By Michael Susin
Coca-Cola HBC AG said net profit rose but missed market expectations and warned that it expects current backdrop to remain challenging.
The bottler for Coca-Cola Co.–listed in both London and Athens–reported a net profit of 636.5 million euros ($681.6 million) for 2023, compared with EUR415.4 million in 2022 and expectations of EUR712.6 million, according to a consensus forecast provided by the company and based on the estimates of 14 brokers.
The Switzerland-based group said its comparable earnings before interest and taxes–or operating profit, its preferred metric–came in at EUR1.08 billion, beating market expectations of EUR1.035 billion and prior year’s EUR831.0 million.
Volumes organically grew 1.7% to 2.835 billion unit cases led to net sales revenue increase to EUR10.18 billion, up from EUR9.20 billion the previous year. Consensus anticipated 2.82 billion unit cases and EUR10.25 billion in net sales revenue.
Organic revenue grew 17%, ahead of consensus at 16.1% and in line with the company’s mid-teen growth guidance.
The board has declared a dividend payout of EUR0.93 a share, compared with EUR0.78 a share a year ago.
Looking ahead, the company expects 2024 organic revenue at group level to grow within its medium-term target range of 6% to 7%, while organic EBIT is expected to grow 3% to 9%.
The company added that cost-of-goods-sold per unit case should increase from low to mid-single digits due the combined effect of inflation and foreign exchange headwind, which is estimated to have a EUR30 million-EUR50 million negative impact on comparable EBIT.
“While we expect the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment to remain challenging, we remain confident that we will continue to make progress against our medium-term growth targets,” the company added.
Write to Michael Susin at michael.susin@wsj.com
