Dow Jones Newswires: Danone posts higher sales, but cuts full-year guidance

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Danone SA said Friday that sales for its third quarter grew at an accelerated pace, but adjusted its guidance to lower expectations for its like-for-like sales growth in 2019.

The French food company BN, -0.63%  said sales came to 6.42 billion euros ($7.13 billion), up from EUR6.19 billion the year previous and better than analysts’ consensus expectations of EUR6.37 billion.

On a like-for-like basis, sales rose 3%, Danone said.

Despite its sales growth accelerating compared with the previous quarter, some of the headwinds Danone had flagged during second-quarter reporting didn’t ease in the third quarter, management said during a conference call Friday morning. Danone cited tough comparison bases in Europe for its waters business in particular.

Danone widened its guidance of like-for-like sales growth toward the lower end. It now sees like-for-like sales growing 2.5%-3%, compared with previous guidance of 3%. For the first nine months of the year, like-for-like sales grew 2.1%, the maker of Activia and Alpro said.

Danone backed its target of having a recurring operating margin above 15% for 2019.