KUALA LUMPUR (March 16): Carlsberg Brewery (M) Bhd today (March 16) announced a final dividend 25 sen per share, payable on May 18, 2023.

This raises the group's total payout for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2022 (FY2022) to 88 sen per share. This is the group's highest yearly payout since FY2019, and represents 85% of the group’s net profit for FY2022.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic hardships that ensued during 2020 and 2021, Carlsberg Malaysia’s dividend payout fell to 40 sen and 56 sen per share respectively. With the economy recovering starting 2022, so did Carlsberg Malaysia’s profitability.

In FY2022, the group recorded net profit of RM317.05 million, 57.74% higher year-on-year from FY2021’s RM200.99 million. The surge in profitability was driven on the back of a 36.08% increase in revenue to RM2.41 billion.

In the group’s 2022 annual report, Carlsberg Malaysia managing director Stefano Clini said the stable operating environment in 2022 with no halt to production and operations had enabled the group to continue to deliver value for shareholders with the record net profit.

“This year was certainly unique and challenging once again. With the pandemic retreating, the world was finally out of the woods and most of us returned to living life like we did three years ago. This in itself gave us plenty of reasons to celebrate.

“With the return to normalcy, our teams could finally go back to holding physical consumer-facing marketing events and promotional activities. The range of advertising and promotion initiatives we invested in and events and activities we hosted helped to drive footfall back to on-trade,” said Clini.

He added that 2023 will be another challenging year for Carlsberg Malaysia as a global recession looms following inflationary pressures. For the group, both its Malaysian and Singaporean operations are expected to record more moderate growth rates as inflation persists, he said.

“This year was also significant as we transitioned from our successful implementation of the SAIL’22 strategy to our new five-year strategy, SAIL’27, which evolved from the seven-year-strong foundation built by SAIL’22.

“The new strategy will sharpen our focus across all our key strategic levers while raising our financial ambitions,” said Clini.

Carlsberg Malaysia closed at RM21.60 on March 16, giving the group market capitalisation of RM6.6 billion. Year-to-date, the counter had declined 5.35% from a RM22.82 closing price on Jan 3, 2023.