Unilever PLC (UL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 9, 2023 3:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello and welcome to Unilever's Q4 and Full-Year 2022 Results.

We would like to now hand 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 full-year results. We expect prepared remarks to be around 30 minutes, followed by Q&A of around 30 minutes. All of today's webcast is available live transcribed on the screen.

First, can I draw your attention to the disclaimer relating to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. And then straightaway, I hand it over to you Alan.

Alan Jope - CEO

Thanks Richard and good morning everybody. Before we start, I'm sure you will all have seen by now that Unilever is appointed Hein Schumacher, as our new CEO as from the 1st of July, and I like to use this moment to congratulate Hein on his appointment. From the limited time that we spent together over the last few months, I have every confidence that Hein will be a great leader for Unilever, and that he will take the business to new heights in the coming years. I look forward to continuing to work with him on our Board ahead of handing over the keys as CEO at the end of June.

But meantime, it is full steam ahead to sustain the current good momentum in Unilever's business. My team and I remain fully focused on that task at hand. Right, this is how we'll run today. I'm going to give a quick overview, and then Graeme will take you through the details of the results. I'll then give an update of our progress against our strategy, and Graeme will share our outlook before of course we move on to take questions.

2022 was an important year for Unilever. We navigated levels of commodity cost increases that we've not seen in a generation taking price increases responsibly to protect the shape of the P&L, and thereby enabling us to continue to invest in our brands. We manage the impact on volume as well and as a result delivered growth levels not seen for over a decade. We suppress €60 billion of turnover for the first time and added two more brands Lifebuoy and Comfort to the €1 billion club, which now stands at 14 brands.