Kimberly-Clark Stock Slips After Q4 Profit Misses Estimates: Retail's Bullish

synopsis

Shares of Kimberly-Clark Corp. ($KMB) slipped 1.5% on Tuesday after the company reported lower-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, but retail stayed bullish.

Kimberly-Clark said adjusted earnings per share (EPS) stood at $1.50, missing consensus estimates of $1.51, according to Fly.com.  

Its Q4 revenue came in at $4.93 billion, down 0.8% compared to the year-ago period. Revenue beat consensus estimates of $4.86 billion. The company credited the top-line growth to “upward inflection” in volume-plus-mix, improved productivity, and ongoing investments.

Its North America net sales of $2.7 billion decreased 0.5% in the fourth quarter, but organic sales increased 1.1%, driven mainly by volume growth of 1.9%.

For 2025, it expects adjusted earnings per share to grow at a mid-to-high single-digit rate on a constant-currency basis. It also currently expects 2025 organic sales growth to outpace the weighted average growth in the categories and countries where it operates, the company said.

Sentiment on Stocktwits improved to ‘bullish’ from ‘neutral’ a day ago. Message volumes were in the ‘extremely high’ zone.

KMB sentiment meter and message volumes on Jan 29 as of 5:06 am ET

"2024 was a breakthrough year for Kimberly-Clark with the launch of our transformative, multi-year Powering Care strategy and successfully rewiring our organization into three powerhouse segments with world-class functional support," said Mike Hsu, Kimberly-Clark’s chairman and CEO. "Our full-year results exceeded our new long-term growth algorithm - supported by consistent execution across the organization - and we established a strong foundation to accelerate our strategy in 2025 and beyond."

Kimberly-Clark also declared an increased quarterly dividend of $1.26 per share, payable on April 2, 2025, to stockholders of record at the close of business on March 7, 2025.

Kimberly-Clark brands include such names as Huggies, Kleenex, Cottonelle, Poise, Depend, Andrex, Intimus, Plenitud, and Sweety.

Kimberly-Clark stock is down 1.2% year-to-date.

For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.<