India, China power Unilever to report fastest growth in 9 years in 2021

A double-digit growth in the priority markets of India and China helped the Anglo-Dutch FMCG major Unilever deliver its fastest underlying sales growth in nine years in 2021.

Unilever delivered full-year underlying sales growth of 4.5 per cent in 2021, the FMCG major said in a post earning statement.

Priority markets such as "India grew double-digit with balanced volume and price and strong actions on savings and mix" though Covid-19 impacted India in the early part of the year, said Unilever.

While China grew double-digit, led by volume, with growth broad-based across categories and channels, especially e-commerce, it added.

"Priority markets of China, India, and the US grew at 14.3 per cent, 13.4 per cent, and 3.7 per cent respectively, said Unilever CEO Alan Jope.

India comes under Asia/AMET/RUB (Africa, Middle East, Turkey; Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) market region of Unilever, which has reported underlying sales growth of 5.8 per cent with 3 per cent volume growth and 2.7 per cent from price.

India grew double-digit with a balanced split between price and volume. Pricing and savings actions continue to be important in India as commodity prices remain elevated, it said.

China also delivered double-digit volume led growth, with food solutions growing at above 2019 levels whilst Home Care and Beauty and Personal Care also grew well.

South East Asia declined low single-digit as the region was impacted by Covid-19 related restrictions throughout the year, and our Indonesian business performance was poor in a highly competitive market, it added.

While in the region, Turkey delivered double-digit growth with high single-digit volume. "In South Africa we grew mid-single-digit in volatile market conditions, weighted towards volume," it added.

In 2021, Unilever's turnover from the region was at 24.3 billion euros.

Overall turnover of the Anglo-Dutch FMCG major in 2021 was 52.4 billion euros.

In the fourth quarter, Asia/AMET/RUB turnover was 6.1 billion euros. Its global turnover during the quarter was at 13.1 billion euros.

"The major challenge of 2021 has been the dramatic rise of input costs. We responded with pricing actions, delivering underlying price growth of 2.9 per cent for the year, accelerating to 4.9 per cent in the fourth quarter, with full-year underlying operating margin down 10bps and underlying earnings per share up 5.5 per cent," said Jope.

He further said: "We are focused on driving faster growth from our strong portfolio of brands and markets, and recently announced a major change to create a simpler, more category-focused organisation designed to further improve performance.

On the 2022 outlook, Unilever said it expects underlying sales growth to be in the range of 4.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent.

"Pricing will continue to be strong, with some impact on volume as a result," it said.