Ambev S.A. (ABEV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call March 2, 2023 11:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Jean Jereissati - Chief Executive Officer

Lucas Lira - Chief Financial Officer and Investor Relations Officer

Conference Call Participants

Rodrigo Alcantara - UBS

Lucas Ferreira - JPMorgan

Marcella Recchia - Credit Suisse

Carlos Laboy - HSBC

Thiago Callegari - BTG Pactual

Ricardo Alves - Morgan Stanley

Robert Ottenstein - Evercore

Thiago Bortoluci - Goldman Sachs

Felipe Ucros - Scotiabank

Operator

Good morning, and thank you for waiting. We would like to welcome everyone to Ambev's Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Results Conference Call. Today, we have, with us, Mr. Jean Jereissati, CEO of Ambev; and Mr. Lucas Lira, CFO and Investor Relations Officer.

As a reminder, a slide presentation is available for downloading on our website, ri.ambev.com.br, as well as through the webcast link of this call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

Before proceeding, let me mention that forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and assumptions of Ambev's management and on information currently available to the company. They involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions because they relate to future events and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. We caution investors not to rely unduly on any forward-looking statements and urge you to carefully consider the risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time-to-time.

Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could also affect the future results of Ambev and could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements.

In addition, words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, projects, forecasts and future or conditional verbs such as will, may, could, should and would as well as any other statement that necessarily depends on future events are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

I would also like to remind everyone that, as usual, the percentage changes that will be discussed during today's call are both organic and normalized in nature, and unless otherwise stated, percentage changes refer to comparisons with fourth quarter or full year 2021 results as the case may be. Normalized figures refer to performance measures before exceptional items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as a part of Ambev's core activities. As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the company discloses the consolidated profit, EPS, operating profit and EBITDA on a fully reported basis in the earnings release. These normalized figures must not be considered as an alternative to GAAP measures to evaluate our financial performance. In addition, they may not be comparable to non-GAAP measures used by other companies in the industry.