Royal Unibrew A S

Good morning, everybody. My name is Lars Jensen, and I'm the CEO of Roy Unibrew. With me today, I have our CFO, Lars Vestergaard, and we would like to welcome you to this webcast, where we will cover the release of our third quarter result, and afterwards, take your question. Now, please turn to slide number three. In Q3, we had a great quarter with good momentum in the business and the best EBIT ever result. In Q3, we picked up the volumes that were lost in June due to bad weather. We delivered 8% organic volume growth in the quarter, driven by continued strong rebound in our international markets and solid performance in Western Europe, and in particular Italy, where we continued to gain market share. The capacity constraints we had last year has been solved as the acquired companies have added sufficient capacity to support our global supply. We increased our market shares in many markets and our multi-beverage model with focus on growth categories is giving good momentum. In our multi-beverage businesses in Northern Europe, soft drinks have continued the strong progress seen in the first half of 2024, especially driven by Denmark and the Baltic countries. In Italy and international, where our beer positions are more niche, we continue to outperform in the markets. Our sales in to the international segment has been higher than sales out, as we have rebuilt stock in several markets. Our sales out flight attitude in international is high single digit. As the stock has been rebuilt, you will see a higher calibration between sales in and sales out going forward. Organic EBIT growth in the third quarter of 25% was driven by strong commercial execution, top-line growth, as well as efficiency improvements. In general, integrations of acquired companies are progressing according to plan, and this is now starting to be reflected in the business results. On 1 October, we took over the sales and distribution of Pepco's beverage portfolio in Belgium and Luxembourg, The carve-out of the business from Pepsi has required significant IT integration work and is still requiring some work before we are in normal operations. On 17th of October, we signed an agreement to acquire Penorikaa's portfolio of local Nordic brands within spirits, liquor and local wine in Finland. The most well-known brand is Mintu, a leading liquor brand in Finland, which is also exported to Nordic countries. The transaction is expected to be finalized during the first half of 2025. In Q3, we reach an agreement to sell our shareholding in the Polish brewery companies Perva and Farel. Farel owns shares in Perva, so that's how it hangs together, for the total proceeds of 207 million Danish kroner. The amount is recognized as financial income in the profit and loss statement, and the amount is tax-free. based on the results delivered year to date and our expectation for the remainder of the year, we take the bottom of our interval slightly up on the full year EBIT growth guidance. Now please turn to slide number four. On this chart, we try to illustrate some case stories in our growth categories. As you know, the European beverage market is not really growing. Therefore, it's important to identify and play in the categories that grow. The headlines show our growth categories, and below we have some important examples on how we play in them. In low-nose sugar, our group growth has more than doubled since 2019. The success is driven by strong execution, but also the combination of strong own brands together with Pepsi's strong portfolio of sugar-free soft drinks. The growth is both organic and via acquisitions. As a specific example, we have the Faxi Condi brand in Denmark that has grown 65% since 2019, and the growth is almost entirely coming from the sugar-free version. But more importantly, it is not taking volume from the sugar version, so the growth is on top and supporting the call. A part of this journey is the launch of the orange version, where we decided to put the full focus on no sugar, despite the orange market being more skewed towards sugar versions in general. In premium, we have grown the Italian business volume by 40% since 2019, the year before COVID and the stocking, destocking that we went through. This has been done without compromising our premium positioning and the price level continues to be at a high level. A part of the growth is led by the increase in field force, a part of the by launch of cans and finally, very, very strong marketing work. In no low alcohol, our volume has grown slightly as the market growth in the category is also low in the Nordics. We still expect this category to grow, however, at lower levels than our previous thinking. The quality of our offering is very strong and provides excellent opportunities to have great tasting beverages, even when you do not want to have alcohol. In energy, we have several strong examples and have selected the cult case in the Baltics, the cult brand that has grown from not even being in the market in the Baltics to 9% market share. in four years and continue with strong momentum. Their success is based on strong concepts from other markets of the group combined with strong execution by our organization in the Baltics. This is a good case of creating organic growth via category entry on the back of group experience with a local twist. In the Netherlands, the volume of SOCI vitamin water has grown by around 60% in just two years. We also see a strong performance in Finland and the Baltics in this category, a category we believe will grow quite a lot going forward. Lastly, we want to highlight our performance within our Gravn's and Hansa brands in cider-slash-RTD in Norway. We take the lead in expanding the category and have grown 38% in four years despite strong competition and many players in the market. The broader cider-RTD space is one of the few categories that grow in volume in Norway and we believe that that will continue. Now, a note on entering new categories. It's not super easy to enter new categories if you do not have experience in working in the country. It took us about three years to learn to do soft drink in Italy, which was on the back of a beer business. It is different gameplay that you see in the categories. And this is something that we are very thoughtful around when we enter into categories in a country where we do not have the experience. Summing up, in order to grow our business by volume, we must play a strong role in growth categories with a mix of own brands and partnership brands. Now, please turn to slide number five. If we look at the year-to-date developments in our individual business segments, Northern Europe saw the lowest organic growth in both volume and revenue, as demand was impacted by poor weather in June and weak development in the on-trade segment. Also, consumers are buying more on promotions in the off-trade channel. Year-to-date, we increased to 8.3 million hectolitres, which is equivalent to 2% organic growth, while organic revenue increased by 3% organically. In Western Europe and internationally, we saw overall strong developments and solid execution with no capacity constraints. In Western Europe, year-to-date volumes increased 7% organically, while organic revenue increased by 16%, predominantly due to strong performance in Italy. Our beer, carbonated soft drink, and energy business continue to expand, and we continue to win market share in all the three categories we are present in, which is very, very strong. In international, the strong growth continued in the third quarter and year-to-date. Volumes were up 37% to 1.1 million hectoliters, whereas net revenue increased by 32% organically. The negative price mix was due to product and country mix, And as mentioned earlier, our current volume sales outgrowth is high single digits. And now I'll let Lars take over, so please take it from here.

Thank you, Lars, and good morning to everyone. I will walk you through the main highlights of our financial result in Q3 and the first three quarters of 2004. As Lars alluded to earlier, we saw strong performance across the organization and we gained market share in Q3. Our total volume increased by 34% in Q3 and by 31% year-to-date, primarily driven by additional volume from the Netherlands and San Giorgio in Italy. Acquisitions contributed by nearly 0.9 million hectolitres in the quarter and by approximately 2.5 million hectolitres in the first three quarters of the year. The organic volume growth in the quarter was 8% and 5% year-to-date for the group. The price mix was overall neutral in the quarter, meaning that the organic revenue growth in the quarter was also 8% compared to 7% year to date. Net revenue was also positively impacted by M&A and grew 22% in Q3 and 21% year to date. EBIT grew more than net revenue by 33% and amounted to 675 million in Q3, which is our best quarterly EBIT result ever. The EBIT margin increased by 130 basis points to 16.5%. in Q3, and if we adjust for M&A, the EBIT margin expanded organically by 230 basis points in Q3. The margin expansion is a result of efficiency improvements as well as having solved the capacity constraints we experienced last year, as Lars also mentioned. So it's good to see that the efforts across the group is showing results also in the margins. We had a slightly positive weather impact in Q3, where the organic EBIT growth was 25%, which to a large extent offset the negative weather impact in June. It means that the weather impact has been close to neutral if you look at our year-to-date numbers, where organic growth rates was 19%. Net financial expenses were positively impacted by 207 million Danish kroner from the sale of our shareholdings in Poland. Adjusting for this impact, net financial expenses increased 9 million to 62 million in Q3 as a result of higher debt and interest rates. Tax payments increased to 144 million kroner in Q3 and to 290 million kroner year-to-date. This corresponds to a tax rate of around 18% in the quarter, which is positively impacted by the tax-free sale of shares in Poland. The underlying tax rate was 24% in Q3 and 22% year-to-date. We expect to land the full year around 21%. Earnings per share increased by 83% in Q3 and by 43% year-to-date to 24.5 kroner per share. This is impacted by the disposal of the shares in Poland, and excluding this, our earnings per share would have been 20.4 kroner. If you turn to slide number 7, please. On this side, we show the impact of acquisitions on revenue and EBIT. On the left-hand side, we show the revenue bridge. Net revenue increased by 747 million kroner, or 22% in total. Acquisitions amounted to 469 million kroner. or 14% of revenue, and the remaining 278 million kroner, equivalent to 8%, comes from organic growth. On the right-hand side, we show the EBIT bridge acquisitions contributed by 41 million kroner to EBIT in Q3, equivalent to 8%, while organic growth in EBIT amounted to 127 million, which is equivalent to 25%. On top of the acquired net revenue and EBIT, we also acquired access to extra capacity on a group level in connection with both acquisitions, which has contributed to organic growth as well. The two new production sites have delivered volume to the group and have freed up capacity in Northern Europe, which has supported the global supply chain, and the effects can mainly be seen in the international segment. Adjusting for M&A, the EBIT market expanded by 230 basis points in Q3. Please turn to slide number eight. Free cash flow amounted to more than 1 billion kroner in the first three quarters of the year. This is an increase of 37% versus last year. The cash flow was positively impacted by the sale of the shareholdings in Poland and positive developments in operating results. On the other hand, cash flow was adversely impacted by an increase in net working capital as a result of higher activity, and in particular by an increase in receivables and inventories since the end of last year. In total, cash flow from operating activities was 233 million higher than in the first three quarters of 2024. CapEx increased by around 107 million compared to last year, resulting in a free cash flow of 1 billion and 32 million Danish, which is 277 million higher than last year. One of the key focuses for 2025 has been to re-establish our financial flexibility, which we have now achieved, primarily driven by strong operating profit and cash management. Our net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA ratio improved to 2.1 at the end of Q3 and is now well below our financial target of maximum 2.5 times EBITDA. As announced in Q2, the Board of Directors decided to pay out an extraordinary dividend of 14.5 kroner per share, which happened in the beginning of October. So that cannot be seen in the balance sheet in this reporting. Please turn to slide number 9 and the outlook for 2024, which has been narrowed. We still expect net revenue to be at least 15 billion kroner, including contribution from acquisitions of around 1.5 billion kroner, which is equivalent to an expected organic growth of around 4.5%. We now expect an organic EBIT growth rate of 15 to 19%, meaning that the reported EBIT is expected to be in the range of 1.965 to 2.024 billion Danish kroner. Belgium and Luxembourg are not expected to contribute to earnings in Q3 due to integration cost. Acquisitions will contribute to EBIT by around 85 million in the full year. Net financial expense are now expected to be around 90 million Danish due to the proceeds from the sale of the shares in Poland, whereas expectations for the tax rate is unchanged. CapEx is now expected to be in the range of 850 to 950 million Danish. After some years with high volatility and many moving parts such as inflation, COVID, stocking and destocking in Italy, 2024 is expected to be a normal year. Although the weather was poor in June, it has been fairly neutral if you look at the full year impact. Overall, macroeconomic uncertainty has remained high and therefore the underlying volume growth has been modest with cautious consumer spending. And we see the effects to a higher extent in on-trade in Norway and Finland than in the rest of the business. And with that, I'll give you the word back, Lars.

Thank you, Lars. And now please turn to slide number 10. Just go through the key items on our agenda right now. We see a successful integration of the acquired companies unfolding. We are well underway across the acquisitions and look forward to welcoming our colleagues in Finland during the first half of next year. As consumers continue to be cautious, we continue to put efficiencies high on our agenda. As we have shown on the page with our growth framework, we have been successful in bringing focus on the right categories. When we meet with our global leadership team, we share best practices and discuss changes in the markets to ensure that we react to changes in the beverage categories with the aim of growing faster than the market and win in the segments that are growing. The market environment is based on some cautiousness on the consumer front, which is impacting on trade in Finland and Norway. Across all countries, we continue to experience that consumers are buying more on promotions, and we continue on the basis of that to monitor closely and make the necessary changes to ensure solid in-market performance and profitability. And lastly, we continue our focus on ESG and are on track to deliver on our main KPIs in the coming periods. Please turn to slide number 11. And to summarize, our financial performance has been strong across the group with the best quarterly EBIT ever and higher organic growth than peers. A very strong free cash flow allowed us to bring down debt and solidify our financial position. Being in the right categories with the right offerings have made us much more robust and enabled us to gain market share in many markets. As long as consumers are focused on price, we will remain focused on cost and on driving efficiencies out of the business. However, we will also continue to enhance our product portfolio with high-quality brands, as we have done both this year and in the past years. And with that, we are ready to take your questions. So, operator, please start from here.

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Once again, slowly press star one and one if you wish to ask a question. We will now take the first question. From the line of Thomas Lynn Peterson from Nordea, please go ahead.

Good morning, Lars and Lars, everyone else. Two questions from my side, please. The first one is on the guidance of the EBIT, organic EBIT growth guidance of 15 to 19 percent, which is perhaps still relatively broad with just seven weeks left of the year. So just wondering here if you could help us at least with what does it entail to end up in the bottom and the top end of that range. And then the second question is on the efficiency improvements, which you mentioned several times in the statement. and that you have a pipeline of initiatives for the coming years. So just wondering if you could maybe elaborate a little bit on these initiatives, and perhaps also if you could clarify how much of these initiatives are actually part of the synergies related to the acquisitions in the Netherlands and in Norway. That would be my two questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. On the guidance piece, we are entering into the second high season of the year around Christmas. And as we do see, and as I talked about today, there's consumer cautiousness. Then I think in looking at our estimates, we are probably screwed a little bit more to the negative side. acknowledging that Norway and Finland are important markets for us during these two months and basically the last seven weeks, as you say. And on top of the entree, that is also connected to the sales in the monopolies. This is also high season, and if we would see the same kind of behavior on trade into the monopolies. That was skewed more to the bottom of the interval. If it's more normal, then of course it will be more in the middle. And then obviously there's a lot of geopolitical movements, although the vast majority of our of our COGS is fixed or hedged, there's still some elements that could move, you know, 5, 10 million back and forth. And when you look at the guidance interval, that's the kind of level that we are talking about in terms of swing. So those are, I would say, are the major movable elements for the last seven weeks. Lars, if you would comment on the efficiency.

So if we turn to the efficiency, if you look back over last year, it was clear that we had significant capacity constraints, primarily where the international business was impacted. But also our supply chain in Denmark was full. So the acquisitions we have done is very much to take the pressure out of the capacity constraints we've had. So the Danish supply chain is more in balance now, which you can clearly see that the international segment has been growing very fast. And also we have been able to supply the Danish market without as much support from our suppliers. Companies elsewhere in the group. So we're saving a lot of what you can say internal efficiencies by having a more balanced capacity. And of course, if you are too full, that means you have too many changeovers. So the synergies that are sitting outside the acquired companies is pretty significant in this quarter. And then if you think about the last couple of years, we've been extremely busy with fixing inflationary pressure. So the focus from the organization has been to pass on inflation into price increases to offset this pressure. This has taken, I want to say, less focus this year. And when we look across the business, the teams are working with driving out efficiencies significantly. with many different initiatives across the business. And that is what you start to see the effects of. So I would say that's a key focus with a substantial amount of initiatives. And now people have more time to actually focus on that. And that is what you start to see in the numbers.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Richard Wittegen from Kepler-Chevre, please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking the questions. Good morning, Lars and Lars. Two for me, please. First of all, Lars, you were talking about the knowledge exchange with the leadership team. Can you maybe give some more details what you see in kind of opportunities in that area? Is that more efficiency related or is that more on the commercial side? And are there any specific countries that you could mention where you see opportunities? And then the second question is on Finland specifically. Are you taking any measures in adapting to the tougher environment, you know, in terms of product or in price or channel? And there is obviously a negative impact, a negative mix impact on the Northern Europe business. I know I think it has a negative mix effect on pricing. but does it also have a negative mix effect on the gross margin? Thank you.

Yeah, so starting with the last one, I think the reason why we talk about Finland and for that matter also Norway, that's because we in general have a larger business in on-trade than we do have in off-trade. So when consumption is moving from on-trade to off-trade, there is a mathematical loss of share of 15% to 20% depending on which category we operate in. That is to a lesser extent in the rest of the markets where we operate with a multi-beverage portfolio. So that's kind of like that's more calibrated. So we need to work harder in these countries to compensate when that happens. Norway is still on track to deliver on what we talked about at the Capital Markets Day. And the Finnish business is still delivering very solidly. But it is... It is more challenging to reach our ambitions. So that is what we are talking about here. So remember that when we give an outlook guidance in the beginning of the year, that is a buildup of improvements from the year before. And we would have hoped that we would have had an environment in Finland and Norway that would have helped us in doing even more. So it is not something that is dragging us down, but it's something where the growth rates are not fully living up to what we saw in the beginning of the year. But we are compensating for that in other territories. So still a very, very solid business. Now the question on the growth leadership team. So this is the forum where we basically discuss the strategy and the elements in the strategy. This is where we discuss resource allocation, so which are the categories where we see the most growth. And we share best practices, ideas, and try to cascade down in the lead teams in the countries. so that we connect people to harvest both efficiency gains, but also looking at market potentials, growth potentials in various categories. So we have a lot of cross-border learnings. I think I'll call out energy drinks as a category where we have a more centralized approach to development of NPDs, and where we steal with pride across border in terms of what works and what doesn't work. And that goes not only on flavors, it also goes on type of packagings. Sometimes the countries steal brands or get help from a brand point of view. In other cases, they get help from the ideas, and then you would see that enrolled in the local brands when that happens. I see opportunities in all countries. Of course, some countries are more mature than others. Some countries have been in Royal Unibrew ownership for a longer period of time. And I would say generally, the countries that have been acquired over the last three, four, five years, those would, from a percentage point of view, they would carry larger opportunities to improve. compared to the countries that are big in multiple categories and where we're already on a margin level is way beyond the group average. But all countries have opportunities, and it comes both on the growth side, but it definitely also comes on the efficiency side. And I think if I should call out a country or a territory which is excellent in adjusting, then it's the Baltic countries. We have slimmer margins, we have lower consumer spending power, and thereby you end up with slimmer margins as input cost is the same. And if they do not adjust, very, very short-term focused, of course with a long-term view on building categories, but the adjustments that they make is a stellar way of operating agile and moving resources to try to cater for the opportunities in the market. And I think in some markets, we could benefit from having a more agile approach, an even more agile approach. I think we're much more agile than most of our peers, but we can still improve.

Great. Thank you. Thanks, Elias.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Mandeep Sangha from Barclays, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Lars and Lars, and thank you very much for my questions. My first one actually is just around the international division. You sort of touched upon earlier the strong volume growth. Even on easy comms, the volume growth was very strong, and obviously how the division has benefited from extra capacity that's been freed up through the acquisitions. This year has been a very sort of volatile market, particularly sort of in Nigeria, given sort of FX depreciation and inflation. As that begins to somewhat stabilize, What is your outlook going forward to 2025, given the additional capacity that you now have, but also hopefully a stabilizing consumer environment in that market? How should we think about the run rate for the international division going forward? Because obviously there's a focus of the CMD as well. And my second question is actually just coming back to Europe. Some of your competitors, when we look at Heineken, had a difficult time in Italy this quarter. And Campari were also talking about destocking that they started to see at the end of Q3. You also had your own destocking issues this time, well, last year. What gives you confidence that those issues won't creep up? Are you seeing anything in the market or is there anything that you've done since your destocking issues last year that gives you confidence that there's no forthcoming issues that could potentially happen if the macro environment doesn't improve in Italy? Thank you very much.

Yeah. On international, as we mentioned in the call, if we look at our current flight attitude of sales out, and that means the sales out from our partners in the countries out into the market, we are at a high single-digit flight attitude. I think this is as close as we would get to giving any kind of guidance on 2025. We will come back to that end of February. But it is a solid growth. And now you mentioned volatility and inflation and so on. And this is also obviously in some of the geographies where we from time to time see unrest that can give normally a shorter period of time where you have some disruption in the market. And I think that's just the nature of of international. This year has been really a stable year, whereas the last two years before has been more like a roller coaster, both for internal reasons, because of the lack of enough capacity, but also because of unrest and some partner challenges. But 2024 has been, in that respect, a very straightforward year. When it comes to destocking, we are monitoring our inventory levels really close, not only in Italy, but in all the markets where we work with distributors, slash wholesalers, importers. So we always target the right level on inventory, which is depending on our own performance, the geopolitical situation, depending on container traffic, if it's easy or it's not easy, and so on and so forth. And obviously in Italy, where we are working in multiple categories, we monitor the total in-market stock level, so to speak, that it doesn't become too high. We haven't seen any specific changes in Italy on stock levels. We have been fairly flat on our stock levels throughout the year. and expect that that would not change the last seven weeks of the year.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Andre Thurmond from Danske Bank, please go ahead.

Yes, thanks for taking my questions. I wonder if you can give any sort of, I realize that it's too early to guide around 2025, but can you give any kind of indications around what you're seeing in 2025 in terms of potentially how a market like Norway will perform and Holland will perform? And maybe also a few comments around gross margins into 2025. That's my question.

I think you gave a bit of the answer yourself, that it is a bit early to give guidance on 2025. I think if you look at the way that we talk about the market right now, which has been very consistent for a long period of time, 15, 18 months or so, I don't think there's any reason why that we would talk differently about how we are going to see the next period of time. And then we are back to what we already talked about. That leads to that we need to have a higher focus on efficiency, as Lars talked about. that is going to be more vital to stay competitive and to be able to hit the right price points so that we secure that there's no volume decline in the overall beverage market. And then relentlessly try to move as much business into the growth categories, which generally drives a higher profitability, not only for us, but in general also for our customers. I don't think you should expect a very different view on 2025 as we have experienced in 2024.

And maybe just to add, in Norway we have been focused very much on integrating Solia and Hansa this year and rolling out a new system, which is expected to go live towards the end of the year. Despite that, they have managed to increase profitability a lot in Norway, and I would say the team we have in Norway is becoming stronger and stronger every day, and we can see... that the commercial attitude is improving a lot. So I would say if you look at Norway, I think we are really on a strong path to creating a solid business in Norway. And I think that's, so we're pretty optimistic on Norway as we look forward. So I think that's the comment on Norway.

Maybe just one follow-up on Norway. Can you maybe elaborate on what you're seeing on cross-cell synergies, so to speak, between Solera and Hansa? Are you seeing something already there now, and what is it?

So the way the organization has worked up until the end of the year is that you basically have two parallel delivery systems that have been merged from an organizational point of view. the processes in the back end has not been merged. That will happen with the ERP go live. Despite that, we've seen good efforts in particular in on trade where the sales people from the beer business is starting to sell in wines and spirits to a large extent to our customers. And also you see we have access to a lot of customers through the wine and spirits business where We have a constructive dialogue on getting beer in as well. So I would say that journey to becoming a multi-beverage business in the alcohol space in Norway is well on its way. Of course, because we have a relatively large share of the on-trade business in Norway. If the market goes down, we are not immune to that. So when there is a little bit of pressure on on-trade, we will go down with the market. But if you look at... the amount of customers we have and the cross-sell we do, we do see positive signs in Norway that this is moving in the right direction. And then, of course, next year when we are on the same platform and we have aligned the trade terms and et cetera, then we can have full focus on customers and not on merging the two systems.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Andre Andon from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Lars and Lars, and thank you for taking my question. One from me, please. With Ramona now part of Royal Unibrew for a year, what are kind of the key consumer trends you're seeing in Netherlands at the moment, and how are they reflecting on your portfolio in the market? Thank you.

I think the excise that came into place in the beginning of the year have changed the market dynamics a bit, given that most, I would say, brand owners have seen lower returns. shares in the overall market, and you have seen a movement towards water, which is the only category that didn't get the excise. And you have seen that the retailers have struggled to find a way to do efficient promotions because of the dynamics that happens on the price points that comes out of the excise increase. And that has led to that you see more sales of water and in the flavored categories, more private label and low end. So there's a lot of focus at our end on how to change these dynamics. We are pretty positive around how we can do that together with the customers. On top of that, you continue to see growth in no sugar. You see the healthy beverages, as we talked about. So see vitamin water as a category that is growing. And the portfolio in Ramona is, in general, very well positioned to cater for the growth categories. So we are pretty optimistic on how the future could look like. But I think we also need to reckon that this is a change of culture. It is a business that has had a mind of running a mainstream beer business in Holland and running a non-alcohol beverage business is something that is totally different. And that is not something that you change overnight. But we are well on the way to get into a more, I would say, a more uniform mindset of how you get the best or maximize the local opportunities. So this is where we are on Holland.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the end of Philip Spain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, Lars and Lars. Thanks very much for taking my questions this morning. The first one I just want to ask, following up on your comments from earlier in the call about where you're seeing customers buying more on promo, just wanted to know if you're seeing promotions from competitors in the market get deeper at all and how you're responding as well to the fact that consumers are buying more promotions. Are you increasing your levels of promotions in the market as well? And that's my first question. And then my second question is just on, you also mentioned earlier in the call that you don't see as strong growth for no and low alcohol. Looking ahead, I just want to understand what's changed there and what you do expect for that segment moving forward as well. Thank you.

If I take the no low question, I think the starting point of this category is very, very low. And we saw or we have seen a swing where it was quite positive during COVID. after covid and now it is it is it is less of growth rates in reality i think the offering is still super important and we believe in this in the long term but when we look at the opportunity compared to no low sugar energy drinks enhanced waters ready to drink cider and so on so forth then that category has moved down the rank. It doesn't mean that we cannot grow. It doesn't mean that we're not doing good. But it just indicates that the growth opportunity is lower than what we saw three, four years ago. So that's the no low alcohol. Lars, maybe comments on the promo?

Yeah, so I think what's important to note when we call out that the promos part of the business have been bigger, our portfolio is pretty broad and we are very strong in both convenience and we have many different pack sizes. It is a fact that consumers are bargain hunting more. So we do see that there is more promotional pressure across the business. That, of course, has two effects. That means that the volumes goes up and the margin goes down. so the the way we try to uh to mitigate that is of course to ensure that we have a very high efficiency in our supply chain and manage our cost based to a market where it's more important to for customers to uh to get what you say uh products on promotion rather than to pay the high price so it's basically just adjusting to uh to that scenario and i think we've got a a pretty solid toolbox to do that across most market. But of course, it means that you act slightly differently in the way you deploy cost, the way you set up your production, what do you say, the production patterns, et cetera, because you need to make certain that you are super sharp on And that is also why we run efficiency very tightly at this point in time, because if consumers are focused on price, then we need to make certain that we are super sharp in terms of the cost that we use across the business. But I would say that's the benefit of having a multi beverage business. That is that you can adjust to that and you have a lot of levers to pull to ensure that if the customer is looking for lower cost, then you can adjust to that and still make money, make good money in that scenario.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Soren Samson from SCB, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Lars, Lars. Just for that question on the, just trying to get some clarification on the M&A effect of the 1.5 billion you mentioned. I was just trying to see the increase in revenue for first nine months was around 2 billion, and then if I back out the organic development, then I I get to 1.3 billion in M&A effect for the first nine months. So we should expect 200 million more from Ramona and San Giorgio in the last quarter. Is that how we should read it?

San Giorgio for one month and then Belgium for three months. That's what is the effect that is remaining. So Ramona is now on a comparable basis.

Okay, but they were included, you know, in the end of September, and so it's not like a pure M&A effect. We should expect the 200 million because they're already in numbers for last year, right? Or if I ask in another way, what's the annual contribution from these two in 2024 expected?

So maybe bilaterally come back on the details on that one, on the build-up.

Yes, please do, because I was just trying to backtrack on what the revenue contribution was when you acquired them, and that was around 1.8. So I was just trying to sort of piece together how that fits with the 1.5, but we can take that afterwards.

Yes.

My second question was... was on the follow-up on the international business questions earlier, which was more on the profitability side. You have very strong growth, which should give some very good operational leverage. So can we expect the profitability to continue to improve in the coming quarters and into 2025? And what level of margin should we look for going forward in terms of the margins?

We look at the margins. That's kind of like a mathematical devaluation of the margins because the COX went up and we increased prices to try to cover for that. So that lowers a bit the margin if you compare to before the inflation started. And then we still need to get about half of the cost increase that we suffered on the logistics side. We need to get that back. And then the rest of it in general, that would be more market mix-based and not relating to that. There's a change of profitability there. On the totality of what sits in the margin, there's obviously an allocation of costs because the international business, a large majority of that is being produced in the Nordic sites. So the more efficient that we run in the Nordic sites, of course, then they will get a share of that when we do the allocation of costs. So this is how it works.

Okay, but there's nothing sort of structure that's changed since three or four years ago in terms of the way they're operating, I guess.

No, so this is more a mix, a market mix. I think structurally, we have the Canadian business with a restaurant that goes at a higher revenue but a lower margin than the average. Of course, that has a dilutive effect, but that's the only structural thing that has changed in international of any magnitude.

Okay, and then my last question is more trying to sort of get a sense of the underlying organic price development. It was a bit hard to see from here, both on the group level and on the divisions, but maybe you can give us a bit more call on that.

I think what you should remember to adjust for in the numbers is when you look at group levels, if we call out that the on-trade in Norway and Finland is slightly negative and volumes moved somewhere else, that has a mixed impact on the group. We see strong growth in Baltics. Finland is not as positive. So there's a lot of country and channel mix in that number. So it's a little bit difficult to isolate price effects in the quarter. So there's a lot of mix in the numbers that you're looking at.

Okay, so it's more a mixed effect than a price effect, I guess then.

I think when you look at pricing, we are back to where we were before the inflation started. And I think we already called that out a couple of quarters ago. So there is still inflation in most societies. And if there's inflation, then, of course, we would also need to get price increases to cover up for those extra costs that we get in. But we are back to the same toolbox as we were using before the inflation started to kick in, and that is... looking at pricing look at price mix and and try to do efficiency gains operational leverage and thereby uh ongoingly create an expansion of margin uh looking at it from an organic point of view it's exactly the same toolbox okay thanks for that guys thank you we will now take your last question

From the line of Peter Shested from ABG, please go ahead.

Yes, thank you for taking my questions. I have four, if I may. First one on price, potential price increases for 25. As you said, you're seeing some pressures now and there. I guess you have to compensate that for with prices. But is that possible in the future? in sort of the scenarios that you just alluded to in terms of moves towards, you know, tougher retail negotiators and also general weakness across the board. In terms of the international business, any plans or sort of Do you see any advantages in terms of cost, logistics, etc., of moving that production from Denmark to, for instance, closer to Africa, for instance, as moving that to St. George? On the margins in the M&A, you graciously provide some details for us to calculate that, but where are we index-wise from the maximum points? And sort of capital allocation, any thoughts now that Julie Rich is sort of coming back to a point where share buybacks might be coming to play again? Thank you.

Yeah, if I start on price increases, I'm not going to comment on that for 25. I think I rely on the comment that I also gave to Sharon, and that is that we do still see inflation. And in particular, I would say on the fixed cost line, the salaries in many countries have already been fixed based on history. So we need to deal with that piece. So some kind of inflation and price increase must be expected. International, there's multiple pieces when it comes to moving closer to the markets where it's being sold. Sometimes it's not actually a good financial exercise because we are producing very, very efficiently and have good suppliers that support us in making sure that we can be competitive when you look at the production cost. And as long as that is the situation, there's multiple markets that needs to be serviced out of the Nordics. Change of import duties, which we have seen in Africa on and off, of course, is something that potentially can change. Avoidance of import duties, avoiding of transportation costs is something where you then can allow yourself to have a higher cost if the import duty and the lower transportation cost pays for it. And then you need a partner that can do it for you, either moving it to license or moving it to third-party production. And the team in international are constantly monitoring what is the best way to operate here. And then I think whatever we do in terms of moving closer to being produced in the market where it's consumed, It would normally drive down CO2 consumption, which is also on our agenda. So there's multiple pieces that we are looking at when we judge the international business and potential move of where we produce it. I think just before last on the San Giorgio piece, it's an asset where we have spare capacity when we have done the CapEx, and thereby it became a piece of the puzzle to support international. And if it's from a financial point of view and if they have capacity, it makes sense to ship out of – out of San Giorgio to markets that are now serviced from the Nordics, we are going to evaluate if that's a good idea. So that is how we work on the total supply chain network. Whoever has the best total cost of ownership will get the volume, so to speak.

If you look at the acquisitions that we have done and how they are performance also in terms of margins, it's important to remember that we don't like low margin business. So whenever we buy a company, we go in and we analyze What do they make on each product that they sell? And if there is any loss-making business in there or there's any low-margin business in there, we really challenge whether we should keep that business. For us, the key focus when we have acquired a company is to make certain that we get the EBIT impact in and we start to get on a journey where we have a good portfolio where we grow over time. If you look at the EBIT contributions from the acquisitions that we have done, it is delivering as per plan. If you think about the Italian acquisitions, it was a private label producer before we took it over. Some of it was okay business, and some of it was not good business. And I think the key for us was to really make certain we got down to a – a solid base business because we could use the capacity for other things. So we have not really focused on what you can say the margin percentage in the business because the first thing we do is to ensure that the portfolio we have is all something that we want to continue with. But I would say if you look at how the Italian acquisition is performing in terms of contribution to the group EBIT line, It is doing super well. It is delivering what we expected. It is freeing up capacity so you can see a lot of growth in international where we can now produce some of the beers consumed in Italy in San Giorgio. And if you then turn to Formona, then Formona have contributed with a lot of capacity to the group. So that's as we would like it to be. And also the acquisitions in totality deliver the profit that they need to do to the group. So I would say we are on track in both San Giorgio and Fremona. But remember that the revenue line, we don't like nobody in business. So we are taking out what we don't make money on.

And on capital allocation?

So if you look at capital allocation, remember that the net debt to EBITDA that we're looking at at the end of Q3, we paid our dividend two days after. So a lot of money went out of the bank account just shortly after. Of course, it's clear that our balance sheet is in good order. Our priorities have not changed, meaning that we want to develop the business. The integrations are starting to get integrated across the piece. We have one more acquisition that is closing towards the beginning of 2025 in Finland. So I would say the balance sheet is getting back on track and we are quite far down the road of integrating the acquisitions. So for us next year, it's really all about making certain that we grow organically and we continue to develop the business. If the balance sheet improves, then, of course, we need to look at how much do we distribute to shareholders. But that's too early to say now because we just paid out dividends and that, of course, takes up the net debt to EBITDA somewhat.

Thank you. I guess we can follow up on talks on Friday.

Thank you. I would like to turn the call first over to Lars Jensen for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. And everybody, thank you for participating. I think what you should keep in mind is that we are growing our business strongly. We are performing a couple of percentage points better than peers in our geographies. We have re-established our financial and strategic flexibility on our balance sheet. and that we have an optimistic view on the years to come. And then I look forward to meeting you all over the coming days. Thank you very much.