Zurich/Geneva — Nestlé plans to switch in or out of businesses with combined sales of almost Sf10bn ($10bn) as CEO Mark Schneider focuses on coffee, bottled water and pet care to prioritise profitability over scale. Selective acquisitions and divestments could affect about 10% of total revenue, Schneider said as he unveiled his new strategy to investors at a conference in London on Tuesday. Nestlé is already trying to sell its US chocolate business, its first major retreat from sugary snacks, as the Nescafé maker embarks on its biggest revamp in at least a decade. "We’ll need to trade out of some product areas and into others," Schneider said. "We’ll act decisively, and the US confectionery is a good example of that." For the first time, the Swiss owner of Nespresso coffee and Perrier water set a fixed profitability target, aiming for an underlying trading margin in 2020 that is as much as 2.5 percentage points higher than it achieved last year. This is still shy of the level sought...
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