Hangover sequel

25 October 2019 By Lisa Jucca Follow @LJucca

The Budweiser maker said profit in the third quarter was stagnant, and volumes declined in China. That puts pressure on boss Carlos Brito to do more deals. Yet the world’s top brewer is still working off a debt hangover, and the weak performance makes dealmaking harder.

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Anheuser-Busch InBev on Oct. 25 reported lower-than-expected profit in the third quarter and forecast only “moderate” earnings growth in 2019 due to challenges in the second half of the year.

The world’s largest brewer said “normalised” earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, which excludes non-recurring items, were unchanged at $5.3 billion, missing market expectations of a 3% increase.

The company blamed higher costs of inputs such as aluminium and malt barley and currency weakness in key markets like Brazil. Beer volumes declined 5.9% in China, the world’s biggest beer market.

AB InBev shares fell as much as 11% to 73.6 euros on Oct. 25, the lowest in more than four months.

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