Quality grower in choppy times: Heineken
In a market dominated by headlines around AI, quality growers delivering consistently strong earnings such Heineken have been overlooked.
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Amid recently volatility, we have been looking to increase our portfolio weighting in defensive consumer staples companies. Whilst it is difficult to find high quality and consistent high growers in this sector, Heineken has caught our eye.
Heineken has been a front runner in the consumer staples industry due to their high consistent growth. They have delivered EBITDA growth of 8.86% CAGR and sales growth of 7.85% CAGR over the past 5 years. Since their IPO in 1937, they have generated compounded earnings greater than 10% annually, showing their resilience.
Heineken is a well-entrenched global beer producer, founded in 1864, recognisable by the iconic green bottle with the red star. It started off as a failing brewery bought by Gerald Heineken and has rapidly grown since its inception to become the world’s #2 brewer and Europe’s #1 brewer. Heineken is still controlled by the Heineken family. The founding Heineken family holds ~25% controlling interest in Heineken through a holding-company, established in 1952. This unique structure allows the Heineken family to continue to lead the company and ensure the long-term strategy is aligned with their vision.
Their portfolio expands over 170 brands including Heineken®, Moretti, Amstel, Tiger, Dos Equis, Bintang and numerous other consumer favourites.
Under their strategy EverGreen 2025, they organically grew Heineken® sales volumes by 51%, premium beer by 21% and low and no alcohol beer by 31% since 2020. With the conclusion of this strategy, they have launched their new strategy EverGreen 2030 shaped by their learnings over the past 5 years. This strategy aims to accelerate growth by concentrating its efforts on 17 countries in emerging markets and improve productivity by scaling the rollout of its Digital Backbone. This is a multi-year, €1 billion investment to standardise its IT infrastructure across 70+ global markets.
They operate across many regions in both mature and emerging markets. Recently, a growing share of its revenues have been coming from emerging markets such as Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Beer consumption in emerging markets is half of developed markets and they represent over 80% of the global population. With the growing middle class and urbanisation of emerging markets, management view these regions to have huge growth runways.
The Africa and Middle East region performed strongly in 2025 despite political tensions and macroeconomic volatility. They gained market share in Namibia and Ethiopia and strengthened their premium beers portfolio. Heineken made divestments in Sierra Leone to focus on higher potential markets, demonstrating their disciplined approach to growth.
In the Americas, in January 2026, Heineken completed an acquisition of FIFCO’s beverage and retail business solidifying its Central American position, elevating Costa Rica to be a top 5 performer by operating profit. This acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to operating profit and EPS. Additionally, Heineken made an investment into a Brazilian Brewery to support growing demand and long-term volume growth.
Growth in the Asia-Pacific region in 2025 was led by Vietnam and India. Heineken was able to gain or maintain market share in over 70% of their Asia-Pacific markets, demonstrating strong brand penetration and customer loyalty. Across the region, premium beer brands such as Heineken® and Kingfisher Ultra were the main growth drivers.
In the mature market of Europe, Heineken faced a difficult 2025 where overall beer consumption dropped, however they saw strong and improving performance in Portugal, Spain, Serbia and the Netherlands.
In all regions, they have strengthened their premium, non-alcoholic and beyond beer brands to better align themselves with the rapidly changing consumer trends. Their agility and ability to identify trends quickly has made them a market pioneer in non-alcoholic and beyond beer beverages.
We expect Heineken to continue to grow successfully in 2026 with earnings per share expected to grow at 10% this year. With the market’s focus on artificial intelligence, it has ignored quality growers like Heineken outside of the technology sector. We think Heineken is a steal, trading on a PE of 14x.
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Garry is an experienced global investor, managing global equities portfolios at Profeta Investments and Perpetual Investments for over twenty years. He is the founder of Profeta Investments.
Profeta Investments is a global asset management firm focused on delivering high absolute returns. We focus on investing in quality businesses through different phases of their maturity. We manage a high conviction portfolio taking a long term view. We focus on growing companies with strong balance sheets where management teams are aligned with shareholders. For more information visit www.profetainvest.com
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This wire is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon for the purpose of making an investment decision
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Garry is an experienced global investor, managing global equities portfolios at Profeta Investments and Perpetual Investments for over twenty years. He is the founder of Profeta Investments. Profeta Investments is a global asset management firm...
Expertise
Garry is an experienced global investor, managing global equities portfolios at Profeta Investments and Perpetual Investments for over twenty years. He is the founder of Profeta Investments. Profeta Investments is a global asset management firm...
Expertise
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