Unilever Profit Falls After Year-Earlier Gains

By Saabira Chaudhuri 

LONDON-- Unilever PLC reported lower profit for the fiscal year as the company came up against a year-earlier period in which results were buoyed by gains from divestitures, however core profit and revenue both climbed.

The maker of Magnum ice cream, Dove soap and Axe deodorant posted net profit of EUR4.91 billion ($5.34 billion), compared with EUR5.17 billion in the same period last year. Core operating profit climbed 12% to EUR7.9 billion. Revenue rose 10% to EUR53.3 billion, helped by currency gains.

Underlying sales--which strip out the impact of acquisitions, disposals and currency movements--grew 4.1%, compared with 2.9% in the same period last year.

Unilever has been working to push more high-end products in Europe and North America, as the company works to offset a constrained mass market in these regions along with slower growth in many emerging markets. For the year however, sales in emerging markets grew 7.1%, up from the 5.7% growth the company reported last year, as Unilever was helped by strong price growth.

The company has been taking steps to shift its product portfolio away from slower-growing food and towards higher-margin personal care products and was recently reclassified on the S&P and MSCI indexes from Packaged Food to Personal Products.

Earlier on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the chief executive of the company's slowgrowing spreads unit had resigned, after just one year in the role. Sean Gogarty stepped down last month to pursue other opportunities, according to the contents of an internal memo reviewed by the Journal.

He has been replaced by Nicolas Liabeuf, formerly senior vice president of marketing operations.

In its earnings report, Unilever said sales in the Baking, Cooking and Spreads unit "continued to decline as we weren't able to stem the sustained market contraction in developed countries."

Write to Saabira Chaudhuri at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 19, 2016 02:41 ET (07:41 GMT)

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