Unilever PLC (UL) Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference 2024 (Transcript)

Unilever PLC (NYSE:UL) Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference 2024 Call September 25, 2024 5:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Fernando Fernandez – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Bruno Monteyne – Bernstein
Callum Elliott – Bernstein

Bruno Monteyne

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining. Fernando Fernandez with us from Unilever today. Fernando, thank you very much for joining us.

Before we go into the fireside chat, I also want to explain why I need some backup and I’m not here alone, Fernando, is, I’m handing over to Callum Elliott, who currently covers the US staples. He’ll be taking over for me as I’m leaving Bernstein at the end of this week to start a new life on the private equity side.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q – Bruno Monteyne

Fernando, thank you very much for being here with us. And actually I wouldn’t just say welcome, but also congratulations. I think, if I sort of sense investor sentiment, there’s clearly a very big change before versus a few years ago. A lot has changed. Margins have started to recover. We’ve had volume and pricing also. So — and I was often quite a critic or cynic on whether this was going to happen. So, well done. Congratulations.

Now thinking about what you said and Hein said at previous sessions as a kind of a change, the biggest thing I sort of keep hearing is this focus on holistic product superiority. But product superiority is new. Alan Jope was already talking a lot about that. Hein sort of added the word holistic product superiority to it. So, clearly, it implies a broader measure than what you did before. Can you explain how it’s different, what’s different, and how does that sort of those changes reflect Hein’s way of thinking about Unilever business going forward?