Unilever making 'drastic' changes in Indonesia amid boycotts

By Richa Naidu

LONDON (Reuters) - Unilever will make "drastic" changes in Indonesia, its finance chief said on Thursday as consumers boycott multinational brands in response to the war in Gaza and exacerbate the business' existing distribution problems.

Unilever, which makes Dove soap, Knorr stock cubes and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, first said in February that fourth-quarter sales growth in Southeast Asia had been hurt by shoppers in Indonesia boycotting brands of multinational companies "in response to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East."

Speaking to analysts after delivering slightly better-than-expected quarterly sales, Chief Financial Officer Fernando Fernandez said the company would aim to make its brands "more contemporary" given the "significant societal change" going on. He said he expected to see an improvement in the next six months.

Barclays analyst Warren Ackerman noted on the call that the group's Indonesian business has underperformed for nearly a decade.

"Why should investors believe the turnaround this time will be any different storms we've seen in the past?" he asked.

Unilever's Indonesia unit reported an 18% revenue drop in the third-quarter, driven by a decline in volumes.

The company's CEO Hein Schumacher acknowledged "long standing issues" in the country. He said Unilever was "making in Q3 and Q4 a significant intervention in Indonesia that is not going to yield results in the next quarter."

CFO Fernandez said a revamp of the distribution system was underway to stabilise prices and the group's efforts were already yielding some results.

"We have been recovering part of the share losses we suffer due to the consumer backlash that is related to the geopolitical situation in Middle East, we have recovered around one quarter of the share losses," he said.

(Reporting by Richa Naidu; Writing by Josephine Mason; Editing by Peter Graff and Tomasz Janowski)