• Bloomberg, Thursday, November 5, 2009 11:15 AM

When Paul Polman became CEO of Unilever at the beginning of the year, he promised to stoke sales growth. He's done so by boosting advertising, accelerating the introduction of new products and, it turns out, by cutting prices by as much as 3% -- even more than analysts realized. The number of goods sold increased by 3.6% in the company's fourth quarter as a result.

CFO Jim Lawrence says Unilever will report lower selling prices into the first half of 2010, given year-on-year comparisons. "We are now about where we should be," he says, and he does not anticipate further price slashing. The pricing outlook outweighed Unilever's third-quarter profit and sales growth, Jeroen Molenaar writes, which both beat analysts' estimates.

Unilever also says restructuring costs will be higher than anticipated because of the integration of Sanex and other soap brands it's buying from Sara Lee Corp.

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