By Matthew Dalton 

BRUSSELS-- Anheuser-Busch InBev on Thursday said economic recovery in the U.S. helped offset the impact of a stronger dollar that hurt sales elsewhere in the company's global beer empire, pushing up profits during the fourth quarter.

The results show that falling unemployment in the U.S., combined with the company's efforts to sell more "premium" beers, is helping turn around AB InBev's performance in its largest market. But Budweiser, perhaps the brewer's most important brand, continued to lose market share in the U.S. as the company still struggled to attract younger drinkers to the beer.

"It isn't an easy challenge," Chief Financial Officer Felipe Dutra told reporters on Thursday. "We don't expect to stabilize Budweiser in the U.S. in the short term."

The world's largest brewer said net profit for the quarter was $2.53 billion, up from $2.52 billion a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter was $12.02 billion, up from $11.71 billion a year ago and slightly topping analyst expectations of $11.86 billion.

The company also proposed to pay $3.52 per share in dividends for 2014, a 26% increase over the year before. The company's shares fell around 1.5% in early trading.

That drop may be explained by two factors, said Trevor Stirling, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein in London. First, investors may be worried by some underlying profit-margin weakness at the company that was masked by an unusually low tax burden in 2014.

But the second factor may be intrigue surrounding the question of whether AB InBev is preparing to buy SABMiller PLC, the world's second-largest beer company. Some investors interpreted the big increase in the dividend as a sign that the company may be preparing to bid for the company, Mr. Stirling said, by returning cash to shareholders for a later capital increase to fund the acquisition.

SABMiller shares traded up over 1% on Thursday morning.

Ultimately, AB InBev's controlling shareholders--three Brazilian multibillionaires and a group of five Belgian families--are unlikely to support a bid for SABMiller right now, Mr. Stirling said.

"We believe the controlling shareholders of AB InBev think at the moment there are better alternative investments," he said.

AB InBev said sales volumes in the U.S. rose 0.2% in the quarter compared with a year earlier, reversing a trend of falling volumes in the U.S. That helped soften the impact of the stronger dollar, which cost the company $848 million for the quarter in lost revenue and $2.3 billion for all of last year.

"We have operations in markets like Brazil where the stronger dollar puts pressure on transactional costs," Mr. Dutra said.

Nevertheless, revenue in Brazil rose slightly, mainly because of the company's efforts to sell more premium beers, a company priority, Mr. Dutra said.

Those efforts also helped boost sales during the quarter in China, where sales of Budweiser, which sells at a premium overseas, were strong despite weakness in the Chinese economy.

Developments in the quarter show how Budweiser is increasingly becoming a non-American brand. More than 60% of Budweiser sales volume occur in markets outside the U.S., such as China and Brazil.

The company has been investing heavily in the U.S. to try to stem the market-share losses there. It aired a commercial during the Super Bowl that tried to double down on the brand's status as a mass-market beer, showing bearded, bespectacled men drinking craft brews, followed by the slogan: "There's only one Budweiser. It's brewed for drinking not dissecting."

The spot raised eyebrows for making fun of the craft-brew scene, a strongly growing market in the U.S. that AB InBev itself has invested in with brands such as Goose Island.

"We appreciate the fact that the ad was somehow considered controversial, " Mr. Dutra said, "but in the end it was all about celebrating Budweiser."

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com

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