Ambition to tackle issues, where we see the reasons as more structural, and less as temporarily/mismanagement,” he said.
Born in 1976, Navratil started his career with Nestle in 2001 and had various roles in Central America before taking over responsibility for global strategy and innovation for the Nescafe and Starbucks brands in 2020.
The Swiss and Austrian national became chief executive of the Nespresso brand in July last year.
“Navratil has a decent execution track record in coffee, which is Nestle’s biggest business,” said Jon Cox, an industry analyst with the Kepler Cheuvreux financial services company.
“He needs to deliver on the turnaround plan and return Nestle to its traditional mid-single digit growth and annual margin improvement model.”
Nestle owns more than 2,000 brands, including Purina dog food, Maggi bouillon cubes, Gerber baby food and Nesquik chocolate-flavored drinks.
The multinational has suffered a series of setbacks, including a bottled water scandal that began in France in 2024 and the deterioration in sales in the wake of the wave of inflation.
Jean-Philippe Bertschy, an analyst at Swiss investment managers Vontobel, said that by promoting Philipp Navratil, Nestle was banking on a leader from the next generation of the group’s executives.
“We know Philipp as exceptionally straightforward, ambitious, and relentlessly focused on results. One of his first priorities will be to pull Nestle out of its current cycle of negative headlines,” he said
