so far this earnings season only one householdgoods giant has been able to mutter the magic words that wall street wants to hear volume growth investors are no longer impressed with margindefending price increases at consumerstaples titans such as kimberlyclark kmb 008increase green up pointing triangle and colgatepalmolive cl 193decrease red down pointing triangle  with room to keep hiking prices running out they expect these will soon stop being a driver for overall revenue growth that will put the onus on companies to start moving more units in contrast to the modest volume declines they have been seeing lately so when procter  gamble pg 283increase green up pointing triangle said friday it expects to see “volume returning to modest growth” in the current fiscal year ending next june its shares rose 28 when colgatepalmolive on the same day gave a more noncommittal outlook on volume its shares fell 19 and when kimberlyclark was similarly vague on this key subject earlier in the week it suffered a 3 selloff on the surface quarterly results for the three companies appeared similar organic sales a key industry measure that strips out currency and merger impacts rose 8 from a year earlier at pg 8 from a year earlier at colgate and 5 at kimberlyclark all thanks to price increases but underlying volumes fell 1 at pg and 3 at both colgate and kimberlyclark all gave strong forecasts for organic sales going forward on conference calls though all were quizzed by analysts about how much of that would be coming from actual volume growth kimberlyclark chief financial officer nelson urdaneta noted that the pace of declines in volume growth is slowing sequentially with volume falling 7 year on year in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 5 in the first quarter of 2023 but he fell short of saying if or when it would turn positive in his comments colgatepalmolive chief executive noel wallace told an analyst that “i understand the importance of gaining volume growth” but he mostly stressed the need to protect margins “as you know we’re coming out of what has been the worst rawmaterial environment in decades” wallace said “we believe that if we exit this type of environment with a structurally lower gross margin you’re going to be in a hole that’s very difficult to dig yourself out of in the future” against this backdrop pg finance chief andre schulten sounded positively bullish when he said there could be 1 to 15 global volume growth this fiscal year already in the us pg’s biggest market there was 3 volume growth in its fiscal fourth quarter he noted of course if pg falls short of that forecast its shares could get hit but at least now these companies know exactly what wall street expects from them