Strong growth in Unilever’s ice cream business, bolstered by better weather than the year before, has helped to contribute to a 9.4% increase in the consumer goods giant’s third-quarter turnover.
The company’s revenues were up to €13.4bn in the last three months, with underlying sales growth of 5.7%. Unilever continued to drive innovations behind premium brands such as Magnum Pink and Black and Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Core range in Europe and North America. In leaf tea, it continued to build its presence in faster growing segments, with Lipton and PG Tips extending further into fruit, herbal and speciality teas.
Savoury demonstrated good volume-driven growth led by cooking products in emerging markets and innovations around naturalness and health. Unilever launched Knorr Mealmakers with 100% natural ingredients and continued to grow the business in Africa with fortified stock cubes that address iron deficiency. In dressings, Hellmann’s showed strong volume-led growth driven by an excellent performance in Latin America and the success of the brand’s squeezy packs in Europe and North America. The baking, cooking and spreads unit – newly founded in July – is repositioning the business to more attractive segments which helped it to gain share in margarine, despite markets continuing to decline.
Overall, Unilever achieved underlying sales growth of 5.7% in the past quarter – 8.4% in emerging economies – and has enjoyed revenue growth of 11.1% since the beginning of the year.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman said: “The strong delivery in the third quarter shows that our focus to build our company for the long term is paying off.
“Our model of competitive, profitable, consistent and responsible growth is built on sustained investment in our brands, infrastructure and people. The sharpened strategies across the four categories [foods and refreshment, alongside personal care and home care] are gaining traction and a stronger innovation pipeline is increasingly driving growth. As the results show, the scale and breadth of our portfolio brings resilience in challenging economic conditions.
“We continue to see soft markets with no immediate sign of getting help from an improving global economy. We are responding fast to accelerating change and high volatility with a focus on continuous cost management while increasing our organisational agility. We will continue to invest steadily behind our brands, innovations and go-to-market capabilities.
“These actions keep us on track for another year of volume growth ahead of our markets and we now expect underlying sales growth for the year towards the upper end of the 2% – 4% range. We continue to expect steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow.”
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