Share price of Marmite and Magnum owner is underperforming badly in marked contrast with its peers
Unilever is frustrating its shareholders. Last year’s stock market “rally in everything” bypassed the consumer goods giant entirely. The shares fell by a tenth and, at £39.42, stand roughly at their level of five years ago, soon after the group adopted a supposedly energising cost-cutting and deal-making overhaul in response to its close encounter with Kraft Heinz’s financial engineers. There have been developments since then, such as the offloading of the low-growth PG Tips tea business a couple of months ago, but none has stirred excitement.
Here’s fund manager Terry Smith, explaining to investors in his £29bn Fundsmith fund via his annual letter on Tuesday why the stock was a bottom-five performer in the portfolio: “Unilever seems to be labouring under the weight of a management which is obsessed with publicly displaying sustainability credentials at the expense of focusing on the fundamentals of the business.”
