10.15.15
For the third quarter 2015, turnover at Unilever increased by 9.4% to EUR 13.4 billion ($15.3 billion). For the nine months, sales rose 11.1% to EUR 40.4 billion ($46.2 billion).
According to CEO Paul Polman, "The strong delivery in the third quarter shows that our focus to build our company for the long term is paying off. Growth was however helped by some specific factors such as a soft comparator in China, strong ice cream sales and some advanced sales in Latin America.
"Our model of competitive, profitable, consistent and responsible growth is built on sustained investment in our brands, infrastructure and people. The sharpened strategies across the four categories are gaining traction and a stronger innovation pipeline is increasingly driving growth. As the results show, the scale and breadth of our portfolio brings resilience in challenging economic conditions.
"We continue to see soft global markets with no immediate sign of getting help from an improving global economy. We are responding fast to accelerating change and high volatility with a focus on continuous cost management while increasing our organizational agility. We will continue to invest steadily behind our brands, innovations and go-to-market capabilities. These actions keep us on track for another year of volume growth ahead of our markets and we now expect underlying sales growth for the year towards the upper end of the 2-4% range. We continue to expect steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow."
According to CEO Paul Polman, "The strong delivery in the third quarter shows that our focus to build our company for the long term is paying off. Growth was however helped by some specific factors such as a soft comparator in China, strong ice cream sales and some advanced sales in Latin America.
"Our model of competitive, profitable, consistent and responsible growth is built on sustained investment in our brands, infrastructure and people. The sharpened strategies across the four categories are gaining traction and a stronger innovation pipeline is increasingly driving growth. As the results show, the scale and breadth of our portfolio brings resilience in challenging economic conditions.
"We continue to see soft global markets with no immediate sign of getting help from an improving global economy. We are responding fast to accelerating change and high volatility with a focus on continuous cost management while increasing our organizational agility. We will continue to invest steadily behind our brands, innovations and go-to-market capabilities. These actions keep us on track for another year of volume growth ahead of our markets and we now expect underlying sales growth for the year towards the upper end of the 2-4% range. We continue to expect steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow."
