Croda: Sales at FTSE 100 chemicals firm boom
Sales at FTSE 100 chemicals firm Croda International jumped by eight per cent in the first quarter of 2025, thanks to strong performance across all arms of its business.
Every arm of the cosmetics, detergents and pesticides chemicals provider recorded positive growth. Life sciences achieved the best performance the company has revealed in a stock exchange update.
“Good sales growth was driven by higher sales volumes with the price/mix headwinds we saw in 2024 starting to diminish,” said Croda.
Across the four arms of Croda’s consumer care business, only beauty actives experienced a dip in sales, while fragrance and flavours grew by 19 per cent compared to the previous year.
In the FTSE 100 firm’s life sciences arm, crop protection and seed enhancement both recorded sales growth in the teens, while pharma grew seven per cent compared to the previous year.
Croda’s adjusted profit before tax in the first quarter was in line with the firm’s expectations, it added, and left profit guidance unchanged at between £265m and £295m for 2025.
“Although our well-balanced local manufacturing and procurement model helps to mitigate our direct exposure to tariffs, we are assessing the likely impact, talking to our customers and intend to apply a tariff surcharge to cover any associated incremental costs,” said the firm.
Croda has been struggling with stock price performance in recent years, falling 19 per cent since the start of the year and 74 per cent since its peak in December 2021.
The firm also added that it had continued to successfully implement its £25m cost-saving plan, and had improved asset utilisation at its 11 shared manufacturing sites.