Carlsberg CEO Sees Little Threat From Brewer Consolidation

By Christina Zander

STOCKHOLM--Chief executive of Danish brewer Carlsberg A/S (CABGY), Cees 't Hart, said Wednesday that he sees little threat to the company from the planned merger between the world's two largest beer groups.

Mr. Hart, who's been heading up the Danish company since June last year, said he felt that being a dominant player in specific markets was more important than being the biggest player on a global scale.

"We don't really see a threat from [the merger] to any of our own number one and two market positions," Mr. Hart said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The world's number one brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, agreed last November to buy SABMiller PLC for about $108 billion, a tie-up that will create a brewing behemoth that dominates about 30% of the world's beer market.

Earlier Wednesday, Japan's Asahi Group Holdings said it had offered to buy Grolsch and Peroni, two European brands, from SABMiller as the merging companies plan to sell assets to get antitrust approval for their tie-up.

Mr. Hart did not wish to comment on whether Carlsberg was also among the bidders as the sales process is still ongoing, but he noted that M&A was not a priority for the company going forward. The main focus is on organic growth, he said.

Carlsberg, the world's fourth-largest brewer, said it expects "low single-digit" growth in operating profit on a comparable basis this year after reporting fourth-quarter net profit of 78 million Danish kroner ($11.8 million).

This was sharply down from 168 million kroner in the same period the year before, due to restructuring charges, but better than the 254 million kroner loss that analysts had expected, according to the average forecast in a poll by data provider FactSet.

Write to Christina Zander at christina.zander@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2016 07:41 ET (12:41 GMT)

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