Henkel lifts 2026 sales outlook after pricing drives Q3 beat

Oct 29 (Reuters) - Germany's Henkel slightly upgraded its 2026 sales outlook on Thursday after stronger-than-expected pricing helped organic sales beat forecasts in the third quarter, despite mounting raw-material cost pressures.

With Henkel seeing stronger growth across both its consumer and adhesives businesses, investors are looking for signs that momentum in the higher-margin Adhesive Technologies division can continue to support profitable growth.

• The consumer goods and adhesives maker now expects 2026 organic sales to grow by 3% to 4%, up from previous expectations of between 1.5% to 3.5%.

• The company now expects direct-material prices to rise around 10% from the previous year's average, up from its earlier forecast for a high-single-digit increase.

• It sees restructuring expenses at 200 million to 250 million euros, versus 150 million to 200 million euros previously.

• In the third quarter, the Persil-maker's organic sales grew 6.5%, ahead of a Vara consensus that expected a 4.1% increase.

• Henkel's Adhesive Technologies unit reported third-quarter organic sales growth of 7.9%, driven primarily by strong pricing.

• Its Consumer Brands unit grew 4.8% organically, helped by pricing and volume growth.

• Shares were up 1.3% at 0917 GMT, with analysts at Bernstein noting that the majority of growth in the quarter came from pricing which at 5.4% at a group level was ahead of consensus expectations of 2.6%.

• "The broad based nature of the beat, with both Adhesives and Consumer significantly outperforming expectations, and volumes ahead of consensus despite the big step up in pricing are strongly positive signs," Bernstein added.

(Reporting by Paolo Laudani, Editing by Friederike Heine and Bartosz Dabrowski)