09 February 2023
If you are covering Unilever’s results, please see the following comment from Chris Beckett, head of equity research at Quilter Cheviot:
"Unilever has posted stable but relatively unremarkable results this morning. However, the company will likely be happy with this as it is trading at a 17x Price to Earnings Ratio so can afford to have somewhat vanilla figures.
"Full year sales margins and profits have all met expectations. However, the Q4 sales have slightly outperformed expectations with all pricing up 13%, but with a volume reduction of only -4% which is not a bad effort considering the economic backdrop and this is more to do with its categories opposed to poor execution.
"Looking at how it performed across the globe, its European business performed worse than its USA and Asian counterparts but this is not unique to Unilever with this trend repeated across its competitors.
"One interesting element of the results was that is Q4 ice cream sales were down -10% in volume, which points to there being a clear uptick in ice cream consumption at home during the lockdowns.
"Unilever’s forward guidance forecasts more of the same at least for H1 23 with prices on the up but volume lowering. A solid set of results but nothing out of the ordinary, which will be exactly what it wanted considering the global financial climate."
