Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) yes­ter­day re­port­ed unau­dit­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $19.38 mil­lion for the first nine months of its fi­nan­cial year, a 46 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $13.27 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

The af­ter-tax prof­its of the per­son­al and home care com­pa­ny for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, were greater than the au­dit­ed $17.15 mil­lion it re­port­ed in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

UCL’s rev­enue for the nine-month pe­ri­od to­talled $173.08 mil­lion, 2.96 per cent more than the $168.10 mil­lion it gen­er­at­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

Unilever chair Daniela Bu­caro, in her re­view of the re­sults, said the rev­enue growth was pri­mar­i­ly at­trib­uted to the beau­ty and per­son­al care cat­e­go­ry (BPC), par­tic­u­lar­ly from its pow­er brands Dove, De­gree, Vase­line, and Axe.

These brands have con­sis­tent­ly de­liv­ered sig­nif­i­cant prof­itable growth in the year to date, out­pac­ing the over­all growth rate of the com­pa­ny. The high­ly

prof­itable BPC cat­e­go­ry has in­creased to 55 per cent of to­tal rev­enue, com­pared to 50.8 per cent dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.

“The ice cream cat­e­go­ry has per­formed well, ben­e­fit­ting from a change in dis­trib­u­tor which has con­tributed to the over­all prof­itabil­i­ty growth this quar­ter,” said Bu­caro.

She not­ed that in the home care cat­e­go­ry, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence pos­i­tive mo­men­tum in vol­ume re­cov­ery com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, as it rein­vests in brands at both lo­cal and re­gion­al lev­els.

She said the com­pa­ny’s gross mar­gins have im­proved due to the ro­bust per­for­mance of the high­er mar­gin beau­ty and per­son­al care cat­e­go­ry, as well as man­age­ment’s em­pha­sis on cost op­ti­mi­sa­tion and op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies.

“This im­proved prof­itabil­i­ty has en­abled rein­vest­ment in our brands as we in­vest in fu­ture growth,” said Bu­caro.

She said the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ef­fec­tive­ly and dili­gent­ly man­age its work­ing cap­i­tal by main­tain­ing op­ti­mal in­ven­to­ry lev­els and en­sur­ing healthy re­ceiv­able lev­els while ful­fill­ing oblig­a­tions as they be­come due.

That ap­proach has con­tributed to an in­crease in cash re­serves by $15.9 mil­lion.