I’m pretty sure will find this hard to believe but coming from the first Nigerian MD of Guinness (Mr Seni Adetu) in over 20 years you have to take him seriously. In an interesting interview that appeared on Thisday he was quoted amongst other interesting such as their financial performance, competition, beer market, shift to premium alcohol etc.
“Another reason is that Nigeria’s record of alcoholic beverage consumption is still relatively low compared with records from other African countries. Africa contributes close to 5.0% to global beer production and in that Nigeria accounts for less than 1.0%. Per capita consumption in Nigeria is one of the lowest in Africa.”
He also explains that huge depreciation cost was a major reason why the company saw declining profits in its trailing accounts
“In that context, the revenue growth was in the single digit. The loss of gearing between the net sales and profit has to do with two things: First is the depreciation that is going in on account of the new manufacturing assets that we have just acquired – the N55billion I talked about and the second is the finance charge that is coming through from our borrowings in support of the investment. If you discount those, in the circumstances of a challenged market, this is an encouraging performance.”
Here is a video of him back in February talking about the growth of the beer industry in Nigeria
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