Global vs. Notable Consumer Staples: A Deep Dive into Four U.S. Leaders
How P&G, Kimberly-Clark, Colgate, and Unilever compare on valuation, dividends, and balance-sheet strength.
Consumer-staple stocks anchor many portfolios, but not all are alike. We mapped the global landscape and found that just a handful dominate worldwide while most remain regional.
In this note we explain that distinction prior to our deeper dive on four big U.S. names.
Why We Looked at the Sector
Consumer-staple companies — especially those in household and personal products — form the defensive backbone of many long-term portfolios. The group is not homogenous with some firms operating on a global scale and others better described as regional players.
Global vs. Notable Players
We used three criteria:
Scale: annual sales in household & personal care ≥ $10–15 billion
Geographic reach: sales in at least three major world regions
Category leadership: top-2 or top-3 share in at least one major global product category
Global Players: firms meeting all three
Procter & Gamble (PG), Kimberly-Clark (KMB), Unilever (UL), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Reckitt (RKT), Essity (ESSITY-B)Notable / Stable Players: strong regionals or category leaders that meet only one or two criteria
Unicharm, Kao, Beiersdorf, Henkel, Ontex, Daio Paper, Lion Corp, plus private Georgia-Pacific and First Quality
A useful extra insight: all the “notable” firms are either foreign-listed or private.
All of the full SEC-reporting names in this space come from the global tier.
Narrowing the Focus
For deeper financial analysis we turned to the four SEC-accessible global names:
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Kimberly-Clark (KMB)
Colgate-Palmolive (CL)
Unilever (UL, ADR in the U.S.)
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These four publish full U.S.-standard financials (10-K or 20-F), making it possible to compare valuation, dividends, and balance-sheet strength consistently.
