3M recently reported that its sales grew 4.5% in the 2020 third quarter compared to the 2019 quarter, to $8.4 billion. Organic local-currency sales grew 0.9%, while acquisitions (net of divestitures) increased sales by 3%. Foreign currency translation increased sales by 0.6% year-on-year.

Compared to the 2019 third quarter, total sales grew 25.5% in Health Care, 6.9% in Safety and Industrial, and 5.6% in Consumer. Transportation and Electronics saw sales decline by 7.4%. Organic local-currency sales increased 8.1% year-on-year in Health Care, 6.9% in Safety and Industrial, and 5.5% in Consumer while declining 7.1% in Transportation and Electronics.

“Our third-quarter performance demonstrated once again the strength of the 3M model as we executed well, served customers and continued to fight the pandemic,” said Mike Roman, chairman and CEO. “Though economic uncertainty and challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic remain, we returned to positive organic sales growth with sequential improvement across businesses and geographies. We posted another quarter of robust cash flow, aggressively managed costs and further strengthened our balance sheet.

“We continue to take actions to transform 3M and position us to deliver strong results as our end markets recover. We will invest where demand is strong, aggressively manage our cost structure, and create new innovations that address customer needs and global market trends.”

3M reports that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve and affect its businesses in a number of ways. The company saw sequential improvements across businesses, end markets and geographies. During the third quarter, end market demand remained strong in personal safety, home improvement, general cleaning, semiconductor, data center, and biopharma filtration. At the same time, several other end markets, while improving, continued to experience year-on-year declines primarily driven by COVID-19-related headwinds, including healthcare and oral care elective procedures, auto OEM, general industrial, consumer electronics, hospitality, office supplies, healthcare IT, and traffic safety.

On a geographic basis, total sales grew 7.7% year-on-year in the Americas and 4.4% in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), with a decline of 0.6% in Asia-Pacific. Organic local-currency sales grew 3.4% year-on-year in the Americas but declined 0.3% in EMEA and 2.6% in Asia-Pacific.

Additional details are available at www.3m.com.