SABMiller gains as soft drinks outpace lager

Anyone for a lager? No, make that a soft drink instead.

SABMiller, the brewer behind Miller Lite, Grolsch and Peroni, said sales of soft drinks continued to outpace those of lager in the first three months of the year.

While lager volumes grew 2 per cent in its fourth quarter, soft drinks fizzed with an 8 per cent rise, continuing a recent trend that has seen SABMiller, which is also a Coca-Cola bottler, increase its exposure to the category in Africa.

This helped push up revenues 6 per cent - well above expectations of a 4.8 per cent increase, helped by gains in South Africa, Mozambique, Colombia and Peru. For the full year, revenues expanded 4 per cent.

There was a turnround in China, one of the brewer's biggest markets, which had suffered from weak demand because of bad weather and the government's anti-extravagance campaign. After a 9 per cent drop in volumes in the third quarter, lager volumes returned to growth in China.

China was a bright spot for Unilever and Diageo, which also gave quarterly sales updates on Thursday. Diageo, the world's largest spirits group, surprised with an unexpectedly strong bounceback in its baijiu white spirits business, which helped drive a 13 per cent jump in net sales in China.

But the US remained weak for SABMiller, with sales to retailers dropping 2.7 per cent in the final quarter, and by 2.3 per cent for the full year.

Philip Gorham, analyst at Morningstar, said: "SABMiller remains one of the few consumer staples firms unable to benefit from the economic recovery in the US. Beer in the premium category and below is losing share to craft."

Lager sales in Europe were affected by the crisis in Ukraine and uncertainties regarding market conditions in Russia, the company said.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation