Heineken Holding N.V. (HEIO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Barclays Consumer Conference. Very happy to be here with Dolf van den Brink, CEO of Heineken. Thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you. Happy to be here. Good stuff.

So I wanted to kick off with the -- your sort of medium-term guidance and particularly the guidance that's going to be coming into play this year. It sort of moved around a bit over the past couple of years. It started off being a margin target at around 17%, and then that moved to mid- to high single digits, and now it's moved to 0 to mid-single digits EBIT growth. What changed? What were the main pieces of that change? And perhaps what have you learnt over that process?

Very good. Thank you. The original 70% margin, we set that in February '21 in the middle of COVID, and it was more intended as a marker of restoring the business at a relative quick speed. And then last year, we realized with all the inflation and pricing and the nominator, denominator challenges that came with that we had to convert that to an operating profit OG target. Now with hindsight, what's clear that we were too optimistic. So that's learning number one. At last year's summer, things looked very good. We we're, of course, in the middle of the big bounce back from COVID. We were on track to over deliver against our targets on revenue, on volume growth, on operating profit and I think, yes, we got a bit too optimistic in terms of this year that these things would continue. When we look to this year, indeed, we have been running into more volatility than we thought we would. In 3 out of 4 regions, actually, I'm pretty proud of how the teams in a very agile way are responding. In Europe, it's mostly -- until the summer, it was at least running according to expectations. You have seen that we took a lot of pricing yet the underlying financial delivery was quite impressive. The Americas is working out as we thought. Africa, a bit more rocky, but also financially, that was not a big shocker. It was really Asia that came quite unexpected, and I think we're going to talk about that in a separate question. The learning is, I think even some of the people in this room said, too, we really like your team. We get your strategy, we buy it, we like it. We would like you to be a bit more boring, a bit more predictable, and we take that too hard. I think it's a fair challenge. We have had a lot of volatility in the world. The company has had a lot of volatility, and we really need to make sure we get the company back on kind of solid, consistent, predictable performance. And that comes with more cautious guidance. And I think there's one other element there that's important to us as a family-controlled business, we just always want to make sure that we have the room to do what's right for the business, mid and long term. And that we don't get squeezed into a box where you need to do things that make sense short term but not long term. So, yes, altogether, I think a couple of fair learnings there.

Okay. And well, I'll jump on that point about Asia and Vietnam, in particular. Could you run through sort of exactly what happened with the sell-in going into the Tet period, how that progressed during the year, how you responded with various pricing changes and perhaps how you see the Vietnamese market going on for the rest of this year and into next?

Yes. Yes, so this is one of the most bizarre reversals and trend that I've ever come across. Remember, last year, also bouncing back from COVID, we were up 30%, 40%. In fourth quarter, we were up 40%. There was an incredible momentum and confidence in the business in the market. And that very quickly reversed going into the new year. We for sure missed it. I readily admit it. I think basically, almost everybody did. I think there was not any economists out there that kind of saw that one coming. There was a lot going on the reopening in China and how that would be a lift for the region. That clearly didn't happen. We went into the year with a massive overstock because the Tet occasion is really a premium occasion. So this affected us more than others. And I think it's fair that initially, the team framed it as an overstock issue, underestimating the deceleration in the underlying market trend that was going on, on top of that. And by the end of the first quarter, beginning of second quarter, it became clear that it was not just an overstock, but actually the overall market moved into decline. The Vietnamese production date is very messy. So it's hard to kind of get a clear line of sight. Of course, we know our own numbers. I think our main domestic competitor, who's a public company in Vietnam, so we have that data, they reported 11% revenue decline in the first half. So that's probably a 13%, 14% volume decline. So that kind of gives you a sense that, yes, there is a big deceleration in the underlying market. At this moment, Q3, we guess that the market decline is still in the high single digit. For us, a bit worse because there is some down-trading happening under these circumstances. Now where does that leave us? First of all, the destocking is completely dealt with already by the second quarter. So that's no longer an issue. We had a price point issue on Tiger. That is no longer issue, that's been dealt with. But I think we are now going with the market in terms of volumes. We are deliberately cautious. I think we are not going to see a huge turnaround in the fourth quarter. Next year, of course, from a selling point of view, you're going to cycle a lot of what happened. But on a sell-out basis we are deliberately putting ourselves in a cautious mindset. From a portfolio point of view, we feel, yes, we are heavily exposed to premium which is a bit of a disadvantage. At the same time, Heineken, Tiger, incredible, important power brands in that market. But I'm particularly proud of what we have been doing with mainstream. 5 years ago, we had 4%, 5% share in mainstream. We quadrupled that. It's almost 20%. Our mainstream volume is up for the year, where clearly the mainstream segment overall is down. So we continue to gain share in mainstream. But yes, with 92% share in premium and 20% share mainstream, the mix is, at this moment in time, not working in our favor. But I think from a strategic point of view, the team is doing the right things. Last comment to make. We made a deliberate decision not to dramatically downsize the business and take a lot of cost out. For example, in Nigeria, we did. But in Vietnam, we feel we really need to make sure we preserve the ability -- the capabilities of the organization to also fully profit from the bounce back that will come. We remain very bullish on Vietnam. This has happened before, 2008, 2009. It was also kind of bumpy at the time going into the global financial crisis. You see that now we remain big believers in the underlying fundamentals of Vietnam. Urbanization is still below 50%. GDP per capita, below USD 5,000. If you compare to adjacent countries, there's still a lot of upside at a meaningful scale with almost 100 million population. So, bumpy, but confident in the strategy and confident in the outlook mid to long term.

Okay. And just picking up on some of the -- you mentioned you kept the cost in the business, hoping for the bounce back next year. It looks like from some of the economic numbers that we see out of Vietnam, there has been a bit of an improvement over the past few months. I'm sort of assuming come Q4, you'll be comping that big sell-in, which perhaps could cause a bit of, well, challenging comp. But as we get into next year, the volume data is -- should be a relatively easy comp. And so is it fair to say, as of the beginning of next year, it's more plain sailing?

Yes. So Q4 will be a bit tough because we cycled that tailwind. Q1 will -- must be quite positive because we cycled the destocking that we incurred. But at the same time, having learned our lesson, we are not yet expect a huge bounce back to the historical kind of volume or trend but it will be an improvement for sure. Some people ask, and it's maybe also relevant for us here today, hey, yes, GDP went down from mid-high single digit to low single digit, but it's still growing. Why is the effect so big? And I think it has a lot to do with the industrial workers, the blue-collar workers in the industrial zones like Vung Tau outside of Ho Chi Minh. We saw 400,000, 500,000 blue-collar workers return to the rural villages because of the impact on exports. So exports are a very important driver. Now the good thing is after some brutal trends on exports in absolute terms coming down in the first half, we start seeing some normalization there. That would be a key driver of the normalization of the volume trends as well.

Okay. Good stuff. And you mentioned Nigeria as well. So let's run through what's happened there. Was that mainly just sort of an economic slowdown in the country? Or is there anything else going on in the sort of competitive nature with yourselves and the other players in the market? I guess some of your competitors are showing some slightly stronger results in Nigeria, but of course, their market share is somewhat lower than yours. Perhaps, you could run through what you're seeing in Nigeria and how you think that will play out?

Yes. So first, maybe good to zoom out. The people, we all -- time moves quickly. But when you look back to 2020, '21, early '22, Nigeria was one of our best-performing opcos. We were actually growing double digits. We're investing in capacity extensions, et cetera. So Nigeria is coming out of a 3-, 4-year fast growth trend. Kudos to you because you were actually one of the people who kind of called a trend change in Nigeria. The war in Ukraine has actually been brutal, not personally on the energy side, but on the food prices side, Nigeria being a net importer of food. So they were heavily impacted, as you rightly saw coming. And that started basically last year's summer. So also from a cycle point of view, things will start being a bit easier. Now 2 particular things happened this year, Q1 were the elections, in particular, that decision to take the higher-value banknotes out. So there was an epic cash crunch, which really impacts a category like beer. And then in second quarter, the new government actually was surprisingly assertive and they devaluated the naira with 65% and they took the petrol subsidies down, which, again, really directly impacts disposable income of consumers. So the whole first half has been quite brutal. We do believe, though, that some of these decisions from the government are actually structurally very important. And for the first time in many years, we see this happening. This is a rare thing to happen in the dynamics of Nigeria which really makes us more optimistic about the mid, long-term prospects of the country. Now on the competitive dynamics, I'm going to gently disagree because I don't fully agree on that one. In Q1, basically, from a market share point of view, we were in line with our main competitor. But two, in volume share in the second quarter, we gave a bit back because we took pricing on the mainstream brands in the second quarter, and they didn't. They now -- in the beginning of the third quarter, they've done. So volume shares are normalizing. And from a financial point of view, we performed better. So and actually, I'm quite impressed by our team and their agility, with volumes down over 20% how solid the underlying financial performance has been of the business. As I said, looking forward, second half the cycle will be a bit better, but let's not be naive when a country like Nigeria goes into a cycle like this, that's always 1 or 2 years at least. So we keep also here our expectations deliberately a bit conservative. Again, yes, you're going to cycle that minus 20-plus in the first half of next year. In the meantime, we just keep investing in what we control. The brand portfolio, we have, by far, the most diversified portfolio. We are the #1 in beer in lager beer. We are the #1 in premium. We are the #1 in malt beverages. We're #2, #3 in stout beer. The premium portfolio is doing better than the mainstream portfolio, which is interesting. A brand like Desperados tripled its volume. And ultimately, our biggest strength is actually our route to market. And so also when you go to a cycle like this, it's really important to make sure we preserve capabilities so that you can profit from the bounce back.

Okay. Just comparing your responses between Vietnam and Nigeria, it sounds like you've kept a lot more cost in Vietnam it sounds like because you're expecting the bounce back to be somewhat quicker.

Yes.

And the 1, 2 years that you mentioned Nigeria sort of implies, that's why you've taken costs out of Nigeria because -- okay, that makes sense.

Look, I started my international career in Central Africa and so I know Africa a bit. When you go through a rollercoaster like this, the macroeconomic volatility in Africa is just much higher. And again, 65% devaluation, et cetera. So when you go through a cycle like this, you don't want a huge fixed cost overhang because that can be brutal. So here, you mothball packaging lines, sometimes even a brewery, very quickly taking the cost out, but also at a later point, you can restart those things.

That makes a lot of sense. Well, let's move on to Mexico. I know that Mexico has been, I guess, mathematically challenging because of all the OXXO changes. But of course, this is the last year of that. Perhaps you could run through how you've seen that transformation happen? Did it go to your expectations? But then, of course, without that next year, is that just a drag that's behind us and the Mexican economy looks like it's one of the better-performing emerging markets?

Yes. No, again, maybe good starting by zooming out. It has been such an incredibly strategic asset for the company. We did the FEMSA acquisition back in 2010. Since then, I think two things happened. This is a great example of fierce global player competitiveness, but actually really to the benefit of the market. The market size has more than doubled. The profit pool has more than tripled. Our profit has more than quadrupled since we acquired FEMSA. So this -- I would say this is kind of the high watermark. This is what you would like these large developed market operations to look like. We always knew that this contract would be ending. With hindsight, I think we made the best of the situation by agreeing with FEMSA to do a staggered mix in. That was quite fundamental because if you would have a cliff where you lose 3 million, 4 million hectoliters in a year with operational deleveraging, that would have been very damaging. So very happy how we have been able to do this staggered over 4 years. We didn't have a single year of operational deleveraging because basically, the market growth was every year larger than the mix effect of OXXO. Consequently, we gave back some volume share which we will have to gain back. But from a financial point of view, actually, it has been quite beneficial because OXXO, of course, had brutal trading terms. And we're converting a lot of this volume into SIX which is our own retail chain, with believe it or not, 16,500 stores. That is one of the largest retail chains on the planet. And our profitability in SIX is actually disproportionally high. So we're actually on our way to grow our underlying operating profit fivefold. So financially, it has worked well. We've kept the volume share loss in check, but the task now is to start normalizing that. And yes, as of January, we are finally done after 4 years of, yes, losing every year 751 million hectoliter. That will be stopped. And that will mean that we can capture the promise and the potential of the Mexican market in a fuller way than we were able to do the last few years.

Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense as well. I'm going to move on to Brazil where, I guess, you've been premiumizing the market very quickly. It looks like you're taking share, from the data that we can see. What do you think is behind that? Is that the premium growth? Or is that your new digital capabilities that you've announced? And perhaps how do you see a change in the competitive dynamics since we saw Petrópolis going to bankruptcy at the beginning of this year?

Yes. Again, good by starting to zoom out. If you go back 10 years, this was a four-, five-player market, where only one party was making money and nobody else. And we would like this market to move from that picture and to look much more like Mexico. And I think it's actually on its way there. It's now a 3-player market. In essence, it's the big 2 players that really are in the lead. We are very proud of how we have built on the underlying components of the old Kaiser business and the old Kirin Brasil business, how we put that together and completely transformed the portfolio from being 70%, 80% low-margin economy beer volume and low margin to actually negative margin softdrink volume. And we've been completely converting that to a mainstream and premium business. Now 75 -- over 75% of the business is premium and mainstream beer. We have not been going for blunt volume share. We actually proactively shed about 10 million hectoliter of economy beer volume. We shed about 12 million hectoliter of softdrink volume. So it's not about gaining volume share for the sake of volume share, it's really all about gaining value share that we can convert into operating profit. And in that regard, the portfolio transformation, together with the route-to-market transformation, and we were completely reliant on Coca-Cola up to a couple of years ago. Now we've been able to move to Heineken and Amstel brands into our own direct distribution, which was absolutely key, not from a pure reach point of view, but particularly from the on-premise business and the returnable packaging, where the margin -- where there's a big margin opportunity. That has worked very well over the last 2 years. We are not yet where we want to be from an operating margin point of view, but the absolute operating profit starts to become quite meaningful. We're soon breaking EUR 300 million of underlying operating profit which, in the history of these companies, that has never happened. So keep on building value share. I think in value share, we're around 27%, 28% share right now. Keep converting it to operating profit, keep investing in our brand portfolio, our route to market and make it look more like Mexico mid, long term.

That sounds like the real aim here. I was having this discussion with Fernando at ABI on Tuesday, and your comments that it's becoming much more like a 2-player market. And he mentioned that not having perhaps players in the market that didn't fulfill all the business practices that one had to fulfill, well, means that the Western companies who do follow all the rules is a much more sensible competitive market where profitability will improve for everyone.

Yes. And let's be clear, it's highly competitive. Mexico is highly competitive. Brazil is highly competitive. But I think we have been very clear that we don't want to kill the profit pool. We want to grow the profit pool. And the playbook at Heineken is always to invest in brands, always to lead with premium and make sure you have sufficient mainstream to go with it to give it sufficient scale. And that playbook has been working out quite well.

Okay. Well, let's move on to Europe, which actually I think is -- when we were sitting here last year, everyone was expecting Europe to be a much more challenging market. We saw the headlines about cost of living. And perhaps it's been one of the most resilient markets across the whole beverages space. Is that your experience of it? Have you seen any evidence of trading down? Have you seen any evidence of people moving from on-trade into off-trade? And how do you see that continuing perhaps as we come out of this cost of living concerns that people have been facing.

Yes. Now, first of all, we had a good year, a strong year in Europe last year, with the bounce back after COVID. Let's not forget the [ entrée ] business, which is meaningful and quite profitable, has not returned yet to pre-COVID levels. So you're still high single digit to low single digit down on that. That's meaningful and that is not restoring yet this year. So there's still more to do. And maybe part of that is kind of permanently gone. The input cost inflation that we're all talking about globally, the most extreme version of that was, of course, in Europe, the war in Ukraine, the energy pricing, doubling, tripling and that's working its way to the most bizarre increase in input cost that I've ever seen in my career, which led to double-digit pricing this year in Europe. And yes, I think we have taken more pricing in the first quarter this year than the prior decades cumulative. So this was always going to be a big shock. We made it deliberately because of the retail structure in Europe, which is deflationary because of the -- that structure. We knew that if we would not take the pricing now, you would just accept a structural step-down in the gross margins of the industry. You're never going to get that back at all the moment. So we felt quite strongly we had to take the pricing. We also felt as a volume leader in Europe that we had to move first. So we moved quite vigorously in the first quarter. We did get to pricing. That's question number one, do you get to pricing? We actually got to pricing without major incidents. We knew that we would sacrifice some volume in the first quarter because competition was following more in the second quarter. It took a bit longer than I would have liked. But as of June, our market shares have been returning to kind of the prior level. So yes, we were deliberately courageous. We sacrificed a bit of volume share. But in June, July, our market shares are back. First half, our operating profit was flat, while we increased our marketing selling expenses quite vigorously, because if you take your pricing up, you also need to make sure you keep investing in your brands to make sure that you're worth your price. That was the first half. It's also fair to say that the summer has been brutal. And yes, it's always a bit lame to talk about the weather, but the weather effects with climate change, it is getting more extreme and the amount of rain that we had, basically across the majority of Europe in July and August, was certainly worse than what we were expecting at the time.

Okay. And just picking up a couple of things. You said you took a huge amount of price at the beginning of this year. One of the concerns that people have at the moment is what's going to happen in the pricing negotiations next year. Do you see any risk that you're going to have to give some of that back to the retailers or perhaps a greater promotional intensity next year? How do you see that pricing negotiation develop?

Let's take France out. That's always a bit of case apart. But across Europe, I think our arguments are solid. We still have work to do to restore our gross margins. They're not yet at pre-COVID levels. absolute operating profit is not yet fully there. There will be a lot of wage inflation. A lot of -- we're going to talk later about the input cost, but the wage inflation in Europe is going to be brutal. So all in all, I think there's sufficient arguments to avoid price rollbacks. Mind you, there's not going to be a lot of pricing. And actually, that may be a good thing to make sure that we restore the affordability levels with our consumers.

Understood. Okay. So let's pick up that COGS piece because from my position or our position, it looks like the COGS situation will be significantly easier next year. The aluminum price has fallen quite substantially. The energy price has fallen quite substantially. And as we understand, you hedge on a 12-month basis. Mathematically, that looks like a much more benign or negative COGS scenario into next year. Is that what you're expecting too?

Yes. Now I need to watch myself. I see all those laptops and spreadsheets open there. So let's be balanced. I think it's good to talk about the balancing components here. One, undoubtedly, on your global commodities like aluminum, malt what have you, there's going to be favorability. We are about 50 -- slightly over 50% hedged for next year if you guys see the spot prices, so there will be favorability there. Now that's been balanced by local commodities that are really moving fast in the wrong direction. So for example, rice, very important in Asia, up 30%, 40%. Sorghum, quite important in Africa, up in the 50%, 60% range. So again, only by the end of the year, we will know what kind of the underlying net effect is there. On transportation, undoubtedly there's going to be a big favorability on ocean freight. Our U.S. business profitability is massively impacted this year because of ocean freight. That will revert, to a large extent. But then land transportation is really heading the wrong direction where petrol prices are going. Again, only by the end of the year, we will know the net effect. On the noncommodities, particularly in Europe on energy and water, there will be favorability with energy pricing somewhat normalizing even though still at double the pre-war levels, but compared to last year, favorable. But then other fixed costs like wages really heading in the wrong direction. So overall, I want to caution ourselves and I want to caution everybody in not being too optimistic. It may not be as favorable as everybody is assuming. Having said that, after a couple of years of double-digit, mid-double-digit input and COGS increases, yes, for sure, it will be significantly better than that, allowing us much more benign pricing and hopefully, that really works through a normalization of the volumes. Because in the end of the day, beer is capital intensive, fixed cost intensive. You need to get that operating leverage going.

Okay. And on the cost side, I suppose you've just gone through this transformational cost program with EverGreen. Has that played out as you've expected it to do? What are the big changes that you've made? And perhaps you did originally have a margin target of getting back to 17%. Is that something we could expect in the next few years?

Yes. So first of all, maybe good to clarify that EverGreen is not just a financial savings program. EverGreen is really meant as the ongoing transformation of our business over the next 5, 10 years. And the kind of -- it hangs together on the words of superior balance growth. We take great pride that Heineken, over the last decades, 2 decades has been a strong growth company. We want to balance that a little bit more to make sure that it indeed converts more to underlying operating profit and leverage on the margin. But it starts with that growth and superior growth agenda. So EverGreen is also about investing in growth the assets. That's why we bought control in India. That's why we did the Distell deal in Southern Africa. That's why we bought Beavertown in U.K. So we're continuously investing in future growth through the footprint, through portfolio. And even in this pretty challenging year, we're investing EUR 180 million incremental marketing and selling expenses just in the first half of the year. It is all about accelerating the Heineken brand, the premium portfolio, the 0.0 portfolio. The digitization, as you said, we will break [ EUR 10 billion ] in gross merchandising value on our eB2B platforms. So EverGreen, first and foremost, is about superior growth and investing in superior growth. But in order to safeguard our ability to continuously ramp up the investments, we did see a big opportunity to be more focused on productivity and savings. And the company prior was a little bit too much, okay, I give you growth, but no margin or the other way around. We do feel if you want to play Champions League, you need to do both. That's why we launched the EUR 2 billion savings program. Initially, also internally, there was a shock like, how on earth are we going to do that? And I'm proud of the agility and the learning capacity in the organization to really start building this new muscle of ongoing productivity savings year-over-year. We will fully or actually over-deliver against the EUR 2 billion program. And we were also quite deliberate earlier this year to now make a commitment to deliver EUR 400 million of ongoing savings where the primary audience is not us here in this room, but actually, the organization because we don't want them to refer back to, oh, savings, that's something you do out of necessity every 3, 4 years and not something that's just part of doing business. Now you challenge a little bit in the sense of are we seeing it? And actually, I do believe you see it. If you look to our full year numbers of last year, our volumes have more or less stabilized versus pre-COVID levels, but our underlying operating profit was EUR 400 million higher and our ATL, BTL, our marketing, selling, EUR 100 million higher. So there was a EUR 500 million extra value in the bottom line. So yes, the EUR 2 billion program was absolutely critical to offset a lot of that inflation because in the meantime, between '22 and 2019, your wage inflation, your capital cost going up and what have you, we're able to offset all of that and deliver that EUR 400 million, EUR 500 million more. And that's kind of the formula that we like and that we're really investing and leaning into.

Okay. And in terms of the EUR 400 million going forward, where do you see the core areas of additional savings coming from? I think you gave some very interesting ideas in Europe at the Capital Markets Day. Is that the key area where you think more savings will come?

Yes. I think partly it's just the 2,000 small initiatives that add up to a big number that you need to continuously do. We're continuously filling our pipeline of cost savings and we move them from stage L1 to L4, et cetera. So that's just routine, should become routine now. Then you do things like what we call Project Sequoia, where we have completely redesigned the supply chain footprint in Europe, where it was basically every little opco had their own structures and we have moved that now to more platform business across the region. That's a EUR 500 million of structural savings unlock. It's a very important reason why this year, we're able, even with everything going on, the input cost inflation, the volumes under pressure, why we still have underlying operating profit growth in Europe is because of that program. About half the savings have been captured by the end of this year. The other half will be next year and the year after. And we will continuously be looking for those kind of opportunities of also more structural transformation projects that are a bit more intense.

Okay. Then you also mentioned Distell previously. And I want to just touch on that, perhaps I've not been as constructive on that acquisition as I could have been. But could you run through what's the rationale of Heineken getting into perhaps categories that are not traditionally part of Heineken? I always see Heineken as the premium beer company, yet Distell has quite a significant part of it being spirits and what looked like fairly mainstream wine brands. What's the rationale there?

Yes. So it was not about wine and spirits. South Africa is the biggest profit pool in Africa, and we are a major large long-term player in Africa. Organically, we had fought our way to 16% share in beer with the Heineken and Amstel brand, but it was not converting to any value. And so in order to make sure that the momentum that we're having on our brands and with the South African consumer, that we were able to get a much bigger part of the meaningful profit pool of South Africa. And you have to scale up, you need a route-to-market platform like we needed Kirin Brasil in Brazil to really unlock the Brazil opportunity. So it was initially about scaling up in the route to market. More than half the Distell business was and is cider with absolute power brands, Savanna cider, the Hunter's brand. That was the key reason. And almost the wine and spirits came on top of, that was initially secondary. Now what's quite important, many markets, wine and spirits have a separate route to market compared to beer. South Africa, actually, it's the same. It's going from the brewery or the winery to these large mammoth wholesalers, to the bale breakers, to the brands. So there's actually a lot of synergies. This is what Distell saw 10, 20 years ago when they put that company together. The absolute share in wine and -- yes, the very attractive niche they had in spirits, we actually said, let's see it. Let's learn. A lot of people asked us, are you willing to sell? For now we are actually quite intrigued by it. Let's learn. It does give scale in the South African market. And with time, we see the optionality of that. Outside of South Africa, this allowed us to consolidate Namibia, where we were long term a minority. We're merging that with Distell. Namibia, that's becoming a quite -- the market share in total alcohol will be quite impressive. And then you have the optionality of Rest of Africa. So yes, it was actually a lot of components. I think on the pricing, we were quite disciplined. We were paying under 11x EBITDA. And we paid basically only half in new capital, half of it by bringing our operations in. So altogether, we felt that this is actually a very strategic deal to now go after a very big part of that attractive profit pool.

That makes a lot of sense. I can see we're running out of time, but there's two questions that I've been asking all the management teams that we've had on stage. Firstly, is there any one brand that's outside of your portfolio that you particularly admire? And that's not meant to be an M&A question, just to be very clear about that. But anything in wine, beer or spirits that you think is particularly impressive.

There's one thing that has been annoying me mightily, and that is Aperol Spritz. And my own 21-year-old daughter is drinking it. And you have to admire these guys. And as by origin a marketer, how they did that in the orange and the ritual, the glass, the aperitif occasion, I admire them. And they're a fierce competitor for that occasion, including in my own family, which is a bit sad. Anyway...

And then with all these sort of questions you have from myself and investors, what's the area you think that people don't pay enough attention to at Heineken that they really should?

Maybe 2 things. One is -- like today, we always get a lot of focus on Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam. Those have been the big building blocks of our footprint over the last decade, and they will continue to be. I think I don't get a lot of questions yet on the new building blocks. Ethiopia, it's up 20%, will be 5 million hectoliter. It's a 100-million population country. That's a new building block that is not really on the radar. South Africa will be a massive building block. And the most important of all, India, where we're now the #1 player, 50% share. Geopolitically, India is going to be the big gainer for the coming decades. And I think we're in prime position to take advantage. So it's really about the big scalable new building blocks that we are putting together. That's one. And the other one is our people. In the end of the day, Heineken is about people. It's about our family culture, it's the passion, the prides that our people have.

Well, excellent. Dolf, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you have an excellent rest of the conference.

Thank you so much. Have a good day.