Shares in Reckitt Benckiser fell 6% to 5,156p in early trading after the consumer health group missed sales forecasts and cut its full-year growth guidance.
Analysts at Jefferies, which rates the shares a 'buy' with a 5,900p price target, said the update was "NOT a good" one and expected Reckitt to lag its peers.
Like-for-like sales at Core Reckitt, which excludes the Mead Johnson infant formula business, rose 3.3% in the third quarter. Jefferies had forecast 3.9% and the market consensus was 4.0%.
The shortfall came from volumes, which rose just 0.1% against consensus of 1.4%.
Reckitt now expects Core Reckitt sales growth of 3.5% to 4.5% this year, down from a previous range of 4% to 5%. Consensus was 3.9%.
The company blamed supply problems with Lysol, the disinfectant brand, and a slowdown in the vitamins, minerals and supplements category in China.
Jefferies estimated the Lysol disruption cost about 0.3 percentage points of Core Reckitt growth. It described the problem as self-inflicted, since it stemmed from longer than expected outages while production lines were upgraded.
The analysts said the market would be frustrated by the late disclosure.
North America was the biggest miss, with sales down 1.3% against consensus of growth of 1.2%. Jefferies reckons sales would have been close to flat without the Lysol problem.
Adjusting for Lysol and China, third-quarter growth would have been about 3.7%, the analysts estimated. They said that was too many allowances for the shares to work for now.
Emerging Markets grew 8.0% against consensus of 8.9%, while Europe beat forecasts with growth of 0.8%. Mead Johnson also beat, with sales up 2.7%.
Jefferies expects consensus earnings per share for 2026 to move little. Reckitt cut its 2026 net finance cost guidance to £250m to £270m from £320m to £340m, thanks to a one-off gain from a Mead Johnson bond tender.
The shares had traded on about 15 times forecast earnings before the fall.
