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Ralph KuglerPresident, Home and

Personal Care

Increasing CompetitivenessPrudential Back to School Conference, Boston

September 8, 2005

Rudy MarkhamChief Financial

Officer

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Rudy MarkhamChief Financial Officer

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to be here inBoston, presenting at one of the year’s major investor events. SinceUnilever was last here, two years ago, our performance hasdisappointed but I am glad to be able to say that we have begun toput this right. Indeed, while it is still early days, the first encouragingsigns of progress are evident in the first half year results.

I am not going to repeat the detailed description of the areas wherewe needed to increase our competitiveness, which we went into atsome length at the start of this year. The simple fact was that we hadstarted to lose market share. While the share losses were small, theywere an indication of the need for action. So in September last yearwe drew a line in the sand and changed the priorities for theremainder of the year to support growth. This was followed by theannouncement of a simplification of our organisation structure,capitalising on the simpler business that we have created over thepast 5 years.

With me today is my Board colleague, Ralph Kugler, President ofHome and Personal Care, who sits with me on the new executiveteam. Ralph will tell you about how we are changing and how this willtranslate into improved market place performance.

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Safe Harbour Statement

This presentation may contain forward-looking statements, including ‘forward-lookingstatements’ within the meaning of the United States Private Securities LitigationReform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon currentexpectations and assumptions regarding anticipated developments and other factorsaffecting the Group. They are not historical facts, nor are they guarantees of futureperformance. Because these forward-looking statements involve risks anduncertainties, there are important factors that could cause actual results to differmaterially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.Further details of potential risks and uncertainties affecting the Group are described inthe Group’s filings with the London Stock Exchange, Euronext Amsterdam and the USSecurities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report & Accounts onForm 20-F. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of thispresentation.

As usual, we will take the safe harbour statement shown here asread – it is included in the slides to this presentation which areavailable on our web site.

I have said that over the past 5 years we have created a simplerbusiness, so let’s first take a look at what this means.

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Unilever’s Strong PortfolioUnilever’s World Category Positions

#1 in Europe

#1 in D&E

Focus on 2 brands

#1 in D&E

Focus on countrystrongholds

Source: Euromonitor, Unilever estimates

Savoury & DressingsSpreadsWeight ManagementTeaIce CreamFrozen Foods

LaundryHousehold CareDaily Hair CareSkinDeodorantsOral Care

Our $1bn brands

Number 1Number 2Number 3 or less

We operate in 12 categories. We are global leaders in 7 of these,while in 3 of the others we have leading positions in our mainmarkets.

We manage these categories through a portfolio of brands which isnow much more focussed.

We have some 200+ brand positions - a huge reduction on 5 yearsago. These include global brands, like Dove, Lux, Lipton andHellmann’s and local jewels, like Suave here in the US. 13 of thesebrands have sales of over 1 billion dollars.

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Scale and Geographic Reach2004 Turnover: € 39.1 billion, US$48.4 billion

The Americas: 32%

Europe: 43%

Asia/Africa: 25%

35% in Developing and Emerging markets(all countries except W Europe, US, Canada, Australia & Japan)

Total sales last year were close to 50 billion dollars. We have avery broad reach across the developed world. In the US alone wenow have a business of some 10 billion dollars and are starting touse that scale by going to market as one company for the first time.

But probably the most striking feature is that a little over 35% of ourbusiness, or 17 billion dollars of sales, is in developing and emergingmarkets. The purchasing power of these countries continues to growand indeed is expected to overtake that of the developed countriesfor the first time next year. By 2010, nearly 90% of the world’spopulation will be located there.

We have been established in most of these markets for a long time –in a number of cases for over 70 years. From a strong base, oursales here have grown organically at an average of about 8% p.a.over the last 15 years – and did so again in the first half of 2005 –equivalent to well over a billion dollars of additional annual sales. Itis also profitable growth, with an average operating margin of around14%.

Overall, then, a strong portfolio of brands with excellent scale andgeographic reach - but we hadn’t been delivering the top line growthwe knew Unilever was capable of.

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2005 Priorities

Regain momentum in Western Europe

Drive successes harder- Build on strengths in Developing & Emerging markets

- Build on strengths in Personal Care

- Key Vitality launches

Cost savings to help fund increased competitiveness

Implement new organisation and keep market focus

So these were the priorities we set out at the beginning of this year.

Starting with Western Europe. This was the major drag on growth in2004 and we are determined to regain momentum there.

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2005 Priorities







Markets across Western Europe are broadly flat. After a few years of weak economic growthconsumers are more value conscious than ever. This does not mean they do not want brands – butthey do want value for their money. They are as attracted as ever to brands that can meet theirindividual aspirations with added functional benefits and provide an emotional connection.But….these must be convincing and worth the price, otherwise they will buy a private label productinstead.

This has proved fertile ground for the growth of hard discounters, particularly in countries wherethere has not been a strong value focus from established national retailers. Thus in Germany harddiscounters now have a market share of about 40%. By contrast, in the UK their share has beenheld to only 5%, at least in part because the major established chains, and Tesco in particular, haveplayed a greater role in emphasising value for money – in a way perhaps similar to the role thatWal.Mart plays in the US.

The major retail chains have clearly recognised the threat from hard discounters and have beenresponding. Indeed, it is largely this which has held back pricing and thus overall growth in WesternEurope over the past couple of years.

Against this background, we are placing increased emphasis on understanding the different waysthat shoppers, our consumers, choose to make their purchases so that we can tailor our offeringsaccordingly. This helps us to work with both the established retailers and with discounters, who areeach looking to define their own unique market positioning. We can help them do this with in-storebrand activation designed to their needs and in some cases with specific product formats.

Beyond this, we are increasing our competitiveness to ensure that our brands do offer real value.This is a more general theme for us.

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Increasing Competitiveness

Innovation Winning With

Customers

Improvement in market share trend

Marketing Investment Pricing

This chart shows the 4 key elements of competitiveness: Innovation,winning with customers – by which we mean retailers, marketinginvestment and pricing.

Importantly these elements must all work together to drive marketshare. It is rare that the answer to a struggling brand’s problems issimply to cut the price. Similarly, a great innovation can be lostwithout the supportive partnership of retailers. And simply throwingmoney into the market in the form of advertising is not in itself theroute to profitable growth.

There are plenty of great examples in Unilever when these elementsdo all come together in a winning formula. We know how to do it.But there have also been a number of cases where we have notexecuted well enough across all of them.

We have also not always been quick enough to recognise asuccessful innovation in one part of the world and build on itelsewhere. This has been true in both Foods and Home andPersonal Care, from heart health margarines to hair care.

So the next key priority is to drive our successes harder.

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2005 Priorities







Firstly in developing and emerging markets, to capitalise on thestrong base there, from Brazil to South Africa all the way to India andIndonesia. Again, it is the combination of excellent innovation andbrand activation which is the key.

Secondly, in Personal Care. We have grown over many years inhigh single digits. This is faster than the market growth and reflectsthe strength of our brands. Brands like Degree, Ponds, Axe, Suaveand, of course, Dove. There is no reason why we should notcontinue to grow faster than the market: across much of the world,competition is still relatively fragmented. Our growth did fall back in2004 but is now returning well.

Thirdly, by bringing to market new products inspired by the theme ofVitality which is now the driving force behind our innovationprogrammes across both Foods and Home and Personal Carecategories.

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Vitality Innovation

Heart Health

Knorr Vie

Power of Tea RaguOrganic

Breyers Double ChurnedLight Ice Cream

A clear example of this is the introduction of Knorr Vie – ‘smoothie’-style drinks in a small bottle which provide half the dailyrecommended intake of fruit and vegetables. They have alreadybeen launched in four European markets and more will follow. You’llfind some outside this room, near the Ben and Jerry’s cabinet, and ifyou haven’t already tried one I would encourage you to do so !

You can see it also in the further development of our heart healthbrands. In Europe, the successful pro.activ range continues toextend, while here in the US we have started to transform the under-developed Promise brand into the successful European Flora/Becelmix.

Other examples are Lipton tea with the AOX antioxidant seal, RaguOrganic, and the launch of Breyers Light ‘double churned’ IceCream.

But Vitality is also a powerful theme that goes well beyond ‘healthand wellness’ in Foods and Ralph will show you some greatexamples of Vitality in action in Home and Personal Care.

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2005 Priorities







To help fund the actions we are taking to improve competitiveness,we are driving cost efficiency.

This encompasses an ongoing global buying programme, furthersimplification of the supply chain, and reductions in overheads as wede-layer the organisation and integrate our Foods and Home andPersonal Care businesses around the world.

And to reinforce the execution of these priorities we areimplementing a new organisation. This is being done in aprofessional and disciplined way to ensure that we keep, and indeedincrease, our market focus.

Let me try and give a flavour of how this is working.

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New Organisation

CEOPatrick Cescau

PresidentEurope

Kees van der Graaf

President AmericasJohn Rice

President Asia / Africa

Harish Manwani

PresidentFoods

Vindi Banga

Chief OfficerFinance

Rudy Markham

PresidentHPC

Ralph Kugler

Chief OfficerHuman Resources

Sandy Ogg

• Simpler, faster, more accountable• Proximity to market, Prioritisation of resource, Performance focus

Regions Categories FunctionsClear, distinct and complementary roles

Here is the new top team. This single executive group replaces three bodies in the old organisation: anexecutive committee and two divisions. It means faster decisions and action and greater accountability.Importantly, it is also much closer to the market and is focussed on delivery. It is accountable to a boardmade up mainly of independent non-executive directors, with a non-executive chairman.

Reporting to Patrick Cescau are three regions, two categories and two functions. This executive setsstrategy and determines priorities across countries and categories. We meet every month to review themarket place performance and execution and make adjustments to priorities and resource allocationwhere necessary.

The regions are responsible for deploying the brands and innovations effectively. They manage thebusiness on the ground and are focussed on winning with customers. The regions deliver the growthtoday and the profit and cash flow – value creation.

The categories are responsible for brand development, innovation and for the brand and categorystrategies. They are located around the world – in global technology centres, regional innovationcentres and alongside local business managers. They deliver the growth and profit of ‘tomorrow’ andthus sustainable value creation.

Sandy Ogg and I are responsible for building functional excellence in HR and finance. We havebenchmarked ourselves against the best in terms of cost efficiency and capabilities and our objective isto raise the bar on both.

So, we have simplified the structure at the top and have unambiguous allocation of responsibilitiesthroughout the organisation.

A key element of the overall organisational change is the move to ‘One Unilever’, announced last July.

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Integration of HPC and Foods operations

Single face to customers and suppliers

Shared services, outsourcing

De-layered management

One UnileverLeveraging Unilever’s scale

€700 m p.a. savings by end 2006

Further opportunities beyond 2006

In each country where this is not yet the case, we are integrating our HPC and Foods operations.This brings two important benefits:

Firstly, by presenting a single face to customers. Recent industry consolidation has revived thequestion of whether scale, across different categories, matters, or if it is enough to be leader in justone or two ? We believe that both are important. New product introductions, promotions, shelfspace management and pricing are discussed at a category level. But there is another level of thepartnership – which covers overall supply chain efficiency and looks at changing shopper patternsand responses to growth of alternative formats. Particularly interestingly for us, and an area wherewe are leading the way in the US, is our ability to bring real shopper insight not just for a particularcategory, but across the store.

The second major benefit is in lower overheads costs – by moving to a single management structurein each country and shared services, usually from a regional centre. We expect savings of €700mper year, or nearly two percentage points of sales, by the end of 2006. There will be a reduction of15% in the top two levels of management this year and we expect to reduce the top 3 levels bybetween a quarter and a third by the end of next year.

This level of change clearly needs to be well planned and executed to minimise disruption – but wehave plenty of experience in this. We also already have some well-proven examples of the benefitsof acting as one. In Canada we moved to a single company in 2000. From being ranked as two mid-tier suppliers by the retail industry, we are now ranked in the top tier, while we have moved from nogrowth to an average of 4% over the past 4 years and with sharply improved margins.

Along with the changes in organisation, Patrick has taken steps to improve the alignment ofincentives with our financial and business priorities, as illustrated in this next chart

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Alignment

Total Shareholder Return (3 year rolling)

Restricted stock grantconditional on 3 year performance:• Ungeared Free Cash Flow

• Underlying sales growth

Business unit sales growth

Economic Value Added

Business priority objectives

Annual bonus

Long-term incentive plans

Incentives aligned with financial and business objectives

Financial objectives

€25-30 bn by 2010

ROIC improvement

Top Third

Maintain, or grow,market share

There are two long-term incentive schemes. The first, for top management, supports our over-archingambition of top third total shareholder return.

The second replaces the old stock option programme and is available to a broader base of managers.It is a restricted stock grant, conditional on performance over 3 years on two metrics: cash flow andunderlying sales growth. The vesting condition on ungeared free cash flow is consistent with ourlonger term objective of delivering €25-30 billion in the six years to 2010. The internal underlyingsales growth targets reflect the fact that top line growth is essential to long term value creation. Weintend to maintain, or increase, our share in markets which have longer term volume driven growthrates of between 2 and 4% per year.

Finally, there is a shorter term annual bonus available to all managers. Half of this is based onperformance of the particular business unit in terms of sales growth and Economic Value Added.Our measure of Economic Value Added is the prime profit metric we use in the business and is wellaligned with our objective of a progressive improvement in ROIC to 2010.

The other half of the short term bonus is based on delivery of specific objectives which are driven offthe business priorities set by the Unilever Executive –which might be, for example, market share in aparticularly category in a particular country for a growth priority.

At this point I will hand over to Ralph who can bring the changes to life with some very real examples,and I will then conclude with a quick summary of progress in the first half year.

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Ralph KuglerPresident

Home and Personal Care

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world class brand mixesThe Role of the Categories

brought to market brilliantlyThe Role of the Regions

working seamlessly and interdependently together

Organized to Win

As Unilever, we are intent on building on our historic strength ofdeep roots across the world, but exploiting the advantages of scaleand scope where these add value.

As Rudy has already shown, the new organisation focuses on clearlydifferentiated tasks for the categories and regions, with clearaccountability for results, and strong interdependence between thetwo. I plan to show you how we will use this to grow through winningbrands and to illustrate it with 3 examples.

It also allows us to capitalise on our unique heritage in a way that isclearly different from our major competitors.

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Dove

Lux

Sunsilk

Rexona

Pond’s

Axe

Suave

Vaseline

Lifebuoy

Clear

Signal

Close-Up

Omo

Skip

Surf

Radiant

Snuggle

Comfort

Cif

Domestos

Strong Stable of HPC Brands

We will do this with strong brands which are leaders in theirsegments with distinctive and insightful positioning, underpinned byunique technology, and supported by great communication.

For example, our brand focus exercise identified about 2 dozenglobal HPC brands capable of working across borders, as it wasclear that we need to deploy the full force of Unilever’s scale acrossall capabilities - just as some of our global competitors are rolling outtheir proven brands, even into the geographies that had traditionallybeen our own preserve such as Asia and South America. Brandfocus has left us with a strong stable of brands but history hadbequeathed something of a ‘patchwork quilt’ in that some brandswere strong in some countries, and different ones strong in others.

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“Multi-local and multi-national” a competitivedifferentiator …

…But how to deploy global scale without losingthe benefit of deep local roots ?

“mindlessly global”

“hopelessly local”

our destination

The Challenge

today

Our strategy is to build on our historic strength based on deep rootsin local markets, but exploiting the advantages of scale and scope.This is about getting the right balance between “hopelessly local”and “mindlessly global” in a way that is clearly different from ourmajor competitors .Certainly it capitalises on our unique heritage. In one way or anotherall multinational companies are wrestling with this new marketingchallenge - how much to globalise, how much to tailor to local tastes.How to deploy powerful distinctive brand ideas with global appealacross markets at different stages of development, different historiesdifferent cultures and different incomes?

The potential growth from the successful extension into newterritories is substantial.

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Axe Effect - Now in the US

Axe, one of our fastest growing brands, is a good illustration of whatI mean. For reasons that no doubt seemed good at the time, Axewas never extended into the United States. We finally launched in2002, - an early example of our strategy to more aggressively extendour strongest properties into virgin territory.

The innovation came from Europe and Latin America where Axe wasalready highly successful, whilst the US company focused on brilliantactivation in the market and with local consumers.

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Europe47%

LatAm27%

NorthAmerica 14%

Asia9%

AMET3%

Europe65%

Lat Am26%

AMET3%Asia

6%

Share of Axe turnover by region

Taking the Axe Effect Global

2001 2005

Entirely incremental business for us, and a contributory factor toAxe’s continued double digit global growth, every year.

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0

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4

6

8

10

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2002

2003

2004

2005

LATEST

Dol

lar S

hare

( tot

al m

arke

t )

Axe Value Share USDeodorant

Bodywash

The results in the US have been spectacular - with both Deodorantand Body-wash quickly taking leadership of the male segment oftheir respective categories.

Terrific idea. First class pack design and advertising.And ample proof that big ideas can travel. Notwithstanding the factthat in the US there existed neither any significant aerosol market,nor a fragranced bodyspray sector, we’ve built strong, leadingpositions.

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A Heritage of Fragmentation

Let’s look at another example of how deploying our global scale isbeginning to pay dividends. This time in the laundry business, andour biggest brand, Omo.

Through its varied history of local launches and relaunches over theyears, Omo had become highly fragmented, with different positionsand liveries around the world. This is how we built our leadership inmany countries, but it also made it almost impossible to simplify andfocus our R&D and marketing programmes.

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A Universally Relevant Idea

Through an exhaustive programme of consumer research, we haveidentified a brand positioning that builds on the root strengths ofmany of these different market positions.

Our global and Brazilian teams have together developed a new brandidea, which research and in-market experience has shown to bepowerfully resonant in many different geographies.This brand idea has come to be known as “Dirt is Good”, and itexemplifies Vitality, the joie de vivre, that underpins Unilever brands.

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A Unifying Factor

…for brands with local independent heritage...

This idea has acted as a unifying factor for brands that come from adiverse heritage, which had had a bewildering complexity in terms ofpackaging, formulation, brand names, and advertising.

Pragmatism must be balanced with respect for consumer preference- and this has almost always meant that brand names have not beenchanged – nor even the iconic colour green of Rinso in Indonesia!But in all other respects, these brands are the same.

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2003 2005 20071997 2001

IdeaPack

Suppliers

Innovation

Identity360º

Driving Local Alignment

The “Dirt is Good” brand idea has allowed us to drive globalalignment across all aspects of the marketing mix, - not justpackaging, but also suppliers, new ideas, innovation and in the waythe brand is experienced by consumers.

This alignment has also been a powerful force for simplification

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…working globally

2006A single cornerstone position...

For the first time ever, we have one global laundry brand, with onecommon proposition and a unified programme.

This means that - notwithstanding our heritage, and differing brandnames, our leading laundry brands can stand up to the large globalcompetitive brands on equal terms….

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A New Global Competitor

… rather than fighting the competition as a fleet of tugs.

We can now put our best laundry talent globally to work on onebrand with one development programme, and the opportunity todeploy ideas quickly from one region to another.

Given our heritage, however, you would expect us to execute it in away that is tailored to local reality and tastes.

Take a look at this film from Latin America.

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- “No Mum” (Latin America)

Advertising: “Dirt is Good” Brand Roll Out

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‘Sport Wave’ 360º - Brazil Pilot 2005

Brand Activation

…bigger, replicable with unrivalled stature...

One of the advantages of behaving as a $2bio brand is that you cancommand to your advantage the type of global talent that smallerbrands cannot deploy.

Like the world’s finest footballer (and by that I mean the ‘beautifulgame’, with the round ball, played with the proper rules…)

And not just Ronaldinho, but even his mum!

And locally, our companies have been able to take this big idea andexecute it more powerfully because now they are really focussing onhow to activate brands in the market.

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Advertising:

- “Ronaldinho” (Brazil) x 2- “Ronaldinho” (Spain) x 1

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“Removes any type of stains”

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20

40

60

80

100

External Panel Attribute Data

2002J F M A M J J A S O N D



Pop

Omo Progress

Omo Multiação

Omo Cores

Any Omo

Minerva

Brilhante

Campeiro SurfBold

ArielAce

Enhancing Performance

This advertising idea, although powerfully emotional - has beenshown in our regular tracking also to drive strong performanceattributes. In fact they have never been higher.

This shows consumers perception of Omo’s stain removal in Brazil.

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“Leaves clothes whiter”

0

20

40

60

80

100




Omo Multiação

Any Omo

External Panel Attribute Data

Pop

Omo Progress

Omo CoresMinerva

Brilhante

Campeiro SurfBold

ArielAce

Enhancing Performance

…. and this one shows which brands consumers believe to leaveclothes whiter . This strong brand idea is driving key brandattributes higher.

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Turkey Q4 05

Our new structure enables faster. Here is an example from Turkey.

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Advertising:

- Omo “Basketball” (Turkey)

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Jan/F

eb.20

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Jul/A

ug.20

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eb.20

03

Jul/A

ug.20

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Jan/F

eb.20

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Jul/A

ug.20

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Jan/F

eb.20

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OMOALOARIEL

“Dirt is Good” Launch

Business ResultsMarket Share - Turkey

Just as in Brazil, Dirt is Good drove brand share growth, and wonback market leadership in Turkey that we had lost during 2003.

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But it is not only with our historically fragmented portfolios that thenew organisation is having an impact. Dove, possibly our most globalbrand, is also benefiting from our new-found capability to deploy ourbest brand and advertising ideas around the world more effectivelyand more quickly.

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Global Brand VPDove

Category SVPSkin

Category SVPHair

Category VPOral

Personal CareGroup VP

Global VPDoveSkin

Global VPDoveHair

Global VPDoveDeo

New Dove Organization

Category SVPDeodorants

Interfacing with regions

Previously the management of the brand had been in the hands of 6separate regional teams, coordinated by the global brand director.Underneath the apparent uniformity of the brand there was room forconsiderable regional variation. Sometimes this was driven bygenuine consumer differences. Sometimes, but not always ...Under the new organization, the brand is the executive responsibilityof the global Senior Vice President, and this has immediatelyresulted in significant changes in the management of the brand.

This small team leads and co-ordinates Dove development whichcontinue to be done in our regional centres.

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To make more women feel beautiful everyday. By widening today’s stereotypical view of beauty and by inspiring women to take great care of themselves.

Dove Mission

A Clear Strategy

The Dove brand mission, well aligned with the company’s Vitalitymission, is “to make more women feel beautiful everyday, bywidening today’s stereotypical view of beauty and by inspiring womento take great care of themselves.”

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Massive success in Europe in 2004: Dove Firming

Before the New Organization

This was best expressed in the launch of Dove Firming Cream,developed in Europe, through this iconic advertising campaign, whichcelebrated real women as they are – not the artificially slim ideal thatmost models represent.

The campaign was so daring, fresh and so in tune with the spirit ofthe age that it garnered quite unprecedented PR coverage, andexceptional popular appeal amongst women.

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Newspapers, magazines and TV programmes all picked up the storyof Dove, in tune with real women.

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These pictures give you an idea of how strong the popular appeal ofthis campaign was in Europe over the last 12 months. This is thefront cover of the London Times weekend magazine. The campaignwas featured as the leading article under their own initiative.

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And a film was made just for Wal*Mart, using their own staff.

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Algemeen Dagblad 16 March 2004

And this is an example from the Netherlands.

But it wasn’t just a PR success - sales of our body cream range inEurope increased by more than 80%.

Notwithstanding this success, North America, Lat Am and Asiainitially proposed reasons why the campaign would not be suitable forthem.

This debate slowed down the rollout of our campaign. The point Iwant to make is that with our new organization, brand management issufficiently expert, focused and now empowered to make theappropriate call in these instances.

Dove Firming grew by 400% in 2004.

Is now a category 40+ €M x-category business in Europe.

Free PR generated was worth 9 €M in the top 4 countries in Europe.

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One Year LaterRolled out in Latin America

One year later, the campaign has been rolled out across the worldwith the same spectacular level of impact. Note that we still tailor thecommunication as appropriate - but use local consumer insight toadjust for real cultural differences..

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Rolled out in North America

One Year Later

…here is the US version.

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Rolled out in Asia

One Year Later

So we have rolled out this big idea in less than a year worldwide -and the campaign is having the same success as it did in Europelast year.

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0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

550

600

North Am Europe Asia Latin Am Africa & ME0

100200300400500600700800900

100011001200130014001500

Total

+18%

+3%

+7%

+27%

+22%

+12%

Dove PerformanceTurnover - Cumulative to June 2005

Most important of all is the impact in the market place. Our largestpersonal care brand is growing this year by 12% with no newcategory launch or geographic extensions -faster than last year.

Most impressive of all, it is growing in high double digits in NorthAmerica where it has been on the market for more than 50 years.Conclusive proof that inspirational management of brand equity andappropriate innovation with excellent in store activation can drivedynamic growth in even our most venerable brands!

And the growth is not slowing down….

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Vitality is in tune with consumers

Strong brand ideas work globally

Fast roll out maximises the opportunity

Unilever’s new organisation is enabling thisto happen - now

Organized for Success

So the changes I have described really make a difference. W havean enviable portfolio of strong brands, with many leadershippositions. In the recent past, we have constrained our success, witha fragmented regional approach to brand development, which hasslowed down the roll out of big ideas, and divided our resource overtoo many projects.

Our innovation programme, based on brands that exemplify Vitality,and enabled by the changes I’ve described, are all really making adifference.

With faster roll-out of proven successes, quickly, we are alreadyseeing the results – and in a way that can combine big globalinsights with relevant local cultural differences.

Thank you. Now back to Rudy.

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Rudy MarkhamChief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ralph.

Let me give you a brief update on progress, starting with sales.

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Q4 ‘04 Q1 ‘05 Q2 ‘05

Turnover +0.6% +2.3% +1.4%

Like-for-like growth* +1% +2% +3.3%

Progress on Growth

* organic sales growth, at constant exchange rates, days adjusted

• Market shares stabilised• Volume based• Strong growth in Developing & Emerging markets• Solid growth in North America• But … Europe remains weak

It has been encouraging to see a trend of improving like-for-like growth: from 1% to 2%to 3.3% over the last three quarters - clear evidence that the steps we took to start toincrease competitiveness from the fourth quarter of last year are gaining traction.

Market shares have been stabilised since the start of the year and are starting to tick upin a number of places – though in aggregate they are still a little lower than a year ago.

D&E markets have returned to strong growth, 8% like-for-like in the first half, and 10%in the second quarter. This was broad based across both Home and Personal Careand Foods and by region and by country. Of our top 15 developing and emergingmarkets, every one grew by at least 7% in the second quarter, while 11 of them grew indouble digits.

Like-for-like growth in North America has been solid in the first half at around 2 to 2.5%despite a sharp decline in Slim.Fast.

However we have not yet turned the corner in Western Europe. We are no longerlosing share overall, but neither have we regained, in aggregate, the share we lostduring 2004. As a result like-for-like sales declined by around 2% in the first half year.This is clearly an area where we still have more to do to improve competitiveness as Idescribed earlier.

Turning to profitability in the first half.

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Profitability - H1 ‘05

* before Slim.Fast write-down, restructuring and profits on disposals

- underlying* (50)bps

Operating Margin 13.7% (140)bps

EPS (6)%- before Slim.Fast write-down +6%

Savings and improved mix largely offsethigher input costs and increased marketing investment

The operating margin was 140 basis lower than last year whichincluded a write-down of intangibles on the Slim.Fast brandequivalent to 180 basis points. At the same time, the reportedmargin benefited from lower restructuring charges and higher profitson disposals. Without these, the underlying margin trend would havebeen a decline of about 50 basis points.

This reflects the effect of increased market investment and higherinput costs, largely offset by the benefits of savings programmes andan improved mix.

Reported earnings per share were 6% down in the first half, butincreased by 6% before the impact of the Slim.Fast write-down.

51

Three quarters of improving growth

Increasing competitiveness

Driving cost efficiency

Implementing new organisation

Maintaining control

Summary of Progress

Encouraging signs of progress…

but still more work to do

So, I hope we have given you some insight into the change underway in Unilever.

There are encouraging signs of progress in the market place. Three quarters of improvinggrowth tell us that we are starting to see the benefits of the steps already taken, ahead of theorganisational changes, to improve competitiveness.

Looking forward to the second half, the effect of the higher oil price and continued marketinginvestment will put increased pressure on margins. With this in mind, we are driving hard oncost efficiency. The savings from moving to ‘One Unilever’ will increasingly contribute to this inthe second half and through into 2006.

We have a competitive balance sheet, and plan to maintain this. So far this year we havebeen using surplus cash to replenish treasury stock used for a preference share conversionearlier in the year. We have already announced that once we have completed thisreplenishment we plan to buy back up to €500m of shares in the remaining months of 2005.

A new organisation structure has been set up throughout the business. Within this overallstructure we are executing the move to One Unilever, country by country, in a disciplined wayto maintain control, minimise disruption and ensure that we keep, and indeed increase, focuson the market.

So, in summary: early days, and encouraging progress but we still have a lot to do.

Thank you, and with that we will move to questions.

52

Ralph KuglerPresident, Home and

Personal Care

Increasing CompetitivenessPrudential Back to School Conference, Boston

September 8, 2005

Rudy MarkhamChief Financial

Officer

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