Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (HBC) reported a record annual profit on Wednesday, and expects profit to grow in 2024.
The profits were helped by strong demand for its sparkling drinks, coffee and energy drinks, as well as easing cost pressures.
The report comes after Coca-Cola surpassed Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter revenue.
The American beverage giant, which owns about 23% of the HBC, cited similar factors in contributing to revenue.
Profits
The Switzerland-based company expects its comparable operating profit to grow by between 3% and 9% in 2024.
It reported a comparable operating profit of €1.08 billion for the year ending 31 December 2023. This represented a 17.7% rise.
Beverage companies have witnessed strong demand despite hiking prices in an effort to pass on elevated production costs to customers.
While this has benefitted Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola HBC, PepsiCo reported its first sales decline in 14 quarters due to similar tactics.
Cost pressures have begun to ease in the past few months, bringing relief to bottlers such as HBC who have seen margins improve.
Easing cost pressures in the second half of the year was reflected in the full year comparable gross profit margin, which was 80 basis points higher.
Organic revenue per case for 2023 was up 15%.
Chief executive of Coca-Cola HBC Zoran Bogdanovic said, “While we expect the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment to remain challenging, we remain confident that we will continue to make progress against our medium-term growth targets.”
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