Unilever kicks off £1.29bn buy-back as bosses look to boost share price

Consumer goods giant Unilever has kicked off a €1.5bn (£1.29bn) share buyback today as bosses look to boost its share price after a slide over the past year.

The Dove-to-Marmite maker said the first tranche of a buyback programme announced in February will be worth up to €850m and will run from today until the end of August.

Goldman Sachs is handling the purchase of the shares from shareholders.

The consumer goods group launched a €1.5bn buyback in February after volumes increased for the first time in 10 quarters, although the consumer goods giant’s CEO said its performance needs to improve.

“Our competitiveness remains disappointing and overall performance needs to improve,” Hein Schumacher said in a statement at its results in February. “We are at the early stages of this work and there is much to do but we are moving with speed and urgency to transform Unilever into a consistently higher performing business.”

While the maker of Dove soap and Hellmann’s condiments said in February its full-year underlying operating profit rose 2.6 per cent to €9.9bn and its underlying operating margin was up 60 basis points to 16.7 per cent, it missed analyst expectations for operating profit of €10.4bn and a margin of 16.9 per cent

Shares have ticked up since the announcement of the buy-back on the 8th February, rising around six per cent.