Heineken chief Dolf van den Brink has praised the company’s “resilient and well-balanced” performance in 2025, as the beer giant gained share, and improved profitability amid a squeezed beer market.
While a strengthening euro pushed topline reported revenues to fall 4.7% to €34.3bn at the Dutch multinational, organic growth measures showed a significantly healthier picture of 0.2% growth, as over 60% of the company’s markets gained or held market share.
Adjusted operating profits were up 4.4% to €4.4bn in the year to 31 December 2025.
“In 2025, we delivered a resilient and well-balanced performance,” said van den Brink. “We gained share, drove cost and cash productivity, and increased investment behind our brands. Combined with agility and our advantaged footprint, this helped us navigate volatility and deliver within our guidance range.”
He added that as the company’s last five-year plan, Evergreen 2025, concluded, the company had made “meaningful progress” and “advanced major transformations that strengthen [its] fundamentals”.
Under Evergreen 2030, Heineken will now pursue sales growth despite the sluggish worldwide beer market.
“Our first priority is to accelerate growth, funded by stepped up productivity and operating model changes that will involve a significant cost intervention over the next two years,” he said.
“This will unlock stronger people productivity and enable greater speed and efficiency. At the same time, we remain prudent in our near-term expectations for beer market conditions.”
The company aims to take advantage of its relative strength in emerging markets to pursue their growing middle classes. In 2025, Heineken’s only market that saw volumes grow was in the Asia Pacific region, where they rose 4.4%. Notable growth in Vietnam, Ethiopia and India was more than offset by declines in Brazil, Cambodia, the US and Poland. Licensed volumes jumped 17.8% thanks to the strong performance of the brewer’s Chinese partner, China Resources Beer.
”With volume pressure in some regions, our productivity programme was instrumental in driving organic profit growth and operating margin expansion,” Heineken said. The Africa & Middle East region led the way, as the flow-through of savings delivered in this and past years came through strongly, helping to offset volatility in several other markets. As a result, despite the challenging macro-environment, we delivered within our operating profit guidance range for 2025.”
In the UK, Inch’s and Old Mout ciders registered “solid growth” in the year, and alongside Cruzcampo helped the country “stand out” in Europe for its good performance despite softer Birra Moretti sales.
No comments yet