Consumer goods behemoth Unilever on Thursday posted weaker-than-expected sales growth, as it failed to match some of the booming trade it saw during Britain’s heatwave last year.
The FTSE 100 owner of brands such as Marmite and Dove soap said underlying sales rose 2.9% in the third quarter. That missed the 3% growth the City had been expecting.
Finance chief Graeme Pitkethly said that during the same quarter a year earlier Unilever had benefited from surging demand for goods from Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s thanks to hot weather.
As well as having less demand for ice cream this year, the third quarter of 2019 also suffered from softer demand in India, a slowdown in China, plus declines in Argentina.
However, the company pointed to better trading in South-east Asia, with Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines performing strongly across all divisions.
Chief executive Alan Jope said it “maintained momentum” in the period “with a good balance between volume and price”.
Unilever stuck to its full-year target for underlying sales growth in the lower half of a 3% to 5% range, and is on track to achieve a 20% operating margin in 2020.
The shares rose 70p to 4678.5p.
