Full Year 2024 Unilever PLC Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- Unilever PLC (UL) executed its Growth Action Plan (GAP) with speed and discipline, leading to improvements across the company, including brand superiority and innovation scale.
- The company achieved a significant increase in gross margin, up by 280 basis points to 45%, exceeding pre-COVID levels in all business groups except Ice Cream.
- Underlying operating profit grew by 12.6% to EUR11.2 billion, supported by a 2.9% underlying volume growth across all business groups.
- Unilever PLC (UL) returned EUR5.8 billion in capital to shareholders in 2024 through dividends and buybacks.
- The company is on track to complete the separation of its Ice Cream business by the end of 2025, which is expected to enhance focus and performance.
- The company anticipates a slower start to 2025 with subdued market growth in the near term, particularly affecting Q1 performance.
- Unilever PLC (UL) faces challenges in China and Indonesia, with market weakness and the need for significant portfolio and brand proposition adjustments.
- Commodity inflation, particularly in cocoa and dairy, is expected to impact costs, necessitating price increases throughout 2025.
- Despite improvements, the company acknowledges that consistency in performance is not yet fully achieved, with more work needed to navigate turbulent market conditions.
- The restructuring program, while ahead of schedule, involves significant job reductions, with 7,500 roles expected to be cut by the end of 2025.
Good morning, and welcome to Unilever's full year results. Thank you for joining us. In a moment, Fernando Fernandez, our CFO, will give a breakdown of the results for 2024. After which, I will look at some of the key priorities for this year and beyond.
In total, we expect prepared remarks to last around 40 minutes, followed by 30 minutes Q&A. And all of today's webcast is available live transcribed on the screen.
Before I provide a few reflections of my own on the results, I want to touch on some of the broader shifts we have made in 2024 to set us up for a higher and more consistent performance. There are five in particular I want to highlight.
First, having been adopted and embedded across the business following its launch in October 2023, the Growth Action Plan, or GAP, was executed last year with speed and with discipline. And we see this reflected across the company. A few examples: in the plans, in our top 30 Power Brands, in our unmissable brand superiority framework, in the step-up in the
| Access to All Earning Calls and Stock Analysis | |
| 30-Year Financial on one screen | |
| All-in-one Stock Screener with unlimited filters | |
| Customizable Stock Dashboard | |
| Real Time Insider Trading Transactions | |
| 8,000+ Institutional investors’ 13F holdings | |
| Powerful Excel Add-in and Google sheets Add-on | |
| All data downloadable | |
| Quick customer support | |
| And much more... |
Trustpilot
We'd love to learn more about your experiences on GuruFocus.com and how we can improve!
Take Survey
