{"id":102095,"date":"2026-08-12T15:13:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/102095\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T15:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:13:09","slug":"jefferies-says-world-cup-and-stockpiling-flattered-unilevers-standout-quarter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/102095\/","title":{"rendered":"Jefferies says World Cup and stockpiling flattered Unilever’s standout quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jefferies<\/a> Jefferies says World Cup and stockpiling flattered Unilever’s standout quarter Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

Jefferies has raised its price target for Unilever PLC (LSE:ULVR)<\/a>\u00a0to 3,900p from 3,800p while sticking with an underperform rating, arguing that the consumer goods group’s headline second-quarter volume growth was inflated by roughly 2 percentage points of one-off factors. <\/p>\n

David Hayes calculated the boost was worth around \u20ac256 million of sales in the quarter. <\/p>\n

Volume and mix growth at the core business, covering home and personal care alongside retained foods, came in at about 7.4%, beating consensus by 4.4 percentage points. <\/p>\n

Hayes identified three distortions behind that number. <\/p>\n

Unilever’s sponsorship of the North American World Cup, where it was the sole personal care partner, added an estimated 3 percentage points to that division through merchandising and promotional discounting. <\/p>\n

Home care saw a similar 3-point boost from retailers buying ahead of price rises the company is taking in the second half as oil-linked input costs climb. <\/p>\n

The timing of Amazon Prime Day shifting into the quarter added around \u20ac30 million, benefiting the beauty and wellbeing arm. <\/p>\n

Unilever has played down the pre-buying and World Cup effects, but Hayes said peer precedent, particularly at Procter & Gamble, made such dynamics inevitable. <\/p>\n

Stripping them out leaves volume and mix at 5.4%, a two-year compound growth rate of about 3%. <\/p>\n

The analyst raised his full-year like-for-like sales forecast by 40 basis points to 4.4%, now within the company’s 4% to 6% guidance range rather than at the bottom of it. <\/p>\n

Earnings forecasts for 2027 rise 2%, helped by currency turning into a modest tailwind. <\/p>\n

The target price implies a multiple of 13.5 times forecast earnings, against roughly 16.5 times on consensus numbers today. <\/p>\n

Hayes sees risk to the operating margin holding above 20% if volume growth slips below 2%, with about \u20ac300 million of stranded costs from the ice cream exit still to absorb. <\/p>\n

The shares fell 20p to\u00a04,570.5p. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jefferies says World Cup and stockpiling flattered Unilever’s standout quarter Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock Jefferies has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20694],"tags":[42935,13258,28660,12213,21055,13444],"class_list":["post-102095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-unilever","tag-david-hayes","tag-jefferies","tag-percentage-points","tag-unilever","tag-volume-growth","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117083190264971147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}