Unilever has sales better than expected in the quarter

Unilever unveiled Thursday better than expected sales for the first quarter and maintained a positive tone about the remainder of the year, citing signs more optimistic in markets such as United States, China and India.
However, the company quoted in the sales balance a framework of "deterioration" in Russia and in Brazil, where checking drop in consumer spending.
The evaluation occurs in spite of the company's sales in Latin America have grown 8.9 percent in the first quarter, to 2.1 billion euros, compared with a 0.5 percent expansion in North America, the 2.06 billion, excluding impact of currency movements, acquisitions and asset sales.
Overall, Unilever's sales in the first three months of the year totaled 12.8 billion euros, an increase of 2.8 percent. Analysts, on average, expected expansion of 2.1 percent for the period, according to data presented by the company.
Unilever gets more than half of its sales in emerging markets, which account for 7.5 billion euros of the total turnover of the group in the first quarter.