Unilever pops 5% on margin guidance raise, Ben & Jerry's spinoff on track to complete by end of 2025

Unilever shares popped on Thursday morning, after the consumer goods giant raised its full-year margin guidance and said the spinoff of its ice cream business was on track to complete by the end of 2025.

Shares climbed nearly 8% during the morning, before gains cooled to around 5.45% by 10:14 a.m. in London.

The company, whose vast portfolio of brands spans Dove, Axe, Hellmann's, Knorr, Domestos, Marmite and Vaseline, recorded sales growth across all segments in first-half results published on Thursday. Beauty and well-being expanded 7.1%, while ice cream lagged other segments with just 0.6% of sales growth — which includes prices — and a 1% decline in volumes sold.

Unilever called the performance of ice cream, which totals 15% of group turnover, "disappointing." Back in March, the company announced it would separate the unit, which includes Ben & Jerry's and Magnum, in a bid to streamline its business across beauty and well-being, personal care, home care and nutrition.

"We've seen a good volume growth ... a sequential improvement in that. But pricing was a bit subdued, and that was also the result of the commodity basket that saw a much lower inflation than obviously we've seen over the last couple of years," Unilever CEO Hein Schumacher told CNBC's Silvia Amaro on Thursday, regarding the results.

"And when we see that we're focused on competitiveness as well. And if we can give it back to the consumer, then that's what we do."

Unilever raised prices across product categories early in the inflationary cycle of the last three years, citing "extraordinary" input cost pressures across agricultural products, energy, transport and logistics.

Underlying price growth was 1% in the second quarter of this year, compared with 8.2% over