Heineken Raises Dividend, Carlsberg Ekes Out Profit

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 [e-mail] and Christina Zander at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2016 02:18 ET (07:18 GMT)

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