Unilever FY21 Profit Up; Sees Weak Margin, Higher Sales In FY22; Plans Dividend, €3 Bln Buyback

(RTTNews) - Unilever PLC (UN, ULVR.L, UL) reported Thursday that its fiscal 2021 profit before taxation grew 7 percent to 8.56 billion euros from last year's 8 billion euros.

Net profit attributable to shareholders' equity increased 8.4 percent to 6.05 billion euros 5.58 billion euros a year ago.

Earnings per share were 2.32 euros, up 9.2 percent from 2.12 euros last year.

Underlying profit attributable to shareholders' equity was 6.84 billion euros, compared to 6.53 billion euros in the prior year. Underlying earnings per share were 2.62 euros, compared to 2.48 euros last year.

Turnover grew 3.4 percent to 52.44 billion euros from prior year's 50.72 billion euros. Turnover increased 6.2 percent at constant currency rates.

In the fourth quarter, Unilever revenues grew 4.9 percent from last year to 13.1 billion euros.

Looking ahead for 2022, the company expects underlying sales growth to be in the range of 4.5% to 6.5%. Pricing will continue to be strong, with some impact on volume as a result.

The company said that underlying operating margin is expected to be down by between 140bps and 240bps, so maintained between 16% and 17%, with the first half impacted more than the second half.

The company expects margin to be restored after 2022, with the bulk coming back in 2023 and the rest in 2024.

In January 2022, the company announced major changes to Unilever's organisation, which is expected to generate around 600 million euros of cost savings over two years. The new organisation will be fully operational from the middle of the year. The new structure will be achieved within existing restructuring investment plans of €2 billion across 2021 and 2022.

The Board has declared a quarterly interim dividend for Q4 2021 of 0.3602 pounds per Unilever PLC ordinary share or 0.4268 euro per Unilever PLC ordinary share.

Further, the Board has approved a share buyback programme of up to 3 billion euros to be conducted over the next two years, which is expected to commence in the first quarter.