Heineken Raises Dividend, Carlsberg Ekes Out Profit
February 10 2016 - 2:33AM
Dow Jones News
By Maarten Van Tartwijk and Christina Zander
Two of Europe's biggest brewers brought some cheer for
shareholders Wednesday, with Heineken NV of the Netherlands raising
its dividend by 18% on a rise in full-year net profit, while Danish
rival Carlsberg A/S turned in better-than-expected fourth-quarter
earnings.
The brewers are both contending with continuing concentration in
the beer industry after Anheuser-Busch InBev NV agreed last
November to buy SABMiller PLC for about $108 billion, a tie-up
between the world's two biggest beer groups that will create a
brewing behemoth that dominates about 30% of the world's beer
market.
Heineken, the world's third largest brewer, reported a 27% rise
in net profit to EUR1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) last year from
EUR1.5 billion a year earlier on a 6.2% rise in revenue to EUR20.5
billion.
The brewer said revenue and earnings will continue to grow this
despite volatility in emerging markets and deflationary pressures
in raising its dividend to EUR1.30 a share from EUR1.10.
Carlsberg, the world's fourth-largest brewer, said it expects
"low single-digit" sales growth on a comparable basis this year
after reporting fourth-quarter net profit of 78 million Danish
kroner ($11.8 million). Profit was sharply down from 168 million
kroner in the same period the year before, but better than the 254
million kroner loss that analysts had expected, according to the
average forecast in poll by data provider FactSet.
Sales in the fourth quarter rose 2.3% to 14.66 billion kroner on
better demand for the company's beers in Asia, but rising costs
weighed on operating profit, which fell 21% to 1.41 billion
kroner.
Carlsberg has proposed an unchanged dividend of 9.00 kroner a
share.
Earlier Wednesday, Japan's Asahi Group Holdings said it had
offered to buy Grolsch and Peroni, two European brands, from
SABMiller as the merging companies plan to sell assets to get
antitrust approval for their tie-up. Other Asian brewers are set to
bid for the brands too.
Write to Maarten Van Tartwijk at maarten.vantartwijk@wsj.com and
Christina Zander at christina.zander@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2016 02:18 ET (07:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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