Unilever: All eyes on Ben & Jerry’s maker’s progress after leadership shakeup
Investors will turn their focus to Unilever’s third quarter on Tuesday results to see how the ice cream and deodorant maker is faring after a leadership shakeup.
New chief executive Hein Schumacher officially took over from his predecessor Alan Jope back in July, telling investors at the time he wanted to see more of its products “performing better than the competition”.
When Unilever published its half-year results back in July, Schumacher updated the guidance for the full year given by Jope in February.
The Ben & Jerry’s and Dove soap supplier said in its last trading update that operating profit reached €5.5bn (£4.74bn) during the half year, up 22.6 per cent on a year to year basis.
However, the consumer goods giant said that volumes were “virtually” flat across the business, with a step- up in performance in beauty and wellbeing and personal care which helped volume declines elsewhere.
Back in Februay 2021, Unilever also announced a share buyback programme of up to €3bn (£2.6bn) to be completed over 2022-23.
“For all of the noise about food groups ‘profiteering’ from inflation, shares in Unilever are unchanged over the past twelve months,” Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said.
“Even if one of the foundations for any investment case for the stock is the pricing power conferred by its powerful brands, which range from Dove to Domestos, Hellmann’s to Knorr, Sunsilk to Vaseline and Magnum to Marmite.”
He added: “The shares also still trade below the putative offer price from Kraft-Heinz when the American giant made a cash-and-stock bid for Unilever all the way back in 2017, so investors will be looking to new chief executive Hein Schumacher, a group-wide restructuring plan and an ongoing share buyback programme to provide a spark.”
It comes as fellow consumer heavy weight Reckitt Benckiser is set to post a trading update on Wednesday.
The owner of Durex and Dettol has been trading well amidst the cost of living crisis with its most recent financial results showing like-for-like revenue growth of £3.9bn up 7.9 per cent in the same period last year.