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Hamburg (dpa) - The consumer goods group Beiersdorf did significantly less business than hoped because of the corona pandemic last year.
Sales were at EUR 7.025 billion, 8.2 percent below the previous year's level, as the company announced on Tuesday.
"Organically", that is, from its own resources, the company reports a drop in sales of just 5.7 percent.
Worldwide corona-related restrictions in important markets and travel restrictions would have significantly impaired business development - especially in the second quarter.
The group profit shrank by 19.3 percent to 636 million euros.
Despite some uncertainties, CEO Stefan De Loecker is optimistic about the financial year 2021. He is confident that “with the start of vaccinations in many countries we will see significant improvements by the end of the year”.
He also announced that he would increase investments.
“Our brands have become more attractive.
And we want to expand that with additional investments of 300 million euros over the next five years. "
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Sales in the Consumer Business Segment fell organically by 6.6 percent to 5.7 billion euros in the 2020 financial year - although it would have fallen even further without the well-developing brands Eucerin and Aquaphor.
Beiersdorf posted sales growth of 8.3 percent for them.
Beiersdorf also had to accept a decline of 6.0 percent for its core brand Nivea, but according to the information it was able to gain market share in more than half of the countries.
In the Healthcare division - that is essentially the plaster business for the Hansaplast brand - sales were 5.9 percent below the previous year's level and were particularly affected by Corona restrictions in Spain and Italy.
At the luxury cosmetics brand La Prairie, sales fell by 23.9 percent due to the pandemic, due to the significantly lower travel volume and the associated decline in sales in the important travel retail business.
Even double-digit growth in China could not compensate for that.
The business of the Beidersdorf subsidiary Tesa has, according to the information, recovered from the crisis.
After a difficult first half of the year and a significantly better second half of the year, Tesa turned over around 1.325 billion euros in the 2020 financial year.
The Beiersdorf subsidiary came up to 1.5 percent of the previous year's level of 1.379 billion euros.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210216-99-469654 / 2
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