Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (ABI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Anheuser-Busch InBev's Sustainability Conference Call and Webcast. Hosting the call today from AB InBev are Mr. Tony Milikin, Chief Procurement, Sustainability and Circular Ventures Officer; and Ms. Ezgi Barcenas, Global Head of Sustainability. To access the slides accompanying today's call, please visit AB InBev's website at www.ab-inbev.com and click on the Investors tab and Presentations page. Today's webcast will be available for on-demand playback later today. [Operator Instructions] Some of the information provided during the conference call may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. It is possible that AB InBev's actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in these forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the risk factors and important factors that could affect AB InBev's future results, see risk factors in the company's latest annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the 23rd of March, 2020. AB InBev assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information provided during the conference call and should not be liable for any action taken in reliance upon such information. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Tony Milikin. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. My name is, again, Tony Milikin. I'm the Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer at AB InBev. I'm excited to join you today and discuss what we at AB InBev are doing to build the company for the next 100 years. So approximately about 3 years ago, Carlos Brito has moved sustainability under procurement to incorporate an agenda better suited for our commercial strategy and to make sure we are addressing the sustainability challenges most important to our businesses. In my opinion, this is Brito's greatest gift he could offered to our sourcing teams. Our procurement professionals have renewed purpose to engage our suppliers, collaborate and innovate. My teams oversee -- just to give you an idea, my teams oversee sourcing. We have vertical operations; sustainability, as I mentioned; and circularity. And as for everybody on the call, circularity in our view is managing our waste. And we're looking -- we are working across different teams and functions in the business from marketing, supply to finance, from a global and a local point of view to embed sustainability in everything we do as a company. We have a strong history of sustainability at AB InBev, but our 2025 goals are our most ambitious yet, not only addressing what we're going to do within our walls but also ensuring that our communities and environments where we live and work daily are thriving and resilient. Now more than ever, our sustainability goals are relevant and business-critical. While the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges for our communities and businesses, our teams have shown tremendous ability and agility throughout the process. If anything, the pandemic has strengthened our commitment to sustainability, and it's shown us that we have a set of right goals at the right time for the business and our communities we operate. We're also learning quickly and sharing best practices across our global footprint, working collaboratively to build a resiliency across our supply chain, whether it's making sure our farmers can continue to grow and sell their crops but also make sure that the cash flow to them continues, to ensuring our small retailers can continue to not only operate but grow their businesses. And so I'd like to, at this point, introduce you to Ezgi Barcenas. She's our Global Head of Sustainability. She's the brains behind the strategy and our goals now. And so I'll introduce her to just take over now. And I look forward to joining you at the end of the presentation for your questions. Thank you for being with us today. Ezgi, it's all yours.

Thank you, Tony. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. I'm Ezgi Barcenas. As Tony mentioned, I'm the Global Head of Sustainability at AB InBev, and I've been with the company over 7 years. So I'm excited to speak with you today. Today, we'll share with you an overview of our approach to sustainability, the key strategic pillars as well as programs that we put in place, all in order to future-proof AB InBev. You're all likely familiar with our company, but just to reiterate our size and scale, we operate in nearly 50 markets around the world, sustaining over 5 million jobs globally and with about 50 million consumers buying our products daily. And we keep that global scale and local reach in mind in how we show up in our communities every day, how we design our programs for supply security, for business continuity and community resilience. So we buy, make and sell over 90% of our products locally. This requires a healthy natural environment as well as thriving communities. And we're building a company to last. And when you couple our diverse and global reach with our local focus, you see why sustainability isn't just part of our business. It is our business. And if you look at our entire value chain, you will see how at every touch point we invest in building vibrant, thriving communities a healthier environment and a resilient value chain. And our sustainability strategy, as you can see on the screen, is a reflection of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. We're an engine for local economic growth, and we proudly contribute to broader sustainable development, whether it's how we show up to improve the livelihoods of our farmers, how we enhance the water availability and quality for our communities in high-stress areas or how we champion the transition to a low-carbon economy, invest in road safety and green logistics in order to strengthen our communities and value chain and also to strengthen micro and small enterprises at the end of our value chain, and these are just to name a few examples. As I mentioned, sustainability makes business sense, and it's really very simple. At the core of it, sustainability is about supply security and business continuity. When you think about raw material sourcing, water availability, this is why sustainability makes business sense. But it's also about our own employees, our own employees that are increasingly seeking that sense of purpose, that sense of pride. We always say our greatest strength is our people, and sustainability is a genuine concern for the modern workforce. So it's not only critical for talent attraction but also for talent engagement and retention, and we know that. Thirdly, with the rise of conscious consumerism, we're seeking -- we're seeing consumers are asking more questions about environmental and social impacts and turning to their favorite brands, some of our most iconic brands, to step up in authentic, purpose-driven ways. And we witnessed this trend for years. Our Stella Artois brand has spearheaded this internally and externally since 2014 through their partnership with Water.org, which I'm sure many of you have seen, in order to provide water access to women and families in need. And more recently, our Budweiser brand has championed our corporate efforts, which I'm really proud of, to switch to 100% renewable electricity by launching a campaign in Davos a couple of years ago at the World Economic Forum and with one of the most successful and commendable Super Bowl ads last year to tell the story of our commitment to renewable electricity for a more sustainable future. Last but not least, sustainability is really truly all about innovation. It's about the future. We know we need to think about the future of agriculture. We're thinking about the future of packaging, future of logistics, future of consumerism in our efforts to build the company for the next 100-plus years. And it allows us to remain ambitious, differentiated and competitive. So if you think about it, sustainability is, in fact, doing what we do better, whether it's sourcing the highest-quality ingredients, being efficient, resourceful and effective with our resources or embracing new technologies and innovation or telling great stories about our iconic brand. As the world's leading brewer, we remain firmly committed to creating a better world for all of our stakeholders while also creating value for our business. So when we set out to redefine our sustainability strategy in 2017, following our transformational combination with SAB, we brought together 80 of our colleagues from around the world to create our next set of public commitments. So as you can see, sustainability is not a siloed team or organization in our company. Colleagues from all of our 6 operating zones across procurement; supply, which is our operations team; logistics; corporate affairs; and R&D teams came together to identify the most material issues and the biggest opportunities that we have in order to create value for our business but also future-proof our value chain. And these are the 4 pillars: agriculture, water, packaging and climate, that are core to our dream of building a profitable growth company, and we're putting resources and effort behind them. We're also sharing targets linked to our compensation with hundreds of colleagues around the world that are working across zones and across functions to deliver our sustainability goals. I'd like to also note how we're taking an outward-in approach in every one of them. And this is really critical, and it's evident in our farmer-centric approach to smart agriculture, our focus on communities and water availability and quality in high-stress areas, our commitment to protecting and promoting our 2-way packaging, which I think is arguably the largest circular economy in the world and in how we're working with our supply chain to reduce emissions and contribute to local grid transformation through additional renewable capacity that we're putting in place. And we're making great progress towards our 2025 commitments only 2 years in. And what's not visible on this page is really the programs and partnerships that we're putting in place to ramp up our efforts for 2025. And we're working hard to hold ourselves accountable with clearly defined KPIs in true ABI fashion and an assurance process as part of our integrated reporting. By having sustainability integrated into the core business, we have been able to quickly take action internally and across our value chain to deliver early progress, which gives us confidence that we're on the right track, and we're proud to share some of the results with you today and some of the programs we put in place. So as we're building programs and partnerships to ensure 100% of our farmers are skilled, connected and financially empowered, we're investing in economic guidance and remote field-level advice in order to improve farming practices, lower their environmental impact and improve farmer productivity. Again, you can see how we're taking that farmer-centric approach in everything we do. We're also investing in climate modeling and predictive analytics, so that we can better forecast risks and opportunities in our sourcing regions. This is a key priority for us, and we're utilizing climate prediction data from NASA, which I think is a unique opportunity for us to demonstrate practical use case applications of their data. We're also making progress on regenerative agricultural efforts. And we're building out our global approach to soil health with our economists and our partners, key partners like The Nature Conservancy and Sustainable Food Lab. In fact, you may have seen coverage a few months ago of our Indigo Ag partnership with our rice farmers in the U.S., which showed really good results and provides learnings on how we can expand our approach more broadly. Through this partnership with rice farmers and Indigo Ag in the U.S., we've seen over 20% reduction in water use, nearly 15% reduction in nitrogen savings and over 25% reduction in methane production and all of this while increasing farmer profitability. So again, sustainability makes business sense. And we know that biodiversity will be high on the agenda in a post-pandemic world as COVID-19 has really exposed an urgent need for regeneration and resilience. So we're working to build out a really robust strategy, which I'm really proud of, that includes biodiversity with partners like The Nature Conservancy and Sustainable Food Lab, as I mentioned. In addition, with the pandemic, we're seeing growing inequality within and between countries. And this makes our work with smallholder farmers all the more essential, both for our supply security and for their livelihood. So we continue to invest in their resilience and the development of these vulnerable supply chains. And one way we do that, if I can give an example, is by investing in technology solutions like BanQu. It's a blockchain-enabled platform to strengthen our smallholder sourcing through transparency and empowerment, ensuring that farmers are paid a fair price and have greater access to financial services. It also helps us run these programs more efficiently and effectively. So across all of our agricultural programs, whether it's smallholder or commercial market, our local teams are partnering with farmers to implement our responsible sourcing policy to ensure that farms are a safe place to work and that human rights are respected, a key element to building resilient agricultural supply chain. And if we move on to water, water is really our #1 ingredient in all of our products, and more importantly, it's a basic human right and a critical resource for the health and well-being of our communities, which is why we've taken an outward-in approach, again, as I mentioned earlier, in our water commitment strategy in order to ensure 100% of our communities to have measurably improved water availability and quality in high-stress areas. This really enabled us to drive what some stakeholders have called a sector-leading agenda in water stewardship. Bringing accountability and measurable improvement to our watershed work really positions us as the leader in this space and helps us manage our water risk more effectively. We're taking a science-based approach at each and every one of our high-stress watersheds. One example is the great results we're seeing out of Bucaramanga in Colombia, where our collective efforts with partners like [ GIV ] has really allowed us to set up a water fund that, in addition to a number of benefits, is helping retain over 2 million cubic meter of additional water annually in the ecosystem. It's really an incredible project. It's the buffer zone of 13 municipalities, and our local team is doing a fantastic job bringing together all the key stakeholders and raising funding for this project. Water security is very complex, and we can't do this alone. Additionally, this past March, as part of the UN Global Compact, we also proudly cofounded a CEO-led cross-sector coalition to help inform corporate water stewardship evolution and shape ambitions and frameworks into industry standards. Our own CEO, Brito, has been a champion of this initiative, which marks the beginning of the water-positive future for all of us. Furthermore, we've been rated CDP Water A-lister. It's great to see our efforts are being recognized in a world where water stress continues to be magnified by climate change. If we move on to packaging. In packaging, we've set a really ambitious target to have 100% of our products be in packaging that's returnable or made from majority recycled content. Through this commitment, we're really working hard to eliminate over 1 million tons of virgin materials from our supply chain. I believe it's over 1.3 million tons, actually. We're investing in recycling programs, and we're co-innovating with suppliers and commercial partners. So you'll see on the left side of the slide that, in partnership with our marketing teams, we're also thinking about our environmental footprint in sponsorships and events, so at every touch point, at every product that we put out in the marketplace. We're partnering with our R&D arm, our GITEC team in Leuven, our Global Innovation and Technology Center in Leuven and our suppliers to explore more sustainable packaging options, and also, we're looking for alternative solutions for plastic beyond primary packaging, which is really where the opportunity to make an impact truly exists. Another example, if I can give another example, is in markets like Brazil and Colombia and many others, we're also collecting "lost" glass bottles and bringing them home through our accelerator start-ups that are improving our supply security, lowering costs and improving transparency and dignity of those vulnerable supply chains as well. We're also working with our largest suppliers to think about the future of packaging. As I mentioned earlier, sustainability is really all about innovation for us. So in China, for example, late last year, we brought together can sheet suppliers to better understand the gaps and opportunities in recycled aluminum scrap, so that we can continue to identify opportunities for partnership. Last but not least, we have over 50 circular packaging programs globally and more than 20 working with formal waster -- informal waste collectors. And we're taking all those learnings from our agricultural programs in trialing BanQu in Zambia and Colombia. So it's our blockchain platform that we utilize in our agricultural supply chain to bring greater transparency and financial access to waste collectors as well in these previously informal markets. In most collector programs, women make up about 50% to 60% and, in Zambia, even up to 70%, where the program is focused on increasing women's participation. And we're really excited to take some of the learnings from these pilots to ensure that we're scaling social impact alongside environmental impact across our circular packaging programs. So when we think about carbon, our commitment to reduce 25% of our carbon emissions across value chain -- across our entire value chain is a science-based target. It's approved by science-based targets initiative, and it's in line with our 1.5-degree Celsius trajectory. The biggest opportunity in climate action truly for us is in value chain. In fact, over 80% of our carbon emissions are Scope 3 emissions. And it's really another reason why sustainability and procurement need to go hand-in-hand in our efforts to build a more sustainable future and a more sustainable company. In our 100% renewable electricity commitments, we're looking to convert over 5 terawatt hours of electricity from brown to green. And so far, we contracted over 60% of our global volume to come from wind and solar power. And we continue to grow our understanding of the renewable space and even proudly sit on the Advisory Committee of RE100 to work -- to provide best practices and recommendations on enabling policies to governments and other local stakeholders around the world as we go from market to market, looking at renewable electricity opportunities. We're also continuing to electrify our fleet wherever it makes sense, championing new technologies and innovations across our zones. And we also launched a sustainability dedicated to supplier platform, named Eclipse. Some of you may have seen this. This program is fairly new. We launched it late 2018, where we're working together with over 50 of our biggest suppliers to set a shared vision, identifying gaps and opportunities. And the whole ambition here is to really co-innovate with our supply chain. We've gotten an A- score in CDP Climate. We've also been recognized because of our great efforts in working with our supply chain as a CDP supplier engagement leader. Again, we're really proud of these achievements, and huge thanks and shout-out to our procurement teams now for their growing supplier collaboration efforts for sustainability. We mentioned our accelerator program a couple of times when we gave the BanQu example. Our sustainability accelerator, our award-winning 100+ Sustainability Accelerator, was launched in 2018, and it continues to deliver really strong results. We created this to be an open platform to support promising ideas and technologies to help us solve some of the biggest sustainability challenges that we face, that the world faces today. And our 100+ Accelerator runs annual boot camps in 9 markets, followed by a 10-week program for select entrepreneurs to pilot test and scale their solutions in our operations and value chain. And I think that's what makes our program really special because we truly pilot their solutions and we test to see if their results are worth scaling. 12 out of 21 start-ups in our first cohort have received a commercial contract from us, and we're scaling up their solutions following the success of their pilots. Collectively, our start-ups have raised over $200 million from prominent investors. So now we're in the second cohort. And they're offering us the potential to capture over $80 million in savings by 2025 based on some of the solutions that we're seeing and scaling right now. I mentioned BanQu before for agriculture. I also mentioned it in circular packaging. But just another example of one of our start-ups in the sustainability accelerator, EW Tech, which is a green caustic soda replacement that's used in our breweries for cleaning purposes, really comes with an incredible innovative solution that comes with huge water, energy and time savings, which then translate, of course, into cost savings for our operations. So that's another solution that we identified out of Colombia that we're piloting and scaling and really excited about the results. This year, we're piloting in our second cohort. As I mentioned, we've got 17 start-ups. And again, the idea is to test game-changing solutions in our field, in our watersheds for our consumers and with zero waste. Maybe a few examples that I can provide. OKO is an Israeli company that's providing weather-indexed crop insurance to our body farmers in Uganda, which is really a first for many of our smallholder farmers. Gybe is another one that's providing real-time water quality data in one of our high-stress watersheds in agricultural supply chain in the U.S. We're also always in search of circular and renewable sources of water. So with Asarasi, we're working to understand the opportunities in plant-based water for maple processing. This is -- if you think about it, this is really tree water that's harvested harmlessly during maple syrup production. It is the by-product of maple syrup industry. And then with Nomo, we're investing in the transparency of vulnerable recycling supply chains to collect bottles and improve the livelihood of waste pickers and, of course, lower our costs. At every step, everything we do makes business sense for us. And I think Tony mentioned this earlier. Our purpose has never been more relevant than it is today. COVID has strengthened our commitment to building a better world, to bringing people together for a better world. And it's made the need for innovation and collaboration to support local communities even more critical than ever before. So for us as a company, the health and safety of our colleagues, the supply chain partners, the communities has always been our top priority, and that's what's informed our immediate response to the pandemic. In agricultural supply chains, the relationships that we built throughout our programs over the years, with our farmers, the relationships that we've built there and the digital platforms that we put in place have really enabled us to quickly adopt to market disruptions because of the pandemic, whether it was managing through the harvest, getting farmers feeds and inputs, ensuring that farmers have the information and support they need to produce a quality crop because they rely on that economic guidance from our economists. And because of this, we've been able to maintain supply throughout this entire time, and we've had no interruptions, and we're really proud of that. We're really proud of the local connections and local investments we're making in these farmers. And we also -- I think it's worth noting that we also continue to support our farmers by keeping buying sites open, operating safely with protective equipment, of course, which is critically important for farmers' cash flow. We also are working to ensure their access -- they have access to credit and inputs. We're offering health and safety training and remote economic advice and guidance, as I mentioned, using radio or SMS, where if a smartphone is not available, we're using radio and SMS to reach smallholder farmers that we typically need in person but we can't now because of the pandemic. In water, we were able to produce and donate nearly 3 million bottles of hand sanitizers and disinfectants to hospitals and frontline workers in 20-plus countries. This is, of course, especially critical in communities that face water access or water availability challenges. Water security is very complex. There's no single solution, as I mentioned, and we continue to invest in our community resilience. We also work with the waste pickers in our recycling supply chains to ensure their safety and well-being. And we haven't stopped partnering with our suppliers throughout the pandemic. Our Eclipse platform is really a first of its kind in the beverage industry. And then throughout the pandemic, we've offered educational webinars, workshops with sector experts from RE100, Goldman Sachs and Albion Power and others, really providing opportunities to share best practices and continue to learn from each other. The idea here is how do we continue to learn from each other and collaborate on critical enablers that we need for that transition to a low-carbon economy. So we're really committed to building a company for the next 100-plus years, to bringing people together for a better world. And we'll continue to invest in local supply chains and communities because we really believe that the future is local. And we're constantly looking for ways to design for resilience and to build the long-lasting change. And our own CFO, Fernando Tennenbaum, has joined as a founding member to the UN Global Compact CFO Taskforce for the SDGs a couple of weeks ago, to bring the corporate finance and sustainability world closer together, and we're really proud of this. And the idea here is to continue to identify innovative financing mechanisms to ensure that we're tackling material issues to our business and solving shared challenges with our communities across the world. So in closing, thank you for your time today. I'm really excited to be here with Tony. We hope you have a more thorough understanding of our sustainability strategy and ambition. Some of you may have heard it for the first time. Some of you may be following our sustainability journey for quite some time now. And we're really excited about the progress that we're making. We don't have all the answers, but we're looking forward to learning, testing and scaling solutions. So I'll -- maybe without further ado, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A, and we'll be happy to take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI.

Great. A couple of questions. Obviously, in -- when you're in the beer business, relations with governments is very important. And all of these issues that you discuss and sustainability are important to governments and their populations. I was wondering if you can talk about that side a little bit, how maybe these efforts are integrated with your local community and government relationship teams, whether you've seen any tangible benefits from that in terms of tax credits perhaps and ability and license to operate. So that would be the first question. And then the second question. Perhaps, is -- are there any advantages that you can quantify on the capital expenditure side from these efforts? Obviously, it can be more efficient with waste that there should be some tangible results. Any way to quantify any of that?

Thank you. Thank you for your question. Of course, as I mentioned, the future is local. We're continuing to invest in our local communities everywhere we work. So whether you look at our efforts in agriculture or in water or in packaging or in climate action, everything we do, we do with our local stakeholders, right? We can't do this alone. So we have to work through industry associations. We have to work very closely with our government affairs, industry affairs and corporate affairs teams around the world. And sustainability is really our business, and we set the goals that are material to our business. So we continue to have the right conversations, knock on doors to figure out what the opportunities are around the world. And we have great relationships around the world with governments, and we don't really comment on taxation. But yes, we are seeing an emergence of conversations on green taxation. So I think a lot of our efforts and the way that we continue to invest in solutions and innovations are going to put us in -- position us well in the future as we see more policies up here. What we're really looking for here is the enabling policies and the regulatory backbones that are needed for us to invest in new technologies. And if you think about renewables, for example, we're taking our learnings from one market to another. And we're sharing with our supply chain, with our suppliers, with the local authorities what some of our learnings are. If I can give one example, in Argentina, I believe, it was in Argentina where the government opened a brief consultation period with companies and public and experts and scientists. And we weighed in on that. We weighed in on what we expect to see from the technology and how companies like ours are looking forward to scaling these technologies, so that, again, our approach to sustainability really goes beyond being efficient. We're focusing on how we can be resourceful, how we can champion innovation around the world and by leveraging our core competencies. So yes, absolutely, we're working very closely with local stakeholders, including government.

Hey, Robert, with your second question, not like by quantifying, but it's good to talk to you. The thing that you need to know is that when you were with us back in '08, when I started the company, we were about 6 liters to produce 1 liter of beer. We've made those investments, and now we're down to 2.8, and we're on our way towards as -- getting as low as the water use there is. I think the other part is that when you start thinking about investments, we look at this from a procurement standpoint. We're working with our suppliers. And everything that we're doing right now, so if you think about renewable electricity, our costs now are lower. If you think about bottles, our recyclability content in those bottles, that's actually less carbon footprint, less carbon being used and lower cost to us. So the whole supply chain of those cutlet coming back to the glass factories. Same thing with cans. I mean if you look at aluminum around the world, there's plenty of aluminum. We just got to get it back into the cans. And so when you think about that, it's lower on our carbon footprint and lower cost, ultimately. So everything that we're doing, we look from an efficiency, but it's also about being effective. And so hopefully, Robert, I've answered your question best we can.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Lisa Lang ] of [ Federal Adherence ].

First of all, thanks so much for this presentation. It's really good to get some insights on your sustainability approach. What I felt really interesting is that you said you -- for your sustainability targets, you have very clear KPIs. And you also said you're working a little bit more on biodiversity. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit more on that, in particular, what KPIs you're considering to measure your impact on biodiversity.

Yes. Thank you. This is something that we're looking at very closely, as I mentioned, because in agriculture, it is really about shifting behaviors and introducing new technology and innovations. So we're testing. We're testing new technologies and new farming practices through partners like Indigo Ag, and I've given some examples there. For me, at the end, what it really comes down to is good agricultural practices, right? So someone may call it regenerative agriculture. Someone else may call it smart agriculture or conservation agriculture, right? At the end, we really want to be very mindful of our resources, whether it's water and water quantity or quality, right, because the runoffs and the fertilizer use also make an impact in water quality; or whether it's soil health. And it really -- this is what it comes down to. And for us, those are some of the metrics that we continue to check. It's this water quality, quantity, soil health and yes, so similar topics like that.

Our next question comes from the line of Alicia Forry of Investec.

Thanks very much for these insights. It's very interesting. My 2 questions are: one, you talk about farmer security being critical. But ABI is also pretty well known for having quite an aggressive days payable outstanding position, i.e., you're very tight on your working capital. So I'm just curious how you square that circle and where trade-offs occur. And then secondly, I'm curious, given your broad geographic spread, if you notice a difference in consumer and government acceptance of sustainability across the various regions, if you notice any differences, that would be interesting.

Yes.

Ezgi, let me address the payment side of it. Yes, we are aggressive. And yes, we're very smart about how we do cash management. But it's not a one rule for everything. We're very smart about segregating our supply chain or our suppliers. And so when you look at our farmers, especially our small shareholders or stakeholders, sorry -- I'm sorry, small suppliers out there, we address that differently on our cash management. I think the other part would be is this. We're looking at our small farmers. So I'll just give you an example. Ezgi brought up BanQu earlier, a blockchain solution. And in that situation, we didn't even -- we couldn't even see our suppliers. So it did not even have a financial identity. And so we didn't fully understand our ability to get the money to those farmers, those small, small farmers. And so through BanQu, we basically unlocked that. And ultimately, now those farmers have a financial identity. We're working directly with them through blockchain to make sure they are paid on time and in an expedited manner, instead of going through a broker and then going into a black box. So I think when you start looking at how we are addressing our supply chain and how we make those payment decisions, you can rest assured we're doing our best to make sure that we have a differentiated way of going to market. The second question, Ezgi, on consumers. I didn't -- repeat that question, and then I'll get back to that.

Yes, sorry. It's really just across the different regions, do you notice differences in consumer and government's level of acceptance or interest in sustainability. Are there variations?

Wow. I got to say -- Ezgi, do you want to go with that? I've got another thing, so go on.

Yes. Of course, we see variation across the markets, right, just like you would in anything that you look at. One thing I would say is, definitely, we are seeing the rise of conscious consumers. As I mentioned, we're seeing the rise of health and well-being. We're seeing a focus on locally sourced products. So all of these things are trends that we've been following for years. But also we're seeing from consumer groups how they want to choose brands that share the same values and principles that they do as individuals. And that may vary depending on where you are in the world and your market conditions. There are, of course, nuances within your local context. But I would say more developed countries are likely to be more in tune with environmental challenges and environmental risks out there, whereas some of the developing country consumers are focused more on social development and economic empowerment. So we have a wide variety of ways in how we engage with our consumers, and it really goes back to that local context and what's the most pressing topics in that market and how they expect our brands to show up or our local operating businesses to show up in those communities every day. So yes, there is a variety that we see around the world.

Our next question comes from the line of Trevor Stirling of Bernstein.

Just one question from my side. Ezgi, I think you referred in the presentation to returnable glass bottles as the ultimate circular packaging. But historically, in developed markets, there's been a lot of resistance both from consumers and retailers to that system. Do you think there's any scope for reintroducing returnable glass bottles into developed markets? I'm just thinking maybe there -- if [ present tune ] can train people into not flying, can they -- can there be a certain movement towards returnable glass bottles?

Yes. Thank you, Trevor. I think this is, honestly, one of our biggest opportunities as a company and as citizens of this planet. As I mentioned, our circular packaging commitment really gives us that -- empowers us to continue to protect and promote our returnable volumes. As you mentioned, as markets mature and consumers opt for more one-way solutions, more convenient solutions, we see a decline in returnable volumes. And we've seen that for years. And our marketing teams are working relentlessly to meet the consumers where they are and also protecting some of those infrastructures and cultural norms. If I can give some examples, in Colombia, we are -- together with one of our start-ups, accelerator start-ups, Nomo, specifically, we're working to improve the consumer journey. We're using our waste collection system to collect empty glass bottles to be cleaned and refilled. So again, trying to make it more convenient for the consumers. In Brazil, we're looking at new returnable solutions with some of our biggest brands, a new returnable long neck with our Brahma Duplo Malte that we're launching. And we're using Corona more broadly and -- to support our circular packaging goal. But I think most -- one of the initiatives that really excites me the most in the U.S., how we're working with one of our start-ups, again, in the accelerated program. It's called Conscious Container. We're piloting returnable bottles. In a market like the U.S., that has been one way since 1980s. So this is something that we're really excited about. We're not only trying to slow down this trend but maybe even reverse it, and we know how incredibly difficult it this is, but we are looking at solutions. We're trying to pay more attention to what the consumers of today are asking because, again, going back to the earlier question, we are seeing a shift in consumer behavior. And yes, there may be a moment in time when the consumers will go back to returnables, maybe even in a market like the U.S. So stay tuned. We'll definitely share the results of that pilot by the end of the year when our second cohort graduates from the second -- from the accelerator program.

Hey, Trevor, it was a fantastic question because that's the one that we think about. There's a couple of angles on this. It's deals with the consumer, deals with the retailer, but I'd also just say that when you look at -- I'll just use the U.S. because I think that's some of the areas you're pointing to. Look at the states that have deposit loss, and then look at -- once they make waste actually a currency, you see that, that actually gets into the recycling market. I think that's one part of it. The second part of it is our teams are working with our suppliers right now to see if one-way bottles can be used more than once, all right? And so the design of returnable bottles is totally different than the one-way bottles. But is there the science within the glass that allows us to use one-way bottles, right, currently, if we can get them returned, can we use them multiple times? And so there's a lot of work going on with our teams just to see how we can keep the life of the bottle and continue in its life to be more -- used more than once.

Our next question comes from the line of Celine Pannuti of JPMorgan.

Yes. I hope you can hear me. I have 2 questions. The first one, you mentioned earlier some of the savings that you were able to do on this sustainability journey. I'm also wondering if there are as well costs associated with that. We heard some of the other companies, the subsector are spending a lot of money in terms of packaging, trying to find alternative or setting up funds. I presume as well, electricity must be more expensive when you buy green ones. So could you share your thoughts on that? That's my first question. And my second question is on the -- your direct farmers you're pledging on the agriculture pledge you've made. How much of your buying is linked with direct farmers? And how do you do on what is not linked to that to ensure that there as well a sustainable way that this agriculture or farmers are treated or behaving?

Yes. Thank you for your questions. So maybe I'll start with the second one. In agriculture, when you look at barley, which is our largest crop, about 50% of our global barley volume we buy directly from farmers. So those are the farmers that are in scope of our public commitment of ensuring that they are skilled, connected and financially empowered. So right now, we're trying to -- we're fortunate, I believe, as a business that we have a short and simple supply chain compared to other companies out there of our size and scale. So that said, we still are trying to close the gap on transparency into that direct supply chain. So about 50% of that volume -- that barley volume that comes from direct farmers, direct relationship with farmers. So we're investing in blockchain technology like BanQu to be able to really pinpoint exactly which farmer and which farm that barley came from, and we continue to invest in those local operations. But I think your question -- and the direct farmer volume is -- I think it varies depending on the year. It's a little bit less than 50%. But we're also working with our malt suppliers. I think you're raising a great point on how are we working with our indirect supply chain, and we're working very closely with our malt suppliers to look at the other half. And our Europe team is really spearheading this effort. They're working very closely with their suppliers and especially their malt suppliers to better understand what are some of the environmental considerations or social considerations that sit within that volume. But great question. Thank you.

Yes. Ezgi, let me add on to that. I think when you talk about maltsters, we're one of the largest maltsters in the world, I mean, our vertical operations. And so we have our own KPIs of operating, and we work closely with our suppliers to compare those benchmarks back and forth. So whether water usage, the amount of energy, waste, just everything that goes into malting, we're pretty good at it ourselves, and we work closely with our suppliers. So you find the actual benchmarking between our suppliers and our verticals is very, very healthy and robust, and that helps us lower all our costs and become much more sustainable over time.

Yes. And we -- I was just going to go back to your first question. Sorry, go ahead.

Yes. No, that's all good.

Yes. And I may turn it over to Tony. I believe, if I understood you correctly, you were asking about how do we invest in these programs and how do we handle the cost of these initiatives. So maybe I'll turn it over to Tony to talk a little bit about how everything we do really has a very strong ROI.

Yes. Well, when we talk to our suppliers, we're working with our suppliers, I mean, there's a lot of just pure procurement that comes into it. But I'll just give you some -- I'll give you an example. In Europe, when we're actually buying corrugated, which is a secondary packaging for us, we're actually finding out the green of the supplier, which means the supplier that has invested more in sustainability actually has a lower cost. And so the ones that have not made those capital improvements and had a focus towards sustainability, they actually are not being able to compete. And I'm just giving you that example, but you start looking across whether it's the can industry, which we're the largest can buyer in the world. Whether we make the cans ourselves or we're buying, we're the largest in the world. So those companies that are most green tend to win our business, and it's on the pure economics, but it's also because of their thoughtfulness and making it part of their strategy. And it's always at a positive ROI. We have exceptions, but in general, it's really around smart business. I'd say, the only exception out there for everybody who's listening is water. Water is the one that is -- we've got to invest. But I would tell you, it's really about working closely with our competitors in the beverage industry. We all have a situation of dealing with water. It's precious. It's our most precious resource. You can talk to anybody in the beverage industry, but let's just talk about beer. You can make beer with other raw materials, whether it's malt, corn, sorghum, cassava and any other type of starches, but you cannot make beer without water. And so that's our most critical resource. And we know that we can't do it by ourselves, and we're looking to partner with every one of the other beverage companies and competitors to do a better job.

Yes. And if I can quickly comment on that water comment from Tony. Absolutely, I think this is where if you actually take a closer look at our public commitment of having 100% of our communities to have measurably improve water availability and quality, you will see that we are trying to bring that sense of accountability into that commitment. That measurable improvement piece is really incredible there because if you look at prior corporate efforts, there has been discussions of replenishment, replenishing back in the same watershed, replenishing another watershed and offsetting. Our previous commitment was around protecting watersheds. All of those are great. But they are not -- water risk is very local. It's not like carbon. So you need to identify what the context-based metrics are that you need to track, so that you can look back and say, "Okay, now my investment has paid off, and I have measurably improved the watershed health or the quality and availability of water to my business and the communities that are at it." So we need to continue to invest in those long-term restoration conservation efforts in water. And we're bringing that accountability on ourselves and on our partners, like The Nature Conservancy and WWF who've been working very closely with us to better understand what are those key indicators at the watershed level, everywhere around the world, where there is high risk for us to continue to monitor and track, so we can improve the watershed health but also better track what the ROI is.

I think the other part of the question, Ezgi, was around buying green or green certificates, and that's not part of our strategy. Our part of our strategy is to actually do the hard work. It's not to piggyback on somebody else's work. It's about us doing the hard work and making the investments working with our supply chain.

Our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Stern of AllianceBernstein.

It's great to see you guys actually put some metrics down in relation to your goals. I know from some of your competitors, they give us their targets but not actually any KPIs that they're tracking. So that's great to see. One question I had was in regards -- you mentioned earlier with compensation-linked targets. I was hoping you guys could provide a little more context or clarity around that. Is that for -- is that in relation to your sustainable goals you outlined before? Is that for the executive branch -- or sorry, the executive compensation? And just could you potentially provide some examples of what those may be?

Yes. Absolutely. So maybe like let me take a step back and tell you a little bit more about how sustainability is managed within the company. We sit within the procurement organization, but we have an internal sustainability council made up of 4 chiefs who meet monthly to review our progress and to continue to provide guidance and weigh in on our efforts. And those are Tony on the line who's our Chief Procurement, Sustainability Officer. We have our Chief Supply Officer, Pete Kraemer; Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer, John Blood; and Chief Marketing Officer, Pedro Earp. So the council oversees our sustainability commitments and strategy. And in addition to that, we have a bi-monthly or sometimes, if needed, more frequently review, with Brito on the sustainability agenda. So we are very close to leadership at the highest levels in the company, and we continue to get their input and guidance on how we build our strategy. I would also add that our Board is very engaged on the topic of sustainability. They really understand what's material to our business. And we typically have at least 2 updates annually to the Board on our progress against the commitments. And of course, there is other frequent updates as well on supply security sourcing strategy, which, again, goes back to our raw materials and water efforts that we discussed before, our packaging efforts that we discussed before. So all of that to say that sustainability strategy is really governed at the highest levels within the company with at least 1 C-suite member carrying a target on sustainability annually, and that would be Tony. But I would say that our Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, John Blood, also carries targets linked to our broader, better world strategy. Depending on the year, we may even have -- we don't carry a target. Again, it depends on how the target is written and how it ladders up. But again, it depends on the year, but at least 1 C-suite every year carries a target linked to their variable compensation, that will be their bonus. And we treat sustainability like we would treat any other business initiatives, so it becomes part of our target setting and cascading process, which is very rigorous inside the company. And our global team leads on the strategy and then works very closely with the local teams across different zones and functions to cascade down the target that follow a very clearly outlined road map that will get us to our 2025 goals. So that's really how we integrate sustainability into our business priorities because we see them as business priorities, and it's not just sustainability or procurement teams that carry these targets. Depending on the year, you may have someone on the people team, marketing team, R&D, brewery operators. We really can't get all the way down because we can't do this alone. We rely on a big team of teams to achieve these. But yes, we're really proud of how we connected to our target setting and cascading process and to our bonuses as well. It really helps drive alignment very quickly inside the company.

Our final question will come from the line of Edward Mundy of Jefferies.

I've got a couple. The first is comments made on the opening presentation, but can you remind us what proportion of your volumes are you buying in local crops to then benefit from taxation breaks, for instance, with sorghum? And do you have a target to roll that out or an actual target you're aiming for as a proportion of your volumes? The second question is around the slide where you have responded to COVID with the likes of the hand sanitizer. Could you perhaps provide a bit more color on the other side of the pandemic? As we go into the recovery phase, what other plans do you have in place to support the communities to get them back on their feet, which would also boost your recovery? And then the third question is going back to Slide 5. I know it's slightly off-topic from sustainability, but it's one of your important -- your 10 factors that's for the UN's SDGs. When it comes to smart consumption, could you remind us of this target to get to 10% lower, and where are we? And is that the ultimate cap? Or do you think you can go beyond the 10%?

Yes. So I think there were a number of questions in there. Could you go over them really quickly? I think your first question was around the percentage of crops that we buy locally and if we have any tax breaks that we get. This is a small percentage of our volume, but it's growing rapidly. It started in sub-Saharan African markets. So this is something that's growing, and we're seeing it around the world. Now we expanded it to Latin America and in Peru, Ecuador and 5 states in Brazil. So those are our -- kind of part of our affordability strategy to ensure that we're investing in subsistence crops and commercializing them, so that we can continue to put out new innovations in the marketplace but also improve the livelihood of the farmers and also to bring new consumers into the category, right? Because again, this is part of the affordability strategy that's incredibly linked to the commercial strategy. And we're taking a lot of the learnings from our SAB operations and applying them now in Latin America. So very small percentage of the volume but growing, and we're excited to see the learnings. And again, once something works, we definitely make sure that we scale it up.

You don't have any formal -- no formal targets at this stage in terms of how big you expect that to get to?

We have targets at the local level that the teams are operating against. But no, we have not set any public commitments externally. We don't have a global target that we can share with you, but we do have targets at the local level because we have set a strategy, right? So once you have a strategy, then you set the targets and KPIs, so that the local teams can drive progress towards that. Your question on hand sanitizers, as we go into recovery, how are we continuing to support the community. I believe Brito has spoken on this multiple times as well. For us, health and safety of our communities was our kind of first response to the pandemic, and that, soon after, we quickly figured out how to make hand sanitizers and disinfectants and then -- and share those with our communities and with also frontline workers. As we go into recovery, we are part of the communities, right? So our government affairs teams, our local supply teams, we're working very closely with everyone to better understand the local needs. I think maybe one piece that I can quickly highlight here is -- and you may have heard this again in other meetings is how we will continue to support our retail partners. We supported them from the beginning. But as we shift our focus from response to recovery around the world, what we're doing now is working more closely with the local pub bars and restaurants that have been forced to close their doors as part of the measures announced to contain the pandemic, this pandemic. And these are places that we gather with our friends and colleagues, and in many ways, we really think that these are the heart and soul of our business. So we launched a series of initiatives to prompt financial support during this time of uncertainty to these retailers. And I believe today, we have over -- we have live initiatives, what I would call live initiatives, ongoing initiatives in over 20 countries around the world that support more than 23,000 POCs. So again, this is a growing number. As societies are opening, we're continuing to figure out the needs of our retailer partners. Some examples are there in our Cafe Courage program. [ Pub bars ] in the U.S. was open for takeout program. We've got several others. But again, we're working with a sense of urgency. Our teams around the world are continuing to explore the opportunities in which we can continue to support our business partners. Yes, so we have a number of them. And at the end, we want our suppliers and our customers alike, we want them to thrive. So you will see that recovery support ongoing. I believe those were all your questions. Oh, I think your last question was on the UN SDGs, I think you referenced. And then you asked about our no- and low-alcohol volumes. We're continuing to make progress there, taking the learnings from one market to another. Our commitment is to get to at least 20% of our global beer volume to be low- or no-alcohol beer products. We believe that providing consumers with high-quality no- and low-alcohol beers, which we call NABLAB, can play really an important role in reducing harmful consumption of alcohol. So in 2019, I think this was published in our report as well, NABLAB accounted for about 7% of our global beer volume. And to date, we have over 80 NABLAB offerings for different consumer occasions. So this is just one way of how we approach reducing ample consumption of alcohol. Another one is looking to place guidance labels on all our beer products in all of our markets, ensuring that we're increasing alcohol health literacy by 2025. We're also investing in social norms campaigns to shift individual behavior, so that we can reduce ample consumption of alcohol. So there's a lot of programs that are really evidence-based programs that we're working with our experts to shift social norms and behaviors on one hand but also to continue to offer choices to our consumers through products -- NABLAB products on the other hand. So I think that was probably our last question, unless there is another question queued up. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today. We really enjoyed speaking with you, sharing with you a little bit more about how we think about sustainability, how we approach our programs, how we continue to invest in our supply chain and community resilience. Excited to keep the dialogue going, and looking forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call and webcast. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.