One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies has warned of a slow start to 2017 after lower-than-expected sales growth at the end of the year. Unilever, the maker of Dove Soap and Magnum ice-cream, said that its underlying sales growth was 2.2 per cent in the three months to December 31. This was below the market’s expectation of 2.8 per cent growth and down from the 3.2 per cent recorded in the third quarter, which was marred by the distraction of Unilever’s high-profile row with Tesco over the price of Marmite. This means that for Unilever, which owns hundreds of brands globally, underlying sales growth for last year was 3.7 per cent, which was slightly below the market consensus of 3.9 per cent.

Source: The Times January 26, 2017 09:01 UTC