable around that space. Second, we really know our consumer and we've invested behind that knowledge with brands and claims that resonate. Third, our track record of innovation is very strong. And last, we know how to launch new brands and grow them, a great example being Intima, where we have doubled net revenue this year. Our strong in-market execution underpins all of this. Our focus on e-commerce allows us to engage directly with the consumer so that we can test and learn with new products very quickly. We are celebrating 30 years in China, our foundations are strong. Our team is executing at a high level. Given all of this, I am not surprised by this performance and I believe China will continue to be a very meaningful growth engine for core record going forward. We're looking forward to sharing more with you about our businesses in China and India, as well as some of our high potential markets across the area at our record focus on emerging markets event on December 4th. For the group, we delivered like-for-like net revenue growth of 7% in the quarter, driven by core record and meat Johnson nutrition, which was up 22%, cycling its most impacted quarter following the Mount Vernon tornado. This was marginally offset by a 4.9% decline in essential home, where we remain on track to complete our announced investment by the end of the year. Overall, we are continuing to execute our plan and make progress against our strategy, delivering results from our sharpened operating structure and enhanced focus on our power brands. Let me now pass you to Shannon to take you through our group and segment performance in Q3 and the drivers behind it.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning. In Q3, we delivered like-for-like net revenue growth of 7% across the group, taking our 2025 year-to-date performance up to 3.3%. Within core record, Q3 like-for-like net revenue growth was 6.7%, taking our year-to-date performance to 5%. As expected, all three of our areas were in growth in Q3. This was led by emerging markets with like-for-like net revenue growth up 15.5%, delivering balanced growth with 7.4% volume growth and 8.1% price mix. As Chris highlighted, China's continued strength has been driven by our executional excellence, with share gains across key power brands in intimate wellness and germ protection, as well as a strong performance in the VMS segment of self-care. India grew low single digit in the quarter, with the change to GST resulting in a shift of trade orders to Q4. Sellout remains strong, and year-to-date, our like-for-like net revenue growth in India remains at high single digits. Performance was mixed across our LATAM business in Q3, with a challenging consumer environment in Brazil impacting growth across self-care and intimate wellness, while we delivered encouraging growth across all categories in Mexico. Now moving to our developed markets, in Europe, Market-wide category growth was broadly flat in the quarter. Against this backdrop, Europe delivered 0.8% like-for-like net revenue growth, with volumes at minus 0.5% and price nicks of 1.3%. The area continues to deliver sequential improvement in volumes, up from minus 4.7% in Q1 and minus 1.9% in Q2. We continue to drive premiumization and innovation contributing to positive mix. The launch of direct intensity across a number of markets has driven strong growth for us across the category already delivering high rankings on Amazon and high single digit market share across the total condom category in France. We're continuing to launch into more markets through Q4. Despite some softness in seasonal self-care, non-seasonal OTC performed strongly, driven by the continued success of Gaviscon, as well as benefits from the launch of Nurofen mini liquid capsules during the year. Moving to North America, where volume growth of 2.3% and price mix of minus 1% delivered like-for-like net sales growth of 1.3%. Growth in North America was driven by our non-seasonal brands, which delivered mid-single-digit like-for-like growth in Q3. Lysol delivered high single-digit growth across its broadened portfolio, including laundry and air sanitizers, as well as core disinfection. Finish performance was resilient, and within non-seasonal self-care, Nereva delivered a good performance. Our seasonal self-care OTC brands declined mid-single digits in the context of double-digit category declines across the market. This was a function of lapping a COVID spike in Q3 of 2024. While we expect the challenging growth environment in our developed markets to continue, we will benefit from ongoing innovation launches and our premiumization strategy across our power brands. Now, moving on to our global categories. Across self-care, seasonal OTC brands declined low single digits, predominantly in North America, as already mentioned. Excluding seasonal OTC, self-care delivered 12.3% like-for-like net revenue growth in Q3, led by strong growth in our VMS portfolio, particularly in China, and this was supported by Gaviscon and Neurofin performance in Europe. For the category as a whole, we delivered 5.6% like-for-like growth in Q3. Germ protection delivered 9.2% like-for-like net revenue growth, led by double-digit growth in Dettol, as the brand benefited from new innovations and go-to-market excellence across our emerging markets. Lysol delivered volume-led, high single-digit growth in North America. And Harpic showed strong performance in emerging markets, while in Europe, growth was tempered by the more challenging environment. Household care was resilient in Q3, growing 0.2% on a like-for-like basis. Finnish grew low single-digit, benefiting from our continued category penetration in emerging markets alongside our premiumization strategy. Spanish delivered growth in emerging markets, offset by a mid-single-digit decline in Europe. Our intimate wellness category continued to deliver very strong growth with like-for-like net revenues up 13.5% in Q3. Alongside direct intensity in Europe, we're driving share gains across emerging markets led by China with our upgraded lubricants and benzocaine condoms. BEAT delivered double-digit growth in emerging markets with mid-single-digit growth across Europe. And Intima continues to perform very strongly in China, with the brand more than doubling net revenue in 2025 on a like-for-like basis. Turning to our non-core segments, B. Johnson Nutrition grew like-for-like net revenue 22%, with a volume increase of 12.4% and price mix of 9.6%. As you'll recall, the prior year comparative net revenue was significantly impacted by the Mount Vernon tornado, which destroyed Mead Johnson's primary U.S. warehouse in July of 2024. The business is returning to more normalized underlying growth and has now regained its market share leadership in North America. Outside of North America, the international business grew low single digit in the quarter. Essential Homes' like-for-like net revenue was down 4.9% in Q3, reflecting volume growth of 0.6% and a price mix impact of negative 5.5%. The European business is delivering as expected. However, Essential Homes' performance continues to be significantly impacted by a tough Brazil pest season comp, as well as continued underperformance in U.S. air care. We now expect essential home like-for-like net revenue to decline mid-single digits for full year 2025. Turning to our share buyback, where alongside our half-won results in July, we announced another £1 billion program, which began on the 28th of July. As of this morning, you'll see we've completed the first £250 million tranche of this program. Finally, turning to guidance. We maintain our fiscal year 25 outlook, which we upgraded in July. We expect group like-for-like net revenue growth of plus 3% to plus 4%. And in core record, we expect to target above 4% net revenue like-for-like growth for the year. Our fuel for growth program is expected to help drive adjusted operating profit ahead of net revenue growth. and we expect to deliver another year of adjusted diluted EPS growth. With that, let me hand it back to Chris to wrap up.