{"id":47304,"date":"2026-05-24T09:29:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T09:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/47304\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T09:29:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T09:29:46","slug":"mayo-not-today-unilevers-foods-dilemma-splits-the-analysts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/47304\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayo not today: Unilever’s foods dilemma splits the analysts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mayo Mayo not today: Unilever’s foods dilemma splits the analysts Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock <\/p>\n

Unilever PLC (LSE:ULVR)<\/a>\u00a0is reportedly considering a separation of its foods division, including brands such as\u00a0Marmite, Hellman’s and Knorr, but analysts say that while an exit\u00a0makes strategic sense as a medium-term goal, now is not the right time and would bring challenges that should not be underestimated.<\/p>\n

Barclays analyst Warren Ackerman called the Bloomberg report “not that helpful,” warning it risks distracting management when delivering 2026 targets “needs to be front and centre.”<\/p>\n

UBS analyst Guillaume Delmas noted the news may signal Unilever is “de facto acknowledging” that hitting its 4-6% annual sales growth target with 26% of revenues in mature food categories “is a challenging objective”.<\/p>\n

Any deal is unlikely before 2027, according to Bloomberg sources. Unilever already spun off its ice cream business in December<\/a>, which accounted for around 15% of sales, and has earmarked \u20ac1 billion to \u20ac1.5 billion of smaller food brands for disposal, with the aim of making Knorr and Hellmann’s the twin pillars of a slimmed-down Foods portfolio.<\/p>\n

A full Foods separation would strip out roughly 26% of group revenues, cutting turnover from \u20ac50.5 billion to \u20ac37.6 billion. UBS estimated it would modestly boost underlying sales and volume growth, but would be dilutive to operating margins by 80 to 100 basis points.<\/p>\n

Both Barclays and UBS warn that food sector multiples are “pretty depressed”, especially given anaemic volumes and industry-wide\u00a0concerns around GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and health-conscious consumers.<\/p>\n

UBS’ Delmas flagged\u00a0two further hurdles, one being some “potentially significant dis-synergies” that were not a concern in the ice cream split, as\u00a0Unilever’s home and personal care operations have “substantial overlap” with foods on a route-to-market standpoint.<\/p>\n

It would also dent the group’s cash generation profile in hard currency terms, he said, given that foods is slightly more skewed towards mature markets than the rest of the Unilever and commands higher operating margins and lower capex requirements.<\/p>\n

The ideal path, said Barclays’ Ackerman is for Unilever’s management to “bide their time and focus all their resources on delivering 2026 and keeping possible options around Foods in-house at least until concrete value creating options are realistically on the table”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayo not today: Unilever’s foods dilemma splits the analysts Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock Unilever PLC (LSE:ULVR)\u00a0is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20694],"tags":[21687,23717,3871,23715,12213,23716],"class_list":["post-47304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-unilever","tag-bloomberg-report","tag-food-brands","tag-foods","tag-operating-margins","tag-unilever","tag-warren-ackerman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116628856645657130","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47304","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=47304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}