PARIS — Coffee creations, yogurt and waters carried Danone SA’s North American region to like-for-like sales growth of 5.8% in the third quarter of the fiscal year, even though sales fell nearly 8% on a reported basis. Sales of €1.61 billion ($1.74 billion) compared with €1.75 billion in the previous year’s third quarter. Volume mix/growth was 4.9%.

Juergen Esser, chief financial officer of Danone, called the results in North America a “stellar performance.”

“Our coffee creations platform is going from strength-to-strength with our core portfolio as well as our innovation selling extremely well, enabling consumers to trade down from coffee houses, replicating the experience in the comfort of their own homes,” he said in an Oct. 24 earnings call. “We also see a very good performance in the fast-growing yogurt category, where our high-protein products continue to post strong double-digit growth. The rest of our yogurt portfolio is also showing an accelerated momentum, including our Activia brand sequentially increasing its contribution to the performance of our yogurt business.”

Companywide, Paris-based Danone had sales of €6.83 billion ($7.29 billion), down 1.2% from €6.91 billion due to a 3.1% negative impact from scope. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 3.2% on reported sales. Like-for-like sales increased 4.2%, and volume/mix growth was 3.6%,

“The scope effect is still negative at minus 3.1%, yet sequentially reducing as expected,” Esser said. “This is mainly due to the disposal of our Horizon Organic business in Q1 of this year.”

In Danone’s essential dairy and plant based (EDP) segment, sales fell 5.5% to €3.28 billion from €3.47 billion, although like-for-like sales rose 4.1% and volume/mix growth was 3.8%.

“The Oikos and Activia brands continue to grow very strongly in Japan, and moving forward, this will be supported by the new capacity coming online very soon at our local factory,” Esser said.

Within North America, EDP had like-for-like sales growth of 6.2%.

In the Waters segment, sales dipped 0.6% to €1.35 billion from €1.36 billion. Like-for-like sales growth was 3.2%, and volume/mix growth was 2.3%.

“In Waters, the Mizone brand has performed well in the second half of the summer season despite lapping some even stronger comparables,” Esser said. “Growth is very much supported by our successful repositioning of the core as well as by the electrolyte innovation, which makes us win market shares in this very vibrant category.”

Within North America, Waters had like-for-like sales growth of nearly 10%.

In the Specialized Nutrition segment, sales increased nearly 6% to €2.19 billion from €2.07 billion with like-for-like sales growth of 5.2% and volume/mix growth of 4.1%.