(Agence Ecofin) – Unilever CI seems to please investors with its annual growth of 44% posted on Monday, December 5. However, its financial performance is not completely attractive.
With a stock market valuation that is up by around 44%, the subsidiary in Côte d’Ivoire of the agro-industrial group Unilever is on track to achieve in 2022 its best stock market performance on the Regional Stock Exchange (BRVM) of Abidjan since 2011. The only companies currently doing better than them on this financial market are Nestlé CI (+60.5% on December 5) and SETAO (+45.9%).
Under the assumption that the stock market value of a company corresponds to the projections of distributed net income attributed to it by investors, this progression of Unilever is surprising. For the 2021 financial year, it declared a financial net profit of just over 6.6 billion FCFA ($10.6 million), but on an accounting basis, the net profit presented for the vote of the shareholders during the general assembly of next December 13 is displayed at only 175,129 FCFA.
Under these conditions, the margin achieved does not make it possible to compensate for the accumulation of previous losses, and the hard core of the company’s equity is absorbed, and finds itself in a negative position of less than 4.4 billion FCFA. . Until then, the most recent results available (those for the 1st quarter of 2022) are not more reassuring.
The net profit is announced there as an increase of 345%, compared with that of the same period in 2021. But it is only 401 million FCFA. Also, this result was achieved on a turnover down 25%. The company also exited the tea segment, and was disrupted by the crises in Burkina Faso and Mali. The question therefore remains as to how to explain the current stock market progression.