Unilever PLC (ULVR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning or afternoon. I'd like to welcome you to the second in a series of webcast this year, where we offer investors an online opportunity to learn about a specific area of the business. The first webcast was in March when Fabian Garcia talked about our business in the U.S. and it's available to replay on our website. Today, I'd like to welcome Richard Slater, Unilever's Chief R&D Officer, who's going to talk about innovation and R&D at Unilever, and we'll have time for a short Q&A at the end.

Thanks, Richard. Great to be with you today. For those I have not met before, as Richard said, Richard Slater, Chief R&D Officer of Unilever. And I've been in the role just over 2 years now. Prior to that, I was at GSK Consumer Healthcare and Reckitt prior. So I hope to speak for around 20, 25 minutes, and then we'll open up for a short Q&A. I'd like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement before I get started. I'm moving on and getting right into things. So earlier in the year, Alan introduced to many of you, the 5 strategic choices we've made for future growth. And today, I'll be going into a bit more detail on one of these strategic choices, particularly, to talk about how we're winning with our brands through superior and sustainable innovation. Now in terms of innovation at Unilever, there's 4 areas that have been really top of mind for me over the last 2 years coming into the company and coming into this role. And I wanted to share a little bit more about what's behind these with you today. The first is that we have a genuinely world-class R&D function, which I'm really proud to lead and who are focused on delivering superior and sustainable innovations that deliver competitive advantage for Unilever. The second, our exciting science and technology initiatives where we focused our resources and are developing differentiated technology for the future. Thirdly, over the last 2 years, we've been transforming the innovation portfolio and the process of innovation at Unilever, bringing more focus on bigger projects and discipline in our execution. And finally, the role that innovation plays in delivering strategy in 3 areas in particular, transforming the core, premiumizing and accessing high-growth spaces. And I'll share a few real examples behind those. So let me start with a brief overview of R&D. And actually, I thought, I'd go straight into 2 examples here, because our fundamental role in R&D, despite the fact we work on lots of parts of the business, our fundamental role is to develop superior and sustainable products. So on the left here, you see the relaunch of our Laundry brands around the world, including Persil here in the U.K. This is a greener formulation, less chemicals, is the first plant-based cleaning polymer and green sourced surfactants and enzymes. The packs are 50% to 100% recycled plastic. And the best part of all of that is, is our best ever cleaning performance. And second, we've just launched BotaniTech, a home hygiene range. And thus clearly, you can all see the consumer need right now for highly effective hygiene products for the home, but also there's a need and a desire to have products that are kinder to the planet and kinder to the people and families. So this was developed with a pH-neutral formula. It's the only major brand to be 100% biodegradable. It uses naturally derived active ingredients that kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. It gets 24-hour antibacterial action, but it's also safe for use for all parts of the home, including food prep and even children's toys, and it was developed in less than 9 months. So I share these just as 2 quick examples of what I mean by superior and sustainable. And I hope you'll see this more in action as I progress through. So back to a little bit about R&D in Unilever, and I see this in 4 ways. So the first is a deep science and technology expertise. We've got a diverse and talented team and more than 5,000 professionals around the world, and more than 50 nationalities, and women comprise more than half of our senior roles now. And many of the people in our teams are truly world-leading experts in their fields from things like, material chemistry, microbiome, alternative models for animal testing. And of course, we don't do this alone, and we have a very large network of innovation partners from our big suppliers to innovative start-ups and some of the biggest technology companies in the world. And actually, almost 70% of our innovation is enabled through the partnerships as well as in-house expertise. And secondly, we are science and technology obsessed in R&D, but we're science and technology obsessed at the service of bringing real benefits to people to bring against real needs and real pain points. And I'm staggered by this, but we have access to more than 1 billion digital consumer connects each day. And this is data that comes, for example, from consumer reviews, comments online ratings online. Now all of this is filtered using AI and machine learning to provide our teams with feedback on products, insights for new innovations, for example, specific fragrance or ingredient trends or ways to improve our products. Now R&D is embedded in the consumer and business teams. 80% to 90% of our people sit within a business and consumer team. So this really ensures that we work on locally relevant real insights and that we tailor our global developments appropriately. So one example here and one simple example is tailored solutions for hair care in Indonesia where 34% of the population wear hijab. And covering the hair all day can lead to specific issues, around things like oil and freshness. So the team developed a specific deeper cleaning Sunsilk shampoo and conditioner with a longer-lasting fragrance. And this has become more than 10% of total brand turnover in Indonesia and is being rolled out in all the relevant parts of the region. And thirdly is our global scale combined with local knowledge. So we have 8 global technology innovation centers that sit in our biggest markets where we have access to top talent and key partners. And that's across the U.S., Europe, India and China. On top of this, we have 10 regional hubs, for example, in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, and a presence in more than 60 countries. Now this ensures that we rapidly deploy and tailor the global innovations from those big centers in the local context, and it also ensures business continuity, material cost-saving programs and our sustainability work happens on a local level as well as globally. And then finally, here is our cutting-edge digital technology. And this has been an investment area for Unilever R&D and something that I'm really focusing the teams. So a few examples here. So we're building automated technology into those innovation centers that I mentioned. And this enables efficiency, but actually also more accuracy in our experiments and faster work effectively, faster experiments, faster rollout products. So one example, our materials innovation factories part of our U.K. innovation hub is an open access center. It brings together the best academic start-ups, and industries together under one roof. And it actually has the highest concentration of robots doing material chemistry work anywhere in the world. And we're finding it's generating data 10x faster than traditional bench work. Now we used to have to, of course, do all of our experiments by hand at the bench. But now we're seeing that rapid superior product design can come from being able to run thousands of experiments digitally in place of physical experiments. And that allows us to narrow down key parameters, optimize the performance, sustainability and cost before we get to the lab stage. So in the last 12 months, we performed more than 12,000 digital experiments, we captured the data from many thousands more, and that's reducing our spending on trials and clinicals by more than EUR 25 million a year. And it's one of the ways we're cutting the time to market for innovation. And finally, here, we're applying artificial intelligence. I mentioned the example earlier that too this real-time market and consumer data. So in our China Innovation Hub for example, we're generating insights and prototype innovations in a matter of hours. And we can pilot on e-com in a matter of days. That's versus the usual weeks and months to deliver innovation. So our skin care brand Vaseline in China has massively benefited from this approach, and that's allowing us to enable rapid local and channel tailored innovations, for example, e-commerce. And it's helping that brand grow in China. It's now many times the size it was just a few years ago. Now the second area I want to talk about and one of the key shifts I've been really pushing is that we focus our R&D work behind fewer key science and technology areas to bring superior and sustainable technologies and innovations into the funnel. These initiatives take advantage of our scale and external leverage and they sit at the intersection of key consumer mega trends that are shaping the industry and leading-edge science. Now we're supporting them with a multiyear program of incremental investment, and they'll deliver across our divisions. We're also already using these technologies in our innovation, and I think there's more to come here in the future. And I can't share all of these for competitive reasons. But I wanted to bring it to life rather than just talk about it. And I wanted to use 3 examples -- 3 key examples for us, which are renewable ingredients, next-generation biology and plant-based technology. So on to renewable ingredients. And this is really moving away from things like petrochemical sources of ingredients. And first example here is a bio-produced surfactant. Surfactant being the key cleaning ingredient in many products, and here's a dish liquid product where we're using bio tech produced cleaning ingredients that are 100% renewable and 100% biodegradable. And again, a bit like the example earlier, we actually found it also delivered superior mildness on hands than regular products. The second is a pilot launch we've just done in China. It's the world's first laundry capsules made with surfactants from waste carbon emissions. So this is really on the cutting edge of technology. At this stage, it is a test and learn launch, but it shows what could be possible. And we're also working on plastic alternatives, such as the recently announced paper detergent bottles as part of an industry collaboration and this is piloting a technology to create suitable barrier without plastic. So innovations like this are going to be really essential to meeting our plastic reduction goals, and it's also what consumers are demanding of us. The second area is next-generation biology, and this is all about the seismic shifts we're seeing in our ability and our understanding of harnessing biology for benefit. And it's particularly enabled by digital technology and data. And to give you a practical example, biotechnology is one, gene therapy is another, even the vaccine development, we've recently seen for COVID is another example. And I think next-generation biology will really enable to unlock significant new benefits for our industry, too, and it's going to be essential for meeting our ambitious climate and nature goals. So the first area is microbiome. Microbiome probably most of you are aware, but it's the family of microbes that live in and around our body or even in our home. And what we found in recent years is the microbiome is key to virtually all aspects of health and wellbeing. And for us, that goes across skin, hair, nutrition, oral care, even the home. Now we're a leader here with more than 100 patents and leading partnerships across the world, including a recently announced partnership with Microba Life Sciences to talk, to explore the link between gut health and sleep quality. The second area is skin barrier, which is a critical component of healthy skin. And just as one practical example here, we've been able to develop a new technology for our pro-lipids that helps the skin repair is barrier from inside out. Now this is clinically proven to work on even the dry skin in just 2 hours and is superior to the competition. And thirdly, here, immunity. I really believe this is going to be a focus for the years ahead, not just related to COVID, but also to the millions of preventable illnesses and deaths still occurring around the world as a result of poor hygiene and sanitation. So we're continuing to focus on superior, clinically proven technology for brands such as Lifebuoy which is the world's #1 hygiene soap brand, with highly effective products that not only kill viruses and bacteria but also start to work with the skin's own immunity. The third and final example of a focused science and technology areas is plant-based. Now plant-based, first, you might think foods and certainly, dairy-free, vegan, meat alternatives are a key focus for this. Now we have a state-of-the-art, Foods Innovation Center just opened in 2019 in the Netherlands in an area known as the Silicon Valley of Foods, where we have a lot of academic partnerships, startups, all innovating on a campus along with our innovation center. Now these areas of plant-based food are high growth and premium segments and we see strong consumer demand, but also the key to addressing our goals on climate change as well as creating a more sustainable food system. Now the really key thing here is to create the right taste, texture and structure for foods, which takes a lot of category and R&D expertise. And it takes capability and creativity to create innovations like, vegan Hellmann's Mayonnaise, Vegan Magnum and plant-based burgers that look, cook and taste just like meat for Vegetarian Butcher. And supporting this work, we've just announced some innovative partnerships such as with Algenuity, who are looking at algae protein and ENOUGH looking at mycoprotein to develop even more sustainable sources of protein for the future. And plant-based isn't just in foods, but it also applies to Home Care and Beauty & Personal Care. And here, plant-based polymers can be used in laundry products just as one example, to enhance cleaning but in a way that is 100% renewable and biodegradable, unlike those from petrochemical sources. So that's a bit about our size and technology and R&D. And the third overall area I want to talk is how we've been transforming, how we innovate -- innovation portfolio. And I've been working really closely with our business leaders over the last 18 months to really look hard at how we innovate. Our [indiscernible] innovation program in recent years have become more fragmented than perhaps we would have liked through the Connected 4 Growth program, perhaps too many small initiatives that were not, in the end, moving the needle far enough for growth in our biggest brands in all cases. So last year -- at the start of last year, we set out an ambitious program to step up the impacts of innovation on Unilever's growth, including calling out impactful innovation at a company level of one of our growth fundamentals to drive operational excellence. And there's 3 keyways we've garnered this. The first is we've developed new and completely refreshed category innovation strategies across the whole company. This has been a really in-depth process that involved exploring all potential high-growth spaces across consumer, segments and channels and then determining exactly where we should play and what our right to win is. And what it's done is helped focus our resources behind the bigger and faster-growing segments and channels and our R&D focus on to fewer, more differentiated technology areas and really focused us on winning products. I mentioned winning products. We've put a big focus back on product superiority as a core driver of market share and penetration. And we've more than doubled our testing in the last 18 months here. And the testing is one thing, but you need to then intervene on the products, improve them, put those local insights into action that I talked about earlier. And we've been doing that and working hard on that in our last 18 months in key markets and our key products, and we stepped up our percentage of turnover winning significantly from less than 50% to more than 65% now. And that's testing against head-to-head against the best competitor in a given market. And we have virtually no losses across our portfolio. So our ambition continues there. We'll keep focusing on the testing and the products improvements, but also evolving our approach to think about things like online ratings and reviews that are provided in real time. And thirdly, we focused on fewer, bigger innovation activities executed with more discipline. The results of this work are average project size is more than doubled. We've stopped around 1/3 of our projects without compromising on the funnel value and we've adopted a new agile innovation process that's spread our innovation by 30% on average, when we look across the portfolio. But most importantly, from having a fragmented and complex funnel, we've now got clear, sizable incremental bets to launch each year. And we've got a significant step-up in the number and size of those bets in the funnel. So the key point there is all of that work is working in terms of the real projects in the funnel that we see for launch in the coming years. Okay. So that's a bit of how we've been innovating. And then lastly, I wanted to talk about the role of innovation in delivering our portfolio and our strategy. And I see it really playing in 3 key roles for our portfolio. And those are core transformation, and that's really around innovating on our biggest brands with differentiated technologies, superior products and better meeting consumer needs. Secondly, premiumization -- commanding a premium for superior offerings and new benefits. And finally, future growth spaces, creating the Unilever portfolio of the future, both organically and through acquisition. So I'll use some recent examples to hopefully, illustrate this for you all today. So starting with core transformation. And the first one here is our Rexona relaunch just happening right now. Now we're the category leader in deodorants, and Rexona is the #1 deo brand in the world. It's also known as Degree and Sure, depending on the market that you're at. Although, most people on the call here would probably say their antiperspirant or deodorant works well. Research shows that 80% plus of people still experience odor or wetness issues quite regularly, especially in high-pressure situations, which, of course, I know nothing about right now. Now we launched last year our patented superior technology in our premium clinical range, and this has proven to be 3x more effective at stopping sweat. This technology actually took 9 years to develop, unlike some of the innovations I was talking about that take days and hours now. This is an example of a technology that took years, real in-depth patient work. More than 50 expert scientists are now are able to bring this disruptive tocology to the core of Rexona and it's the first ever 72-hour nonstop protection, however, much you move. So this innovation is a great fit with the brand purpose to get people moving more. The second one here is around Knorr, and part of Knorr's healthier portfolio transformation. Knorr is our largest food brand in Unilever. It's in 90 countries. And so it represents an enormous opportunity to bring boldly healthier foods to life and really drive our food strategy. As part of this, we've just launched Knorr Zero Salt Stock. I don't know how many of you thought about this before. But I can tell you that creating a zero salt stock without impacting the flavor and the structure is a serious challenge. It's like building a house with no bricks in terms of taste or no mortar in terms of structure. But it's really important because most of us consume more than double the recommended amount each day of salt. And often, we don't know that we're doing that. So to achieve this, the R&D team run literally thousands of virtual experiments in parallel, with multiple combinations of ingredients to find the right theoretical mix that would work. And then, of course, that theory has to turn into practice. So they did multiple rounds of lab and recipe work to build the house to create this formula and set of ingredients that would work. Now through this, the team have created the zero salt stock, but it's also great tasting and well structured. And we're now in a stage of rolling this out successfully around the world. Thirdly, I've got here one of our recent launches and one of our biggest, which is Dove Body Wash relaunch. Now Dove is Unilever's biggest brand. It's around 5 billion in sales -- EUR 5 billion in sales. It operates across multiple categories and skin cleansing, so sort of body wash being the classic format is the largest. It's been growing extremely well in recent years, often supported by innovation. And we recently innovated to bring a complete upgrade of our formulation, clinically proven superior moisturization and care. Now behind this is a patented technology that delivers that, but it's combined with an ultra-mild, so a gentle microbiome friendly formulation. And the key point and insight and technical challenge here is to bring skin care benefits. So imagine leave on skin care benefits to a wash off product. Now we were able to use the Unilever scale here because we've taken the skin characters from our face business, applied our formulation knowledge from across hair and skin to design this chassis in this formulation that gives the mild cleaning but also leaves the key active ingredient on the skin. It might sound simple, but harder than it sounds because the cleanser is there to take things off the skin. And here, we're trying to leave the fantastic moisturizing ingredients on the skin. So also been proven to be clinically superior versus the competition. And on top of this, we've launched it in a 100% recycled bottle. This has saved more than 20,000 tons of virgin plastic a year. I think it's a nice example where, if you deliver superior product against core benefits on the biggest brands and in our biggest markets, you're going to have success in terms of the launch and in terms of growth. And the final example from a transformation of the core point of view is Omo, which is the largest laundry brand in Latin America. This recent launch is Omo concentrates, which brings superior sustainability to the core, but without compromising on cleaning, convenience of value. So it delivers sustainability and plastic reduction that our consumers really care about. And it's one of our largest ever plastic reduction projects. How it works is consumers buy an easy-to-carry concentrated refill in store, and then they simply dilute this at home into the regular 3-liter bottle, they keep a bottle. And that was quite key to ensure that there was minimal change to well-established habits and to make sure the value perception and the dosing was all fit with what people were used to. But the refills are 75% less plastic, much less water, much less transportation and emissions and cost and higher-value density, so better for the e-com channel as well. And it's actually more affordable at-shelf for consumers but also more profitable for us. The technology behind this enables the concentrated formula, but it also dilutes easily, and it's almost biodegradable formulation that we've ever launched in Laundry. So this was launched really successfully, and it's helping drive record market share across LATAM. In Argentina, for example, already has a higher market share alone than our key competitors. Okay. So I'm going to talk -- second area -- second role for innovation being, premiumization. So Magnum Double is Magnum being one of our $1 billion-plus brands. I'm sure many of you have tried it, and certainly always popular in my house. It's had a very successful innovation history. Magnum Double Gold Caramel is the latest addition. And with Magnum, it's really important to carefully craft the product's experience to fit with the brand and always deliver for people. So here with the pint pots, we have a chocolate lid on that, you crack and open. And then for this innovation, it's got to double layer chocolate with sauces between. This takes quite a lot of know-how and technology behind the formula, the product, the recipe and the production process. And what's fantastic here as well as we're using advanced recycling technology on the packs to create, like new food-grade, 100% recycled plastic tubs and we're the only large ice cream brand to do so. And actually, you can even have the Magnum Double delivered to your home in as little as 30 minutes in certain cities because of our Ice Cream Now delivery channel innovation. Second example here and one focused in some of our emerging markets is Lux and Lux Botanicals. Lux is another one of our EUR 1 billion plus brands. This is all about bringing the fantastic product experience, a more premium proposition with locally relevant, natural ingredients. So here, for example, a combination of exotic flower perfumes and botanical beauty oils, but it's also underpinned by our most effective skin care technologies. And again, this is bringing skin care technology into cleansing products to give added benefits for people and for our users. So this liquid versus a traditional bar format is more convenient, it's more premium, it's more profitable for us and better for our consumers as well. So we launched this first in China, very focused on e-commerce, and it's now rolling out across Southeast Asia. Another key example for premiumization for us is Dove Hair Therapy. Just launched in the U.S. and Canada. A really key one for us in the premium hair segment. which is growing at 30%, growing ahead of the market. And it's a patented formula with state-of-the-art skin care ingredients again applied to hair. So hyaluronic acid, Vitamin B3, serums. And it actually delivers an amazing product performance, particularly on shine and gloss. And we've shown it to be superior to even higher -- to higher-priced luxury brands and with a really compelling consumer claim at 97%, less breakage after just one use. I think it's the final premiumization example. This is a launch we've just done in the U.S. and that we're really proud of. It's our premium, sustainable, refillable deodorant under Dove. You buy this once and you refill for life. And the refills are 50% less plastic than a regular stick. About 98% recycled material in that refill, and they're fully recyclable, 100% recyclable. It really created a tremendous potential when we launched this. I think it's a patent's beautiful, precision-engineered stainless steel versus not what people expect in the deos and antiperspirant category. But importantly, the product delivers too. The formula has got moisturizers, a course of moisturizers on it, and it delivers 48-hour odor protection. So this enables at premium price point, high-value density, which is great for e-commerce as well. And I think it really shows how an innovation can disrupt and bring premiumization in any category as long as we bring real benefits. And the final sort of core role we see for innovation is enabling the future growth spaces. Now we've shared with you before, I think Alan has shared with you that Unilever has identified 5 strategic growth spaces across hygiene, skin care, prestige beauty, functional nutrition, nutrition and plant-based food. What we're doing is R&D, and our innovation teams is gearing up behind these to build strong innovation funnels behind. And I'll just touch on 2 in the interest of time today. So the first is OLLY. OLLY was acquired in 2019 as part of our Functional Nutrition business, where we've set an ambition to grow to at least EUR 3 billion in sales in the next few years. Now OLLY was a real disruptor in the category, innovated behind really clear and simple proposition on real benefit areas and in consumer preferred formats, such as gummies. Now this range has been co-created with consumers, particularly with women, to tackle real issues for women that can be inaccessible or even taboo today. So you can see more playful examples, but they tackle real issues like beat the blow to living [ libido ]. And is a fantastic innovation machine behind OLLY and behind our nutrition brands, but we also see a future opportunities to bring the scale of Unilever's science and technology to help power our innovation in the years to come. My final example is Hourglass, part of our Prestige Beauty portfolio. Now Hourglass is the world's first luxury, cruelty-free, color cosmetics brand, which is famous for its disruptive in cutting-edge innovations. Across Prestige Beauty, we've actually developed and launched more than 40 technologies from Unilever R&D applied to our Prestige brands and businesses which is really an example what I just talked for OLLY around leveraging the scale and expertise of our teams and our partnerships and our R&D. And the most recent example here is Hourglass vegan lipstick is the first vegan alternative to the most commonly used red pigment in color cosmetics, which is red carmine. The problem here is red carmine is derived from female beetles, and it can take more than 1,000 beetles for 1 lipstick. I don't think many people realize this. And red carmine is really used throughout color cosmetics and throughout the industry. So after a multiyear development, this was really dependent on digital virtual experiments, again, as I talked earlier. Our teams were able to find a vegan replacement without compromising color or intensity. So this launch recently with an incredible burst around it, early signs are it is going to be really successful. So I hope I've managed in this very short time to show you the extent of transformation going on in innovation at Unilever and the key role that R&D plays. And my key messages are, we know we have a genuinely world-class R&D here, and it's more focused than ever on superior and sustainable innovation. And working on some science and technology initiatives and benefits for the future. We have completely overhauled and transformed our innovation approach, much more focus on clear strategic priorities, bigger bets and a more disciplined approach, all with winning and superior products at the hub. Now innovations play a critical role in delivering the strategy and the portfolio shift we need and that's through transforming our biggest co-brands, premiumizing, and accessing high-growth spaces. Thank you. That's all I wanted to say. So I'll pass back to Richard, and hopefully, we'll answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Richard. Just to remind anybody who wants to ask a question, [Operator Instructions], and I'll be asking Richard the questions. The first question we have is about local responsiveness. It's from Jeremy Fialko at HSBC. Given the move to fewer, bigger innovations, how are you ensuring that you do not lose the degree of local responsiveness and speed to market, it was one of the reasons behind Connected 4 Growth?

Yes. Yes, so it's a great question. It is something we think about a lot. We aim to balance because it's definitely for me, an and, not an or, and what I mean by that is, I think, it's really important to state a clear strategic framework for where we want to direct our R&D in our innovation efforts. The most attractive, highest growth, future-fit spaces that we want to innovate in. Then once we set that framework, we do then need an incredible level of innovation, trial, test, launch. Some things will work, some things won't. And also a degree of freedom for our innovation hubs in the markets, now local teams to be able to tailor according to local needs of taste, of fragrance, of washing habits, of beauty and personal care habits of different skin and hair types. So I really believe we don't lose any of that local focus. The point for me will be, the test, the learning, experiment, the try and iterate, and failed approach is that should be done on areas that are important to win in. And so we keep going with that -- we keep learning and iterating and developing our innovations and ultimately making that innovation big. And that's the secret sauce, if you like in the balance that we're looking for in terms of big, global and local and fast experimentation as well.

The next question we have is about your budgets. It's from David Hayes at SocGen. In the last 10 years, R&D spend is down. You have a lot of impressive ambition to create better products and sustainable products. Are you barking for more budgets to deliver on all these initiatives? Can you get that budget? And when?

I always think that Alan Jope thinks that I planted these questions, but I can assure you that it's a genuine one. And look, we do have a big ambition for the transformation that we need to bring to the core of our products and some of the science and technology changes -- challenges we talked about earlier. We have recently committed to making a gradual reinvestment into R&D. So the first point being is, we are investing in those spaces from a science and technology point of view, the big projects, the critical capabilities that we need. But actually, we do have a really efficient and competitive R&D organization as well. And a couple of core examples. One would be, the digital tools and techniques and capabilities that I talked about earlier. The fact that we're able to save more than EUR 25 million a year through doing digital versions of the experiments then in the past we'd have done by hand or in the lab, really drives the efficiency of R&D and the speed. And the second thing is, of course, we have an incredible network of partners from big suppliers, to innovative start-ups, to tech companies. And we're working together on lot of these innovations. So R&D, size and scale is dramatically multiplied by that leverage. So I think we have a good, sufficient level of R&D spend. And what we're doing now is pushing to invest in the specific types of areas that I talked about earlier, where we really need to transform science or technology of this, seriously big bet innovations. And I think there's a strong support to make that investment.

The next question comes from Karel Zoete, Kepler Cheuvreux. When you look at your ESG commitments, some are quite ambitious and your new innovations and technology in the pipeline, where do you believe that Unilever has most work to close the gap in terms of technology and capabilities, et cetera?

Yes. What we -- I think there's two sides for this. One is, I think we can proudly say that we're leading the way on a lot of the commitments and the science and technology behind it and some of the partnerships that we have. But I think we also need to be humble enough to know that we've got an incredible amount of shift and change. If we just take our clean futures initiative and strategy in home care, we have to transform more than 100 years of chemistry around home and hygiene and laundry products in just a few years. So that really is going to enable some of the -- require some of the partnerships and innovation I talked about earlier around renewable ingredients, bio-produced ingredients in the future in sustainable natural sources. So I think that when we think about the renewable sources, climate and carbon neutral ingredients, materials and formulations, it's probably one of the biggest challenges that the whole industry has, and we're certainly looking to lead on that. And then, of course, our packaging and plastic, and I think the single biggest challenge there is bringing reduction initiatives, that take, all of the plastic out of the system. We all know that plastic is a valuable material when used in the right way and when used in a circular way. But rightly, we've committed to reducing our plastic use as well, and that's what consumers and people rightly demand of us as well. But of course, bringing affordable high-quality products that can replace part of the plastic footprint is also a big challenge. And that's why working on things like the poly packs example I showed earlier with detergents and hair products in a coated paper pack -- paper-based pack. That's the sort of innovation that we need there. And also great on that one is an industry collaboration. So we get the whole scale of industries might behind that and the chance to move the whole system.

We've had a couple of questions coming in about how we measure performance and success in R&D.? Can you tell us something about that?

Yes. Definitely. So to start maybe with innovation because we've been talking about that so much today. Well, we directly measure the value of our future potential funnel in terms of the incrementality that it will bring, the total size of turnover, it will bring the margin that it will bring. But ultimately, now the #1 priority being profitable growth and responsible growth from that funnel. Of course, we also measure all sorts of things around the sustainability index of our products, et cetera. So we measure all of that. I think the most really important is we also track and measure in the market how our products actually deliver. We measure what we call incremental turnover, effectively the incremental sales we get along with a suite of key criteria for the innovation. So for example, the distribution we've achieved, the repeat rate et cetera. That's part of that rigor that we brought into our innovation process. So we have proper performance management around our innovation. So that's a key one for R&D. But we also, as R&D contribute to cost saving and fuel for growth initiatives as we call them across our portfolio. So taking complexity out of the system, removing the unnecessary -- removing waste and putting that money back into the business. So we measure against our cost-saving work. And a really key objective for us is the delivery of our sustainability initiatives. And we take a leading role within Unilever, along with our marketing teams, our countries and supply chain, to drive against, for example, our plastic goals, our climate goals and our nature goals that we've laid out. So they're some of the key targets and metrics that we have as R&D. And I'm a really big believer in discipline and frameworks and clarity and then a lot of creativity, innovation and spark within that. And that's the same way we measure things quite robustly and rigorously and then we give people some freedom to operate and creative license within those.

So talking of targets, James Targett of Berenberg has a question about technology. How do you leverage AI and digital R&D technology capabilities compared to those of key peers? Is this a meaningful competitive advantage or now just industry standard?

Yes. Well, fantastic question. We've been investing in this for years. I have to give credit to those that came before me in the sense of seeing the need for the common digital data backbone for all of our R&D data and that takes a number of years to develop and get it right and invest. And that's allowed us to then put in place a really innovative tools on top of that around things like the simulation, virtual experimentation, units, our modeling, our predictive modeling. And all of this gets better with data, of course and whether that's through simple algorithms or really into machine learning and AI. And the more we use these and the more the -- if the algorithm gets better or actually [indiscernible] better, then the better it gets. And so I really believe we are on the cutting edge here. I can't believe there are R&D teams anywhere that aren't also thinking about this or starting to work on this. But I know that we got on this early and that we're really investing hard and really using them and empowering the predictive nature of this. I would say we're doing some really innovative stuff as well on the cutting edge. So a quick example would be our AI Hub in China, our AI Innovation Hub. So that's where we're getting insights directly from, for example, e-commerce from our partners, feeding those in automatically into our prototyping units that are creating, in some cases, prototypes in a few hours from getting that insight, launching it in a matter of a few days as a pilot launch of e-com and then creating that feedback -- getting the feedback and iterating until we get to a scalable solution. And I think that's really at the cutting edge and really interesting for how that might apply and scale around the world and become part of how we do R&D, generally.

Next question is from Chris Pitcher. How integrated is R&D across the different business units? And can you give an idea of how the R&D investment is allocated across categories?

Yes. We have a very business connected and integrated R&D teams. Obviously, lots of ways that you can choose to structure a team. And I think, I personally believe we have a really nice balance here. So we have a strong function and a strong connection as a function, which allows things like talent, development, expertise, partnerships and wherever it makes sense, some science and technology bets and some capability bets. So that's a sort of functional identity in the company. But 80% to 90% of our teams sit in a category brand or country cluster team. So they're in the thick of it with the business, close to the business objectives and targets, delivering day in, day out for those teams. So I think we have that nice balance. Now what we do also have on top of that 80% to 90% of our people sitting in the 3 key divisions of F&R Food & Refreshment, Home Care and Beauty & Personal Care, we have some key capabilities that it makes sense to pull out, and they are our safety and environmental assurance center. And those folks lead critical important business continuity work on safety, but they've also been leading on things like no animal testing, which we are, undoubtedly a leading force of. And we have our regulatory teams, and we have our digital R&D teams that we call out as a capability as well. But really, the key message is, I think we have R&D very closely embedded in the business, and I think that works extremely well to keep connected to consumers and what's really needed for each of our categories and brands.

A question about patents from Harold Schmidt. You have more than 20,000 patents. How important are patents in your business? Do they help at all with the pricing?

Yes. So more than 20,000 patents and patent applications. That is an impressive number. Of course, we look at those carefully to make sure they're all important in adding value and not just sitting there. So we do regular reviews of these along with the legal and patents team as an R&D team. I believe that patents are important along with other forms of IP in our industry and in our game. It's not quite the same as maybe a pharmaceutical model in terms of 1 patent that might protect a new molecule for 10 or 20 years. But they are an important part of how we protect our IP. Particularly as we go to more innovative spaces and some of these science and technology areas I talked about, I think they're more and more important. And many of the places that I talked about, we are really leading in terms of generating new insights on ingredients, new uses, new benefit areas and protecting those. And then, of course, it goes with usual design protection and know-how. Things like ice cream manufacturer will be heavily dependent on know-how and tells you know-how as well. So it's part of the mix. It's an important part of it. But it's not -- obviously, not quite the same as in the pharmaceutical world is one example. And then I wouldn't personally make the direct link in each case between a patent and pricing, but I would make the link between differentiated science and technology against real benefits and the chance to bring appropriate pricing and a chance to bring premiumization. And that's part of what we've been really trying to drive over the last 18 months to 2 years.

That's very clear. A question from [ Tom Evan ], apologies, if I mispronounced that. How are you passing on innovation across brands? For example, the Rexona Deo innovation to Dove Deo? Did you want brand first, simultaneously? Or how do you order it?

Yes. Well, the decision on what space and when to innovate on a given brand, it's really part of those category innovation strategies that I talked about earlier, and that brings some framework and rigor to where we direct our efforts. And then in terms of applying the technology and the benefits across, it's a careful consideration depending on what fits with that brand's identity, that brand's purpose, the price point of that brand and whether it's bringing a real benefit. And I think we're always now looking at -- I would say we're definitely looking at more platform-type technologies now. But I think you have to be really then careful to make sure that you're really doing something that's true to that brand and true to a real consumer need. But the deo is one is a great example because the patented, genuinely superior technology that I talked about earlier that we launched on the clinical range. We were able to adapt that to launch on Rexona core to bring the benefit of our 72-hour protection, whilst moving as much as you want, however much you move. And that's an example where we're trickling the technology from one brand to another within a category. And then in areas like skin care and skin cleansing, I think I talked a bit earlier about how we're taking some of the fantastic skin care actives that we have and applying those to skin cleansing to bring care like benefits to cleansing. So it's part of what we're looking at from a technology point of view, but it will always be carefully looked at in terms of fit with brand and against the real consumer need. And of course, practical considerations like price point and affordability as well.

Let's just take one last question, which is from Warren Ackerman of Barclays. It's about partnerships. At the beginning of your presentation, I think you said 70% of innovation is done with external partners. Is that right? How has that number change and which partners have made the biggest difference to your innovation efforts?

Yes. It is right. It's a start that I was actually surprised about when I first heard it, because it's incredible. Now it doesn't mean that every innovation within that 70% was wholly developed from a partner that we bought in. Most of these are collaborative efforts. So we bring some of the science and technology, that brand understanding and the formulary understanding, and we're partnering with someone on the outside to bring a novel ingredient or a novel process. So it's more often than not collaborative effort, and I think that's fantastic. I think that's a really aspirational number for us to have and really magnifies the amount of R&D that we can do internally. Richard, sorry, there's a second part to the question on top of the number was right, but the second part was what?

How has it changed over the years? And which partners have made the biggest difference?

Yes -- sorry. It's increased over the years. I think Unilever has had a proud history of partnerships. So I'm not claiming that all of this has happened in the last 18 months or 2 years. But again, it's been an area that we've called out. as part of our R&D strategy to really expand our ecosystem. So I think where Unilever's historically been extremely strong, as an example, is some of our big suppliers and material suppliers. Fantastic partnerships and connection that innovation that goes on together to bring, for example, more sustainable fragrances or novel, sensorial ingredients to some of our products and packs. I think what we've added to that in more recent years are more innovative partnerships, maybe some more start-up companies, small, medium enterprises, some companies from the technology sector to bring things like new sources of protein, renewable ingredients, including biotech and some really novel thinking from the technology world about how we do our R&D and innovation. So I'd say it's always been a big part of how we do R&D innovation, but the shift we brought is bringing that new suite of partners in, alongside our big traditional material suppliers and partners in that space.

So let's call it a day there. Thank you, Richard, very much for your presentation and for giving us candid answers. Thank you to everybody for listening. Just to remind you that there will be a replay of this available on our website shortly. And if you've got any further questions on this subject or any other, just contact the Investor Relations team at Unilever. So thank you very much.