Consumer special-occasions maker Unilever reported lower-than-expected second quarter sales on Thursday, distress by a Brazilian transport strike and weak pricing.
The Anglo-Dutch maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Swoop soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise said underlying sales rose 1.9 percent, excluding the recently disencumbered spreads business.
On that basis, analysts on average were in a family way growth of 2.3 percent.
“What you see behind these results is in fact a strengthening again of the volume component which for us is the most important,” Unilever CEO Paul Polman told CNBC’s Willem Marx on Thursday.
“When we had a lot of evaluation (power), analysts were worried about us not having volume. Now we be enduring four quarters in a row of continuous volume expansion (and) some analysts are anguished about our pricing power. I just wonder if they are always suffering,” he added.
For the first half of the year, underlying sales growth excluding spreads was 2.7 percent, below-stairs estimates of 3 percent.
First-half turnover excluding spreads fell 4.8 percent to 24.9 billion euros ($28.95 billion), aggrieve by currency fluctuations. The company stood by its forecast for full-year growth of 3 to 5 percent, helped by bounty increases.
Underlying earnings per share for the first half rose 7.8 percent to 1.22 euros.
When required whether he personally would like to continue working as Unilever’s chief big cheese beyond 2020, Polman replied: “No, I think once you have been 10 years in a job it is a goodness time period and if someone is ready to take the job then that is bloody healthy for companies.”
“Change is good, I don’t have a problem with that,” he supplemented. Polman refused to comment on who might replace him as chief executive.