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Unilever PLC (UL)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 3, 2011

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Transcript

Paul Polman

Management

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Unilever’s Full Year and Fourth Quarter Results presentation. We certainly appreciate once more the interest that you’re showing in Unilever at this time, and certainly, the time you take out of your busy schedules to be with us. I’m joined this morning by Jean-Marc Huet, who is obviously as you know our Chief Financial Officer; James Allison, our Head of Investor Relations and M&A. Also in the audience today with us are Mike Polk, who is the President of the Categories; Genevieve Berger, who is the Chief R&D Officer; Pier Luigi Sigismondi, who is our Chief Supply Chain Officer; Dave Lewis, President of the Americas; and Tonia Lovell, who is our Chief Legal Officer. I would also like to make a particular mention today of Jan Zijderveld, our newly appointed President of Western Europe. Some of you, I believe, have met Jan in Singapore last November. Until recently, he was the Executive Vice President of our Southeast Asia and Oscillation businesses. Under his leadership actually, our businesses there have performed extremely strongly growing at the 10% plus mark in 2010 in as you know highly competitive market conditions. I’m certainly confident that Jan will make a great addition to the Unilever Executive team. Jan actually replaces Doug Baillie, who has been appointed Chief HR Officer in succession of Sandy Ogg. Doug has done a remarkable job steering our tough European business to strong results in extremely challenging conditions once more. In fact, under his leadership, we started to grow share again in Western Europe after many years of decline. I’m convinced that he will bring to HR his considerable business experience and passionate focus on the consumer and customer as well as a deep commitment to develop our people and our organization. In…

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Thank you very much, Paul, and good morning to everybody. In my review, I will discuss a performance in the fourth quarter and in the year as a whole. Let me begin by looking at our sales performance. Underlying sales growth for the quarter was 5.1% driven entirely by volume. Against a strong comparator and with in-quarter pricing turning positive, we saw volume growth step-up slightly from the level seen in the third quarter. If we compare volumes in the fourth quarter of 2008, we see growth over the two-year period of more than 10%. The weak euro resulted in a strongly positive Forex effective 8%. Turnover for the quarter was €10.8 billion, up 12%. For the year as a whole, turnover was up 11%, reaching a total of €44.3 billion. That’s €4.5 billion added to the top line in the last year. Underlying sales growth was 4.1% with volume growth of 5.8%. Forex was again a significant positive at 7.3%. In 2010, the impact of disposals on turnover slightly exceeded that of acquisitions. In 2011, however, we will see a boost to our growth from our step-up M&A program. For the first time in many years, M&A will add to the business. As Paul has explained, our volume growth is broad-based across regions and categories and volume share momentum is consistently strong. The virtuous circle growth that we often talk about is starting to work for us, and it is innovation more than any other factor that has triggered this positive change in our business. Most fundamentally, our innovations are getting bigger. We can now think realistically about projects that will deliver more than €50 million of incremental turnover in their first year. That’s more than 10 basis points of growth for Unilever as a whole from a single…

Paul Polman

Management

Thank you, Jean-Marc. So as you’ve heard a good set of results and another major step towards the consistent top and bottom line growth that we have been targeting; this despite the difficult environment that continued throughout the year much as we frankly had expected. You’ve heard me say many times that this new Unilever is now fully fit to compete. These results are further evidenced of this and we are certainly pleased with the results of 2010. We’re starting to get into this roof of this virtuous cycle of growth and all our intentions are, obviously, to stay there. But perhaps many of you are more focus on what lies ahead rather than what has been achieved over the past year. So, let’s look at 2011 for the next few minutes. Yes, we do expect the environment to continue to be volatile. This austerity measures just starting to take hold across much of the developed world, and unemployment remaining stubbornly high, there will be considerable pressure on consumer spending. Imagine market growth for the last year suddenly has been a bright spot of the global economy should continue to be robust, although here are also signs as I’ve said before of modest slowdown starting to appear, but the most significant challenge facing the industry today is the return of inflationary pressures after some years of deflation and we’ll see it happening now again to the global economy and in particular, obviously, the rapid rise of commodities. I understand the questions you’re asking, “Can we protect margins in certain environment? Do we have the firepower and confidence to price where we need? And if we do, what will happen to our hard won volume gains and market shares and overall competitiveness? Does the new Unilever really have the discipline to…

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

OK. So, it’s the usual format. (Operator Instructions). So, let’s start in the room. And Warren, you had your hand out first. Warren Ackerman – Evolution Securities: Good morning, it’s Warren Ackerman. It’s Evolution. Question for Jean-Marc. Can I just come back on to the 400 basis point impact on margins from higher input costs for 2010? Obviously, that's a very big number. If my math is right, that seems low double digit increases on your overall basket of input costs. When I look at that versus P&G, they were saying 130-basis point impact. I appreciate very different portfolios, but I'm surprised the gap is so different, 400bps versus 130 basis points. So the question is, what assumptions lie behind the 400bps and what forward cover do you have on inputs? Thank you.

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Sure. Well, you can imagine we’re not going to make comments about competition when it comes to this point. And this is today a vantage point where we see an impact to 400 basis points on our turnover, so make sure that it’s absolutely crystal clear that we’re talking about on our turnover and not on our cost base. But we think that this is the right way to look at it. Point one, as Paul mentioned, we’re in a very volatile environment. So, this can change quite quickly from week to week. Where we have a reasonable confidence is over the first half of the year be it through covers, hedging and our inventory levels. We have a very good view on how this will pan out for the P&L for the first half. But let me just underline, given this volatility, less clear for the second half of the year. As it is today, 400 basis points is our best guess on what the impact will be on our P&L for 2011.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Sara? Sara Welford – Citigroup: Just in terms of the emerging markets, you refer to the fact that they might -- that they're starting to slow down. Can you give us a little bit more clarity on that? Is it volume-led? Is it price-led?

Paul Polman

Management

I’ve said it before and I don’t know why you all refer to me to give you the answers because if you look at the IMF and OECD, they give their forecast that we look at and they say the same thing. See China has been very good and continues to be very good, but the government is continue to look at taking measures to ensure that there’s no overheating and you’ll see that coming in. And the same thing in India, we’ve seen two or three interest rate increases for the same reason. So, the forecast that are out there officially now is a slightly slower growth. Now, having said that these markets are growing healthy, and obviously it’s becoming an increasing part of our business. Within that companies that do well can grow faster. It’s very clear that the population will continue to grow, and the first products that these people go to, usually the products that we sell. So, I don’t see there’s any reason for us to have a worse performance. But I’m just realistic about the economic environment. If you don’t see reality in the eye, you cannot make the right business decisions to run your business. And we’ve done that in 2010 and I think it’s proven to be right and helped us tremendously get these successful results, and we’ll do it also in 2011. Now, I’d be the first one that would love to be proven wrong and have economies even more robust than they are the better for our business results. But we are taking a prudent outlook. And the same for the developed markets, where you see a significant burden being transferred to the public at large, to the consumer away from the government as some of these issues of government deficits needs to be address. No better example of this than here in the U.K., but increasingly the rest of Europe as well. So, we have to be mindful of what is happening now.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Michael? Michael Steib – Morgan Stanley: I have a couple of questions, please. The first one is one the commodity cost management again. It’s not clear to me why managing commodity cost necessarily enables you to deal with the volatility better. Can you give us a few examples perhaps of what you specifically change that make you confident that you can manage this volatility better?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes, sure. Michael Steib – Morgan Stanley: And then secondly, if we look at the overall level of A&P spending, if we eliminate the quarterly volatility. On a full year basis, are you confident that you are spending the right amount on A&P both in absolute and then percentage terms of sales…

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Michael Steib – Morgan Stanley: Or is this going to be another substantial headwind to margins next year.

Paul Polman

Management

Thanks, Michael. No, I appreciate both questions. Let me turn to commodity what has changed specifically to Pier Luigi and then I’ll come back on the A&P.

Pier Luigi Sigismondi

Management

Well, first of all, what we do is that we have a very strong view on the covers that we have for the next three to six months, so we can actually protect our margins by understanding precisely how the market is moving. So, I think we have a very strong team who has actually a very deep understanding of how the market is moving, so that’s first number one. Number two is there is a lot of information that actually is communicated to the market very quickly. So, the responsiveness that we have in the business is actually quite high, so by doing those two, I think we are quite free to compete.

Paul Polman

Management

We’re able to -- if you look at it over a two-year period of time, for example, because of the global organization that Pier Luigi is leading, we’re able to aggregate more. We actually have fewer suppliers. We have a better penetration off the supply chain and a better knowledge as a result of the global supply chain. We were in situations that we would -- when we were to decentralized would take opposite positions against certain materials across the world, if I may be honest, that all is finished now. So that discipline, that responsiveness that he’s referring to is giving us a better opportunity to manage it in a more volatile market. It requires a lot of skills, but to better manage it. And we now have discussions at the board level as an example every month on what positions we’d taken, how far we had and what we cover and what we don’t cover, so the transparency is there as well. Earlier, feedback to the markets to take actions causes discovering and explaining, so there’s a lot of things that have improved in the way we manage the business that make us feel confident. Turning to the A&P very briefly, I think we’re confident with the absolute levels are strong versus our competitors in the categories that we compete in. We had probably the strongest increase certainly in our history, but also as far as our competitors over the last two years with €700 million. And I appreciate and I want to repeat that you take a broader feud and just the famous 90 days and get excited about that. But even take the last periods, what we’ve seen in Europe, for example, is the need for us to be competitive on the pricing and promotions of…

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Paul? Paul [ph]: Staying on the points of cost developments, you’ve got visibility as you’ve mentioned on the next say three to six months. We’ve mentioned some phasing in terms of the A&P that we’ve seen in Q4 as well. Can you discuss a little bit about the phasing of the cost that you can see both commodities first half versus second half? A&P to support new product launches? And then lastly, you’ve also mentioned one third of turnover, I believe, is being generated from innovations. Is that the right number? Is that going to go up or down?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Paul [ph]: How can we see that?

Paul Polman

Management

Let’s start with the key driver innovations for a second. I have said before that the 30%, 33% as we call it now is about the right number. What you want is -- because you want to have it stick with the consumer and take some time to make it really work like Dove , it’s a multi-year program to drive the business across the world. So, I think 33% is about right. What we’re focused on is the quality of the innovations and continues to drive the qualities higher. And what we’re focused on is launching in more countries. We now have significant amount of projects that have given us €50 million of turnover or more. Just two years ago, you were challenging us on that, if we could ever do that. Right now, many of the initiatives that we have in the market on Dove, Dove Damage Repair or Magnum Gold or Knorr Stock Pot or the Clear re-launch, they’re all €50 million or more. The second thing is launching in more countries at the same time. We, in 2008, nine from memory, about nine countries behind big initiatives. Now, we are launching them in 40. We have 40 initiatives that we’re launching -- sorry, nine initiatives that we were launching in 10 countries or more. Now, there are 40 initiatives that we are launching in 10 countries and more. So, the robustness of our innovations is really what drives our business. And we feel very confident about the pipeline that we have. So, please [ph] they’re all relative to competition again, but we feel confident about that and our business is clearly driven by innovation. Then in terms of the year, I think we have to be careful in terms of making forecast in a very volatile…

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

OK, one more in the room and then we move to the phones. Julian Hardwick – RBS: It’s Julian Harder from RBS. I just wondered if you could give us a little bit of color on what surprising you are seeing as we now move into 2011 and how you see pricing evolve, if your assumptions of a 400-basis point commodity increase are correct.

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Julian Hardwick – RBS: And I mean if in the year’s time and when we’re all sitting here and you’re reporting on 2011, and you’ve not been able to deliver the objectives that you’ve set. What factor as you sit here today do you think would account for a shortfall? What’s concerning you most about that life?

Paul Polman

Management

Well, to go on to that discussion what concerns me the most of life would actually deviate quite sharply from the purpose of this press conference, so I won’t go that direction. I’m pretty happy to where it’s going. Let me just put it in perspective again once more because I understand the concerns. And obviously, you should always be worried about uncertainly moving forward that is always uncomfortable for everybody. But the equivalent cost inflation that we now see with the best of our knowledge is about 4% of total turnover. In 2008, when we dealt with that, was about 6.5% of turnover, if you go back. In the 6.5% of turnover, we were able whilst keeping volumes flat. It wasn’t the performance we were particularly pleased about; I think we overshot a little bit on pricing then. But at the end of the day, we came through this with 6.5% pricing and flat volumes. Our brands are much stronger, our innovations are stronger. We have more volume momentum and we are only seeing a 4% equivalent. Now, we don’t think that 4% equivalent is all the pricing that will play out in the market to your point Julian. We think that with what we’re trying to do with the savings programs and what we’ve setup was capturing the efficiencies of the volume momentum that we have that obviously the consumer pays significantly less. If you want my best guess because it’s a function of many factors including competition, it’s probably half of that you’ll see in the market. And what will happen in the dynamics if we’re here a year from now is that you might see an overall growth inline with our ambitions, but a slightly different mix between volume and pricing and that you already started to see coming through in the last quarter, which was tremendously stronger volume 5.1%, but started to have already a 0.5% positive pricing in the quarter, so that is how the year is going to evolve.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Thank you. Going to go to the telephone line, Paul. So, we got Marco Marco Gulpers’s on the line. Marco, can you come through? Marco Gulpers – ING: Yes, good morning all. A follow-up question actually on the pricing statement, a little bit the angle. On the retail environment, what are you actually seeing? It is tougher these days to pass on the price increases and maybe two years ago? That is the first question. And the second question on the cost saving, a positive surprise there on €1.4 billion compared to €1.3 billion. Part of that is coming in the supply chain savings or buying savings, I would say. How does this affect basically your gross margins reporting in the fourth quarter? If you were to strip out that additional €100 million, how would gross margins have look like for the fourth quarter? Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

Since I couldn’t understand the first question, I’ll hand it over to Jean-Marc to answer it.

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Well, I’m not sure that we understood it fully.

Mike Polk

Management

No, I didn’t all get the second question at all.

Paul Polman

Management

The line was pretty bad. So, I don’t -- did you get it?

Mike Polk

Management

I think the question was about from the retailing perspective, but I just heard the word retail. That’s it.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Marco, just to do justice to this, could you just repeat the first question again because you didn’t come through. Marco Gulpers – ING: Yes, sure. Another way of asking the pricing question is what are you seeing actually currently in the retail environment? You made the analogy basically with 2007 or 2008 period. Could you help us out on the retail environment, what are you seeing there? Is it easier today to pass on prices or would you say it’s more difficult?

Paul Polman

Management

Got it.

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Got it.

Paul Polman

Management

Then in that case, we change the flip over who answers which question. It’s always the interest to have the CFO answer retailer questions. The good thing is we are seeing some movement in pricing at the retail level as well. Don’t forget in the developed markets, you have to really look at it more granularly. But in the developed markets, where you have a more concentrated and developed retail environment, their own labels have a much higher percentage of their cost in their selling price if you want to. And as a result, they are more subject to the strong increases than people like us. For us, the product cost in total is about 30% of our turnover. For many of the retailers, catering to the lower parts of the economic spectrum, if you want to, with their private levels, it can be as high 70%, 60%, 70%, in some cases even higher. So, when there are input cost inflation, I think they will see more of that coming through than we do. On top of that, our renovation programs and again our brand strengths will give us better opportunities. So, I’ve always said a certain level of inflation, I know not everybody agrees with that, but a certain level of inflation is healthy. Now, then people are worried then say if is happening is there an acceleration of private level growth? The reality is there is no private label really in the emerging market, where we have a very big part of our business. In the developed markets, it’s anywhere around 15% to 20% on average in the markets that we compete in and we have not seen that trend significantly change, not in 2007, 2008, not after that, not now. You’ll get monthly reports that have little movements and people get excited of that, but that trend is fundamentally not changing. Brands that do that work well, that innovate, that support can continue to grow in any environment. And that’s where we plan to be. The second part of the question?

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Again, if I understood it correctly, your question was about €1.4 billion of savings, which is a €100 million more than €1.3 billion, and what the impact would have been in the fourth quarter. And rather than answer that question because we don’t manage savings on a quarterly basis, let me just take it a step back and say, we did €1.4 billion for the year of which of the lion share is supply chain, but don’t forget there’s also an important part in indirect as well as to a lesser extent media savings. That €1.4 billion in 2010 is very similar to the €1.4 billion in 2009, and this just underlines the fact that we really are driving the business on a continuous improvement level. We are trying to do this type of work each and every year. It’s not a function of performance from a quarter to quarter basis, and that’s the reason why we have confidence at the beginning of 2011 for another savings at/or hopefully more than €1 billion.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

We’re going back to the room now, just in case the telephones aren’t working. For those people who are on the line, please contact the IR team afterwards, we’ll take you questions there. Nikko, you had your hand out first. Nico Lambrechts – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: My apologies. A question for you Paul. Could you maybe take us through the decision that the board made in terms of your long-term focus for sustainable underlying margin improvement? Is that the right target for the long-term health of the business in a year like this year? Where you have to probably make more aggressive decisions on cost and A&P or is that a target that the market is asking you to do, the equity market? And could you maybe clarify would that also be a target that you would like to achieve in the first half and the full year this year? Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

In other words, when are you giving guidance? We don’t. So, the question is the right question though. And that’s why I want to reiterate once more, Nick, that it’s very important is that we will keep our brands and our support competitive as a priority. We are building share again. We have better innovations, I think, than many of our competitive sets. We are winning many of the battles as you saw in Singapore that we can go into at different points of time, and we want to keep that, and it’s driven by innovation in our case. But we also recognize that we have to stay competitive. We saw some price movements in the last quarter in Europe and that had to be competitive. So, we will not compromise on that, and that’s a moving thing. But I also think that our overall margins are not yet best in class and we have to be sure that if we continue to get to our virtuous cycle of growth -- of continuous top and bottom line growth, that we keep each other honest in the quality of the growth. We don’t live by quarter. We might not live by year, by 365 days, if there are good explanations. But our long-term model, a virtuous circle of growth should be consistent top and bottom line growth. I insist on that especially that’s the starting point that we have and there’s ample room to deliver on that. In short-term situations of extreme stress or difficulty, we will have to deal with that. Now, we’re able to run our business now thanks to the strengths of our innovations with a margin enhancement at a time when we see some of our competitors reporting 150 to 250 basis points down in margin, and significant negative pricing. So, I think it points out again the strengths of our model, and what we are doing and what drives that and we will continue to focus on that. Our innovations will be up next year. Our support behind that will be up. We will put selective pricing in, but never beyond competitor. And at the end of the day, I believe that we can continue to stick to our long-term objective and run the business on that basis of healthy top line growth above the market and steady, but consistent margin expansion.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Susanne? Susanne Siebel – Barclays Capital: Thank you. Susan Solder here. Further to your pricing strategy, could you elaborate a little bit how you’re going to flex that between the geographies, between developed and developing markets considering the inflation that’s there?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Susanne Siebel – Barclays Capital: And also, how you’re going to do that between food and HPC given that their different dynamics, different competitive dynamics in particular behind those categories. Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

Yes, sure. Absolutely, and I’m glad your asking the question because you have to really look at it at a granular level. And even at the emerging markets, that word doesn’t exist anymore, there are recent [ph] ones, there are emerging, there are already some quite developed in there. You need to be really, really looking at country by country. The currency effects coming in next to input cost effects. Let me give a macro picture to keep it short. In the food area where we see more inflation, our emerging market business is only 25% food more or less and 75% HPC and the growth that we are seeing is more coming from the HPC than from food. I think there will be some challenges, but putting them in perspective of where we are, we feel that we can manage that. You will see some prices going up, it’s happening as we talk. You’ll see some prices going up, perhaps a little bit lower volume than what we showed, but the overall should be healthy in my opinion. In the developed markets, actually the food part of our business is a very small part of people’s overall spending [inaudible] 10%, 15% at maximum, but it’s less. And I think the developed markets, we should be able to pass on at least a part of these 400 basis points that Jean-Marc talked about provided we also back that up with innovations and continue to improve the quality of things that we do. So, the consumer might be paying more, but she gets a significantly better product. Don’t forget that when we launch, for example, Knorr Stock Pot last year, which is rapidly exceeding the €100 million plus turnover is actually 70% more expensive than the granular cube that we sold. But it’s such a better that we’re selling -- but it’s such a better product and a better experience. Dove Men+Care, Magnum Gold of Hutera [ph], these are products that provide a better value. So that is how we look at pricing. You should not underestimate that. Give consumers not just the price increase, try to minimize that, but give consumers also better products. So, we’re looking at category by category, country by country and I think it is not something that is more challenging than it was in 2007, 2008 and I am encouraged by some of the price movements I already see happening in some of the markets or reductions in promotional spending. And increasingly, we’ve only have a few of hour competitive set to report the results, but I think what I read in those results at least was that there was an intention to reflect some of that in the pricing, which is a little bit better noise than I’ve heard in the last two years from some of them.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

OK, two more, Martin, and then one more. Martin Deboo – Investec Securities: Thank you. Martin, Investec. Simple question, what was input cost inflation in Q4 in basis points of turnover?

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

It was 7% in the second half of the year.

Paul Polman

Management

Q4 specifically, we don’t have, but take the second half.

Mike Polk

Management

Yes. The second half of the year, our input cost was up by 7%.

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

For the whole year around 2.5 to 3% net of FX, H2 7%.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Yes, one more. John?

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Full year 2.5 to 3.

Paul Polman

Management

I think we’ve bitten the input cost to death, so I know it’s all you know worried your own share of wallets. So, let’s move to some other topics because the business is run by broader factors than just that.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

John? Jon Cox – Kepler Equities: Yes, John Cox with Kepler. Yes, moving along what about the top line? I just think consensus at the moment is for over 5% organic growth this year. You delivered that in Q4, you seem to be saying that’s where you want it to be. How confident should we be that you’ll be able to maintain that sort of pace through 2011? Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Our goal is to get -- the markets globally are growing at about 4% as we read it for our weighted basket of products. We’ve said that before, I was just looking at it coming in today. It’s still more or less the case, 7%, 8% the emerging markets flat in the developed market and that’s where we are. Although it continues to grow ahead of that, I’m talking value here. So, our goal is to continue to go ahead of that and increasingly get into the 4% to 6% range that we are in. I feel comfortable with that, and we’re doing that now. In extreme cases of inflation, if this would continue, then you might be even above it. But to be in the 4% to 6% range, I think this company can deliver now despite having some drag on some parts of the portfolio. So, we feel that we are showing that increasing consistency. But I also want to be clear; I am more interested in delivering it and then promising it. So, I want to be clear that. But I think we are getting in an increasingly comfortable relationship with our investor base that we can get to that consistency. But it’s also clear to me that two year’s alone is not enough to give that confidence yet and there are always some people that look at some of these uncertainties and not look at the positives. And I always quote Stephen Covey, “You cannot talk yourself out of things, you’ve behave yourself into.” So, we go very steadily into delivering that model, and hopefully win the skeptics bit by bit. But we should be doing 4% to 6%, yes.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Paul, do we still have time for more?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes, absolutely. They’re all…

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

OK, let’s keep going then. Deborah? Deborah Aitken – Bryan, Garnier & Co.: Hi, can you give us some insight please on your acquisitions and what you’re expecting from those 2011 both sales and anything you can give us on cost of date?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes, you probably want more specific data around the acquisition, if I listen to your question. Deborah Aitken – Bryan, Garnier & Co.: Yes.

Paul Polman

Management

Jean-Marc, you want to cover that?

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

Well, let me just make a couple of points. I think importantly with a lot of acquisitions is to look after a period of time post-integration. And if you look at assets, although they were small, but once like T.G. and in Marco, a year later, a year and a half later, they’re really performing according to plan be it top as well as bottom line. So, increasing confidence that we can buy assets, integrate, but then most importantly is let them grow. So, overall, we have I think now more and more points of reference that we’re getting better at this. When it comes to the more recent transactions, we’ve just close Sara Lee in December, so it’s very early days. I think our proposal is to more factually come back to Sara Lee, specifically post [inaudible] be it either in our Q1 or Q2 results. What we see, which I think is very promising is given the time between announcement and closing, you’ll recognize that it took a long-time for us to close this deal. The brands are healthy. The momentums good as we now know the business and their ownership. Alberto Culver, obviously, we’re waiting for approval to close that deal.

Paul Polman

Management

So, we’ll get back to what it means in the year and what we said we will stick to, but what it means in the year in terms of restructuring and business effects. And we’ll report the business results, so you get that transparency. Dave is here and Dave is responsible for the Alberto Culver integration. That’s obviously a very important business for us. So, perhaps Dave wants to spend two words on that.

Dave Lewis

Management

I think to build on what Jean-Marc said, there’s a lot of pre-integration work already done. But it’s nothing [ph] will be driven by this part of justice that’s as for a second reading in the U.S. Best timeline indication I could give is that we would have conclusion of that around the middle of the year.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Xavier? Xavier Croquez – Cheuvreux: Two points of clarification. The first one is on pricing. I think you just said that you had all 0.5% in-quarter pricing because the consumer doesn’t remember flat pricing versus year-on-year. How much pricing in the quarter have you been putting on the system and keeping the volumes that you had, is my first question. Is it 0.5%? Secondly, on the savings, the nice pie that we have with the €1.4 billion, I understand that you expect more than €1 billion. But what -- if it is €1 billion, would not be delivered at the same pace as is in 2010 because buying savings should be fairly strong. So, what is missing, where would be the shortfall when you guide us at €1.1 billion or whatever? And to clarify, all the cost synergies are restructuring are not in this pie nor in your guidance 2011. Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

Right. Last point is correct. On the pricing, it is 0.5% pricing in the quarter. So, we have actually put some pricing in on the food side already on the personal care side, where we -- and actually on the fabric solution side, we’ve been able to do pricing as well, by the way, in many places across the world and still give good volumes. We see prices moving up slightly in the South [inaudible] in Latin America; in India now; in China, there is some price movement on the laundry categories. So, there are always individual countries that need to be dealt with. But broadly we see the direction going up, and as market leaders in this emerging markets have to show the initiatives in many of these cases and we’re starting to do that, but we will be very mindful to keep our brands competitive. So, you will see the positive pricing increasingly coming through in the quarters ahead of us more and more and more. We have made some price adjustments down as well to stay competitive. On fabric softeners in the U.K., someone was taking share with predatory pricing. In laundry in France, your country, the same person was taking share with predatory pricing that has to stop and increasingly, I think we make that very clear. But we’re able to do that in a model that gives overall better results. So, we have now put pricing in across our categories in most of our countries to be honest without going into the details. And we also have close [ph] with the retailers to the best of my knowledge all the agreements for 2011, which is quite exceptional because sometimes that can drag on to well into the year with loss of support. Now, it’s actually the opposite. So, I feel moderately realistic. I don’t want to use the word optimistic. I feel modestly realistic that common sense is a little bit more prevailing in more places than in perhaps for us over the last two years on this, and that’s how we will do it. But we will run it very, very tight. And we -- because of our increase transparency, because of our business model now, because of the “Compass” we’re able to get that feedback from the markets fairly quickly. And although we have the P&L in the markets, we are able to take very quick actions were needed to take corrections. An example of that is India, where we saw irresponsible price decreases in some categories, we took immediate actions and our business now is growing double digits including in laundry already for the last two or three quarters. And we’re happy about that. So, we will continue to do that.

Jean-Marc Huet

Management

So, the answer to your second question on savings, I wouldn’t use the word shortfall when comparing €1.4 billion with €1 billion. Take a step back; we did €1.4 billion in ’09, €1.4 in ’10 that’s close to €3 billion. So, from that backdrop, we feel confident with continuous improvement, with the mindset to achieve another €1 billion on 2011. So, I think that it’s important to recognize that backdrop plus the fact that we are at the beginning of the year, and we will do what’s possible within 12 months.

Paul Polman

Management

But the fact that Xavier is asking for more shows that he has potential to work for Unilever, so I appreciate that.

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

OK. One final question, Paul? Last question, Simon? Simon Marshall-Lockyer – Jeffries & Company: Could you give us a little bit more on what you’re seeing in China given the inflationary, and the inflationary measures taken by the government. Your expectation of maybe some slightly slower growth out of developing in emerging markets, are you actually seeing that already now or is this your expectation? And are you actually seeing that these anti-inflationary measures taken by the government in China are beginning to have an effect? Are beginning to slow things down?

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Simon Marshall-Lockyer – Jeffries & Company: Could you give us some sort of views on that? Thank you.

Paul Polman

Management

Yes. Well, with some modesty, I have to say we have good results in China. We are growing well into the double digits, the upper double digits. We are growing at more than two times, if not close to three times the GDP. We’re building share in all categories by one [ph]. So, our performance under Ellen Jobs [ph] leadership in China has been a very, very strong performance and he should be definitely congratulated on that. We’re closing in on many of our competitors, very strong growth in laundry, for example. As an example of that that we shared with you in Singapore, but I can go into any of the categories. But I have to say, we were late starters. So, our business is smaller and we continue to invest in China to close that gap, but invest responsibly here as well; very fast top line growth, but also bottom line growth and our shares are moving up in all categories except oral care, which we are now working on and are starting to see to move that as well. So, that’s the full transparent story. What we do see is because of the increased attention to China and the market leader losing share across most of the categories, we see the cost of competition going up. So, we have tremendous opportunities as a company to extend our distribution network, to go to the B and C cities and that is what we are doing. We’re adding tremendous amounts of points of distribution. And still in a better position to expand our portfolio, we just launched the Dove Hair Care brand, which is off to a great start. It was a big initiative. Our Lipton, the Lipton Tea we launched, and now we are expanding the Lipton Ready-to-Drink,…

James Allison

Head of Investor Relations

Thank you.