Nigeria’s largest Beer maker, Nigerian Breweries (NB) plc continues to consolidate on market leadership with a 2.7percent surge in Q3 revenue to N259.92bn for the period ended 30th September 2019 as against N254.99bn recorded the same period last year.
However, gains were wiped off by the higher excise duty expense compared to last year, leading to flat net revenue growth of +0.1% yearon-year in the period. Excise duty expense ballooned to N24.24bn for nine months as compared to N16.93bn in the same period 2018.
Amid the growing competition in the beer market, Heineken-owned Nigerian Breweries’ marketing and distribution expenses spiked to N57.48bn from N51.44bn in 2018. Its cost of sales, however, declined from N143.35bn in nine months 2018 to N139.50bn in the same period 2019.
In its Q3-19 trading update, Heineken NV (NB’S parent company) stated that Nigeria beer volumes grew lowsingle-digit with the premium portfolio growing double-digit, driven by brand Heineken.
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Heineken NV said it is seeing increased volatility across a number of its markets despite seeing profits rise by 4.45% to €1.67bn, driven by beer volume growth of 2.3%, with brand Heineken surging 7.4percent.
The company said that it benefited from the doubledigit growth of its Heineken brand in Brazil, South Africa, the UK, Nigeria, Romania and Germany.
While commenting on the results, Jean-françois van Boxmeer, CEO of Heineken, said the beer portfolio delivered solid volume growth of 2.3percent in the context of a challenging comparison base given a very good summer last year.
“The growth of Heineken accelerated to 7.4percent. We are seeing increased volatility across a number of our markets, which we assume to continue for the rest of the year,” he said.
Looking forward to the rest of the year, the company said it expects operating profit growth of around 4% organically.
