Strong organic sales have boosted Church & Dwight’s second quarter results with an adjusted EPS of $0.73 or a 12.3 per cent year on year increase.

Net sales for the same quarter increased $38.8 million, equivalent to a 4.8 per cent growth to $847.1 million, while organic sales registered a growth of 5.1 per cent. The US personal care provider reported a boost in organic results driven by volume growth of 4.5 per cent and 0.6 per cent favourable product mix and pricing. 

Some of the key figures include: consumer domestic sales seeing a 6.6 per cent increase, while consumer international net sales saw a decline of 4.2 per cent, mainly due to negative foreign exchange impacts. Speciality products saw an increase of 7 per cent, while the gross margin decreased 10 basis points to 44 per cent in the second quarter, compared to 44.1 per cent in the comparable period in 2014.

“We are extremely pleased with the sales and earnings growth in both the second quarter and first half of 2015,” says James Craigie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “The strong momentum we ended 2014 with has continued in the first six months of 2015. Our strong organic growth was driven by innovative new products launched in all of our major categories as we believe that innovation is the key to increasing our market share and reviving category growth in this challenging economy. The results to date are promising, as three out of four megabrands achieved share growth or were flat in the second quarter.”

Speaking about the outlook for the rest of the year, Craigie says, “We continue to expect organic sales growth of approximately 3 per cent in 2015 behind new product introductions on our core business. We expect gross margin to expand by approximately 25 to 35 basis points.”