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Hindustan Lever Results

A look at how the market-tossed Hindustan Lever has done, lately.

All said, watching the performance of Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), India's largest consumer products' marketer, is always rather interesting - there is always a surprise or two.

The broad numbers first. HLL's topline for its third quarter of calendar 2003 (the three months ended 30 September, 2003) is reported at Rs 2,467 crore, up 7 per cent over the same quarter of 2002. The growth rate, HLL is keen to advertise, is twice the rate recorded last year. So the company is driving slightly faster, a result presumably of better visibility (read operating conditions).

The interesting thing, however, is that profit-after-tax (PAT) is actually down 3 per cent this quarter, to Rs 408 crore. Close HLL watchers would have noticed a mild shift from bottomline (a fixation over the past few years) to topline management - what you'd expect of a so-called 'marketing company'.

Of even greater interest, at least to those who watch the company for their own research purposes, would be the specific results in individual market categories. The first big announcement is that HLL's Power Brands have registered a double-digit growth, in value terms, in the third quarter (10 per cent, to be precise). Foods, as a market category, have grown twice as fast --- at a good 20 per cent. This, despite the fact that the ice-cream business (a high long-term potential business as Unilever once observed) is stuck where it was in 2002, at a miserable quarterly Rs 20 crore odd in revenue. Soaps and detergents, in contrast, is a Rs 1,000-crore-plus business, quarterly.

The company's toothpaste business has also grown in double-digits - at 11 per cent. Colour cosmetics has turned in a marvelous performance, with a 34 per cent growth.

But the most interesting result of all (to some, the shocker of the quarter), is the spectacular showing of HLL's skincare business. It has zoomed 42 per cent over the third quarter of 2002. The brand that did it? Fair & Lovely. Hmmmm...

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