Earnings call transcript: AB InBev sees modest growth in Q3 2025

Anheuser Busch InBev SA (BUD) reported its Q3 2025 earnings, highlighting a modest revenue growth of 0.9% and an increase in EBITDA by 3.3%. The company’s underlying earnings per share (EPS) rose by 1% to $0.99. Despite these positive results, the company’s stock experienced a slight decline of 0.19%, closing at $52.98, as investors processed the mixed financial signals and market conditions.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue increased in 70% of AB InBev’s markets.
• The company announced a $6 billion share buyback program.
• Global beer market volume projected to grow by ~1%.
• Michelob Ultra Zero and Cutwater spirits are leading product innovations.
• Inflation pressures are moderating, but challenges remain in Latin America.

Company Performance

AB InBev’s Q3 2025 performance showed resilience amid challenging market conditions. The company achieved revenue growth in 70% of its markets, with significant bottom-line growth in four out of its five operating regions. The launch of new products, such as Michelob Ultra Zero and Flying Fish, alongside the expansion of the Cutwater spirits brand, contributed to this growth. However, the company faced challenges in Latin America due to a tough consumer environment and unseasonable weather impacting beer volumes.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue growth: 0.9% YoY
• EBITDA increase: 3.3%
• Underlying EPS: $0.99, up 1% in USD
• Margin expansion: 85 basis points
• Interim dividend: €0.15 per share

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, AB InBev’s stock saw a minor decline of 0.19%, reflecting investor caution. The stock’s current price is $52.98, which is closer to its 52-week low of $45 than its high of $63. This movement suggests a market sentiment that is cautiously optimistic but tempered by external factors like inflation and regional challenges.

Outlook & Guidance

AB InBev remains confident in delivering 4-8% EBITDA growth for 2025. The company is optimistic about the upcoming FIFA World Cup in North America, which is expected to boost the beer category. Looking forward, AB InBev plans to focus on expanding its beyond beer segment and continuing its innovation efforts.

Executive Commentary

CEO Michel Doukeris emphasized the company’s commitment to innovation and consumer value, stating, "We are investing to provide superior value to our consumers." He also highlighted the opportunities beyond the beer market, noting, "The addressable market outside beer is bigger than the beer category itself." CFO Fernando Tennenbaum reiterated the company’s focus on long-term shareholder value through strategic capital allocation.

Risks and Challenges

• Continued inflationary pressures, although moderating, could impact cost structures.
• The challenging consumer environment in Latin America poses a risk to growth.
• Unseasonable weather patterns may affect beer volumes in key markets.
• Currency fluctuations could impact financial performance.
• Increased competition in the non-alcoholic and spirits segments.

Q&A

During the Q&A session, analysts inquired about AB InBev’s strategy in China, where market challenges and inventory adjustments were discussed. The company’s capital allocation strategy was also a focal point, with executives addressing pricing and volume growth expectations. The success of the Cutwater brand and the broader beyond beer strategy were highlighted as key growth drivers.

Full transcript - Anheuser Busch Inbev SA (ABI) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Welcome to AB InBev’s third quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. Hosting the call today from AB InBev are Mr. Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer. To access the slides accompanying today’s call, please visit AB InBev’s website at www.ab-inbev.com and click on the Investors tab in the Reports and Results Center page. Today’s webcast will be available for on demand playback later today. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press Star 1 on your touchtone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing 2. If you should require operator assistance, please press 0.

Some of the information provided during the conference call may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on management’s current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. It is possible that AB InBev’s actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in these forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect AB InBev’s future results, see Risk Factors in the company’s latest annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 12, 2025. AB InBev assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information provided during the conference call and shall not be liable for any action taken in reliance upon such information. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Michel Doukeris.

Sir, you may begin.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2025 earnings call. It is great pleasure to be speaking with you all today. Today, Fernando and I will take you through our operating highlights and provide you with an update on the progress we have made in executing our strategic priorities. After that, we’ll be happy to answer your questions. Let’s start with the key highlights. In the third quarter, we continue to navigate a dynamic operating environment with headwinds in China and unseasonable weather in the Americas, particularly in Brazil, constraining our results. After a slow start to the quarter in July and August, we saw improved performance in September. We remain focused on the consistent execution of our strategy and adapted where required. We maintained our disciplined revenue management plan and continued to deliver on our productivity initiatives.

Consistent investments in our brands and innovations drove increased portfolio brand power and continued market share gains in key markets. Despite the challenging environment, we delivered another quarter of top and bottom-line growth, margin expansion, and U.S. dollar EPS growth. Our growth platforms of premium beer, non-alcohol beer, and beyond beer continue to outperform, and the quarterly GMV of BIS marketplace has reached nearly $1 billion. In the U.S., our portfolio is continuing to build momentum and gain share of the industry, led by Michelob Ultra, which is now the number one brand in the industry by volume year to date. Our solid financial results in the first nine months of the year reinforce our confidence in delivering our outlook for the year, given our deleveraging progress and strong free cash flow generation.

The Board has approved a $6 billion share buyback program to be executed within the next 24 months, as well as an interim dividend of €0.15 per share. We also continue to proactively manage our debt portfolio and have announced the redemption of $2 billion of outstanding bonds. In summary, we are confident in the resilience of our strategy and ability to deliver consistent results. We are investing to provide superior value to our consumers, and we are winning in key markets and growth segments. We are taking action where adjustments are required and are excited about the opportunities ahead to drive shareholder value creation through profitable growth and disciplined capital allocation decisions. Turning to our operating performance, while overall volumes were below potential, we grew revenue in 70% of our markets.

The combination of our disciplined revenue management choices and portfolio of mega brands that command a premium price drove a revenue per hectoliter increase of 4.8%, resulting in top-line growth of 0.9%. Our productivity initiatives more than offset transactional FX headwinds to drive an EBITDA increase of 3.3% with margin expansion of 85 bps. The strength of our diversified geographic footprint enables us to navigate the current environment and deliver profitable growth in the long term. Revenue increased in 70% of our markets this quarter, and we delivered bottom-line growth in four of our five operating regions. Now I’ll take a few minutes to walk you through the operational highlights for the quarter from our key regions, starting with North America. In the U.S., the momentum of our portfolio continued, and we are increasing investments in our brands to fuel growth in beyond beer.

Our portfolio growth accelerated with a revenue increase in the mid-40s led by Cutwater, which grew revenue in the triple digits. Cutwater is now one of the top 10 largest spirits brands in the U.S. and was the number one share gainer brand in the total spirits industry in August and September. In beer, our market share momentum was led by Michelob Ultra, the number one volume share gainer in the industry and now the largest brand year to date in both on and off-premise channels. Ultra has gained market share in all 50 states this quarter. The brand has 16% share of the industry in its top state and 8% average share nationally, but has less than 6% share of the industry in 20 states, so there remains a significant opportunity for further expansion and growth.

Michelob Ultra Zero was launched early this year and is already the second largest non-alcohol beer brand and the number one fastest growing non-alcohol beer in the industry. Ultra is the superior light beer made for those who seek an active lifestyle and balanced choices. Now let’s turn to Middle Americas. In Mexico, our revenue continued to grow, driven by disciplined revenue management choices. The industry was, however, impacted by a softer consumer environment and unseasonable weather, which resulted in our volumes declining by low single digits. With improved weather and consumer sentiment, our volumes improved sequentially throughout the quarter, gaining share and returning to growth in August and September. In Colombia, record high volumes drove low teens top-line and mid single digits bottom-line growth, with our portfolio estimated to have gained share of total alcohol beverages.

In Brazil, market share gain and disciplined revenue and cost management offset a soft industry to deliver flat EBITDA with margin expansion. Our revenue declined by 1.9% driven by volume performance, which was negatively impacted by unseasonable weather and a softer consumer environment. When we look at our performance across both South America and Middle Americas, it is clear that the industry has been impacted by a combination of cyclical and one-off factors this quarter. Cyclical factors include inflationary pressures and low consumer sentiment, which have impacted demand not only for beer but all consumer categories to different degrees. What has perhaps been more acute for beer than other categories has been the unseasonable weather.

Latin America accounts for 20% of the global beer volume, which is typically 1.5 to 2 times the weight of other categories in the consumer goods area, and the region is even more relevant for our business while we are managing through the short-term headwinds. When we look ahead at the outlook for the category, the fundamental drivers are unchanged, and we see clear potential for industry volume growth as conditions normalize, as evidenced by Mexico where our volumes returned to growth in August and September. In Europe, continued market share gains and premiumization drove flattish volumes and margin recovery. We gained share of the industry in five of our six key markets, with our performance driven by our mega brands and non-alcohol beer. In South Africa, the underlying momentum of our business continued, maintaining share of beer and gaining share of beyond beer.

Top-line grew by mid single digits and EBITDA grew by high single digits with margin expansion. Now moving to APAC. In China, revenue declined by 15.2% with our volumes underperforming the industry. While the overall industry has been impacted by a soft consumer environment, which has been even more pronounced in our footprint and key channels, we recognize that we have opportunities to enhance our execution and route to market to better align our results with our capabilities. We are a company of owners who strive for operational excellence. We have been working in China to right size inventories in line with the channel shifts, allocate resources towards areas of growth, and elevate our execution. We have a clear view of where to improve, and as we move forward, our priority is to reignite growth and rebuild our momentum.

To achieve this, we are focused on increasing investments in our mega brands, leading innovation within the industry across packaging and liquids, strengthening our route to market in the in-home channels with an increased focus on online to offline, continuing our geographic expansion, and rebuilding our excellence in execution. We are moving with speed to ensure that our business emerges stronger and investing to be better positioned to outperform in the long term. Now let’s take a look at the key highlights of our three strategic pillars, starting with leading and growing the category. Our mega brands continue to lead our growth with net revenue increasing by 3%. Corona continued to drive premiumization across our markets, growing revenue by 6.3% outside of Mexico and growing volumes by double digits in 33 markets.

Through the consistent execution of our category expansion levers, we aim to increase participation across our markets by offering supreme core brands, innovating in balanced choices to provide consumers with no and low alcohol, low carb, zero sugar, and gluten free options, and expanding our premium and beyond beer portfolios. On a rolling 12 months, participation of legal drinking age consumers within our portfolio was stable in non alcohol beer. Our portfolio momentum continued with net revenue growing by 27%, led by the growth of Corona Zero. We are now leaders in eight of our top 14 non alcohol beer markets and estimate to have gained share in 70% of them. Non alcohol beer is a key opportunity to develop new consumption occasions and increase participation, and we are investing and innovating to lead the growth.

This quarter, we announced a partnership with Netflix, which is the world’s most popular streaming service. They are creating content that shapes culture, and watching Netflix has become a new social occasion. Our iconic brands are part of the fabric of society in the markets in which we operate, and it is a perfect pairing to bring together beer and entertainment in this unprecedented way. What makes our partnership with Netflix unique is its global reach and scale of activations across our portfolio of brands. Consumers will see this come to life through co-marketing campaigns, activations, title integration, limited edition packaging, and even at live events. What we are most excited about is how this partnership will create more meaningful experiences for consumers across their passion points, including comedy, music, cooking, and live sport events.

The Beer and Beyond Beer category remains vibrant, and we are leading innovation to address emerging consumer needs, providing choice and superior value in different occasions and balanced choices. We are innovating liquids to provide consumers with different options to meet different lifestyles. From the rollout of Stella gluten free in Brazil to Harbin Zero Sugar in China to Michelob Ultra Zero in the U.S. and Cass 4.0 in South Korea, we are leading the category in liquid innovation in Beyond Beer. Cutwater continues to expand, growing volumes by triple digits, approaching half a billion dollars in annualized retail sales, and is now a top 10 spirits brand in the U.S. After a successful rollout in Africa, our flavored beer Flying Fish is now expanding to Europe and the Americas in adjacent beverage categories.

We are taking the learnings from developing a number of successful brands in the energy drink space in the U.S. and have launched Ford Energy to participate directly in this segment. Let’s now turn to our second strategic pillar, digitize and monetize our ecosystem. In the second quarter, BIS captured $13.3 billion in gross merchandising value, an 11% increase versus last year. The growth of BIS marketplace accelerated with more than 500 partners on the platform quarterly. Gen Cross increased by 66% versus last year and is now approaching $1 billion. In D2C, our digital platforms continue to enable a one-to-one connection with our consumers and help us in developing new occasions. Our digital platforms generated $138 million in revenue, serving 11.9 million consumers and generating close to 18 million orders online.

With that, I would like to hand it over to Fernando to discuss the third pillar of our strategy, Optimize Our Business.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Thank you, Michel. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. I will take a few minutes to discuss the progress we have made in optimizing our business. Our EBITDA margins improved by 85 basis points this quarter, with expansion in four of our five operating regions. We know that each quarter will be different, but we are confident that the combination of our leadership advantages, disciplined revenue management, continued premiumization, and efficient operating model create an opportunity for further margin expansion over time. Moving on to EPS, we delivered underlying EPS of $0.99 per share, a 1% increase in U.S. dollars and a 0.3% increase in constant currency versus last year. EBITDA growth accounted for a $0.09 per share increase, partially offset by higher other financial results, which increased due to a higher cost of FX movements and.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Cost of hedging.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: The objective of our capital allocation framework is to maximize value creation for our shareholders. Given the progress we have made on our deleveraging and our solid year to date financial results, we have increased flexibility on our capital allocation choices. We remain confident in the long term growth and value of our business and have announced today a new $6 billion share buyback program to be executed within the next 24 months. In addition, we have announced an interim dividend of €0.15 per share, our first interim dividend since 2019. We also continue to proactively manage our debt portfolio and have announced a bond redemption of $2 billion. Our bond portfolio remains well distributed with no relevant near and medium term refinancing needs. Upon completion of the bond redemption announced today, we will have no bonds maturing through 2026 and we have no financial covenants.

Our results in the first nine months of the year, the resilience of our strategy and the strength of our mega brands all reinforce our confidence in our ability to deliver on our 2025 outlook of 4 to 8% EBITDA growth. With that, I would like to hand it back to Michel for some final comments.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thanks, Fernando. Before opening for Q&A, I would like to take a moment to recap on our performance year to date. We are encouraged by our results for the first nine months of the year as we delivered EBITDA growth at the midpoint of our outlook range. Underlying P’s increased by mid single digits in U.S. dollar and by 12% in constant currency. While our volume performance has been below potential due to a combination of cyclical and short term factors, we remain confident in the long term fundamentals of our business. With strong free cash flow generation, we have increased capital allocation flexibility and announced a $6 billion share buyback program, an interim dividend of $0.15 and a bond redemption of $2 billion.

As Fernando just mentioned, our performance year to date and the strategic choices we have made position us well to deliver on our outlook for the year. Our brands have met consumers in some of the most iconic events in sports and culture this year, creating moments of celebration and cheers. As we look to 2026, there is an incredible opportunity to activate the beer category because next year, on top of our powerful lineup of mega platforms, we have the FIFA World Cup in North America. This iconic event encompasses 104 games across three countries. Each game is an opportunity to bring beer and sports together and create unforgettable moments for our consumers. With that, I’ll hand it back to the operator for the Q&A.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. In the interest of time, we will limit participants to one question and one follow up question. If you have a question or comment, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. We do ask that while you pose your question, you pick up your handset to provide optimal sound quality. Our first questions come from the line of Edward Mundy with Jefferies. Please proceed with your questions.

Morning, Michel. Morning, Fundo. Two questions for me please. The first is around the board’s thinking around the shift to a two-year buyback program of $6 billion. Given the balance sheet repair, is it to signal clearer capital allocation priorities from here? Is there also a practical reason insofar as it gives you a little bit more flexibility in the pace of buybacks, given that historically you’ve tended to get your buybacks done ahead of schedule? That is my first question. My second question is around the broader category, the broader beer category. One of your peers recently highlighted a medium-term outlook for global beer of about 1% volumes. Putting the external environment to one side, how important is it that the rate of pricing required across the broader industry could start to moderate after the huge extremes over the last few years given inflation and negative transaction?

How important is it that the pricing going forward might become less meaningful in helping to stimulate volume growth?

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Hi Fernando. Here, let me take the first question and then I will transition to Michel. When we talk about capital allocation, I think it’s always important to put in context that the objective of the capital allocation is to create long term shareholder value. The framework is unchanged and remains very disciplined within our choices. What is evolving is that now that we have an improved balance sheet, we have increased flexibility and what you see is that we are exercising some flexibility. The share buyback in itself is an effective use of capital for shareholder value creation. If you think about it as we move from an inorganic to inorganic transition, I think the first thing that was important for us was to give a framework so people understand the sort of growth that we can deliver. That’s the medium term outlook that we provided four years ago.

If you look at what we did in the beginning of this year, we provide a framework with the ambition for a progressive dividend. I think now the share buyback is just another natural evolution on that, a two year share buyback of $6 billion, but that should not be seen on a standalone basis. It’s the share buyback, it’s also the interim dividend which is consistent with our ambition of progressive dividend over time and also the debt reduction that we announced which is consistent with our capital allocation priorities. Much more of an evolution and kind of the consequence of the additional flexibility that we have nowadays.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Michelle Eyad, good morning. Thanks for the question. I think that just building on the share buyback point, there is a lot of consistency on the capital allocation choices and this, of course, is the return to shareholders, the debt, but that is the number one priority that we have, which is organic growth. We’ll continue to invest for this number one priority, which is drive the category and the company forward on an organic basis. In terms of the category overall, I think that we shared with you during the capital markets day the view that we have around the category and the potential that we see for future growth coming from structural tailwinds related to economic growth, demographics, and where this growth most likely will come from developing and emerging markets where we have a strong footprint, strong growth to market, and scale.

Therefore, we are in the same line where the full potential of the category today would be around 1% growth in normal conditions. The more we increase the addressable market with these beyond beer propositions, there are opportunities for us to further stretch this growth, right? Looking at the short term, I think that we see this Latin America impact on the beer category overall. Latin America is very important for CPGs, but is much more important for the beer category to the range of almost twice the size that it represents for beer versus other CPGs. We saw some pressure across CPGs overall in Latin America, but this is more impactful for beer and even more for us because Latin America is much bigger for us than it is for beer overall and for other CPGs.

When you think about price, I think that there are two components on that. One is that beer is an affordable category and affordability is very important for beer. After three, four years of high cost pressure, high inflation for us and for consumers in general, of course we had to be very disciplined in revenue management and to recover our margins, as you just saw during the webcast, to continue to recover our margins over time because of revenue but also cost discipline. As we look forward, inflation is normalized, coming down, so we would expect less pressure on the prices coming from inflation.

I’m of the view that we should be very disciplined as category leaders to continue to build over time the capabilities to move prices with inflation so we can continue to recover our margins, but also have a good category and ability to deliver on the investments and everything that we want to do for the future and how you do that. You need to balance, as we always do, the affordability with the ability to build brands, because premium brands, they command premium price, use the right revenue management capabilities. A good revenue management strategy needs to deliver at least with inflation. This is in the long run, because in the long run we need to capture the cost increase and the opportunities that we have to premiumize in the market. Nothing changed on our side there.

I think that what’s going to change is a little bit of the environment because inflation is coming down, therefore less pressure will hit consumers. Thanks for the question.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Mitchell Collett with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you. Hi, Michel. Hi, Fernando. I’ve also got two questions, I think one for each of you. The first one is on longer term volume growth. I mean, you cited some of the external factors that have impacted not just this quarter, but overall 2025. How do you think about volume growth longer term for the category, particularly in your footprint? You gave the comment that 2026 offers an incredible opportunity to activate the beer category. Do you think you can get back to volume growth in 2026? My second question, which I think is for Fernando, is can you give us any color at this stage? I know it’s early on the potential impact of input costs in 2026. I’m specifically thinking about the impact of FX and the timing of your FX hedges. Thank you. Hi, Mitch. Good morning.

I think that you’re right, like 2025 is being very typical and that is this combination of the pressure that inflation has been built over consumer and the consumer baskets. We see this overall across many markets, reduction on the total basket, while beer and alcohol has been maintaining the share of baskets. It’s really about a little bit of pressure on consumption. There is this big one-off of this change in the weather pattern because of the La Niña that is impacting the Americas. Some countries such as Brazil were heavily impacted by that. The fundamentals behind the category growth remain the same. As we said before, a lot of this growth, projected to be over 80%, will come from developing and developed markets. Our footprint is very strong in these regions and I see no reason today why this will change over time.

Next year then becomes a very special year. While you know that we don’t guide for volume, we see the outlook as a positive one because there is less pressure on consumers coming from lower inflation. As salaries rebuild, purchase power rebuilds, prices tend to normalize. Consumers tend to be in a better position. I’m not making any forecast on the consumer sentiment, neither the purchase power for next year. Consumer sentiment is impacting this year and as everybody else, we hope that things will normalize over time. If this bounces back, it should be a positive as well. Overall for CPGs, it’s hard to believe that’s going to be worse than what we saw this year. The worst case scenario should be the same, but we think that can be better. Then we have FIFA.

FIFA over time is being $0.20 to $0.25 impact on the category in the years that we have the games. The fact that’s going to happen in North America is great for the category because it’s going to impact the overall Americas, of course, but then has great viewership time across Europe and Africa and of course in Asia. People always adapt. The nightlife is much stronger as a consumer occasion in APAC. I think that’s going to be a great year for FIFA. Everybody’s very excited. The games will be longer next year because more teams, so more people participating. We can’t wait to see the fans across the globe gathering and gathering over a beer to watch for that. We continue to work hard focusing on what we can control. You see that the growth of non-alcohol is a great opportunity for us.

Our beyond beer portfolio continues to accelerate and we continue to innovate in the balance choices. We are providing more options for consumers in more occasions. We are doing our part and we are looking forward to see how consumers will react next year.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Thanks for the question and hi Mitch, Fernando here. Your question on cogs. We don’t provide any specific guidance on cost of goods sold, but you know our hedging policy always hedge 12 months ahead. If you look at where FX is today and what it was one year ago, you can get a.

Conference Operator: Good sense on that.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: From where the market is, it’s kind of more like a normal year. Once again, I think we said normal year in 2025. I think 2026 is more of a normal year. Different dynamics in different markets, I think next year probably given where you see Midwest premium today, probably a little bit more pressure on the U.S., but then again, this is based on current market prices. They can always move around and effects a little bit the other way around as we saw in 2025. In 2025, we saw more pressure in the first half given the currency behavior in 2024 and more pressure in the second half. I’m sorry, and less pressure in the first half. In 2026, given how things are evolving, things continue to be the same way. Likely to be the other way around, but then again, this is basically on current effects.

We still have two months to go, but let’s keep monitoring that.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Very helpful.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Lawrence Wyatt with Barclays. Please proceed with your questions.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Afternoon, Michel and Fernando, thanks very much for the questions. A couple from me as well, please. Firstly, you kindly gave some information on the exit rate in Mexico suggesting that.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Was improving throughout the quarter.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: I was wondering if you had a similar view on what was happening in both Brazil and Colombia just to see if we’re getting a similar consumer improvement in other parts of Latin America. Secondly, perhaps Fernando, historically you would say that going below 2 times net to EBITDA was value destructive for AB InBev. Just wondering if you continue to share that view and what steps you could take if that metric were to be getting close to being hit. Thank you.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Hey Lawrence, thanks for the question. Yes, we made a comment on the exit rate for Mexico because I think that was very telling. The fact that once the price environment normalized a little bit, the weather was slightly better. We could see not only our market share bouncing back, but also volumes improving through August and September. Unfortunately, in Brazil it is a tale of two stories. I think that the industry overall remains very impacted by this very unseasonable weather. At this point, it can really be said that’s unseasonable because the winter was cold. Yes, winters can be cold, but you see September is usually much better weather in Brazil, even October, and still cold and wet in a very strange way. Brazil didn’t improve a lot for the weather. Of course, we’ve been adjusting our execution.

Relative prices in the market improved after more than a year of prices being very open on the gap, and our share bounced back strongly, which reinforces the strength of our portfolio. The way that our mega brands are growing in Brazil and the share gains on the premium segment that continue to accelerate. When you look at Colombia, Colombia is not getting all this impact. Colombia volumes continue to grow, share of alcohol beverages continue to improve, very strong performance. Consumer confidence is not that high, but not as low. Inflationary pressures in Colombia are more moderate, so consumer is in better shape there than it is in some other parts in Latin America.

Of course, this all is bouncing back and now we are looking at the summer so we can see really where the industry is going to land overall and how the weather is going to be. As we said, as we look forward for 2026, some of these one offs can actually be positive as we build back in 2026. Thanks for the question and Lawrence, Fernando here.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Your question on leverage. We’ve been very consistently saying that our optimal capital structure is around two times. It’s also fair to say that most of the benefit of leverage you get once you get to three times. The long term goal is still two times, but you have less of an urgency to go there. You can have more flexibility once you’re below this level, which we reached at the end of last year. Of course, every year is going to be slightly different. Sometimes you have effects, fluctuations, but the resilience of our business gives us the consistency to be more on the, as I can say, more on the offense. Now bear in mind that the product number one is always organic growth.

We keep investing, we keep, if you see this quarter, sales and market, we continue to invest there, but definitely way more flexibility and kind of still two times is the optimal capital structure.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Robert Ottenstein with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your questions.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Great.

Thank you very much. Two questions from me as well. The first one is I want to focus on the announcement that you’ve won the Champions League. That came as a bit of a surprise to me. Please put that in the context of how you’re looking at sports and some of these big assets, how that’s evolving. Most importantly, obviously there’s a lot of big numbers on this. I don’t know if you can talk about the numbers on this, but maybe talk about the ROI, how you see that being an efficient use of marketing investment, and also a little bit about timing. My understanding is that Heineken still has it for the next couple of years. That’s the first question on the Champions League. The second question, arguably in the U.S., perhaps the greatest success this year has been Cutwater.

That’s a brand that you’ve had for a number of years and it’s just exploded this year. Maybe talk a little bit about the success that Cutwater is having this year, what you think the drivers are for that, whether you think that’s sustainable, what you’ve learned from it, and can you take that model to other countries?

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Thank you.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Robert.

Conference Operator: Morning.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thanks for the questions. Starting with the recent announcement and the role of these events, sports and occasions, I would start by talking about consumers. This is the main reason why we do the investments and why we are lining up into mega platforms. Consumers are behaving different and consumers are as usual evolving. As such, it was very important as we build our strategy and we fine tune our execution to make sure that we are leading and moving fast to where consumers are and will be more and more. That is why when we start leading in terms of execution with this concept of mega platforms and mega brands, integrating our brands with big partner, big partnerships, big events and relevant cultural moments is key for our brands to win in the long term.

As I said before, these winning brands that command premium price and premium positioning are very important on our strategy. This works for FIFA, this works for Netflix, this will also work for UEFA, which is an important component as we build this integration with platforms and culturally relevant moments that consumers are looking for, are talking about and are experiencing. It is all about the consumer, how we integrate our brands and these relevant cultural moments and how our brands over execute competitors within the category. That is a great addition. We could not be more excited with the opportunity. As everything moves, 2027 is the right timeline for us to start executing on that. The second part on the U.S. and Cutwater, I think that you have been following.

We have been talking about this portion of the consumer and consumption occasions where bitter is not the choice, where more refreshing is not the choice, where people want to indulge a little bit more, where the palate is a little bit more sweet, right, and more mixed. We decided to bet on that back in 2018 with Cutwater. We have been building this brand very patiently, but we have built the brand in a very high quality way. Consistency, right distribution, right price as a premium brand, right investments, right consumer occasions. As the brand improves availability, as consumers get to know the higher quality that we have on this proposition and we position very right for the right occasion, I think that the brand is gaining relevance. What we saw over the summer now is consistent brand building and relevance getting to a tipping point.

This brand is now the number one share gainer in spirits, triple digits over the summer, becoming one of the top 10 spirits brands in the U.S. and built from scratch. If one would say what we learned from that is that yes, we can build brands in a very relevant way, yes, we can build this Beyond Beer segment to be what we expect to be for us, so incremental and something that will increase our addressable market. We have been rolling out this notion of the Beyond Beer and how to tap into more occasions across many markets. I gave here during the webcast the example of us rolling out now Flying Fish across many different markets from Africa to Europe to Americas. The early results and indicators are very positive as well. There is more to come and we continue to build Cutwater.

We are just at the beginning. I think that the brand, still very small for us, is accelerating and we have a big ambition to drive not only Cutwater but Neutral and the other propositions that we’ve been betting on in this Beyond Beer space. Thank you for the question.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Andrea Bistacki with Bank of America. Please proceed with your questions. Yes.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Hi guys. I have two also please. This is the first one. Your volumes have been more challenging this year, but after nine months you’re still very much, very much on track. In fact, you’re at the middle of your 4 to 8% EBITDA guidance range. I wanted to ask whether you’ve had to make any adaptations to the plans that you would have had at.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: The beginning of the year.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Maybe more agile revenue management or something more tighter cost control than you would have had at the beginning of the year. If you could discuss this a touch. Just on the MAS, the Middle Americas zone, there was a question earlier on Colombia. I just wanted to broaden it slightly. Middle Americas ex Mexico is very profitable for you. It continues to deliver solid volume growth.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: Could you just discuss a bit.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: On how the environment is in these markets, why you think it’s different from, say, Mexico or Brazil, how confident you are.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: In your ability to continue to deliver.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Volume growth in these high margin countries in the next 12 months or so. Thank you. Andrea, good morning. Thanks for the question. I think that in a way they are in the same vicinity right on volume and how performance and our execution is adjusting, adapting on this environment. I think that the environment is one that’s very dynamic and we’ve been seeing this of course over the last few years. Every year there is some extra components. As I said before, to me, the extra component on this dynamic operating environment this year was the unseasonable weather in the Americas, but more pronounced in Latin America. I think that we’ve been adjusting. We often say here in house that our strategies, just like beer, can be used in many different occasions. We’ve been adapting the execution. We are very agile in reallocating resources.

Our portfolio has breadth that is useful for us in this moment because we have from premium brands to value propositions that they can adapt and be used to accelerate a little bit our execution when it’s needed. The discipline in cost management, the discipline in revenue management was very, very important for us. A differentiator, I would say, during this period because despite a very challenging consumer environment, we are able to deliver margin expansion, EBITDA growth, EPS growth. Very solid financial results that are a product of our very solid operational capabilities and delivers through the quarter. When you look at mass, it is not only very important for us and very relevant for our performance during the quarter and in the long run.

This quarter specifically because overweight in the beer category versus other CPGs and overweight for us, AB InBev was a big impact on the volume. It is relevant. We are adapting, brands are performing very well, we continue to invest, we continue to manage the portion of the business that we control. In the long term we continue to see this as a very relevant growth driver for the industry. We are best positioned to capture this growth over time with the operations, scale, and brands that we have in the region. Thank you for the question.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Celine Panutti with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your questions.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. My first question, could you, coming back maybe on the Cutwater question, but in a broader sense, how big is beyond beer now for you in terms of the portfolio? You said it grew, I think, 27%. Where do you see the capabilities outside or the opportunities outside of North America? If you could help us a bit frame the growth journey and as well the profitability of that category both in North America and outside of North America. My second question, I think it was an impressive performance in gross margin despite some of the FX headwinds that you were facing. Could you give us a view on the building block on the gross margin performance in the quarter, please? Thank you. Hi Celine, good morning. Thanks for the question.

I think that I’ll hit some numbers quickly here to cover the points that you asked about. I think that the last time that we talked about that, I mentioned that beyond beer is a great opportunity for us because it cuts across this interaction of the different alcohol beverages and is incremental for us, right? 2/3 plus of the volume that we capture in these occasions from these consumers is incremental to our portfolio. I also remember that the last time that we talked about this, this was around 1% of our overall volume. This today for us is around 2%. It is growing 27%. The opportunity here is huge because the addressable market outside of the beer category is very relevant and is bigger than the beer category itself. It is a huge addressable market.

Today it is a very small portion of our volumes, but it is growing very fast. It is all about the consumers. There is a group of consumers there that indulge in different occasions with different liquid profiles. We have been learning a lot about that and we have been having some very successful launch and scale up products in this area. Cutwater, Neutral, Brutal Fruit, Flying Fish, Busch Light Apple, to mention a few of them. On average, they are sold at higher prices than the beer equivalent products that we have. They have profitability per hectoliter per SKU that is higher than the profitability that we have with equivalent beer SKUs. I think that we continue to work hard on that.

This is small for us today, 2% of the portfolio, but it is big in our opportunity to grow with more consumers in more occasions and in a very large addressable market of consumer occasions and volume pool. I’ll hand over to Fernando to.

Fernando Tennenbaum, Chief Financial Officer, AB InBev: The second question, Celine. On the gross margin side, I think the gross margin side one is a function of your health brand portfolio. You see the net revenues per hectoliter, as Michel said, premium brands command premium pricing. You can move with the revenue management agenda. The second component of that is of course the cost of goods sold. In the cost of goods sold, you have one component that is the FX and commodities, which is market price, but you have the other components, which is the efficiencies, the kind of fixed costs. There is always a kind of opportunity for us to keep driving on that. For me, it’s a combination of strong portfolio with premium brands and also driving efficiency on the cost of goods sold.

If you remember, we talked about it several times that when we look for margins, we still see opportunities for us to improve our operations, to improve our margins, to improve. A lot of that would be coming from gross profit. It’s just delivering on what we already mentioned several times in the past.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next questions come from the line of Simon Hales with Citi. Please proceed with your questions.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you. Hi Michel. Hi Fernando. My first question, I wonder, Michel, could you talk a little bit more about China? Again, I wonder if you could quantify how big the destock was in Q3 in the context of the little over 11% fall in volumes, and should we expect some further destocking, do you think, in Q4? Is there any reason to believe in overall terms that your Q4 volumes in China will be less bad than they have been in Q3? Perhaps just associated with that, you highlight some new innovations that you’ve got coming in the market. Magnum and some one liter cans, are they in market yet or will they be in market in Q4? That’s the first question.

The second one, a little bit more briefly, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the early consumer and retail reaction to the launch of Form Energy in the U.S. and maybe highlight what really differentiates that brand from other competitors in the energy space. Hi Simon, good morning. Thanks for the question. On China, I think that what we highlighted in prior quarters is a kind of one third of what we see in the volumes is coming from really geographical footprint, channel footprint. One third comes from these adjustments on the inventories. You give me here an opportunity I’ll take to talk about this. I think that just so I’m clear about the adjustments on the inventories, of course, when regions start to decline, we need to adjust our inventories with the wholesalers so we can have a healthy operating environment.

This is what we are doing this year as channels shift as well. You have a second adjustment that needs to be done so we keep the channels healthy, and once they rebound, we can then grow with the channels without stressing the ecosystem. One third is really the shift that happened between on and off premise, where the off premise started growing faster. The propositions that grew in the off premise are more on the core plus sub premium, and then this caused a share loss for us because we were more on the off premise, and we are of course smaller and less distributed in the off premise. Here is where we are making most of the adjustments. When we look at China, most of this adjustment is being already done.

There is still, of course, a little bit to be done as you go through October, November, December, but should not be beyond the fourth quarter. At the same time, because we start expanding distribution off premise, adjusting innovation, adjusting execution. That will be a combination of continuing to right size the inventories, but then having acceleration on our STRs and some of the innovations that we launched and tested. You mentioned Banmagno. Very successful in India, very successful where we launched it in China. We will start to roll it out now, not only the product itself, but some very interesting new packaging that is making a big strike in China will come to Banmagno. We had the new Corona can called drop line can, which is a full lid opening can. That’s very interesting. We launched it first in Zero.

2.0 was a big success, and now we’re going to expand distribution on this packaging. We have some new deals coming in Harbin as well, not only the expansion of Zero Sugar, but some new propositions there that will be helpful as we further enhance our route to market in the off-premise. Inventory adjustments, one-third channel shifts, one-third, these both should phase out as we go through quarter four. We have increased availability in the off-premise, increased investments for execution and innovation that will start to kick in in quarter four and will be very relevant for us in the next year. Form is interesting because in a way we’ve been participating in the energy drink in the U.S. for over a decade, and we have had some very successful scale up of brands in our network, but we were never majority owners of any of these brands.

While we were an important component of the scale up and growth of these brands, we were not the owners. The latest one we divested at the beginning of this year, end of last year, was a good divestment, was a good run of the brand. Now we have a brand that we are majority owners, committed to the long term. Incredible partners that are with us in the journey from our wholesalers to the Form partners to the UFC. Not UFC, but Dana White partner with us in building that. Brand launch is being very exciting. The product is great because I think that the most differentiated thing is the fact that we are focused on a very specific consumer cohort, those who do the work and need this energy every day.

The product brings this clean energy approach, very balanced elements, and I think that the proposition is a strong one, is getting good traction, and we are just at the beginning. I think that there will be a nice upside coming next year because the launch was this year. Distribution is building, awareness is building, and we have some flavors that we are expanding on the back end of this year and will be fully available next year. The most important thing here is our commitment and investment to the long term, because now we are majority owners of the brand and we have incredible partners that are with us on the journey. Thanks for the question.

Conference Operator: Thank you. These were the final questions. If your question has not been answered, please feel free to contact the investor relations team. I will now turn the floor back over to Mr. Michel Doukeris for closing remarks.

Michel Doukeris, Chief Executive Officer, AB InBev: Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for joining, for the ongoing partnership and support for our business. I hope that you are all doing well. Remember to drink a beer for Halloween, and we’ll talk soon. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s earnings conference call and webcast. Please disconnect your lines at this time and enjoy the rest of your day.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.