NEW YORK — Global net sales for Hill’s Pet Nutrition totaled $794 million in the second quarter of Colgate-Palmolive’s fiscal 2021 year, up 18% from year-ago revenue. The company shared on July 30 its earnings for the three-month period ended June 30.

Organic sales were up 15% and pricing rose 4.5% over the quarter compared to year-ago figures. Operating profit totaled $212 million, up 11% from last year’s second quarter.

Six-month sales for the science-based pet nutrition segment totaled $1.58 billion, up 13.6% from the first six months of fiscal 2020.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition currently represents 19% of Colgate-Palmolive’s total company sales, effectively making it the company’s third-most profitable business behind North America and Latin America segments, each at 21% of total sales.

“In particular, we are seeing good results from our Hill's master brand campaign to end pet obesity as well as our new campaign for Hill's Pet Essentials, our vet distributed wellness product in Europe,” said John Faucher, chief investor relations officer at Colgate-Palmolive.

The United States, Latin America and Europe were the three driving regions behind Hill’s organic sales growth.

“Hill's had another fantastic quarter,” said Noel Wallace, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Colgate-Palmolive. “…We're hitting on all cylinders on that business. Growth is across the world. We had all of our regions up with exception of Japan. Market share is up across the board typically and where we're gaining market share is mainly in the US, which is our largest market as you know.

“We saw a good share growth across most retail environments, both on the base business, the Science Diet business as well as the Prescription Diet business – that's behind a continued focus on the strategy, which is the core renovation, premium innovation, new channels, in this case continuing to grow online as well as farm and feed,” Wallace continued. “So, across the board, very strong growth and we continue to obviously invest for growth in that business, and that continues to be the strategy moving into the back half of this year.”

The company cited higher raw material and packaging materials costs and increased ad investment for a decrease in operating profit as a percentage of net sales for the second quarter. These impacts were partially offset by higher pricing and strategic cost savings, Colgate-Palmolive reported.

“Despite significant raw material and logistics cost headwinds, we delivered another quarter of increased operating profit, net income and earnings per share on a Base Business basis,” Wallace said. “We expect the difficult cost environment to continue in the back half of the year and we remain sharply focused on our funding the growth and revenue growth management initiatives.”

Total net sales for Colgate-Palmolive totaled $4.26 billion in the second quarter, up 9.5% from year-ago sales.

A Kansas federal judge recently approved an initial $12.5 million settlement involving Hill’s Pet Nutrition and a class action lawsuit representing 71 people. The settlement would resolve a lengthy class action lawsuit claiming damages related to the company’s widespread dog food recall in January 2019.

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