Raoul Jean-Marc Sidney Huet
Management
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Unilever's First Quarterly Presentation of 2012. For those of you who participated in the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan update earlier this week, thanks a lot for giving us 2 slots in your busy diary. I'll come back to the importance of our Sustainable Living Plan later in the call. You will also have noticed the improvements in disclosure which we've implemented this quarter, very much in line with what we promised, and I hope that this is being helpful to you. I will begin this morning by reviewing our overall performance in the first quarter and the category highlights. James will then review our geographical performance and report on the progress we have made in integrating our important acquisitions. I'll then conclude with some thoughts on the outlook for the year. So let's get going. First of all, I draw your attention to the usual disclaimer relating to forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Okay, good performance in a challenging environment. Underlying sales growth was 8.4% in Q1, broad-based with a good balance between volume and price. Our sales up are in developed and emerging markets, and we grew in all categories with positive volumes in each. Strong performance in Personal Care and emerging markets, those were the key drivers behind our growth. So overall, a pleasing start, albeit against a weak prior year comparator in Europe and, as you all know, impacted by some positive one-offs which affected all competitors. Turnover for the quarter was EUR 12.1 billion, that's up 11.9%. Volume growth contributed 3.5% and price at 4.7%, and that mainly reflects the carryover effect of price increases taken last year. In a period when pricing has been high, our positive volumes demonstrate the strength of our brands and the impact of our…