Research Outline

Unilever Brands

Goals

To determine the landscape within Unilever including details on brands sales, management changes, and external factors or consumer preferences that contribute to success or failure.

Early Findings

Unilever has approximately 193 brands under their corporate umbrella. The identified brands are listed in the attached spreadsheet.

Highlights from the 2018 Unilever Annual Report

Pages 138-144 of the Annual Report detail each of Unilever's group companies and their nominal values.

Unilever's Beauty & Personal Care (BPC) division is the company's largest and includes five global brands with turnover of €1 billion or above, namely Axe, Dove, Lux, Rexona and Sunsilk, as well as other household names such as TRESemmé, Signal, Lifebuoy and Vaseline. BPC has leading global positions in hair care, skin cleansing and deodorants, and strong local positions in skin care and oral care. The prestige business leads in premiumising our portfolio with turnover of €490 million from brands including Dermalogica and Hourglass.

Combined Brand Performance in BEAUTY & PERSONAL CARE 2018 2017 % change
  • Turnover (€ million) 20,624 20,697 (0.3)
  • Operating profit (€ million) 4,130 4,103 0.7
  • Underlying operating profit (€ million) 4,508 4,375 3.0
  • Operating margin (%) 20.0 19.8 0.2
  • Underlying operating margin (%) 21.9 21.1 0.8
  • Underlying sales growth (%) 3.1 2.9
  • Underlying volume growth (%) 2.5 1.4
  • Underlying price growth (%) 0.6 1.5
Combined Brand Performance in HOME CARE 2018 2017 % change
  • Turnover (€ million) 10,131 10,574 (4.2)
  • Operating profit (€ million) 1,160 1,138 1.9
  • Underlying operating profit (€ million) 1,317 1,288 2.3
  • Operating margin (%) 11.5 10.8 0.7
  • Underlying operating margin (%) 13.0 12.2 0.8
  • Underlying sales growth (%) 4.2 4.4
  • Underlying volume growth (%) 2.3 2.1
  • Underlying price growth (%) 1.9 2.3
Combined Brand Performance in FOODS & REFRESHMENT 2018 2017 % change
  • Turnover (€ million) 20,227 22,444 (9.9)
  • Operating profit (€ million) 7,245 3,616 100.4
  • Underlying operating profit (€ million) 3,534 3,737 (5.4)
  • Operating margin (%) 35.8 16.1 19.7
  • Underlying operating margin (%) 17.5 16.7 0.8
  • Underlying sales growth (%) 2.0 2.7
  • Underlying volume growth (%) 1.3 (0.2)
  • Underlying price growth (%) 0.7 3.0
UNDERLYING SALES GROWTH
"Underlying Sales Growth (USG) refers to the increase in turnover for the period, excluding any change in turnover resulting from acquisitions, disposals and changes in currency. We believe this measure provides valuable additional information on the underlying sales performance of the business and is a key measure used internally. The impact of acquisitions and disposals is excluded from USG for a period of 12 calendar months from the applicable closing date. Turnover from acquired brands that are launched in countries where they were not previously sold is included in USG as such turnover is more attributable to our existing sales and distribution network than the acquisition itself. Also, excluded is the impact of price growth from countries where the impact of consumer price inflation (CPI) rates has escalated to extreme levels.
There are two countries where we have determined extreme levels of CPI exist. The first is Venezuela where in Q4 2017 inflation rates exceeded 1,000% and management considered that the situation would persist for some time. Consequently, price growth in Venezuela has been excluded from USG since Q4 2017. The second is Argentina,
which from Q3 2018 has been accounted for in accordance with IAS 29, and thus from Q3 2018 Argentina price growth is excluded from USG. The adjustment made at Group level as a result of these two exclusions was a reduction in price growth of 32.4% for the year. This treatment for both countries will be kept under regular review.
Prior to Q3 2018 USG only excluded the impact of price changes in countries where consumer price inflation has escalated to extreme levels of 1,000% or more. However, given the need to account for our Argentinian business in accordance with IAS 29, we have now also excluded price changes in countries that need to be accounted for in
accordance with IAS 29. Prior to Q3 2018 there were no countries that were accounted for under IAS 29, so no restatements are necessary."