Unilever Ghana Ltd. has reported a net profit of GHC35.7million in 2015, exactly 12 months after recording one of its worst losses in recent times.
The consumer goods company last year made revenue of a little above GHC518.7million, which represents the result of a decision by Unilever managers to contain rising cost while improving operational efficiency.
As a result of the turnaround in the company’s financials, shareholders approved a proposal by the board to pay a dividend of GHC0.40 per share.
At the company’s Annual General Meeting in Accra this week, Managing Director of Unilever Maidie Arkutu explained that the GHC710,000 loss the company recorded in 2014 was largely due to swings in the cedi’s value and the erratic power situation at the time, which increased the firm’s operational costs.
She said improvement in the energy situation and deliberate strategies employed by the company to contain cost have placed it on the path of profitability.
“The change in strategy commenced in the middle of 2014, and if you look at the report by the end of 2014 we had turned all the negatives into flat bottom-line. So we simply enhanced those strategies we initiated in 2014. One was to really manage our cost, so we had many cost scenarios in place; and we focused on ensuring that we used price to recover the cost as much as we could.”
“The second was around significant cost saving initiatives across the entire business. So all the way from how we run our factory to how we procure our raw materials, we sought cost saving throughout; and all these resulted in profits,” Maidie Arkutu, Managing Director of Unilever said at the AGM.
In tackling the power shortfalls that plagued the country significantly last year and resulted in the collapse of many businesses, Ms. Arkutu said the company purchased a new generator to bridge the company’s shortfall in power supply in order to ensure sustained production.
Commenting on the foreign products influx threat in the market, Ms. Arkutu said Unilever seeks to beat competition by producing quality and innovative products that will be the preferred choice of every consumer.
“What we can say is that the nature of competition has changed somewhat, so we are seeing a lot more imported products from Asia. But that is why we invest very strongly behind our brands and make sure our brands are preferred by consumers to any other competitor’s products available on the market,” she said.
She further noted that the power situation easing and the currency’s stability so far this year will help the company to do better than it did in 2015.