Nestle CEO’s past may keep it from giving up sugar

Risk is back on, so who needs chocolate? Nestle SA needs to roll with the times, and investors have a lot of optimism that its brand-new Chief Executive Officer, Ulf Mark Schneider, can produce a quick change of gear.
He’s certainly got the right background, but the tactics Nestle needs aren’t in his DNA. Investors should tread cautiously.
The 150-year-old Swiss stalwart, like rivals Unilever NV, Danone SA and Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, is confronting the sharp end of the Great Rotation — the global move into higher-yielding investments means the stability of the big consumer goods groups is out of favor. They’re also all facing sluggish demand as emerging markets run out of steam, food prices fall and people’s tastes change.
The problem’s particularly acute for Nestle, given that 2016 may be the fourth consecutive year that its misses its target of organic growth of between 5 percent and 6 percent.
Schneider, who takes up his role on Jan. 1, was a surprise pick to lead the company — he’s the first outsider in the top job since 1922. He certainly had a strong track record during his 13 years at the helm of fast-growing healthcare group Fresenius SE. There, he delivered an average annual return of 23 percent, more than double both Nestle and the Stoxx 600 Index. But Nestle is a very different beast. To whip it into shape, Schneider’s going to need to wield the ax on some of its poorer performers.
One obvious issue is that the company still generates 83 percent of its revenue from food and beverages, a lower-growth business. At Unilever, the figure is just 43 percent — it’s been quicker at diversifying out of the sector and building its home and personal care business.
To make a start, Schneider should sell off US prepared food. The division, which includes Stouffer’s frozen meals, DiGiorno pizza and Hot Pockets frozen sandwiches, has suffered as consumers turned to healthier alternatives. It could be worth about $10 billion to $15 billion, according to Martin Deboo, analyst at Jefferies Group.
He should also exit global confectionery, where it’s clearly neither a leader nor in second place, in part because of a failure to innovate in premium chocolate. That could be worth about $20 billion, according to Deboo.
Still, these moves should leave Schneider with a formidable war chest to invest in what Nestle sees as its future engine of growth: health science, including medical nutrition and skin remedies.
Given his healthcare background, the hope is that he can turbo-charge this division, which accounted for 16.7
percent of sales in 2015.
It needs help — it should be driving diversification from food, but over the past two years, growth has slowed. Schneider needs to get this business moving in the right direction.
But it’s not a foregone conclusion that Schneider will break out the knives. He’s a deal junkie. At Fresenius his strategy was to acquire and build, and he made more than a dozen purchases in hospitals, medical care, drug infusion and medical nutrition, though he did sell some units. Hiving off some key Nestle divisions may force him to change his spots. Investors don’t seem to have any doubts right now. Nestle is trading at a slight premium to Unilever on a forward price earnings ratio basis. That looks optimistic, particularly given that Unilever just won fans with plans to lift margins.
Given the weight of expectation on Schneider’s shoulders, without an early sign of a broad reshaping, Nestle is more exposed than rivals to the new
appetite for risk.

—Bloomberg