Quick answer. Beiersdorf’s 3 August 2026 half-year release says NIVEA’s organic sales fell 6.8% in the first half, while sell-out growth remained positive. The company links the shipment-side pressure partly to customer conflicts, trade destocking, innovation timing and a later European sun season. It also announced an 18-month turnaround plan. The release does not show that the plan has already restored global growth.

Source checked: 13 October 2026. The reporting period ended 30 June 2026. This article explains an issuer statement; it is not a product review or independent market measurement.

Two measurements describe different points in the channel

“Sell-in” refers to company shipments into trade customers, while “sell-out” describes products moving from retailers to consumers. These measures can move differently over a short period as retailers change inventory, order timing or promotions. Beiersdorf’s release says the factors weighing on NIVEA affected shipments into trade, yet its sell-out growth stayed positive in H1. It does not publish a numeric sell-out rate beside the 6.8% organic sales decline, so readers should not treat the two statements as directly comparable percentages.

The release names four temporary influences on sell-in: customer conflicts, a later-than-expected start to the European sun season, trade destocking and innovation phasing. It separately says the Middle East crisis and challenges in NIVEA’s core portfolio continued to weigh on the brand. The distinction matters because the company described both timing effects and continuing brand issues; the first group alone is not presented as a complete explanation.

What Beiersdorf says the plan will change

The company says the next phase of rebalancing will run for 18 months. It identifies broad-based innovation across categories, stronger accessibility intended to support penetration and volume, offers tailored to market-specific consumer needs, and greater consumer-facing investment. In the NIVEA-plan section, Beiersdorf said the company would boost H2 2026 media spending by EUR 100 million compared with H2 2025. That is a company investment plan, not a disclosed allocation by market or campaign.

Beiersdorf also said some market-share and volume figures had shown initial positive effects from the earlier rebalancing measures. In the same release, it cautioned that these signals remained too isolated across categories and markets to improve the brand’s performance at a global scale. That caveat belongs next to any mention of early indicators. It prevents a limited set of signals from being recast as a broad recovery.

What remains unproven

The release states management’s Group-level ambition to return to net sales growth in 2027 and profitable growth from 2028. This must not be silently relabelled as a quantified NIVEA-only forecast. They are forward-looking objectives. The reviewed material does not provide a country-by-country baseline for the new plan, a quantified forecast of NIVEA’s 2027 sales, the definition or source for each sell-out observation, or evidence that the added media spend has changed results. Those are open questions rather than missing facts to fill with assumptions.

For a future update, the useful checks are the next company results, whether Beiersdorf reports a refreshed NIVEA measure, and whether the geographic scope and denominator are explained. A retailer’s sales report could answer a different question from the brand owner’s shipment data and should not be substituted without a clear market and period match.

Evidence and limitations. Beiersdorf is the primary source for its own results, stated causes and plans. No independent sell-out panel or local retailer dataset was reviewed. The reported organic sales decline is for NIVEA in H1 2026; it should not be generalized to every country, product line or later period. More dated company and product developments are grouped in Beauty News.

Source notes

Beiersdorf AG, “Half-year results 2026,” published 3 August 2026: official release, checked 13 October 2026.