London, May 16, 2026, 19:03 BST
- Reckitt shares finished Friday 1.12% higher at 4,597p, though the stock dropped around 1.6% for the week.
- Reckitt’s investor event on May 14 was all about digital science and AI, but there wasn’t a new trading update.
- Reckitt’s annual meeting is set for May 21. The April trading update raised concerns about margins and growth that are still unresolved.
Reckitt Benckiser Group finished up on Friday, with shares rising after the maker of Dettol and Durex held an investor event focused on artificial intelligence and product development. Even so, the stock stayed down for the week.
Reckitt closed Friday at 4,597p, rising 51p, or 1.12%. Shares hit that same level earlier in the session. The stock is down about 1.6% for the week, with Friday’s climb outpacing a soft FTSE 100. Reckitt ended at 4,671p on May 8.
The London market is closed for the weekend, so Reckitt won’t face investors again until its AGM on Thursday, May 21. The shares are still trading near a 52-week low at 4,518p, with the 52-week high above 6,500p, according to AJ Bell data.
Reckitt told investors at its May 14 “Focus On: Digital Science” event that generative AI and predictive science are already cutting time to launch for its Powerbrands. It said using the tech has saved up to 70% of time on lower-value R&D work and is now used across all Powerbrands in over 20 countries. Reckitt
“Innovation is no longer about having good ideas,” Chief R&D Officer Angela Naef said. Now, she said, the job is to prove, scale and repeat those ideas faster. Bastien Parizot, who runs global business services and AI enterprise, said AI at Reckitt is handled with “humans fully in the lead.” Reckitt
Reckitt stuck to its script at the seminar, offering investors a closer look at operations but not giving any fresh numbers. The company said in a regulatory filing that it would not share new material financial or trading data, so the market is still using the April trading update.
April’s figures did the damage. Reckitt posted just 1.3% like-for-like net revenue growth at Core Reckitt for Q1, short of the 2.9% analysts had forecast in the company’s own poll, according to Reuters. Like-for-like revenue takes out currency and portfolio shifts to show core sales.
Reckitt CEO Kris Licht said “very low seasonal incidence”, soft European markets, and geopolitical issues weighed on the quarter. But the company kept its full-year like-for-like net revenue outlook steady. Harsharan Mann at Aviva Investors called the quarter “broad-based muted growth” in comments to Reuters. Reckitt
JPMorgan analyst Celine Pannuti said Reckitt’s forecast that second-quarter emerging-market results will match the first quarter fell short since those markets have powered the core business, according to Reuters. That’s the focus for this week. Investors are watching for signs that digital tools can boost sales, not just make development easier.
Capital returns took a back seat. Reckitt on Friday said it purchased 208,000 ordinary shares on May 14 via Deutsche Bank, paying a volume-weighted average price of 4,561.77p. The shares will be held in treasury. Volume-weighted average price is the average paid, adjusted by trade size.
Reckitt Benckiser Treasury Services put out a supplementary prospectus for its £10 billion Euro Medium Term Note programme, an umbrella for bond issuance. The update was administrative but comes with markets watching funding costs and balance sheets.
It’s not just Reckitt feeling this squeeze. Procter & Gamble, which is bigger in household and personal care, said back in April that it sees commodity costs and tariffs weighing on its earnings in fiscal 2026. That’s another sign that rising input costs are hitting the industry, not just Reckitt.
Reckitt is facing the risk that its AI push arrives before sales can back it up. The company said first-half margins will drop about 200 basis points from last year. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Oil and other commodity prices remain high, and cold-and-flu sales are still soft in the U.S. and Europe. If those pressures continue, Reckitt’s planned share buyback and digital-science push might not help sentiment much.
