Unilever did better than expected in the second fiscal quarter, but it dealt with a lot of swings in its various businesses caused by the pandemic.
Underlying sales, a metric that strips out currency fluctuations and other distortions, dropped 0.3%, instead of the 4.3% that analysts were predicting. Unilever was buoyed by spikes in its household cleaning business and especially in hand sanitizer, where production and sales have exploded.
On the food side, Unilever’s ice cream business was affected by the pandemic in a familiar way. In-home went up, but out-of-home sales dropped, with foodservice sales down almost 40% and other out-of-home consumption down almost 30%.
“Although it looks like we are flat on topline, we had record growth and record declines just one click below that,” CFO Graeme Pitkethky said on a conference call.
For the six months ending June 30, overall revenues went down 1.6%, to $29.9 billion, but profit rose 9%, to $3.8 billion.
