Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, boosted its full-year sales forecast after reporting third-quarter sales growth that beat estimates on improved results in emerging markets and a strong performance from its ice-cream business.
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Stripping out currency movements – to which Unilever is particularly vulnerable – shows a rather less dazzling underlying sales growth figure of 5.7%.
The company now expects underlying sales growth for the year towards the upper end of the 2-4 percent range.
Unilever has announced that turnover increased by 9.4% to €13.4 billion including a positive currency impact of 2.9% in Q3.
Unilever didn’t release profit figures in its third-quarter trading statement Thursday.
Unilever chief executive Paul Polman however cautioned that despite sales rises, “we continue to see soft global markets with no immediate signs of getting help from an improved global economy”.
2015 was supposed to be a tricky year for Unilever, but strong growth in emerging markets, especially Latin America, have held the multinational consumer goods giant aloft. Growth was helped by soft comparisons in China, strong ice cream sales over the summer and a few advanced sales in Latin America. “We continue to expect steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow”. “All business lines beat expectations, and emerging-market growth increased further”. Europe, meanwhile, grew at 2% despite significant (2.5%) price deflation, driven by a surge in demand for novelty ice creams.
The company has been pushing deeper into personal-care products like shampoo and deodorants with appeal across different markets, and away from slower-growing food brands.
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Meanwhile, sales in its refreshment division climbed 8.5% with ice cream delivering “very strong growth” helped by better weather than a year ago. Unilever has muscled deeper into the ice-cream business of late, earlier this month saying it had bought Italian artisan ice-cream maker Grom.
