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Swiss food company Nestle, whose brands include Nespresso coffee and Perrier water, announced on Thursday it plans to cut 16,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years, sending its share price soaring.
“The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change fast,” Chief Executive Philippe Navratil, who took the reins of the multinational in early September, said in a statement.
This, he said, included “difficult but necessary decisions to reduce staff numbers”.
The company’s shares rose more than eight percent in morning trading, helping make the overall Zurich stock exchange the best-performing in Europe.
Navratil said this after the company published nine-month figures that showed sales fell 1.9 percent to 65.9 billion Swiss francs ($83 billion).
The job cuts represent about six percent of its workforce.
The layoffs include 12,000 white-collar jobs over the next two years, saving the company one billion Swiss francs – which the company says is twice as much as previously planned.
Another 4,000 job cuts in production and supply chain are already underway.
Navratil said Nestle is increasing its savings target to three billion Swiss francs by the end of 2027 from a previous target of 2.5 billion.
Jean-Philippe Bertschi, an analyst at international investment firm Vontobel, said the chief executive’s message is that “he is being aggressive”, adding that “the first steps are going in the right direction”.
Nestle, which has more than 2,000 brands including KitKat chocolate bars, Maggi seasoning and Purina dog food, experienced turmoil in September when its previous CEO was fired over an office affair.
After this, its president departed earlier than expected.
Nestlé has also been hit by a scandal involving its bottled water brands that broke in France in 2024.
Financial analysts expect Navratil to succeed in restoring stability to the group, whose growth has been faltering since 2022.
The decline in key sales figures was partly due to currency fluctuations. Organic sales grew 3.3 percent in the first nine months of 2025, driven by price growth of 2.8 percent.
“The results have started coming in. Now we must do more and move faster to accelerate our growth pace,” Navratil said.
The company said coffee and confectionery contributed the most to organic growth, with double-digit price increases in some markets.
Patrick Schwendimann, an analyst at Zurich Cantonal Bank, said volumes in the third quarter alone were much higher than expected.
Volumes rose 1.5 percent between July and the end of September, well above the forecast of financial analysts surveyed by Swiss agency AWP, whose average expectation was that they were up 0.3 percent.
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