Its ambitious strategy of price increases coupled with reduced advertising budgets has preserved margins and ensured an organic growth performance that has surprised all analysts; over the last eight quarters, organic growth has averaged 5%.

P&G, which published excellent quarterly results last Friday, including a 4.8% rise in earnings per share compared with the same period last year, has thus successfully negotiated the turnaround initiated six years ago. After a decade of erosion, its profitability has returned to a very satisfactory level since 2021.

The Group had no room for error, not least because it has adopted a very aggressive policy of returning capital to shareholders. Over the past three years, it has returned $54 billion to shareholders - $28 billion in share buybacks and $26 billion in dividends - while the sum of its realized profits reached $43 billion over the same period. 

The resulting increase in debt was perfectly absorbed by price increases and cost control. Net debt represents a multiple of just over one times operating profit before depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, much lower than that of comparable companies such as Unilever, Nestlé or Reckitt.

Speaking of EBITDA, we note with some displeasure that P&G does not use this indicator, which lends itself to so many abuses and misrepresentations elsewhere. What's more, the Ohio-based group now intends to ease up on returns of capital to shareholders, which should not exceed $15 billion by 2024.

This doesn't seem to bother the market, since at $158 per share, market capitalization continues to evolve at twenty-five times this amount. After a period of relative investor disenchantment, P&G is back to its blue-chip valuation.