KitKat and Nescafé coffee maker Nestlé has revealed its net profits tumbled by 45% as cost inflation led the global food and drink giant to hike up the prices of its products. The Switzerland-headquartered company, which owns some of the world’s biggest food brands, said its net profits fell to 9.3 billion Swiss francs (£8.4 billion) in 2022, down from 16.9 billion Swiss francs (£15.2 billion) in 2021.
The decline comes despite the group pushing up the prices of its products by 8.2% throughout the year. The price rises drove up the group’s total reported sales by 8.4% to a massive 94.4 billion Swiss francs (£85 billion), from 87 billion Swiss francs (£78 billion) a year earlier.
But real internal growth, a measure of the volume of sales, edged up by just 0.1%, meaning shoppers spent more money on broadly the same amount of products. In its key market in North America, real internal growth slipped by 1.3% over the year, and weakened further in the last three months of the year with a decline of 4.9%.
