Unilever PLC

Good morning and thank you for joining us for Unilever's second quarter and half year results. In a moment, Srini will take you through the details of the results. But first, let me highlight the key elements of our performance over the first half as I see them and how desire at scale is fundamental to our strong delivery. I have said consistently that volume growth is our overriding priority. It is a true measure of demand and even more important signal of progress during times like this of heightened volatility. It is particularly encouraging, therefore, to be able to present today a strong volume-led hub for Unilever. and not just a strong performance, but an accelerating one, with underlying sales growth in the second quarter of 5.8%, with volume up 5.5%. This is Unilever's best quarterly volume performance since 2010. Our underlying volume growth over the last four quarters averaged 3%, a testament to the strength of our brands and our discipline execution. These strong first half results reflect progress against our key strategic priorities, including, most notably, the performance of our power brands. Now, sitting at 78% of our turnover, these brands continue to outperform, delivering underlying sales growth in the second quarter of 6.9%, with 6.8% coming from volume. a strong innovation program meant there were particularly great performances from DAF, Tertis Good, Comfort, Sunsil and Vaseline. Prioritizing these brands means focusing resources and investing competitively, which is why our brand and marketing investment is concentrated on our power brands. Significantly, today's results also reflect broad strengths across our HPC business, with underlying sales growth in the second quarter of 7.6%, with volume up 7.4%. It was also a good half for our emerging market businesses which maintained their good momentum with 8.3% growth in the second quarter with 7.4% coming from volume. India led the way, with Q2 underlying sales up 10% and volume up 5%. This was a strong broad-based performance. It reflects the evolution of our emerging market portfolio to increasingly focus on high growth segments, social first demand generation and go-to-market transformation, alongside the benefits from corrective actions in fundamentals that we have taken over recent times in key markets. Our developed market business delivered a robust performance, with volume growth in the second quarter of 2.8%. North America continues to outperform, led by personal care, beauty and prestige, while markets in Europe remain subdued. And in terms of profitability, we delivered 10 basis points of margin expansion and continued to invest competitively behind our brands, while generating earnings growth of 2.4% in hard currency. These strong first half results are a direct consequence of bringing our mantra of Desire at Scale to life across the business. Desire at Scale is a growth operating system, shaping how we build brands, how we innovate, how we activate them in markets, and how we convert demand into sales. whether in elevating the quality, reach, and relevance of our brands through the SASE framework, combining science, standout aesthetics, superior product experience, social proof, and contemporary execution, or through embedding the concept of a frontline sales machine by taking our activation programs and the quality of our execution to new, better levels in every market. SASE brands and frontline machine are two sides of the same coin. and at the heart of each is the focus on making our brands and our activations culturally relevant. Our progress on this was recently recognized at the annual CAM Festival of Creativity, where we were the most awarded advertiser of any of the companies present. Our brands received 35 awards, a demonstration of Unilever's ability to rethink how we create demand in this world of infinite content and distribution through algorithms. Here are just a few examples in how we are integrating our brands in culture across some of our key markets. We created a grassroots football tournament in Brazil where eight local teams competed for the chance to play the final in the Emirates Stadium. Our five-part video series has over 130 million views and 180,000 hours of watch time. deepening almost cultural relevance in our second largest home care market with double digit fabric cleaning growth in the second quarter. DAF won six Cannes Lions for its partnership with Reddit during the launch of the intensive repair 10-in-1 serum hair mask. DAF published and amplified customer reviews, whether positive or negative. Real consumers, real feedback, real beauty. The campaign created more than a billion earned impressions and helped make our product the number one hair mask in the US during the campaign. or take Liquid IV, with its role in the Amazon Prime Video's hit series Off Campus. The show is one of the most popular series this year, reaching 66 million viewers worldwide over the first 12 days of release. Liquid IV is integrated into the series, with the main character becoming a Liquid IV brand ambassador within the show itself. These are creative executions designed to travel, earn attention, strengthen brand equity and convert into growth. We know the bar for leadership continues to rise and we will ensure we stay at the frontier of demand generation. Being a frontline machine means activating our brands within these big cultural moments and across the biggest cultural events. And they don't come much bigger than the FIFA World Cup, where Unilever Personal Care was an official sponsor. We have not approached the World Cup as a conventional corporate sponsorship or a one-off event. We have activated 35 brands across more than 120 markets. by bringing creator content, social media production, retail distribution and local store conversion together on an unprecedented scale involving more than 50,000 content creators with a combined audience of more than 600 million people and 180 limited edition products. We have leveraged the event to further strengthen our creator-first operating model, including through the House of Fresh with in-person creator hubs in Mexico City, New York, and Miami, enabling creators to build dedicated content from live events and boost their storytelling to a wider audience. We also develop our capabilities around AI-enabled content at scale using our AI studios. And we will go on capturing the learnings and deploying them in future sports marketing events that will continue to play a key role in building demand and brand equity. The FIFA World Cup has been a pivotal moment for Unilever, showing our ability to turn a global cultural moment into coordinated execution across creators, content, retail and shopper conversion. At a scale few companies can match. Before Jenny takes you through the results in more detail, let's roll the video.

The biggest cultural event in history. 48 teams, 104 matches, more than 6 billion viewers globally. For Unilever, this is a global demand generation platform. a chance to activate our power brands through culture through creators through digital and physical content through retail execution at unprecedented scale another day of winning across all 104 matches Rexona owned a high pressure moment The fourth official, the substitution board, added time. A role that cannot let the game down. Result. More than 50,000 creators, bringing our brands into culture every day. A combined audience of more than 600 million people. More than 1 billion people reach through coverage and conversation. That is how brands travel.

It's a golden ticket. Bubble is live.