SMB posts 14% profit growth

Beer giant San Miguel Brewery grew its six-month net profit by 14 percent year-on-year to P9.4 billion on a double-digit expansion in revenue.

Consolidated revenue in the first semester went up by 12 percent year-on-year to P53.1 billion.

SMB said it had benefited from creative marketing and sales executions that opened up new markets and boosted consumption of its products.

Its Philippine operations posted a 13-percent year-on-year rise in revenue in the first semester to P47 billion.

It was earlier reported that SMB was planning to invest up to $150 million in setting up a beer brewery in Los Angeles, California, to cater to growing demand for its beer products in North America.

SMB is also spending $500 million over the next two and a half years on the expansion of its domestic beer business. The company is set to build one new brewery in Iloilo and another in Cagayan de Oro, each with an annual production capacity of two million hectoliters.

Apart from the new local factories to be built, SMB plans to expand the existing bottling facilities in Bacolod, Davao, Cebu, Polo (Valenzuela) and San Fernando all at the same time.

SMB, which has been operating in the last 126 years, wants to increase its export volume to the Middle East and supply more to America.

The company also plans to expand its production capacity in the Philippines, where the average utilization rate of its various facilities is now at close to 95 percent.

SMB has the capacity to produce 16.8 million hectoliters of beverage in the Philippines annually. Overseas, it has an annual capacity to produce 7.1 million hectoliters.