Indochina sales up for Carlsberg

CARLSBERG – 50 percent owner of the brewery behind Angkor beer – claimed strong sales in Cambodia over the first nine months of the year, in a third-quarter update that came in below most analysts’ expectations yesterday.

Organic volumes increased by 23 percent in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam during the first nine months, compared to the same period 2009, according to the results from the Danish firm.

“The growth was strong across all three markets,” it said.

Carlsberg claimed sales in its Indochina region increased at a faster rate than the overall regional beer market.

Sihanoukville-based Cambrew Ltd – 50 percent owned by Carlsberg – claims 26 percent market share in the Kingdom, and is the brewer of Angkor, Bayon, and Klang beers in Cambodia, among others.

Although Carlsberg saw strong growth in Indochina and other parts of Asia, it claimed “challenging” conditions in its Northern and Western European markets Net income was 1.95 billion Danish krone [US$363 million] in the third quarter, the company said in a statement.

That missed the 2.17 billion krone average estimate of 18 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

“Looking forward, we will be impacted by rising input costs and will therefore have to increase sales prices,” chief executive officer Joergen Buhl Rasmussen said in the statement. ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY BLOOMBER