Unilever Profit Falls After Year-Earlier Gains
January 19 2016 - 3:30AM
Dow Jones News
LONDON—Unilever PLC reported lower profit for the fiscal year as
the company came up against a year-earlier period in which results
were buoyed by gains from divestitures, however core profit and
revenue both climbed.
The maker of Magnum ice cream, Dove soap and Axe deodorant
posted net profit of €4.91 billion ($5.34 billion), compared with
€5.17 billion in the same period last year. Core operating profit
climbed 12% to €7.9 billion. Revenue rose 10% to €53.3 billion,
helped by currency gains.
Underlying sales—which strip out the impact of acquisitions,
disposals and currency movements—grew 4.1%, compared with 2.9% in
the same period last year.
Unilever has been working to push more high-end products in
Europe and North America, as the company works to offset a
constrained mass market in these regions along with slower growth
in many emerging markets. For the year however, sales in emerging
markets grew 7.1%, up from the 5.7% growth the company reported
last year, as Unilever was helped by strong price growth.
The company has been taking steps to shift its product portfolio
away from slower-growing food and towards higher-margin personal
care products and was recently reclassified on the S&P and MSCI
indexes from Packaged Food to Personal Products.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the
chief executive of the company's slow-growing spreads unit had
resigned, after just one year in the role. Sean Gogarty stepped
down last month to pursue other opportunities, according to the
contents of an internal memo reviewed by the Journal.
He has been replaced by Nicolas Liabeuf, formerly senior vice
president of marketing operations.
In its earnings report, Unilever said sales in the Baking,
Cooking and Spreads unit "continued to decline as we weren't able
to stem the sustained market contraction in developed
countries."
Write to Saabira Chaudhuri at saabira.chaudhuri@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 19, 2016 03:15 ET (08:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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