Unilever (Amsterdam:UNA)

Founded in 1930, Unilever is a Dutch-British multinational company, headquartered in Rotterdam (Netherlands) and London (United Kingdom). Present in more than 100 countries, it is the fourth largest player in the world by sales volume behind Nestle, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods in the food industry, and the world's leading ice cream and tea producer. 2 billion people use Unilever products every day around the world. In 2012, the company employed 171,000 people and had a turnover of 51.32 billion euros.

Unilever owns more than 400 brands worldwide, 13 of which have a turnover of more than €1 billion and 8 of which have a turnover of more than half a billion euros. Together, Unilever's 20 main brands represent around €70 billion of sales worldwide.

List of brands present in France, by product category:

• Drinks and Ice Creams: Ben & Jerry's, Café Zéro, Carte d'Or, Cornetto, Elephant, Lipton, Magnum, Max Adventures, Miko, Végétaline, Viennetta
• Food: Alsa, Amora, Fruit d'Or, Fruit d'Or pro-activ, Knorr, Maille, Cornstarch, Planta Fin
• Personal care: Axe, Brut, Dove, Monsavon, Rexona, Signal, Timotei, Williams.
• Housekeeping: Buhler, Cajoline, Cif, Domestos, Omo, Persil, Skip, Sun.

Unilever offers a current yield of 2.59%, significantly lower than the long-term average of 3.55%. The average annual dividend growth is respectable, at 9.36%. The distribution ratio remains affordable at 52.70%.

Thanks to its orientation towards defensive sectors and its broad portfolio, Unilever is not very sensitive to economic variations, which translates into a beta of 0.40 and a volatility of 15.21%.

With sales spread across 100 countries, Unilever is little exposed to currency risk. The title offers a fairly good hedge against the greenback, with a $risk of -0.30. Often, companies from the old continent react badly when the dollar weakens because it creates a competitive advantage for American companies. But on the contrary, we see that Unilever's value in CHF tends to increase when the greenback weakens, and vice versa.

Unilever is a company that offers a broad portfolio of defensive brands and products. This is really a great company, not very affected by the economic situation or the currency war. It therefore logically gets 3 stars, which is a good risk/return ratio. However, its high price at the moment, which translates into a modest current yield and a PER of more than 20, as well as the weakness of the dividend growth, make me stay away from the stock for the moment. To be continued...

Sources: Wikipedia, Yahoo Finance, Swissquote, Financial Times, dividends.ch