About UNILEVER PLC
Unilever PLC operates as a fast-moving consumer goods company. It operates through Beauty & Personal Care, Foods & Refreshment, and Home Care segments. The Beauty & Personal Care segment provides skin care and hair care products, deodorants, and skin cleansing products. The Foods & Refreshment segment offers ice cream, soups, bouillons, seasonings, mayonnaise, ketchups, and tea categories.
The Home Care segment provides fabric solutions and various cleaning products. The company offers its products under the Domestos, OMO, Seventh Generation, Ben & Jerry's, Knorr, Magnum, Wall's, Bango, the Vegetarian Butcher, Axe, Cif, Comfort, Dove, Lifebuoy, Lux, Rexona, Sunsilk, Equilibra, OLLY, Liquid I.V., SmartyPants, Onnit, Hellmann's, and Vaseline brands. Unilever PLC was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
UL operates in the Manufacturing | Consumer Goods | headquartered in Liverpool, New Jersey | approximately 148,000 employees | led by CEO Alan Jope.
$141.8 billion 2.4x P/E 6.8x P/B 2.2x EV/EBITDA 28.5% ROE -4.6% rev. growth 3.3% yield
Our six-factor quantitative model, which ranks 7,333 publicly traded U.S. companies on quality, value, momentum, investment efficiency, financial stability, and short interest positioning, assigns UNILEVER PLC a Strong Buy rating with a composite score of 79/100 — placing it at rank #2 in the entire universe.
What makes this rating noteworthy is not any single exceptional factor, but the breadth of strength across the profile. UNILEVER PLC's dominant factor is value at 98/100, followed closely by stability at 97/100. Even the weakest factor, momentum at 59/100, sits comfortably above average.
At $141.8 billion, UNILEVER PLC operates in the Manufacturing sector where it ranks 1st out of 50 stocks — the 98th percentile among its peers. A dividend yield of 3.3% adds an income component to the total return thesis.
Quality Analysis
UNILEVER PLC's quality score of 96/100 places it among the top profitability performers in the market. The quality factor evaluates margins, return on equity, return on assets, and earnings consistency — the fundamental building blocks of a durable business.
Return on equity of 28.5% exceeds the sector median of -2.0%. Gross margins of 1.0% suggest a commodity-like business with thin pricing power. Operating margins of 1.0% sit below the 3.0% sector average.
Net margins of 10.4% show the company is profitable, though not with exceptional efficiency.
Valuation Assessment
A value score of 98/100 puts UL in the top 2 percent of all stocks on cheapness — suggesting the market is significantly underpricing the company's fundamentals. Key valuation metrics include a P/E ratio of 2.4x, an EV/EBITDA of 2.2x, a price-to-book of 6.8x, a price-to-sales of 2.2x. Deep value scores like this historically correlate with above-average forward returns, though they can also reflect legitimate concerns about business quality that the value factor does not capture.
Momentum & Timing
UL's momentum score of 59/100 indicates a largely neutral price trend — the stock is neither leading nor lagging the market in a meaningful way. Neutral momentum typically means the stock is consolidating or waiting for a catalyst to push it in either direction.
Revenue growth of -4.6% is declining, which makes the momentum signal more precarious. A beta of 0.16 means UNILEVER PLC moves with less volatility than the market, which can be attractive for risk-conscious investors.
Our entry timing model currently signals Neutral, which warrants caution despite the price trend.
Risk Factors
No investment comes without risks, and honest analysis requires flagging them clearly:
- Thin margins. Operating margins of 1.0% leave little room for error. A modest revenue shortfall or cost increase could push the company into unprofitability.
- Model limitations. Quantitative models measure what is measurable — financial ratios, price trends, leverage — but cannot capture qualitative factors like management quality, competitive positioning, or pending litigation. This analysis should be supplemented with fundamental due diligence.
- Market regime risk. Factor-based strategies perform differently across market regimes. The current factor exposures that support UNILEVER PLC's rating may become headwinds if the macro environment shifts — for example, if interest rates move sharply or if sector rotation accelerates.
Bottom Line
UNILEVER PLC earns a Strong Buy rating with a composite score of 79/100 and 5 out of 5 stars, ranking #2 out of 7,333 stocks. The quantitative profile is among the strongest in the market — not because of any single factor, but because of consistent strength across multiple dimensions.
Stocks with this multi-factor profile have historically delivered above-average risk-adjusted returns over three to twelve month horizons. Whether that pattern holds for UL specifically is, of course, uncertain — quantitative models identify probabilities, not certainties.
Explore the full UL analysis page for interactive factor breakdowns, DCF valuation, and risk analytics, or view the complete stock rankings.
Analysis is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.
