Q2 Results: Extended Monsoons Hurt United Breweries’ Earnings

United Breweries Ltd.’s said a prolonged monsoon, elevated costs and a weak economy hurt its second-quarter earnings.

“Quarter two has been challenging for most consumer product businesses, especially for us, given the (weak) economy and heavy monsoons,” Managing Director Shekhar Ramamurthy told BloombergQuint in an interview. “There has been relentless cost-push on account of bottle costs and barley,” he said. The government’s reluctance to the let the beer maker pass on its costs to the consumers in most of its market weighed on its earnings, according to him.

Third quarter, too, will be very challenging, Ramamurthy said. “We do hope that from fourth quarter onwards, there will be an uptick in business, especially because fourth quarter dovetails into the beginning of first quarter, which is a high season for our business.”

Watch the full interview here...