Procter & Gamble Posts Upbeat Q2 Earnings, But Sales Drop

Procter & Gamble Co (NYSE: PG) reported better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based company posted quarterly net income of $521 million, or $0.18 per share, compared to $2.58 billion, or $0.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Excluding non-recurring items, the company's core earnings rose 8 percent year-over-year to $1 per share. Its sales slipped 9.2 percent to $17.79 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.95 per share on revenue of $17.98 billion. The average estimate among 19 Estimize users was for earnings of $0.95 per share and revenue of $18.06 billion.In fiscal year 2015, beauty, hair and personal care organic sales declined 1 percent, while grooming organic sales gained 1 percent. Its health care organic sales gained 4 percent for fiscal year 2015, while fabric care and home care organic sales rose 2 percent. Baby, feminine and family care organic sales climbed 3 percent for fiscal year 2015."In fiscal 2015, P&G delivered strong, double-digit constant currency core EPS growth and very good free cash flow productivity of over 100% on modest organic sales growth," said Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer A.G. Lafley. "We made significant productivity gains and have largely executed the reshaping of our business portfolio. Going forward, our objective is to deliver balanced results across the three main drivers of operating total shareholder return - sales growth, operating profit margin expansion and free cash flow generation."For fiscal 2016, Procter & Gamble projects core EPS growth to be slightly below to up mid-single digits, compared to $3.77 per share in fiscal 2015. It expects organic sales growth to be in-line to up low-single digits from fiscal 2015.Procter & Gamble shares fell 0.27 percent to $80.40 in pre-market trading.