HINDUNILVRNSE29 October 2025

Hindustan Unilever Limited

14,240words

96turns

11analyst exchanges

4executives

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Management on call

Priya Nair

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director

Ritesh Tiwari

CFO, Executive Director, Finance & IT

Niranjan Gupta

CFO Designate

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

Head of Investor Relations & Head of

Key numbers — 40 extracted

40%

ities for sustained growth in the long-term. The recent GST rate reforms have directly benefitted 40% of our portfolio, which has now moved to the 5% GST slab. Consequently, nearly half of our portfo

recent GST rate reforms have directly benefitted 40% of our portfolio, which has now moved to the 5% GST slab. Consequently, nearly half of our portfolio is now covered under the 5% GST bracket. I

rs,

consumers. To ensure a smooth transition, we extended comprehensive support to our trade partners, facilitating pipeline stock liquidation. We also ensured clear and September Quarter 2025

Rs. 16,061 crore

ompetitive performance marked by gains in our turnover-weighted market shares. With a turnover of Rs. 16,061 crores we had a 2% Underlying Sales Growth in the quarter. The growth was price led, driven primarily

by gains in our turnover-weighted market shares. With a turnover of Rs. 16,061 crores we had a 2% Underlying Sales Growth in the quarter. The growth was price led, driven primarily by carry forwa

23.2%

driven primarily by carry forward pricing in Skin Cleansing, Beverages and Skin Care. EBITDA at 23.2% was down 90 basis points year on year, in line with our stated intent to continue investing in th

90 basis point

ily by carry forward pricing in Skin Cleansing, Beverages and Skin Care. EBITDA at 23.2% was down 90 basis points year on year, in line with our stated intent to continue investing in the business. PAT before e

our stated intent to continue investing in the business. PAT before exceptional items was down 4%, reflecting the impact of a lower EBITDA and a decline in net finance income stemming from our st

tters between UK and Indian tax authorities. From a first-half perspective, we delivered a USG of 3% led by 2% Underlying Volume Growth. EBITDA stood at 23%, down 110 basis points year-on-year, in l

23%

st-half perspective, we delivered a USG of 3% led by 2% Underlying Volume Growth. EBITDA stood at 23%, down 110 basis points year-on-year, in line with our previous guidance. PAT bei declined 4% whil

110 basis point

rspective, we delivered a USG of 3% led by 2% Underlying Volume Growth. EBITDA stood at 23%, down 110 basis points year-on-year, in line with our previous guidance. PAT bei declined 4% while PAT grew 5%.

Rs 19

rmance in the first half of the year, the Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend of Rs 19 per share for the year ending 31st March 2026, translating to a total payout of Rs. 4,464 crores.

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Guidance — 20 items

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

opening

“This evening, we will be covering the results for quarter ended 30th September 2025.”

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

opening

“We expect this to take around 30 minutes, leaving us approximately an hour for the Q&A session.”

Priya Nair

opening

“EBITDA stood at 23%, down 110 basis points year-on-year, in line with our previous guidance.”

Priya Nair

opening

“With over 80 billion consumer interactions annually, our insights infrastructure enables us to anticipate evolving needs and innovate with precision.”

Priya Nair

opening

“With our portfolio of brands that straddle across the price pyramid we will refine our strategies on brand, channel and media choices to target each of these distinct consumer cohorts of Power Spenders, Premiumisers, and Democratisers.”

Ritesh Tiwari

opening

“We expect to complete the demerger by December, with the listing anticipated in Quarter 4 of Financial Year 2026, subject to necessary regulatory approvals Moving on to the summary of our performance for SQ’25.”

Ritesh Tiwari

opening

“EBITDA margin at 23% was down 110 bps year-on-year and is in line with our guidance.”

Ritesh Tiwari

opening

“We anticipate normal trading conditions starting early November, once prices stabilise, paving the way for a gradual and sustained market recovery While the increase in disposable income is a positive structural driver, we expect its benefits to manifest gradually in the demand trajectory, rather than through an immediate acceleration.”

Ritesh Tiwari

opening

“If commodity prices remain where they are, we expect a low-single digit price growth.”

Ritesh Tiwari

opening

“Overall, we expect growth of second half of this financial year to be better than the first half.”

Risks & concerns — 15 flagged

We are also closely monitoring and evaluating the impact of this excessive rainfall.

— Priya Nair

PAT before exceptional items was down 4%, reflecting the impact of a lower EBITDA and a decline in net finance income stemming from our strategic capital allocation decisions.

— Priya Nair

Hair Care witnessed a decline in turnover, being impacted by GST rate rationalization across 90% of its portfolio.

— Ritesh Tiwari

Oral Care witnessed a marginal decline in turnover, led out of transitory GST impact.

— Ritesh Tiwari

We remain vigilant about the evolving impact of weather patterns— particularly as the winter season approaches and the effects of a prolonged monsoon begin to play out.

— Ritesh Tiwari

Now these businesses had no impact of GST.

— Ritesh Tiwari

So, is there an upside risk in H2, given the cost has corrected?

— Abneesh Roy

You clarified on that bit that there was an Ice Cream impact of 50, 60 bps.

— Abneesh Roy

And I had called out even earlier that this year, given the impact of monsoons, given the impact of investments, in fact, we have a little lower compared to that margins.

— Ritesh Tiwari

So, any potential risk also that we need to be mindful of at a category growth level?

— Latika

You alluded to the economical impact of the monetary easing, which will help mortgage, interest cost, the direct tax benefit, GST benefit across multiple categories, inflation, especially food inflation, which is meaningfully lower, good monsoon last year.

— Ritesh Tiwari

Yes, there are risk factors, as you called out.

— Ritesh Tiwari

So that's what our rough approximation is, what was the impact of GST on the total aggregate HUL business.

— Ritesh Tiwari

Before you came in, as you said, the growth was competitive in a situation where macros were weak.

— Percy Panthaki

And hence, very difficult to put a number to it, but I just hope that gives you a good amount of sense between if three large commodities, crude oil, which impacts Home Care, I would say, less elastic, Skin Cleansing and Tea, if at all, commodity changes, I would say, more elastic.

— Ritesh Tiwari

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Q&A — 11 exchanges

Hi, team. Priya, first question to you. You articulated your four-pillar strategy, let's say from a company standpoint. When you look at it from a product segment perspective, can you just talk about areas that you think need attention based on your assessment?

Priya Nair

Yes. Thank you, Vivek. I will go category-by-category to just talk a little bit about our performance. Let me start with Home Care. We have an extremely competitive performance in Home Care overall with mid-single-digit UVG. Our job in Home Care has always been to continue to premiumize the market and this is a continued job to be done, and we are on a good trajectory on Home Care overall. Of course, our revenue growth given the deflationary commodity is flat, but overall a good solid competitive performance in our Home Care business. In Household Care, we have a double-digit UVG led out of di

Yeah. Thanks. My first question is on the demand side and the GST impact. So, we have seen in cars, for example, the GST-related cuts led to huge buying. Of course, that's a discretionary demand. My specific question is, once everything normalizes, say, start of November, ex of the grammage increase, which will, say, happen in the lower unit packs, do you see customers actually buying more FMCG in terms of volumes? And second is, when I see the populist programs running now in every state, Bihar is going into elections, Rs. 10,000, for example, being given to every woman. So, do you see actual

Ritesh Tiwari

Thanks, Abneesh. So, let me pick these both questions. So first, GST. And you rightly mentioned that the short-term, there is impact and in month of September and October. And from early November, as prices stabilize, we should start seeing normal trading conditions. Now overall, we know that FMCG consumption has always benefited from two things. Net disposable income, number one; number two, improved consumer sentiment. Now both of these elements will be supported by this GST transformation, which Government has done. So, in our view, this will absolutely augur well for consumption. This will

Hi team. Thanks for taking my question. So, my first question actually is to Priya. I mean you mentioned about your reflections in the first 90 days. Any thoughts on -- is there a trade-off between growth and margins, as HUL looks into the next few years, in the sense that to get to a strong levels of volume growth, do you feel there is a need to invest more in the business, which would take actually your operating margins down in the interim? Or do you feel the business is at a situation where there is no trade-off to be made and growth can be achieved along with stable to expanding margins i

Priya Nair

Yes. Thanks, Arnab. Arnab, firstly, our focus, obsession is going to be on volume- led revenue growth. So very simply, if I had to tell you how we will look at the business, it will be unblinkingly looking at growth first. When we do that, we have the right financial leverage to deliver the operating margin of the business. So, for me, that is simply how we will run this business. And I've mentioned already the four pillars that we have. But hopefully, this answers the question with clarity, Arnab. September Quarter 2025 Earnings call of Hindustan Unilever Limited Yeah, Understood. Just a foll

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. My first question was on specific consumption trends at a macro level. I understand the last quarter was fairly noisy. But starting this year, we have been witnessing multiple positive catalysts and hoping that these will translate into a material pickup in FMCG demand and things have been a little more gradual. The chart that you showed at the beginning of the deck kind of shows a bit of tapering for rural volume growth and a bit of pickup in urban. So, I wanted to get a sense of view on what are you picking up on the ground beyond the Nielsen data? And any spe

Ritesh Tiwari

Yeah, Latika, thank you. Let me just pick this up. So, we all know that urban has two-third of FMCG consumption but rural has two-third of Indians living and earning livelihood. So, both of the urban and rural markets are equally important for us to drive results. At this stage where we see the FMCG market, both are contributing. Urban is growing and so is rural growing. And we have used the word where we do see this now demand trends to be stable, which we are not seeing big ups and September Quarter 2025 Earnings call of Hindustan Unilever Limited big downs when I look at moving annual total

Hi, Thank you for taking my question. First question is to Priya. Priya, actually, if you can talk a bit more on the reimagining or modernizing the core portfolio that you mentioned. What should one expect? Should one expect a near complete overhaul of the core with new packaging, new communication, etcetera. I just wanted to understand what does that reimagining modernizing bring in. And secondly, you mentioned fewer big bets. Can you share something on what you're thinking about fewer big bets because in your opening remarks, we heard premiumization and market development spanning across cat

Priya Nair

Yes. Thank you. Let me start with talking about how we will reimagine our core brands and what that entails. So, if you look at brands and let me give you an example from the Beauty category, just as an example. You know if you look at brands, brands no longer it's not just good enough to have higher brand equity, you need to have brands that are truly desired and desirable by consumers. Today, we have almost 400 million Gen Z consumers in India. And these consumers are indeed driving change and transformation in India. So, as we reimagine the brands, we need them to be more modern, more youth

Thanks for taking my question. Priya, my first question was to you. You have articulated very well about the key priorities across the four points which you made. From your perspective, what do you think would be the fastest fix to kind of drive on that whole growth agenda on these four key priorities that you have?

Priya Nair

Yes. I think all four are equally important. It's always the case in a company like HUL. What we will do is focus on the speed and agility to go behind these. A lot of the fundamentals are in place. So, whether it is the work that's been done on the brands, the more robust innovation pipeline or indeed the doubling down we have done behind the future fit channels. Our job now is to accelerate these and really be bolder. So that's where my head is. I'm sorry, just a follow-up here. Do you think that on a quarter-to-quarter basis, we'll be able to track this in terms of how all these priorities

Hi, Thanks for taking my question. And happy Diwali to all of you. My question, Priya is, the four priorities that you mentioned, they seem to be on the right track, but we've also seen similar priorities in the past as well. So just for my understanding, if you can call out, if any, is there any sort of change in the way that you're looking at the business versus what it was before you came in?

Priya Nair

Yeah, Thank you, Percy. HUL has over the last few quarters in the last couple of years, delivered competitive, profitable and consistent growth in a very, very challenging macroeconomic environment with subdued consumer demand overall. So, in that context, our job is to really accelerate our performance led out of volume-led revenue growth. That's where we're going to focus our efforts. And these four priorities is an acceleration of the journey we are on and a sharpening. What I want to bring in is more focus, speed and agility. Understood. Just to dwell a little further into this. Before you

Good evening. I just had one clarification, firstly, on the grammage part. So, in the latter part of September, you have had to make all these price adjustments to GST, but now you can actually make the grammage adjustment for the price September Quarter 2025 Earnings call of Hindustan Unilever Limited point packs. I just wanted to understand, when you mentioned early part of November, all this gets normalized, does your entire grammage increase bit for the price point packs also now get adjusted in the same timeline by November?

Ritesh Tiwari

Yes. See, overall, Harit, in terms of changes, what we have done is for all non- price point packs, of course, we have done price changes. And as we speak, those products are reaching the market with new MRP. Even on old MRP stock, we've given GST benefit and trade is passing that benefit on to consumers. When it comes to price point pack, to your point, the Rs. 1, the Rs. 2, the Rs. 5, what we have done out here, we have improved and increased grammage or ml which means effectively there's lower price per gram or price per ml. Now these changes have also started landing in the market. And as

Hi, good evening. I had two questions from my side. The first one on the Tea segment. Given the correction in prices of tea and the fact that we are looking at, say, marginally pricing in the commodity. Is it that in the Q3 quarter, we could see prices adjust before the cheaper raw materials, something you consume that could sort of impact our margins specifically for this segment?

Ritesh Tiwari

Yeah, so tea now, as we speak, we are in season. Tea starts to come in May, June, and then we start seeing more production coming in. So, we have a good sense now of tea season. The prices that we have in the market now reflects the lower commodity purchase price that we have and the lower, let me say, spot price that we see in the market. As I mentioned earlier that this is one of the categories that always benefits when overall price table comes down. And we have shown and declared like last quarter, this quarter as well, high-single USG for the business. And this high-single digit growth is

Hi, welcome back to HUL, Priya and Ritesh and thanks for taking my question. The first one was to understand, you mentioned e-com is broadly about 8% of your sales. So, I'm assuming about 12% of urban sales considering two-third. As that grows, right, how does terms of trade change? And how does that sort of impact margins? That was question number one. And question number two was, if we had to look at the larger portfolio, right, there's a fairly large majority of the portfolio, which is 90% to 100% penetrated in the country where the Underlying Volume Growth is really population growth. And

Ritesh Tiwari

Yes. So let me pick up Siddharth. So, first of all, coming to margins for e- commerce. We have maintained in the past as well that when modern trade came and became bigger and one of the reasons why we, as modern trade has now become bigger, we have advantage with our portfolio there because we sell a more premium portfolio in modern trade. That's what has helped us to grow modern trade pretty well over the last couple of decades. E-commerce is no different. At this stage, there's much higher amount of fragmentation on the channel. These things will stabilize over a period of time. And our foc

Thank you, Michelle. With that, we now come to the end of the Q&A session. Before we end, let me remind you that the playback of this event will be available on the IR section of our website in a short while. Thank you, everyone, for your participation, and have a great evening.

Ritesh Tiwari

Thank you. Thank you all. September Quarter 2025 Earnings call of Hindustan Unilever Limited Thank you.

Speaking time

Ritesh Tiwari

Priya Nair

Moderator

Percy Panthaki

Vivek

Abneesh Roy

Arnab Mitra

Sheela Rathi

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

Latika

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Opening remarks

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

Thank you, Michelle. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the conference call of Hindustan Unilever Limited. Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and prosperous Diwali. This evening, we will be covering the results for quarter ended 30th September 2025. On the call with me is Priya Nair, CEO and Managing Director; Ritesh Tiwari, CFO; and Niranjan Gupta, CFO Designate. We will start with prepared remarks from Priya and Ritesh. We expect this to take around 30 minutes, leaving us approximately an hour for the Q&A session. We will look to end the call by 5:30 PM. Before we get started with the presentation, I would like to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor statement included in the presentation for good order sake. With that, over to you, Priya.

Priya Nair

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today. Wishing you and your loved ones a joyful and prosperous Diwali. Let me begin with an update on the operating context, and an overview of our performance in the quarter. I will also take this opportunity to share some of my reflections on my first 90 days as the CEO of HUL and outline the key priorities that will guide us as we chart the course for our company’s next phase of growth. Subsequently, Ritesh will take you through our in-quarter results and conclude with the outlook. September Quarter 2025 Earnings call of Hindustan Unilever Limited At a MAT level, demand growth trends as per Nielsen remained stable with both rural and urban contributing to this. This past quarter, the macro-economic environment was shaped by 3 key factors. The most significant of these was the Government’s recent GST reforms. This is a particularly encouraging development, centered around rate reduction and tax structure simplification. I

Ritesh Tiwari

Thank you, Priya. Good evening, everyone. Wishing you and your loved ones a fabulous Diwali filled with joy, light and prosperity. I will now share a detailed overview of our quarterly performance, followed by a review of first half results before concluding with our outlook. Priya has already briefed you on the macro-economic backdrop for the quarter and its implications on our portfolio. In this context, we have delivered a competitive performance with an Underlying Sales Growth of 2%. Gross Margin stood at 50.9%, almost flat year-on-year. In our previous quarterly update, we had highlighted gross margin dilution arising from a transitory price versus cost gap as we invested to offer a competitive price-value equation to consumers. On a sequential basis, our gross margin has seen a 130 bps improvement as this transitory price versus cost gap has moderated. We have stepped up investments in our brands and business, resulting in a year- on-year increase of 80 bps in our A&P spends. As

Priya Nair

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my heartfelt thanks to Ritesh for his outstanding leadership at HUL over the last five years. He has steered the company through some of the most challenging and transformative periods, including the global COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent inflation-deflation cycles, with resilience and strategic foresight, enabling the company to evolve at a fast pace while consistently strengthening market leadership. We are deeply grateful for his contributions and the strong future-fit capabilities he has built for the organization, and we wish him the very best for his new role. I am also very pleased to welcome Niranjan Gupta back into the organization. After an impactful 20-year tenure across HUL and Unilever, Niranjan pursued external opportunities, most recently serving as the CEO of Hero MotoCorp. His proven track record and rich experience across diverse industries will be invaluable as we continue to drive transformation and accelerated perfor

Niranjan Gupta

Thank you, Priya. Good evening, everyone. Firstly, let me start by wishing everyone a very happy festive season to you and your families. I am honored to be back at HUL, a company that continues to inspire with its consumer focus and portfolio of brands that earned huge love and respect. I am looking forward to working with Priya and team to build on our strong foundation and shape the future path together to drive accelerated growth. Looking forward to connecting with you all over the course of coming months.

Yogesh Mulgaonkar

Thank you, Priya, Ritesh and Niranjan. With this, we will now move to the Q&A session. The Q&A session today will be led by Priya and Ritesh. We request you to kindly restrict the number of questions to a maximum of 2 at a time. In case you have any further questions, please join the queue again. In addition to the audio, our participants have an option to post the questions through the web option on your screen. We will take these questions, just before the end. With that, I would like to hand over the call back to Michelle to manage the next session for us.

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