Unilever (UL) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 28, 2022 3:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Richard Williams - Head, IR

Good Morning and welcome to Unilever's q1 2022 trading statement. We expect prepared remarks be around 30 minutes followed by q&a of around 30 minutes. All of today's webcast is available live transcribed on the screen as part of our accessibility program. First, can I draw your attention to the disclaimer relating to forward looking statements and non GAAP measures? And with that, let me hand over to you.

Alan Jope - CEO & Executive Director

Thanks, Richard. And good morning everyone. In the next few minutes, I'll give a quick overview of our q1 2022 results and I'll do that with reference to the very dynamic external environment and in the context of Unilever's continuing five strategic priorities. Then Graham will go into some more details on the results as well as share our outlook for the year. The external environment is characterized really by three big themes and the first and most significant is inflation.

As you're aware, Unilever was already seeing significant increases in input costs through 2021. Those inflationary pressures sharply accelerated at the end of last year and into the first quarter. events in Ukraine have no lead to even higher levels of inflation since February. agricultural products materials derived from crude oil have been particularly badly hit. And the overall input cost inflation forecast for Unilever in 2022 has risen from 3.6 billion which we communicated in February to know 4.8 billion. Now to manage this, we will continue to drive an ambitious Saving Program and increase prices thoughtfully. These mitigating actions are really an essential component of our ability to protect the shape of our p&l, and so invest competitively in advertising in r&d and in capex. There is still significant uncertainty around our costs for the second half and Graham's gonna come back to this later. Unilever continues to condemn the war in Ukraine.

Our priority has been to protect our people so that they can take care of our businesses. Our business in Ukraine has been severely restricted. We have helped many of our employees to leave the country and we're supporting both those who have left and those who remain with a variety of financial and practical measures. We've also made substantial donations of product and cash to relief efforts. We will of course comply with international sanctions and so suspended all imports and exports of our products to and from Russia. We stopped all capital inflows. And we've committed to not profiting from our operations in Russia. We're keeping our position on our closer view. And as we've said many times our first concern is the safety of our people. COVID is still very much with us.