Unilever PLC (ULVR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this session with Unilever. I'm Tom Sykes, Head of the Consumer Equity Research Team in Europe. And it's my pleasure to offer a warm welcome to Hein Schumacher, Group CEO; and Fernando Fernandez, Group CFO. Over to you, guys.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Tom, for that introduction. Hey, we're very happy to be here at this conference. I'm joined here today by Fernando Fernandez, our CFO. And I'll start off by giving a brief overview of our business, as well as a summary of my first year as CEO. And then we'll take you through our Growth Action Plan, which is an execution plan for stepping up our performance and to build a strong -- building, of course, on the strong fundamentals that the company has. Specifically, I'll talk about some actions that we are taking to drive faster growth and to sharpen the performance edge in the company. And then Fernando will cover the steps that we're taking to deliver an enhanced productivity. And we'll sum up by showing how and why that we believe we are increasingly well positioned to deliver superior performance, and that is through a sustained volume growth, gross margin expansion and attractive capital returns. Now many of you know, obviously, know Unilever well. But for those less familiar, let me just give you a very brief overview. Last year, we generated turnover of EUR 59.6 billion and an underlying operating profit of EUR 9.9 billion, and this translated into free cash flow of EUR 7.1 billion. Our products reach approximately 190 countries at times and about 3.5 billion people use a Unilever product every day somewhere in the world. And such is the strength of our brands that we enjoy a #1 or a #2 position in 80% of the country category combinations in which we operate. We are organized in 5 global business groups, that is Health & Wellbeing -- or Beauty & Wellbeing, Personal Care, Home Care, Nutrition and Ice Cream, and each operates an end-to-end global business. And that ranges from a turnover of EUR 8 billion for Ice Cream to between EUR 12 billion and EUR 14 billion for each of the other business groups. In terms of the geographical split of the business, emerging markets account for 58% of our turnover, and 6 out of our 10 top markets are emerging markets and they are led by India and Brazil. 20% of our group turnover, however, is in the United States, and therefore, the U.S. is our biggest market. And it has grown organically by more than 6% per annum over the last 4 years. And we believe that the global scale of our business is a key strength and one that we intend to maximize more effectively in the future and drive superior performance there through more scalable brands and, obviously, market-making innovations. So hey, that's Unilever at a glance. Now let me say something about my first year in the company, because I joined on the 1st of June last year as CEO Designate and taking over formally on the 1st of July 2023. And since then, we've been quite busy. It started for me with an intense program of listening and learning about the business. And it was soon very clear to me that the most immediate priority was to step up the quality and the consistency of our execution. And so in October last year, we launched the Growth Action Plan, and that plan is highly executional in scope. And it's essentially underpinned by a very simple mantra, which is: Doing fewer things better and with greater impact. And I'll come back to that Growth Action Plan in a moment. At the same time, I began by putting a new team in place. I mean, first of all, Fernando who, after successfully leading our Latin American business, at that time we were still geographically organized, he also led our Beauty & Wellbeing business very well. And after that, we also appointed 4 new business group presidents, some from internal but also with an external perspective. For example, Peter Kulve, a very experienced operator, took over our underperforming Ice Cream business. With Heiko Schipper, who recently joined us, took over externally from Bayer and is leading now our Nutrition business. Yesterday, our new Chief People Officer started, Mairéad Nayager, and that completes the new team. We also optimized further our portfolio, completing the disposals of both Dollar Shave Club and, last week, Elida Beauty. And in February, we completed the acquisition of K18, a deal that we announced last year in December. And with a new team in place from the 1st of January, we took a thorough review of the portfolio. And that led to the announcement of the separation of our Ice Cream business in March, as well as the launch of a major productivity program. Now let me briefly talk about some of the results over the last quarters. We saw an improvement in volumes in Q1 to 2.2%, and that builds on a progress made in quarter 4. Importantly, growth in Q1 was, therefore, evenly balanced between volume and price. And I think that is super important. At the AGM in May, our remuneration policy and our updated Climate Transition Action Plan, both received strong shareholder support. Last month, we set out goals for our sustainability program, a program that is now much more focused, but I believe more impactful as well. And on the 17th of May, we started a EUR 1.5 billion share buyback program for 2024. So that is just a rapid overview of last year, but I hope that it gives you a feel for where Fernando and I are focusing on, what we are focusing on and what we're really attentive to. Now let me come back to the Growth Action Plan, which is obviously key to driving improved performance going forward, and importantly, to restore competitiveness. As I said, we announced the plan last October, and it followed an extensive piece of work by a group of hand-picked senior leaders from the business. The GAP, as it is known internally, is designed to close the gap between our performance and our full potential, as well as opening or extending gaps versus competition where we are ahead already. And it's focused around 3 priority areas: one, delivering faster and, importantly, higher quality growth; two, creating a more streamlined and productive business; and three, dialing up the performance edge in our culture. And again, it's underpinned by the simple but powerful notion of doing fewer things better, but with greater impact. Since October, we have been implementing the plan at speed. Now let me illustrate this by reference to progress in 2 areas: faster growth and performance culture. And as said, Fernando will cover productivity later. Faster growth is about delivering high-quality growth that is balanced between volume and price. And it starts with improving execution of our brands and especially our Power Brands. And we have chosen to focus on these 30 brands that you see here on the page initially, because these brands represent our biggest value creation opportunity. And it's a clear example, I think, where we have been deliberately selective. And they are a combination of our largest brands, 16 out of these 30 already have sales above EUR 1 billion. Now that's obviously more for brands like Dove and Knorr, which are about 5 or even 6x of that number. And the remaining 14 brands have been chosen because of their significant growth potential. Think of a brand like Liquid I.V. By the way, you can taste that here upstairs in the room, which is a good thing, but also brands like SIF and Nutrafol. The size of the brands was important in their selection, but, hey, they have a few things in common. They all enjoy strong positions in the markets in which we operate. They can be further scaled. And as I said, that is very important to me, either regionally in large markets or globally. And therefore, they can -- they represent a sizable growth opportunity for the company. Collectively, these brands are gross margin accretive to the group, meaning they fund the higher reinvestment in brand support that is needed to deliver sustainable volume growth. And for these reasons, these brands have the first call on incremental investment and increased resources. And by devoting our full implementation strength to those brands with the biggest value creation prospect, we avoid dilution of our efforts elsewhere. And in my view, this dilution of efforts and impact was probably my main observation on why performance over the last couple of years stagnated. The focus on Power Brands is key to winning in the marketplace because it allows us to drive execution of all our GAP imperatives. And it's starting to pay off. In the second half of 2023, the Power Brands grew underlying sales by 6.9%, and volume was up 2.7% and 210 basis points ahead of the group. In quarter 1 of this year, they continue to deliver underlying sales growth slightly above the 6% mark. In a lower inflation environment, and that's important, they stepped up volume growth to 3.8%. Once again, significantly ahead of the group. And as a result, these brands have gone from representing about 70% of our turnover at this time last year to now 75% of our turnover. Now we are focusing our efforts and resources on these brands first, but we will not starve the other brands. In fact, we did increase investments behind them. So we will not allow the benefits of growing the head to be wiped out by neglecting the tail. But it's a matter of focus and it's a matter of avoiding dilution, as I said, and ensuring significant execution strength of our plans. The next growth acceleration lever relates to innovation. And this obviously has always been the lifeblood of consumer companies like ours. However, I do believe also here that we have been spread too thinly in the past and that precludes the kind of consistent execution that is key to success. And therefore, our acceleration plan is built around scalable platforms with differentiated technologies that drive category growth, but also extend the time horizons. We're going for multiyear innovation programs with a strong focus on new benefits and new formats, as opposed to relaunches or extensions of existing ranges, and a better use of our strong and, I believe in many cases, world-leading science and technology platforms. Now it will take a bit of time for the full benefits to come through. But we are very confident in the structured 2-step approach that we're taking here. I mean, first of all, very keen to double the size of our average -- to double the average size of our innovation. So of all the innovations that we do. And secondly, to make innovations a lot bigger through scaling. And that means that our top innovation projects, which added about an incremental EUR 50 million the last few years, we should double that to at least EUR 100 million in 2025 and beyond. And once again, that comes back to fewer, bigger and better. And I do believe that this is actually one of the company's most underutilized strength. We have an excellent R&D machine, and we know and we are active in all these markets. We need to combine that and drive scalable market development. Now moving to the next, but a highly complementary lever, and that is unmissable brand superiority. Again, a key measure of success in our industry. Here, we are adopting a very rigorous and quantifiable process to reflect the new way in which we are thinking about and measuring brand superiority. And I talked about this with quite a few of you already, but I wanted to take the opportunity today to elaborate on it because I get -- I tend to get quite a bit of questions about it and why it's so different, and therefore, to lay out the concept very clearly and in some details. So please stay with me. The objective is to make our brands unmissably superior, and that is able to win not just in a single metric -- for example, product superiority, what we've historically been doing, but across multiple dimensions. All of them proven drivers of consumer preference. In other words, product, as I said, but also packaging, proposition, promotion, place and pricing. In a way, this is the classic 6Ps. But the evidence for this is compelling. And we validated it in 29 strategic cells, where, in each case, the causality between improvements against our 6P methodology and stronger brand performance were very clear. With baseline set, gap-closing plans will be in place by the end of the first half of this year. And once this admissibly superior framework is fully embedded, progress will then be rigorously and continuously tracked against our goals, enabling a swift response whenever needed. Now given the importance, let me elaborate a bit further on how it works in practice. We have identified 21 drivers behind market share. And these input metrics are across the 6 pillars that I talked about. So for example, repeat rate or penetration from consumer panels are 2 metrics under product, P from product. Total distribution point share, which measures the breadth and depth of distribution of the brand's product is a metric under place, and average price index from retail audit is obviously a metric on the price. And importantly, we use both internal and external data for our brands and competitor brands to measure. And the framework is then applied at a country category or, in other words, cell level by brand. The importance of the 6Ps and 21 input metrics in driving market share varies from category to category. And that is why we assigned different weightings to them. I believe the results until so far are very powerful. We get significantly improved understanding of what drives market share changes, which informs the actions that we take to close gaps or to extend leads. Continuous tracking enables us to see the results of these actions over time. Let me just bring it to life through a snapshot of how it is applied in our Hair category in one specific country. As you can see here on the chart, we identified the performance of each pillar or P in driving market share, and this is done at an input metric level and results in a percentage weighting for each pillar. Second, we measure holistic performance in the form of unmissable brand superiority scores in a competitive context, here illustrated by showing the top brands, including 3 Unilever brands, as you see here on the left, in that particular country or category. And third, we diagnose the movements of the brand scores versus past periods. Fourth, and most importantly, we identified actions for share gains at a granular level by drilling down into each of the Ps. And in this case, changing both the product and proposition of our second lowest scoring Unilever brand, which competed directly with the strongest competitor brand, were actioned as the most impactful route to improve market shares. I hope you're still with me. We see a lot of potential here and rolling out the program in a speedy but in a structured way. And by July, we will have 60% of the group turnover on this methodology. Clearly, this is not a one-off exercise. It will only be helpful if we do it continuously and with a lot of granularity and in a very -- in a highly disciplined way. But this is something that I'm very, very passionate about. In a way, you could argue it's a return to basics but highly data-driven and, once again, very consistently. Now let me turn to performance culture. One of the 3 elements of the GAP. And by this, we mean injecting a greater performance edge into what is otherwise and, I believe, a sound and a robust and a well-grounded culture. But it starts really -- a change starts really by having the right team in place for the future. And we changed more than 60% of the executive team. They're new in roles or they're just -- they came from -- were externally recruited. And thereby, years of valuable Unilever experience are being combined with fresh perspectives that are brought by 3 external appointments. Nine different nationalities are in our team, and that reflects the diversity, not only of nationality, by the way, but also a thought, skill sets and gender. I believe we have put together a team of leaders with a lot of general management experience and with a strong track record of running businesses, countries or categories. Now it's not just the executive leadership team, but also our Board has seen a lot of change. Ian Meakins took over as Chair in December 2023; and Judith McKenna, former CEO of Walmart International, joined us in March. Five nonexecutive directors rotated off the Board over the last 12 months, and that means that the average tenure in our Board has moved from more than 5 years in 2023 to less than 3 years today. So it's a fairly young Board. The next step in dialing up our performance edge has been to put a new incentive structure in place, because I do strongly believe that people respond to incentives. So we spent quite a bit of time to really get it right. The new directors' remuneration policy was approved at our AGM by 98% of the shareholders. And that policy is based on faster growth; absolute profit delivery in hard currency, importantly; a relative total shareholder return that aligns management remuneration with shareholder experience; and a disciplined capital allocation. But that's only for a very few people. I believe it's even more significant when you make changes to the company at large. And these have followed 2 simple, but powerful principles. The first one is to create a greater line of sight and that means link reward much more strongly to personal contributions rather than an average group performance. There was a lot of opportunity at Unilever to do so. And second principle, applying more differentiation in rewards, which we start doing by the end of this year. And more differentiation goes hand-in-hand with a more streamlined and systematized approach to individual goal setting. We are dialing up in-year performance and once again by doing fewer, bigger things really well and by holding people to account. And together, these represent important shifts in the way that we think about and approach performance management. And I expect to see them becoming increasingly evident in our results over time. Now on that note, let me hand it over to Fernando, and I'll come back at the end of this presentation.

Thank you, Hein, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be back at this conference now as Chief Financial Officer of Unilever. As Hein mentioned, I have led, for the last 17 years, some of our launches and more successful operations, most recently as President of Beauty & Wellbeing, and before that as President of Latin America, Brazil and Philippines. My experience running all this fast-growing business has always been anchored in a few beliefs: increase our brand relevance to deliver consistent volume growth, premiumize our portfolio to drive positive mix and consistently expand gross margin, one of our top priorities going forward. Both Hein and I believe deeply that consistent gross margin expansion must be the backbone of our plans. We provide the funds for investment behind our brands, and it fuels sustainable operating margin expansion. The return of gross margin to pre-pandemic levels of 44% is an absolute must. But this is just the first milestone. We will not stop there, our ambition is definitely higher. Recovery is well underway. In 2023, we revealed gross margin by 200 basis points in the full year to 42.2%, with a strong acceleration of 330 basis points in the second half of the year. We will continue to pull all the levers necessary to reveal and ultimately expand gross margin. This includes the benefit of volume leverage in what is a very high marginal contribution business; the benefits of mix coming from margin-accretive innovation, premiumization; as well as portfolio optimization through M&A and the removal of unprofitable items. We will continue improving our price coverage of cost inflation to recover the cumulative impact that we have since 2020. And finally, we are embedding net productivity mindset across the whole organization. Strengthening net productivity is central to our gross margin ambition and a key element of the Growth Action Plan. We have shifted our focus from a gross savings mindset to a net savings approach to shine the light on what is actually landing in the P&L. Our material and conversion costs have been increasing for several years. This has to change, and it will. We have done extensive benchmarking, we have set up cost per unit reduction for all our items and we are tracking them with rigor. We will support the reduction in our conversion cost by dedicating a higher part of our capital expenditure, more than half, to margin expansion initiatives. This will be up from around 1/3 in the period between 2020 and 2023, in which we fundamentally reveal capacity and service levels post COVID. What is more, the majority of our CapEx will be invested in hard currency markets. Third, we have established operational hubs in 7 low-cost locations with strategic partners. This will enable process standardization and digitization at scale, while unlocking value through the relocation of more than 3,000 roles in lower-cost geographies. We have integrated sales operations, planning, order to cash, logistics in one digital architecture, taking the standardization level in customer operations from less than 30% to over 80%. This is starting to deliver 3 different types of benefits: savings, improvements in working capital and better customer service. Let me illustrate our approach further by zooming into different P&L lines. For 2024, we have an ambition to deliver EUR 300 million savings in materials cost. We have brought game theory techniques and auction processes to the negotiation of our most important materials. We have seen significant savings coming from this structured global program in areas like plastics or fragrances. Second, we have extended the very successful complexity reduction program from reducing items, what we call, above the skin simplification to reducing specification, purchasing and ingredients. This is what we call below the skin complexity. We are leveraging artificial intelligence and big data to make recommendations, track decisions and monitor the savings impact. Finally, we have made significant interventions in several value chains of key materials. We are making significant backward integration in these materials in areas like Home Care, Personal Care and Beauty & Wellbeing formulation. Investing in upstream capabilities through collaborative partnerships give us higher quality and lower cost. For 2024, we are also setting a significant -- a target of a significant reduction in our production and logistic cost of around 2%. It is ambitious, but we need to reverse the upward trend of the previous year. Let me give you 3 examples of how we will do it. First, through network and line optimizations. We are putting in place some big projects of manufacturing network reset. As an example, the one that we are doing in North America with a significant component of near-shoring in Mexico. But there is more to it. We will dedicate more savings, as I mentioned, to savings initiatives and we will see the return from that. Second, we have a much better understanding of our cost to serve to customers and our overall logistic cost. This is enabled by a digital always-on transport price transparency tool, which is a key driver of operational efficiencies and better buying of freight. Finally, we are bringing significantly our waste down, our business waste down. This is helped by the reduction that we have done in our assortment. We have reduced complexity dramatically, and through the enhanced capabilities of our hubs to manage operations in a consistent and integrated way, more effective and more efficient. In short, we are absolutely obsessed with driving efficiencies and productivity through structural improvement and the digital transformation of our operations. From all this, you can see why productivity and simplicity is such a key element of our Growth Action Plan. Early this year and following a very thorough review of our portfolio, we took the decision of separating our Ice Cream business. Ice Cream is a clear outlier in our portfolio with different channels, different route to market and much higher capital intensity, and a different margin structure and cash conversion. We believe that the separation of ice cream makes sense both for Unilever and for a stand-alone Ice Cream business. For Unilever, it will leave us with a more focused business better able to leverage our innovation, marketing and go-to-market capabilities across businesses with complementary operating models. For Ice Cream, it will allow it the flexibility to pursue a distinct strategy as a world-leading stand-alone Ice Cream business with some of the most powerful, the best brands in the industry. Work in operational and the legal separation of our Ice Cream business is underway led by a fully dedicated team, and we expect the separation of Ice Cream to be completed by the end of '25. In the meantime, stepping up the performance of Ice Cream remains our top priority. In parallel with the Ice Cream announcement, we have launched a comprehensive productivity program to create a more efficient Unilever. We see the opportunity to create a leaner and more accountable organization enabled by investment in technology. We expect the program to deliver EUR 800 million of cost savings, more than enough to offset the operational dissynergies from the separation of Ice Cream. These net savings from the program beyond the synergies will provide flexibility for accelerated growth investment and for support of our [ nascent ] improvement over time. The program will further reduce the complexity and duplication in the company through technology-led interventions, process standardization and operational centers of excellence in low-cost locations to drive efficiencies. Bringing this all together, we are fully committed to delivering superior performance on a consistent basis, and we believe that we are well positioned to deliver that. Let me explain why. Our capital allocation priorities are clear and are simple. We will invest primarily to drive organic growth, enabling our superior research and development technologies to better leverage and support multiyear innovation programs, notably for our Power Brands, as I mentioned. We will also, as I mentioned before, a step-up investment to drive net productivity and significantly increase the proportion of CapEx allocated to optimize supply chains and unlock efficiencies, primarily in hard currency markets. We will continue to optimize our portfolio very selectively through bolt-on acquisitions. We will set the bar high here, drawing on the disciplined and focused approach that has proved successful in the last few years. Over the last 5 years, we have upgraded our portfolio rotating out around EUR 3.5 billion of revenue in low-growth businesses and having organically and inorganically more than EUR 3 billion in the fast-growing Prestige Beauty and Health & Wellbeing businesses, increasing overall our exposure to premium segments, fast-growing channels, particularly online. We will continue to focus on shareholder returns, including through an ongoing attractive dividend, with a payout ratio in the 60s. Dividends will be supplemented by share buybacks when we -- at the moment that we have surplus cash available. Following a EUR 5.9 billion capital return through dividends and share buybacks in 2023, we have initiated in May a program of share buyback up to EUR 1.5 billion that we expect to complete during this year. We continue to target a leverage level of around 2x net debt to underlying EBITDA, which is very consistent with our actual levels in recent years, helped by our strong cash conversion. Let me recap what we believe are the company's strong growth fundamentals. We are a global leader with very strong market positions and a portfolio of iconic brands. Our geographical footprint position us well for superior volume growth. We are guided by a focused execution plan, the Growth Action Plan, GAP. Our enhanced productivity program will drive gross margin expansion and reinvestment in our brands. Our portfolio has been transformed, and we will continue to evolve it to make Unilever a more focused, more efficient company. These are the building blocks to drive a significant and sustainable step-up in our volume growth that has been around 1.2% in the last 10 years, and we want to expand significantly. We will deliver consistent gross margin expansion to go beyond the pre-COVID levels, and we will keep generating attractive hard currency returns on capital. With that, let me hand over to Hein for his closing remarks.

Thanks, Fernando. All right. We've covered a lot of ground this morning in the time available. But hopefully, we've given you a sense not only of the scale of the changes that we're making at Unilever, but also the speed and the precision with which we are introducing them. Now I believe that everything begins and ends with execution. Details matter. I said when I joined the company that my sleeves were rolled up. That's probably not today, but normally that's the case. And that's where, frankly, they remain. But amidst the detail, I hope that we've also conveyed to you a very clear sense of direction when it comes to the 3 overarching elements that will ultimately determine our success, the strategy, the structure and our people. On strategy, we are setting clear priorities and making very deliberate choices. Evidenced, for example, by the decision to separate our Ice Cream business. On structure, simplicity has become a watch word, and technology, an important enabler. And these go hand-in-hand. Look, losing 7,500 roles is painful but necessary if we are to get this company motoring again at the speed that I know it can. And finally, on people, we start from a very strong and a great place, to be honest. We have hugely talented people around the world within a culture that is admired. But we won't compromise this good part, but we need to dial up the performance edge in our culture and revive and enhance behaviors that will help to make Unilever a company that wins consistently. And whilst Unilever is a big ship and changes won't happen overnight, to be honest, we know that every journey starts today and at the top. And obviously, you can count on both of us to give what it takes. So with that, thank you very much for listening also to my details on unmissable brand superiority. And let me now hand it over for questions.

Great. Thank you very much, Hein and Fernando. And just in the time we have left, can I maybe pick you up on the point you made on dilution of efforts, it seems, previously. I mean you previously said 70% of the business have technical superiority, but that doesn't translate into brand superiority or product superiority. So in those 6 pillars, if you aggregate them across the business, where would you see the biggest -- the earliest -- the biggest early gains? And how does that affect the skew in your A&P at the moment? And perhaps why didn't that happen before this granularity of analysis?

Yes. As I said, I think we were very strong in our product superiority. We are strong in product superiority. And product superiority essentially means does the product do what the benefit that the consumer is looking for. So does it make your hair look shiny after you wash, and the answer is yes. I think we're after the first -- the trials and so forth, what we're currently seeing across the 6 dimensions, I think, in general, we can improve on packaging. We can improve on place, and therefore this total distribution point metric that I mentioned. And here and there, we had some work to do on pricing. So I would call those 3 out, but mostly packaging and on place. And when you identify a delta, in a way, it's a good thing because you know where to go and what to do.

And in terms of allocating the BMI or A&P budget with the areas that we're getting sort of budget because of legacy, because of history, that you've skewed that more towards...

Yes. I mean as we said, when we look last year at these top 30 brands or the power 30 branches, as we call them, they're not necessarily the biggest, there was 70% of turnover. But if you look at all the resources behind it, so that is BMI, research and development and capital expenditure, it didn't get the sort of proportionate level of investment to spur their growth. That's something that we've really changed. Because we want to make sure that bigger innovations go first and foremost behind those brands to make sure that execution is strong, but also that we improve this unmissable brand superiority behind those 30 brands. So that gives you probably a bit of a feel.

Okay. Thank you. And in your growth at the moment, the bits we can't measure are growing a little bit faster than the bits we can. What comfort can you give the bits that are growing above group average can continue to grow and don't slow before the bits that are underperforming get better? And so do you still expect that sequential improvement this year in volume growth?

Fernando?

Yes, we have 13 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in our Prestige Beauty and Health & Wellbeing business, and also a very strong performance in areas like food service that are not measured in our competitiveness. Of course, sustaining double-digit growth, most of it in volume, in the long run is tough. But we are very confident that we have established a portfolio level that is very solid. We have some of the best, I would say, upcoming brands in the Prestige Beauty industry and in the Health & Wellbeing industry, with very clear leadership in some narrow verticals of these 2 categories. And we continue thinking that this will be growing above our average and definitely above the average of the industry.

Okay. Well, we've come to the end of our allocated time. So thank you both very much for today's presentation. And thank you very much, everybody, for attending.

Thank you.

Thank you.