Haleon PLC (HLN) Stock on 3 December 2025: Earnings Miss, ESG Wins and Analyst Upgrades Shape the Outlook

Quick snapshot (as of 3 December 2025)

Listing: Haleon PLC, LSE: HLN (London), NYSE: HLN (ADR)
Share price: around 370p in London and about $9.7 per ADR in New York ^[1]
Market cap: roughly £33 billion / $43 billion ^[2]
Dividend yield: ~1.8–1.9%, with a conservative payout ratio just under 40% ^[3]
2025 guidance: organic revenue growth around 3.5% and high single‑digit organic operating profit growth, reaffirmed after Q3 ^[4]
Analyst stance: broad “Moderate Buy” / Buy‑leaning Hold, with 12‑month price targets implying roughly 10–20% upside from current levels, depending on the market you look at ^[5]

Let’s unpack what’s going on with Haleon stock right now and what the latest news and forecasts suggest.

Where Haleon stock sits today

In London, Haleon shares trade around 368–370p, with recent data showing:

Last close: about 368.8p, down roughly 1.5% on the day
52‑week high: around 419–420p
52‑week range: lower bound in the mid‑300s, upper bound just over 400p
Dividend yield: about 1.8%
P/E ratio: roughly 23–24x on trailing earnings ^[6]

On the NYSE, Haleon’s ADRs change hands at about $9.7, not far from the middle of their 52‑week range (roughly $8.7–$11.4 according to multiple data providers). ^[7]

So you’ve got a global consumer health giant valued similarly on both sides of the Atlantic: mid‑20s earnings multiple, sub‑2% dividend yield, and a business profile that’s meant to be more “steady compounder” than “hyper‑growth rocket”.

Fresh company news as of early December 2025

1. Zero‑waste milestone in Pakistan

On 3 December 2025, Haleon Pakistan became the first Haleon site globally to earn TRUE Platinum zero‑waste certification, the highest level under the Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) programme. The Jamshoro facility reportedly diverts 99.7% of non‑hazardous waste away from landfill, highlighting a serious push on circularity and waste reduction. ^[8]

For investors, this is less about today’s earnings per share and more about:

Strengthening ESG credentials (which increasingly influence big institutional portfolios).
Potential operational efficiencies over time (waste costs money).
A signal that the company is embedding sustainability into its manufacturing footprint, not just its marketing decks.

2. “Healthy Saudi Smile” and push into digital health

Haleon has teamed up with Altibbi, a major Arabic digital health platform, to roll out the Healthy Saudi Smile campaign, announced in late November 2025. The initiative focuses on Arabic‑language oral‑health content and remote support, framed explicitly as aligning with Saudi Vision 2030 priorities around preventive healthcare and digital access. ^[9]

This ticks several strategic boxes:

Deepens oral‑health category leadership in an attractive market.
Leverages telehealth and digital engagement, not just traditional retail.
Positions Haleon as a partner in public‑health goals, not just a toothpaste vendor.

3. AI‑driven CRM with Salesforce

In October, Haleon announced it had selected Salesforce Agentforce Life Sciences Cloud to modernise its engagement with pharmacies and healthcare professionals using AI‑powered tools. ^[10]

That move speaks to:

Data‑driven targeting of health‑care professionals.
Tighter execution on product launches and detailing.
Incremental margin potential if commercial spend becomes more efficient.

Add all of this to the Pakistan zero‑waste milestone and Saudi digital partnership, and you get a familiar picture: slow but steady widening of Haleon’s moat through brand, distribution, ESG and technology rather than big, splashy M&A.

Q3 2025: modest growth, reaffirmed outlook… and an EPS miss

Haleon’s Q3 2025 trading statement (for the quarter to 30 September) is the backbone of any current view on the stock. ^[11]

Key numbers from the company:

Revenue:£2.799 billion
Reported revenue growth:+0.7%
Organic revenue growth:+3.4%, driven by:
- Price: +1.8%
- Volume/mix: +1.6%
By region (organic growth):
- North America: +0.4%
- EMEA & Latin America: +5.3%
- Asia‑Pacific: +5.1%
By category (organic growth):
- Oral Health: +6.9%
- Vitamins, Minerals & Supplements (VMS): +4.9%
- Pain Relief: +3.7%
- Respiratory Health: ‑1.8% (post‑pandemic normalization in cold & flu)
- Digestive Health: +2.1%
- Therapeutic Skin & Other: ‑1.1% ^[12]

Management also highlighted capital returns:

Around £1.1 billion returned year‑to‑date via ~£500m share buybacks and ~£600m in dividends, with the 2025 buyback programme completed during the quarter. ^[13]

The slightly awkward bit:

A transcript summary notes that Q3 EPS came in at about $0.1167 per ADR, versus a consensus forecast of $0.1261, a miss of roughly 7–8%, with revenue also a touch light versus expectations. ^[14]

That combination — “okay fundamentals, but below the whisper numbers” — explains why market reaction to Q3 has been described as cautious rather than euphoric, even though management reaffirmed 2025 guidance:

Organic revenue growth: around 3.5% (assuming a normal cold & flu season)
Organic operating profit:high single‑digit growth
FX translation expected to be a headwind of ~3.3% on revenue and ~5.1% on adjusted operating profit for 2025. ^[15]

Taken together, Q3 says: Haleon is still growing, especially in Oral Health and VMS, but not fast enough to be a growth stock and with just enough disappointment to remind everyone this is a slow‑and‑steady story.

Governance update: a new chair incoming in 2026

In November, Haleon announced that Sir Dave Lewis will step down as Chair and as a director on 31 December 2025. Vindi Banga, currently Senior Independent Director, will become Chair from 1 January 2026. ^[16]

Banga brings:

33 years at Unilever, including CEO/Chair of Hindustan Unilever.
Board experience at GSK, Marks & Spencer, and UK Government Investments.
A background steeped in global consumer brands and emerging markets.

From an investor’s perspective, this is evolution rather than revolution, but it reinforces Haleon’s identity as a consumer‑marketing‑driven company rather than a classical “big pharma” play.

Capital structure, share count and ownership trends

The latest Form 6‑K and related announcements give a clean picture of the share base:

As of 30 November 2025, Haleon had 8,952,353,648 ordinary shares issued.
Of these, 45,882,158 shares are held in treasury, leaving 8,906,471,490 shares with voting rights. ^[17]

London‑listed data reinforces that picture with about 8.91 billion shares in issue and a market cap around £33 billion at current prices. ^[18]

On the ownership side:

One recent filing shows Capital Fund Management S.A. increasing its Haleon ADR stake by 406% in Q2, to about 551,000 ADRs valued around $5.7 million at the time. ^[19]
The same report notes that institutional investors and hedge funds together own roughly 6–7% of the company’s equity. ^[20]
A separate dataset pegs institutional ownership of the free float at about 12–13%, with short interest under 0.5% of the float — very low by market standards. ^[21]

There’s also some nuance on management behaviour:

One analysis highlighted around £5.8m of insider share sales over the past year, suggesting at least some executives are happy to derisk at current prices. ^[22]
On the flip side, there have been executive share purchases via dividend reinvestment plans in both London and New York, involving the CEO, CFO and several regional presidents. ^[23]

In other words, no big red flags, but also no “insiders backing the truck up” at these levels.

Analyst ratings and price targets: modest upside, not moon‑shot

London‑listed shares (LSE: HLN)

Different aggregators cluster around the same ballpark:

One dataset tracking five analysts gives a 12‑month target price of about 420p, with a range from 335p (bear) to 517p (bull). That implies roughly 14% upside from a current price near 369p. ^[24]
Another platform, drawing on eight recent analyst targets, shows an average of 414p with the same 335–517p range — about 12% upside from roughly 371p. ^[25]

MarketBeat’s scorecard summarises this as a consensus Hold leaning to Buy: no cluster of “strong buys”, but more positive than negative ratings overall. ^[26]

NYSE ADRs (HLN)

On the US side, numbers skew a bit higher in percentage terms:

A recent stock analysis piece pegs the average target price at $11.61, implying about 19% upside from a reference price of $9.78, with three Buy ratings and one Hold, and no Sell ratings in that particular sample. ^[27]
A broader survey of Wall Street coverage referenced by MarketBeat talks about a consensus target around $12.33 and a “Moderate Buy” rating, based on one Strong Buy, three Buys and six Holds. ^[28]

Notable single‑name calls

A few individual moves are worth noting:

Goldman Sachs upgraded Haleon to Buy in September, raising its price target from £4.15 to £4.40. The bank expects organic sales growth to accelerate to about 4.7% in FY 2026 and 5.1% in FY 2027, helped by emerging‑market volumes, a recovery in the US, and sustained high‑single‑digit growth in Oral Health. It also models around 130 basis points of EBIT margin expansion by 2027, supported by up to £800m of gross productivity savings in the supply chain. ^[29]
Berenberg trimmed its Haleon target slightly (e.g. from ~503p to 500p) but kept a Buy rating, signalling more of a fine‑tune than a thesis change. ^[30]
A Jefferies analyst reiterated a Buy in October with a 440p target, reinforcing that most of the sell‑side sees Haleon as at least mildly undervalued relative to its cash flows. ^[31]
TV’s resident stock‑picker Jim Cramer even dubbed Haleon “a mini Kenvue”, arguing it could play a similar role as a defensive consumer‑health spin‑off with more room to rerate as investors get comfortable with the story. ^[32]

So the consensus, in plain English:
Not a screaming bargain, but a reasonably priced, quality consumer‑health asset where most analysts see low‑teens upside and a decent margin of safety.

Earnings and growth forecasts: steady, not spectacular

Data compiled by WallStreetZen from around 20 Wall Street analysts suggests the market expects solid but not explosive progress from Haleon. ^[33]

On a per‑share basis (ADR terms):

Current EPS: about $0.41
Forecast EPS:
- 2025: ~$0.19
- 2026: ~$0.21
- 2027: ~$0.23 ^[34]

Those numbers look odd at first — lower EPS in 2025 vs the “current” figure — but they reflect:

The impact of disposals (e.g. ChapStick and non‑US NRT businesses) and
Normalisation after strong post‑demerger years, plus FX and interest headwinds baked into models. ^[35]

In growth‑rate terms, WallStreetZen calculates:

A forecast annual earnings growth rate of about –18% over the 2025–27 window,
Versus much faster expected growth for the broader Drug Manufacturers – Specialty & Generic peer group and for the overall US market. ^[36]

On revenue, their model suggests Haleon’s top‑line growth will lag sector averages, consistent with a mature consumer‑health franchise rather than a high‑beta biotech. ^[37]

In other words:
Haleon is forecast to be more “bond‑like branded consumer staple” than “growth biotech” — modest revenue growth, some operating leverage, a reliable dividend, but no expectation of sudden earnings explosions.

Valuation and dividend profile

Several recent analyses converge on a similar picture for Haleon’s fundamentals: ^[38]

P/E multiple:
- Trailing: around 23–25x
- Forward: roughly 18x using some ADR‑based estimates
Gross margin: about 63–64%, comfortably in premium consumer territory. ^[39]
Dividend yield:1.8–1.9%, with a payout ratio under 40%, leaving room for dividend growth and buybacks. ^[40]
Free cash flow: one recent analysis cited ~$1.9 billion in free cash flow, giving Haleon plenty of firepower to both invest and return cash to shareholders. ^[41]

Compared with its positioning:

The valuation is higher than a slow‑growth utility but lower than a hyper‑growth pharma name.
For long‑term investors, the pitch is “quality cash flows + brand power + modest growth + capital return”, not “10x in three years”.

ESG and strategy: more than just toothpaste

If you zoom out from the quarterly noise, there are a few big strategic threads that keep reappearing:

Category leadership in oral health and VMS
Sensodyne, parodontax, Polident, Centrum and friends are driving the bulk of Q3 growth. Oral Health in particular is consistently growing faster than the group average and gaining share in multiple markets. ^[42]
Emerging‑market expansion
Q3 saw emerging markets grow about 7% organically, with India up double‑digits and China mid‑single‑digits, and initiatives like Healthy Saudi Smile and investments in Pakistan reinforcing that theme. ^[43]
Sustainability as a brand asset
TRUE Platinum zero‑waste at Jamshoro, bio‑based packaging partnerships, and reporting through an ESG hub all feed into the story that Haleon wants to be the “responsible consumer health” brand owner. ^[44]
Digital and AI enablement
Partnerships with Salesforce and platforms like Altibbi show Haleon trying to weaponise data and digital distribution, not just pump TV ads. ^[45]

If the company executes, those themes should support mid‑single‑digit organic growth and incremental margin expansion — exactly what Goldman and other bulls are baking into their models. ^[46]

Bull vs bear: how does HLN look on 3 December 2025?

Putting all of this together:

Bullish arguments

Global leader in consumer health with durable brands and high gross margins. ^[47]
Resilient organic growth, especially in Oral Health and VMS, with guidance for ~3.5% organic revenue growth in 2025 and sell‑side expectations of faster growth from 2026. ^[48]
Attractive capital‑return profile (dividends + buybacks), underpinned by strong free cash flow. ^[49]
ESG and digital initiatives (zero‑waste certification, Saudi oral‑health campaign, AI CRM) that strengthen brand and regulatory appeal over time. ^[50]
Valuation that is not cheap but reasonable, with most analysts modelling low‑teens upside over 12 months and very low short interest. ^[51]

Bearish arguments

Q3 2025 EPS miss and revenue slightly below consensus show the risk of “good, not great” execution in a market that already knows this story. ^[52]
Earnings‑growth forecasts that lag both the sector and the broader market, partly due to disposals, FX and de‑leveraging, mean Haleon is unlikely to become a growth darling. ^[53]
Ongoing US consumer headwinds and a sluggish North American growth rate leave the company leaning heavily on Europe and emerging markets for momentum. ^[54]
Some insider selling over the past year may raise eyebrows, even if it’s balanced by smaller insider purchases and institutional buying. ^[55]

For a long‑term investor, Haleon today is essentially a branded consumer‑health utility: you’re buying brand strength, predictable demand and solid cash flows, plus a bit of growth and ESG shine — not a lottery ticket.