Cough, Cold and Flu Report 2015: Sales of cough-cold solutions up 15%
Long before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that this year’s flu shot didn’t match up well with this year’s predominant flu virus, sales of cough, cold and flu remedies were on the rise. According to IRI data for the 12 weeks ended Nov. 30, 2014, sales of cold/allergy/sinus liquids and powders were up 15% to $318.9 million across total U.S. multioutlets. And while much of that uptick in sales can be attributed to the new allergy remedy Nasacort 24HR, sales of traditional cold remedies were up significantly as well.
For example, sales of Procter & Gamble’s combo pack of Vicks NyQuil and Vicks DayQuil were up 20.3% to $15 million in the period, and sales of Reckitt Benckiser’s Children’s Mucinex were up 13.9% to $13.6 million.
Sales of cough-cold tablets were up, too, by 4.5% to $1 billion in the 12-week period. Of note among tablets was Bayer’s Alka-Seltzer Plus cold remedy, sales of which were up 14.4% to $52.1 million. Sales of Mucinex tablets totaled $36.6 million, up 22%.
From October through the first week of November, incidence levels were up about 3% season-to-date, noted Matthew Mannelly, Prestige Brands president and CEO. And while promising, the success or failure of the cough-cold and flu season will be defined by incidence levels in November and December, he told analysts at the top of the season last year. “That's when the season begins to heat up, and that also will determine retailers in terms of their reorder patterns for the next quarter,” he said. “So [the season] is up about 3% in terms of incidences for the first four, five weeks.”
A strong flu season year-to-date has helped to contribute to the sale of products correlating with fever, noted Helen of Troy CEO Julien Mininberg in a conference call with analysts last week, especially thermometers. According to IRI, thermometers sales were up 21.5% to $43.2 million. “That's where we've seen a lot of strength actually all season long, this season,” he said. “And yet much earlier in the season, the cold and cough type of incidents — things more like congestion that's more correlated to [the sale of] humidifiers was actually quite weak, so weak that it was actually below last year which itself was below average.” Sales of humidifiers for the 12 weeks through Nov. 30, 2014 were relatively flat, up 0.7% to $70.1 million.
