Benzinga | Feb 16, 2021 09:08AM EST

Ecolab Says Sees FY2021 Results Above FY2019 Results From Continuing Operations

Business Outlook

The continued uncertain outlook regarding the timing and pace of global economic recovery from COVID-19's impact does not yet present an adequate basis for us to provide either quarterly or annual earnings forecasts.

We expect full year 2021 Healthcare & Life Sciences segment sales to moderately improve over the prior year's very strong gain, with good year-on-year sales growth from our Industrial and Other segments. We look for our Institutional & Specialty segment to show a significant year-on-year increase for the full year as it recovers toward its pre-COVID peak 2019 levels.

We believe COVID-19 will remain a critical economic factor throughout 2021, particularly in the early part of the year. We believe the beginning of the recovery in our global end markets will start in the second quarter with the broader expansion of the vaccine distribution, and we expect it will take until the end of the year to generally reach a new normal. However, we believe that our strengthened business will deliver full year 2021 earnings above 2019 results from continuing operations, with the first quarter year-on-year percentage decline showing modest sequential improvement from the fourth quarter and the remaining quarters of 2021 showing strong year-on-year growth.