Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

Proxy Advisory firm SES has pulled up Hindustan Unilever (HUL) on the recent royalty hike issue. In its report, SES has criticized country’s largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) maker for increasing the royalty amount without taking the shareholder’s approval, besides terming the hike as ‘unjustified.’

HUL’s board in January approved a royalty of 3.15% of turnover effective this month. Uptill January, the company paid 1.4% of the total turnover as royalty to its parent company, Unilever. However, this hike will be effective by the company in phased manner till March 2018.

The FMCG player registered a rise of 15.59% at Rs 871.36 crore in Q3FY13 as compared to Rs 753.81 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year. The total income from operation of the company has increased by 11.74% to Rs 6654.83 crore for the quarter under review as compared to Rs 5955.53 crore in the same quarter last year.