Carlsberg A/S estimated that the Russian beer market would shrink at least 5 percent this year, stunting the Tuborg maker’s growth prospects, as a ban on large bottles takes hold.
That market, which was the source of a sixth of last year’s operating profit, is declining due to a prohibition on selling beer in 1.5 liter plastic bottles that took effect at the start of the year, Carlsberg chief executive officer Cees ’t Hart said during a conference call with reporters yesterday.
The stock fell as much as 2.9 percent in Copenhagen.
Carlsberg’s Russian business represents the biggest acquisition in the Danish brewer’s history and was once its brightest star, generating almost half of its operating profits in 2009.
However, after a series of shocks struck the Russian market — including plunging oil prices, Western sanctions, recession and higher beer taxes — Carlsberg now only gets a fraction of earnings there.
BALTIKA
The Danish company sells about a third of the beer consumed in that country under brands such as Baltika.
Operating profit would rise by a mid-single-digit percentage on an organic basis after rising 5 percent last year, the Copenhagen-based maker of Tuborg beer said yesterday.
The company also forecast currency shifts would boost earnings by 350 million kroner (US$50.2 million) this year.
UPBEAT ANALYSIS
“From a conservative management team, guidance of a mid-single-digit increase in organic profit is as good as one could hope for at this stage,” Exane BNP Paribas analyst Eamonn Ferry said in a note to investors.
The firm’s operating profit of 8.25 billion krone last year missed analysts’ estimates of 8.29 billion kroner.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day