Colgate-Palmolive achieves organic growth in Q3 2014

Colgate-Palmolive has expressed satisfaction with its third-quarter results for 2014, having achieved a net sales total of $4.38 billion (2.72 billion pounds).

This represented a year-on-year organic sales increase of 3.5 percent, although this was counterbalanced by negative foreign exchange trends, resulting in a bottom-line decrease of 0.5 percent.

Despite this, operating profit margins and net income as a percentage of sales both rose compared to Q3 2013, with the company's leading global market shares in toothpaste and manual toothbrushes remain strong at 44.6 percent and 33.4 percent, respectively.

The firm's mouthwash division continued to make gains and the corporate restructuring programme also showed good progress, putting Colgate on target for solid organic sales growth for 2014 as a whole.

Ian Cook, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Colgate, said: "We are pleased to have achieved another quarter of broad-based organic sales growth and higher profitability, despite difficult economic conditions worldwide."

Earlier this month, the firm declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.36 per common share, payable on November 14th 2014. It has paid uninterrupted dividends on its common stock since 1895.