"VIABILITY STATEMENT The activities of Unilever, together with the factors likely to affect its future development, performance, the financial position of Unilever, its cash flows, liquidity position and borrowing facilities are described on pages 1 to 25. In addition, we describe in notes 15 to 18 on pages 115 to 130 Unilever’s objectives, policies and processes for managing its capital, its financial risk management objectives, details of its financial instruments and hedging activities and its exposures to credit and liquidity risk. ASSESSMENT In order to report on the long-term viability of Unilever, the Directors carried out a robust assessment of the principal risks facing Unilever, including those that would threaten its business model, future performance, solvency or liquidity. This assessment included reviewing and understanding the mitigation factors in respect of each of those risks. The risks and mitigating factors are summarised on pages 28 to 31. The viability assessment has two parts: First, the Directors considered the period over which they have a reasonable expectation that Unilever will continue to operate and meet its liabilities; and Second, they considered the potential impact of severe but plausible scenarios over this period, including: assessing scenarios for each individual principal risk, for example the termination of our relationships with the three largest global customers; the loss of all material litigation cases; and the destruction of three of our largest sourcing units; and assessing scenarios that involve more than one principal risk such as: a contamination issue with one of our products, leading to a fine equal to 1% of Unilever’s turnover, lower sales of impacted products and temporary closure of our largest sourcing unit; a major IT data breach resulting in a fine equal to 2% of Unilever’s turnover along with an outage in a key system resulting in the temporary inability to sell products; and a global economic downturn leading to an increase in funding costs and the loss of our three largest customers. FINDINGS A three-year period is considered appropriate for this assessment because it is the period covered by Unilever’s ongoing strategic planning; and it enables a high level of confidence in assessing viability, even in extreme adverse events, due to a number of factors such as: Unilever’s considerable financial resources together with established business relationships with many customers and suppliers in countries throughout the world; high cash generation by Unilever’s operations; flexibility of cash outflow with respect to significant marketing programmes and capital expenditure projects which usually have a 2-3 year horizon; and Unilever’s diverse product and geographical activities which are impacted by continuously evolving technology and innovation. Taking into account Unilever’s current position and plans, the Directors believe that there is no plausible scenario that would threaten our business model, future performance, solvency or liquidity over the next three years. CONCLUSION On the basis described above, the Directors have a reasonable expectation that Unilever will be able to continue in operation and meet its liabilities as they fall due over the three-year period of their assessment."