Carlsberg hailed the impact of its acquisition of soft drinks supplier Britvic for helping partially offset sliding beer volumes.
The Danish brewing group saw volumes fall by 3% organically in the three months to 30 September, driven by weakness in Central & Eastern Europe and India, as well as the loss of the licence to brew San Miguel in the UK. Organic volumes grew by 0.4% at Carlsberg last year, but have fallen in every quarter so far in 2025.
Excluding the impact of San Miguel, group volumes would still have fallen by 1.7% in Q3, Carlsberg admitted.
However, non-beer volumes climbed by 1.5%, with western Europe up 4.9% as Carlsberg continued to progress its integration of the Britvic business, acquired for £3.3bn in January.
Revenues, meanwhile, declined by 1.4% organically and slightly below analysts’ expectations of a 1.5% decline.
“We delivered strong reported growth driven by the Britvic acquisition,” said Carlsberg CEO Jacob Aarup-Andersen. “We also achieved solid underlying volume and revenue growth in western Europe and saw sequential improvement in Asia, supported by strong performance of our premium portfolio in most markets.”
The integration of Britvic was “progressing very well” and Carlsberg maintained “strong confidence in the advantages of combining beer and soft drinks”, Aarup-Andersen said,
However, the supplier continued to face “challenging consumer sentiment” as well as a “heighted adverse impact” to its business resulting from the war in Ukraine.
In light of “current soft market conditions” the Tuborg supplier was “taking decisive actions” to adjust its cost base, Aarup-Andersen added.
Carlsberg maintained its forecast for full-year operating profit growth of between 3%-5%, ahead of last year’s 2.4% showing but short of its 4%-6% target.
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