Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited (1876) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hosting the webcast today from Bud APAC are Mr. Jan Craps, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the Board; Mr. Ignacio Lares, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. YanJun Cheng, YJ, Chief Supply and Logistics Officer; Mr. Craig Katerberg, Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer; Ms. Linda Qian, Chief People Officer; and Mr. Jan Clysner, Vice President of Sustainability and Procurement. Materials for this webcast can be found on Bud APAC's website at www.budwiserapac.com under the Investors tab on the results and Presentations page. Throughout the webcast, you may submit your questions in the Q&A box on the webcast screen. Before proceeding, we would like to remind you that some of the information provided during this webcast include our answers to your questions 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, uncertainties and other factors beyond our control. Please refer to Slide 3 of this presentation for the full disclaimer. It is now my pleasure to pass the floor to Mr. Jan Craps. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Anna. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Bud APAC's Annual ESG webcast. Some of you might have read our 2022 ESG report published on the 24th of March. Today, I want to take this opportunity to walk you through our 2022 ESG highlights as well as the strategy and initiatives we have planned for this year. I will be joined by the other members of Bud APAC's ESG Committee. This is the fourth year we are holding the ESG webcast, and we are excited for the opportunity to discuss our most material ESG topics with you transparently and share some reflections on our ESG journey. I would also like to encourage you all to submit your questions, and we will answer as many as we can today. If not, my colleagues will reach out to you to follow up accordingly. Let me begin with a brief overview of Bud APAC. We are a pan-Asian brewing champion and part of the AB InBev Group. As the largest beer company in the Asia Pacific, we operate in over 35 countries and territories, and we continue to grow and have a regional footprint of 47 breweries and 51 distribution centers across our principal markets, including China, South Korea, India and Vietnam. We publicly listed our shares in Hong Kong on September 30, 2019, with a stock code of 1876, which commemorates the year the very first Budweiser beer was brewed. Today, we are well positioned for long-term growth and competitiveness, thanks to our portfolio of more than 50 brands and countless beer varieties on top of our operational efficiency, scale, state-of-the-art facilities, powerful route to markets and at the core, our people. We have more than 24,000 talented colleagues of 25 nationalities. 37.2% of them are female and they assume important roles across different functions and markets. As Asia's largest brewer, we are an important driver of economic growth, job creation and sustainable developments. A quick recap in 2022, we improved and sold over 88 million hectoliters of beer and beverages. Our dividend per share of USD 0.0378 for 2022, an increase of 25% from USD 0.0302 in '21. We generated total revenue of USD 6.5 billion and delivered normalized EBITDA of USD 1.9 billion. We believe a sound ESG strategy can create significant economic value and bring more positive environment and a social impact for our shareholders, our communities, employees, customers and consumers and partners. Our corporate purpose is an anchor from which we create a shared vision with our key stakeholders. As Asia's largest beer company, we are deeply committed to building a sustainable business where ESG is ingrained into our operations and across our value chain. These efforts not only strengthen our business and enable our commercial vision, but also empower us to create a more sustainable and inclusive future where prosperity is shared by all, a future with more cheers. To accomplish a shared vision, we have been working along with these 10 principles. Our shared dream in APAC is to be the most loved high-quality growth leader in beverages. Now let me now provide you with an overview of our ESG strategy. To build a truly sustainable business where ESG is embedded in our operations and across our value chain, we work across 8 ESG priorities, which culminate in 3 cross-cutting themes: natural, inclusive and local, around which we create shared prosperity. Our 8 strategic priorities are climates, water stewardship, circular packaging, sustainable agriculture, smart drinking and moderation, entrepreneurship, diversity, equity and inclusion or DE&I, and ethics and transparency. Our 2025 sustainability goals focused on the first four of these priorities driving our environmental sustainability strategy and ambition. In relation to social issues, we prioritize smart drinking, entrepreneurship and DE&I. In addition, ethics and transparency are core to our governance agenda, and we believe provide us with a competitive advantage in our overall business. Through these 8 priorities, we support the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals and strive to contribute directly to those goals. Now I'll share with you our ESG ratings and financial disclosure initiatives. Transparency and meaningful disclosure are key to our ESG efforts. We first issued ESG reports when we listed in Hong Kong in 2019. In our latest ESG report, we disclosed more detailed targets and additional information focused on topics that we have been frequently asked by investors, analysts and media. Our 2022 ESG report has been prepared according to the updated global reporting initiative standards, core option, to Hong Kong exchange ESG reporting guidance in Appendix 27 and United Nations Global Compact. To provide a comprehensive picture of our ESG management and performance we refer to and aligned with key ESG ratings and frameworks such as MSCI, Sustainalytics, DJSI, the CDP climate change questionnaire and the CDP water security questionnaire. We also take part in the science-based targets initiative to set our greenhouse gas reduction targets in line with the 1.5-degree pathway. And we've become a task force on climate-related financial disclosure signatory, which will see us provide additional disclosure about our climate-related risks and opportunities. We're also proud to have received our third MSCI rating upgrade in less than 3 years. MSCI now ranks us as an AA ESG leader among 50 global beverage beers. We've made significant amount of progress in this area to date and we are committed to accomplishing even more in the years ahead. Now let me pass the floor to our CFO, Ignacio Lares to share more on our ESG efforts throughout our value chain and our climate reporting.

Thank you, Jan. Our ESG ambition spans our entire value chain, where we work together with many stakeholders. This graph you now see gives you some idea about creating value from Seed to SIP. As Jan mentioned TCFD earlier, I would like to share some developments on the related financial disclosures that are upcoming. The task force on climate-related financial disclosures was created in 2015 by the Financial Stability Board, the FSP, to develop consistent climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies, banks and investors in providing information to stakeholders. Increasing the amount of reliable information on financial institution's exposure to climate-related risks and opportunities, will strengthen the stability of the financial system, contribute to a greater understanding of climate risks and facilitate financing for the transition to a more stable and sustainable economy. We are excited to share that our pilot TCFD report focusing on our Wuhan brewery will be published soon to align with the HKEX requirements. We also plan to publish a full TCFD report before 2025. The task force on nature-related financial disclosures is an international initiative that was founded upon a model developed by the TCFD. The TNFD framework is a much-needed tool that helps companies address the challenges of global biodiversity loss and the impact of ecological risks on their business. We will continue to develop initiatives that help to reverse these ecological impacts. That's all for me, and I'll now hand it over to Jan Clysner, our VP of Sustainability and Procurement, who will walk you through our four 2025 sustainability goals in detail as well as how we are working towards our net zero ambition. Over to you, Jan.

Thanks, Iggy. In '22, we continue to leverage technological innovation and our industry partnerships that allowed us to make substantial steps towards achieving our 2025 sustainability goals for water stewardship, circular packaging, sustainable agriculture and climate action. Our goals for these 4 priorities span across our entire value chain, and are fully embedded in our business and commercial strategies. Our 2025 sustainability goals are our most ambitious public commitments so far. Since March 2018, we have dedicated ourselves to creating real environmental and social impact and driving transformational change across our value chain. Knowing that no water, no beer, we have long pursued water use efficiency and are very proud to lead the industry with our best-in-class water management practices. Our water usage target is 2.0 hectoliter per hectoliter across APAC by '25. And this includes our breweries in high water risk areas. In our latest ESG report, we publicly disclosed for the first time our water usage and intensity goals in all of our breweries. Last year, we lowered our water usage to 2.2 hectoliters per hectoliter of beer produced across our APAC breweries, representing a 26% decrease against the 2017 baseline. Our Nanning brewery in China is now a leader in water efficiency with a water usage of 1.11 hectoliters per hectoliter, which clearly ranks it first among more than 170 ABI breweries worldwide in water efficiency. The water resource recycling rate at the Nanning brewery is 95%. Meaning, we significantly minimized the consumption of fresh water. The brewery worked with the local government to use treated water to replenish the drying Yufeng lake and achieved zero discharge. It also set a new benchmark for the Chinese beer industry. Of course, we will continue to invest not only in our breweries, but also in water availability and quality improvement for communities in significant water stress. To reach our water target where 100% of our communities in high-stress areas will have measurably improved water availability and quality by '25, we continue to collaborate with our partners to implement community linked integrated watershed programs to conserve and manage water resources, promote climate smart, sustainable agriculture and enhance clean drinking water and sanitation practices. We work closely with leading NGOs to implement our on-the-ground actions. To improve the availability and quality of the water where we operate, we prioritize China and India, where many communities have limited access to clean water. We've replenished 31 million hectoliters of water across the region. In February, three of our breweries received the National Water Efficiency Award, which is jointly issued by four ministries of the People's Republic of China and accounting for half of our breweries in this award in the whole beer industry. Taking reference from the World Resources Institute Aquaduct tool and our internal custom made water risk tool, we conducted a comprehensive water risk assessment to monitor water issues within our supply chain, including areas where we source our agricultural commodities. As the world faces increasing resource scarcity, we're committed to improving the circularity of packaging materials and eliminating waste. We continue to make progress within circular packaging in '22. 63.2% of our total packaging volume was in returnable packaging or made from a majority of recycled content. And 51.3% of our primary packaging was made of recycled content. More than 80% of the returnable bottles have been collected and refilled with beer after sanitation. In terms of the bottle return rate, South Korea ranked first with over 95%, while both China and Vietnam recorded over 80%. Moving forward, we will continue to improve our return rate in all markets. By working closely with our suppliers, we reduced the use of packaging materials, including bottles, cans and other packaging materials by 8,743 tons. While used beverage cans are recycled and reused in China, they are not necessarily be made to become cans again. To increase the percentage of recycled content in our cans, we work with industry partners in the collecting and recycling chain to build a closed-loop solution for used beverage cans as such, enabling can-to-can recycling. In addition, leveraging the influence of our iconic brands, Corona, Budweiser launched the restoring the fishing road project to protect ocean biodiversity by reducing plastic waste. The program was first launched in China and will be rolled out across APAC. The program led to the recycling of 155 tons of plastic waste from the ocean in '22, supporting our aim of making Corona, the first plastic neutral beer. In '22, more than 5,000 farmers in APAC benefited from our smart agriculture program. 100% of our farmers in China and India are skilled, connected and financially empowered. Meaning farmers have access to suitable barley varieties and technical training, and we're in touch with them regularly to share best practices. We also help them to grow their business for the long term so they can further improve their livelihood. We strive to keep our supply chains local. We increased local barley harvesting in China by 60% to 40,000 tons, benefiting 4,500 farmers covering 60,000 hectares of land. We also have a domestic breeding program with China's Jiangsu Nongken Group, one of our strategic multipliers to support domestic barley growth. Now in its second decade, the program aims to localize foreign seeds. For next year, we aim to grow and purchase over 100,000 tons of domestic barley from our farmers in China and India. Each year, large quantities of high-end aromatic hops are imported to brew our beers in China. Together with a local partner, we managed to grow flavor cascade hops in an indoor farm in China. We've grown hops in a greenhouse and the results have been remarkable. We used 80% less water, 90% less land and 95% less fuel for transportation. With the indoor farm, we plan to increase the harvesting frequency to 4x from twice a year. We will continue to expand this program and explore innovative ideas, such as spent grain-based soils as well as experiment with flavors. Leveraging our experience in sustainable agriculture, we partnered with 9 leading agro-food companies in China to launch the climate change agriculture food industry partnership to reduce climate impact. Among our climate action achievements in '22, we reduced carbon emission intensity per hectoliter by 19.7% across our value chain compared to our 2017 baseline. We recorded a 49.6% decrease in carbon emission intensity per hectoliter and a 45.9% absolute reduction in emissions within our operations also against our baseline of 2017, 4 years ahead of our 2025 target. Following our Wuhan brewery, Jinzhou brewery became our second carbon-neutral brewery in '22. We also reduced the energy intensity of our operations by 27%, with Putian Brewery leading the ABI breweries worldwide in terms of energy efficiency. We're on track to achieve our goal of having 100% of our electricity come from renewable resources by 2025. In total, 43% of our purchased electricity in China and 36.3% in APAC came from renewable source. We also piloted new lightweight solar panels that are not only 60% to 70% lighter, but also foldable. The fermentation tanks at Wuhan and Nantong breweries are now equipped with these panels, and we're convinced there are a lot of use cases to be explored for this cutting-edge technology, which was invented by Sunman, a startup that participated in our 100-plus accelerator. Now I will give the mic to YJ, our Chief Supply and Logistics Officer to introduce how we work with our value chain partners to create a more sustainable future together.

Thanks, Jan. We believe energy efficiency is a foundation of the decarbonization. As mentioned earlier, recorded a 45.9% absolute reduction in GHG emissions within our operations against our 2017 baseline, 4 years ahead of 2025 target. The project we have in place have been recognized. For example, over the past 3 years, AB InBev has hosted the 90025 competition, which means 90 megajoule per hectoliter of total purchase energy, 0 carbon dioxide purchases and 2.5 hectoliters per hectoliter water usage. And we have maintained a first place for three consecutive years and become global leaders in energy efficiency among peers. Our Suqian brewery stood out from more than 170 breweries and won global 90025 championships. For renewable energy, 17 of our brewers across APAC deployed solar panels with 4 breweries in China achieved RE100, 4 breweries in China were recognized as National Green Factory. Following our Wuhan brewery, Jinzhou brewery become the second carbon-natural brewery within Bud APAC. These new milestones driving our ambition to achieve net zero across our value chain by 2040. The carbon neutral status of Jinzhou brewery was certified by global independent agency TUV enhanced to the international carbon natural standard PAS 2060. Using 100% biomass steam instead of fossil fuel, achieving 100% of green power purchase and realized carbon dioxide self-sufficiency among the top highlights of Jinzhou carbon natural achievement. To further decarbonize our Scope 3 emissions, we need to work with our suppliers as the majority of our carbon emissions come from our value chain. We are using our Supplier Strategic Alliance, SSA, vendor strategic alliance, VSA and logistic supplier strategic alliance, LSSA, to actively help our supply to reduce their emissions, including renewable energy transition program and carbon emission audit and capacity building project. For example, in 2022, we supported 9 suppliers to install solar panels. We also obtained the baseline carbon emission data from 7 suppliers and helped those 7 suppliers to prepare their carbon footprint. By doing this alongside other actions, our Scope 3 GHG in 2022 decreased 13.8% versus 2019 which is the year we started the SSA program. In the vendor strategic program, VSA, through technical improvement the innovative process equipment can reduce production time and greatly improve energy efficiency, and we also share our new technology with our suppliers. Currently, the program holds 32 patents and 12 technical papers and has initiated 2 internationally leading project. Green Logistic is another key area for LSSA program. In 2022, we deployed 369 green trucks, a 10% increase versus 2021 in our fleet. Our value chain partners are also critical to our climate action effort. We are driving our 2025 sustainability growth with some of them have already been achieved. However, our ambition is not limited to 2025, and we have set long-term goals, which are to develop the decarbonization effort in our supply chain and bring suppliers together to achieve net zero in 2040 in the whole value chain to create a sustainable future. Now let me stop here and hand over to Linda Qian, our Chief People Officer, Linda, over to you.

Thank you, YJ, for a high-level update on our sustainable value chain initiatives. As a business, our greatest strength is our people, and we support every individual to excel. Diversity, equity and inclusion, DE&I, enabled diversity absolutely necessary to make better decisions and achieve better results. The diverse workforce we have, which represent 25 nationalities across the region enables us to better understand and meet the needs of our consumers, customers, partners and communities. In April 2021, we become the first publicly listing company in the beer sectors in APAC to sign the Women's Empowerment Principles, a joint initiative between the UN Global Compact and the UN Women. Becoming a signatory solidifies our commitment to empowering and inspiring women in the workplace and society and create a business environment where women can work, lead and excel in their career. 37.2% of our colleagues are also women. We were recognized as a top employer in China, South Korea and India for the second year in a row. Those awards are a testament to our commitment to supporting our people to develop and grow themselves and initiate their potential at Bud APAC. We place great importance on closing the gender pay gap and we are proud to have achieved gender pay equity in 2022 after setting out to do so 3 years ago. We also have a range of talent programs in place to support our people from across the region to become the backbone for our business. Within our current team, 85% of our APAC management committee members are promoted from the regional Asian market. And 91% of the leadership in Level 2 positions are also from the regional talent programs. We are investing in people both within our company and within our partners through our APAC University. We are aiming to build future capabilities. In 2022, we provided our colleagues with over 115,000 training sessions. The safety of our colleagues is paramount to us. We follow high standards for protecting occupational health and safety and work towards zero injuries in our operations by integrating safety in production and logistics operations. In 2022, we achieved a 40% decrease in total recorded injuries in comparison with 2020. Next, I will discuss how we develop the resilience community. Firstly, in this area, at Bud APAC, we believe that drinking beer should be a positive experience with multiple stakeholders to achieve our smart drinking dose and since 2008. We built a range of programs tailored to different local markets. We aim to influence both social norms and individual behaviors to reduce the harmful use of alcohol across our markets, and we do so through dedicated social marketing campaigns and other programs. For example, in China, we are a pioneer in raising public awareness on smart drinking and road safety. We partnered with local transportation authorities and leverage our local beer brands such as Harbin to conduct innovative, engaging and meaningful campaigns, our campaign activity has been placed for over 15 years, and our commitment has only strengthened over that time. In addition, we continue to expand our product portfolio and provide low alcohol and nonalcoholic alternatives to consumers as they seek to make better and more responsible choices. We aim to achieve our vision of having 20% non or low alcohol beer in our product portfolio by 2025, aiming to improve alcohol literacy, including advice on how to avoid harmful consumption, our use of guidance labors in APAC market, which 100% by the end of 2021. We are committed to contribute to our community building where our business operates. For instance, in China, we have leveraged our economic brand, Corona, to create a novel closed-loop model of utilization, supporting local Anyue farmers in Sichuan province to cultivate Iime and providing Chinese consumers with Corona drinking with lime, experienced since 2019. By the end of 2020, Anyue lime are available across China, with sales exceeding 235,000 kilograms. Our Corona Extra Lime initiative has won multiple social impact and brand inference brands including the most recent grant price of Creative Commerce gold award. Another key pillar of our working is the community empowerment including a strategic corporate social responsibility initiatives in India aiming at sustainable livelihood development through a microenterprise creation in communities near our key breweries. The first group of over 100 women entrepreneurs graduated, and we are working on to further develop additional offers relevant to our in-country business needs as we continue to grow the program and create a meaningful impact for our community. In facing natural disasters, we aim to be one of the first to provide essential such as clean drinking water. To that end, we have donated over 2.45 million cans of emergency drinking water to communities in need in China, India and Korea since 2015. We also continue to support the 28 Hope schools we helped build in 15 provinces in China, and we encourage students to be ambitious and build a sustainable future with us. Also in 2022, our employees spent over 95,000 hours volunteering in 184 events. Now let me pass the next couple of slides to Craig Katerberg, our Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer to share more about our strong governance.

Thanks, Linda. A sound governance structure is the cornerstone of our company's success in ESG and beyond, committed, experienced and diverse, our Board of Directors sets our strategy and monitors progress and developments as we move along our ESG journey. Our cross-functional ESG Committee, which is chaired by Jan Craps, our CEO and Co-Chair of the Board is comprised of 8 of his direct reports. The committee is responsible for overseeing, planning and implementing initiatives related to our ESG journey. The direct oversight and involvement of our CEO and senior management, ensure that ESG is embedded in every aspect of our business and operations. As part of the ongoing strengthening of our governance, in 2022, we further expanded our compensation framework that connects remuneration with ESG results from our senior management team to hundreds of managers with different targets across the business providing financial incentives to further drive improvement in ESG performance across the company. We recently evolved our Board Audit Committee to an Audit and Risk Committee and we also launched a management level risk committee to strengthen our cross-functional approach to determine the risk appetite, profile and tolerance of Bud APAC. Ethics and compliance remains at the core of our corporate culture and operations. We operate through robust policies and procedures that guide business decisions in a professional, transparent and ethical manner, where hard work and results are rewarded and where shortcuts are never acceptable. Our policies and procedures guide business decisions to be made in a professional, fair and honest manner. Most recently, we updated our whistleblowing policy and privacy policy and launched our anti-bribery policy. We also continue to enforce a responsible marketing and communications code among many other policies. In addition, we've built data analytics into our commercial systems to proactively reduce compliance risk across our company. Most importantly, with more than 24,000 colleagues across the region, fully committed to this strategy and to this future. We have more than 24,000 people who bring new ideas for doing things better, who deliver results in the right way and who are creating our company every day. This brings us to a conclusion on ESG today. I hope that we've given you a better understanding of our ongoing ESG journey. Our ESG strategy is designed to enable our commercial vision and fulfill our purpose of creating a future with more cheers. We're proud of the major ESG milestones our teams achieved in 2022, working together with our value chain partners and our communities and we look forward to fulfilling our purpose, dreaming big to create a future with more cheers. Thank you for the time today. We're now ready to answer any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions]

So let me maybe read out the questions, and I'll ask some of my colleagues to answer them. So I see our first question here. Could you discuss the challenges of implementing your ESG strategies in different countries of operations? China, South Korea, Vietnam and India. So let me maybe ask Jan Clysner, if you can answer this question.

Thank you for the question. I'm happy to take this one. We don't see localization challenges as such in the execution of our strategy because we don't use a one-size-fits-all approach when implementing our ESG initiatives in the different markets. And we're extremely focused on our 8 key strategic priorities, but at the same time, review local context, policy landscape, national development, which then allows us to design and shape a program for each market. For example, China. China pledging to reach peak carbon by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, we focus on RE100, carbon-neutral breweries, green logistics, and of course, reducing our emissions in Scope 3 across the entire value chain. South Korea, I mean, there, the government did not allow mechanically recycled plastic material to be used as beverage packaging. But since the lifting of this regulation in the second half of '22, we have been pushing the agenda to test both mechanically and chemically recycled PET. And currently, we're in the stage of running internal quality tests, and our goal is to develop a commercially ready product packaged with recycled PET by the end of this year. And in India, India is a country facing serious water supply challenges. So our focus is on water. Our water program replenished 15.5 million hectoliters of water there across the 3 high-risk areas. And we did this by restoring ground and service water supplies. And it's again -- it's approximately 130% versus total water we use in India. So I hope this answers your question. Thank you.

Thank you, Jan. So let me maybe go the next question. This one looks like one for Iggy. What are the financial impacts, for example, EG profit margins of your ESG initiatives?

Sure, Jan. Thank you for the question. So look, we designed our ESG strategy to reflect our commercial vision for value creation. And we look at it with this lens of a triple bottom line kind of 3P: people, planet and profit. So in essence, it's a holistic process, which really can be broken down into a single financial matrix. But underlying this, we have a core belief that sustainability is our business and our internal mantra is to evaluate whether each solution is both sustainable and whether it makes business sense. And so our environmental vision directly contributes to our commercial excellence and our operational efficiency. Let me give you some examples. So I think one would be water usage reductions and other perhaps circular packaging. If we look at initiatives there. And if we look at empowering our value chain partners as well, all of these actually can help us to improve our supply chain as well as reducing uncertainties. In addition, of course, if you look at diversity, it leads to more creativity and enhances the development of our ESG strategy, so it has other incremental benefits as well. At the end of the day, our commitment towards ESG has also led us to a direct and positive financial impact, right? And I can give you a good example here. In 2021, we shared that we would have secured a USD 500 million sustainability-linked revolving credit facility or a green financing loan for simpler terms. And this came with a 3-year term containing a tiered discount on its interest rate if we achieve these predetermined ESG targets. At the time, the loan was one of the largest deals among publicly listed consumer goods companies in Asia. And it showcased our ability to optimize our capital structure to create economic value for our shareholders, alongside, of course, the sustainability achievements we've discussed before. And then in addition, there are also intangible benefits we can provide to our shareholders. For example, a strong employer brand helps to attract the best talent. We know that our AA ESG rating by MSCI can connect us with high-quality and long-term investors who share the same vision as us. And then we can build our business together in this way. And then finally, our social programs can facilitate business development in the local communities in which we operate. So those are just a few of the examples that come to mind. Thank you for the question.

Thank you, Iggy. Let me take the next question. I think this one will be for YJ. What are the key competitive advantages you have over your peers as a result of your ESG initiatives. YJ, over to you, please.

Thanks for questions. We are actively working with our value chain partners to drive our industry transformation, work with our value chain partners and our local help to create an economic and empower entrepreneurs to drive changes in APAC committed. We used our knowledge and experience to support problem solvers to develop innovative solutions that not only help us achieve our sustainability goals, but also the committee where we have impact. We launched our Supplier Strategic Alliance, SSA since 2019 and Vendor Strategic Alliance, VSA programs with our suppliers to address critical challenges with this and share benefit of our join effort. We also aim to continuously improve supplies, energy management using new technologies and clean energy, such as biomass steam and renewable electricity. For example, in 2022, we helped our glass suppliers, Huaxing, to map its own carbon emission baseline at one of its sites. And Huaxing, we obtained the baseline setting practice to more sites in the coming years. We also have been working closely with the start-up and change makers to employ and share innovative solutions along our value chain. Supported 79 ventures through our local innovation hub in China and 35 ventures in South Korea to accelerate sustainable innovation that this business needs. We leveraged our APAC University and our strategic partnership, like product and partnership, creating a wholesale capability development program that power success in planning and professional development for key wholesale partners. We constantly benchmark against our global peers and lesson to our stakeholder to celebrate and experience our ESG strategics.

Thank you, YJ. Let me see if there is more question. So the next question, I think I will ask Craig to answer this one. What is the company's strategy and approach to risk management? And what next step after the upgrade to Board's Audit and Risk Committee. Over to you, Craig.

Great. Thanks, Jan. The reality is we've always been proactive on risk management, and we continue to actively prioritize risk management. Really establishing a robust, comprehensive and technology-driven risk management mechanism to effectively manage and mitigate risks that are inherent to our business remains a top priority for our company. This allows us to not only meet the regulatory obligations, but more importantly, better protect the business, our customers and our partners. We've been continually evolving our approach to effectively manage and mitigate the risks that we face as a business. There's really been 2 developments on governance structure recently. One's been the expansion of the Board Audit and Risk Committee and one's been the creation of a management level risk committee. These developments allow us to effectively strengthen our cross-functional approach to determine the risk appetite, profile and tolerance from a holistic perspective. Our corporate governance structure and the risk management framework together allow us to assess the risk that we might be facing and prioritize our solutions to them to our best capabilities and capacity. We remain agile to make sure that we continue to guard the interest of our company and shareholders and grow together with our people, partners, customers, consumers and community. Thank you.

This concludes our Q&A session today. I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jan Craps for the closing remarks.

Thank you, Anna, and thank you all for your questions. As I mentioned earlier, we appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you, and we look forward to future occasions where we can share more on our ESG journey. We design our ESG strategy to enable our commercial vision and fulfill our purpose of creating a future with more cheers. We are proud to have achieved some significant milestones in 2022 with our team, our value chain partners and communities. We remain committed to bringing positive impacts in this region and to continue investing in our strategic ESG priorities. Looking ahead, we can and will continue to do better in creating a sustainable and inclusive future with more cheers. Thank you very much, and see you next time.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's webcast. Thank you all for your participation. You may all now disconnect. Thank you.