Strong performances from Dove, Comfort and Magnum brands boosted sales growth of 4.5% at Unilever, according to its third quarter results.
Published on Thursday, Unilever said volume growth increased to 3.6% in Q3, with power brand sales more than 75% of turnover, with 5.4% USG and volumes up 4.3%.
The company had a turnover of €15.2 billion with 2.8% impact from currency and 1.5% from net disposals, with the 2024 full year outlook unchanged with 3-5% USG, and an underlying operating margin of at least 18%.
Improved Volume Growth
Hein Schumacher, CEO, said, "We have delivered a fourth consecutive quarter of positive, improved volume growth, with each of our business groups driving higher volumes year-on-year.
"Underlying sales grew 4.5%, led by our power brands, with particularly strong performances from Dove, Liquid I.V., Comfort and Magnum.
Price growth continued to moderate in line with our expectations."
Growth Action Plan
Schumacher said the company is still in the early stages of transforming performance as it executes a 'Growth Action Plan' focused on doing fewer things, better and with greater impact.
"We are starting to see the positive impact from scaling fewer, bigger innovations across our markets supported by increased brand investment," he said.
"We are taking decisive actions, where we see operational or market challenges to ensure we are well positioned for consistent and improved performance.
Productivity Programme
"As part of the group’s overall transformation, we are implementing a comprehensive productivity programme and the separation of ice cream, both of which are progressing as planned.
We are on track to deliver our 2024 outlook and are confident that the steps we are taking will help to transform Unilever over time into a consistently higher performing business.”
All business groups achieved positive volume growth, according to the report, and underlying price growth continued to moderate to 0.9% in Q3.
Beauty And Wellbeing
In addition to power brands, others also delivered volume growth of 1.3% in Q3, up from -1.6% in H1.
Beauty and wellbeing grew underlying sales of 6.7%, with volume growth of 5.7%.
Health and Wellbeing, and Prestige Beauty combined delivered a fifteenth consecutive quarter of double-digit, volume-led growth.
Strong growth in Health & Wellbeing more than offset softer growth in Prestige, reflecting the continued slowdown in the US and China beauty markets.
Personal care grew 4.4% with 3.1% from volume, driven by a strong Dove performance.
Moderating Prices
Home care underlying sales increased by 1.9%, with 3.3% volume growth more than offsetting continued negative price growth linked to commodity cost deflation.
Nutrition grew underlying sales 1.5%, with muted volume growth of 0.4% amidst moderating prices and market slow- down.
Ice Cream grew 9.8%, with 6.7% from volume and 2.9% from price. This improved performance reflects the continued focus on operational improvements alongside strong innovations, amplified by a weak comparator.
Global Markets
Developed markets, which represents 43% of group turnover, grew underlying sales 6.9% with 6.8% from volume and 0.1% from price.
Volume growth was broad-based and reflected strong growth in beauty and wellbeing in North America, strong growth in home care in Europe and a marked volume improvement in ice cream.
Emerging markets - 57% of group turnover – grew underlying sales 2.9%, with 1.4% from volume and 1.5% from price.
India grew 2.3% with volume growth of 3.4%.
Underlying price growth of -1.0% in India lapped a one-off indirect tax benefit in the prior year, without which Q3 UPG would have been flat, while Latin America grew 3.8%.
This slower rate of growth reflected a decline in the laundry powders market in Brazil and low-single digit growth in Mexico after eight quarters of double-digit growth.
Africa and Turkey continued to deliver double-digit growth.
China declined low-single digit with market weakness across categories and in the context of softer markets, we are transforming our go-to-market approach.
South East Asia declined mid-single digit, driven by an -18% decline in Indonesia which was only partially offset by volume-led growth in Philippines and Thailand.
