(Bloomberg) --Carlsberg A/S said that volumes fell in the third quarter, as poor summer weather across Europe and a consumer downturn in China hurt sales of its beer.
The Danish brewer said organic volumes fell 0.2%, despite investments in marketing to boost sales. An analyst consensus compiled by Bloomberg had estimated the company to grow volumes during the quarter. Like rivals, Carlsberg has been hit with consumers cutting back on spending, particularly in China which is in the midst of an economic slowdown.
Carlsberg was also hurt by lower volumes in France and the UK, where poor summer weather meant brewers weren’t able to take full advantage of sporting events such as the Olympics.
“The French consumer is feeling the pinch,” said Carlsberg Chief Executive Officer Jacob Aarup-Andersen on a call with Bloomberg, although the rest of Europe is performing well.
“Consumers are not overly bullish, but our teams are able to drive growth,” he said.
Sales of non-alcoholic beer were solid, rising 6% as more people turn away from drinking beer. Soft drinks and other non-beer products also rose. Carlsberg is pushing further into the soft drinks category with the purchase of Britvic, and it’s also expanding a bottling partnership with PepsiCo into two further markets in 2026.
The company maintained its full-year target of organic operating profit of between 4% and 6%. Shares of Carlsberg rose as much as 1.7% in early trading before paring back. The stock is down nearly 11% since the start of the year.
Carlsberg’s performance in China was less bad than the market, according to Edward Mundy, an analyst at Jefferies, who added that as the market becomes more “comfortable with the strategic rationale for the Britvic transaction, we would expect the shares to re-rate.”
Earlier Thursday, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV said beer volumes fell more than expected after continued weaker sales in China and Argentina.
(Updates with shares, management comment starting from fourth paragraph.)
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