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28 Jul 2023
Unilever PLC : Heading in the right direction - Buy

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Unilever PLC : Heading in the right direction - Buy
Unilever PLC (ULVR:LON) | 4,558 182.3 0.1% | Mkt Cap: 111,757m
- Published:
28 Jul 2023 -
Author:
Alicia Forry, CFA -
Pages:
7 -
The company’s new organisational structure appears to be delivering improved performance. The H1 results included a nice mix of volume, sales, and margin improvement. In Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care, the two business units where performance has been mixed/disappointing in recent years, volumes have been in solid growth territory for the past two quarters.
We were particularly impressed by how Nutrition was able to cut overheads quickly enough to deliver 80bps of divisional operating margin expansion in H1 – despite gross margins in that business still shrinking y-o-y.
New CEO Hein Schumacher provided some initial thoughts on the business at the interims and will follow this up with more detailed commentary at the Q3 results in October. While understandably complimentary about Unilever’s brands, footprint, sustainability leadership and heritage, Schumacher identified performance culture, science-backed innovation and the group’s focus as areas where Unilever can still improve. And, the percentage of business winning share has dropped to a disappointing 41% (although this has been affected by a planned 17% SKU reduction). We note the new organisational structure is not yet fully embedded after 12 months – evidence that Unilever is, unsurprisingly, a big ship to turn.
We are encouraged by the results in 2023 to date and believe there is scope for consensus to rise further if H2 proves less challenging than the current guidance implies. We appreciate management’s desire to invest in the brands over the near term to improve the market share performance, as well as the uncertain macro outlook. Our unchanged 4,800p TP implies an FY23E PE of 21.3x (P&G (N/R) is on 25.3x CY23 PE); we note that the Unilever DCF fair value in our model is 5,037p.