Beer Group President And Anadolu Efes CEO Onur Altürk Commented
As we step into 2025, I am pleased to see that our resilient business enables us to navigate with confidence through an ever-evolving landscape. 2024 has been a year of strong performance as we successfully met our targets despite operating in a highly dynamic and complex environment. Throughout the year, we faced persistent inflationary pressures, weakened consumer confidence across multiple markets, and geopolitical uncertainties. Yet our ability to adapt effectively to changing market conditions and seize emerging opportunities across geographies has been key to our success.
Our soft drinks business also demonstrated resilience and adaptability despite facing challenging market conditions. While the year began with difficulties; our winning portfolio, strong execution capabilities, and improving market dynamics contributed to a gradual recovery in volume performance toward year-end.
Our beer business has delivered exceptional performance from the start of the year, closing the year with an impressive 8.4% volume growth despite cycling a strong base from the previous year. Almost all our beer operations contributed to this outstanding performance. Our Russian operations were placed under external temporary management by a Presidential Decree in the final days of the year. Unfortunately, there have been no major developments in this regard since our latest announcement.
We remain committed to exploring new opportunities that will enhance our portfolio and expand our presence across different categories, strengthening our position in both existing and new markets. While the macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape remains complex, we recognize that challenges also bring opportunities. In line with our vision to expand our presence in the adjacent geographies where we have operations, we are actively exploring opportunities to strengthen our footprint in key international markets.
Looking ahead to 2025, we anticipate flat or modest market growth in our beer business across our operating geographies, while remaining focused on outperforming the market in every region. Across almost all operations, we plan to grow our revenue above inflation, through pricing and favorable brand & package mix. We remain committed to driving EBITDA growth in absolute terms, though margins may face slight pressure. Free cash flow generation and deleveraging will continue to be critical priorities. Given the unique circumstances in Russia and to not mislead stakeholders, we will not share Beer Group guidance for 2025 until we gain more clarity on the situation.
We remain focused on delivering long-term sustainable value to our shareholders through an optimized portfolio, operational excellence, financial discipline, and continued investments in digital transformation. In line with our commitment to shareholder value and capital allocation priorities, I am pleased to announce that our Board of Directors has proposed a dividend of TL 754 million for 2024.
I remain confident in our ability to navigate the evolving landscape, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and drive continued success together.