South Asia Slowdown Dents Growth at Unilever as 2019 Profits Decline

LONDON — It hasn’t been an easy year for Unilever. In fiscal 2019, turnover at the parent of brands including Vaseline, Dove and Pond’s edged up 2 percent to 52 billion euros. Growth was hit in the fourth quarter by a slowdown in South Asia, one of Unilever’s largest markets, as well difficult trading conditions in West Africa. Unilever had warned last month that annual sales growth would fall short of projections, and that underlying sales growth for 2019 would be “slightly below” the lower end of its 3 to 5 percent, multi-year forecast. Underlying growth in the 12 months to Dec. 31 was 2.9 percent. Year-end profit took a hit, too, falling 38.4 percent to 6 billion euros due comparisons with the prior year when Unilever banked 4.3 billion euros from the disposal of its spreads business. Underlying net profit growth was 8.1 percent, boosted in part by currency gains. In its year-end results released Thursday, Unilever pointed to a “significant slowdown” in South Asia and “some market softening” in China. The consumer giant said that while parts of Latin America have been volatile, there have been signs of improvement in Brazil. “South East Asian markets maintained good growth while developed markets, in particular

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