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Why Invest in Unilever

Why invest in Unilever

Five reasons to invest in Unilever

Market positions

Global market leader with attractive footprint and strong brands

Delivery

Stepping up performance in 2024, backed by bigger innovations and increased brand investment

Transformation

Becoming a simpler, more focused and more efficient company

Ambition

Growth Action Plan 2030 and Value Creation Plan to deliver top third total shareholder return

Potential

Still in early stages of unlocking consistent, superior performance

Global market leader

Global market leader with strong fundamentals diagram
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    Global market leader

    Unilever is a global market leader with strong fundamentals.

    We have a category-led organisation with global Business Groups that are end-to-end responsible:

    • Beauty & Wellbeing (21% of 2023 Group turnover)
    • Personal Care (23%)
    • Home Care (20%)
    • Foods (22%)
    • Ice Cream (13%)

    In 2023, we generated turnover of €59.6 billion, €9.9 billion underlying operating profit and €7.1 billion free cash flow.

    3.4 billion people use Unilever products every day. Our products are sold in 190 countries. 80% of our turnover, as measured across 341 country-category cells, sits in number 1 or 2 positions.

Unmissably superior brands

An assortment of Unilever product logos

Growth Action Plan 2030

In November 2024, we set out our strategy, the Growth Action Plan 2030, to deliver consistent, higher performance with market-making, unmissably superior brands.

It is based on three strategic pillars:

  • Focus on areas of the business with the biggest returns
  • Excel in five demand creation drivers that make our brands superior
  • Accelerate four critical capabilities that keep us ahead in a fast-changing world

And underpinned by sustainability and a winning culture.

Growth Action Plan 2030 diagram
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    Growth Action Plan 2030

    The Growth Action Plan 2030 is our strategy to deliver our purpose of “Brighten everyday life for all” and achieve our goal of best-in-class performance with market-making, unmissably superior brands.

    The strategy includes three choices we are making: Focus, Excel, Accelerate.

    • We focus on the areas of the business with the biggest returns. These are our 30 Power Brands and 24 top markets.
    • We excel in five demand creation drivers that make our brands superior. These are unmissably superior brands, social first demand creation, multi-year scalable innovations, premiumisation, growth channels.
    • We accelerate four critical capabilities that keep us ahead in a fast-changing world. These are science & technology, a lean agile supply chain, net productivity, scaled artificial intelligence.

    Underpinning the purpose and our strategy are sustainability and a winning culture.

    • We focus on four sustainability priority areas: Climate – towards net zero emissions, nature – resilient and regenerative ecosystems, plastics – work to end plastic waste, livelihoods – enhanced livelihoods for people in our value chain.
    • We think of culture in the context of values, people and behaviours. Our values are pioneering, respect, integrity and responsibility. We aim for the best talent, inclusive leaders, truly diverse and most engaged people. Our behaviours are:Care deeply, focus on what counts, stay three steps ahead, deliver with excellence.

Value Creation

Our medium-term value creation framework after the separation of Ice Cream is aimed at delivering absolute profit growth in line with our top 1/3 total shareholder return ambition. It has two fundamental elements:

  • Mid-single digit underlying sales growth with at least 2% contribution from underlying volume growth.
  • Modest underlying operating margin improvement, anchored in consistent gross margin expansion.
Value Creation Plan diagram
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    Value creation

    Our medium-term value creation plan is centred around the priority to deliver absolute profit growth in line with our top third total shareholder return ambition.

    After the separation of Ice Cream, we aim to deliver mid-single digit underlying sales growth with underlying volume growth of at least 2%.

    We aim to deliver modest underlying operating margin expansion fuelled by gross margin improvement.

    We aim to sustain an average cash conversion ratio of around 100% over time.We continue to target leverage of around 2x net debt to underlying EBITDA. We maintain strong single A credit ratings.We aim for a high teens underlying return on invested capital.

    Value creation will be underpinned by disciplined capital allocation, which includes:

    • Making investments for growth and productivity
    • Continuing to reshape our portfolio with bolt-on M&A focused on the US and India. No transformational M&A.
    • Delivering capital returns to shareholders through an attractive dividend and share buyback with surplus cash
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