Unilever Financial Analysis
Thuy Tran Tania Vaswani Pardis Anvari Taran Kandhari
13981068 14042506 14105445 14008599
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Table of Contents
1-Executive summary ......................................................................................................................... 3 2-Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 2.1-About FMCG Industry................................................................................................................ 4 2.2-Unilever Overview ..................................................................................................................... 5 2.3-Unilever Key
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1-Executive summary
This report aims to analyse the financial position of Unilever PLC within its daily operating activities and it also compares the company’s performance with its key competitor, the Proctor and Gamble Company (P&G). The report also includes background of both the companies and an industry overview. To better understand the performance of both the companies, the segmental analyses have been done for both region and products. Due to the global crisis, Unilever and P&G both are facing price rise and inflation pressures, also instability in the Eurozone. All these factors are strongly impacting their operation activity and long-term growth decision plan. Finally After a careful examination of the financial ratios of both the companies, we recommend Unilever as a good company to invest as compared to P&G .The reasons for the following can be seen in the report below.
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2-Introduction 2.1-About FMCG Industry Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, which consists of food as well as non-food consumable products. The volume purchased by end users is usually on a small scales and everyday use basis. This industry had suffered immensely during the global financial crises however, most of the companies conquered profitability and sales growth by 2010. These products are mostly available at supermarkets, chain stores, hypermarkets, grocery stores, etc. The
The purpose of this report is to critically analyse the financial ratio results of Morrison 2008 and 2009 as an equity analyst and compare it with like for like by using Tesco supermarket.
FMCGs are products that have a quick turnover, and relatively low cost. FMCG products are those that get replaced within a year and they constitute a major part of consumers‟ budget in many countries. The FMCG sector primarily operates on low margin and therefore success very much depends on the volume of sales (Sarangapani & Mamatha 2008).
Unilever will want to regenerate their product so that they will be able to be the market leaders for the product again, this is going to be essential for some products where they rely on the business being a good market leader for most of their products. The shareholders will want to know about the business as they will want to have the business sot be the market leader for the company and they will also want to have the product regenerated as quick so that sales are not hit too effectively. They will also want the product to review and test why it has become a decline in sales to make sure that they are going to stop it from happening to other
The sales composition is split into 37% from grocery stores, 20% from drug stores, 35% from mass merchants and 8% from miscellaneous sources. 70% of their total sales value is derived from 10% of their important customers. The company has foreseen valuable increase in their demand and is about to face some problems due to their traditional distribution network and their competitors. To focus these issues, they have decided to improvise on certain issues by collaboration with suppliers and customers which are discussed below.
Operation of Unilever around the world starts fragmenting, but Unilever continues to expand globally and investment made in R&D is increased.
The market will be impacted by changing dynamics in the future. One of the key features that has impacted and will continue to do so is the shift towards online sales, this has resulted in brick & mortar store’s closing down due to lack of revenues and profits. CG is better placed to face this trend, as most of their sales (71%) are from wholesale with only 29% coming from direct to consumers, of which 19% is from online sales. They only have two stores and 4 country websites and have plans to open more stores and websites mainly in European countries.
Unilever had 1600 brands and sales & marketing efforts in 88 countries all over the world. The main target were to get top-line sales growth of 5-6 percent annually and to increase operating profit margin from 11 percent to over 16 percent both to be accomplished by the end of the year 2004.They cutting down their portfolio from 1600 to 400 core brand. Increasing profit margin to 11 to 16 percent by year end 2004.
Read the annual report of one of the Sensex Companies and prepare a note covering the following topics:
In 2000, Unilever decided to reduce 1,600 brands down to 400 and then select a small number of them to serve as “Masterbrands”. One of the reasons to have fewer brands is to decrease control issues. It is harder to manage so many brands, especially when each one has its own particularities. As Deighton pointed, Unilever’s brand portfolio had grown in a relatively laissez-faire manner. In other words, the company’s brands were created without large interference.
Despite the inconsistent changes in spending from year to year, P&G’s market share consistently increased between 1% and 2% every twelve months (see Figure 1). The question is, with Unilever’s actions in regards to marketing expenditures, is the 15% increase going to be enough to restart P&G’s upward growth of market share?
|the industry and its challenges it is important to understand its various phases of growth so far. |
J Sainsbury plc is a UK based company, into grocery, related retailing an financial services business. The study is primarily to do financial assessment of this company and its performance relative to its peers and industry. Seeing the last 5 years report, it is evident that company was in a bad share 3 years ago, and now its in the stage of recovery.
The Unilever Group’s report on ice cream stated that they saw volume growth and share gains in most markets. Specifically they saw a strong performance in Western Europe, Mexico, Indonesia and Australia. Much of this growth was due to the Magnum Gold acquisition and the marketing of this product in these markets. Product quality improvements helped their Klondike line achieve strong results in the U.S.A. The Unilever Group maintained a negative price growth in ice cream. The negative price growth reflected slightly lower gross margins, at constant currency, with commodity costs higher.
* the consumption frequencies, the categories of product consumed and the main reasons to use these products
The first concept of marketing to emerge which have gone on to set the foundation upon which future concepts have been developed, holds that consumers favor products that are commonly obtainable and low-priced. Most business owners and managers of production-oriented businesses focus on achieving high production efficiency, low costs, and mass distribution. This type of marketing concept is logical in many emerging countries, where consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than in its features. This orientation is commonly employed when a company desires to expand to other markets. It is essentially concerned with building production capacity and