BOSTON , Dec 9, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) hosted a meeting today in Boston , Mass. for financial analysts and institutional investors. The company told investors it is well-placed to deliver sustained growth into the future.

"We're confident we have the strategies, brands, innovation pipeline and new market opportunities to sustain our strong growth," said A.G. Lafley, P&G's chairman, president and chief executive.

Balanced Growth Model Continues to Work

Over the past three years, P&G's sales grew an average of 10%. Excluding the impact from foreign exchange, sales grew eight percent. Over the same period, earnings per share have grown an average of 33%, or 12% excluding the impact of the restructuring program concluded in June 2003.

"These results reflect our focus on keeping P&G's core businesses healthy, while expanding the core steadily and with discipline," said Clayton C. Daley, P&G's chief financial officer.

The company emphasized that its growth model is based on balance across brands and categories, across retail customers and channels, and across geographies. "It is this balance that creates the flexibility we need to address isolated competitive and economic issues, while consistently delivering against our long-term objectives," said Daley.

P&G is Well-Positioned in an Industry that Rewards Branding, Innovation, Scale and Go-To-Market Excellence

P&G emphasized that the Consumer Products Group (CPG) industry continues to provide attractive growth opportunities for those companies that are focused on branding, innovation, scale and go-to-market excellence. Over the course of the last five years, P&G has made significant changes to its organization structure, core processes and portfolio of businesses to better leverage company strengths to drive sustained growth.

Branding - P&G has 16 billion dollar brands and another 10 with at least one-half billion dollars in sales. P&G brands are leaders in their categories and extending their margin of leadership. P&G brands bring shoppers to stores and deliver more profitable shopping baskets for the retailer.

P&G said it continues to strengthen its brands by using more creative, experiential, consumer-driven innovation and marketing approaches, leading to better brand initiative success rates.

Innovation - The company emphasized that innovation remains the primary driver of sales and earnings growth in virtually all CPG categories. P&G has created new categories such as Quick Cleaning, Odor Elimination, Daily Facials, Autodry Car Wash, and At Home Teeth Whitening products, which are increasing sales for P&G and its retail partners.

P&G said it has combined its historical innovative capabilities with its Connect and Develop strategy to create new internal and external linkages across technologies, disciplines, geographies and businesses. This leads to a faster pace of innovation.

"P&G's innovation pipeline is strong," said Lafley. "P&G businesses are growing on the strength of leadership innovation that is commanding significant and sustainable price premiums to the market in virtually every category."

Scale - P&G is the CPG leader and the CPG industry is a scale business. Scale benefits accrue to companies that invest in branding, innovation and go-to-market capabilities while driving cost inefficiencies out of the supply chain.

"It's a virtuous circle," said Lafley. "The more scale a company can leverage, the more opportunities there are to grow margins and to reinvest for further growth. The more you can reinvest in innovation to delight consumers, the more you grow. The more you grow, the greater the scale and margins."

Go-To-Market Capability - P&G said it has increased this capability through its unique organization structure. P&G's global business units are more focused on innovation. P&G's market development organizations are more focused on better execution at the local level.

This improved capability was recently recognized in the U.S. by the Cannondale 2004 Power Rankings of the best manufacturers. P&G was ranked first by retailers in six of eight categories: Clearest Strategy, Brands Most Important to Retailers, Most Innovative, Most Helpful Consumer Information, Best Supply Chain Management, and Best Category Management and Consumer Marketing at Retail.

Developing Markets are a Big and Growing Opportunity for P&G

P&G said that the developing CPG market is about $70 billion - now collectively bigger than either Western Europe or North America . By early next decade, the company predicts that developing markets will be equal to the size of these two regions combined. P&G's presence in developing markets is spread over about 185 countries, yet there are still a lot of markets where P&G doesn't yet compete with its leading brands.

"Developing markets are a disproportionate opportunity for P&G versus competitors," said Robert A. McDonald, P&G vice chairman - global operations. "Developing markets represent only about 21% of our total sales versus up to 45% for some competitors."

P&G's leading brands, world class innovation, go-to-market capabilities and scale provide unique advantages in developing markets. "We have redirected a larger portion of our R&D and engineering resources to serve more of the world's consumers. Our goal is innovation that meets the needs of lower income consumers, and low cost supply chains that make that innovation affordable," said McDonald.

Forward Looking Statement

All statements, other than statements of historical fact included in this release, are forward-looking statements, as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In addition to the risks and uncertainties noted in this release, there are certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by some of the statements made. These include: (1) the ability to achieve business plans, including with respect to lower income consumers and growing existing sales and volume profitably despite high levels of competitive activity, especially with respect to the product categories and geographical markets (including developing markets) in which the company has chosen to focus; (2) successfully executing, managing and integrating key acquisitions (including the Domination and Profit Transfer Agreement with Wella); (3) the ability to manage and maintain key customer relationships; (4) the ability to maintain key manufacturing and supply sources (including sole supplier and plant manufacturing sources); (5) the ability to successfully manage regulatory, tax and legal matters (including product liability matters), and to resolve pending matters within current estimates; (6) the ability to successfully implement, achieve and sustain cost improvement plans in manufacturing and overhead areas, including the success of the company's outsourcing projects; (7) the ability to successfully manage currency (including currency issues in volatile countries), interest rate and certain commodity cost exposures; (8) the ability to manage the continued global political and/or economic uncertainty and disruptions, especially in the company's significant geographical markets, as well as any political and/or economic uncertainty and disruptions due to terrorist activities; (9) the ability to successfully manage increases in the prices of raw materials used to make the company's products; (10) the ability to stay close to consumers in an era of increased media fragmentation; and (11) the ability to stay on the leading edge of innovation. For additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those projected herein, please refer to our most recent 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K reports.

About P&G
Two billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers(R), Tide(R), Ariel(R), Always(R), Whisper(R), Pantene(R), Bounty(R), Pringles(R), Folgers(R), Charmin(R), Downy(R), Lenor(R), Iams(R), Crest(R), Actonel(R), Olay(R), Clairol Nice 'n Easy(R), Head & Shoulders(R) and Wella(R). The P&G community consists of about 110,000 employees working in almost 80 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

SOURCE The Procter & Gamble Company

Please visit: http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

P&G Media Contacts: In the US : 001-866-776-2837
International : 001-513-945-9087
P&G Investor Relations Contact: Thomas Tippl : 001-513-983-2414 

" Safe Harbor " Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Procter & Gamble Company's business which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report or Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year.