Heineken N.V. reports 2022 half year results

Amsterdam, 1 August 2022 – Heineken N.V. (EURONEXT: HEIA; OTCQX: HEINY) announces:

• Revenue growth 37.0%
• Net revenue (beia) 24.3% organic growth; per hectolitre 15.6%
• Beer volume organic growth 7.6%; premium beer volume 10.2% organically
• Heineken^® volume 13.8% growth
• Operating profit growth 20.6%; operating profit (beia) organic growth 24.6%
• Net profit growth 22.3%; net profit (beia) organic growth 40.2%
• Diluted EPS €2.20; diluted EPS (beia) €2.30
• Full year 2022 expectations unchanged. 2023 guidance revised

Dolf van den Brink, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, commented:

"We are encouraged by the results for the first half of the year. We benefitted from the recovery in Asia Pacific and the on-trade in Europe as consumers returned to the bars, with demand resilient until now despite mounting inflationary pressures on consumers' disposable income.

Our business performed well in the first half of 2022. We grew ahead of the industry in more than half of our markets and the Heineken^® brand again showed strong momentum, boosted by stepped up brand support. Our actions on pricing, revenue management and productivity offset significant inflationary pressures in our cost base. As a result, operating profit is now firmly ahead of 2019.

We continue to face an uncertain outlook for consumers and businesses alike. Remaining vigilant, we are fully committed to drive our EverGreen transformation for sustained, long-term value creation. In terms of outlook, we reiterate our 2022 goals. For 2023, we move from an operating margin objective towards delivering operating profit (beia) organic growth. Our medium-term aspiration remains to deliver superior, balanced growth with operating leverage over time."

1 Consolidated figures are used throughout this report unless otherwise stated; please refer to the Glossary for an explanation of non-GAAP measures and other terms used throughout this report.
2 Organic growth shown, except for Diluted EPS (beia), which is total growth.
3 Includes acquisitions and excludes disposals on a 12 month pro-forma basis.

SUPERIOR TOP-LINE GROWTH

Our ambition is to deliver superior growth with a good balance between volume- and value-driven revenue expansion, positioning us among the fastest growing global beverage companies. We aim to achieve this by sharp consumer and customer orientation, leveraging our leading premium brands, developing winning consumer propositions in fast-growing segments and continuously shaping our geographic and portfolio footprint.

Revenue for the first half of 2022 was 16,401 million (2021: 11,970 million). Net revenue (beia) increased 24.3% organically, driven by a 7.7% increase in total consolidated volume and a 15.6% increase in net revenue (beia) per hectolitre. The underlying price-mix on a constant geographic basis was up 15.3%, driven by pricing across all markets, covering input cost Inflation on a euro-for-euro basis, a positive channel mix and premiumisation. Compared to 2019, total consolidated volume increased organically by 0.8% and net revenue (beia) is 14.4% ahead, excluding consolidation changes, driven by post-COVID volume recovery, growth of our premium brands and the impact of inflation-led pricing.

Beer volume increased 7.6% organically versus last year and came 4.2% ahead of 2019 on an organic basis. The growth was faster in the second quarter as beer volume grew 9.7%, led by strong growth in the Americas, the continued recovery of Asia Pacific and the on-trade in Europe and modest growth in the Africa, Middle East and Eastern Europe (AMEE) region. We gained or held market share in more than half of our markets.

Driving premiumisation at scale, led by Heineken^®

Premium beer volume grew by 10.2%, driving close to half of our organic growth in beer volume, led by Heineken^®.

Heineken^® continued its strong performance and grew volume by 14.6% in the second quarter to close the first half with a 13.8% increase, up 32.9% versus 2019. The brand grew double-digits in more than 50 markets, notably in Brazil, China, Vietnam, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Laos and the United Arab Emirates. Heineken^® Silver, now present in 22 markets, has nearly doubled its volume, driven by strong growth in Vietnam and China and its rollout across Europe and Asia. As the next step of its global roll-out, we introduced Heineken^® Silver in Mexico this month.

As per the Kantar BrandZ 2022 global survey, Heineken^® was the fastest growing in 'Brand Value' among top alcohol brands, driven by its strong growth momentum, innovations and creativity. The latter was further recognised at this year's Cannes Lions, the prestigious Festival of Creativity, as the most awarded alcohol brand. The brand's most recent campaign, "The Closer", aims to spark conversation on work-life imbalance, with a smile. Heineken^® supports inclusion in the bar and on the football field and is a proud sponsor of the UEFA Women's EURO football tournament.

Amstel volume grew in the high-twenties, bringing a taste of Amsterdam to the world. More than 20 markets grew double-digits, with especially strong results in Brazil, South Africa, Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Mexico, Argentina, India and China. Amstel Ultra continued its expansion in the Americas to reach 12 markets. Birra Moretti continued to share the true taste of Italy across Europe and grew volume in the mid-twenties. All European markets contributed to the growth with particularly strong momentum in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland. Sol grew volume by a low-single-digit, led by strong growth in Brazil, Chile and South Africa, partially offset by declines in Mexico and Europe. In the year of the Tiger, we are uncaging the growth of our brand in Vietnam and beyond. The brand volume grew in the mid-teens, driven by the recovery in the second quarter of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia, a continued strong performance in Nigeria and the launch in Brazil last year. Tiger Crystal is now introduced in 19 markets. Edelweiss grew volume in the sixties, bringing a taste of the Alps to Asia, reaching 7 markets and we have started a local production hub in Vietnam. Lagunitas volume grew by a low-single-digit as double-digit growth in Europe was partially offset by a decline in the USA. The non-alcoholic line extensions of Lagunitas, IPNA and Hoppy Refresher, continue their momentum and grew volume in the high-teens.

Pioneer choice in low & no-alcohol (LONO)

Our LONO portfolio grew volume by a low-single-digit, with double-digit growth in more than 20 markets, most noticeably Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Panama and Ethiopia, partially offset by declines in Poland, Russia and Egypt.

The non-alcoholic beer and cider portfolio grew volume by a high-single-digit, led by Heineken^® 0.0. Despite stopping sales in Russia, Heineken^® 0.0 grew in the low-teens, with a particularly strong performance in Brazil and Spain.

We are in the process of extending our industry-leading LONO portfolio to serve the needs of consumers looking for adult refreshment with lower or no-alcohol content and a great taste.

Intentionally expand beyond beer

We see plenty of opportunities to expand our product portfolio beyond beer to better meet the needs of more consumers. Overall, our portfolio of flavoured alcoholic beverages (FABs), including ciders and hard seltzers, grew volume by a high-single-digit to 6.4 million hectolitres and is ahead of 2019 in the low-teens.

Desperados continued its momentum, particularly in its core European markets and more than doubling its volume in Nigeria. For consumers looking for a trendy alternative to beer at a similar alcohol level, we launched Desperados Alcoholic Sparkling Water with Tequila in the Netherlands in May.

Cider was back to growth in the UK and Ireland and saw double-digit growth in South Africa, Vietnam, Spain and Portugal. For consumers who desire a more balanced lifestyle, we launched Strongbow Ultra Dark Fruit in the UK, a low-calorie cider that does not compromise great taste.

We are learning from our experiments across markets and continue to introduce new propositions. We are increasingly leveraging our strongest brands for these propositions, next to new brands like Pure Piraña. For example, we launched Dos Equis Classic Lime Margarita and Disorderly Tea House in the USA.

Building a future-fit digital route-to-consumer

Our ambition is to be the best-connected brewer, so we have been stepping up our investments behind our digital transformation to build a future-ready HEINEKEN, especially strengthening our digital route-to-consumer:

• Our business-to-business (B2B) digital platforms continued to develop at pace. We captured €2.8 billion in digital sales value in the first half of this year, close to 3x the same period last year and to the entire value captured in 2021, with close to 430 thousand active customers in fragmented, traditional channels. The digitisation of customer relationships enables us to provide better services, leverage data insights, and capture meaningful increases in efficiency. For example, in Italy we have realised the equivalent of an extra day of sales visits per sales representative, whilst in Ethiopia we have seen an over threefold increase in weekly outlet engagements to optimise assortment and product availability. The remarkable growth in digital sales value was balanced across both our direct and indirect distribution markets, notably Nigeria, Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil and Europe. Vietnam observed the fastest growth, more than 6x last year, covering now close to 55% of the fragmented trade.
  
• The net revenue of Beerwulf, our digital direct-to-consumer (eD2C) platform in Europe, was more than 50% ahead of pre-pandemic levels, despite the shift in consumption from in-home to the on-trade as it reopened. Our active consumer base for our home draught systems is close to 40% ahead of pre-pandemic levels, and the transaction data we collect provides valuable insights.
  
• Our eD2C platform in Mexico GLUP is growing fast with very positive feedback from users on its value proposition of delivering orders in less than 60 minutes and its use of brand assets. The platform was launched in Monterrey last year, and we are expanding into other large cities in the country.

Strengthen and optimise our footprint

We continuously review how we can further strengthen our portfolio and geographical footprint and enhance our long-term, sustained growth advantage.

At the end of 2021, HEINEKEN announced its proposed transaction with Distell Group Holdings Limited (‘Distell’) and Namibia Breweries Limited (‘NBL’). We continue in the process of obtaining regulatory approvals to complete the transaction and expect to close it in the second half of 2022.

On 28 March, HEINEKEN announced its decision to leave Russia. We are making good progress to secure an orderly transfer of our business to a new owner in full compliance with international and local laws and expect to reach an agreement during the second half of this year. For more details on the financial implications of this decision, please refer to page 12.

FUNDING THE GROWTH

Given the current inflationary environment, we are taking significant pricing and revenue management actions to offset the input and other cost inflation on a euro-for-euro basis. In addition, we are structurally addressing our cost base and building a cost-conscious culture to mitigate cost pressures, to invest behind our growth and gear our business to deliver operating leverage over time.

We continue to make significant progress in our productivity programme, targeting €2 billion of structural gross savings by 2023, relative to our cost base of 2019. We have now collected more than 9,000 ideas through our systematic process, some going beyond 2023. We are working on embedding this process further so ideas can travel across the organisation to learn, share and reapply. Some of these ideas require significant change and are packaged into transformational programmes. By the end of 2022, we expect to have captured €1.7 billion of these savings, well on track to deliver on our objective.

The progress in the delivery of these savings has helped us to accelerate investments behind our growth agenda, digital transformation and sustainability initiatives. In addition, we are reversing the significant cost mitigation actions taken to partially offset the financial impact of lockdowns and other restrictions on operating during the pandemic. Last year the full cost mitigation actions represented a reduction of expenses (beia) of circa €0.5 billion for the full year relative to 2019. For example, marketing and sales expenses (beia) in the first half of the year increased organically by €264 million or 28.5%, bringing the absolute level close to pre-pandemic levels.

Operating profit increased to €2,070 million. Operating profit (beia) increased 24.6% organically, driven by the volume recovery, pricing and revenue management actions and continued strong delivery of gross savings from our productivity programme, more than offsetting significant inflationary pressures, the reversal of our cost mitigation actions and a step-up in investments. All in all, operating profit (beia) is 21.6% ahead of 2019, excluding consolidation effects. Operating profit margin (beia) declined to 16.0%, 35 bps below the first half of 2021, driven by consolidation changes; excluding those, operating profit margin would have remained stable.

Net profit increased to €1,265 million. Net profit (beia) increased 40.2% organically, driven by the growth in operating profit, lower interest and net financing expenses, and the normalisation of the effective tax rate.

RAISING THE BAR ON SUSTAINABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY

We are making steady progress against our Brew a Better World strategy, focusing on three areas: raising the bar on climate action, accelerating our social sustainability agenda and driving our brands to advance the moderate consumption of alcohol.

Environmental: Path to zero impact

Along our journey to become net zero in our entire value chain by 2040, roadmaps have been developed with our largest operating companies, which account for 75% of our total emissions. In South Africa, we launched the largest solar plant in the African beer industry, reducing the brewery’s carbon impact by 30%.

Regarding healthy watersheds, two new wastewater treatment plants were installed at our breweries in Serbia and Haiti. Meoqui in Mexico is our most water efficient brewery, using less than 2 litres of water for one litre of beer.

Social: Path to an inclusive, fair and equitable world

Currently, 26% of our senior managers are women and we aim to increase this to at least 30% by 2025 and 40% by 2030 on the path to gender balance.

The Heineken^® brand revealed a new direction for its sponsorship in football, making its entire football campaign across both the men's and women's games about tackling gender bias affecting both players and fans of the sport.

Responsible: Path to moderate and no harmful use

Heineken^® 0.0 is being introduced on draught in hundreds of pubs across the country in the UK. Through a partnership with ITV, it is now part of the UK’s two largest television soap series helping to normalise the consumption of non-alcoholic beer.

We also launched a new episode of our ‘When You Drive, Never Drink’ campaign, addressing the issue of overconfidence when drinking alcohol, with the help of F1 drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez.

Governance

We have aligned our long-term incentive (LTI) policy with our sustainability ambitions by including three Brew a Better World metrics representing 25% of the total LTI: carbon emissions reduction in production, water efficiency worldwide and the percentage of women at the senior manager level.

Our multi-year EverGreen strategy aims to deliver superior, balanced growth for sustainable, long-term value creation. We are encouraged by the speed and progress made so far on our key strategic programmes, and by the strong post-COVID recovery of our business.

At the same time, we continue to observe a challenging global environment and an uncertain economic outlook. Whilst consumer demand in aggregate has been resilient in the first half, there is increasing risk that mounting pressure on consumer purchasing power will affect beer consumption.

We expect significant inflationary pressures on our cost base and ongoing investment in our business to continue and impact the second half of 2022 and into 2023. The recent softening in some commodities is being offset by the unprecedented price levels and availability risk of natural gas, most notably affecting Europe, our biggest region. Our pricing and revenue management actions have effectively offset these inflationary pressures so far in absolute terms, and we remain committed to continuing to do so. In addition, our productivity programme continues at pace, lifting the aggregate gross savings contribution to €1.7 billion by end of 2022 compared to the cost base of 2019. This will continue to offset cost pressures and enable increased investments in brand support, our digital transformation and sustainability initiatives.

For 2022, we keep our outlook unchanged and expect a stable to modest sequential improvement in operating profit margin (beia) versus last year. We are changing our previous guidance for 2023. We will move from an operating profit margin objective towards delivering operating profit (beia) organic growth, in the range of a mid- to high-single digit, excluding any major unforeseen macroeconomic and political developments. Over the medium term, we reconfirm our aspiration to deliver superior, balanced growth with operating leverage over time.

Based on the impact to date, and applying spot rates of 28 July 2022 to the 2021 financial results as a baseline for the remainder of the year, the calculated positive currency translational impact would be approximately €1.5 billion in net revenue (beia), €210 million at consolidated operating profit (beia), and €140 million at net profit (beia).

HEINEKEN's dividends are paid in the form of an interim dividend and a final dividend. The interim dividend is fixed at 40% of the total dividend of the previous year. As a result, an interim dividend of €0.50 per share (2021: €0.28) will be paid on 11 August 2022. The shares will trade ex-dividend on 3 August 2022.

HEINEKEN will host an analyst and investor conference call in relation to its 2022 Half Year results today at 14:00 CET/ 13:00 GMT. The call will be audio cast live via the company’s website: www.theheinekencompany.com. An audio replay service will also be made available after the conference call at the above web address. Analysts and investors can dial-in using the following telephone numbers:

United Kingdom (Local): 020 3936 2999

Netherlands (Local): 085 888 7233

USA: 1 646 664 1960

All other locations: +44 203 936 2999

Participation password for all countries: 810785

Editorial information:
HEINEKEN is the world's most international brewer. It is the leading developer and marketer of premium and non-alcoholic beer and cider brands. Led by the Heineken^® brand, the Group has a portfolio of more than 300 international, regional, local and specialty beers and ciders. With HEINEKEN’s over 85,000 employees, we brew the joy of true togetherness to inspire a better world. Our dream is to shape the future of beer and beyond to win the hearts of consumers. We are committed to innovation, long-term brand investment, disciplined sales execution and focused cost management. Through "Brew a Better World", sustainability is embedded in the business. HEINEKEN has a well-balanced geographic footprint with leadership positions in both developed and developing markets. We operate breweries, malteries, cider plants and other production facilities in more than 70 countries. Most recent information is available on our Company's website and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

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Disclaimer:
This press release contains forward-looking statements with regard to the financial position and results of HEINEKEN’s activities. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. Many of these risks and uncertainties relate to factors that are beyond HEINEKEN’s ability to control or estimate precisely, such as future market and economic conditions, developments in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and related government measures, the behaviour of other market participants, changes in consumer preferences, the ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses and achieve anticipated synergies, costs of raw materials, interest-rate and exchange-rate fluctuations, changes in tax rates, changes in law, change in pension costs, the actions of government regulators and weather conditions. These and other risk factors are detailed in HEINEKEN’s publicly filed annual reports. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only of the date of this press release. HEINEKEN does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Market share estimates contained in this press release are based on outside sources, such as specialised research institutes, in combination with management estimates.

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• Click here for the full press release: Heineken NV 2022 Half Year results press release (01 August 2022)