Unilever PLC (ULVR) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to Unilever's second quarter trading statement for 2025. Thank you for joining us. I am joined today by Shini Patak, our Acting Chief Financial Officer. In a moment, Shini will take you through the detail of the second quarter and first half results. I will then come back to talk more broadly about the continuing transformation of the business and how we see the remainder of this year and beyond. First of all, let me set out what what I see to be the key elements of our solid performance in the first half, and importantly, why these give us real confidence when it comes to delivering the full year. There are five elements in particular that I would like to highlight. First, the balance of our growth. We deliver underlying sales growth for the half of 3.4%. and we did it with a good balance of volume and price. Volumes improved sequentially over the course of the half, despite subdued markets, with first-half market volume growth at around 1.3%. Importantly, volume growth was broad-based and positive across all business groups. Second, the continued structural strengthening of our gross margin that allowed furthering increase in the support of our brands. We plan to market the investment highly competitive in the first half at 15.5% of turnover. Third, we continue to outperform markets in the developed economies. In North America, we deliver underlying growth for the half of 5.4%, with volumes up 3.7%, while Europe remains strong, up 3.4% for the half. Fourth, at the same time as outperforming in developed markets, we are also seeing a steadily improving picture when it comes to performance in emerging markets. This has been driven by our largest region, Asia-Pacific Africa, which was up 3.5% in the first half and accelerated to over 5% growth...