Consumer goods company wants to concentrate more on lifestyle products. Sales roughly held in the previous year.
From food to cosmetics to cleaning products: the Dutch-British consumer goods group Unilever is worth 27.715 billion euros – 20th place.
After a difficult Corona year, the consumer goods company Unilever has adopted a new growth strategy. The company wants to focus more on lifestyle products in the future, which are popular with younger buyers.
With this, CEO Alan Jope is returning to his old goals for the group. In the future, sales will grow by three to five percent on their own, as the company announced on Thursday.
On a comparable basis, profits should grow even faster than sales. With discounts of more than three percent, the share was still under considerable pressure.
Targets have been deleted
Originally, a sales increase in the lower half of three to five percent was also planned for 2020, but because of the corona pandemic, Jope had to cancel the targets last spring. While the food and cosmetics business suffered from the restrictions, Unilever experienced a real boom in hygiene products such as soap and toilet cleaners.
With the easing in the third quarter, business picked up again, and in the final quarter things went even better than expected.
After twelve months, the group has achieved an organic increase in sales of 1.9 percent to 50.7 billion euros without acquisitions, sales or exchange rate effects. In nominal terms, however, Unilever recorded a decline in sales of 2.4 percent in 2020, which, according to the company, was due to negative currency effects.
