THE HAGUE, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Unilever suffered a decline in turnover and a meager increase in underlying sales in the third quarter of 2014, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company announced Thursday.
Compared to the same period last year, turnover was down 2 percent to 12.2 billion euros (15.4 billion U.S. dollars) in the third quarter, including a negative currency impact of 2.6 percent.
Underlying sales growth in the third quarter was 2.1 percent compared to the third quarter of 2013. Underlying volume growth was 0.3 percent.
"We expect markets to remain tough for at least the remainder of the year," Unilever CEO Paul Polman said. "We have further accelerated our initiatives to remove unnecessary costs, simplify business and ensure that Unilever is both agile and resilient."
"We are confident that we will achieve another year of profitable volume growth ahead of our markets, steady and sustainable core operating margin improvement and strong cash flow," the Polman added.
Unilever said it was suffering from slow market growth and low consumer demand affected by macro-economic pressures.
In China, the impact of the market slowdown has led to trade de-stocking across distribution channels, Unilever said in a statement. "This resulted in a decline in our underlying sales of around 20 percent."
In North America, Unilever saw "early signs of improvement." Europe declined in both volume and price with poor summer weather impacting ice cream sales.
