Unilever PLC

Thank you and good morning and welcome to Unilever's first quarter training update. As this is only a sales update, we expect prepared remarks to be less than 30 minutes, followed by Q&A of around 30 minutes. All of today's webcast is available live transcribed on the screen as part of our accessibility program. First, can I draw your attention to the disclaimer to forward statement and non-GAAP measures? And with that, let me hand straight over to Adam.

Thanks, Richard, and good morning, everybody.

We've delivered a strong start to the year. Our focus on operational excellence is driving competitiveness, and we're now at 57% of our business winning share on a moving annual total basis. And of course, while competitiveness is very important, it does need to translate into growth. And I'm pleased that this quarter it's contributed to growth of 5.7% with 4.7% from volume and 1% from price. This was led by emerging markets with both China and India performing strongly. North America grew well despite a strong comparator and Latin America has actually shown tremendous resilience in a very difficult environment. COVID restrictions continue, on the other hand, to impact sales in Europe and Southeast Asia, where we saw declines. We're also making good progress on our strategic change agenda. The priority growth segments of prestige beauty and functional nutrition are the two categories where we've been the most acquisitive in recent years, and they're performing well. Prestige grew by 20% and we continue to grow quickly and add scale in functional nutrition, including the acquisition of Onnit announced earlier this week. Together, these two businesses, Prestige and Functional Nutrition, contributed over 50 basis points to reported Group USG this quarter. For the tea business, we're moving at pace. We're on track to complete the very complex global operational separation this year, and we're delighted to welcome John Davidson to Unilever as CEO of the tea company. John is a highly credentialed and experienced CEO. He has a strong track record of managing consumer goods businesses through different stages of their life. John will lead the tea business into its next phase, when we will decide on the most value-creating pathway for this business. And that includes potentially an IPO, a demerger, a joint venture or a disposal. We also shared in January that we were moving several of our beauty and personal care brands under the leadership of a new management team, and we've taken that step, combining these under the name Elida Beauty. It's a collection of very well-known, mainly regional brands, across North America and Europe, and it includes brands like Q-Tips, Caress, TG, Timothee, Impulse, Montsavant, and so on. Collectively, these brands generated revenues of around 600 million euros in 2020, and they will definitely benefit from dedicated management focus as we explore different options for value creation from this standalone business. And as you'll have read, we're announcing a 3 billion euro share buyback starting next month. Those of you who follow us know that buybacks are one of the options in our capital allocation framework. We generated a record level of cash in 2020, and we're confident in our ability to generate good growth and strong cash flow this year. And with that backdrop, we see value in investing in Unilever by purchasing our own shares and so returning