PGHL

By Helen Reid

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Caught between rising costs from tariffs and belt-tightening consumers, big retailers are clashing with the producers of consumer brands such as Nivea-maker Beiersdorf BEIG.DE and brewer Heineken HEIN.AS, as they look to avoid sticker shock that could hurt sales.

The disputes - which have dented some brands' sales - underscore the challenge for consumer goods makers and sellers, with inflation and tariffs pushing up input costs and price spikes in commodities such as coffee.

While pricing talks have never been easy, tariffs are escalating already high food inflation since the pandemic, making grocery bills more contentious and political as consumers grapple with a cost-of-living crisis.

"We all should be very well aware of consumer budgets," Frans Muller, CEO of supermarket company Ahold Delhaize AD.AS, which owns U.S. chains Food Lion, Hannaford, and Stop & Shop, told Reuters on Wednesday.

He said conversations with consumer goods companies over pricing were "tight," adding that the industry's focus was on increasing sales volumes rather than increasing revenue by hiking prices.

"That is the wrong way of supporting customers and the wrong way of growing the business itself."

Ahold has in-house teams that track commodity, energy, and labour costs, and own-brand products it can compare with to establish whether price increases demanded by consumer brands are justified or not, Muller said.

On the other side of the equation are the brands, facing higher costs that are squeezing margins.

Beiersdorf CEO Vincent Warnery said on Wednesday that retailers in key markets, including Germany and France, had pushed back strongly in price talks last quarter, not only refusing price increases but asking for price reductions, and pulling products from shelves.

Beiersdorf eventually agreed to a 2.6% rise, Warnery said, but delistings of some products by retailers knocked two percentage points off its sales growth in Europe in the second quarter.

"There will be a lot of price changes pushed forward by consumer brands, some will be accepted by retailers and some will not," said Bobby Gibbs, a Dallas-based partner at Oliver Wyman who advises retailers and consumer goods firms.

Manufacturers will find it easier to push higher prices through on products where there is brand loyalty and fewer strong private label alternatives, Gibbs said.

Reuters' global tariff tracker shows at least 102 out of nearly 300 companies monitored by the tracker have announced price hikes in response to the trade war, with about 41 of them in the consumer sector.

As well as tariffs, other factors like the cost of capital and labour, and commodity prices in the case of coffee and chocolate, are pushing prices up on certain products, Gibbs said.

Trump has said the tariffs counter persistent U.S. trade imbalances and declining U.S. manufacturing power, and that the moves will bring jobs and investment to the nation.

MORE PRICE HIKES AHEAD

More price hikes are planned, particularly in the U.S.

Tide detergent maker Procter & Gamble PG.N last week said it was raising prices on about a quarter of its products in the U.S. by a mid-single-digit percentage as part of efforts to mitigate the cost of higher tariffs on imported goods. That will affect pricing at Walmart WMT.N, Target TGT.N, and other stores.

As talks heat up, more retailers could pull branded products temporarily as a negotiating tactic, as Ahold's Albert Heijn chain did this year in a dispute over price hikes by coffee roaster JDE Peet's.

Dutch brewer Heineken HEIN.AS last week said its beer sales were dented by a price dispute with European retailers.

"Many retailers are getting more sophisticated in how they can measure product switching ... so they're willing to be bolder on delistings because they're able to protect sales and margin more than they would have in the past," said Gibbs.

In Europe, retailers are joining forces to increase their clout in pricing talks. Carrefour CARR.PA said last month it had created a new European buying alliance called Concordis, along with rival group Coopérative U, and is in advanced discussions with other European retailers to expand the alliance.

Supermarkets are developing more own-brand alternatives to big-name brands. Ahold has introduced 300 new own-brand products this year in its U.S. chains, and sales growth in those has outpaced the rest of the store, it said.

Big brands have taken note, with P&G's Chief Financial Officer Andre Schulten saying last week that retailers have been implementing "more aggressive pricing" on own-brand products.

"We see some level of pressure to drive trade down because of price promotional behaviour," he said, referring to consumers swapping to lower-priced products, adding the market would remain "volatile and challenging".

(Reporting by Helen Reid in London and Bernadette Hogg in Gdansk; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rod Nickel)

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** Shares of Procter & Gamble Health PROR.NS rise as much as 8.6% to 5,742.40 rupees, highest since May 28, 2021

** Pharma products maker reports 25.6% rise in Q1 net profit y/y to 823.3 mln rupees ($9.8 mln); rev grows 2.8%

** More than 79,000 shares traded, 11.4x the 30-day avg; busiest day since March 27

** PROR last up 7.3%, extending YTD gains of 17.8%

($1 = 84.1230 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Meenakshi Maidas in Bengaluru)

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** India's Nifty 50 .NSEI and Sensex .BSESN drop about 0.2% each on profit-booking near record highs, and led by losses in consumer goods stocks

** Traders are booking profits after the recent record rally, and markets will remain rangebound due to lack of domestic triggers, analysts said

** Nifty FMCG index .NIFTYFMCG dropped 0.9% - top loser among 13 major sub-indexes - with all 15 constituents showing losses

** Dabur DABU.NS - the top pct loser on the index - fell 4.8% on a media report saying co's largest shareholders pulled out of buying stake in Coca-Cola KO.N India's bottling arm

** Seven of the 13 major sectoral indexes logged losses

** The more domestically-focussed Nifty mid-cap .NIFMDCP100 and small-cap .NIFMSCP100 slid 0.9% and 0.6%, respectively

(Reporting by Manvi Pant in Bengaluru)

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May 2 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Health Ltd PROR.NS:

• PROCTER & GAMBLE HEALTH MARCH-QUARTER NET PROFIT 465.6 MILLION RUPEES VERSUS 591.9 MILLION RUPEES

• PROCTER & GAMBLE HEALTH MARCH-QUARTER REVENUE FROM OPERATIONS 2.52 BILLION RUPEES VERSUS 3.21 BILLION RUPEES

Source text for Eikon: ID:nBSE2wC68D

Further company coverage: PROR.NS

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Nov 3 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Health Ltd PROR.NS:

• PROCTER & GAMBLE HEALTH LTD SEPT-QUARTER NET PROFIT 655.7 MILLION RUPEES VERSUS 636.6 MILLION RUPEES

• PROCTER & GAMBLE HEALTH LTD SEPT-QUARTER REVENUE FROM OPERATIONS 3.05 BILLION RUPEES VERSUS 2.98 BILLION RUPEES

Source text for Eikon: ID:nBSE5rK0Xy

Further company coverage: PROR.NS

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Sept 27 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Health Ltd PROR.NS:

• PLANS TO SOURCE INJECTIONS PORTFOLIO OF ITS PRODUCTS FROM A CONTRACT MANUFACTURER

• COMPANY SHALL DISCONTINUE PRODUCTION OF INJECTIONS AT ITS MANUFACTURING PLANT IN GOA EFFECTIVE SEPT 30

• DISCONTINUATION OF PRODUCTION AT CO'S GOA PLANT SHALL NOT HAVE IMPACT ON CONTINUITY OF SALE OF INJECTIONS

Source text for Eikon: ID:nBSE4Vx6wn

Further company coverage: PROR.NS

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** Shares of Procter & Gamble Health PROR.NS down as much as 5.8% to 6-week low of 5,036.1 rupees

** Stock clocks biggest intraday pct loss since March 29 and on track for a fourth consecutive session of losses

** Pharma and healthcare products maker reported a nearly 28% fall June-quarter profit

** Total expenses jumps 7.4% on higher input, employee expenses

** Trading vol by 9:36 a.m. IST is 1.6x the 30-day avg

(Reporting by Navamya Ganesh Acharya in Bengaluru)

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Aug 23 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Health Ltd PROR.NS:

• QUARTER WITNESSED CATEGORY SLOWDOWN ACROSS OUR PORTFOLIO

Source text for Eikon: ID:nBSE2xmd3f

Further company coverage: PROR.NS

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BENGALURU, June 29 (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble India said it would invest 20 billion rupees ($243.79 million) to set up a personal healthcare manufacturing facility in the western state of Gujarat.

The company will manufacture digestive products that are part of parent P&G's global healthcare product portfolio at the facility, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The facility will be operational in the next few years and become a global export hub for P&G, the Whisper sanitary napkin maker said.

The new facility spans 50,000 square meters in Sanand, Gujarat, and the investment is through an unlisted company and won't affect any listed public companies within the P&G group in India.

($1 = 82.0370 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Navamya Ganesh Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

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** Shares of Procter & Gamble Health Ltd PROR.NS rise as much as 3.40% to 4839 rupee, an one-month high

** Uptick after the pharma and healthcare products maker reports 16% Y/Y uptick in net profit in March quarter to 591.9 mln rupees

** Revenue from operations jumps 20% to 3.21 bln rupees in Q4

** Core profit rises 16% Y/Y to 796.6 mln rupees in March quarter

** Trading volume is 14,036 shares as of 12:01 p.m. IST, 1.4 times the 30-day avg - Refinitiv data

($1 = 81.7800 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru)

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