Welcome to the Anheuser-Busch InBev's full year 2019 earnings conference call and webcast. Hosting the call today from AB InBev are Mr. Carlos Brito, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Felipe Dutra, Chief Financial and Technology Officer. To access the slides accompanying today's call, please visit AB InBev's website at www.ab-inbev.com and click on the investors tab in the reports and results center page. Today's webcast will be available for on-demand playback later today. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. If you should require operator assistance, please press star 0.
Some of the information provided during the conference call may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. It is possible that AB InBev's actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in these forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect AB InBev's future results, see risk factors in the company's latest annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the 22nd of March 2019. AB InBev assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information provided during the conference call and shall not be liable for any action taken in reliance upon such information.
It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Carlos Brito. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you, Maria, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2019 earnings call. Today, I'll be taking you through the results of the full year and fourth quarter, including highlights from our key markets. I'll then spend a few minutes on our non-alcohol and direct-to-consumer businesses and provide you with an update on our Better World agenda before Felipe addresses our financials. We'll then be happy to take your questions. Our performance in 2019 was below our expectations, and we're not satisfied with these results. There were many successes, but we also faced many challenges. This year, we took steps to evolve our revenue growth to be more balanced between volume and revenue per hectolitre, which is critical to long-term sustainable top and bottom-line growth.
We grew volumes by more than 1%, our third consecutive year of volume growth, with the rate of growth accelerating each year. This contributed to a strong and balanced top-line growth led by a broad set of markets including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and South Africa. We saw an improved performance from the U.S., our largest market, which delivered revenue and EBITDA growth and improved market share trends. We made significant progress towards our deleveraging commitments, resulting in a leverage ratio of four times at the end of the year, accounting for the proceeds expected to be received from the divestment of the Australian operations, while excluding the last 12 months' EBITDA from the Australian operations. That being said, this year was not without its challenges.
We faced significant headwinds in our cost base, driven primarily by the highest annual increase in commodity and transactional currency costs in the past decade, which held back EBITDA growth by approximately 200 basis points. We also faced challenging macroeconomic environments in many of our markets, including Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and South Korea, leading to consumer trade down and consumption contraction. Additionally, our performance in the second half was impacted by softness in the nightlife channel in China, our most profitable channel in the country and where our portfolio overindexes. Let me now take you through the results of the year and the quarter. We delivered a more balanced top-line growth with revenue up 4.3%, revenue per hectolitre up 3.1%, and total volumes up 1.1%. Our beer volumes grew by 0.8%, led by our premium portfolio and supported by an improved performance from our core portfolio.
Our non-beer business had a strong year, with volumes up by 4.8%, led by Brazil and Colombia. Our EBITDA grew by 2.7% with margin contraction of 65 basis points to 40.3%. Increases in commodities and transactional currency costs held back EBITDA growth by approximately 200 basis points. Our underlying EPS decreased by EUR 0.47 to EUR 3.63. The board has proposed a final dividend of EUR 1 per share for fiscal year 2019, bringing the total dividends for the year to EUR 1.80. Let me now tell you about the results of the quarter. Our revenue in the fourth quarter grew by 2.5%, with revenue per hectolitre growth of 0.9%. Growth from our premiumization initiatives was partially offset by advances in our smart affordability strategy, as well as category mix from the rapid growth of our non-beer business, which has a lower average revenue per hectolitre than our beer business.
Our beer business delivered 0.8% growth, while our non-beer business grew by 8%, resulting in total volume growth of 1.6%. EBITDA declined by 5.5% with margin contraction of 336 basis points to 40.1%. Our EBITDA performance was impacted by commodity and transactional currency headwinds, coupled with cycling a challenging comparable, partially due to the phasing of sales and marketing investments following the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Our global brands, Budweiser, Stella Artois, and Corona, continue to outperform. In 2019, they grew revenue by 5.2% and by 8% outside of their home markets, where they typically command a premium price point. Budweiser grew revenue by 3.3% outside of its home market of the U.S., led by Brazil, India, and Europe, where it's the fastest-growing brand in the region, partially offset by China due to the softness in the nightlife channel.
This performance was on top of a challenging comparable given the brand's global sponsorship of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. We continue to leverage Budweiser's strong connection with football through new partnerships with the English Premier League and La Liga, which we activated in more than 20 markets. Stella Artois delivered healthy growth of 6.5% outside of Belgium, led by the U.S. and Brazil. Corona once again led the way with growth of 21% outside of Mexico, in addition to a very strong performance in its home market. Growth was broad-based, with China and South Africa leading the way. The complementary nature of our global brands enables us to meet consumer needs in a variety of occasions and price points, minimizing cannibalization and driving overall growth of the premium segment. I'd now like to go into more detail on some of the commercial highlights across our six main markets.
Additional details on each country's full-year and fourth quarter 2019 performance can be found in our full-year results press release from earlier this morning. Starting with the U.S.. By now, you're likely familiar with our five commercial priorities in the U.S., which were put in place two years ago. These priorities are ranked in order of the potential incremental revenue growth they will contribute to our ambition to lead the future growth of the U.S. beer industry. First, expand core plus. The core plus segment in the U.S. is only half the size of what it is in other mature markets. Therefore, our priority is to double the size of the core plus segment. In the past two years, the segment has grown from 6% of the U.S. beer category to 8%, largely due to the strong momentum of Michelob ULTRA. Second, lead and develop super premium.
We have to be relevant here if we want to gain share of throat and take advantage of the ongoing premiumization trend. Thus, our ambition is to double our share of the segment. In 2019, our share of segment was flat, with Stella Artois stabilizing volumes and our craft portfolio growing by double digits well ahead of the craft segment, which grew by low single digits. Third, disrupt the premium segment. Currently, we are a small player in this segment, so our mission is to disrupt. We have doubled our volume in this segment since 2017, led by the triple-digit growth of Michelob ULTRA Pure Gold organic. Fourth, stabilize our share of mainstream with an ambition to reaching flat share of segment. In 2019, our share of segment decreased by 15 basis points.
While there is still work to be done, this is a significant improvement from the 60 basis points decline of two years ago. Finally, our fifth commercial priority is to capture growth beyond beer. In 2019, we effectively leveraged our innovative and operational capabilities to deliver double-digit revenue growth. In 2020, we're increasing investment to fuel this growth. We have big ambitions for Bud Light Seltzer to grow our share in the fast-growing hard seltzer category, in which we're currently under index. The brand was launched in January 2020 and is off to a very strong start. In summary, we're making considerable progress across all five of our commercial priorities and believe we have the right strategy in place to lead future growth. Moving now to Mexico. This is our sixth straight year of volume, revenue, and EBITDA growth in Mexico, and we see significant opportunities for future growth.
First, while per capita consumption is relatively high, it's not evenly distributed across regions and demographics. We see an opportunity to grow per capita consumption through affordability initiatives, addressing new occasions, and appealing to new consumers, including women. Second, we see a massive premiumization opportunity. The premium segment represents a much smaller portion of the industry than it does in other markets of similar maturity, but it's growing rapidly. Our premium portfolio is growing by strong double digits, leveraging the dedicated structure of our High End. Third, we believe we can capture additional share of throat by exploring adjacent categories. We're enhancing our portfolio through new ventures, including flavored beers and non-alcohol offerings, to serve more consumers on more occasions. Fourth, we're expanding our presence in new and existing channels.
In 2019, we announced a partnership with OXXO, the largest c-store chain in Mexico, which allows us to reach new consumers as we continue to expand to new regions across the country. Additionally, we have a very strong footprint with our own retail format, Modelorama, that enables us to directly interact with consumers. In short, we're extremely proud of our success in Mexico and believe the future of our business is bright. Now let's talk about Colombia. Our business in Colombia had a great year, delivering the highest annual volume growth since the SAB combination. Growth was healthy in both our beer and non-beer businesses as we are enhancing our portfolio to address new and existing consumers. We reached the record high share of the premium segment this year, led by our global brands, which grew by more than 50%.
We see further growth opportunities as Colombia's premium segment is still relatively small compared to markets of similar maturity, and we are investing behind our portfolio to fuel its growth. We have been significantly stepping up our innovation capabilities in our beer and non-beer portfolios, and as a result, our innovations contributed to over 30% of our volume growth in 2019. This includes successful package innovations such as one liter and single-serve returnable offerings, and product innovations such as Salva, our new purpose-driven water brand. We feel confident that the actions that we're taking will drive further growth of our Colombian business. Turning now to Brazil. In Brazil, we have also been scaling up our innovation capabilities. In 2019, innovation accounted for 10% of our revenue, up from 5% in 2018.
We have halved the time it takes to launch a product from eight months to four months, allowing us to act with speed to respond to emerging consumer trends. We launched innovations across all segments. In premium, we launched low gluten Stella Artois to address growing health and wellness trends. We created a new, more premium visual brand identity for Beck's, our German-style premium pure malt brand, which delivered very strong growth throughout the year. We launched a local craft brand called Ribeirão Lager from Colorado, which uses Brazilian ingredients and is already the largest craft beer in Brazil. In the core segment, Skol Puro Malte was our largest ever innovation launch in Brazil, which has been a major success and has brought the Skol brand family back to growth in the fourth quarter.
Skol Puro Malte has also meaningfully contributed to our share gains within the growing pure malt segment, where we're currently under index. We're working to get a fair share of the segment with Skol Puro Malte in the core, Bohemia in core p lus, and Beck's in premium. Already, Bohemia is the number one brand in the segment, and Skol Puro Malte is the number three as of the fourth quarter. In the value segment, we have leveraged the best practice from our other markets to launch beers brewed with local crops. We now have three brands, Nossa, Magnífica, and Legítima, and each is growing rapidly. In the state of Maranhão, Magnífica is already the leading brand in the value segment within a year of its launch. Our innovation supported Brazil's strong top-line performance this year and will continue to leverage our capabilities to fuel further growth.
Let's turn to South Africa. In South Africa, beer has gained approximately two percentage points of share of total alcohol, due largely to a consistent execution of the category expansion framework. We delivered meaningful results across every element of the framework. In the growing high-end segment, where our portfolio currently under index, we are working to rapidly close this gap and delivered our highest-ever market share in this segment this year. In the core, our bulk offerings returned to growth led by a strong performance from Carling Black Label. We extended our portfolio to new consumers and occasions through fast-growing brands such as Flying Fish, Brutal Fruit, and Castle Milk Stout.
We also continue to leverage our smart affordability initiatives such as Lion Lager, which has brought incremental volume to the beer category by acting as an entry point for price-sensitive consumers, especially in light of the challenging macroeconomic environment. We're confident that we have built a strong portfolio in South Africa to meet the needs of consumers across styles and price points. Moving now to China. In China, we're the leaders of both the premium and super premium segments, and today, I would like to focus on our growing super premium business. Our leadership in the super p remium segment has been achieved with a best-in-class portfolio of brands, which span across styles and occasions and are rolled out strategically across the country, depending on the maturity level of a particular region.
Corona leads the way as the number one super premium brand in China, complemented by brands such as Blue Girl, Hoegaarden, and our local craft brand, Boxing Cat. The High End company, a dedicated sales force and route to market focused exclusively on growing our super premium portfolio, was launched successfully in China in 2014 and was later rolled out to 20 additional markets. Our operational excellence leveraging The High End allowed us to deliver best-in-class results in this segment. The super premium segment contributes meaningfully to our top and bottom line results as the gross margins are approximately 10x that of core brands. We're excited about the future potential of this segment and believe we have the right portfolio brands and capabilities to continue winning.
Before I move on to the next topic, I would like to take a few minutes to update you on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our operations in China. First and most importantly, the health and safety of our community, our colleagues, and our business partners will always be our top priority. We support government measures and recommendations to contain the spread of the virus. As for the business impact, it continues to evolve. So far, we see a significant decline in demand in on-premise channels, with almost no activity in the nightlife channel and very limited activity in restaurants. We have also observed a meaningful decline in in-home channels, although to somewhat lesser extent than in the on-premise.
On the supply side, we have reopened more than half of our breweries and obtained licenses to reopen the remaining ones, with the exception of our brewery in Wuhan, according to local government guidelines. Despite the current hardship, we do not believe this crisis will impact the long-term potential of our business, given our unparalleled brand portfolio, route to market, and talent pool. We remain committed to support our team, business partners, and consumers through this difficult time, and they're fully engaged to prepare for a strong recovery when the situation improves. Now I'd like to update you on the progress of two of our businesses. At the beginning of 2019, we appointed two new Chiefs to our leadership team to reflect the increasing importance of two businesses, a Chief Non-Alcohol Beverages Officer and a Chief Owned Retail Officer who leads our direct-to-consumer businesses.
Our non-alcohol business represents approximately 10% of our total volume, generating approximately $3 billion of revenue. Our top six markets for this business are Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Argentina, and Colombia. We have a strong portfolio of brands spanning different styles, functions, price points, and occasions. This portfolio comprises our own brands, such as Guaraná Antarctica, and those of some of the leading beverage companies in the world, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Our non-beer business performed very well in 2019, with volume growth of 5.3%, the result of an evolved strategy that was put in place in 2019 by our new non-alcohol leadership team. We seek to grow and optimize our legacy business, expand our portfolio, and disrupt the space by capitalizing on trends such as health and wellness.
We're proud of the work done in 2019 to elevate the importance of our non-alcohol business. We'll leverage this momentum into 2020. Our Chief Owned Retail Officer leads all of our direct-to-consumer businesses, which reach approximately 250 million consumer interactions annually through a network of roughly 13,000 stores, pubs, and e-commerce ventures. This business generates over $1 billion in revenue and grew by double digits last year. It also enables us to be closer than ever to our consumers, leveraging technology to personalize experiences. A good example is our omni-channel ecosystem in Brazil that includes our e-commerce platform, Zé Delivery, and our pit stores, which enables us to leverage data to ensure consumers have a seamless experience both online and offline. The majority of our own retail outlets are franchised, including thousands of our Modelorama stores in Mexico.
We're proud to support local communities and promote the thriving business environment in our markets. Moving on, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing the advancements we've made on our Better World agenda. In March 2018, we launched our 2025 sustainability goals, our most ambitious set of commitments yet, that will help us grow our business for the next 100 years and beyond while reducing our impact on the environment. Our goals are closely aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as we believe private sector companies have a responsibility to contribute to solutions for some of the world's most pressing and complex issues. I'd like to update you on the progress we have made on each goal in 2019. In 2019, we continued to support our farmers through agricultural development.
We're working with over 20,000 farmers in 13 countries to grow the best barley, wheat, cassava, hops, maize, rice, and sorghum. We set an ambitious goal that 100% of our direct farmers will be skilled, connected, and financially empowered by 2025. Today, 50% of our direct farmers are skilled, 45% are connected, and 35% are financially empowered. When it comes to our water stewardship efforts, we leverage our partnership with The Nature Conservancy to accelerate the establishment of water funds in Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, and support watershed protection projects in California and Colorado in the U.S. We also continued our work with the World Wildlife Fund, focusing on conservation and reforestation efforts and addressing local water challenges in Bolivia, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zambia. We're constantly looking for ways to increase the recycled content in our packaging and advocate for returnable solutions.
We have committed that by 2025, 100% of our products will be available in packaging that's either returnable or made from majority recycled content. Currently, over 40% of our volume is in returnable packaging, and we have achieved 42.3% recycled content in our one-way glass bottles. Climate change has a far-reaching impact on our business and the communities in which we live and work. We have committed to transition to 100% of our purchased electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025. Today, 61% of our purchased electricity is under contract from renewable sources. Now, I would like to hand it over to Felipe, who will take you through our 2019 earnings, cash flow, and capital allocation. Felipe?
Thank you, Brito. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with an update on our net finance costs. Net finance costs in the year were over $4.3 billion, compared to over $6.8 billion in 2018. This decrease was mainly driven by lower mark-to-market gains linked to the hedging of our share-based payment programs of nearly $900 million, compared to a loss of nearly $1.8 billion in 2018. Excluding the impact of the gains and losses related to the hedging of our share-based payment programs, our ETR in 2019 was 24.9%, slightly better than the low end of our guidance. This was due to a significantly lower ETR in the fourth quarter, driven by accrued benefits from interest on our capital in Brazil.
Our effective tax rate guidance for the full year 2020 is between 27%-29%, excluding any gains and losses related to the hedging of our share-based payment programs. The expected increase in ETR is driven by the full impact of the U.S. tax reform, record low interest rates in Brazil, which minimize the interest on capital benefit, and a change in the country mix. Moving on now to earnings per share. Our underlying EPS this year, defined as our normalized EPS, excluding the impact of mark-to-market related to the hedging of our share-based payment programs and hyperinflation adjustment in Argentina, decreased by $0.47 from $4.10 to $3.63. The decrease was mainly driven by lower normalized EBIT and net finance costs, excluding the impact of the hedging of our share-based payment programs.
We closed fiscal year 2019 with $13.4 billion of cash flow from operations and an EBITDA margin of 40.3%. Converted 25.5% of our net revenue into cash, well ahead of most of our peers in all three metrics. Moving to core working capital, another important dimension for cash flow generation. Core working capital consists of those elements of working capital, which we consider fundamental to the operation of our business. It excludes certain items which management has little or no ability to influence. For example, payroll-related payables. In 2019, we reached an average level of core working capital as a percentage of revenue of negative 13.4%. This number is broadly in line with the last two years, despite the significant country mix headwinds. We continue to see opportunities to further drive core working capital as a percentage of net revenue. I'll now spend some time discussing our debt profile.
As you'll see on this slide, our debt maturity profile is well distributed across the next several years. 2019, we undertook a significant refinancing effort, which further extended our weighted average maturity and gives us a comfortable maturity profile. In addition, we took significant steps to retire debt, including the expected divestitures of our Australian operations, not yet reflected in this slide. Our strong cash flow generation provides us with sufficient cushion to repay or refinance outstanding debt without being dependent on capital market transactions to meet our funding needs. In addition, we maintained roughly $16 billion of liquidity, comprised of cash and revolving credit facilities. Our debt portfolio remains insulated from interest rate volatility, as 91% of the debt holds a fixed rate. Furthermore, the portfolio is comprised of a diverse mix of currencies. 57% of our debt is denominated in U.S. dollars and 29% in euro.
We use the euro as a proxy for a basket of emerging market currencies, given its correlation with our key emerging market currencies. In addition, the euro has the advantage of providing access to bond markets with significantly higher liquidity and lower costs when compared to those of emerging market currencies. Our weighted average maturity is roughly 14 years, and there is no year in which the total debt maturing exceeds our liquidity, as you have seen on the previous slide. Finally, we have a weighted average coupon rate of approximately 4%. Accounting for the proceeds expected to be received from the divestment of the Australian operations, while excluding the last 12 months of its EBITDA, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 4x for the 12-month period ending December 31st, 2019.
Deleveraging to around 2x remains our commitment. We will prioritize debt repayments in order to meet this objective. As you can see on the slide, our capital allocation objectives remain unchanged.
With that, I will hand back to Maria to begin the Q&A section. Thank you.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. In the interest of time, we will limit participants to one question and one follow-up question. Again, if you have a question or comment, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. We do ask that while you pose your question, you pick up your handset to provide optimal sound quality. Our first question is coming from the line of Robert Ottenstein of Evercore ISI.
Great. Thank you very much. Two questions. One, the revenue per hectoliter was disappointing. You gave some good explanations for that in terms of consumer mix, affordability initiatives, the non-beer. All of that makes sense, but it is a metric that is important. It's one that, in the past, we've followed to get a sense of how you're doing in revenue management. I'm wondering if you can give us a sense of what the revenue per hectoliter looked like for just beer or any kind of comparable measure on that metric. That would be number one. Second, I was just wondering, Brito, in particular, if you could give us your assessment of the hard seltzer outlook in the U.S. Based on our numbers, it looks like you're getting about an 18% market share. I know it's early days. Does that sound about right?
Do you see hard seltzers being margin accretive to the U.S. business? Thank you.
Thank you, Robert. Your first question about net revenue per hectoliter in the fourth quarter. Before I go there, let me just remind us that the net revenue for the full year was 3.1%, and the fourth quarter came down. Reasons why it came down. First, I mean, in Europe, we're expanding our portfolio into new customer occasions and price tiers within premium. For example, by the launch of Budweiser in Netherlands and France, that early days but doing very well. This, of course, is a dilutive impact on our net revenue per hectoliter. It's incremental to our portfolio because it addresses price segments in which we were totally absent. In Brazil, we saw the impact of category mix due to rapid growth of non-beer versus beer. For example, beer grew 3%. CSD, carbonated soft drinks, water, everything else that's non-alcohol grew 11%.
That, of course, the non-beer business has a lower revenue per hectoliter, but again, it's incremental business. Another thing in Brazil is that we have implemented some tactical revenue management initiatives. You remember that in Q3, we had a price increase that had some issues in terms of its implementation, given the competitive reaction that took price down at the same time. As these things came to more of a normality, but it only came halfway through the fourth quarter, so we still have some impact in that in the fourth quarter. In China, we also had some tough comps. If you remember Q4 last year in China, our revenue per hectoliter grew over 10%, so we're cycling that in China. I think those are some reasons why the net revenue per hectoliter in the fourth quarter was below the yearly average.
Again, it's one quarter only. In terms of your question about still on the net revenue, I think what we have to say about pricing in general, if we step back, Robert, is that in many of our emerging markets in which we operate, consumer disposable income as that growth has considerably lagged inflation over the past several years. This has impacted the relative affordability of beer, and in many cases, a negative impact on per capita consumption of beer. In order to sustain and accelerate the long-term growth prospects of the company, we're taking many factors into consideration. We run a big study in terms of price elasticity in those markets, with many factors being taken into consideration at the local level. The health of the consumer environment, relative beer affordability, inflation, taxes, competitive environment.
We found by market that there is a better place to place this healthy top-line balance in several of those markets, resulting in very strong top-line growth in markets such as Mexico, South Africa, and Colombia. We studied those markets, and we believe that the disciplined execution of this strategy will enable us to accelerate top-line growth. If you remember, this is all connected to the category expansion framework, so this is not a new framework. It's just that in the category expansion framework that has many components, we've been very busy in the last three, four years since we learned about the model in the core, flavored, styles, premium side of the category expansion framework, and last on the smart affordability. This year, after all these elasticity studies that we learn more about each market as opposed to big averages.
Because our assist has changed over time because of disposable income, inflation, taxes and everything, and employment, so many things, we decided to review some of the parameters that we used to have, and we saw that there were opportunities for us to tap into that volume pool and profit pool. That's one thing that also relates to the whole thing about smart affordability. A long answer, but just touch on different points on our pricing and revenue strategy. In terms of the second question about hard seltzer, for sure it's a huge opportunity for us and for the beer industry in general in the U.S. It's bringing new consumers to the category, from wine, from spirits. Much so that the category went back to growth in the fourth quarter of last year. We started in this category with a 10% share.
We're number three today. As you said, we have a portfolio approach. We have BON & VIV, we have Natty Seltzer, and now since Super Bowl, since January this year, we have Bud Light Seltzer. You're right, we're getting very quickly to close to 20% share of segment, and we intend to get to number two position with this portfolio approach that again, is catering to different price points and different consumer needs and occasions. That's the way we do with global brands as well. It's interesting to think when you think about seltzer, when you think what happened with craft in the U.S. Craft was also an emerging trend, helped to be a category, brought new consumers. Not unlike seltzer. We were behind because when we got to the U.S., the legacy portfolio we had had no craft.
Quickly, in a few years, we built a portfolio of craft brands that today grows at many times over what the craft industry grows. We grow a strong double digit versus a low single digit for the craft industry. That was done through some years, and today we are the biggest players in the U.S. and growing way ahead of the industry. The good news about seltzer compared to craft is that seltzer is a game of national brands, which of course caters much more to the way we go to market. I think it's all good news, very profitable. It's incremental. Brings new people to the category. It addresses a lot of trends that are out there in terms of health and wellness, more co-ads, and with flavors, there are many things that can be accomplished.
Is it margin accretive? Do you expect hard seltzers to be margin accretive for you in the U.S. this year? Do you need more scale?
It is. Once production is streamlined, because today's not yet there, as you can imagine. We have to invest, today we're still dependent on a couple beers, a couple breweries to cover the whole country. As is often the case, as it grows, we go for the breweries. That's what our U.S. business guys announced. They announced an investment of $100 million in our Beyond Beer big bets in terms of OPEX and CapEx. Some of that CapEx is not only for capacity, but also for localization of capacity so we can cover the whole U.S. from a more streamlined perspective.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Trevor Stirling of Bernstein. Trevor, your line is open. Make sure you're not on mute. We'll move on to our next question, comes from the line of Edward Mundy of Jefferies.
Accelerate, versus the 4.6% you did in fiscal 2013 to 2017, given the more growthy portfolio.
Ed, we didn't get the first part of your question for some reason. Can you start again, please?
Yeah, sure. Is that better?
Yes.
Good. Okay. First part of my question is that, back in the capital markets event in South Africa in 2018, you didn't provide guidance, but I think you indicated that you expected group growth to accelerate, versus the last five years, fiscal 2013 to 2017 of 4.6%, partly because of the more growthy portfolio that you're getting from SABMiller, as well as the enhanced revenue management toolkit from the category expansion model framework. I appreciate in the very near term, the external environment has been incredibly tough, but has anything changed in how you look at the opportunity today, for your business for growth?
My follow-up question is, around COVID-19, and I appreciate you don't have a crystal ball on where COVID-19 ultimately ends up, but I was wondering whether you could elaborate a little bit more around some of the assumptions around the scale and magnitude of the virus, as to how it relates to your guidance of 2%-5% EBITDA growth.
No, given what we said in terms of our belief that we can grow top line faster, if that was your question, in South Africa in August that year. We continue to believe the same thing. This year, our top line was below that average. It was 4.3% as opposed to 4.6% because of a couple things. First, China in the second half decelerated because of the nightlife channel. Second, Brazil and Korea. Korea, we had macro issues. Industry's down by high single digits. We also had a price increase that we implemented, and when looking back, the execution of that price increase was not optimum. The same can be said about Brazil, in that consumers remain under pressure. Things are getting better, but the price increase was done at a moment when the competitors were doing something very different, and that took a while for us to streamline.
Because of that, we lost volume. Also because we're under-indexed in some fast-growing segments like seltzer and pure malt. As we fix pure malt, as we do in Brazil. Think about this. Pure malt in Brazil, we had no presence. Today, in less than a year or so, we have the number one and three position as of the fourth quarter already in the pure malt section, sector in Brazil, and we would like to have the first three positions there. Seltzer, we came from the high, from a 10% share, but we are growing very fast, and we think the portfolio approach will get us to number two position in that segment. In premium in South Africa, for example, we had an amazing performance this quarter. Again, record high share, but still below our fair share. That segment's growing.
There's some segment mix shift that is not in these three I mentioned, seltzer, pure malt, premium South Africa, for example, that we need to accelerate our participation in those segments so we can also benefit from that growth. In terms of the overall business, we had some important countries for us like China, Brazil. Korea, of course, less important, but China and Brazil were, one, because of a channel that we over-indexed, nightlife, the other one for a price increase and its execution. In Korea, both macro and price increase. Our ambitions aren't changed. We want to continue to grow with a more balanced top line, and that is between volume and net revenue. We think as a company, we can do better than the average of the 4.6%. This year we did 4.3% because of all of the headwinds we mentioned at first.
We see opportunities in segments where we're under-indexed, and that we're taking measures to grow and catch up fast in those segments. In terms of COVID-19, what we put in our release is that, first of all, we're talking about COVID-19 in China because that's where we have information about it, and that's where it's relevant at this point. For the first two months of 2020, we estimate that this outbreak has resulted in lost revenue of approximately $285 million in terms of ABI, and lost EBITDA of approximately $170 million at the EBITDA level. The financial impact on our business in China is difficult to estimate given it's dependent on the containment of the virus and especially the speed by which our customers and consumers resume their normal operations and lives, which can be different by channel and province.
In China, you have more than 30 provinces, and each province is adopting a slightly different way of going back to normal life. Some provinces were hardly hit or harder hit, so they're taking a bit more time. Some others are going back to business a bit faster. We're anticipating our customers to resume their operations in the course of Q2, second quarter of this year. An impact of our current view is reflected on our estimates for Q1 and full year that we gave in the outlook session. Of course, this is based on what we know today. Right? This is where we are today.
The good news, I mean, the silver lining in this whole thing is that Chinese consumers were surveyed by Kantar, a market research company, regarding the impact of COVID on their consumption patterns and what they intend to do once they are released from their confinement and quarantine. Out of the 10 top things they want to do, six, the top six are totally within our business realm. They want to go back to restaurants, they want to go back to meet friends, to dine out, to entertain, to go outdoors, indoor entertainment, to do everything that they would normally do. That's squarely within our dream of bringing people together. That's why our team in China has a crisis room that's now working, of course, on a daily basis. We have weekly calls with the global guys as well.
We are monitoring province by province, channel by channel, because we want to come back very fast, because we think when it comes back, it will be very fast. If you look at SARS, that is the way it came back. As a company, given the portfolio we have, the channels that we are strong and the channels that we are getting stronger, like e-commerce, because people are changing habits and we have a very good share, higher than the average market share of the market in those channels. We want to be an even stronger company in China after this crisis is over. Right now, of course, first priority is safety of our people, community, consumers. Once the government guidelines allow us to go back to business, we are prepared, and we have things as the recovery takes place.
We're very prepared, and we feel good about it in terms of the recovery.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Ed.
Our next question comes from the line of Trevor Stirling of Bernstein.
Hello, Brito. Can you hear me this time?
Yes.
Great. Brito, in your prepared remarks and in the press release, you talk a little about being not satisfied. You talked about some of the headwinds that emerged over 2019 that weren't there when you started the year. If you look at the elements of performance that were actually inside your own control, which elements of your own, say, within control performance, are you not satisfied with and would you aim to resolve next year?
Well, I think as you said, some elements we anticipated to the market. Just in the name of completeness, I'll start from there, Trevor. We said that the second half of the year would be tougher because of the timing of our commodity and FX hedges. We also said it would be tougher because of the sales and marketing phasing coming from a World Cup year the year before. We also said that there was some inventory in China that was advanced in Q2 for summer activities. Every year is a bit different. This year it was Q2, and that would take away a little bit from Q3. All that was said, was public, and all that.
On top of that, things we didn't expect was, first, the price increase we had executed in Brazil in the first week of July, in terms of execution, was not very successful. Not because we executed it poorly, but because we didn't anticipate market participants' reactions, and some participants took their price down as we were taking our price up. That took a while, some months, including into the fourth quarter, with volume impacts, to get fixed. Let's put it this way, to find its new balance. We lost volume in Q3 and part of Q4 in a market that's very important for us in a period where that quarter is important. The last quarter for Brazil is the main quarter. That was not in our plans. In Korea, the same thing happened. We implemented a price increase in April.
Every three years, we implement a price increase in Korea. We implemented one in April. The same thing happened. Competition took a different view. We had to roll back prices in October. Again, we lost a lot of the summer in South Korea. I think those two things are things that, looking back, we could have done better. Nightlife channel, it was hard to predict because it was something that was mandated. It was an externality. Maybe we could have shift resources faster, as we're doing now, to other channels. As said before, we're under index in some fast-growing channels like seltzer, pure malt, and example, South African Premium. We're growing all these channels, maybe we could have started six months, a year before than whichever time we started.
I think those are things that are within our control, that we learned from it. We intend to do a better job going forward. You're right, some things were externalities. We had no control, and we normally focus on the things we control. We're very acid with ourselves, as you know, and we don't take this lightly. We're learning and trying to see how we can do it better next time around.
Just my follow-up question, Brito. You talked about in Brazil at the start about how part of the problem was that beer grew 3% and non-beer at 11%. If I look at beer Brazil from the AmBev accounts, price mix there was down 20 basis points in the quarter. Was that due to rebating of price increases to try and regain some volume in Q4?
Well, that was due to many things, including the one I just mentioned. The issue we had with the execution of the price increase in the third quarter bleeds red into the fourth quarter. That, of course, affected the year-on-year comparison. Also this quarter, the positive brand mix from premium growth was more than offset by this tactical revenue measurement initiatives. That offset and the negative geographic mix from expanding more in the north and the northeast as pure malt started growing and accelerating. Pure malt is more prevalent these days in the north and the northeast. That has a geographic mix. You know that we make less of a margin, those margins, because of socioeconomic classes. The lower socioeconomic classes are more prevalent there. As well as some smart affordability initiatives like the growth of our local craft beers.
On top of all that, you also had non-alcohol, as you said, growing way ahead of beer with lower net revenue per hectoliter, but incremental margins. You put all this in the mix. That was why we didn't grow much in terms of net revenue per hectoliter. On the other hand, if you look at the full year, in Brazil, net revenue per hectoliter grew by 1.9%, of course impacted by the fourth quarter.
Sure.
Good growth net revenue per hectolitre. Net revenue in Brazil full year grew 7%. Total volume in Brazil grew 5%. I'm very happy to see Brazil back to growth. This is great. Brazil hasn't grown volume for some years, but it's great to see net revenue more balanced with volume growth in both beer and non-beer. It's great to see premium growing double digits, even in the face of a cost of sales that went up by 15.5% during the year. That's something that was really brutal. It doesn't happen all the time. That cost of sales took, let me check here, took 300 basis points from our EBITDA. The EBITDA in Brazil declined by 4.4%. Three percentage points of that 4% was the commodity and FX that was higher than any time we can remember. I mean, that's also something that should be mentioned.
Thank you very much, Brito.
You're welcome.
Great.
Our next question comes from line of Celine Pannuti of JP Morgan.
Yes, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. My question is on a follow-up on the price mix. I wanted to understand, first of all, if you could help us, how big is smart affordability as a percentage of sales in 2019, and what would be the plan for 2020 in terms of rollout? Just to what you were saying in terms of pricing, do you think that the environment is looking better in terms of pricing increase for 2020? I'm also asking that because you're guiding for raw material cost and transaction to be around mid-single digits for 2020. In that regard, it would be helpful if you could tell us why is it that you have mid-single digit. I presume transaction is a big impact, and in which countries we should expect this to be the most impactful. Thank you.
All right, Celine. In terms of smart affordability, let me just make sure we all talk the same language on that. Again, this belongs to the category expansion framework, so it's not a new idea. It's just that we've been more active in all dimensions of the category expansion framework, and less active on smart affordability. Now that we have more studies, more insights, more learnings because we try different things in different places, and we build toolkits to be replicable, we now can be more active. Especially in markets like Africa and Latin America. There's a lot to be done there because a lot of people don't consume beer because they can't afford it, right? If this is incremental volume done the right way, this can be dilutive to net revenue, but it's incremental to dollars in terms of margins.
We have been expanding our portfolio to offer more accessible price points. This includes new packaging formats and also new beers brewed with local crops. Smart affordability is a big umbrella that includes all this. This offering is driving incremental profit, but generally have a dilutive effect on net revenue per hectoliter, as I was saying. They are contributing meaningfully to growth in many of our markets, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, South Africa. That was your first question. We don't have any guidance that we're giving at this point of how big or how impactful this will be. Make sure that this is part of the category expansion framework. Category expansion framework is about enlarging the category so we can create more value in the category. It's not about getting net revenue down. In the category expansion framework, you have five dimensions.
You have core, with subdivisions of classic and easy drinking. You have flavors, you have styles, you have premium, and you have smart affordability. Smart affordability is the only one of the five that could dilute net revenue per hectoliter. It can bring new consumers to the category. You have to remember that in these geographies, there are many people that either consume cheap alcohol that has no quality from B brands or illegal alcohol. That's what we're trying to do, trying to get these consumers into our category, safer for them as well because of branded products, more high-quality products. Again, this doesn't live by itself. This lives in the context of the category expansion framework that has five dimensions. This is one of them, and the only one that goes from core down. That's the first thing. Your second question was about price.
Can you just remind us exactly, you asked whether the environment is better for price, right?
Yeah. You mentioned earlier that it has been difficult for you, execution of pricing has been complicated, since you are mentioning still a high raw material cost inflation, will you be able this year to get better pricing?
Yeah. No, I mentioned two markets. I mentioned Brazil and South Korea. I didn't say the price was being tough. I said that pricing execution, looking back, maybe could have been better planned. Right? That's what we learned from it. That at the end, the market moved somewhat, but in a different timing. We would normally do pricing in a different time. We tried to do in a different time from normal, and it didn't work so well. It was more on the execution piece than believing that there's no pricing possibilities. Again, remember, as we grow premium, as we grow styles, as again, within the category expansion framework, there are many things that can create net revenue opportunities per hectoliter, not because of price, but because of mix.
That's the story in China, where we don't do a lot of price increases, but the mix gets net revenue to grow every year by 6%, 7%, at least in the past. Again, when you get all factors embedded, we're giving an EBITDA guidance for next year, given what we know today about COVID-19, of EBITDA growing organically between 2% and 5%. I think this encompasses everything. We also gave guidance including for the first quarter, and said that the growth organically of EBITDA for total ABI should be around - 10% because of all the things we said. Tough comparable in Brazil, right? Let's remember that Brazil had an amazing quarter last year, and that we're comping that, and that we have the COVID-19 that is impacting the China business. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Carlos Laboy of HSBC.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Brito, we see considerable discounting in some of our emerging market stores of local premium brands, whether it's maybe Bohemia in Brazil, Castle Lite in South Africa, or even of global brands in some of these markets. When is it helpful and strategically important to discount, and when it's destructive? How does this fit into your broader strategy for building these premium brands?
Well, this thing of price ladder, Laboy, as you know, is very dynamic. I'll give an example. Pure malt in Brazil was a segment that five years was nonexistent. All of a sudden, you create this segment called pure malt. We didn't create, all of a sudden, somebody created, others jumped into that bandwagon, including us, and now Bohemia is the number one in there. Bohemia was in a place which was premium segment, but premium segment was more and more populated by international brands. Bohemia was losing a little bit of that edge of premium. It went to the premium segment, still premium within pure malt, and now it's the number one category. It's now called core plus.
Yes, we repositioned Bohemia from premium to core plus because we asked Bohemia to play a different role, because now we have a big portfolio of local core brands, I mean local craft brands and premium brands in the premium segment. Bohemia, you can't find position for everybody, but in the premium segment, Bohemia had an amazing role to play, so much so that has grown by triple digits in the last three years, and it became, only in three years, the leader in the pure malt segment at a c ore plus price, as opposed to be walking sideways or backwards in the premium segment. I think you have to understand that some brands will play different roles because sometimes segments get redefined when a new segment comes in, right? Pure malt in Brazil redefined the segment. It's a portfolio strategy.
That's why it's good to have brands. It's sometimes just like a soccer player sitting on the bench. You call one bench to play because there is a new role for that brand to play, and the brand goes and play that brand. I give kudos for our guys in Brazil because they recognized that Bohemia, that was being cluttered in the premium segment by all these international brands from us in competition and craft brands, had a bigger role to play in core plus. It was a bet. They took the risk, and in a few years, it became the number one brand in the premium segment, core plus premium brands. I mean, pure malt, core plus segment in Brazil. I think that's what we're always trying to do.
In Africa, for example, not Castle Lite, but Carling Black Label, we saw that there was an opportunity because of the growth of the premium segment that's growing way ahead of anybody's expectation, that core was being pressured by cheap alcohol, not beer necessarily, but wine in Tetra Pak and all that, and premium beer appealing to some core consumers. There was a role to be played by Carling Black Label going ZAR 1 down at some point, going to ZAR 15, and growing as it's growing out, as opposed to being at ZAR 16 or ZAR 17 and been declining. Because if Carling Black Label was our own brand, you could say, well, you took your own brand and took down in price. Yes.
Because it's part of a portfolio, that brand came down in price, and it's doing very well, but other brands went up in price, right? We didn't have enough capacity for our FABS in South Africa. Now we do. Now we're playing that role that before we were not playing because of lack of capacity. Now we can again appeal to some consumers that, as you know, South Africa is going through tough economic times. They are budget consumers. Those consumers exist. We would like to be the beer that brings people together, all people, not just the ones that can buy core plus and premium, super premium. There's also, in the category expansion framework, smart affordability and core, and that's what we need to continue to look at. This is a dynamic area. That's why it's good to have portfolio.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question comes from the line of Simon Hales of Citi.
Thank you. Afternoon, morning, Brito and Felipe. A couple please, from me. I wonder, just following on Brito from your comments around the category management framework and the increased implementation of the affordability strategy. What does the strategy mean, and how do you think about perhaps medium-term group margins, margin development from here? Do you think you can still expand margins over the medium term with the application of that strategic approach as it stands? Secondly, just on the Oh, sorry. Sorry, Brito.
I think so. If you think of the category expansion framework, it has core in the middle, you have styles going to one side, flavor is going to the other side, you have premium going up, you have smart affordability going from core down. We've been active in all five, but not at the same intensity that we've done core. Then we started doing premium, but we still have lots to do in flavor and styles. Those are very accretive to margins. Smart affordability is the only one that dilutes margin but brings new consumers into the category, and it's incremental to margin dollars. I mean, if you look at all five dimensions, the only one dilutive, all the other four are neutral to incremental. We're not yet at full steam in all four.
Got it. Secondly, just going back to the U.S. business, obviously a lot of innovation coming into the portfolio again in 2020. You talked about obviously the hard seltzers. How do we think about the investment that's going in behind that? I hear what you say around the CapEx side, what about marketing investment for 2020? Should we expect a step change in the business, or is it just a reallocation of spend within that U.S. portfolio to support all that innovation?
Let me tell you, Simon, if you don't mind, I will step back and talk about the five commercial priorities in the U.S. with numbers. Okay. Because, again, those are metrics. The first priority is to grow core plus. We went from 6% of total market to 8% in two years, driven by Michelob ULTRA. The second one is to grow super premium. We're flat. Here we can do a better job, but we're flat at 20% of the segment. In premium, we wanted to double. We went to multiply by 10x our volume, and in two years, we double it from two years ago. Mainstream, that's core and value, we want to stabilize. Two years ago, we're losing 60 basis points, that's core and value. Now we're losing 13 basis points. In Beyond Beer, we were declining 6% two years ago. We're now double-digit revenue growth.
That is what's causing our net revenue in the U.S. to grow this year 0.5%, EBITDA 1.1%, margin expansion of 28 basis points, going to 40.8% EBITDA margin in a very competitive market. That is what we're doing. To support the growth of Beyond Beer, especially seltzer, we are going to commit to 20% increase in investments in the U.S., and that's mostly CapEx, but also some OpEx, behind Michelob ULTRA Pure Gold, behind Michelob ULTRA mother brands, and behind seltzers in terms of capacity. Also in terms of canned wine and canned cocktails. I mean, all these things are mostly CapEx. In terms of OpEx, there's a lot of resource reallocation because that's where growth is.
Great. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Simon.
Our next question comes from one of Andrea Pistacchi of Deutsche Bank.
Yes, hi. Thank you. I first have a question for Felipe on the tax rate, then a quick follow-up. One of the reasons for the higher tax rate guidance is the U.S. fiscal reform, you said, and I think the non-deductibility of your interest charge. Is there a path over the medium term to reduce the tax rate as you delever the balance sheet? Then, Brito, going slightly deeper on Beyond Beer in the U.S. You talked about seltzers. You've just referred in the previous question to canned wine, Babe and Cutwater, so ready-to-made cocktails. Can you just talk a little bit more about these, how they're performing, the size of these now, and are we close to the point where these two brands in particular can start to make a more meaningful contribution to the total?
Hi, Andrea. This is Felipe. On the effective tax rate, the point on U.S. tax reform is the full implementation of that. I would say the most relevant impact is also coming from the country mix, as there has been a significant shift. This thing is less sensitive to the leverage level. What happens, if you recollect at the very beginning, part of the SAB funding was not deductible. There is room still for deleveraging, and that should help. I think for 2020, it should stick to the current guidance of 27%-29%.
On the Beyond Beer, Andrea, let me just recap the Beyond Beer. Big growth driver for the industry, that's something we have to take advantage. Profitable, brings a lot of consumers back incremental. First, the seltzer, we already spoke about it. Second, canned wine and spirits. When we started ZX five years ago, one of the missions of ZX was to look at alcohol adjacencies or other alcohol segments where there were profit pools and volumes that we're not using or poking, and go there with some innovative approaches. That was the canned wine, the canned spirits, and already Drinkworks as well. Our pod-based machine for cocktails and beer, which has been around in the U.S. and already commercial in many states. Which allow us to gain incremental volume outside of the beer category while leveraging our existing capabilities and assets.
The other one was to fill the category white space, focusing on brands like Kombrewcha, which is a kombucha with alcohol, that have high opportunity to growing microtrends. So we're big on that, but we continue to bet on that because that could be something that connects to health and wellness, very low ABV, something that health and wellness consumers are willing to pay a premium for. Leveraging the improved performance of our existing brands like the Ritas. We're seeing improved brand health and volume trend performance in Ritas, and the idea really, is to establish this as a business unit, and that's what we did in November last year, when we established a new Beyond Beer business unit, which allow us to focus on developing this portfolio to meet consumer needs in these different categories and occasions. We're very committed to Beyond Beer.
That's why we announced this investment, mainly on seltzer, but not only, but also for canned wine and spirits. We think there is a lot of interesting volume and margins to be captured here.
Okay, thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have time for one more question. Our last question comes from the line of Sanjeet Aujla of Credit Suisse.
Hey, Brito, Felipe. You've been talking about category expansion for a couple of years now. It seems like the pace of innovation has stepped up, but it doesn't seem like it's been enough. Is it a risk you're trying to do too much at once and perhaps spreading yourself too thinly and losing focus on the core brands?
No, I don't think so, Sanjeet, because I mean, the teams that are doing this are separate teams. That's one of the reasons why ZX was put in place. Core is more than 70% of our business. We want to continue to hero the core within our company, we know that this day is not only about focusing one thing. Again, the category expansion framework gives a good roadway to do that. We have proven ways of work in core. There's still work to be done, of course, because core is being challenged by many sides, from below, from above. We've been investing in core, trying to understand a bit more how brands can be positioned, packaging, promotional activities, new channels, e-commerce. Lots of things that for core is very important.
Core is also about deliver the current but transform the business, continue to transform so it continues to remain relevant. A lot of these other innovations are being done by different sides of the business. For example, the premiumization is being done by The High End. The High End is separate from the core organization. Right? The flavor and styles are being done by ZX. Right? The smart affordability is being done by the core because they are more connected in terms of packaging, occasion, packs. The idea is to The High End grew double digits, both top and bottom line. ZX is already 15% of our revenue growth. To your question, you're right. Not everybody's doing the same thing. Core is core together with smart affordability. Okay?
You have The High End taking care of premiumization, and then you have ZX taking care of styles and flavors. That's pretty much how we are divided to conquer.
Just a quick follow-up. It seems like the competitive intensity across the industry has stepped up over the last couple of years. Is that offsetting some of the gains that you're making with category expansion? What's embedded in your outlook for the competitive environment? Do you expect it to remain just as intense?
I mean, beer has always been competitive. What you see different today is because two or three companies in the beer business are developing more and more global brands. They start facing each other just like Coke and Pepsi, right? Coke and Pepsi, they are exactly in all the markets facing each other. Beer used to be very local in terms of brands. Now it's going to international, then going to global brands. As this continues to grow, competitors are going to face each other in many markets at the same time. Because the growth to another market is being done via global brands, that is also very healthy. Compared to other food and beverage categories where the new entrant comes as a private label.
In our business, at least the new entrant comes at the very top, either as a craft or as a global brand, and that gets consumers to trade up. That's beneficial for the category, beneficial for our players, especially for the leading player in that market. When somebody comes to our market and starts developing or investing as well in the premium segment, if we don't sleep on the wheel, we're going to be the biggest beneficiary of that segment growing faster, right? That's what we want to do. As more people invest in seltzer, we want to have a close to fair share, and at some point fair share, so as the segment grows, we take our fair share of that growth. Today, we're not there yet.
Got it. Thanks.
This was our final question. If your question has not been answered, please feel free to contact the investor relations team. I will now turn the floor back over to Carlos Brito for closing remarks.
Thank you, Maria. I would like to do two things in this closing. I'd like to close the business part, and then I would like to close and talk about our 30-year colleague, Felipe, his last conference call. Bear with me a little bit. In terms of the business in closing, throughout the year, we achieved a more balanced top-line growth between volume and revenue per equity growth and made considerable progress toward our optimal capital structure. However, our overall performance was below our expectations. We're a company of owners, we are never fully satisfied with our results. As I said during the call, we learned from some implementations and executions of prices, for example, or some categories that were underindexed, and we're going to fix this very quickly. We're a strong, diversified company with an unrivaled geographic footprint, portfolio of brands, and talent pool.
We'll use these learnings from this year to better position ourselves to deliver long-term growth. While there are some short-term challenges ahead, we're confident in our strategy and plans to grow our business by delivering balanced, sustainable top and bottom-line growth in 2020 and beyond. Before I conclude, now I want to take a couple minutes to thank Felipe Dutra, my friend, my partner, our Chief Financial and Technology Officer, who will be stepping down after a long and distinguished career with our company to pursue new projects. As we announced earlier this year, Felipe's departure will be effective after our annual shareholders meetings on April 29th. Since he joined our company in 1999. This is wrong, 1989. Felipe has embodied the spirit of true ownership. He's been in the company for 30 years.
He has been the architect of our company's best-in-class financial strategy, and his contributions to value creation are numerous. Under Felipe's direction, our financial discipline has freed up resources to invest behind the growth of our business. Likewise, he played a key role in the creations of InBev, as well as in our landmark combinations with Anheuser-Busch, Grupo Modelo, and SAB. Over the years, Felipe has developed a strong bench of talent that's now spread across different zones and functions of our company. Fernando Tennenbaum, our incoming Chief Financial and Technology Officer, is a great example of this bench. Fernando is a 15-year veteran of the company and presently serves as Vice President of Finance for the company's South American zone, as well as the Chief Financial Officer for our Brazilian subsidiary, Ambev S.A.
He has a deep understanding of our business and international experience, developed through several positions in the finance function, including treasury, M&A, and investor relations. He will be part of our senior leadership team and a member of our executive committee. Felipe, we have been honored to have you as our partner over 30 years. Speaking for myself, it has been invaluable having your advice and your friendship. It has been an amazing journey. Wish you the best of luck in your new endeavors and success in the next chapter of your life.
Thank you very much.
Fernando, welcome. We're excited to have you appointed as our CFO. I look forward to partnering with you to ensure we lead growth through consumer centricity, operational excellence, and innovation supported by strong financial discipline. Welcome, Fernando. All right. Well, thank you, and I'll see you next quarter.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.