Unilever PLC (UL) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

April 27, 2023 3:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

We would like to now turn the call over to Richard Williams, Unilever's Head of Investor Relations, to begin the presentation.

Richard Williams - Head of IR

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Unilever's First Quarter 2023 Trading Statement. We expect prepared remarks to be around 25 minutes, followed by Q&A for around 30 minutes. Given that it's a busy reporting period, we will end with a hard stop by 9:00 A.M. All of today's webcast is available live, transcribed on the screen.

First, can I draw your attention to the disclaimer relating to the forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. And with that said, straight over to Alan.

Alan Jope - CEO

Well, thanks, Richard, and good morning, everyone. In the next few minutes, I'll give an overview of the Q1 trading performance and also a short update on our progress against our strategic priorities. In our usual format, Graeme will then provide more details on the results and cover the outlook. And then, of course, we'll take some questions.

Before that, I would like to acknowledge that this will be the last time that I'll present Unilever's quarterly performance. By the time that we released the half year results in July, Hein will have taken over as the CEO of Unilever. However, that's still two long months away, and I remain fully focused on executing our strategic priorities and driving performance. The hand over to Hein will take place during June until then it's business as usual.

Right. We made a good start to the year and again delivered double-digit underlying sales growth. And the growth is very broad based across all business groups and geographies. Although pricing remains elevated, volume performance has improved strongly. In part, this reflects some preplanned one-offs and in part, better-than-expected elasticities.

Our billion+ Euro brands grew faster than the rest of the portfolio. We saw particularly strong performances from Hellmann's, from OMO and from Rexona. We do continue to prioritize our investment behind our billion+ Euro brands which are also benefiting from the strongest innovation lineup that we've had for many years. And I'll give some examples of that shortly.

The new organization has landed well. It's continuing to deliver the impact that we designed for. Sharp prioritization, differentiated expertise between the business groups, speed and tackling difficult decisions and pockets of underperformance and actually greater leverage of Unilever's scale in our business operations team. We delivered underlying sales growth of 10.5% in the first quarter, driven by price at 10.7% with underlying volume, down slightly at minus 0.2%.