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

Welcome to the Full Year 2024 Results Announcement Conference Call for Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited. Hosting the call today from Budweiser APAC is Mr. Jan Craps, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the Board; and Mr. Ignacio Lares, Chief Financial Officer. The results of the full year ended 31st December 2024 can be found in the press release published earlier today and available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchanges and Budweiser APAC's website. Before proceeding, let me remind you that some of the information provided during this call, including our answers to your questions on this call, may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on the management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond our control. It is possible that Budweiser APAC's actual results and financial condition may differ possibly materially from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in these forward-looking statements. Budweiser APAC is under no obligation to and expressly disclaims any such obligation to update the forward-looking statements as a result of any new information, future events or otherwise. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect Budweiser APAC's future results, see risk factors in the company's prospectus dated 18th September 2019, the 2023 annual report published and any other documents that Budweiser APAC has made public. I would also like to remind everyone that the financial figures discussed today are provided in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. The percentage changes that will be discussed during today's call are both organic and normalized in nature and unless otherwise stated, percentage changes refer to comparisons with the 2023 full year. Normalized figures refer to performance measures before exceptional items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as part of Budweiser APAC's normal activities. As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the company disclosed the consolidated profit, EPS, EBIT and EBITDA on a fully reported basis in the press release published earlier today. Further details of the full year 2024 results can also be found in the press release. It is now my pleasure to pass the time to Mr. Jan Craps. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Ray, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call. I hope you're all doing well. Before discussing our results, I'd like to take a moment to address our other announcements. As most of you probably know by now, today, we announced that after 7 years as CEO and Co-Chair at Bud APAC and 23 incredible years with ABI, I'll be stepping down to pursue other opportunities. Starting April 1, YJ Cheng will be the new CEO and Co-Chair for Bud APAC. As a brewmaster with 29 years of experience at the company, including 15 years as a VP Supply and Logistics for the APAC region, YJ is ideally suited to lead Bud APAC. I've had the privilege of working closely with him for the last 7 years. Many of you would have also met YJ during our Investor Days in both Korea in 2022 and in Wenzhou in 2023. I'm fully committed to helping make this transition as smooth as possible, and I wish YJ the very best as he begins in his new role. Now let me take you through our agenda today. 2024 was a year with mixed results. Softness in China under a weak consumer environment and negative channel mix was partially offset by our geographic footprint with robust growth and commercial momentum in both South Korea and in India. Let me provide you some more color on each of our key markets. Our business in China in the fourth quarter was impacted by proactive inventory management, soft industry and continued weakness in the on-premise channels, which disproportionately affected our business. In 2025, we are focused on the consistent execution of our strategy with clear initiatives adapted to the current consumption trends. And we have made clear portfolio choices and prioritized specific channels, which are fully realizing the potential of Budweiser, growing Core++ innovations, including Zero Sugar offerings and accelerating in-home Premiumization. We are confident that with our industry-leading Premium portfolio and route to market, we are well positioned to capture a disproportionate share of the category and profit growth in China. Our geographic expansion strategy for the Budweiser brand remains on track. In 2024, the distribution of Budweiser expanded from 220 cities to 235 cities, while our Super Premium portfolio distribution covered 56 cities. In terms of channel expansion, volume and revenue contribution from the in-home channel increased as a result of our ongoing efforts to Premiumize the channel as in-home consumption occasions continue to develop. We have begun 2025 with a clear focus on Budweiser and Harbin, reconnecting with consumers to drive market share growth. With Budweiser, we celebrated the Chinese New Year, ushering in the Year of the Snake. We unveiled a special limited edition of Budweiser Reserve, inspiring Chinese consumers to shed their baggage and embrace renewal as we stepped into the new year. With Harbin, we partnered with the NBA stepping into the growing health and wellness trend in China to drive the strong growth of Harbin IGD Zero Sugar. Sales volumes almost doubled last year for Zero Sugar, delivering expanded reach and engagement with young adults. On the digitization front, BEES has been expanded again to more than 320 cities, representing approximately 80% of our net revenue for China in December. With this successful scale-up, we are focusing on leveraging technology to further enhance our commercial capabilities and drive value creation for all our stakeholders. In South Korea, our growth momentum in the fourth quarter accelerated with volume increase and market share growth as we continue to lead the category through the strength of our brand portfolio. We achieved a further total market share gain, supported by share gains in both the on-premise and in-home channels, led by all our mega brands, Cass, HANMAC and Stella Artois. For the full year, our total market share reached its highest level in over a decade. According to Nielsen, our leading domestic beer brand, Cass ranked #1 among all consumer packaged goods brands in the in-home channel, and we ranked #3 among all CPG companies in 2024. Cass' market share also reached an all-time high as we continue to increase consumer participation via innovations such as Cass Light Zero Sugar, Cass 0.0% and Cass Lemon Squeeze. These innovations target distinct audiences and occasions, including health and wellness. Sales of Cass Light Zero Sugar grew by more than 30%, becoming one of the top 3 domestic beers in the in-home channel in South Korea. Meanwhile, sales of Cass 0.0% grew by more than 30% as well and sales of Cass Lemon Squeeze almost doubled. In terms of digitization in South Korea, beads accounted for 24% of our total net revenue in December. In India, our business is continuing to grow and the net revenue of our Premium and Super Premium portfolio grew by almost 20% in both the fourth quarter and the full year. Over the past 5 years, the market share of our Budweiser brand has more than doubled with India cementing itself as one of Budweiser's top 4 markets globally. Before I pass it over to Iggy, let me share some of the additional progress we have made in our sustainability initiatives. We doubled the number of our carbon-neutral breweries in China to 6, with the most recent additions being our breweries in Ziyang, Zhangzhou and [ Jiangxi Mai ]. We reduced carbon emission intensity per hectoliter within our operations by 65% against our baseline of 2017 and by 32% across our whole value chain. And last year, we reduced water usage from 2.03 l to 1.89 hectoliters per hectoliter of beer produced across our APAC breweries. This also represents a 37% decrease compared to our water use efficiency rate in 2017. In 2025, we obtained APAC Blue Seal from the top employer institution. Our offices in China, India, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam as well as our headquarters in Hong Kong were all certified as top employers. With that, I will now pass it over to Iggy to take you through our financial results. Over to you, Iggy.

Thank you, Jan. Good morning, everyone. In the full year 2024, total Bud APAC volumes decreased by 8.8%. Revenue decreased by 7%, while revenue per hectoliter grew by 2%. Our normalized EBITDA decreased by 6.3%, while our normalized EBITDA margin increased by 21 basis points. Cost of sales increased by 0.7% on a per hectoliter basis, mainly driven by cost management initiatives and commodity tailwinds, which offset the impact of operational deleverage and product mix. In APAC West, volumes decreased by 10.6% in the full year, while revenue and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 11.4% and 0.9%, respectively. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 14%. In China, in the full year 2024, volumes decreased by 11.8%, driven by weak consumer sentiment with slower traffic and less spending in on-premise channels where our footprint is more pronounced. Revenue and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 13% and 1.4%, respectively. Our volumes in the fourth quarter decreased by 18.9% as on top of the aforementioned factors, we proactively reduced inventory, which accounted for approximately 1/3 of our volume decline. Revenue declined by 20.1% with revenue per hectoliter declining by 1.4% in the quarter due to a high base and negative channel mix. In APAC East, volumes increased by 3.6% in the full year, with revenue and revenue per hectoliter increasing by 12.7% and 8.7%, respectively. Normalized EBITDA increased by 33.2% with EBITDA margin increasing by 472 basis points, driven by top line growth. Finally, we continue to manage our costs and our balance sheet with financial discipline, in line with our capital allocation priorities. As of the end of 2024, our net cash position was USD 2.9 billion, despite a USD 274 million decline as compared to the end of 2023. We are, therefore, pleased to announce that the Board has recommended a dividend of USD 750 million or $0.0566 per share for the full year '24, representing a 7% increase versus the prior year. That's it for me. And with that, Jan and I are here to answer any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Chen Luo from Bank of America.

This is Chen from Bank of America. So first of all, I'd like to express my gratitude for Jan's leadership in the past 7 years. And currently, after talking with investors, I think the market focus is more on China and also on the strategy given the recent management changes, both at the headquarter level and at the China level. So my questions are focused on these 2 areas. So firstly, in China, I'm interested to understand the most recent updated trend of year-to-date or CNY sales performance in China. If possible, can you help to elaborate on additional color in terms of performance by channel, region and the price segments? And how do we compare the channel inventory now versus the same period last year or versus a normal level? And is there any pricing update related to our non-Premium portfolio as I understand, usually, at the beginning of Q2, there will be a normal price increase? So that's my first question.

Thank you for your words. So I think for the first question about China, essentially, you would have seen in our results that there is a soft consumer environment continuing in China, which has continued to impact the overall beer market and also our performance. So I don't think this is a surprise for you. Short term, there is a challenging lower consumer confidence because consumers are basically going out less and spending less. And the softness is more pronounced in the on-premise, which, as you know, is more Premium. So we are disproportionately impacted with our business by these trends. We continue to see positive brand mix in our portfolio, but the negative channel mix is impacting our net revenue per hectoliter performance in 2024.When we look specifically at the fourth quarter, on top of this environment, STWs, our shipments to wholesalers has lagged behind our STRs, the shipment to retailers by our wholesalers because on top of the environment, we have worked with our partners to adjust our inventory levels to be in line with the current business environment. This is important because, as you know, we are long-term focused, and we want to ensure the long-term health of our route to market. So managing this is quite important for us and for our wholesaler partners. And so this difference between STW and STR accounted for about 1/3 of the volume decline in the quarter. As to the business environment, we don't expect any significant changes because the consumer confidence in China remains below historical levels. However, if you look at the early readings of CNY, Chinese New Year, we are now several weeks behind or after Chinese New Year was there, and we -- our results point to similar STRs CNY last year, but improved sales to consumers. So both trends are significantly better than the trends you would have seen in the fourth quarter. Of course, it is still too early to comment on full year trends. Talking about the inventory management. As I mentioned earlier, we did proactively manage the inventory in the fourth quarter. We have maintained the inventory discipline throughout the year-to-date. To your question on revenue management initiatives, we are market leader in both Premium and Super Premium segments. And as we usually do, we did take a slight price increase in the fourth quarter of 2024. And usually, we look at the core pricing before the summer. So it's a little bit early to give any comments on that. So thank you for your question, Chen. I don't know if you have a second question.

Yes. So my second question is about our China strategy post the recent management change. So given all the changes, both for our management as well as in the industry, what is our strategic focus in 2025? And is there anything that we are going to do differently in the future? So that's a very simple question.

Yes. Thank you, Chen. I think for 2025, there is a very clear focus for the China team with one top priority, which is market share growth. So that is really the key focus for the team. We do believe we are very well positioned to continue to lead Premiumization of the beer category. To get the market share growth, we will focus and continue to focus on the consistent execution of our strategy. Of course, this execution needs to be adapted to the current consumption trends, which is why we have determined very clear portfolio choices and channel priorities, which I can give a couple of more context or color to. Priority #1 is Budweiser and continues to be Budweiser for China. So both for geo expansion, channel expansion strategy, we always use Budweiser as the anchor brands. And then we expand to other channels depending on the market maturity and the consumer preference. So we are very excited with our Budweiser plan for this year, and we have a very strong planning in terms of mega platforms and activation points that I can give some more color to later. If you look at the next priority, you will see that we are shifting resources from the Super Premium segment to Core++, adapting to the current consumption trends. So based on our observations, Core++, which is the price segment in Chinese restaurants between RMB 8 and RMB 10 as an industry segment, which for us, of course, it includes Harbin IGD Zero Sugar for our peer brewers, it is what we call the sub-Premium brands. This segment has outperformed other segments. Harbin IGD Zero Sugar volumes also outperformed because they almost doubled versus prior year with expanded reach and engagement, specifically with young adults. So we will continue to accelerate the successful innovation. We see a very differentiated proposition with Zero Sugar. And so we continue to drive Core++ distribution nationwide. Talking about our Super Premium portfolio, of course, we don't drop this portfolio. We continue to selectively invest behind Super Premium to be ready for the future. So we will keep the right level of investment for Super Premium in selective channels and regions to be ready when the consumer confidence bounces back. Talking about channels, we will accelerate in-home Premiumization by leveraging our brand portfolio and enhancing our APAC's price strategy to gain market share in the growing in-home channel. Of course, we do have the ambition to continue leading nightlife and we'll be more selective in our investments in the Chinese restaurant channel. The biggest opportunity, if you look a little bit more long term in China continues to be Premiumization. We continue to see an increasing number of middle-income households in the future, driving the growth of the Premium and Super Premium segments. We are confident and continue to be confident that with our industry-leading and Premium portfolio and our Premium route to market, we are well positioned to capture disproportionate share of the category and the profit growth in China, while, of course, we remain agile within the context of the current macro environment. So I hope this gives you a little bit of color, Chen Luo, on the -- both our consistency of the strategy, but also how we drive focused execution in the current context in China.

Our next question is coming from the line of Xiaopo Wei from Citi.

Jan, first of all, a great thank you for being a great leader and a great help to investors and the sales analyst group on this call and good luck for your next journey, and we will definitely miss you. I have 2 questions. The first question, it is about the market share versus profitability. As you mentioned earlier, that is the priority in China would be the recovery of market share. But how could you balance the margin and Premiumization versus the market share recovery in your strategy? We know that '25 is filled with a lot of macro uncertainties and weak consumer demand. I will stop here, and I'll ask a second question later.

Thank you Xiaopo and thank you for your kind words. I think this question I could answer. It's good to hear it from the CEO. It's even better to hear it from the CFO, right? So let me ask Iggy to take this one.

Thanks, Jan. Thanks for the question, Xiaopo. So I think maybe as Jan mentioned earlier, right, quite explicitly, in 2025, market share is and will be our top priority in China. And while we do believe in this culture of and, right, and not or, clearly, the priority this year is on market share growth. And you would have seen this, obviously, as well more prominently and explicit in our press release this morning as well. Margin is, of course, still very important to our long-term success. However, the greater focus on top line growth as a priority in 2025 is I think what's important to draw out of the discussion today. And really to that effect, even as we increase sales and marketing investment as a percent of net revenue, this should not necessarily lead to EBITDA margin dilution. At the end of the day, we have several drivers that should support our EBITDA margin. Those, of course, will continue to include operational efficiencies, cost management and most importantly, right, brand mix driven by both trade-up and Premiumization. So I think we have all of the tools required to make sure we can prioritize market share and still deliver margin as an important long-term priority. Thanks for the question, Xiaopo.

The second question is a follow-up on the Premiumization. Some of your competitors were saying that the industry's Premiumization has become more sophisticated with a more pronounced shift towards diversified occasion, personalized products, experience-centric demand and healthy options. And as we all know that Budweiser has a very rich portfolio, what's your next playbook to drive Premiumization with all the resources on hand in '25?

Yes. Thank you, Xiaopo. And I think you know, right, we have been focused on Premiumization since over a decade now, right? So we really built up with our team very deep consumer insights on how to address this different and incremental consumer needs. And this has led to our demand landscape model, which we use to map our brand portfolio in a very differentiated way. Our brand portfolio is leading the industry in terms of brand power. If you combine our brand portfolio, not only Budweiser being the strongest brand in China, but also the portfolio having the highest combined brand power, which is a leading indicator of market share growth potential. And even more so, if you look at Premium brands as consumers do look for more experiences and added value from Premium brands for different need states and occasions. If you look at Budweiser, which I mentioned earlier, remains our #1 priority in China, we have a very strong activation plan for this year. I'm actually very excited with the plan that we have prepared and the team is -- has a very full plan this year. We already started off with a strong CNY celebration campaign, but we will continue and very soon introduce a new VBI. VBI is our internal language for visual brand identity. So essentially, we are evolving the Budweiser packaging starting next month, so March 2025. The new packaging design will retain, of course, the classic visual heritage, but it's also highlighting the brand's Budweiser Bowtie, which is quite iconic. And we're also adapting to a new Budweiser Red color scheme, which makes the brand appear younger and more visually striking. So of course, we did very extensive consumer research on this, and we are very excited with excellent results in consumer research. Following the new VBI launch, we have a full game plan with our mega platforms, football and then music, where we really leverage the global strength with our local adaptation of the mega platforms. When you look at other trends, health and well-being, of course, is an important trend in China, more and more relevant within beer as well in the beer category. And so as you know, we took the lead last year in innovating, expanding the Harbin IGD Zero Sugar. And we are leveraging our mega platform with NBA, which is promoting this concept of Zero Sugar. And next to that, we're also offering zero alcohol choices like Corona Cero and Budweiser 0.0% nationwide to meet its needs. Next to that, we continue to seed and grow the different innovations that we have in not only our craft beer brands, where, of course, we have Goose Island and several local craft brands, but we also have a big innovation on Budweiser Magnum, which is in a beautiful black and gold packaging. But also from a liquid perspective, it involves longer brewing time and incorporates big malts. So again, there, we differentiate our portfolio choices to answer to these Premium consumer needs. So as you hear, I think we continue to invest and grow our mega brands. We leverage differentiated campaigns and experiences to continue to drive Premiumization. And as Iggy mentioned earlier, we continue to increase our sales and marketing investment as a percent of net revenue to bring all these brands and these platforms to life this year. So thank you for your question, Xiaopo.

Our next question is coming from Euan McLeish from Bernstein.

My first question is on China. It seems that your thinking around your Core++ strategy is evolving. I think historically, it seems maybe it was more of a shorter-term strategy, and it sounds like it's becoming -- that's evolving. So can you maybe tell us about how you think the role of Core++ fits into strategy over the medium term and how kind of the short term or the nearer term kind of consumer health is impacting that? It would be really helpful if you could comment about how Core++ channel mix compares versus Budweiser, how the margins compare. And how do you -- to what extent do you have to trade-off between Core++ growth versus Budweiser brand growth when you're activating in the market?

Yes. Thank you, Euan. I think Core+ as a segment has always been an integral part of our strategy because it is essentially there supporting our expansion strategy when we want to bring Budweiser to more cities and more regions. And of course, it helps us in the scale as we penetrate more channels when we go from nightlife to Premium restaurants into modern trade as we then get into more mainstream restaurants and in-home, Core+ does play an important role. I think the big movement we have seen in the last couple of years, right, let's say, 3, 4 years and accelerating is that this Core++ industry segment, the RMB 8 to RMB 10 segment, which is including this Harbin IGD Zero Sugar has been outperforming other channels in the current consumer environment and especially so in the in-home channel. So this Core++ segment is quite interesting. It offers an upgrade from core and value propositions to Core+, but then Core++ gives an extra trade-up for these consumers. And it's kind of an in-between offering to prepare consumers for further Premiumizing into our portfolio. So the Zero Sugar actually plays a role for us there in between these 2 segments. But Harbin, of course, has always been very important for us. It is our second biggest brand after Budweiser in China. And we launched the Harbin IGD Zero Sugar to seize the opportunity in the price segment. So the partnership with the NBA, the growing health and wellness trend in China, all of these have supported the strong growth of this innovation. So the results almost doubled, right, versus the prior year. And so we are specifically focused on young adults to expand reach and engagement there. When you look at the financials, margins are significantly higher than core and Core+ segments. Of course, when you compare to Premium, let alone Super Premium, they would be lower. What is interesting when we look at our demand landscape and we look at the interaction of these drinkers versus Budweiser and Premium or versus Core+ segments and core and value drinkers, there is a much higher interaction in this Core++ offering versus Core+. So we don't see that much interaction with Budweiser, let alone Blue Girl or Corona Blue Girl or Corona or Hoegaarden. So essentially, when we test this and we track our consumer choices, we see that consumers are trading up from our core and Core+ brands. While given Budweiser brand strength, we don't really see any trading down from Budweiser into these segments. So overall, for our portfolio, it is margin accretive, particularly in the current environment, which is why we also decided to place a bigger bet on it. You can imagine that Super Premium in the current environment takes few of our resources. So it is really a rebalancing of resources into this Core++ segment. When you look at distribution, to your question on channel mix, we are driving accelerated Core++ distribution nationwide. We are focused on Chinese restaurants and in-home channels because that's where the RMB 8 to RMB 10 price point has the largest trading up opportunity. As you know, Budweiser is over-indexed in nightlife channels, Premium dining, where this proposition is much less relevant. So we don't see that much trade down risk in the channels that we are leading. But we do see this trading up opportunity in Chinese restaurants and in in-home. So I hope that gives you some more color, Euan, on your question.

Yes. That's really helpful. The other question I wanted to ask was a bit about Korea beer affordability and pricing. So it's obviously been about 18 months since you took price on the core brands in Korea. And since then, Korean CPI has been running at 2%, 3%. So I guess beer has been getting more affordable on a relative basis. Have you seen a positive impact in overall beer consumption as a result of that? And then maybe you can talk a bit about pricing going forward. So there's obviously no April excise tax change anymore, which would have historically presented a logical opportunity to take price. So how are you thinking about pricing going forward? Is this something where you'd like to set up a regular 12-, 18-month routine like you had historically? Or do you think this is going to become a market which is more of a kind of a granular pricing market where every -- on a regular basis, you're making adjustments by SKU and channel. So what -- how do you think that's going to evolve in Korea?

Thank you, Euan. Let me ask Iggy to cover this one.

Thanks, Jan. Thanks for the question, Euan. I think, look, in Korea, as you well know, we make pricing decisions really in the context of both the macroeconomic environment, but also the competitive landscape. And this is constant, right? We've taken a disciplined approach to assessing to planning and to executing pricing decisions. And you should expect or count right on us to continue doing that. The excise tax, of course, the government formally confirmed, right? The officially confirmed that there will be no excise tax increase on beer in 2025. So I think that's important news as well. But I think there are other elements that are important in South Korea, right? If you think of it in terms of market maturity, given it's more mature than some of the other markets here and the Premium segment is still underdeveloped where it should be, right, relative to market maturity, there's a big opportunity there. And of course, the price and margin ladder in Korea is much more compressed than it is in China and some other markets. So this dovetails into why we've increased price on our Premium brands several times actually over the past 2 years in the in-home channel specifically. And we've, of course, been expanding the price difference to the core segment in doing that. And we still believe there's an opportunity to continue to increase that price difference between the segments further over time. In Premium specifically, we announced, obviously, the last price increase of 8.1% within the in-home channels effective 1st of November of last year, so of 2024. And so since it only started to kick in as of the fourth quarter, it will therefore be obviously mostly felt in 2025, right? We have quite a bit of carryover for this year. In terms of overall volume and share performance, of course, you've seen the results, right, for our Korea business, a very strong performance from a volume perspective, particularly in the last 12 to 18 months. I think it's a bit indicative of the portfolio's ability at that price point to be very, very successful. And then beyond that, of course, at this moment, we have nothing really to announce regarding a further price increase.

Our next question is coming from Lillian Lou from Morgan Stanley.

Again, thanks again, Jan, for your leadership and wish you all the best. So my question -- first question actually is a follow-up on Korea, as Iggy just explained on the price actions. So after our price hike in the Super Premium in fourth quarter last year, what has been the volume trending so far? And any changes on the market dynamic, i.e., competitors, do they follow? So that's my major question on Korea, the volume impact so far and probability for the rest of the year.

Sure. Thank you, Lillian. Good to hear from you. And thank you for your words. I think for South Korea, maybe first, generally, right, as you know, we have built a very strong brand portfolio in Korea, both in core and Premium segments, and we continue to invest, right? We have the leading brands. We are leading innovations, and we are developing leading capabilities. So when you look at the overall industry in South Korea, remains soft given the macroeconomics. Of course, the current political environment is also remaining volatile, which is impacting to some extent, the consumer sentiment. However, happy to report that our portfolio continues to grow brand power. And if you look at the year-to-date volume year-to-date this year, volume also continues to grow well. When we look at last year Q4, the last market share numbers we have is that the Q4 market share continues to accelerate versus the full year. So of course, the full year was already quite strong market share growth, right, 349 bps on a full year basis. The fourth quarter was accelerating versus the full year market share growth. So you can imagine the momentum that the team has been able to build in South Korea. And the share gains are both across in-home and on-premise channels. So as a result, last year, we reached -- our total market share reached its highest level in at least 10 years, probably history, but let's say, at least 10 years, led by the growth of Cass, which also achieved record high market share as a brand. So that led us -- I shared it in the opening notes, right, that according to Nielsen, it made Cass now the #1 singular brand in the whole consumer packaged goods industry in Korea within this channel. And we also ranked #3 as a total company within all consumer packaged goods companies in last year. When you look at how do we see growth for this brand, right, given its size, we are actually quite excited with the innovations that the team has been launching in the last number of years in a very consistent way with a specific focus on growing consumer participation. So this participation or how many -- what percent of consumers consumes beer as a category and then Cass as a brand that has been growing very healthily, leveraging our innovation approach. So our innovations are focused on health and well-being like Cass Light Zero Sugar, which grew more than 30%. And it actually interestingly became the top 3 domestic beer brands in the in-home channel. So imagine what the other 2 are. And Cass 0.0% also grew more than 30%, and it is leading the nonalcoholic segment, supported with the first mover in the Korean restaurant channel. When we look at Cass Lemon Squeeze, which again is driving participation, attracting more consumers, this brand, which we launched originally 2 years ago, again, almost doubled last year with more than half of its growth sourced from outside of our portfolio, including the ready-to-drink segment. So we are very confident, as you can probably hear, on our strong and our healthy brand portfolio, route to market and people capabilities to continue to lead the beer industry in South Korea. So I hope that answered your question, Lillian.

That's very detailed. My second question is on the raw material cost. So how does it trend so far in 2025? We did have some benefit last year and whether there will be continued tailwind to help elevate some of the pressure and also leave room for more investment in market share gain.

Iggy, go ahead.

Thank you for the question, Lillian. So I think, look, in the full year '24, of course, our COGS per hectoliter remained largely flattish. They increased by 0.7%. And it was effectively cost management initiatives and commodity tailwinds, which mostly offset both the impact of the operational deleverage and the impact, of course, of Premiumization on our cost of goods sold on a per hectoliter basis. We've not really made any changes to our commodity hedging strategy. So you could still think of the raw and packaging material cost trends within this context of a generally 12-month hedging policy. If we look maybe at the commodities individually, I mean, barley has continued to decline versus the previous year. So maybe a more muted rate than the benefits that we saw in '24, but it's still directionally by a low single-digit decline, kind of on a 12-month basis versus last year. If we look at aluminum pricing, it has risen a bit over the course of 2024. It's now sitting around USD 2,600 per tonne. Of course, that continues to move up and down, but generally, think of it more as a mid-single-digit increase. Energy, as you're well aware, is a bit harder to predict and to hedge. However, for the most part, it's been mostly neutral thus far. So if you think of commodities maybe as a whole, you could look at them as being flattish to a slight increase on a year-over-year basis, given, of course, at this point in the year, we're mostly hedged for 2025. But I think more importantly, beyond commodities, we continue to execute our efficiency improvement programs, our cost management initiatives. These should be fairly consistent with other years. And given commodity escalation is fairly moderated or it is not an anomalous year, it wouldn't be a stretch to challenge our operations teams to look to offset most, if not all, of the impact of commodities on our cost of goods sold. And then as we've said in the past, where this should leave us really with Premiumization as the key meaningful driver for our cost of goods sold on a hectoliter basis escalation as we look at 2025 as a full year. So I hope that answers your question, Lillian.

Our next question is coming from Ye Liu from Goldman Sachs.

Jan, just also want to take the opportunity to say a big thank you to you. It's been an honor to have known you in person, work and collaborate with you in the past 7 years since IPO. So I wish that your own vision come to you on every step of your new path. I also want to take the opportunity to pop up the questions on how Bud APAC will continue to execute the strategy for market share gain. So the first question is that we believe that the in-home penetration is an important strategy for China this year. So would you please share the key success factors and the key challenges for in-home penetration from the past several years' experience? Also, any color on the progress so far and any 2025 target for Budweiser brand in the key regions such as Hubei and Anhui? How should we look at the overall volume target in China in 2025? That's my first question.

Thank you. Great to hear from you. Thanks for your kind words. Yes, I think you're spot on, right? The in-home channel is quite important for us and for the whole beer industry. Especially as we in the future, we see this opportunity of China continuing the Premiumization. It's clear that a lot of the occasions are also shifting between channels. So for us to expand our distribution of our key brands into the in-home channel and really get to distribution scale offers a very large opportunity for us. So you already see that in our numbers that the in-home channel continues to contribute or the contribution to total volume continues to increase, led by Premiumization. If you first look at our brand portfolio from a consumer pool point of view, in the in-home channel, it is important to have a full portfolio with different packages at different price points. So this pack price opportunity is something that our team is very focused on. And as I mentioned before to the team, of course, our new leader in China is the China President, Fabio, he brings a very rich experience in this. As you probably know, he has not only a large experience in Brazil and then in the global headquarter, but also in Europe, where this particular part of revenue management, pack pricing and in-home distribution and kind of consumption and purchasing development is very developed. So he brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to China to accelerate our growth in the in-home channel. And I'm quite optimistic with the skill set that he's bringing to the table that he will be able to really have a big impact on that. The brand power of our portfolio is very high, and it offers this opportunity to drive the Premiumization of the channel. And as I said earlier, we are quite excited with our activation plans for our top brands, specifically this year with a very full agenda across the year. The second part of in-home, of course, is distribution, right? So how do we take care of this availability and how do we offer our brands and our packs in the right channels and in more and more stores as Premium brands and our Core+ brands become more relevant to consumers. So for this over the last couple of years, we developed different strategies, right? So I think the most traditional one is what we've been doing over time, but we find new ways of doing it is driving in-depth route to market. So China has more than 5 million in-home points of sales. And the key to successful in-home expansion is to develop a high-quality distribution network to cover more POX. So we need more wholesalers, both Tier 1, but then especially Tier 2 wholesalers to cover more outlets. So then we have markets where we have strong [ BC ] wholesalers, right, our top Budweiser wholesalers. So we support them to strengthen their in-home penetration. And there, interestingly enough, BEES has actually been a very big help to us because it helps our Tier 1 wholesalers map the Tier 2 wholesalers as they see the orders coming in from the stores, and they can organize route to market in a very well-organized way for distribution and help them with the execution as well. In other markets where we don't have strong [ BC ] wholesalers, we are developing and we have more and more new Tier 1 and Tier 2 wholesalers to help us expand to more POX. The second part of this distribution building is what we announced last year, right, that we have this partnership that we signed with Swire in December 2023. We've been collaborating with Swire Coca-Cola in Anhui and Hubei provinces to accelerate in-home expansion. When you look at last year, it was a successful collaboration. We've seen continued market share growth in the in-home channel, both in Anhui and Hubei provinces, led by Premiumization. So we're quite excited with the partnership, and we believe it will continue to bring synergies and translate into more meaningful benefits in the future and also the start of the year there was quite successful. The third pillar there is on digital, right? So with O2O, the O2O channel or the offline to online channel, some people call it instant retail, this is also continuing to grow. And so we are engaged with our wholesalers to utilize the platforms to capture the growth opportunities there. So you see there are really different approaches on how to accelerate the growth in home. There's a lot of focus on that in our company and also new skill sets with Fabio's leadership in China to drive the commercial agenda in this important channel. So I hope that answers your question.

That's very, very clear, very well structured. Also, I want to raise the question -- second question on the long-term growth. We still believe into China's long-term Premiumization strategy. So what's going to be your long-term growth pillars, if you want to emphasize for different regions and in China, especially based on your city maturity model, which analyzes the Premiumization potential for different beer pricing segment and consumption in hundreds of cities in China. How do we look into different geographic expansion and big city plan?

Yes. Thank you, Liu. I think expansion remains one of our key strategic pillars in China, right? We always say Premiumization, expansion and digitization. So geographic expansion continues to play an important role for both the Core++, the Premium and Super Premium growth, will continue to be a very relevant part of our strategy. So we prioritize expansion, as you mentioned, in different regions, based on the potential consumer demand. And for that, we look at our market maturity model. So we have this expansion playbook, which has a different strategy and toolkit tailored city by city. And we really prioritize the city expansion based on, on the one hand, disposable income in that specific city and in the other hand, our market share position versus peers. So that allows us to offer different portfolios with relevant channel priorities for the specific city kind of maturity level. So depending on that city maturity, we typically either put more focus on Budweiser with Core+ to support the trading up and the Premiumization or in the more mature cities, Budweiser and a specific focus on Super Premium brands when you think about regions like Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang where Super Premium is also -- is already very well developed. As you probably know, we continue to have a massive distribution opportunity, right, with our portfolio. So Budweiser is still around only 1/3 distribution versus the total universe. So we still have 2/3 to go in the next number of years. When you look at Super Premium, it's even less than 10% total distribution. So that's one of the reasons that we continue to see very significant runway for further expansion for us. Every year, we update our targets, right, in terms of how many cities do we have where Budweiser is selling more than 1 million liters or more than 10,000 hectoliter. And so at the end of the year, last year, we achieved the target that we set out 1 year ago, which was going from 220 to 235 cities. So Budweiser continued to successfully scale. Super Premium was in 56 cities. For next year, we are sharing that our distribution target for Budweiser is to grow from 235 to 250 cities. So again, we want to expand another 15 cities, 1-5 cities to continue to accelerate our growth and geographic expansion. So I hope that gave you some color for your question as well, Ye.

Our next question is coming from Weibo Chen from CICC.

This is Wenbo from CICC. Thank you again for your past dedication and expertise and wish you all the best in the future. And my first question is that in China recently, O2O liquor delivery platforms such as Waimai, Jiu Xiao'er are developing rapidly. And will we consider potential cooperations with such platform? Will this channel have a relatively large impact on the sales channel structure of beer industry in China in the future? This is my first question.

Sure. Thank you, Wenbo and thanks for your words. I think O2O, you're right, it is an important growth opportunity for the beer industry, and I would say alcohol in general. These platforms have started to focus more on beer as a growth driver, and we've partnered very early on already with them to basically work together with them to drive traffic and promote different drinking occasions because key here is instant retail, right? So in a way, they can develop new drinking occasions because they serve the consumer within 15 to 30 minutes after they place the order. So it really opens a lot of new scenarios for us to service consumer needs and occasions. So I mean, happy to report that last year, we grew strong double digits in the O2O channel. So you know our definition of strong double digits. It's a very strong growth. And we see this as a new emerging in-home channel. Apps like Meituan especially and also Eleme, Waimai, which is more specialized in alcohol, they connect consumers with the closest off-premise stores. So it is important to understand that actually our products still goes through the traditional in-home route to market to the store and then the orders picked up via these platforms. So that's important to understand our route to market remains through the traditional in-home route to market, but then we leverage these platforms to connect the consumer in these drinking occasions with the stores where they can either pick up or be delivered from. So regarding the impact for the on-premise channel, so there are some restaurants who allow consumers to bring their own alcoholic drinks. However, we see this mostly mainstream restaurants not that much in the Premium dining restaurants, other than with Nightlife, where we are over-indexed. So we don't see that much impact on our on-premise business, to be honest, from these platforms. In addition, from an opportunity point of view, this O2O channel typically focuses more on Premium products, which is, of course, beneficial to in-home Premiumization. And so the O2O channel contribution to in-home sales continues to increase and also in our numbers. So thank you for that question. I think it's interesting.

Helpful. And my second question is like digitization. And I want to know what is the potential impact of digitization on local operations and management after the launch of SAP in India? And have any positive changes have been observed?

Yes. Thank you for the question. I think on digitization, as you probably know, we have different fronts that we're working on, right? We have digitization in sales. We have digitization in marketing and the consumer, and we have digitization in the tech supply or in the supply chain. All of them have different levels of progress. And I mean, I could talk a long time about this because I think it's quite an exciting field in our business where we are, in our view, clearly leading the industry. So I think your question is specifically both on the sales digitization and then the platform in India. So maybe a little bit of color on that. So we are very busy continuing to digitize our route to market, actually, both in China and South Korea. In China, we use our kind of own developed B system. In South Korea, we leverage also the practices and the platform internationally. And so we continue to invest in our digital capabilities through BEES. And from the start when we launched BEES, in both countries, it has the same strategic intent. We basically want to sell more in more POX with a better ROI and better service. So we work with algorithms to increase sales when the customer places the order. We leverage BEES to increase our distribution with better visibility and organization of the -- especially the Tier 2 route to markets supporting our Tier 1 wholesalers, improving ROI because of return on investment with the level of visibility we now have, it is very easy to track and to improve our resource allocation and mechanisms. And providing incremental service. We measure NPS scores, the Net Promoter Scores, and we start also -- we are in the middle of a successful pilot so far with our marketplace as well. So when you look at the transactional functionality, we expanded BEES in China to more than 320 cities and covering 80% roughly of our revenue. So quite sizable already. When we look at South Korea, the team has been launching this more recently than in China, right? So more about the last, let's say, 1.5 years and already accounting 24% of the total net revenue in December in South Korea. If we move to India, as we mentioned in the last call, we did quite a significant change in India, right, in terms of platform. So we did a significant system integration project transitioning to SAP S/4HANA, which is really our new ERP platform, which will support India in our very ambitious agenda of being the new growth engine for Budweiser APAC in the future. So these projects in India are designed to enhance the digitization and the system integration, both for the financial and also the nonfinancial information and also improving our processes and management visibility really to set us up with another strong milestone in the growth journey for our India business. So we focus on expanding our capabilities and also using these tools to drive value creation for our stakeholders. So I hope that gives you a little bit of color, Wendan.

Our next question is coming from Christine Peng from UBS.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank you for the great help you have provided to me in the past, and I wish you all the best in the future. So I have 2 very simple questions. The first question is about Korean market. I know management has talked a lot in terms of the Korean market Premiumization, et cetera. But my question is more on the margin front. So we -- so what is the long-term profitability target for the Korean business, say, in the next 1 or 2 years?

Thank you, Christine and thanks for your words. Let me ask Iggy to cover this one.

Thanks, Jan. Thanks for the question, Christine. I think it's a very good one. In South Korea, I mean, our EBITDA grew by strong double digits in 2024. And of course, the key driver to this was the double-digit revenue increase. So the revenue per hectoliter obviously benefited from the revenue management initiatives, which we've discussed before as well as actually both positive package and brand mix. And then, of course, on the volume side, we had the benefit of significantly outperforming the industry as well. So the consequence of this picture is both our EBITDA and our EBITDA margin expanding significantly. And it's all hinged right on the strong top line performance and the support, of course, that the favorable operating leverage gives us there. If we look at the drivers, right, the main drivers for margin growth in APAC East and in Korea, they continue to be in order of the same ones we discussed previously at our Investor Day, still price first, operational efficiency second and mix third. And actually, it's for this reason that it becomes increasingly clear why we see our business there in a really great spot. In pricing, in the last 5 years, really, we've landed in a much more consistent environment, and we've seen more moderated price increases every 1 to 2 years. As we discussed earlier, as I mentioned earlier in the call, this has allowed us to make pricing decisions both in the context of macroeconomic environment, but also the competitive landscape and always keeping our consumers in mind. In terms of operational efficiencies, we continue to implement cost management initiatives across the business. These, of course, combined beneficially this past year with the commodity tailwinds as well to give us very good results. But these are part of the standard routine, right, the standard management routine that we have in the country. And then, of course, lastly, but also very importantly, we still anticipate that we'll continue to Premiumize the industry. It's still, as Jan mentioned earlier, very under-indexed versus other mature markets. And of course, given the strength of the portfolio, as Jan mentioned earlier, we should be incredibly well positioned to capture an outsized portion of that growth with these very strong Premium brands, right, that we've been developing and building for quite a while. So on that basis, I would say that longer term, we really don't see any barriers to further margin recovery. In fact, if you go back to the views of those Investor Days, you'll recall that we had shared seeing this underlying structural margin tailwind from the growth drivers that I just mentioned. And yes, we still hold this view today. We're very confident that our strategy and our commercial capabilities should position us in a really strong position for future sustainable growth. So thank you so much for the question, Christine.

So second question is about Indian market. Obviously, Jan has previously mentioned that digitalization has been a key driver for the Indian market growth. But we all know that Indian market right now in terms of profitability is still relatively lower than the rest of the market, especially compared with the group. So is there any profit target you are hoping to achieve for Indian market in the next 1 or 2 years? And separately, any update on the Premiumization front in Indian market?

Yes. Thank you, Christine. I mean, when we talk about India, I think really, we are focused on the top line growth. But then to your point, EBITDA growth and then after that, also cash flow growth, right? So all 3 KPIs are very important in India. I think when you look at the business, top line-wise, we see very strong continued momentum. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, Premium, Super Premium, which is the bulk of our business in India, grew by almost 20%, both in the quarter and on the full year. Over a medium-term view, last 5 years, Budweiser doubling its market share and really making India one of the top markets for the Budweiser brand globally even. So Premiumization-wise, it continues to be a very important driver for us from an EBITDA perspective because the brand mix clearly is driving our performance, and we are leading the growth in this Premium, Super Premium segment. So it continues to be very important also just to develop the Premium industry in India. I would say the second one is industry. India is in this special situation that it has a very low per capita consumption to this point, and it is going very well as an industry. And both volume growth and revenue growth at very healthy levels. And we continue to see a very big opportunity. And when we put moderation on top of that, this opens even more exciting perspective for India. So we all know India is a complicated market to operate in because alcohol sales is restricted. There's only about 90,000 outlets across the country that are allowed to sell alcohol. And then the regulation is done state by state. There's different taxes in every market, different distribution rules and also import-export arrangements between the states. So that's why the industry can get unlocked when we can position beer as a drink of moderation because it is a drink of moderation in the alcoholic categories. And so when we are successful in that, we see good results. So for example, in the last couple of months, we are very encouraged to see that in Uttar Pradesh, UP state, regulations increased the number of outlets that are allowed to sell beer from about 6,000 to 10,000. So almost doubling the number of outlets that are allowed to sell beer in UP. The low alcohol bar retail vans in -- that are serving beer and wine, I should say, are now allowed as well and they're introduced in UP in the key cities like Noida and Lucknow. When you look at Telangana government, they just approved a 15% price increase in the beer category recently this month. And in MP, Madhya Pradesh, we've also seen positive change both on excises and on beer distribution. So actually, on many different fronts, we continue to see very encouraging moves. This is a longer movie because it needs to happen state by state, but we do see very positive movements there. Then last but not least, I think productivity. India continues to be a very key driver of EBITDA margin. We have a very large opportunity. I think in the last Investor Day, we mentioned that actually the revenue per hectoliter of India is already at similar levels of China, but the margin per hectoliter is lower. So of course, the difference is driven by this productivity opportunity. And we have very specific plans and the teams in the supply chain are making continued progress on benchmarking essentially our China operations in the smaller breweries, benchmarking this for our India breweries, and we see very good progress in the different breweries that we have in India. So I hope that answers your question, Christine.

In the interest of time, our final questions will come from Anne Ling from Jefferies.

Two questions on my side. First is on the dividend side. So can management team reiterate your dividend policy? And what is your latest practice? So that's my first question.

Thanks, Anne. Thanks for the question. And so I mean, we continue to be focused on maximizing value for our shareholders. And this includes, of course, providing a competitive dividend. It's a very important part of the strategy. If you go back to the time of the IPO, we shared at the time that our dividend policy was to maintain at least a 25% dividend payout. Since the IPO, of course, our dividend payout ratio has always been significantly higher than that commitment. But more importantly, I think if you take a look at the track record since IPO, we've actually been increasing our dividend amount steadily year-over-year. And we've shared on several occasions our ambition to continue to maintain or grow the dividend amount in the future. I think that's important to note. For the full year of 2024, the Board has recommended a dividend of $750 million or $5.66 on a U.S. basis per share, which I mentioned, of course, earlier in the call. And that represents a 7% increase as compared to the $701 million that we would have announced last year. But I think what's most important there is this shows, of course, our confidence in the future cash flow generation capabilities of the business as well as, of course, the ability to fund organic growth, complemented by strategic inorganic opportunities as we usually share when we discuss capital allocation, while still maximizing a direct shareholder return, which, of course, the dividend presents as well. So that's a bit about how we think of the dividend structure for the business. I hope that answers your question, Anne.

Yes. Got it. And my second question is going back to South Korea on the Premiumization side. So in the past, management mentioned that ASP or margin improvement for South Korea is more on like price hikes rather than Premiumization. And what -- with this strategy to raise price on the Premium product in the off-trade channel last year, so is Premiumization also increasing the importance in driving margin and ASP? And by the same token, on the on-trade side, we have introduced Stella Artois on the distribution network. And may I know if Premium segment growth is getting more meaningful?

Thank you, Anne. Yes. Thank you so much. I think for Korea, Premiumization remains a big opportunity because this market is a mature beer market. It's a very developed beer market. So the percent of Premium in the total industry is still underdeveloped. So we are driving this growth for the Premium segment. When you look at South Korea, the reason that the mix driver is smaller from a total contribution or EBITDA growth contribution perspective, it is because the price ladder is pretty compressed. So the price difference between the Premium beer in South Korea versus the core beer is much less wide than it would be in a country like China, for example. So that is the explanation why we have consistently in the last number of years, been taking price increases disproportionately in the Premium segment because we see consumers that are looking for these opportunities for these propositions also willing to pay, and it helps us lead the beer industry in a more wider price structure, which will drive the profitability of the beer industry and also the margin mix. You're right that we introduced Stella Artois on-premise and it's been quite a good experience, right, introducing Premium brands in the Korean restaurants and beyond in South Korea. We did both the small channels with a 500 ml bottle, but we also have a very successful draft program where we educate consumers on the quality of draft and our Stella in the Chalice is a very unique ritual and experience, which consumers today are more and more looking for. So I'm happy to report that we are the #1 leader in the Premium segment in South Korea. And that we have also increased our segment share in Premium in 2024. So we've not only seen cost and innovations successfully in South Korea, we also complemented that with both the leadership but also growing leadership in South Korea in the Premium segments. So thanks for your question. I hope to see you soon.

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

Thank you, Ray. So I think you could hear from the call, we are confident about our medium, long-term growth opportunities, and we are well positioned to drive value creation. For 2025, our top priority in China is to reconnect with market share growth by leveraging our winning brand portfolio and Premium route to market to drive the execution of our strategy. In South Korea, we will continue to invest behind cost, expand consumer participation through innovation and lead Premiumization, which remains under-indexed compared to other developed markets. And finally, we see India as our next growth engine as we lead the industry Premiumization and moderation. So I want to thank all of you for joining us today. I would also like to extend my gratitude to all our investors and analysts for your continuous trust and support for Budweiser APAC, for your partnership and for your time over the years. For those who are based in Hong Kong, I look forward to our happy hour this evening to catch up in person. Those who are not based here can still jump on the plane and join us. We wish you all the best. Have a great day. Thank you, and see you soon.

This concludes today's results call. Please disconnect your lines. Thank you.