Cadbury plc issues regular trading updates ahead of its half year and full year results. The update follows the publication of the first quarter IMS on 30 April 2009 and reflects Cadbury’s performance through to the end of May 2009.

Cadbury plc confirms that it has built on its good first quarter with improved trading in April and May. Growth in Chocolate remained robust, reflecting a good seasonal performance and the benefit of new product innovations. Gum and Candy both grew, helped by improved performances in a number of developed markets.

Our Britain & Ireland business sustained its strong performance in the UK which offset difficult trading in Ireland. Our major emerging market businesses in South America, the Middle East and Africa and Asia also performed well. The Pacific business benefited from good seasonal chocolate sales and an improved candy performance in Japan. In addition, our North America revenue continued to recover from the impact of destocking early in the first quarter. As a result, despite conditions in Europe remaining very challenging, revenue guidance for the full year is unchanged, with the expected slower start to the year set to be balanced by a stronger second half, underpinned by planned new product launches. Margin guidance for the full year is also unchanged with the first half margin improvement expected to be higher than for the year as a whole, reflecting the impact of re-phasing some of our marketing investment to the second half to support the new product launches.

Todd Stitzer, Chief Executive of Cadbury plc, said: “Our early progress has continued into the second quarter with our businesses focused on delivering market share gains and efficiency improvements. As a result, we reconfirm our full year guidance for revenue growth around the lower end of our 4-6% goal range and to make good progress toward our goal of mid-teens margins by 2011.”