Unilever PLC (UL) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Hein Schumacher

Good morning and welcome to Unilever's Third Quarter Trading Statement. Thank you for joining us today. Prepared remarks today will take 15 to 20 minutes, leaving about 30 minutes for Q&A. And all of today's webcast is available live, transcribed on the screen. In a moment, Fernando Fernandez, our CFO, will take you through the details of the results for this quarter. And before that, I wanted to set out a few reflections on the quarter end, more generally on where I believe we currently stand.

The first thing to note is that we have delivered another quarter of volume-led growth. Underlying sales in Q3 grew 4.5%, with volumes up 3.6%. And this marks the fourth consecutive quarter of positive and improved volume growth. Importantly, volumes were positive across all business groups, with the strongest performances in Beauty & Wellbeing and Ice Cream. In Ice Cream, we are starting to see the benefits of ongoing operational improvements. Progress here is unlikely to be linear, but we do believe our Ice Cream business is on the right trajectory.

Overall, growth in the quarter was once again driven by our Power Brands which were up 5.4%, including 4.3% volume growth. And these brands are undoubtedly benefiting from the increased focus and investments that we are putting behind them under our Growth Action Plan. More generally, the operational improvements we are making as part of the GAP helped to explain the stronger and more consistent level of delivery we are now experiencing. As part of that, I'm pleased that we are starting to see the positive impact from scaling fewer but bigger innovations across our markets.

Alongside operational improvements, we are also continuing to take well-considered steps where necessary to sharpen and strengthen the portfolio. This quarter saw us exit the water purification business in China, for example, with the completion of the sale of our stake in Truliva. We also completed our exit from Russia in October with the sale of our entire business to the Arnest Group, the end of a considerate, lengthy and complex process.

In those parts of the business, where we are not yet seeing the level of improvement we want, we are taking decisive action to correct and to necessary, to reset operations. In Indonesia, we are making a significant intervention to address both portfolio and route-to-market challenges. This is not a quick fix and we don't expect to see the benefits until well into next year but we are determined to see this through.