In 2025, Unilever Nigeria Plc kicked its earnings growth into gear, reaping the benefits of stepping away from loss-making business lines two years prior. Sales revenue saw steady growth throughout the year, while profits surged to N32.2 billion—topping the combined net profits of the previous four years.
The audited financial report for the food and personal care products company for the year ending December 2025 shows stronger performance, with an improved cost-to-income ratio and margins hitting impressive new highs.
In 2023, Unilever Nigeria separated its home care business from the home and personal care products segment as part of its strategy to boost growth in more profitable products.
The strategy has paid off, with the company’s two main market segments—food products and personal care—driving all the growth needed without being weighed down by the margin-draining home care division.
The net profit margin rose from 8.1 per cent in 2023 and 10.1 per cent in 2024 to reach 15 percent the end of 2025.
Unilever Nigeria has seen positive progress, with steady growth in sales revenue and a greater portion of that revenue being turned into profit. Sales revenue has not been negatively impacted by the sale of the home care business unit that contributed as much as N10.5 billion or 9 per cent of group turnover in 2023. Instead, Unilever Nigeria has posted strong sales revenue growth for the second consecutive year, rising by 44% to N149.5 billion in 2024 and by 43.3% to N214.3 billion in 2025.
Strong sales growth comes with improved margins across the entire cost-income flow. Production costs have steadily reduced their share of sales revenue for the second consecutive year, dropping from about 67 percent in 2023 to 63 percent in 2024, and further down to 58 percent in 2025.
Gross profit therefore grew ahead of turnover also for the second year at over 62 percent to close at N89.5 billion, confirming strong cost saving from discontinued business units.
Significant cost savings have also been extracted from operating activities with only a moderate increase of 7.6 percent in selling and distribution expenses to N6.7 billion.
A strong growth of 44.7 percent in marketing and administrative cost to N42.8 billion was more than compensated by an overturning of impairment loss of N1.7 billion in 2024 to a gain of over N1 billion in 2025.
It is nevertheless a sharp slowdown from a record growth of 103.5 percent in marketing and administrative expenses to N29.6 billion at the end of 2024.
Further strength in operating activities came from other income that grew by over 64 percent in the year to close in excess of N1 billion.
The favourable developments lifted operating results from a drop of 9.4 percent in 2024 to a height of N42.2 billion in 2025, a rise of 130 percent in the year. Operating profit recovered from its reading of 12 percent of revenue to roughly 20 percent over the period.
The third leg of Unilever’s margin building tripod in 2025 is a top record growth in net finance income, which has happened for the second year. There is an outstanding growth of 51.4 percent in finance income to N10.3 billion and a drop of 68 percent in finance expenses to N817 million.
Net finance income got the leap by 122 percent to N9.5 billion after jumping more than two half times to N4.2 billion in the previous year.
Unilever Nigeria has seen two years of profit acceleration from N8.4 billion in 2023 to N15 billion in 2024 and further to N32 billion in 2025.
The company earned N5.60 per share at the end of 2025, improving from N2.64 in 2024. The directors have announced a final cash dividend of N3.25 per share to shareholders, having paid an interim of 50 kobo per share in the course of last year.
