The firms are bullish, given CL’s excellent combination of top-line growth opportunities, cost-saving initiatives, and reinvestment programs, which continue to drive strong growth for the Company.  Also, they believe Colgate has demonstrated consistently strong business fundamentals, and the Company's exceptional level of internal discipline has represented a real point of differentiation, when compared with other companies in its peer group.  Looking ahead, the firms believe the new product pipeline will enhance the Company’s growth rate.  It has the dominant share of the markets in which it operates, its daily-use products are sold at a relatively low price/unit, and it faces insignificant threat from private labels or even value brand players in most of its categories.  Colgate-Palmolive offers a better investment profile relative to its peers, even though the stock might get too expensive at a certain level, given the Company’s greater exposure to the emerging markets, lower reliance on oil-based commodities, and margin benefits from its savings programs, apart from the above-mentioned reasons.  Most of the firms based their valuation on forward EPS multiples and DCF analysis.

The firms believe that CL’s scale, its well-established, often dominant brands and deeply-entrenched distribution infrastructures, should enable it to hold or gain share in developed markets on this intensified marketing, and category growth should enable it to grow in developing markets, even if it loses some share.  Colgate is an exceptionally well-run global HPC company, whose focus on a narrow group of product segments has driven best-in-class organic revenue growth, margin expansion, and returns on invested capital.