Heineken N.V. (HEIA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Deutsche Bank Depository Receipts Virtual Investor Conference, DbVIC. My name is Zafar Aziz from the Deutsche Bank team. I'm pleased to announce that our next presentation will be conducted by Heineken from the Netherlands. Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. [Operator Instructions] On a final note, all day's presentations were recorded and can be accessed by the Deutsche Bank website, adr.db.com. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Federico Castillo Martinez and Mark Matthews from the IR team at Heineken. Heineken trades on the Euronext, Amsterdam under the symbol HEIA and in the U.S. on the OTCQX market as HEINKY. Welcome, Federico and Mark.

Hello. Good morning, everybody, and good afternoon. If we have anybody listening in from Europe, thank you for having us today. We're very happy to be here. We will give you a bit of an overview of our company and our strategy in a few minutes. And very quickly, we will pass on towards Q&A to be able to entertain any questions you may have. So please, if you want to already begin shooting them and feeding it into the chat, then I will make it run the smoothest for everybody. So let me start by telling you a little bit about Heineken and how our dream is to shape the future of beer and beyond. This is something that Heineken has been doing since 1864, and at the moment, we are mobilizing our organization to deploy EverGreen, our new strategy at scale, which we will be covering a little bit in more detail, about what it's a about. In order to get a little bit of results, we are the #1 brewer in Europe. We're the second largest brewer globally. We are present in more than 190 countries around the world with more than 160 breweries. We have more than 300 international and local beer and cider brands, and we have close to 90,000 employees. And our company has characterized itself of delivering, what we call superior graft, which is a level of growth that has been above the level of the total category, very consistently through time in the absence, of course, of the most recent disruptions of the COVID pandemic and a bit of the waves that have followed off volatility thereafter. We have a very diversified footprint. We have #1 and #2 positions in 71 countries. And if you look at the composition of our revenue, it's actually quite balanced, more or less half and half between emerging markets and developed markets. We are the most premium of all the brewers with more than 40% of our revenues coming from our premium portfolios. Naturally, a bit over half of that is actually from Brand Heineken itself that represents close to 20% of the total volume of the business, 80% comes from other brands across our portfolio. We have also a very strong portfolio, what we believe is the most powerful portfolio where the power of our brands is ahead of our market share level in aggregate, meaning that we'll be -- there's a good headroom for us to continue to grow and capture share through. The Heineken brand itself has been shaping the category since 1864, with a number of milestones that have characterized the brand throughout its history, from being the build that revolutionizes the quality into taste of beer back in 1886. For the moment, that was the first imported beer to come to the U.S. after the -- after provision was lifted in 1933. It basically was the first beer in the world that was able to travel around the world and many Dutchman where -- travel in the world bringing that brand to pretty much all the corners of the earth. And that's why you have this brand in its omni presence pretty much everywhere. The ambition of brand Heineken today is to be the most meaningful beer brand for younger top consumers. And even in the context of the significant challenges that COVID has brought and the aftermath of COVID has brought across many markets around the world. It has continued to grow very strongly. And over the last 5 years, it has developed over 12% revenue CAGR by itself. And this is great news because it is a brand that is around 50% more profitable than the rest of the brands in our portfolio, giving its premium position. So let me pause there, and let me hand over to my colleague, Mark Matthews, who will tell you a little bit about our strategy Evergreen and the shifts that we're trying now to make into our business.

Thanks, Federico, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us today. And as Federico said -- so, we've built a strong footprint, whether you think about that geographically and even with our premium portfolio and our share of markets where we choose to play. And of course, we've been through various times of disruption. And most recently, of course, Dolf, our Chief Executive, Dolf van den Brink. He joined the company midway through 2020, which, of course, was the first year where COVID and the lockdowns, that came with COVID causing global disruption really took hold. So no better time, right, then to shift the strategy when there's a global pandemic on. And EverGreen wasn't a result of that. It was underway before that, obviously, but clearly made even more relevant with the circumstances that we've seen since then and since Dolf took over the helm. Now the key part about EverGreen and the link to nature is intentional. We talk about our EverGreen strategy to continue to help us deliver superior and balanced growth in the next evolution of the Heineken business. And that's important. We've been known for delivering superior top line growth. And we now want to switch into delivering superior and balanced growth in this next chapter. And as Federico mentioned, that includes an implicit within that are shifts from our strengths into the company, which is future fit, is ready for the future. So let me walk you through a few of those. We've had -- Federico mentioned our footprint. We've spent time building our footprint, expanding into emerging markets with deliberate M&A, for example, in Brazil, in Vietnam in Mexico over the last decade or so. And actually moving forward and with EverGreen, we're looking to accelerate organic growth. So the superior top line growth will now be focused more on building our organic growth and driving premium leadership and market leadership there. So, we have developed, as Federico mentioned, a very strong position with the Heineken brand and in Premium in general. But now we're really looking to scale that. So Evergreen, we're taking a shift to scale that premiumization and become even more consumer-centric in innovation, which we believe is where the future of growth in the beer and broader beverage alcohol beverage category exists. We've had a track record and we're very proud of our excellent execution and customer relationships, close, long-standing trust-based customer relationships. And we now want to shift this strength to include more data and digital customer strategies. Shifting our traditional business and our very strong relationships to embrace the digitization and the digitalization that is taking place everywhere. Whether that's with the consumer directly or with our own route to market. And we've talked about having a superior top line growth. Fair to say pre-2019 driven by and focused on volume. And we are now absolutely wanting to shift that to becoming more balanced, driving value across all 4 dimensions of our Green Diamond, and I'll quickly come on to that in a moment. Now I should just interject it. If anyone wants to pick up our Investor Presentation, there is a link in the handout section of our presentation area today, and you can follow that to the website, and it should take you directly to where you can download a presentation, which will cover this as well. And finally, we have -- we've been very intentional and proud of having an OpCo-centric culture. And this is -- OpCo is operating company. We empower our local operating companies with a lot of decision-making ability, for example, in pricing execution, and the portfolio decisions that they take with their own local brands. Beer, after all, is a very local product to markets where it exists. And there is the closeness to the consumer, is a real competitive advantage, as we understand it. So we've built that over many years, and now the shift is we want to move that to become even more networked as a business. Federico mentioned, we have more than 160 breweries, but are we really efficient in our footprint in the best way that we can be. And of course, the answer there is, no. We think we can improve, and we've got some great examples there. For example, the end-to-end supply chain transformation in Europe. Which we recently discussed in depth at our Capital Markets event and is currently underway. Which is driving more of a network approach to how we deliver to our customers and increase efficiency. But it's not just about efficiency. We like and we want to maintain our entrepreneurial spirit. It's a key part of the company and a key part of what's brought us to, where we are today. And this is really about building disciplined entrepreneurship. The shift is to this disciplined place. Now what does that mean? Well, we don't want to have a reputation of just planting flags, taking the Heineken brand everywhere, regardless of the cost. We are now much more deliberate and much more intentional about our capital allocation and making sure that we will be generating returns, and we're building the beer category for the future. Of which we can give you some examples of where we've done that, where we've been successful and how we can see that working very well. And for those who have followed our company for a while, Brazil would be the market, I would -- I would point to that, okay? So EverGreen is really -- it's a change in our strategy, that's building on our strengths. And the last thing I'll say, and then we'll pause, maybe I've seen some questions come in already, is that our priorities, we have 5 strategic priorities. So within that framework of what we're trying to achieve in the company, this is where we focus our energies and how we'll win. The first is, as Federico mentioned, to shape the future of beer & beyond. We want to build an advantaged footprint, scale premiumization, pioneer the Lo/No alcohol category and explore beyond beer. This new and exciting category outside of traditional lager. Our second priority is all around the digital area, the digital space, and we want to become the best connected brewer globally. We have a very clear third priority on productivity. This is to enable us to fund our growth and to fuel profitability in the organization. We also have clear and specific commitments on sustainability. This is our fourth area of priority across the environmental, the social and the governance aspects of these -- of our organization. And finally, people. People are incredibly important. And you hear Dolf or Harold talk, we will always come back to the strength and the power of our organization, and we really want to unlock the full potential of our people in that sense. And that hasn't changed. So think about this as a step forward to become future fit and to create the Heineken, which will be ready to adapt and to deal with the seasons, the shifting seasons, that will come in our future. And of course, we're moving through one as we speak. This year has been a season of high inflation, high inflationary impact in developed markets. And we're currently navigating that and executing on EverGreen. I'll pause there. Federico, anything else to add?

I forgot I was muted before -- to minimize the feedback in the [ noise ]. Yes, I would like actually to follow, to continue building on what you were saying, Mark, about addressing the -- some of the questions that are already in the chat at the same time. Because they're very relevant and precisely building on what you were saying.

The first one that I'd like to speak to is what do we see as the growth drivers of the business over the next few years? And the first thing that I would like to point out is that beer is a fantastic category. It is big, it is successful, it is moderate. It is natural, It is a very local category. And it is growing share of throat on a global basis. And I underline this because in -- the one market in the world that is, of course, very big, but all exception to this is precisely in the United States, where beer has been losing share of throat. However, globally and across the broad majority of markets globally, beer is in growth and is gaining share of throats. And this is true across emerging markets, where greater purchasing power for consumers and improved affordability is making beer more accessible. So countries in Africa, in Latin America, in Southeast Asia have strong growth and lots of headroom to be growing in beer, but also developed markets across Europe, particularly in the Southern part of Europe, where beer is gaining significant share of throat from wine. And this is sometimes misappreciated if you are looking at the beer category from the vantage point of the United States. Now the opportunities going forward, are much larger, of course, in emerging markets. Where consumption per capita of beer stays at relatively low levels, given the level of purchasing power of consumers. But also Premium, the penetration of Premium Beer across markets is still greatly under-developed, and we believe that there is still significant headroom for that. Heineken as the most premium of the brewers, then is best positioned to capture and benefit from this opportunity. And the other area of growth is, areas that we have properly identified of underserved consumers and under-representative occasions of a -- where beer could play a bigger role. Which are these? Well, this is about low energy occasions, where we could do better in the sense, that when people are relaxing and sometimes this is an area where, at the moment, we are under-indexing in these kind of occasions, with female consumers. It's also a segment of consumers, where we are underrepresented and where we could certainly do more. If you look at the taste profile of beer, about 90% of the beer category is lager with a very narrow taste profile. So by bringing innovation to bear and expanding the profile of beer, taking advantage of the wide range of tastes that a beer can deliver, there's certainly more opportunities that we can tap on. And of course, the premiumization angle of it. If you look at the spread of value that spirits that have -- are probably further along than beer on this premiumization journey have gone. These price gaps can be up to 2.5x in the world of spirits, if you compare them to the world of beer. Which being a little bit more specific on how these opportunities manifest themselves? Well, the low and nonalcoholic category is growing at a much more accelerated base for us, than the rest of traditional beer. And it's great that within that segment, Heineken 0.0 is the leading nonalcoholic brand in the world, with the disruptive proposition that it brought to the market, when it was first introduced in 2017. In the U.S., it was introduced in 2019. And since that has revolutionized the nonalcoholic beer space in the market. And it's the #1 brand by value in that space. Another area that you probably have heard a bit of, is the beyond beer space, where Heineken explain through propositions like Desperados, which is a Tequilla infused flavored beer and our cider propositions. We are the #1 cider producer in the world. With the recent acquisition of Distell in South Africa, we are the largest beyond beer player outside of the U.S., on a global basis. So that is another area that will drive significant growth going forward. Let me pause there. I don't know if you want to pick up another question, Mark, and can follow up.

Yes. I think so, let's move through because there's an interesting question here. Can we give some examples of the digitization drive and the benefits? And I think I would say -- I would give 2 examples there for the audience to think about. The first is perhaps much more socialized among the investment community, which would be the B2B or the eB2B platforms, which global brewers are establishing in their route to markets and particularly in their direct route-to-market operations. And essentially, this is digitizing the transaction between the customer and the brewer. And clearly, there are efficiencies to be gained in this space. But also a significant amount of data and understanding of consumption of where consumers are purchasing, how they're purchasing and how we can leverage that data to improve everything from better quality touch points with the customers that we sell to, the endpoint shops and outlets that are selling our products. But also understand directly the consumer behaviors, when do they purchase beer and for what reason. So that is something that we are very much behind and in many of our markets, we've also introduced a new brand called eazle, business made easy. It's an umbrella brand under which we'll start to migrate our eB2B platforms for more of a global scale efficiency and building a network in that sense. So that is perhaps one of the more well-known and well-understood areas that brewers and other consumer product goods companies are accelerating. And we're taking a very active part in that, and we believe that we can create value there. As well as that, part of our digitization journey includes, building a much more connected network of breweries. And we actually call this the connected breweries. We've got more than 60 of our breweries now connected. What does this mean? Well, it means that in the similar way, the Internet of Things will connect a device to your network at home, for example, and link various devices together. We can also do the same with our breweries and use that connection and the data, that is being collected over thousands of different parts of the brewery to, for example, build predictive maintenance routines in place and understand when a particular component within the brewing process is likely to fail. Now of course, one of the biggest causes of inefficiency in the brewing process is unplanned downtime. So in this sense, by digitizing and by getting a data-driven view of our operations, in the actual process of brewing, we can really minimize some of that unplanned downtime and of course, create efficiencies within the operation of the breweries. And this is not to be underestimated -- this, it's not small stuff, right? We can strip out significant complexity and cost from production by being one step ahead. And I think this is another example, which is not necessarily consumer facing, like the eB2B or our direct-to-consumer platforms may be. But it is also driving an internal efficiency, that our customers and, of course, eventually, our consumers will benefit from. So they are 2 examples, but if anyone else has more specifics, then please come back. And Federico, maybe one for you, where do we sit in the nonalcoholic beer market? So maybe just a quick overview of that and how we see that developing?

Yes. So we -- to give us a reference. So the nonalcoholic beer market globally represents at the moment, only 1% of the total beer market. Now in Europe, that is already close to 5%. In the U.S. also, it's about 1%. But it's growing fast. It's been growing at about a 30% CAGR over the last few years and has to continue that level of momentum into this year. And we believe that, that can -- that segment can indeed reach the levels of European levels of consumption globally. There's markets within Europe like the Netherlands, close to 8% of the total beer market. Spain is closer to 10%. So the headroom for growth there is fantastic, It's great to note that we over-index in terms of our share in that segment significantly. So the headroom for growth there is spectacular. We're actually seeing some of the fastest growth in emerging markets, in places like Brazil and in Mexico. Which is not what we would have thought at the start when we launched these innovations. Now I'm also conscious that we have a very -- we're running short of time. So I'm going to try to run through some of the questions that are there to try to hit as many as we can. There's one about the difference in geographic exposure and how do we expect the growth to come differently. So for us, clearly, the biggest part of the growth we expected naturally to come from emerging markets. And if you look at the priorities for regions are very different. You can find them in our presentation. But in APAC, it is about seizing a larger share of that expected growth in that region. Where we have very attractive profit margins. In Africa, it's about the -- creating more value to long-term growth potential and delivering balanced and profitable growth. Here, capturing the growth but capturing value, it's important because of the challenges that many of these countries go into from time to time. By the challenges we have in Nigeria at the moment. There was actually one question about Nigeria specifically there. Yes, we're being affected significantly in Nigeria at this moment. And it's a bit challenging to say when will that come back in growth. I think Nigeria has shown very strong resilience through time and the potential of that market remains immensely significant. It will become one of the most populous countries in the world in just a few years' time, given its demographics that is quite deterministic. It will happen. So it's great to maintain that position, despite the short-term challenges for that big potential that can come down the road. Continuing on the geographic lens in the Americas, it's about progressively capturing a larger share of the profit pool by capitalizing in our momentum. We are having strong momentum, particularly in Brazil, but also in Mexico with our brand portfolio that, as we come out of some headwinds that we've had, given the mixing of OXXO, the largest retail chain in that country. We will start to see some acceleration of our growth into the coming years. And finally, Europe, where it's more about improving the profitability and the value creation of our model, given that this is not a region we're going to see a lot of growth, but where we need to do better in order to leverage our scale advantage and our privilege -- in our Premium -- our leadership position to create bigger value. Maybe we have -- actually, we need -- we have -- we need to stop, I think, because we've run up to the 30-minute milestone, unless some summary of the moderators tells me differently. So I think we are -- we can -- we will need to wrap up. So I'm sorry...

One more question. I think we've just been given the white smoke, we can do one more question. So there you go.

Maybe the one about discuss shareholder returns, dividends and buybacks. So let me just share with you what are our capital allocation priorities. We see ourselves as a growth business. So the first and foremost priority is to reinvest in our business. We have an investment level objective, to stay on the order of 9% of our net revenue in terms of CapEx to continue expanding our positions and investing in the growth of our business. That is a very important destination of capital. The second and third is largely about maintaining a very disciplined financial profile. So to have -- to stay below 2.5x net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. It's important for our business. We have a strong track record of around 15 years of doing so. When we have deviated at a particular moment in time because of a large acquisition, we have returned to those levels within a couple of years' time. So that is -- so staying within that threshold is another important priority. Third is our dividend policy. We've been very consistent about 30% to 40% payout of our net profit by year-on-year, even there in COVID times, that's exactly what we were able to deliver despite the significant challenges that our business went through. And once all of these priorities have been met, then we certainly will have -- continue to have an important M&A agenda. As we still see opportunities in our business to continue to expand geographically. Maybe not by large transformational acquisitions in the past, but large bolt-on acquisitions. Like what we did in Brazil in 2016 with Kirin or what we've done with South Africa with Distell more recently. And once all of these priorities have been met, we might consider other avenues to allocate capital. You may have seen that earlier this year, we acquired a big part of the shares that FEMSA, one of our shareholders put into the market, and we bought back some of those shares. So if the conditions are the right ones, like at that moment in time, we could also consider that to allocate some capital. I don't think we can stay longer, Mark. Before we get them fill the hook coming from the right and pulling us out of the screen. So without much ado, I would just like to thank everybody for their interest in Heineken. And feel free to contact us at [email protected], in case you have any follow-up questions that we would like to engage with us more directly.