Good morning, and welcome to the Henkel Q3 2021 conference call. With us today are Carsten Knobel, CEO, Marco Swoboda, CFO, and the investor relations team. For the duration of the call, you will be on listen only. If at any time you need assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad, and you'll be connected with an operator. Please note that there will be a live webcast of today's conference call, including the Q&A session. In addition, a replay of the conference call and the Q&A session will be available on our website, www.henkel.com/ir for a certain period of time. By asking a question during the Q&A session, you agree to both the live broadcasting as well as the recording of your question, including salutation, to be published on our website. Here, we will briefly mention your name and the company you are representing.
At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Knobel. Please go ahead, sir.
Dear investors and analysts, good morning from Düsseldorf, and a warm welcome to our conference call on the results for the third quarter of 2021. I'm here with our CFO, Marco Swoboda. Thanks for joining us today. Let me remind everyone that this presentation, containing the usual form of disclaimer of forward-looking statements within the meaning of relevant U.S. legislation, can be accessed via our website, henkel.com/ir. The presentation and discussion are conducted subject to this disclaimer. I will not read this disclaimer. We take it as read into the record of this conference call. Our agenda today will focus on the key developments and our business performance of the third quarter of this year. I will start with the full picture.
Hand over to Marco, who will comment on the business performance in more detail before I will close with the full year outlook and Henkel's priorities for the remainder of this year. We are looking forward to taking your questions then at the end. Let's first have a look at the key developments. In the third quarter, Henkel sustained its growth path with a strong organic sales growth of 3.5% on group level, driven by pricing. In nominal terms, sales increased by 1.9% to a level now of about EUR 5.1 billion. Growth in the third quarter was supported by a very strong performance of Adhesive Technologies, which delivered organic sales growth of 7% against the positive prior year quarter.
Laundry and Home Care achieved good organic sales growth of 2% thanks to strong performance in laundry care and despite a very high comparable base of almost 8% in Q3 2020. Beauty Care remained below the prior year at -3%. The further recovery of the professional business could not fully compensate the decline in consumer. Here, the performance continued to be affected by significant market headwinds in the body care segment, particularly in soaps. Also, over the two-year period, Henkel achieved a strong performance with a compound annual organic growth in the third quarter at the higher end of our mid- to long-term ambition of 2%-4% organic sales growth. We performed well in a volatile and highly demanding environment.
We continue to see headwinds from extremely tight supply markets and significant input cost inflation, which intensified further in the past months. We are reflecting this in our financial outlook for the full year, which we are updating today. Based on our strong sales performance year to date, we expect to close the year well within the guidance range of 6%-8% organic sales growth. At the same time, due to the stronger input cost headwinds, we are now expecting the earnings KPIs to come in at the lower end of the prior year guidance ranges. To be more precise, we expect an adjusted EBIT margin of around 13.5% and adjusted EPS to increase by a high single-digit percentage at constant currencies.
While managing our performance in a challenging environment, we executed important initiatives to drive our Purposeful Growth agenda with full speed. Today, I will focus in particular on the progress we made in the area of competitive edge. Let's have a closer look at our two years' growth dynamics. Compared to the third quarter of 2019, we achieved a strong compound annual growth rate in organic sales of 3.7%. Importantly, for the first time, each of our three business units exceeded its respective pre-COVID levels in organic terms. Year to date, our organic sales increase is of 8.6%, which translates in an annual growth rate of 3.1% over the two years period.
A compelling performance thanks to our robust, diversified portfolio with strong brands and technologies, successful innovations for our customers and consumers, particularly in the field of sustainability and the expansion of digital. Facing a persistently challenging business environment, I'm particularly proud of the great commitment and the strong dedication of every single Henkelaner. The economic activity continued to recover in the third quarter, but as expected, growth rates were slowing compared to a very dynamic first half year and against a stronger prior year baseline. Industrial demand improved further with a mixed picture across different industries and headwinds from global supply shortages. Consumer behavior is still impacted by the pandemic, but demand continued to normalize, particularly significantly and with varying dynamics across categories. Finally, the scarcity in raw material supply and logistics with sharp and broad-based cost inflation further intensified in the course of the third quarter.
Here, let me provide you with some more details. Industrial production continued its recovery, but growth was gradually slowing after an exceptionally strong Q2. This was mainly due to the higher prior year comparable basis and stronger than anticipated headwinds in the automotive sector. Accordingly, the industrial production index advanced by about 6% year-over-year in the third quarter, after an increase of almost 18% in Q2. From a regional point of view, the growth profile was broad-based. Industrial demand expanded in all regions by a low single-digit to mid-single-digit %. The picture by segments is a bit more differentiated. Most markets relevant for our Adhesive Technologies business recorded a sustained recovery. General manufacturing and maintenance benefited from a robust demand after the recovery only gradually picked up throughout the second half last year. This is also true for the industrial business.
The markets for packaging, lifestyle and electronics continued their growth momentum. In contrast, the automotive sector turned significantly negative in Q3. Global production volumes declined by a double-digit %. Mainly as a result of the ongoing semiconductor shortage. Moving to the consumer categories, here we are seeing varying dynamics. Pandemic-related restrictions are still in place in most countries, and more recently, infection rates were on the rise again. With vaccination rates at a high level in many regions and further rising, consumer behavior and demand patterns continued to normalize in the third quarter. Demand continued to decline against elevated prior year levels in most categories that have benefited from a strong focus on hygiene and from stay-at-home effects during the pandemic. This includes hard surface cleaners as well as at-home colorations and in particular soaps that recorded a double-digit % market decline.
The category continued to be significantly affected by the strong unwinds of peak demand levels, especially in our key markets, Western Europe and North America. On a positive note, the hair salon market continued its recovery despite a less impacted prior year basis, with more salons back in operations. Demand for hair styling products sustained its rebound after it had just turned positive in the course of Q2. Finally, the heavy duty detergents and automatic dishwashing markets also showed a positive development compared to the prior year level. Supply chain headwinds are intensifying. Demand remains high across industries and consumer categories, but it meets very tight supply and logistic markets. This imbalance has been further deteriorating in the past months, not least due to container and labor shortages as well as weather-related disruptions such as the devastation from Hurricane Ida in August.
What have we been seeing in the markets in the third quarter? Prices for raw materials increased further from already high levels. Some input materials reached price levels not seen in 10 years. Logistics costs were also up, reflected by further increases of global container freight rates and increased truckload prices. This resulted in higher average shipment costs, specifically in the North American market. Supply shortages are increasingly affecting economic activity with a lasting effect. Light vehicle forecasts for the full year have been cut by 10% equal to more than eight million cars globally. As a result of these accelerating trends, we are now expecting prices for direct materials to increase by a low to mid-teens percentage this year, implying further cost pressure in the second half of the year. This compares to our previous expectation of a low-teens percentage increase per August.
We continue to work hard to limit the impact of on our profitability with additional savings in the supply chain as well as pricing initiatives where possible, which will materialize with a certain time lag. In this demanding environment, we maintain our strong focus on our strategic priorities, and we are executing our Purposeful Growth agenda with full force. This year, we put special emphasis on two areas. First, further expanding competitive edge across our businesses through innovation, sustainability and digitalization. Second, shaping a collaborative culture with empowered people, making cultural change tangible for our people. In our call today, I would like to focus on our further progress with regards to our competitive edge. Of course, we will report in detail on our strategic initiatives at our full year results release in February.
In Adhesive Technologies, the teams continue to expand our competitive edge through continuous innovation and a strong focus on sustainable solutions. Let me stress some highlights here. We further strengthened our contribution towards a circular economy in the automotive industry with our new debondable hot melt that enables cost efficient repair of individual LED panels in the latest generation of LED headlamps. Until now, you had to change the complete car headlamp in case of a malfunction. We also developed color-matched adhesives for seamless designs in the fast-growing market of mobile phones and wearable devices. With our solution, we don't only enable attractive product designs, but also ensure superior waterproofing and drop performance. We introduced a new solution that facilitates a sustainable paperboard packaging in the beverage can industry.
This innovative packaging solution has a lower carbon footprint than its alternative, reducing the CO2 equivalent by around 50%. The applied solution from our Technomelt range also has best-in-class recyclability properties. Moving to Beauty Care. In Beauty Care, the teams fueled the continued reopening of hair salons with impactful innovations, leading to strong growth in professional in the third quarter. Our Igora Royal brand, which we had relaunched with a full redesigned sustainable packaging concept, was an overproportional growth driver. In Beauty Care Consumer, we recorded an overall negative organic sales development. Markets remain challenging, with continued weakness in the body care category after an already difficult Q2. Nevertheless, we further expanded our competitive edge also in Consumer. We increased market shares in hair cosmetics. The share gains were supported by new launches under our coloration brands Palette and Syoss, as well as under our styling brand göt2b.
We further developed our Nature brands. We broadened our Nature Box offering by extending our sustainable solid range now also into the field of conditioners and by launching highly concentrated intense hair treatments. In Laundry and Home Care, we sustained our innovation leadership, evidenced by market share gains across all regions, with the exception of North America. We once again outgrew our markets in the important cap segment and expanded global market shares by 60 basis points. For example, supported by the continued rollout of our Persil 4in1 Discs and further innovations across different price tiers. After the successful pilot launch in e-commerce channels, we launched our sustainable Persil Eco Power Bars also at retailers in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, and more markets will also follow. In Home Care, we continue to expand our position with share gains of 50 basis points.
This was fueled by the rollout of strong innovations in toilet care and dishwashing under the brands Bref and Somat. Moving on to digitalization, which continues to be a strong driver of our performance. We expanded our digital sales share on group level now to almost 20%. In Beauty Care and Laundry and Home Care combined, we grew e-commerce sales by around 20%. In Adhesive Technologies, we continue to expand our successful B2B eShop, onboarding further customers to the platform. Digital sales again increased by a clear double-digit percentage. With that, we have now reached a digital sales share of 30% in that business. Our digital transformation is not only related to sales. In the field of Industry 4.0, we were just recognized again by the World Economic Forum as a front runner.
Our Laundry and Home Care plant in Toluca in Mexico was awarded with the Advanced Fourth Industrial Revolution Lighthouse, already the third plant, the third Henkel plant, that received this important industry award. These are just a few highlights, and the teams are driving further progress as we speak. With this, let me hand over now to Marco, who will lead you through our business performance in more detail. Marco.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Carsten, and good morning to everyone on the call also from my side. Let's dive straight into the top line performance in the third quarter. We achieved a strong organic sales growth of 3.5% in the third quarter, driven by positive price development of 3.4%. The stable volume development was characterized by normalized demand in our consumer businesses and the continued but slower recovery in industrial production. The net effect of our acquisitions and divestments had a slightly negative impact on sales of -0.3%, and this reflects the increasing impact from divestments completed year to date as part of our active portfolio management. Headwind from currencies reduced significantly compared to the first half of this year, but still amounts to -1.3%.
In total, Henkel recorded a nominal sales increase of 1.9% to about EUR 5.1 billion. Let's look at the regions. From a regional point of view, we achieved organic sales growth in every region with the exception of North America. The emerging markets were strongly driving Henkel's organic sales growth, with a high single-digit increase in each Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Our performance in mature markets overall was almost flat year-over-year, with mixed developments in the regions. North America was lower year-on-year at -2.6%, as a result of declines in both Beauty Care and Laundry and Home Care, whereas Adhesive Technologies achieved very strong growth despite the automotive weakness we do also witness in North America.
Western Europe recorded organic sales growth of 1.1%, supported by positive growth in Laundry and Home Care, and again, a very strong performance in Adhesive Technologies. With that, let me provide more detail on the performance of our business units. Against an already positive prior year base, and that is important to note, Adhesive Technologies overall achieved organic sales growth of 7% in the third quarter of 2021. By business area, Automotive and Metals remained slightly below the prior year and also below pre-COVID levels. Automotive was negative due to the reduction of global automotive production as a result of challenged supply chains and the semiconductor shortage. Nevertheless, our Automotive business performed better than the light vehicle production index, which was down by about even -20%.
Our Metals business, in contrast, continued to perform very well and achieved double-digit growth in Q3. Moving to Electronics and Industrials, here we saw double-digit growth in both areas. We benefited from a recovery of our Industrials business as well as a continued strong customer demand in our Electronics business. Also in Packaging and Consumer Goods, we achieved double-digit organic growth, thanks to a particularly strong growth in Packaging as well as in lifestyle, and the strong growth in Consumer Goods. In Craftsmen, Construction & Professional, organic sales growth was very strong. The Consumers and Craftsmen business was lower compared to a strong prior year Q3, which had benefited from catch-up effects, but well above pre-COVID levels. We could more than compensate this with significant growth in the Construction business, and double-digit growth in our general manufacturing and maintenance business.
The significant organic sales growth of Adhesive Technologies was equally driven by volume and pricing. In the course of the year, we continuously increased our pricing, resulting in a contribution of 3.4% in the third quarter. From a regional perspective, all regions contributed to this development with a very strong or double-digit growth. In the emerging markets, we grew significantly above prior year level. In Eastern Europe and Latin America, we achieved double-digit organic sales growth, particularly driven by our Packaging and Consumer Goods business area. In the mature markets, all regions reached a very strong organic sales growth. Although North America and Western Europe were negatively impacted by the decline of automotive production, all other business areas could more than offset this development. Let's look at Beauty Care.
In Beauty Care, organic sales development was at -3% below prior year, and with a mixed development in our business areas. Our Professional business sustained its recovery and achieved strong organic sales growth against a prior year basis, which was already less impacted by the pandemic, with more salons already back in operations. With this strong growth in the third quarter, we also exceed the pre-crisis level organically for the first time. In contrast, our Consumer business recorded an overall negative development against a very high prior year basis, mainly driven by strong market headwinds from the continued normalization of demand in body care, in particular soaps, against the 2020 peak levels. This resulted in a double-digit market decline in key mature markets, North America and Western Europe.
In addition, the business is still confronted with an unbalanced supply and demand situation, including excess inventories affecting the whole market. The Hair Cosmetics category overall was slightly below prior year. While Styling continued its recovery with significant organic growth in the third quarter, Color recorded a decline, also here driven by normalization of demand compared to the higher prior year levels. Importantly, we were able to expand our market shares in both categories, i.e. Color and Styling. In Hair Care, organic sales development was below prior year. In Beauty Care, the positive price development was more than offset by volumes, which declined by -4.7%, so that overall that resulted in negative sales performance of -3%.
From a regional point of view, North America and Western Europe, our strong comeback in Professional could not compensate for the decline in our Consumer business, especially Body Care. In the emerging markets, Beauty Care achieved a very strong growth, both in the Consumer and Professional businesses. This development was bolstered by all regions except Latin America. Finally, on to Laundry and Home Care, which achieved a good organic sales performance of +2% against a very high basis in the prior year quarter. This was in particular driven by Laundry Care, which recorded strong organic sales growth. Heavy-duty detergents contributed with strong growth, supported by our mega brand, Persil, which continued its excellence, excellent performance. Specialty detergents achieved double-digit organic sales growth, fueled by our key brand, Perwoll.
In Home Care, we recorded a slight decline in organic sales in the third quarter, mainly due to normalizing demand for hygiene articles and a corresponding decline in the surface cleaner category. At the same time, we continued our strong performance in the dishwashing and toilet care categories, with strong and significant organic sales increases respectively. Also in the third quarter, Laundry and Home Care continued to grow market shares with gains in almost each region. The business unit even reached new record levels in Eastern Europe. The North America region remained behind the prior year level, both in terms of organic sales development as well as market shares. Here, our business continued to be affected by supply and logistics headwinds.
Organic sales growth of Laundry and Home Care was entirely driven by price, which increased 4.3% in the third quarter, gradually stepping up compared to Q1 and Q2. Volume, in contrast, was at -2.2%, mainly resulting from an ongoing negative development in North America, as well as the further normalization of demand in hygiene categories. From a regional perspective, Laundry and Home Care achieved organic sales growth in each region except for North America. In the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions, the business unit even recorded double-digit growth. Eastern Europe and Africa, Middle East achieved significant and very strong growth respectively. Finally, Laundry and Home Care delivered positive organic growth in Western Europe. Let me close my financial review with an overview of the two-year growth rates.
Overall, Henkel achieved a strong two-year organic sales CAGR of 3.7% in the third quarter. Following a slowdown in the second quarter, our growth profile gained traction again in Q3 on both group and business unit levels. It is worth noting that all business units are back in a positive growth territory over that two-year period. Adhesive Technologies and Laundry and Home Care recorded a two-year CAGR of 4.1% and 4.8% respectively in the third quarter. In contrast, Beauty Care sales year to date are still below the 2019 level in organic terms. Also here, Q3 saw the business return to a positive two-year average growth rate. This is true for both professional and consumer. With this, handing back to you, Carsten.
Thank you, Marco. Before moving to the Q&A, let me close our presentation with the full year outlook and our key business priorities for the remainder of 2021. Based on our strong performance year to date, we expect that we will close the year well within our guidance range of 6%-8% organic sales growth. Our business environment continues to be impacted by the COVID pandemic and its implication on economic activity. Consumer demand is returning to more normal levels in many categories, with varying dynamics and particularly high volatility. Industrial demand is recovering sharply, with many sectors coming back to their respective pre-crisis levels, with growth held back by extreme supply shortages and logistics bottlenecks, and with drastic and broad-based increases of raw material prices and logistics costs.
These headwinds intensified during the past months, and as a consequence, we are now assuming that direct material prices will increase this year by a low to mid-teens percentage. For sure, the teams at Henkel continue to work hard to limit the impact on our businesses and the profitability going forward. We are reflecting this in our updated financial outlook for the full year and are now expecting an adjusted EBIT margin of around 13.5% and an adjusted EPS growth of a high single-digit percentage, which is representing the lower end of our prior guidance ranges. Our priorities for the remainder of 2021 are clear. First, in these challenging and demanding times, we will continue to protect and support our employees, their families, our customers and business partners. This remains on top of our agenda in the management board.
Second, as we are facing an unprecedented situation in the raw material and supply markets, our focus is on managing our performance across all businesses, closely collaborating with our strategic partners to secure supply to our customers and working hard to limit the impact on Henkel's profitability with continued pricing initiatives and savings. At the same time, we continue driving the implementation of our Purposeful Growth agenda with full force and a specific focus this year on expanding our competitive edge and enhancing our company culture. With this, let us move to the Q&A. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now looking forward to taking your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Knobel. Ladies and gentlemen, the question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind about asking a question, please press star two on your touchtone keypad. We will take questions in the order received, and we will take as many as time permits. Please limit your questions to a maximum of two questions at a time. Again, please press star one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Guillaume Delmas from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Carsten, Marco, and Lars. Two questions for me, please. The first one on your consumer goods business in North America, because you were mentioning in August that you were at an inflection point, and yet your organic sales growth is still negative in Q3. Market share development seems also to be negative in Laundry. I appreciate that you had a challenging base of comparison, some persistent supply chain issues, but what tangible evidence do you have that would show that the turnaround plan is on track here?
I guess the bigger question is, at what point do you throw in the towel for this business? Then my second question, I mean, may be a bit premature, but can we talk a little bit about the 2022 margin outlook for consumer goods? Because when I look at the consensus on your website, it is for a meaningful expansion, 100 basis points in beauty, 40 basis points in laundry. I will not expect you to provide a 2022 margin guidance today, but directionally, do you think it's reasonable to assume such an uplift next year, given that at least in the first half of 2022, you will still be facing off the same challenging commodity and logistics headwinds? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Guillaume. Very happy to take your question. Let me start with the first one, the consumer businesses in North America. In North America, I think we were able, if we start with the Beauty Care part, to significantly increase our market shares in hair, heavily driven by gains in both color and also in styling. The same holds true for our professional business, especially in North America, where we have a quite significant share. In contrast, the share of our Body Care category was lower year-over-year, really also based on a quite challenging market environment.
The relatively weak performance was mainly due to strong market headwinds, which were triggered by a fast normalization of demand against the extreme peak levels in the prior year, especially in the key mature markets. In addition, the businesses here are facing an unbalanced supply and demand situation, which is including excess inventories affecting the whole market. That's, you know, for the Beauty Care part. If we move to the Laundry and Home Care situation, yes, we recorded a negative organic sales development in Q3 against a high comparison base in the prior year quarter, and that affected. We were affected by severe material supply and inbound logistic challenges as a result of the supply chain disruptions.
As a result, after a meaningful improvement in H1, the service levels in Q3 have been negatively affected by that. The turning around of our performance of Laundry and Home Care in North America is definitely, as I mentioned it before, our top priority, and we are taking the decisive decisions, actions which are also related to our framework. While we have not yet achieved the turnaround, we continue to execute our turnaround plan. We step up our innovation offensive with the launches across our key brands and to support our turnaround.
You know that we installed last year with Alan Wolpert a new head. He finalized and brought his management team in the last couple of months in place, and we are reorganizing also our structures to be more agile and more collaborative, and we are further sharpening our portfolio and by that driving also key capabilities such as e-commerce, digital, and sustainability. Importantly, there are signs that our initiatives are starting to pay off. Overall, it is our clear ambition to reignite growth and significantly increase profitability to reinvest in our brands in the foreseeable future. I think that's for the first part. You know, the second question was your question related to the full year of more to the outlook in direction of 2022.
Guillaume, I hope you understand that at this point, I think it's too early, and we don't provide the formal guidance for the fiscal year 2022. We will publish the guidance when we will presenting our results for the full year. Nevertheless, let me provide you some comments which are also in line with I would say recent statements also from peer companies. First, I think the current forecast now for the IHS, so for the industrial side, indicates a strong development of industrial production with an expected growth of around 4%. Secondly, the demand in the consumer categories should continue also to further normalize.
Third, from today's point of view, raw material cost inflation is expected to persist also into 2022 with continued high volatility and that particularly in the first half year. However, I think it's difficult to make a reliable assessment at this point in time with regard to the exact extent and also the impact as well, the further development going forward. Hope that clarifies.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
Thank you very much, Carsten.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Bruno Monteyne from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Carsten. My first question is on the impact of commodities on your margin. Clearly margins are down because of it, and you haven't had time to reset pricing with your customers yet. Clearly, in the next 12 to 18 months, you will have time to reset pricing with your consumer business. I'd expect quite a recovery of some of that commodity price impact. Would it be fair to assume that the total impact on margin you would be planning to recoup will be about 50 to 100 basis points whenever sort of the timing is right for that? My second one is I'm trying to get a feeling for price elasticity in your business, but it's probably too early from the data we've seen so far because most of the price increases seem to be in emerging markets and the volume declines in developed markets.
So in the next few quarters, as you're passing through prices in developed markets, let's say you're passing, increasing them by 300 basis points, would it be fair enough to assume that all the benefits from pricing in developed markets will probably be offset with lower volume growth, so we shouldn't really expect an acceleration in the top line in the next few quarters on the back of that? Thank you.
Good morning. Good morning, Bruno. I will start with the second one. Maybe Marco, you take then the impact on the commodities. As a first of all, Bruno, I think what we can see is, if you look, and if we start maybe with the adhesives part, what we have been able now, if you take quarter one, two, and three, we have almost doubled the pricing from 0.7% in quarter one to 1.7% in quarter two, and now 3.4% in quarter three. As we have mentioned it before, we have been, and we will be, always able to bring that price increases which we face to our markets, to our customers with a certain time delay.
If you look at consumers, as we have mentioned it always, it's more difficult to get that through. Also, you know, the discussions with the retailers are more difficult, and I think that's not only for us, for Henkel, that's for the whole industry. Taking that into account, when you talk about elasticity too early in terms of to judge because you know, the price increases, especially in the consumer markets, will happen, you know, while we're speaking or even have been partly starting, but also will come. Therefore, elasticity is at this point difficult to comment on. What we currently see, that there is not a big shift between the price increases we execute and a volume-related reduction. Maybe we take now the other one, Marco, the commodity part.
Clearly we see, as you mentioned, is inflation, especially on input on the input side, on commodities, and that indeed has a strong impact on margins. For sure, it is our ambition to pass through that higher commodity cost finally also to the customers, partly also compensate by efficiencies, like we always said. It will be at the end, a mix of measures that is required. From a pass through, very clearly we wanna pass on the absolute cost increase that we do see. Therefore, we do expect that also margins will recover from that point of view.
I do not comment on the size of that recovery, but for sure, not a higher pass-through in the future means an increase on the margin. What is also important when you look at the whole topic, when you look at it from a mathematical effect, now passing on absolute cost increases to the customers finally at the end means that you also see that this partly has a negative impact on margin. At the end, we have to see what the balance then will be. Higher pass-through then in the year 2021, but then also from a mathematical point of view, you have higher turnover.
Basically if you compensate one-on-one your input costs from a gross profit level, then if you take all that into account, you also have a negative impact and the net effect on margins is what we gonna see in the future. As we cannot give a guidance, I cannot comment on where we stand, but what is very clear, price increases are very high on agenda. That's the only way to now deal with that environment, like also competition does, and we are actively working on that to also press through up next year.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Christian Faitz from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, Carsten, Marco, and Lars and team. Two questions, please. First of all, on the adhesive side, what are your salespeople telling you about the current demand situation in automotive? Is there any silver lining on the horizon, or is it still unclear when the semi-driven, semiconductor-driven demand slowdown in automotive will pick up again? Then second, what are you doing on the hedging side, in terms of raw materials? Can you do anything at all? Maybe you can share some insights how long a typical raw materials buy is for Henkel. Thank you.
Christian, good morning. I will take the question of adhesives, and Marco Swoboda will then comment on the hedging of raw materials. First of all, you know, according to IHS, the global light vehicle production declined significantly by around -20% in Q3, primarily due to semiconductor shortages. While this impacted also our automotive business, I think it recorded a single-digit percentage decline compared to the prior year, thus by that also outperforming the overall automotive market.
As you know, moreover, with our expertise and our innovative technologies, I think we are here very well-positioned to continue winning with new businesses in this growing market of e-mobility. By that, Henkel is continuously investing also in production facilities in order to drive that. You know, how this will continue is maybe also difficult to judge. You may recall, I think during the half year call, we talked about that we were estimating to have impact of around EUR 80 million from the semiconductor shortages. This for sure significantly increased now in the second half of the year, I would say to a level of the mid hundred or around EUR 130 million-EUR 150 million .
Nevertheless, as you have seen, we have been able to compensate or even overcompensate that with other segments. How the situation will turn, it's difficult to judge, but I think we will be also still impacted also at the beginning of the year. As I mentioned it before, there are a lot of other sectors and opportunities where we can compensate. Hope that helps a little bit, Christian. For the second question, I hand-
Yes. Very good. Thanks.
Good. For the second one, I'll hand over to Marco.
Yeah, Christian, your first part of the question related to hedging of raw materials. Like we said in the past, that is not a material effect that we can have from hedging, because what we do buy is typically not the base chemicals or base commodities that you may be able to hedge. From that point of view, financial hedging we don't apply to a significant effect, only for very small elements where that is possible. On the supply contract length, I think that relates to your question, I mean, what other measures or tools do we have basically to deal with the current environment and when is actually the current input cost inflation arriving?
On the contract length, that is typically two to three months, what we do see here. For some contracts, we also have formula-based pricing. That is where also effects from base chemicals or base commodities would come through a bit quicker. The good thing in formula pricing is that basically the suppliers can't enlarge their margins on what they deliver to us, even if there's a big scarcity in the market. That's why in part we also favor formula pricing. Of course, we see significant developments also in these commodities that are the underlying of these formulas. We will see also some effects even coming through shorter than the two to three months.
That's basically, I think, to your question.
Okay. Thank you very much, Carsten and Marco.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Celine Pannuti from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. My first question is on Beauty. The volume was quite low, negative -4.7%. Could you give us a bit of a flavor of how it was, professional versus the rest, which I think professional must have been positive, but if you could give us an idea? You were talking about this issue of oversupply. Does it mean that that kind of magnitude of hit to your body care business will continue into the fourth quarter? My second question, in fact, is related to that. If I think about, you know, three years in a row, since 2019, you have reinvested a big chunk behind both Beauty and Laundry and Home Care.
You know, three years down the line, what do you think you need to do in terms of reinvestment? Should we expect that this is something that needs to continue to be mended, and therefore something that will come on top in 2022? Thank you.
Hello, Celine. Good morning. To your first question, if we have the split between the retail and the professional business, the negative organic sales development in the consumer business was mainly due to declining markets in some of our key categories, against the background of the pandemic-related normalization of demand and a very high comparison to the previous year peak levels in some of the key categories. I think we recorded around 7% top line in Q3 2020. As I pointed it out before, the main driver was the performance in body care, which recorded a clear double-digit organic sales decline in the Q3.
This was particularly due to the significant decline in the soap market in the key markets of North America and Western Europe, resulting from a normalization of the demand I mentioned before of the peak levels and due to an unbalanced supply-demand situation and the excess of the inventory levels. In contrast, the consumer hair I mentioned that also was overall slightly below the prior year with mixed developments. We had very good development in styling to continue to recover and posted also a significant organic sales growth after it just turned positive in Q2 of last year. In color, we continued to gain shares in Q3 in an overall declining market. Moving to the professional part
The professional part did not experience material restrictions in terms of the long lockdowns in the third quarter anymore. Subject to further pandemic development, we expect stability and further normalization of the situation also in 2022. That's, you know, to the situation in to your first question of beauty. Your second part, only for clarification, Celine, it means when you talk about investments, you're talking about the marketing investments, correct?
Exactly, yes.
Good. Okay, then it's clear. If we take that into account, year to date, we continue to invest in our brands on the increased level we announced in March 2020, when you recall, where we made the kind of margin we said, and we said it by saying, you know, we wanted to invest EUR 200 million more than 2020 and 2018 and three hundred fift- no, EUR 200 million more than 2019 and EUR 350 million more than 2018. With somewhat this time with somewhat stronger investment increases in the Beauty Care consumer as well as the Professional in this year. I hope you please understand that I do not provide a formal guidance on our marketing and advertising spend for the full year.
Of course, in this dynamic, economic and competitive environment, we need to keep a high degree of flexibility in adjusting the measures and also the marketing spend. Also going forward, we will ensure that the investments are well targeted and reasonable. I think, coming back to the situation, what we have seen also in terms of market shares, I mentioned it. I think we have seen in Laundry and Home Care market share gains, in all countries, in all regions. Therefore the elasticity of the additional marketing spend plays a good role. For sure it's not a single individual component because it's also related to innovation and teams and so on. With the exception of North America, I think here I've been clear and transparent.
In Beauty Care, I think the situation is that it is paying off in a good way when it comes to the professional part, where we see really good developments. The same, I mentioned before, for color and styling. The Body Care, I think I explained in detail that it is significantly also impacted by the whole COVID situation and the way of normalization of the situation.
Thank you.
You're welcome, Celine.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tom Sykes from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, everybody. Firstly, just on adhesives, given you've got some volume growth there and obviously price growth, are you able to say whether as a run rate, your absolute EBIT level in adhesives is flat at all or stable at least? And then are you able to say something about the inventories on both the customer and on the supply side, please? And then just as a follow-up on the earlier questions on consumer and I guess particularly North America, do you expect any negative impact on shelf space or listings for full year 2022 from the service level impacts in full year 2021, please?
Tom, maybe I start with the follow-up question or the last one. We are not expecting any negative impacts on that in terms of the service levels impacting the shelf because we are, you know, on the measures to improve the situation. Because mainly the impact was not, you know, negative performance from our side or operational performance, but was really shortages of materials, which is not only affecting us. To the question of adhesives. You know, as far as we can assess it, we did not experience significant catch-up or stocking dynamics as a consequence of our pricing initiatives. We also did not face any major volume losses as evidenced by the overall strong volume growth of 3.6%. Therefore, I think nothing to add more and maybe the inventory part. Marco, can you take that?
When it comes to Henkel, then, of course we do the visit here and there our inventory levels also to increase selectively safety stocks to deal better with the current volatility on the supply markets. And in that sense from a net effect, there will be probably some also increases in inventories compared to what we have seen in the past. But not dramatically, but selectively where we see big shortages and therefore risk also in the future.
Okay. Sorry, I just didn't quite understand the comment there, Carsten. Your absolute EBIT level in adhesives. What are you saying there? Sorry. Are you matching prices versus, you know, price and volume versus the cost increases now, or is that still to come?
I mean, we basically, maybe I take that one, maybe to look at it from a different perspective. We always said that in adhesives we have a pass-through for material costs that takes a while to get digested, and that pass-through to over time is after roughly three to six months. From that perspective, we are not yet there to pass it over. In so far from a margin perspective, for sure on a net basis, at the moment, we are still being hit. Experience shows in Adhesive Technologies that we're able to cope with these environments with a time lag of three to six months. You know? That's, I think, what we can say at that point.
The strong evidence that we are passing through prices is what I mentioned before in one of my comments. If you see the accelerating trend of the price component from 0.7% to 1.7% to 3.4%, now in the quarters of Q1, Q2, and Q3, I think we have doubled the pricing in each consecutive quarter. I think that's exactly what Marco has pointed out. Maybe I had not understood your question well enough.
Yeah. No, no problem. Thanks very much for the clarification.
Okay. You're welcome.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from the line of Iain Simpson from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A couple of questions from me, if that's okay. Firstly, just very quickly, could you give us any idea as to what proportion of pricing across your business rolls over in January? Because I think European branded stuff is often on kind of annual pricing cycles, I think some of your adhesives business as well. Just any idea of what proportion of price contracts roll over in January, ideally by division, would be great. Thanks. Secondly, I wondered if you could talk at all about within beauty, particular hair styling and hair color, whether you're seeing any actual fashion changes post-COVID or how the consumer's approach to their hair is changing now that people can kind of get out and about again.
Some of your competitors have mentioned that they've seen categories like color cosmetics doing a bit better. Wondered if you could comment at all on how that's going with hair. Or perhaps provide an update on your own recent kind of move into color cosmetics with göt2b. Then just finally, sorry to come back to it, but the U.S. supply chain issues, I think you've had quite a few of those over the last five, six years, where your supply chain there seems to kind of suffer a problem every 18 months or so.
I just wondered if you felt confident that, you know, that you just had a series of unconnected events, and it was just coincidence, or if you felt there might be any sort of bigger structural implications in how you're running your U.S. supply chain that perhaps needed revisiting? Thank you very much.
Iain, couple of questions coming back. I think I will take the pricing one and also the question related to beauty, and Marco then will comment on the supply chain situation. Maybe start with beauty. What I mentioned before is definitely I think we are seeing you know normalization of trends or based on the COVID situation in styling, in color, and at home colorations always needs to be seen then also for sure with the professional business. I mentioned it before, I think here in that part, we see from a business performance perspective really good developments. We see increasing market shares in styling, in color, in home, but also in the professional business overall. Are there new trends?
Now, I would say for sure, you can imagine, now with some parts that markets or also activities in the evening getting open, that people are coming back on that and are also, you know, very motivated to spend and to show. Therefore, I think styling and color situations are from a trend perspective, in general, positive, but they are, from my point of view, not extraordinary new ways how people style or how people color in a way. On the situation of, you know, when you mentioned the color cosmetic launch of under göt2b, I think it's too early to make an assessment regarding the launch of the göt2b makeup portfolio.
It was launched and rolled out just in the late Q3, and it's meanwhile available in many stores of some of the major retailers in Germany. The launch was supported by a good media campaign, which also delivered a good result, I think, on that part. Coming to your pricing question, your first one, in terms of how the things are, you know, going into the next year, I think, I said it, I think as you can see in the first three quarters, we doubled the pricing in each consecutive quarter. In the fourth quarter, pricing is expected to further increase to support our organic sales performance. Therefore it will be definitely above what we have seen in Q3 of this year.
By that, you know, I think we had it last time, and there is no big difference in terms of that. We are saying that a big portion of this raw material increase 70%-80% will be seen within this year, but there will be spillover effects to not only January, but to next year. This we will see definitely then within 2022. Maybe for the last part, Marco, the supply situation.
Yes. When we look overall at the supply situation worldwide, of course now all the businesses, companies struggle in different, also, categories and segments. That's what we see overall, throughout the whole economy. When we look at Henkel, in the first nine months, we did record globally an all-time high of supply disruptions or force majeure that basically our suppliers do declare, and that number has reached even now in the first nine months a number of 1,300. That compares with the number of maybe around 150 incidents in a normal year. Dramatic uplift, and that's even more than in the COVID year 2020, where we had roughly 600 supply disruptions. Worldwide, it's a really challenging environment that we're operating in.
When it comes to North America, here we are particularly hard hit also by a number of events. First, the weather-related phenomena that we had seen. Beginning of the year, basically the freeze of the Gulf Coast leading to a lot of petrochemical facilities having to be stopped, affecting the whole commodity supply in North America and gradually recovering throughout Q1, Q2. Then in September, Hurricane Ida hit again, the industry also then imposing new shortages due to plant shutdowns of suppliers. That is basically hitting, of course, not only us, but the general industry in North America. On top, we do see very strong shortages also in logistics capacity.
There's a severe shortage of truck drivers, for example, in North America, also making it hard even if you can secure the supply, but then you have to arrange transportation from the supplier's plant to your own facilities. That is the second challenge that the teams are working on. We have task forces in place over there to deal with it. It's a difficult situation, and that is not hitting us alone. That is basically a phenomenon we do see, many companies struggle with that. Also our customers, by the way, do struggle with it, in particular in the fast-moving consumer goods area, where we often have contracts where basically the customer is responsible for picking up the goods at our factory. That has proven for the customer to be a very efficient model in the past.
That's why typically certain customers do prefer that. But also here, customers fail to arrange transportation, the pickups, that they are responsible for and basically working with our customers through that. But that shows that it's not a Henkel phenomenon per se. To your question, is it structural? We think not really because at the end, that is what we see not only hitting us, but also our customers. In the past, we had, as you pointed rightly out, also certain issues in North America when it came to supply chain. Back in 2018, that was more self-inflicted, in fact, due to the change of our logistics IT system at the time. That was a completely different impact that we had then. Now basically, the industry is struggling with the current conditions in the market.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your questions, ladies and gentlemen. I'd now like to hand back to Mr. Knobel for his closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you. First of all, thank you for your questions. Let me close today's presentation with a summary of our key takeaways. In the third quarter, we sustained our growth path with a strong organic sales growth of 3.5%, and this corresponds to a strong annual growth performance of close to 4% since the third quarter of 2019, with all businesses exceeding their respective pre-crisis levels organically. In our markets, we saw a continued recovery of industrial production, as well as a further normalization of demand in relevant consumer categories. These dynamics were reflected in the development of our business units.
We have experienced further headwinds from extremely tight supply and raw material markets, and we have been managing those with our teams in an agile way with extensive measures to limit the impact on our business and the profitability. We are reflecting all of this in our updated outlook for 2021. Finally, we continue to drive the execution of our Purposeful Growth agenda across the pillars. As always, please be reminded of our upcoming events. Our next event will be the publication of our fiscal year release in February. With this, I would like to thank you for joining our call today, and take care, stay safe, and also stay healthy. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for joining today's Henkel conference call. You may now disconnect your lines, and we wish you a pleasant day.