Earnings call transcript: Heineken N.V. reports strong Q4 2025 growth

Heineken (AS:HEIN) N.V. (HEIA) reported robust financial results for the fourth quarter of 2025, showcasing significant growth in both revenue and operating profit. The company’s net revenue increased by 5% organically, reaching 30 billion euros, while operating profit rose by 8.3% to 4.5 billion euros. With a strong financial health score of 2.7 (rated as "GOOD" by InvestingPro), the company maintains solid operational performance. Despite macroeconomic uncertainties, Heineken’s stock showed a modest decline in premarket trading, reflecting cautious investor sentiment.

Key Takeaways

• Net revenue grew 5% to 30 billion euros, driven by strong brand performance.
• Operating profit increased by 8.3%, with a margin improvement of 40 basis points.
• Heineken Zero and premium brands led product growth.
• The company proposed a 7.5% dividend increase.
• Heineken maintains a strong market position in non-alcoholic beer.

Company Performance

Heineken’s performance in Q4 2025 reflects its strategic focus on premiumization and innovation. The company’s flagship Heineken brand grew by 8.8%, supported by new product launches such as Heineken Silver. Additionally, Heineken Zero saw a 10% increase, underscoring the company’s leadership in the non-alcoholic segment. Heineken’s diversified presence across over 70 countries and its local production strategy have contributed to its resilience in various markets.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 30 billion euros, up 5% year-over-year
• Operating profit: 4.5 billion euros, up 8.3%
• Operating profit margin: 15.1%, improved by 40 basis points
• Diluted EPS: 4.89 euros
• Proposed dividend: 1.87 euros per share, up 7.5%
• Net debt to EBITDA ratio: 2.2x

Market Reaction

Despite strong financial results, Heineken’s stock price showed a slight decline in premarket trading, dropping by 1.52% to 184.02 euros. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock appears overvalued at current levels, trading at a P/E ratio of 62.5x and an EV/EBITDA multiple of 31.15x. This movement may reflect investor caution amid broader market uncertainties and the company’s cautious outlook. Heineken’s stock remains within its 52-week range, with a high of 219.22 euros and a low of 146.92 euros, while analysts maintain a consensus hold recommendation.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Heineken has set an organic operating profit growth target of 4-8% for 2025. The company anticipates continued volume and revenue growth, supported by increased marketing investments and a focus on digital technology platforms. With a robust current ratio of 3.11 and moderate debt levels, Heineken aims to achieve at least 400 million euros in productivity savings in 2025, despite expecting mid-single digit increases in variable costs.

For comprehensive analysis of Heineken’s growth prospects and financial outlook, investors can access the detailed Pro Research Report available exclusively on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

"We are truly building, investing, and future-proofing our business, not just for the next year, but for the next generation," said CEO Dolf van den Meeg. This sentiment reflects Heineken’s commitment to long-term growth and innovation. CFO Harold added, "We have developed a number of scenarios, but these scenarios are based on my current knowledge," highlighting the company’s proactive approach to navigating potential challenges.

Risks and Challenges

• Macroeconomic uncertainties could impact consumer spending and market dynamics.
• Potential tariff impacts and regulatory changes in key markets.
• Challenges in African markets, particularly Nigeria and Ethiopia.
• Rising variable costs could pressure margins.
• Competitive pressures in the premium and non-alcoholic segments.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Heineken’s productivity savings strategy and its performance in key markets like Brazil, Mexico, and Vietnam. The company addressed concerns about challenges in Africa and discussed potential impacts of tariffs on its operations. These discussions provided insights into Heineken’s strategic priorities and risk management approaches.

Full transcript - Heico Corp (NYSE:HEI) A (HEIA) Q4 2024:

Tristan, Host/Moderator, Heineken: afternoon, everybody from Amsterdam. Thank you for joining us for today’s live webcast of our 2024 full year results. Your host will be Dolf van den Meeg, our CEO and Perot van Mooek, our CFO. Following the presentation, we will be happy to take your questions.

The presentation includes forward looking statements and expectations based on management’s current views and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, and it is possible that the actual results may differ materially. For more information, please refer to the disclaimer on the first page of this presentation. I will now turn the call over to Dolf. Dolf?

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Thank you, Tristan. Welcome, everyone. Last year, we delivered a solid year demonstrating momentum and progress on our multiyear strategy, Evergreen. Before we delve into the results, let’s start with a brief reminder of our strategy, which continues to shape our business. Our ambition is to deliver superior balanced growth to consistently create long term value.

We do this with a clear focus on five strategic priorities embedded in the business as indicated on the left. These priorities propel the flywheel of our growth algorithm with that to top first and foremost growth. We’re targeting superior and balanced growth, both volume and value growth. Growth enables gains in productivity and this in turn fuels resources for investing in further growth and to improve profitability. And this year, certainly has delivered the balance embodied in our dream diamond.

We delivered growth, balanced between volume and value, continuous productivity, better capital efficiency and made progress against our ambitions on sustainability and responsibility. Let’s take a closer look at our key highlights of the year. First and foremost, we achieved broad based beer volume growth in all four regions. We gained or held volume market share in the majority of our markets. We made a meaningful material step up in marketing and selling investments behind our brands and invested significantly more behind our digital and technology platforms supported by our productivity programs.

At the same time, we were able to deliver strong profit growth with strong cash flow generation. This has enabled us to increase our cash returns to shareholders, including a dividend in excess of SEK1 billion and a new SEK1.5 billion share buyback program, which Harald will discuss

Harold, CFO, Heineken: in more detail.

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Additionally, as we look ahead to 2025 and taking into account macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, we expect operating profit by next year to grow organically in the 4% to 8% range. So let’s take a look at our financial highlights. Net revenue by year grew 5% organically versus last year. Significantly, our growth was balanced and broad based as net revenue per hectoliterbaix grew 3.5%, while total beer volume was up by 1.6%. The momentum behind the Heineken brand continues with 8.8%.

Operating profit by year grew by 8.3 and the margin was 15.1%, up 40 basis points versus last year. Notable was the strong improvement in The Americas. Net profit by year improved by 7.3% with the growth coming mainly from the strong performance in operating profit. Diluted EPS by Air London at EUR 4.89. Huggoldt will cover this in more detail later.

The delivery of our growth has been balanced and moreover the volume growth itself has been of high quality. Mainstream brands grew slightly ahead of our total portfolio, led by the big brands in our biggest markets including Kingfisher (LON:KGF) in India, Kooskampone in UK and Hamsol in Brazil. Our premium beer brands grew 5%, more than triple the rate of our total beer portfolio. The growth has been delivered by a wide range of premium brands and extensions across our regions, including Kingfisher Ultra in India, Vilamoretti in Europe, Dozeckis in Americas and Esprados in Nigeria. And of course, Lepa Heineken, which was up almost 9%.

The growth was broad with 24 markets in the double digits, most notably in Brazil, China and Vietnam. Additionally, Heineken zero grew 10%. This high quality volume growth led to a 5% net revenue by year growth with positive pricemix in all regions. Operating leverage led to good revenue to profit conversion with operating profit by year growth over 8%. Now let me take you through the performance in our regions.

First, Africa and Middle East, where we achieved volume growth and successfully navigated volatility under challenging conditions. Net revenue by acc grew organically by 24.5% with 3% beer volume growth and a strong pricemix of 21%, mainly by pricing for inflation and currency devaluation. Operating profit by accrual 31% as pricing, accelerating volume growth and continued productivity gains more than offset cost increases. In Nigeria, we successfully navigated high inflation and severe currency devaluation, actively adapting our cost base. Despite difficult economic conditions, I’m pleased how the team grew volume in the teens and gained overall share.

Goldberg grew volume in the 30s and Heineken and Desperados led to growth in our premium portfolio. We’re competing and winning with a diverse range of drinks, beer and Beyond beer. Our non alcoholic malts performed strongly and with the addition of Distel Nigeria, we expanded our portfolio to include fast growing wine and distilled spirit brands. Also in South Africa, we completed the integration of Distel positioning us as a strong challenger with a competitive multi category business model. Beer is back in growth supported by the launch of the 65CL returnable glass bottle for Heineken.

Our Beyond Beer portfolio led by Savanna and Bernini continued their strong momentum. In our wine and spirits portfolio, we have seen some solid growth from key brands such as JC Zaru, Amarula and Cliff Drift Brandy as we use our full platform to drive the growth. Elsewhere in Africa, we took effective pricing in Ethiopia to protect profitability before and after a steep local currency devaluation. It’s also worth calling out the strong performance in Egypt, our latest market to implement our digital backbone to which I will return later. On to The Americas, which really stood out due to its strong operating profit performance, while funding a significant step up in marketing investments.

Net revenue by April ’3 percent and beer volume up 1%. Price mix grew by 3% benefiting from pricing and premiumization. Operating proven by April ’20 four point five percent, supported by a better portfolio mix and productivity savings. In Mexico, we delivered strong operating profit growth benefiting from the productivity programs. We also invested back in the business both in marketing and in our production footprint as we started construction of our new brewery in Yucatan.

During the year, we had solid volume growth. Tecato original and Dos Equis grew volume mid single digits and high single digits respectively in the old grew in the teens, leveraging its deep roots in Mexican culture. In Brazil, we maintained and expanded our leadership in the premium category as we further stepped up investment behind our brands. Heineken achieved its eleventh consecutive year of double digit growth. In mainstream, Amstel is now a top five brand in Brazil, doubling its volume over the past three years to 11,000,000 hectoliters.

In a challenging U. S. Market, our market share remains stable with Heineken zero recorded its sixth year of consecutive growth. Elsewhere in The Americas, we achieved growth and share gains in Panama, Peru and Ecuador. So moving on to APAC, where we significantly stepped up our marketing investment to set up the region for further growth.

Net revenue bank grew by five percent, beer volume by 4% and price mix 1%, operating profits increased by 2%. In Vietnam, the market returned to growth in both the on and off premise channel by the end of the year. The Heineken brand grew volumes in the 50s led by Heineken Silver. During the year, we actively adjusted our portfolio as channel dynamics evolved. This has led to our mainstream brands to go in the double digits with BF yet up almost 60% and La Rue Smooth growing and gaining share in Central Vietnam.

In India, full year was up by a high single digit as our momentum continues, underpinning our belief in the future potential of this market. The premium portfolio grew in the 30s gaining share in the segment led by Kingfisher Ultra and UltraMax. In China, Heineken continued its strong growth trajectory in the premium segment. Volume was up in the high teens driven by the strong momentum of both Heineken Ore Canal and Heineken Silver. Elsewhere in Asia, Cambodia volume declined, pressured by challenging conditions in a declining market.

In Laos, we gained significant market share as we grew beer foil by more than 60%. Now on to Europe, where we are focused on investing behind our brands and transforming our portfolio to refuel growth. Net revenue by year declined by 1.5%, partly due to lower intercompany exports with both price mix and volume slightly positive. Productivity savings financed our step up in marketing and ensured price and promotional competitiveness, whilst also enabling operating profit Bayer (OTC:BAYRY) to grow 2% organically. We gained our health market share most of our markets, most notably in The UK where our full innovation led portfolio delivered share gains to which I will return in a minute.

In Western Europe, consumer sentiment impacted our growth, though pricing remained stable after the sizable increase last year, with strong growth in our next generation brands such as CALIA in France, ELAGILA in Spain, TESOLs in The Netherlands and Esparados more broadly in Europe. The non alcoholic beer inside the portfolio grew by high single digit led by Heineken zero. Elsewhere in Europe, both revenues and volumes were good, notably in Southeast Europe with strong performances in The Czech Republic, Greece and Croatia. I wanted to return to The UK, where we continue to gain both significant volumes and value share in both on and off premise channels. We have transformed our business to ignite growth through different levers of our portfolio.

Bira Moretti is the leading lager brand on draft in UK and continues to drive the growth. With the introduction of Bira Moretti Salle di Mare, we had one of the biggest innovations in the beer market over the past year. Beef for Time is now the leading crop brand in UK, led by NECO IPA, which had another year of on and off trade share gains. Inches and Old Moots are growing double digits, further premiumizing the cider category. Kooskomo, with which the most successful UK alcoholic beverage launches over a decade, underpins our double digit growth in the mainstream segment.

We’ve continued to innovate on fosters, recently with fosters proper Shandy and signing a multi year partnership with the professional Dartz Corporation. Dartz has become the most watched sport on British TV after the Premier League. We have invested more than GBP 200,000,000 revamping our 2,400 strong pup estate in the past five years, providing great surroundings and high quality experiences. As such, our pup estate has significantly outperformed the wider pubs market. More broadly, we were rated by the Advantages Group as the best supplier to all on trade customers and the number two supplier across all CPT players by grocery customers.

Moving on to Brand Heineken, leading once again our portfolio. The sustained momentum behind the Heineken brand continues at pace. The innovations of silver and zero have been additive to growing the brand power and volume of Heineken original. Total (EPA:TTEF) Heineken has grown 75% since 2018. Heineken’s growth continued into 2024, adding another 9% of growth with 24 markets in the double digits, most notably in Brazil, China and Vietnam.

Heineken Zero and Heineken Silver have been once again strong contributors, up 1034% respectively. I’m also especially proud that the Heineken brand continues to be admired for its creativity in both idea and execution. Our award winning campaign celebrates social moments around our brands and we continue to leverage global partnerships including Formula One and both the men’s and women’s UEFA Champions League. Let’s dive a bit deeper into Zero Zero. We continue to be the global leader in the non alcoholic beer, a category that delivers growth, profitability and moderation.

Since the launch of Heineken zero zero in 2018, we have captured more than 40% of the total global growth of the non alcohol and beer market, three to four times our fair share. Heiligen Zero Zero is the largest global brand in zero alcohol, having revolutionized the category. It’s now available and admires in 117 markets, growing by double digits in 28 markets this year. Moreover, we continue to introduce zerozero varieties of our key brands, and more recently, SAWS Zero in Brazil, El Aguila Sinfil Terra Zero in Spain, a broad range of CYC0 flavors in Poland and Espadrado zero more globally. I wanted to reflect on the significant investments we are making this and the coming years.

Enabled by our productivity initiatives Harold will touch upon later. This year we stepped up our marketing investment by double digits investing 0.3 or 3,000,000,000 in total or almost 10% of the revenue behind our brands. In every one of our regions, our investments in marketing was ahead of revenue growth OG. We’re building new greenfield breweries in markets with strong growth potential including Mexico, Brazil and with our JV partner in Dubai. And we are investing significant sums behind our digital technology programs including our eB2B platform connecting over 700,000 customers in fragmented traditional channels, reaching $13,000,000,000 in gross merchandising value in 2024.

Our multi year digital backbone program that simplifies back office processes whilst building a global data foundation and unlocking the value of that data, which we lever throughout the business by leveraging artificial intelligence from our connected breweries to our shared service centers. We are truly building, investing and future proofing our business, not just for the next year, but for the next generation. And of course, when looking at future proofing our business, Ruhr better rolled our strategy to deliver on our environmental social responsibility ambitions where we are progressing across all three pillars. In our ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions in scope one and two by 02/1930, we continue to make progress, reduced our emissions by 34% in the last two years. On our journey towards healthy watersheds, we improved water efficiency across all our breweries to 3.1 liters per liter of beer produced and now have over 36 water balancing projects.

On the solar pillar, we achieved our targets of at least 30% women in senior management roles by 2025, a year early. On responsible consumption, as I indicated earlier, as category leaders, we continue to make progress to make sure that zero alcohol options are always a choice and broadly available. And with that, let me hand over to Harold to discuss the financial highlights. Harold?

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Thank you, Dorf, and good day to you all. I’ll first take you through the main items of our financial results, then come to our share buyback announcements before closing with our outlook for 2025. Starting with our top line performance on Slide 17. We posted an organic growth of SEK1.5 billion or 5%, delivering $30,000,000,000 of net revenue by year. In the year, we delivered a good balanced growth with volume, pricing and a positive mix effect for premiumization.

Total consolidated volume on an organic basis grew 1.4%. Beer volume grew in all our regions as Dolby indicated in line or ahead of the category in the majority of our markets. Lower third party volumes partially offset our beer volume growth, particularly in our wholesale network in Europe. Net revenue per hectoliter increased by 3.5%. The underlying pricemix on a constant geographic basis was 4.1% with a price component of 3.7%.

Pricemix improved in all our regions, more pronounced in Africa, Middle East and especially in Nigeria to offset inflation in currency devaluations. Currency translation dampened net revenue by $1,650,000,000 mainly from the devaluation of the Nigerian naira and depreciation of the Brazilian real and the Mexican peso. The consolidation effect had a net negative impact primarily due to our exit from Russia and the sale of Ramona more than offsetting the acquisition benefit of Distil and Nambrigira breweries. As we move on to the next slide, we delivered $4,500,000,000 of operating profit value, growing 8.3% organically and representing an operating profit margin value of 15.1%, up 40 basis points versus last year. The $1,500,000,000 of organic net revenue value growth on the previous page translated to $367,000,000 organic operating profit growth, a conversion of 24%.

Pricing and strong growth savings from productivity initiatives more than offset moderate total cost inflation and investments. Our variable cost per hectoliter decreased organically by low single digits as lower commodity and energy cost in The Americas and Europe more than offset a double digit increase in Africa Middle East. The latter driven by high local inflation and exchange rate devaluations in key markets such as Nigeria and Ethiopia, for which we successfully priced. Marketing and selling investment as a percentage of net revenue by year reached 9.8%, up 70 basis points compared to the prior year and reflecting an organic increase of almost $300,000,000 All regions invested in marketing and sales at a faster rate than their revenue growth. Whilst all regions contributed to the organic growth in operating profit by the Americas region was the main contributor, up 24.5%.

Next (LON:NXT) to top line growth leverage and positive portfolio mix, variable expenses benefited from lower commodity costs. In addition and proportionally more significant, margins improved due to structural productivity savings that delivered outstanding results, especially in Mexico and Brazil. For instance, we made major steps in near shoring and local sourcing, collaborating with strategic suppliers. We were also able to systematically lower our distribution cost and deliver meaningful fixed cost productivity. The Africa and Middle East region achieved the pricing needed to offset the impact from inflation and transactional currency effects.

Volume growth provided leverage and together with impressive productivity savings including sharper choices in capital expenditure reflecting a more uncertain environment, this flowed through to operating profit buyer growth. In Asia Pacific, good performance from India and the top line recovery in Vietnam contributed to operating profit buyer growth, partially offset by decline in Cambodia. In Europe, we reinvested the majority of lower variable cost and productivity gains behind growth and competitiveness, noticeable in our market share trajectory and still delivered a 35 basis points positive operating profit improvement. Consolidation changes had a negative impact of SEK62 million, primarily due to our exit from Russia and the sale from Fumona. The translational currency effect was turning on the $36,000,000 negative, mainly from the devaluation of the naira in Nigeria and depreciation of the Mexican peso and the Brazilian real.

We achieved over $600,000,000 in gross savings in 2024, surpassing our $500,000,000 target. Approximately 40% of the gross savings were delivered by our supply chain operations over the year proven to be a continued source of productivity. Secondly, strong supplier collaboration and a series of new procurement initiatives delivered another 40% of the aggregate growth savings. The remaining came from initiatives related to fixed cost optimization. A few specific examples.

In Europe, countries closely collaborated as we progressed with our supply chain transformation and brewery network optimization. We rolled out centralized demand and supply planning and transportation services, leveraging AI solutions and thus driving significant productivity. The Americas contributed a third of the saving, for instance, through portfolio harmonization and near shoring in close collaboration with strategic suppliers, both enabling a more efficient value chain, predominantly in Mexico and Brazil. The productivity initiatives in Africa and Middle East helped us to remain competitive in a high inflation environment. The teams worked hard on rightsizing operations and leveraging digital for more efficient processes.

This in turn led to a lower breakeven point for our business, specifically in Nigeria, Egypt and Ethiopia with significant benefits when volume growth was used. In Asia Pacific, our markets focused on design to sustainable value initiatives as we harmonized our packaging range across the region while still searching to consumer needs. As Dolf already mentioned and depicted on the right side of the chart, these productivity improvements not only enabled a double digit increase in marketing and selling investments in support of growth and helped fund the digitization of our business, but also and importantly helped improve productivity profitability. Let me turn to all the key financial metrics on Slide 20. Our share of profit by our from associates and joint ventures grew 16.7% organically, reflecting the strong profit growth of our associates and joint venture partners in Chile, Costa Rica and China.

Net interest expenses Gaia (NASDAQ:GAIA) increased organically by 12.7% to $543,000,000 reflecting an increase in our average effective interest rate to 3.5%, predominantly from higher interest of local borrowings in Nigeria. All the net finance expenses by year amounted to SEK271 million, an organic increase of 12.1% mainly caused by transactional foreign exchange, resulting from the devaluation of the Nigerian naira and the Ethiopian beer and the depreciation of the Brazilian real and the Mexican peso. Net profit by A increased by 7.3% organically to BRL2.74 billion. The effective tax rate by EIA was 27.9% compared to 26.8% in 2023. This increase is primarily due to the tax law changes in Brazil that came into effect on 01/01/2024.

All in all, this resulted in organic EPS value increase of 4.7% to EUR 4.89. Given our solid performance and within our target payout range of our dividend policy, we will propose at the AGM of this year a dividend increase of 7.5% share per share to EUR 1.87. This equates to an aggregate amount of EUR 1,050,000,000.00 to be returned to shareholders through dividends. Finally, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 2.2x below the long term target of below 2.5x. Let me now turn to free operating cash flow.

We recorded a cash inflow for the year of SEK3.1 billion, a SEK1.3 billion increase from last year. As a reminder, our cash delivery in 2023 was relatively soft, so the improvement should be taken in the right context. This came from a big part from the circa SEK1 billion of working capital improvements, mostly from Europe and the AmeriGas. Leaving the relatively easy comparator aside, we are pleased and encouraged to see results of specific interventions to enhance our capital productivity. A few examples.

With advanced analytics, we are optimizing our way of working, leading to improved better management and cash collection practices in The Americas. We are gaining traction to use AI in our forecasting process, thereby optimizing purchasing and inventory levels. And we’ve been working with suppliers to bring our payment terms closer to industry standards. CapEx was just under $2,500,000,000 lower than last year by $226,000,000 and representing 8.2% of net revenue by now below our guidance of 9%. We invested in additional capacity in Brazil, returnable packaging materials, for instance, in South Africa and in a can packaging factory in Mexico.

We also allocated specific funds for sustainability investments where we have now developed good practices to assess individual projects on technical feasibility and financial risk and return. Cash flow from operations before working capital changes was lower by $43,000,000 Cash used for interest, dividends and tax decreased in aggregate by $190,000,000 mainly from lower income taxes paid. Let us now turn to our capital allocation priorities. As a reminder, in our value creation model, we prioritize capital allocation towards organic growth. And this year, we had a significant step up in reinvesting back in the business, especially through higher marketing and selling investments and new capacity in key markets as I just mentioned.

We do so with a disciplined financial framework with a prudent approach to debt. We remain committed to our long term below 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA ratio. We maintain a consistent dividend policy as we have for decades paying out 30% to 40% of net profit value. As I said earlier, our proposed dividend will return over $1,000,000,000 of cash to shareholders. We also prioritize value enhancing acquisitions to enhance long term profitable growth.

And as previously indicated, we consider additional capital returns such as share buybacks. In 2024, we achieved significant deleveraging, ending well within our target capital structure supported by a strong free operating cash flow. Consequently, whilst we continue to invest in our business, we are well positioned to return additional capital to shareholders. And as such, this morning, we announced a two year share buyback program where we intend to repurchase own shares to an aggregate amount of SEK 1,500,000,000.0. Heineken Holding NV has committed to participate pro rata to its shareholding based on their 50.005% ownership.

Simultaneously, Heineken Holding has also announced a two year share buyback program where they intend to repurchase up to $750,000,000 of their shares. They will use the proceeds of its pro rata participation in our program to finance their program. Both Henken and Z and Henken Holdings will cancel the repurchase shares, thereby reducing the number of outstanding shares and issued capital. Large Green, Heineken’s Holdings’ largest shareholding and ultimate controlling shareholder of Heineken and V fully supports the program but will not participate in the share buyback. Now lastly, our outlook for 2025.

We anticipate continued macroeconomic challenges including weak consumer sentiment in Europe, volatility, inflation and currency devaluations in developing markets and geopolitical fluctuations potentially affecting our consumers. The 2025 outlook reflects our current assessment of these factors as we see them today. For the full year 2025, we foresee continued volume and revenue organic growth. However, good to mention that the first quarter will face a high comparison base and be impacted by technical factors such as fewer selling days and the timing of Easter and Tet. We expect our variable cost to rise by a mid single digit per hectoliter.

Excluding Africa and Middle East, however, where higher input the local input cost inflation and currency devaluation persist, variable costs are expected to increase by a low single digit per hectoliter. Our continuous productivity program aims to deliver at least $400,000,000 of gross savings in 2025, funding growth, digital transformation and sustainability initiatives. As it did this year, we intend to further increase in support of our brands and for marketing and selling expenses to grow ahead of revenue. Overall, we expect to grow operating profit by organically in the range of 4% to 8% with the risks and opportunities we see in the upcoming year incorporated in both ends of the range. With a more stable set of finance expenses and tax rate, we expect organic net profit to be broadly in line.

Before we go into Q and A, just once again to summarize. A solid year for Engle. We achieved broad based beer volume growth in all four regions. Our strong productivity program enabled us to materially step up our investments in marketing and sales and support our digital and technology journey. We delivered strong profit by our growth and cash flow generation, allowing us to increase cash returns to shareholders.

And as we just showed, we expect operating profit by our organically in 2025 to grow in the range of 4% to 8%. With that, we’re happy to take your questions.

Moderator, Heineken: Thank you. Our first question today comes from Edward Mundy with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Edward Mundy, Analyst, Jefferies: Afternoon, Dolf, Harold, Tristan. So one question, one follow-up. First question is really a big picture question to perhaps take a step back. Very nice shape to the P and L and good cash generation this year. What’s clicked and what gives you confidence that you can continue on the trajectory of delivery and absorbing external volatility?

And then the second question perhaps to Harold of the $600,000,000 of cost savings versus the original target of 400,000,000 in fiscal twenty twenty four, what were the incremental things that you’d found? And clearly, you’re guiding for at least CHF 400,000,000 in fiscal twenty twenty five. Can you talk about some of the initiatives for next year as well, please?

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Very good. Thanks, Ed. Let me take the first one and hold if you can take the second. On your it’s a broad question, Ed, but actually let me go back to the evergreen growth flywheel. We are in consumer goods.

It all starts with volume growth. And therefore, last year was so critical because we showed growth in all four regions and we showed high quality growth with mainstream positive, premium at double, triple the rate and zero zero even three, four times that rate. So the core is volume and that is what we have been investing in, whether it’s investing in greenfield breweries and high growth markets like Mexico, Brazil, Dubai or investing in marketing and selling expenses, so that is one. The R and D, the revenue margin growth is very important, assuring that we’ve taken off pricing where we should like in high inflation markets in Africa, but also make sure that we moderate pricing to allow consumers to catch up. And therefore, for example, in Europe, we moderate our pricing to allow consumer and volume growth to return.

And depending on this is savings. I remember starting in my role four years ago and speaking with many of you and at the time it was said, Heineken is a great marketing company, but you guys don’t do savings, you don’t do cost well. And this was one of the key pillars that we put forward in Evergreen and now cumulative we have taken $3,400,000,000 of cost out. And after taking a lot of the high hanging fruit or the low hanging fruit initially, now we’re really making systemic changes to our cost structure across the world. And those savings of $600,000,000 over $600,000,000 last year absolutely fundamental in assuring double digit increase in marketing and selling expenses, increase in digital technology investments, whilst it’s still generating 40 basis points of margin.

So it’s really the growth flywheel with growth, savings, investments propelling new growth. And we really hope in 2025 to keep building on this momentum and make sure that the flywheel keeps turning the way it did last year. Paul?

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Yes. And on your second point, indeed, we are delivering over $600,000,000 of cost savings in 2024. The target for 2024 was $500,000,000 just to be clear. And this just goes to illustrate that we actually have got good feasibility on the pipeline of projects and when they will turn up into the P and L. So we are really moving from ideas to business case evidence to then implementation and then to value capture.

That’s the process that we’re running. And as a consequence of that, the over delivery in 2024 is good news, but not necessarily that much of a surprise. It just all came together. And it really is because all of the regions have really done their utmost in order to make this happen. For example, you hear me talk about Africa, which had to navigate very volatile times, but did not sit on their hands to adjust their cost base.

And then when volume starts to come back in like it happened in Nigeria, for example, in quarter four, you do see the benefits of that lower cost base coming through. So I think it is, as Dolf just articulated, becoming a structural approach to how we look at productivity in our organization. Now then pivoting forward into 2025, we have got the same visibility that I just commented on also for 2025. And just a couple of data points, our brewery network optimization is a project, a big program and a series of projects that takes time to mature. And therefore, this continues also in 2025 and Europe is working very hard on making that all land.

The second one is and I called it out just in the script now, we have some very interesting new procurement ideas that we’re bringing into the equation in 2025. And last but not least, our digital and technology investments are not there to catch up with the past. We’re also very focused on driving business returns. And this is as simple as removing duplicate payments to actually starting to become more sophisticated in what product needs to be served in what channel through what means in advanced markets like Mexico and Brazil. So all of this is really starting to happen in 2025.

Hopefully that gives you a flavor.

Edward Mundy, Analyst, Jefferies: Very good. Thank you.

Moderator, Heineken: Our next question comes from Sanjay Ajulo with UBS.

Sanjay Ajulo, Analyst, UBS: A

Sanjeet, Analyst, UBS: couple of from me, please. Firstly, you’ve on the variable COGS guidance of mid single digit, clearly that’s a step change versus 2024. Against that backdrop, how are you thinking about the scope for gross margin expansion in 2025? Will you be having to step up pricing if it is an intention to deliver that? And my second question just on cash conversion, very strong delivery, Harold, in 2024 after a challenging 2023.

How should we think about the run rate for cash conversion from here on in? I think we’re at 100% last year. Is that sustainable if there’s more working capital efficiencies

Sanjay Ajulo, Analyst, UBS: to come through? Thank you.

Tristan, Host/Moderator, Heineken: Yes.

Harold, CFO, Heineken: So I guess I’ll take both of them. So for first, Sanjeet, I think your variable COGS guidance is indeed a mixture of all the markets that we operate in across the world. You know that very well. But therefore, I think it’s really to unpick that because we’re singling out Africa, which of course continues to experience high inflation and currency devaluation. And if you look at the rest of the markets, it’s much more low single digit.

What is also the case because it’s linked to the point that you’re making is that markets have more or less experience in how to price for that inflation and devaluation. So we are fully expecting, for example, in Africa to be able to price for that. And I think the proof of the pudding has actually been given also in 2024. Now the nominator, denominator impact plays a role, but we do expect also in outside of Africa that pricing will be relatively modest going into 2025 because we really want to ensure that we find this balance between market momentum that needs to be sustained and therefore affordability needs to come into play, but at the same time find other levers like back price architecture or channel mixes that really needs to be able to offset that. So pure pricing will be moderate.

Yes, we still have an ambition to go for gross margin expansion. How that will turn out, we’ll have to have a discussion market by market and region by region. I hope that gives you a little bit of a picture, but for sure, we see a gross margin expansion over time as part of our financial success model. Then in terms of the cash conversion, as I just tried to indicate, this is not just a bounce back of what we had in 2023. There’s an element of it, but we also are working extremely hard.

We have this concept of cash control towers that we’re now putting in all of the regions. I was talking about much more sophisticated practices in terms of going after debt management, but we’re also working with suppliers, for instance, in order to get this cash conversion indeed up to the 100%. Now whether 100% is sustainable, I don’t think it will be in the short term. And the very simple reality check that we also need to do is that currencies plays also a role. So our free operating cash flow, a lot of our profit is coming from Mexico, Brazil and other markets will have to be taken into account.

So don’t peg 100% too soon. What we are committed to is incremental progress on that cash conversion, but I think 2024 was a bit of a sweet spot in the percentage.

Sanjay Ajulo, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Moderator, Heineken: Our next question comes from Guin Cross with BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY). Please go ahead.

Guin Cross, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Hi, Dolf, Harold and Tristan. Thank you for the questions. A couple from me. You mentioned that the 4% to 8% organic operating growth guidance has got both risks and opportunities. I wonder if you could just give us a bit more color on some of the scenarios that you envisage at the higher and lower end of that guidance range.

The second question is on Vietnam where you’ve talked about some improved volume momentum, both the off premise and on premise channel return to growth in Q4. If you could just share a bit more color on what you’re seeing on the ground there right now and your early sense of how strong TET was? Thank you.

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Fantastic. Thanks, Ken. Let me pick up on the Vietnam question and Harold can comment on the outlook. So indeed encouraging to see and we at the half year mark, we were signaling stabilization in total market, but indeed towards the fourth quarter, we saw not only growth returning to the off trade, but also to the on trade in sell out. So that’s a very good sign.

And we do expect that to continue. Then what we saw in our own volumes, we were actually up mid single digits in volumes. That was partly because we were cycling the destocking a year earlier in the first half. And in the fourth quarter, because TETs moved earlier, some of the TETs moved into November, December. And as we are more premium and Tetris more of a premium location, we benefited.

So we really in the form of sell in, we were moving ahead of the market, but you have to be cautious to just project that out. What we are very proud of is the rebalancing in the portfolio. First of all, Brandt Heineken is absolutely on fire, growing another 50%. Heineken Silver, which was originally developed and launched in Vietnam, continues to grow at incredible pace. With the rebalancing in the market between premium and mainstream and between on trade and off trade, the mainstream portfolio became even more important, very happy to see double digit increases on it.

BFjet, which is a proposition which we nationally launched a couple of years ago growing 50%, sixty %. Lahoud, which is very important in the Mid Central Region up strongly on the new innovation, Lahoo Smooth. So it is multifaceted. It is rebalancing portfolio, it’s rebalancing channel, it’s rebalancing geographies and in the aggregate we’re very pleased how the team has navigated a pretty challenging situation over the last two years. And we are cautiously optimistic about the short and the midterm.

Important to note is that where the end of the year benefited from early test, Q1 will and the opposite will suffer a little bit from that. That is implied in our comments on in the outlook on Q1 volumes. But underlying, we are happy how both markets and our portfolios develop. Harald? Yes.

Thank you, Dolf. So first, thanks for

Harold, CFO, Heineken: the question on the outlook range. I think it’s a very relevant one. Maybe just before I get into the specifics, just to zoom out a little bit. I think over the past years, we’ve seen turbulent times and that has taught us not only to respond, but also to anticipate a little bit better. And I think what we’re trying to signal with this 4% to 8% range is that we have got better in risk identification, scenario planning, but also the importance of consistency in our results.

So that’s message number one. Now what the outlook statement also says is that there are a number of factors ranging from inflation to foreign exchange to some geopolitical situations that are unfolding by the day. And therefore, we really need to call out that what we are flagging today is based on the knowledge that we have today. And that means that the 4% of the range really is taken into account potential tariff structures that are being talked about in The U. S.

Or for example, continued volatility in Africa that we also have seen and Nigeria is still not out of the woods, Ethiopia and you will have other countries that you will have in mind. But on the upper end of the range, it’s also important, right? This might actually be a boost for growth for some of our markets if it falls the right way. There are a number of momentum cases that we’re building and we’ve talked about the stronghold markets, Dol just gave an example of Vietnam, that actually we’re in a better place than we were a year ago and I think our 2024 results are also an indication of that. So I think it’s indeed right to look at the full spectrum of that 4% to 8%.

We’ve developed a number of scenarios, but these scenarios are based on my current knowledge.

Edward Mundy, Analyst, Jefferies: Thank you.

Moderator, Heineken: Our next Our next question comes from Sarah Simon with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Please go ahead.

Sarah Simon, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Yes, good afternoon. I’ve got three, if I may. First one was, Howard, you talked about CapEx coming in a bit lower than anticipated and kind of cutting your cloth for an uncertain environment. Do you think that that’s just kind of deferred CapEx, I. E.

It’s going to reappear somewhere else down the line or is it sort of discretionary CapEx you’re simply not going to spend? Second one was on aluminum. As you think about your 4% to 8% range, have you got any specific assumptions around aluminum and what prices might do if there are tariffs? And then the third one was just can you remind us of the phasing of new capacity being opened in Latin America in particular, please?

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Yes. Let me just go one, two, three. So first, the CapEx lower is indeed a reflection, as I just called out, of a more volatile environment. And frankly put, also some volumes that are coming in at predominantly from last year lower than expectations. So this is a rightsizing and try to picture that for example, we have quite big capacity expansion plans in Nigeria that now we have put on hold and deferred that later.

What is I think important is that we continue to invest in our organization and in our business. We are still investing above 8% of revenue in new projects. And this is not only in new production capacity, it is also in returnable bottle. It is also in digital and technology and it is also in sustainability. So I would like to take away this notion that we have just put a break on it because we’re not investing in the future.

That is definitely not the case. What is the case is that we really are trying to, yes, be much more mindful in a current uncertain construct about how quickly we invest upfront and are finding ways through example this supply productivity to actually squeeze more volume out of our existing footprint. So that is, I think, an extremely important point and you will have therefore also picked up that also for 2025, we expect similar levels not bouncing back to our previous guidance of 9%. So indeed, our intent is to stay closer to the 8% than to the 9% range going forward as well. On your second point of aluminum, important, yes, it’s baked into the 4% to 8% range.

We also have seen commodity prices react and therefore, this is an important point for us to watch. However, the hedging policy is such that we have effectively covered most of that for 2025 already. So anything that will happen will not have a material impact on that 4% to eight percent range. And then the phasing of new capacity in Brazil, new capacity is coming on stream in quarter three, quarter ’4 this year. And in Mexico, we’re building only for 2026 and beyond.

So that’s a bit the highlight of the new capacity.

Sarah Simon, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Perfect. Thanks a lot.

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Thanks, Sarah.

Moderator, Heineken: Next, we have Celine Panuti with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Celine Panuti, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you very much. Good morning good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So first question, I wanted to come back to the commentary you made on tariffs. Could you please explain a bit what could be the impact that you will see if you could quantify that?

And then maybe related on the centrifuge on tariff, what is your expectation for Mexico in terms of performance in the country for 2026 consumer environment, pricing, volume? How do you feel that the potential situation with tariff will impact your business locally? My second question, staying with Latin America, is on Brazil. Could you talk about pricing? I think it has been it seems you’ve not priced yet in Brazil, while competition has priced.

Are you when are you expecting to price? Or do you think that you have hedges that allow you to be a bit more to pose a bit versus competition? And we saw a strong margin expansion throughout the year in Brazil. Can you talk about the driver of that and whether we are at a level where you feel you have maxed out where we are in terms of the journey for the opportunity on margin in Brazil? Thank you.

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Very good. Well, otherwise, this turns into the CFO call. Let me also answer two questions. Let me take the first two and then maybe you can comment on the Brazilian pricing. On the tariffs, maybe one thing to first speak about is that beer and in particular Daeinik and Kuprijn, we are a very local for local company in seventy, seventy plus countries, we have local breweries operated by local people with even more than half local brand portfolio selling to local customers.

Over 80%, ninety % of our inputs country by country are sourced locally. So as such that gives us a relative protection and makes us, yes, expect a relative lower impact than maybe other industries, that is one. Now the one country where we do have some exposures indeed to U. S. Because we import from Mexico, we import Mexico, we import from The Netherlands.

But actually at the scale that Heineken is these days, The U. S. Is a relative moderate sized operating company, less than 5% of revenue and volume. Yes, I don’t know about you, but we are joking in Heineken that we have green bottles not crystal bottles, for sure not a crystal ball. So we don’t know what’s going to happen.

We also don’t know what’s going to stick, because you can’t pick up breweries and move them around. Some more probable impacts are taken into account in our outlook as a matter of caution, but overall on the aggregates, we don’t expect a huge impact. On Mexico, the local operation, actually when you look to the exit rate, it has been relatively strong. Post elections, we see our business, particularly in the fourth quarter picking up, so no concerns there, also not on January. So at least in that regard, no caution, but again, we don’t have crystal bottles, so we’ll follow that closely.

We are in a fast mode. As we’re saying, we’re building a new brewery in the Yucatan. We are it has not been spoken about in the Q and A, but we promised and we delivered a very significant step up in our marketing and selling expenses up double digit, more than $300,000,000 growing at double the rate of our revenue. Actually every region, our marketing expenses are growing faster than revenue, but certainly in our priority markets like Mexico and Brazil. So those are a couple of thoughts on your first two questions.

Maybe you can take the Brazil pricing, Harold.

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Yes. So Maurizio, our General Manager in Brazil will like this question a lot because I think we have been over the past years actually very bold in setting up our portfolio, particularly in the premium, but also the upper mainstream parts with Downstol up for success and have confidence in the brands that we built. So we actually have been price leader in those markets despite our relative size. So the fact that our competitor has now initiated pricing is not really necessary for us to respond to that because we follow our own pricing strategy and really are looking at the comparable products in the market and what our consumer is prepared to pay for it. And therefore, I think we will have factored in a relatively moderate amount of pricing going into 2025 because we’re happy with the price premiums that our portfolio is carrying, but we also want to stay competitive.

And we previously spoke also about another competitor that is really trying to dominate the economy segment. So price relativities actually matter in this market. So we stay the course. And this is a bit of a link to also your second question about the margin expansion because this has been in the making over years, this Brazil or actually The Americas profit acceleration that you see. Just to call out a few facts, we’ve been price leaders, we’ve been strengthening the brand Heineken, we’ve been strengthening the Amstel brand, Dolce has called out doubled in the past three years also and that really gives us a portfolio platform that has been very good to us including the P and L.

Secondly, and just to call it out for The Americas, our premium portfolio has grown from 30% of our footprint in 2021 percent to 36% in 2024 and that actually excludes Amstel. So we very intentionally worked around the portfolio model and that is now starting to pay off. The go to market transition in Brazil was also done intentionally and not only was that a carrying vehicle for our premium and upper mainstream brands, it also allowed us to increase the returnable bottle as a proportional part of our footprint. We also no longer importing 1,000,000 bottles and we are, as I just explained, heavy on digitization of our route to markets and creating more efficient processes. So you see wherever you look, whether it’s the top line or the variable cost or the fixed cost, we are putting all the structures in place to make this a very profitable and growing business, and that’s what we like to see.

Now to your point, has it maxed out? I don’t think it has maxed out, but what is the case is that, of course, the pace of acceleration is no longer sustainable. We are now reaching levels where a more normalized expansion should be expected. And maybe that’s leave it at that with an eye on the time as well. Thanks, Salim.

Moderator, Heineken: Our next question comes from Chris Pitcher with Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Ajulo, Analyst, UBS: Good afternoon. One question for me, following on really from the Brazil point. I mean, you’ve shown good improvement in profitability in The Americas, both in Brazil and Mexico over time. Could you talk a bit more about your plans for South Africa and the rest of Africa? Because as a region, obviously, it drags on your group margin.

When you acquired Distel, you were pretty confident on the cost synergies. Can you give us an idea of where South African profitability is now after what’s been quite a disrupted five years both sort of operationally and with the integration? And then can you just give us an idea of how you’re running Africa outside of South Africa? I mean, you referred to East Africa today in terms of volume performance. Are you thinking more in regional groupings ex South Africa?

Thanks very

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: much. Yes. Let me start and then feel free to compliment. So first of all, I think there are indeed three, four parts to Africa. Historically, Nigeria has been extremely important and of course our P and L has been highly impacted by the massive devaluation of the last eighteen months.

We are proud of how the team has been responding, how they have been rightsizing the cost structure, how we have transformed our portfolio. We actually had double digit volume growth, believe it or not, in that environment. We gained market share. It was balanced between economy mainstream and premium. We have a donor rights issue rebuilding the balance sheet.

So short term pain, but we really believe that we have done the structural systemic things to set Nigeria up for growth over the next three to five years. And a story that we tell internally, if you look to Europe, you see now that the fastest growing economies in Europe are Greece, Portugal and Ireland, which were the most crisis impacted countries decades ago during the Euro crisis. We believe that Nigeria and to the same extent Ethiopia is forced to take a lot of tough medicine as a local economy, but also for our business. So short term pain and indeed from a bottom line point of view not yet sufficiently visible, but we’re really structurally setting that business up for mid term and long term growth. Ethiopia the same thing.

We saw the devaluation coming and we sacrificed some volume share by initiating pricing early and that has really protected cash flow and bottom line. Still, we do believe and we are the market leader both in Nigeria and Ethiopia, we have the strongest portfolio and we’re doing the top work on the balance sheet and cost structure. So that is one. Two, South Africa and Southern Africa post the STELL acquisition, extremely important. We have been transparent that we dropped the ball on a couple of commercial elements during the transition.

The transition was in a way a reverse takeover, highly complex. We do believe now that we’re coming to the back end of that. We saw volume return across the different product segments, volume growth in beer, in cider and ready to drink, in wine. So that is where what we want to see. We saw also a big jump in profitability, not yet at full potential, but a big step in the right direction.

We are not yet gaining share to the extent that we feel, because the whole strategic premise was to build a strong multi category model to accelerate share gains. That is not yet happening, but again we are taking things in a step and we do it very structural and very methodical. Namibia, where we are now a multi category business because the old Namibia breweries and the Distel Namibia has been merged, the same in Mozambique. So you see that the model of South Africa is being replicated in a couple of other markets with good results. And indeed, the East Africa countries of Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, where we are combining the ex distill operation and our legacy Heineken export business is really very synergetic, especially on the revenue side and that’s why we made that comment.

So across the board, doing a lot of the tough things to put this region up for sustainable and profitable growth in the mid and the long term. Short term, we are not satisfied, let’s be clear about the bottom line delivery. That will have to follow soon, but a big step in the right direction. Good. I think we can allow for maybe one more question, right?

Moderator, Heineken: Absolutely. Next question is from Trevor Stirling with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken0: Hi, Dolph, Harold at Trish. Two from me, please. First one around selling and marketing, Dolph. I know you don’t manage the business to ratio, but I did see that the ratio seemed to go up from 9.1 to 9.8. You’ve indicated that you want to further increase selling and marketing ahead of revenue.

But do you have any sense of your broad range of where you’d feel the business was investing at the right level? And the second question, you came into the top of guidance in 2024. Which parts of the business came in at the top of your own expectations in 2024? And as you look forward to 2025, where are you most positive about a continued step up in momentum?

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: Very good. Let me start. On marketing and selling, again, I hope what’s coming through in our answers that with Evergreen, over the years, we have made a couple of priorities that we have been trying to be very consistent about, whether that was about a structural systemic productivity programs, big step up in digital technology on both back end and front end, step up on marketing selling. So, the marketing selling, we made a huge step up in 2022, then due to circumstance we had to pause, but we never reduced, but pause in 2023 and in 2024 we were able to resume the step up and we’re signaling in our outlook that we’ll continue that step up next year. I don’t think we have a magic number in mind, Trevor, and we also want to be clear that operating companies need to fight for the resources.

We want to make sure that every euro is spent with a high ROI. For now, we see plenty of opportunity across mainstream, across premium, across lower no elk, across Beyond Beer, across digitizing the B2B. So right now, at this step, we are signaling marketing expenses to go up ahead of revenue for another year. Deliberately, we’re not giving basis points there, but we are planning it to be meaningful. But again, opcos really need to pitch.

They need to work hard to convince us that they have the right ROI on those investments. And, yeah, we are proud in the Q and A, it has not come through fully yet. We are super proud that after all the turbulence of the world and turbulence in our footprint of last year that we have solid volume growth across all four regions and that the quality of that growth is good with mainstream up, premium at 5%, Heineken at 9%, zero %, zero %, where we are the global market leader. That’s what we want to see. That’s what we’re investing in and that’s what we want to systemically kind of lean lean into.

So there’s a bit of a play for leveraging your question there, Trevor, if you allow me. And it may be hard to Yeah.

Harold, CFO, Heineken: And maybe let me try to make a link, because it was the top end of the range. It was partly because it was market driven And we were very happy with the results of India, for example. Also, the premium growth of India was twice the growth of the premium segment. The Americas, we’ve spoken a lot about the financial results came in very strong. And what was also important is that we were cautious on Nigeria.

And actually, despite all of that turbulence and that pricing that needed to be taken, the volumes were actually better than what we anticipated also because we wanted to be a bit realistic and cautious there. So there is a momentum that DOLF is trying to articulate across a multitude of markets that make us, yes, feel pretty good about those results. And then we have to make a link with the first question that Ed asked is that also our productivity really came in quite strongly because everybody just kept going at it in order to continue to fuel the investments, but also deliver the ambitions that we set out. So I think all in all, a good team effort from Heineken. Let me grab thirty seconds to round up the call.

By actually making by actually thanking our shareholders for their patience. We realized that

Dolf van den Meeg, CEO, Heineken: with all the turbulence of the last years, first and confidence of our shareholders has been tested. And we do hope that our results, both bottom line, top line capital, is an encouragement and a strong signal, and we hope that the share price reaction this morning is indeed a reflection that confidence is going up. We realize that we need to work hard every single day earning that confidence, but we do believe that priorities of Evergreen, if consistently pursued, are starting to bear the fruits that we always intended. And you can count on us to keep on leaning in on that. On that note, thank you all.

Have a wonderful day. And looking forward to see most of you sometime tomorrow when we are in London. All the best. Take care.

Harold, CFO, Heineken: Thank you.

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