Main Q&As at Europe business 2019 briefing

A.The outlook for market volume growth of five countries in Central Europe business is flat in the future. On the contrary, the market value seems to grow due to the category shift from the mainstream and economy price range to the premium. Especially, we anticipate the acceleration of the market growth of craft beer and non-alcohol beer taste beverages in light of the consumer life style changes.

A.The market is expanding significantly primary due to the following two reasons. One is that consumers think NAB as a substitute of beer. Another is that they also recognize NAB as a refreshment beverages for adults made of nature ingredients, including barley and malt. In the future, we have strengthened promotions by launching new products in the other countries utilizing the know-hows and knowledge accumulated in Czech, where we have a high market share of NAB.

A.Consumers tend to seek “better” in their lives due to the increase of their disposable earnings driven by the favorable economic environment in Central Europe. We have responded to the diversification of consumer needs leveraging our extensive brand portfolio and captured the shift towards premiumization in consumer behaviors.

A.We anticipate the continuous growth of NAB market due to the increase in health consciousness. We have strengthened the communications through such means as the improvement of taste and the appeal of stylish images focused on young adults and aimed to exceed the market growth.

A.We anticipate the several impacts of Brexit, including the occurrence of customs clearance procedure for import products and the stagnant consumption due to the deterioration of economics. We are now preparing for the customs clearance by ourselves, not to depend solely on the government efforts. We envisage that the stagnation of consumption has big impacts primary to the mainstream category. In light of the several impacts, we continue to improve our brand equities centered on premium and super premium categories.

A.In Europe, consumers tend to enjoy beer with their meals and we think there is a big potential of Asahi Super Dry, which goes well with food. Asahi Super Dry has a success story in Japan and clear differentiated factors, such as sharpness and Karakuchi, extra-dry. These also make us feel the potential of future growth of Asahi Super Dry globally.