Spring clean

1 February 2018 By Carol Ryan

The Dove soap owner is on track to meet sales and profit targets that it set after rejecting Kraft Heinz’s $143 billion bid. Its next big tasks are to pick a new head office and the next CEO. Getting both out of the way quickly will allow the company to focus on taking on rivals.

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- Unilever said on Feb. 1 that underlying sales in the group’s fourth quarter increased to 12.8 billion euros, up 4 percent from a year earlier and above analysts’ consensus forecast of a rise of 3.7 percent.

Underlying sales excluding the recently sold spreads business rose to 12 billion euros, up 4.3 percent from the same period a year ago.

Unilever said it had cut costs by 2 billion euros in 2017 and that underlying operating margin rose to 17.5 percent from 16.4 percent in 2016. The company is aiming to lift the underlying operating margin to 20 percent by 2020 and cut costs by 6 billion euros by then.

Chief Executive Paul Polman told investors that the outcome of a review of the company’s dual-headed structure would be made public shortly.

The company’s shares were down 0.5 percent at 46.43 euros by 0912 GMT on Feb. 1.

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