Henkel to lose momentum in 2023 after jump in sales

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany's Henkel said on Tuesday that it expects slower industrial and consumer demand to curtail sales growth this year after price increases helped organic sales to jump 8.8% in 2022.

The consumer goods company forecast organic sales to grow between 1% and 3% from the 22.39 billion euros ($23.91 billion) reached in 2022.

Despite the increase in sales, Henkel posted a 13.7% drop in adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) to 2.3 billion euros in 2022, largely due to higher material prices and logistics costs, as well as rising energy prices.

The maker of Persil detergents and Schwarzkopf haircare products said it would focus on efficiency this year and aims to increase adjusted return on sales to 10-12% from 8.1% in 2022.

Henkel said it plans to propose an unchanged dividend of 1.85 euros per preferred share and 1.83 euros per ordinary share for 2022.

Chief Executive Carsten Knobel merged the ailing cosmetics business with the detergents division last year in an effort to growth the business and cut costs.

($1 = 0.9362 euros)

(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi, Writing by Friederike Heine, Editing by Miranda Murray, Kirsti Knolle)