Compañía Cervecerías Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 10, 2023 12:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Claudio Heras - Head of IR

Felipe Dubernet - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Felipe Ucros - Scotiabank

Fernando Olvera - Bank of America

Henrique Brustolin - BTG Pactual

Operator

Good day, everyone. And welcome to CCU's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Please note that today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Claudio Las Heras, the Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Claudio Heras

Thank you. Welcome, everyone. And thank you for attending CCU's second quarter 2023 conference call. Today with me are Felipe Dubernet, Chief Financial Officer; and Colin Drako, [ph] Financial Planning and Investor Relations Manager. You have received a copy of the company's consolidated second quarter 2023 results. Felipe will now review our overall performance, and we will then move on to a Q&A session.

Before we begin, please take note of our cautionary statement. Statements made in this call that relate to CCU's previous performance or financial results are forward-looking statements, which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to materially differ. These statements should be taken in conjunction with the additional information about risks and uncertainties set forth in CCU's annual report in Form 20-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and in the annual report submitted to the CMF and available on our website.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Felipe Dubernet.

Felipe Dubernet

Thank you, Claudio, and thank you all for joining us today. During the second quarter 2023, CCU posted a strong set of results in the past economic environment, expanding consolidated volumes by 4.8% and EBITDA by 45.1% from last year. The growth in volumes and EBITDA was 6% and 96.2%, respectively, when we exclude the Wine Operating segment, which is facing a particularly challenging scenario due to a sharp decrease in export volumes, in line with the Chilean wine industry.

The performance of the quarter shows that our efforts and initiatives to recover our profitability strained under the original plan HerCCUles 2023 are in the right path. However, we are aware that more efforts are needed in order to consolidate this positive trend.

Accordingly, looking ahead, we will continue focusing on the six pillars of HerCCUles 2023: number one, maintain business scale; number two, strengthening revenue management efforts; number three, enhance the CCU transformation program to deliver efficiency gains; number four, optimize CapEx and working capital; and number four, focus on core brands and high-volume margins and innovations; and six, continue investing in our brand.