Nestlé сменила стратегию: приоритетом стала реальная внутренняя прибыль вместо слияний и роста цен

Nestlé growth strategy overview Nestlé prioritises RIG growth over pricing, acquisitions and portfolio changes Coffee and Petcare remain central to Nestlé’s growth ambitions Emerging markets growth is driven primarily by market share gains China recovery continues through operational simplification and consumer focus Future success depends on execution, targeted investment and innovation For years, Nestlé’s strategy has been firmly focused on growth through scale. It’s expanded rapidly across the globe and established the world’s biggest brand portfolio in the process. But times are changing and scale no longer automatically equals success. In fact, it’s increasingly being seen as a limitation. As a result, Nestlé’s shifting away from scale and towards targeted investment in high-growth opportunities. A strategy underpinned by a renewed focus on real internal growth (RIG). Nestlé’s new strategy The Swiss multinational’s switched to prioritising real internal growth, rather than relying on pricing, portfolio changes and acquisitions. “RIG is my specialist subject and a huge priority for us,” says executive vice president, Anna Olive Manz while speaking at the Barclays Global Consumer Conference. “Driving growth drives margin, drives cash, drives all of it.” And the strategy appears to be working. “We’ve now had four solid quarters of RIG-led growth,” she says. Though the infant formula crisis continues to weigh on the company’s performance, despite “steady progress” made in the category’s recovery. Selective investment Another sizable shift in Nestlé’s business strategy is what Manz describes as a move away from “averaging” investment across the portfolio. Historically, Nestlé applied similar performance expectations to all categories. Now, it’s concentrating resources on its strongest performers, including cold coffee, ready-to-drink (RTD) coffee and therapeutic pet nutrition. And to make sure the business continues to invest in the highest-growth categories, performance is now tracked quarterly rather than annually. This goes for marketing too, with the business reducing the number of brands it’s putting media investment into from 400 down to to 120. That’s a huge reduction, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the 280 brands losing media investment are losing out completely. “They’re things like Carnation milk,” says Manz. “You don’t need media on Carnation milk. You need brilliant in-store promo, you need brilliant activation, but not media. So getting super clear on what needs what.” Coffee and Petcare lead Nestlé announced the establishment of its Four Pillars – Food & Snacks, Coffee, Nutrition, and Petcare – in February. And, while all remain fundamental to the food and beverage giant’s future, Coffee and Petcare sit at the centre of its long-term growth ambitions. Coffee’s evolving far beyond its traditional role as a hot breakfast beverage, with Nestlé seeing significant opportunities in cold coffee, RTD formats, functional beverages and products designed for younger consumers. Innovations such as Starbucks Refreshers Concentrate are intended to expand coffee consumption into entirely new occasions. Meanwhile, Petcare continues to be one of Nestlé’s most fast-growing and dynamic categories, with emphasis being placed on premium wet cat food, where innovation and consumer willingness to trade up are driving strong growth. “Cats from a CFO’s perspective are brilliant,” says Manz. “They’re super picky eaters. So if you give them a better food, they won’t go back and eat the old food. And that’s why being able to innovate into the cat space is wonderful, because it gives the opportunity for the consumer to trade up.” Beyond its core categories, the company’s also benefiting from strong momentum in emerging markets. Emerging markets Nestlé’s strongest growth momentum is currently coming from emerging markets. Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa has seen widespread growth, with countries including Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines proving to be increasingly important for the multinational. This, says Manz, is driven less by improvements in local economies and more by Nestlé’s ability to gain market share through stronger execution and innovation. “It’s not consumption driving growth. It’s market share-led growth.” And that distinction matters. If Nestlé can continue gaining share through innovation and improved execution, growth becomes more durable and less dependent on economic cycles. However, not all emerging markets are following the same trajectory. While Nestlé’s gaining momentum across much of Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa, China remains a more complex turnaround story. China Weak category growth and soft consumer demand continue to stifle growth in China. As a result Nestlé has spent the past 12 months shifting away from a distribution-led model, which prioritised expanding reach into lower-tier cities across the Asian nation, and towards a strategy centred on consumer demand and consumption. That’s involved simplifying distribution networks, reducing excess inventory, streamlining sales teams and cutting the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs) on shelves. It’s also become more targeted in its approach to innovation and marketing, focusing on the products and consumer trends that are most likely to drive demand. And early signs, says Manz, are encouraging, with “good progress overall”. Market share is beginning to stabilise in several categories and some businesses, including ready-to-drink coffee, are showing improved volume trends. But there’s a long way to go. “It’s going to take us a little bit of time to go from a share loss situation to consistently holding share and then outperforming our categories.” North America While growth is accelerating in many parts of the business, North America remains a key area of focus. Representing roughly a third of Nestlé’s sales, the region recorded flat RIG in the second quarter, a performance Manz described as “not acceptable”. Importantly, she doesn’t believe weakening consumer demand is the primary issue. Instead, she points to a combination of category-specific challenges in frozen food, ongoing efforts to turn around the Gerber infant nutrition business and operational issues within Coffee Mate creamers. “The consumer is weak in North America, but it hasn’t deteriorated.” In other words, if Nestlé can improve execution in underperforming businesses while maintaining momentum in stronger categories such as Coffee and Petcare, North America could become a significant contributor to future growth. The same focus on execution is also shaping how the business thinks about its wider portfolio, particularly with regards to mergers and acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions The world’s biggest CPG has been actively reshaping its portfolio, selling its mainstream VMS business, 50% of its Waters business and exiting Ice Cream in the past year. Yet transformational deals are not a priority. Instead, Nestlé’s focus is on extracting greater value from the businesses it already owns. “The single biggest way for us to drive shareholder returns right now is organic growth, accelerating growth, improving margins, improving cash returns,” she explains. “And when we’ve got the businesses we own really motoring, that puts us in much better shape to do bolt-ons. It also means if we dispose of anything, we’re disposing of it at higher value.” Nestlé’s focus on organic growth and value creation is also shaping how it approaches one of the industry’s biggest emerging opportunities – artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is a subject Nestlé and everybody else is in the industry is “very focused on” says Manz. The multinational’s already monitoring how consumers use AI tools to search within its categories, analysing the prompts they enter and the types of questions they ask. Understanding that behaviour is becoming increasingly important as AI begins to influence purchasing decisions in much the same way that search engines and social media have done over the past two decades. The company’s also tracking how its brands appear in AI-generated responses and measuring how often Nestlé products, websites and research are referenced when consumers seek advice on topics ranging from nutrition to confectionery. Manz believes the company’s vast library of scientific research, nutritional expertise and consumer insights could become a competitive advantage in an AI-driven world. It’s not just about showing up well as a brand name, she explains. It’s about being one of the cited places that the LLMs, go to for information. As AI increasingly becomes a gateway between consumers and brands, that could prove critical. Beyond scale The Nestlé of the future is likely to look very different from the one we know now. Rather than spreading investment evenly across categories and geographies, the company’s progressively directing resources towards those that promise the strongest growth and highest returns. In doing so, it’s betting on disciplined execution and targeted investment, rather than scale alone, to define its long-term success.