BOSTON — Nestle SA has “more to be done” in its North America business after a disappointing second quarter, said Anna Manz, chief financial officer.
In a Sept. 8 presentation at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference in Boston, Manz said that while the consumer environment in North America has been weak, it was not the driver of the company’s poor performance in the region. Instead, she pointed to two key factors.
First, weak category growth in frozen food.
“There, the category as a whole is in slight decline,” Manz said. “It plays to the more challenged area of the consumer. Equally, there are big pockets in that category that are growing much faster. And the sorts of trends that — where we’re seeing that faster growth is around world cuisine, around high fiber, high protein, around actually the very small pack sizes or the single pack sizes and then the big…
