Tag: Cl

Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL) Lowered to Hold at Hsbc Global Res

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Hsbc Global Res cut shares of Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL – Free Report) from a strong-buy rating to a hold rating in a research note published on Friday, Zacks.com reports.

A number of other research analysts have also issued reports on the stock. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their price target on shares of Colgate-Palmolive from $95.00 to $105.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Monday, July 22nd. Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of Colgate-Palmolive from $100.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, July 10th. TD Cowen initiated coverage on shares of Colgate-Palmolive in a report on Tuesday, July 23rd. They set a buy rating and a $110.00 price objective on the stock. Citigroup boosted their price objective on shares of Colgate-Palmolive from $103.00 to $112.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, July 10th. Finally, Evercore ISI boosted their price objective on shares of Colgate-Palmolive from $100.00 to $106.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Thursday, July 18th. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $99.42.

Get Our Latest Report on CL

Colgate-Palmolive Trading Up 1.5 %

Shares of Colgate-Palmolive stock opened at $100.88 on Friday. Colgate-Palmolive has a 52-week low of $67.62 and a 52-week high of $101.42. The company has a quick ratio of 0.28, a current ratio of 0.42 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 13.21. The company’s 50-day simple moving average is $95.96 and its 200-day simple moving average is $90.34. The firm has a market cap of $82.77 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.92, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.57 and a beta of 0.39.

Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE:CL – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, July 26th. The company reported $0.91 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.87 by $0.04. Colgate-Palmolive had a net margin of 14.21% and a return on equity of 470.19%. The business had revenue of $5.06 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $5 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.77 earnings per share. The business’s revenue was up 4.9% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that Colgate-Palmolive will post 3.55 earnings per share for the current year.

Colgate-Palmolive Dividend Announcement

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, August 15th. Stockholders of record on Friday, July 19th will be paid a $0.50 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Friday, July 19th. This represents a $2.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.98%. Colgate-Palmolive’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 63.29%.

Insider Activity

In other Colgate-Palmolive news, insider John W. Kooyman sold 3,497 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $93.47, for a total transaction of $326,864.59. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 3,181 shares in the company, valued at approximately $297,328.07. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In other news, insider Sally Massey sold 12,226 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, May 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $94.06, for a total value of $1,149,977.56. Following the transaction, the insider now directly owns 13,924 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,309,691.44. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, insider John W. Kooyman sold 3,497 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, May 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $93.47, for a total transaction of $326,864.59. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 3,181 shares in the company, valued at $297,328.07. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 0.34% of the company’s stock.

Institutional Inflows and Outflows

Large investors have recently modified their holdings of the business. Signaturefd LLC increased its holdings in shares of Colgate-Palmolive by 26.5% in the 2nd quarter. Signaturefd LLC now owns 17,705 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,718,000 after acquiring an additional 3,711 shares during the period. Arjuna Capital increased its holdings in shares of Colgate-Palmolive by 0.8% in the 2nd quarter. Arjuna Capital now owns 38,004 shares of the company’s stock worth $3,688,000 after acquiring an additional 314 shares during the period. Bank OZK acquired a new stake in shares of Colgate-Palmolive in the 2nd quarter worth about $212,000. Main Street Research LLC increased its holdings in shares of Colgate-Palmolive by 1.5% in the 2nd quarter. Main Street Research LLC now owns 6,939 shares of the company’s stock worth $673,000 after acquiring an additional 100 shares during the period. Finally, HighMark Wealth Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Colgate-Palmolive in the 2nd quarter worth about $291,000. 80.41% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Colgate-Palmolive Company Profile

(Get Free Report)

Colgate-Palmolive Company, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells consumer products in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Oral, Personal and Home Care; and Pet Nutrition. The Oral, Personal and Home Care segment offers 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 related items.

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ABMN Staff

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July 30, 2024
Want companies to lower their prices? Stop buying stuff from them.

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The thing that will make companies lower prices is if consumers stop complaining about paying more for the things they need and want, and actually start refusing to buy them.

As the U.S. corporate earnings-reporting season progresses, with earnings from major retailers Walmart Inc.
WMT,
+0.59%,
Target Corp.
TGT,
+0.10%
and Home Depot Inc.
HD,
+0.52%
on tap next week, investors can get a ground-floor view of how consumer demand may have been hurt, or not, by higher prices, and what the companies plan to do, or not do, about it.

This dynamic of how consumers adjust their spending habits when prices change is referred to by economists as the price elasticity of demand.

“ For companies to cut prices, ‘you have to have the consumer go on strike, and they’re not there yet.’”

— Jamie Cox, Harris Financial Group

Those who trust companies will choose to ratchet down prices on their own, or at least not raise them because the rise in input costs has been slowing, haven’t been listening to what the many companies have told analysts on their post-earnings-report conference calls.

Read: U.S. inflation eases again, PCE shows. Prices rise at slowest pace in almost two years.

Kraft Heinz Co.
KHC,
+0.47%
acknowledged after its second-quarter report that its relatively higher prices have hurt demand, but not by enough for the food and condiments company to consider cutting prices.

Colgate-Palmolive Co.
CL,
+0.81%
said it will continue to raise prices, even as inflation slows and selling volume declines, as the consumer-products company continues to be laser focused on boosting margins and profits.

And while PepsiCo Inc.
PEP,
+0.16%
was worried that elasticities would increase, given how its lower-income customers were being particularly pressured by inflation, the beverage and snack giant reported strong results as it witnessed “better elasticities” in most of the markets in which it operated.

“Obviously, there is still carryover pricing, and I don’t think we’ll do anything different than our normal cycles on pricing in the balance of the year,” PepsiCo Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston told analysts, according to an AlphaSense transcript.

Basically, as MarketWatch has reported, so-called greedflation is alive and well.

Jamie Cox, managing partner for Harris Financial Group, said as long as the job market stays strong, as it is now, corporate greed will continue to pay off.

“If something is more expensive, and you have a job, you’ll complain about it, but you won’t substitute it for something cheaper,” Cox said. For companies to cut prices, “you have to have the consumer go on strike, and they’re not there yet,” Cox added.

“ ‘At some point, people are going to say, “All right — enough.” ’ ”

— Paul Nolte, Murphy & Sylvest Wealth Management

The reason elasticity is so important in the current environment is that, as long as consumers continue to pay the higher prices companies are charging, inflation will remain stubbornly high, making it, in turn, more likely that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates or, at the very least, not lower them.

But the longer interest rates stay high enough to crimp economic growth, the more likely the stock market will reverse lower as recession fears rise.

“At some point, people are going to say, ‘All right — enough,’ ” said Paul Nolte, senior wealth manager and market strategist at Murphy & Sylvest Wealth Management. “But we just haven’t seen that yet.”

What is elasticity?

Economists use the term “price elasticity of demand” to refer to the way in which consumers adjust their spending habits when prices change.

“Elasticity tries to measure how much more producers will want to produce if prices rise, and how much more consumers will want to buy if prices fall,” explained Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica.

Elasticity often depends on the type of product a company sells.

For example, consumer-discretionary-goods companies that sell products and services that people want will often experience greater price elasticity than consumer-staples companies that sell things that people need, such as groceries and prescription drugs.

But even for needs, consumers often still have a choice, as less expensive generic, or private-label, alternatives may be available.

Andre Schulten, chief financial officer of consumer-staples maker Procter & Gamble Co.
PG,
+0.58%,
which recently beat earnings expectations as it continued to raise prices, telling analysts that, while there was “some trading into private label,” the overall market share of private-label products was unchanged for the year.

As Harris Financial’s Cox said, consumers may be complaining about higher prices, but they aren’t yet desperate enough to stop buying.

The Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book economic survey stated that business contacts in some districts had observed a “reluctance” to raise prices as consumers appeared to have grown more sensitive to prices, but other districts reported “solid demand” allowed companies to maintain prices and profitability.

That’s likely why companies and analysts have become less concerned about price elasticity. Based on a FactSet analysis, mentions of the word “elasticity” in press releases and conference calls of S&P 500 companies
SPX
increased as inflation and interest rates started surging in early 2022 through the end of the year.

With inflation trends softening this year, the Fed took a brief pause in raising rates in June, helping fuel further stock-market gains, before raising rates again in July.

Mentions of the word elasticity in earnings press releases and conference-call transcripts of S&P 500 companies.

FactSet

As the chart shows, “elasticity” popped up in more than 55% of earnings releases and conference calls in mid-2022, but with the second-quarter 2023 earnings-reporting season more than half over, mentions had dropped to about 20%.

Perhaps that will pick up, as retailers, especially those catering to lower-income customers — recall the PepsiCo comment — assess the demand impact of continued price increases.

Meanwhile, the branded-foods company Conagra Brands Inc.
CAG,
+0.71%,
whose wide-ranging food brands including Birds Eye, Duncan Hines, Hunt’s, Orville Redenbacher’s and Slim Jim, were starting to see the emergence of a different dynamic.

Chief Executive Sean Connolly said consumers were shifting behavior in some categories as prices remained high. Rather than trade down to lower-priced alternatives, he noticed some consumers buying fewer items overall, “more of a hunkering down than a trading down.”

That’s exactly the kind of consumer behavior that is needed, if companies are to stop feeding into the greedflation phenomenon and to start pulling back on prices.

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August 13, 2023
Environmental groups oppose pipeline expansion in Pacific NW

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SALEM, Ore. — The U.S. government has taken a step toward approving the expansion of a natural gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest — a move opposed by environmentalists and the attorneys general of Oregon, California and Washington state.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, announced Friday it has completed an environmental impact statement that concluded the project “would result in limited adverse impacts on the environment.”

“Most adverse environmental impacts would be temporary or short-term,” the federal agency said.

A grassroots coalition of environmental groups said the analysis conflicts with climate goals of Pacific Northwest states and fails “to address upstream methane emissions from the harmful practice of fracking.”

The Gas Transmission Northwest pipeline belongs to TC Energy of Calgary, Canada – the same company behind the now-abandoned Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.

Gas Transmission Northwest proposes to modify three existing compressor stations along the pipeline — in Kootenai County, Idaho; Walla Walla County, Washington; and Sherman County, Oregon — to boost capacity by about 150 million cubic feet per day of natural gas. The company says the project is necessary to meet consumer demand.

The 1,377-mile (2,216-kilomter) pipeline runs from the Canadian border, through a corner of Idaho, and into Washington state and Oregon, connecting with a pipeline going into California.

In August, the attorneys general of Oregon, Washington state and California asked the FERC to deny the proposal, saying the expansion is expected to result in more than 3.24 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, including methane and carbon dioxide.

“This project undermines Washington state’s efforts to fight climate change,” Washington state Attorney General Ferguson said back then. “This pipeline is bad for the environment and bad for consumers.”

The grassroots coalition said the federal study didn’t adequately address harmful impacts on the climate caused by the project, including by fracking to obtain the natural gas. The energy industry uses the technique to extract oil and gas from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals. But the technique increases emissions of methane, an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas.

“FERC’s approach will worsen the climate crisis, downplaying the impacts of a proposal that will pollute our communities, impact health and safety, and create millions of tons of climate-changing pollution each year,” said Lauren Goldberg, executive director of Columbia Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in Hood River, Oregon.

The regulatory commission’s study noted that its staff was unable to assess the project’s contribution to greenhouse gases “through any objective analysis.”

“Climate change is a global concern,” the federal study said. “However, for this analysis, we will focus on the existing and potential cumulative climate change impacts in the project area.”

TC Energy said Saturday that it is reviewing the environmental impact statement, which recommended a few mitigation measures.

The company has “secured long-term agreements with customers for 100% of the project capacity,” TC Energy said in an email. “This further demonstrates the need for secure energy to supplement renewables as we work toward a cleaner energy future.”

FERC is expected to make its final decision on the proposal on Feb. 16, the environmental coalition said.

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November 19, 2022
The Latest | UN Climate Summit

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister says they have concerns about an EU proposal on loss and damage funding for countries vulnerable to climate change made late Thursday at U.N. climate talks.

Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island states, said there are parts of the EU’s offer that need “adjusting,” without adding more details.

“We will wait until we meet and bilaterally to discuss the areas of concern,” he said.

Joseph met Friday with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock for talks on operationalizing loss and damage financing and said he will also hold separate talks later with China and the United States.

“We need an agreement at COP right now. That’s what we need, an agreement among all the parties,” Joseph said, adding there is a “strong possibility” to achieve an agreement on loss and damage funding by Saturday.

———

Dozens of nations spearheaded by island nation Vanuatu say they will seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on countries’ legal obligations to protect people who suffer from the impacts of climate change.

Vulnerable nations and other states, including New Zealand and the Alliance of Small Island States, supported the move.

“AOSIS will benefit greatly from this initiative … The moment of this advisory legal opinion is now,” said Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island sates.

Vanuatu environment and climate minister Ralph Regenvavu welcomed the growing coalition of nations in support of the move.

On U.N. climate talks, which are set to end today although likely to go into the weekend, Regenvavu said there was renewed hope following an EU proposal late Thursday night for a loss and damage fund.

“Overnight circumstances changed and we hope for a loss and damage deal today,” he said. “We are happy with the progress made so far.”

———

KEY DEVELOPMENTS:

— Crunch time for UN climate talks as Friday deadline looms

— EU shakes up climate talks with surprise disaster fund offer

— Confusion, finger-pointing, opposing views at Egypt’s COP27

— Politics, climate conspire as Tigris and Euphrates dwindle

———

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Friday morning that the EU’s proposal late Thursday on a fund for vulnerable countries suffering the impacts of climate change was “a big step” in U.N. climate talks in Egypt.

The talks, set to end today but likely to go into the weekend, were buoyed by the EU offer that tied loss and damage funding for nations vulnerable to climate change with cuts to planet-warming gases.

Asked whether China will participate in such a loss and damage fund, Baerbock replied: “We are arguing massively for it.”

Baerbock said that “industrial nations carry responsibility for the past” and their wealth was built on using fossil energy. She added that “now we want to take our responsibility for the future together and that’s why we are arguing so much for countries such as China but also other big emitters also to participate in the future in supporting the weakest in the world together.”

But Baerbock did not think an agreement would could quickly.

“I packed my suitcase for the whole weekend,” she told German television.

———

EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said Friday that a proposal made by the bloc on funding for loss and damage and mitigation is “a final offer” that seeks to “find a compromise” between nations as negotiators seek a way forward at the U.N. climate talks in Egypt.

The EU Executive Vice President made a surprise offer late Thursday on tying compensation for climate disasters to tougher emissions cuts.

Timmermans said he was “encouraged” by immediate reaction to the proposal and more engagement on the offer is expected Friday.

“This is about not having a failure here,” said Timmermans. “We we cannot afford to have a failure. Now, if our steps forward are not reciprocated, then obviously there will be a failure. But I hope I hope we can avoid that.”

———

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

———

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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November 18, 2022