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July 31st, 2013 
Peter Nolan
BUDWEISER-MAKER Anheuser-Busch InBev has seen its second-quarter earnings fall by nearly a quarter because of higher taxes and higher financing costs.
The world’s largest brewer said on Wednesday that its net profit during the period was $US1.50 billion ($A1.66 billion), or $US0.93 per share. That was down from $US1.94 billion, or $US1.21 per share in the same period a year ago.
The fall came despite a 1.9 per cent increase in revenues to $10.6 billion, on a mix of higher prices and lower volumes.
The Leuven, Belgium-based company noted that the volume decline – 1.2 per cent from a year ago – was less severe than in the first quarter, when its Brazilian operations performed poorly.
The sales figures were a bit of a surprise following lacklustre earnings by rival SABMiller last week and AB InBev’s share price rose 5.3 per cent to 71.32 euros in early trading on the Euronext exchange.
These were the first results to be published since InBev’s $US20.1 billion acquisition of Corona brewer Grupo Modelo in June.
Brands owned by InBev make up nearly 50 per cent of the US beer market, and regulators forced it to sell Modelo’s US business to Constellation Brands Inc, including the rights to Corona there, in order to win approval for the deal.
Tuesday’s results were published on a pro-forma basis – as if it had owned Modelo in both years. It also stripped out the impact of a one-time $US6.31 billion gain due from a revaluation of the value of shares it held in Modelo before the acquisition.
InBev said net debt at the end of the quarter was $US43.1 billion, up from $US30.1 billion at the end of 2012, mostly due to financing the Modelo buy. The company said it expects to pay down debt relative to operating profit by roughly a third by the end of 2014.
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