“For Unilever, the future starts here; their commitment to stronger capital and income returns to shareholders from a reinvigorated portfolio is hugely welcome, and we are very happy to maintain our high exposure to the stock within our funds.”
Group CEO Polman also promised shareholders a dividend hike of 12%, reflecting the group’s confidence in delivering sales growth 3% to 5% ahead of the market.
Unilever’s shares were up 1.5% to 3996p following the news.
Sky also published a trading update for the nine months to 31 March 2017 on Thursday, reporting an 11% drop in operating profit to £1.0bn, which it blamed on additional Premier League costs and a weaker advertising market in the UK.
Unlike Unilever, Sky succumbed to Rupert Murdoch’s advances, granting the billionaire media mogul the remaining 61% stake required to control the company completely.
On Monday, the European competition regulator expressed its “unconditional approval” of the deal, but the UK regulator Ofcom has yet to weigh in.
Sky also announced it had struck a $250m multi-year, co-production deal with HBO and would be investing in “ground breaking” virtual reality experience in partnership with Sir David Attenborough and the Natural History Museum.
Despite attracting another 106k customers across the group and posting a boost in revenue to £9.6bn, up 5% on a constant currency basis, shares in the media company were flat during morning trading.
