Welcome to the 2024 nine months results announcement conference call for Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited. Hosting the call today from Budweiser APAC is Mr. Jan Craps, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chair of the Board, and Mr. Ignacio Lares, Chief Financial Officer. The results for the nine months ended 30th September 2024 can be found in the press release published earlier today and available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Budweiser APAC's website. Before proceeding, let me remind you that some of the information provided during this results call, including our answers to your questions on this call, may contain statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements. These expectations are based on the management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors beyond our control.
It is possible that Budweiser APAC's actual results and financial condition may differ possibly materially from the anticipated results and financial condition indicated in this forward looking statement. Budweiser APAC is under no obligation to and expressly disclaims any such obligation to update the forward looking statements as a result of a new information, future events or otherwise. For discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect Budweiser APAC's future results, the risk factors in the Company's prospectus dated 18th September 2019 and 2023 annual results published and any other documents that Budweiser APAC has made public. I would also like to remind everyone that the financial figures discussed today are provided in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise.
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 the same period in 2023. Normalized figures refer to performance measures before exceptional items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as a part of Budweiser APAC's normal activities. As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the Company disclosed the consolidated profit EPS, EBIT, and EBITDA on a fully reported basis in the press release published earlier today. Further details of the 2024 9- months results can also be found in the press release. It is now my pleasure to pass the time to Mr. Jan Craps. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you, Ray, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call. I hope you're all doing well. In the first nine months of 2024, our performance was impacted by continued industry weakness in China that was partially offset by our geographic footprint, including ongoing strong performance in South Korea. Continued commercial momentum in South Korea and India drove sustained market share gains and revenue per hectoliter growth. Let me provide some more color on each of our key markets. In China, our performance was impacted by a soft industry, particularly from continued weakness in on-premise channels which disproportionately affected our business. We continue to lead the premiumization of the beer category with our Premium and Super Premium portfolio contributing approximately two thirds of our revenue on a nine-month basis.
Volume and revenue contribution from innovations within the Budweiser family including Supreme and Magnum continue to increase in terms of channel expansion. Revenue contribution from the in-home channel grew as a result of our ongoing efforts to premiumize the channel and our geographic expansion strategy for the Budweiser brand is also on track. From a portfolio perspective, we are connecting with consumers through our mega brands and mega platforms to drive long-term growth. Budweiser further expanded its sports platform through the Summer of Sports campaign launched alongside the nationwide introduction of Budweiser 0.0 in Super Premium. We launched the Corona Ctrip Travel Campaign featuring customized tours to unwinding destinations such as Hainan and Yunnan, further building the association between Corona and the passion to travel.
In Korea, we almost double Harbin Ice GD Zero Sugar volumes supported by our partnership with the NBA and the growing health and wellness trend in South Korea. Volumes increased by mid single digits in the third quarter while revenue increased by mid teens. As we continue to lead a category through the strength of our brand portfolio, we achieved a strong overall total market share gain supported by share gains in both the on-premise and in-home channels led by Cass. From a portfolio perspective, we further expanded Cass Light Zero Sugar in the third quarter with a campaign featuring South Korean Olympic fencing gold medalist Oh Sang-uk. We continue to invest in the rollout of Hanmac Extra Creamy Draft in the on-premise with over 1.3 million glasses poured since its launch in May. We continue to lead premiumization with Stella Artois growing volumes by double digits.
In India, our business continued to outgrow the industry for the first nine months of the year driven by double-digit net revenue growth within our Premium and Super Premium portfolio. The Premium and Super Premium segments contributed more than two-thirds of our revenue. Before I pass it over to Iggy, let me share some of the additional progress we have made in our sustainability initiatives. Bud APAC maintained its low risk rating from Sustainalytics, ranking 4th among 85 brewers, wine and spirits companies and 7th out of 644 food products companies worldwide. In September 2024 we kicked off campaigns across our key markets to celebrate a global Be Responsible Day to promote smart drinking in partnership with government and industry stakeholders. A commitment we have been championing for 17 years. With that, I will now pass it over to Iggy to take you through our financial results.
Over to you, Iggy.
Thank you, Jan. Good morning everyone. In the first nine months of 2024, total volumes decreased by 8.1% while revenue decreased by 6.1%. Revenue per hectoliter grew by 2.2% as the benefits from revenue management initiatives in Korea and favorable brand mix across Asia were partially offset by adverse channel mix. Our normalized EBITDA decreased by 6.2% while our normalized EBITDA margin decreased by 4 basis points. Our gross profit margin expanded by 108 basis points in the first nine months, mainly driven by revenue and cost management initiatives. Cost of sales decreased by 8.1% or 0.1% on a per hectoliter basis, primarily driven by operational efficiencies and commodity tailwinds. In APAC West, volumes decreased by 9.4% while revenue and revenue per hectoliter decreased by 10.2% and 0.9% respectively. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 13.3% in China.
In the third quarter, volumes decreased by 14.2% impacted by weak consumer sentiment in a soft industry, especially with slower traffic and spending. Revenue declined by 16.1% while revenue per hectoliter decreased by 2.1% due to a high base and negative channel mix from weakness in the on-premise channels where our footprint is more pronounced. In APAC East, volumes in the first nine months of the year increased by 2.2% with revenue and revenue per hectoliter increasing by 14.3% and 11.8% respectively. Normalized EBITDA increased by 39.3% with our EBITDA margin expanding by 547 basis points. And with that, Jan and I are here to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. Please press star one one only once to ask a question. In the interest of time, we ask a participant to limit themselves to two questions. And please ask one question at a time. Our first question is coming from Euan McLeish of Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Jan.
Iggy, thanks for taking my question. Obviously an extremely tough quarter in China.
Okay.
Hello.
Go ahead, Euan. We can hear you.
Okay, great.
Thanks very much. Yeah, sorry. Just saying, obviously an extremely tough quarter in China. And I understand that your Premium mix is particularly susceptible to the cyclicality of the economy. But it does seem that other competitors are faring better than you. And it's tough to understand what are the kind of idiosyncrasies and the issues that you're particularly facing. You know, you've got Heineken growing volumes at 20%. You've got Pearl River in Guangdong is showing some pretty decent volume and price mix suggests that consumers in some places are in pretty good shape. So yeah, what's kind of idiosyncratic to your brand? And what can you do about these idiosyncratic issues? I'd be particularly interested if you can comment on any kind of differences that you're seeing between the in-home channel and the on-trade as well in terms of momentum and competition, et cetera.
Thanks very much.
Sure.
Thank you Euan and good morning. Good to hear from you. So yes, I mean to start off, I think in China we continue to see a soft consumer environment which is impacting the overall beer market and our performance. And if you look in the short term, I think really the challenging part is a low consumer confidence is driving consumers to go out less and also spend less. We do see the softness more pronounced in the on-premise channel to your point, which as you know is more Premium and that's disproportionately impacting our business. So while we do see positive brand mix in our portfolio, this negative channel mix has impacted our net revenue per hectoliter in the quarter.
So based on our observations, we see the core segments, which is the segments that we call the RMB 8 in Chinese restaurants as a price reference, right? With Core+ at 6, Core+ at 8 Premium between 10 and 12. So the Core++ segment is an industry segment which Harbin Ice GD Zero Sugar in our portfolio. And we see this segment outperforming other segments especially in the on-premise channel. And we see this performance strong both with our innovation Ice GD Zero Sugar but also with several of our peer sub Premium brands or core brands that are doing well. When we look at our portfolio choices in different regions in Guangdong we are trading up from Core+ to Core+ + with this GD Zero Sugar which volume year to date has almost doubled versus last year.
So we see a strong growth trend on that price point and that innovation, growing the base for future trade up to Budweiser in Guangdong and accelerating our in-home channel expansion as well. If you look at Fujian, we continue to focus on executing our strategy right quite consistently to drive further premiumization. So we do see shifts from Budweiser to Budweiser Magnum and up to Blue Girl to continue to grow Fujian's expansion markets. If you look at our STW which is a sales to wholesalers, the lag behind in Q3 are STRs the sales to retailer given. We work with our partners, wholesaler partners to adjust the inventory levels in the current business environment so that we also ensure the long-term health of our core markets.
If you look medium to long term, we are very confident on the opportunities and we believe we are well positioned to drive long term value creation. China firmly remains one of the most significant long term profitable growth opportunities even globally for our parent company with the addition of more middle income households in the future driving further Premiums, Super Premium segment growth. We believe we have the right and a consistent strategy with premiumization, expansion and digitization and we have the industry leading full brand portfolio which continues to see large distribution opportunities supported by Premium mature markets. So, I hope that answers your question Euan.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Christine Peng of UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you, management, to take my questions. So I also have two questions. One is for Korean market and the second one is for the Chinese market. So I ask the questions one by one. So the first question for Korean is that how do you see the profitability trend for Bud APAC in Korean market? Given that you have been gaining market shares in the past one to two years so how should investor foresee the profitability trend for the Korean market going forward?
Sure.
Thank you, Christine, and good morning. Let me pass our question to Iggy. Sure.
Thanks Jan. Thanks for the question Christine. So in South Korea revenues grew by mid-teens right in the third quarter driven by of course that double-digit revenue per hectoliter increase and single-digit volume growth on top and revenue per hectoliter continued to benefit of course from the revenue management initiatives we put in place. But also some positive package and brand mix. In the case of volume it benefited actually from the significant outperformance of the industry, right. The strong market share performance from the teams there and obviously that combination landed us on both our EBITDA and our EBITDA margin expanding significantly. So the strong top line performance and of course the favorable operating leverage combined very well in the quarter and year to date.
If we take a step back and we look at the main drivers of margin growth in APAC East, they still continue to be in sequential order pricing first, operational efficiency second, and mix third, and it becomes increasingly clear why we see our business there as being in a very good spot on the pricing side. Obviously in the last five years, a more consistent environment has come to life with more moderated price increases on an annual or every two-year basis. And this has allowed us to make pricing decisions really within the context of the macroeconomic environment and with consumers in mind. In the case of operational efficiencies, we continue to implement cost management initiatives across the business, which combined of course beneficially this year with the commodity tailwinds. And then I guess finally we anticipate the industry will continue to premiumize, right?
It's still under indexed versus other mature markets. And here of course we're very well positioned to capture an outsized portion of that growth with the comprehensive portfolio of Premium brands that we have. So longer term we really don't see any barriers to further margin recovery. In fact, if you went back to the views that we shared during the investor day in Korea at the end of 2022, you would recall we saw an underlying structural margin tailwind right from these growth drivers. So we're very confident that we have the right strategy in place and the correct commercial capabilities to position us well for future sustainable growth as well. So I hope that answers your question, Christine.
Thank you, Iggy.
So I also have a question for the Chinese market. So you mentioned that the on-trade channel for the Chinese beer industry has been struggling. We saw a similar trend happening to every single Premium beer company in China. So going forward I was wondering what is Bud APAC's plan to develop a Premium portfolio in the in-home channels? What actions has your company taken to tackle with these macro challenges in order to better cater to the premiumization trend in in-home channel in China?
Yes, thank you, Christine, and I think your question makes a lot of sense, right? Because we also see increasing disposable income, market maturity across China, which will drive this premiumization trend of the in-home channel, which for us gives us large opportunities to continue to expand our distribution to drive the Premium volume growth in the future, so we've actually been expanding our O2O markets to more channels within in-home to go wider and deeper even in geographies where we are already well established with strong market share position, so we are driving Premium drinking occasions in in-home channels, so maybe a couple of insights into our business that can be helpful, so the in-home channel contribution to our total volume has continued to increase and actually led by premiumization.
So if you look at our Premium and Premium volumes, they have grown mid single digits in the in-home channel year to date versus last year. If you look at the distribution model, we have been driving in-depth route to market model as you might know, right? China has more than 5 million in-home box or in-home outlets. So the key for successful in-home expansion is really to develop a high-quality distribution network to cover more stores. So we have markets where we have strong BC wholesalers or Budweiser elite club wholesalers. We continue to support these wholesalers to strengthen their in-home penetration by leveraging BEES, our digital tool because it helps us to execute key initiatives more effectively in markets where we don't have strong BC wholesalers. We continue to develop new Tier 1 and Tier 2 wholesalers to help us expand to more POS.
We collaborated with Swire Coca-Cola in Anhui and Hubei provinces like we covered in the last call as well. We almost had a one-year anniversary day, right, of this partnership. We continue to accelerate in-home expansion since December last year. In the last nine months we continue to grow our market share in the in-home channel in both provinces led by premiumization according to the last Nielsen data. We believe the partnership will continue to bring synergies and translate into more meaningful benefits in the future as well. Then maybe one specific channel that is quite interesting to follow is what we call the O2O channel, right? The online to offline channel. This instant retail channel has continued to grow. We engage with the channel to capture these growth opportunities and we are leading the O2O channel.
So the number one market share position in O2O and we also continue to gain market share in this important growth channel. So I hope that answers your question, Christine.
Thank you, Jan.
Thank you.
Our next question is coming from Leaf Liu from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot.
Jan, Iggy, thank you for the opportunity.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can leave. Good morning.
Good morning.
I have two questions I will ask one by one. So firstly, I think Jang already touched.
The bond a little bit on the.
Geographic expansion strategy which has been on track. So want to understand more of your growth strategy especially for the regional expansion backed by your city maturity model. I remember that model analyzes the Premium potential for beer consumption in hundreds of cities across China. So what are the big city opportunity you can see from now? Especially maybe a little bit more detail on the progress with Hubei and Anhui regions. So that's the first question.
Thanks.
Sure. Thank you, Leaf. So if you look at expansion as one of our strategic initiatives, it actually plays quite an important role for Premium, Super Premium growth today and in the future. And so it continues to be a very relevant part of our strategy. So as you mentioned, we prioritize expansion into regions with potential consumer demands based on our market maturity models. So we have this expansion playbook which basically tracks more than 300 cities. And we tailor our strategy and toolkits city by city based on their market maturity and our share position. So we have about one third distribution rights, less than 35% distribution of our Premium brands, less than 10% distribution of Super Premium in China.
So that's one of the big, big reasons we see a continued significant runway for further expansion into the future, given the power of our brands is very high in China and well above our market share today in the markets. If we look at this year, we target to expand our Budweiser distribution from 220 to 235 cities. And we define a distributed city as a city where we sell more than one million liters of Budweiser. So in some key expansion cities, for example, just to name a few, right cities like Hangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, Sichuan, Xishuangbanna, these all cities where Budweiser is growing positive STR growth in the third quarter as well, despite the whole environment around us. And overall, we are on track to deliver the Bud expansion cities plan this year.
When we enter into a new city, we always look at a consumer demand based on demographics, also affordability, city stage, competition, landscape. And then we decide what product portfolio we bring in and which channels we prioritize. So this can be either with Budweiser, with Corona, or with Budweiser and Super Premium depending on the market maturity model that the city is in. And of course, as we get a Budweiser into our distributed cities, so above 1 million liter we typically see high growth rates and we invest in line with the growth opportunity. But already today about one third of our Budweiser cities is more than 5 million liters.
In these cities we typically see additional opportunities and economies of scale on the commercial investments on the one hand, and we leverage Budweiser scale and the strength of our Super Premium portfolio to really drive Super Premium distribution here on the other hand. So to today, about half of our Super Premium distribution cities are already generating volumes of more than three million liters as we speak today. We are quite excited with the expansion opportunity and we continue to see this as a very big drive and priority for our team on the geographic expansion front. Thanks for that first question, Leaf.
Thank you so much, Jan. That's very comprehensive and helpful. So my second question also on China, but I want to turn into more long-term growth outlook especially with the recent policy pivot. So how do you envision China beer market's growth path in terms of volume mix and pricing level in the longer term? 5 years- 10 years supported by the expansion of the middle class in China compared to other regions. Any statistical analysis you have done for your long-term strategy. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Leaf. And I mean it's helpful to take a step back, right? I think as you know, China is already today the biggest beer market in the world in terms of volume. So it's about roughly a quarter of the total global beer volume is consumed in China and that's, you know, 1.8x the U.S. It's about 3x Brazil. But of course today we all know that in this industry Premium Super Premium beer is only at half of the development that we see in more mature markets. So you know, about 17% of the total beer industry is Premium Super Premium while in many other markets is between 35%-40%, even 45% when we see markets mature over time. So that means that the biggest opportunity in China continues to be premiumization.
We estimate that Premium and above will contribute in the next 10 years about 100% sort of full net revenue growth in the beer market in China and about 80% gross margin growth in the industry will come from Premium and Super Premium Premium brands as we define them as RMB 10 and above in Chinese restaurants. This, with increasing disposable income which even today we see that in China as well and rising numbers of middle income households. We continue to focus on building our brands with strong brand power. Also with innovations like the Zero Sugar innovation we did in the Core+ plus price points to expand our base for future premiumization. We continue to invest as well behind our Super Premium portfolio for the future. Of course in the short term there is some more pressure on this segment.
But in the future we believe this will continue to be a strong growth driver in terms of route to market development. We continue to expand geographically as I mentioned earlier to lower tier cities because of the overall Budweiser distribution being only at less than a third of the total potential. Together with our Core+ portfolio as we leverage a trade up opportunities from core and value to Core+. If you look at channels, nightlife remains an important channel to build brands and to premiumize into Premium and Super Premium brands. But as I mentioned earlier, we continue to expand our hotel market to in home to drive more premiumization in the in home channel. And as I said, the in home channel contribution continues to grow in our portfolio and we continue to grow our Premium Super Premium brands versus last year within the on-premise channel.
Then digitization, as you know, is the third piece of our strategy. It is there to support top line growth and premiumization and expansion and we use technology to connect consumers with our sales and our supply chain. And of course the brand power of our portfolio combined with its long term growth potential for expansion and continued premiumization in the industry for us represents a very compelling value creation opportunity for the future. So thank you for your question, Leaf.
Thank you Jan. Thanks a lot.
Our next question is from Lillian Lou from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning Jan and Iggy, I have two questions as well. I'll ask the first one first. This is about the Korea market. So basically we know in the past quarters of this year we have been seeing the benefit of price hikes throughout last year and getting into fourth quarter I think we started to be on the same more same comparable basis on pricing. So how do we expect in terms of the performance on ASP or general trend in Korea business in the fourth quarter and also a little bit getting into 2025. So this is my first question. Yes. What the dynamic on the shift with the benefit of price hikes?
Sure. Thank you, Lillian, and good morning. Thank you for your question. So we make our pricing decisions in the context, of course, of the macroeconomic environment. So while South Korea is one of the more mature markets in Asia, we do see the Premium segment still underdeveloped versus other mature markets. Even if it is higher already than China, it's still below some of the other more mature markets. However, the price and margin level in Korea is much more compressed than in China. So you might have seen that we have increased the price point of our Premium brands two times in the last two years in the on-premise channel, expanding the price difference with the core segments. So in the future also driving more brand mix benefits when consumers premiumize into these Premium segments.
We do see an opportunity to continue to increase the price difference between the segments over time. So we actually very recently announced an 8.1% price increase for our Premium brands in the in-home channels, which will be effective as of tomorrow, November 1st of this year. And so this has only started to kick in for the fourth quarter for November and December basically. And so it will mostly be felt for 2025. Overall we remain cautiously optimistic about our margin improvements driven by the recent price increases. And so of course the main drivers for growth in APAC East should continue to be price, operational efficiencies and mix as he also mentioned a little bit earlier. So I hope that answers your question, Lillian.
Yeah, thanks a lot. That's very helpful in terms of this price hike actions. So the second one I think is more on the cost side generally speaking for the whole operation because barley price has been a bit tailwind in terms of the raw material costs throughout the year. And what kind of a trend are we seeing as well as on the expenses level when we started to look at the 2025?
Sure. Thank you Lillian. Let me give this one to Iggy.
Sure. Thank you Jan. And thanks Lillian for the question. So look, I think through the first nine months of the year our COGS per hectoliter have remained largely flattish. They decreased by 0.1% and that's really been driven by both cost management initiatives and the aforementioned commodity tailwinds which have really offset any additional operating expenses thus far. And the third quarter itself. Actually both China and APAC East had a decrease in COGS per hectoliter and that was offset by some one-time operating expenses. In India. We've not really made any changes to our commodity hedging strategy. If you think of it on the raw and packaging material side, the cost trends, you can kind of still look at them in the context of a general 12-month hedging policy.
If you think about this year, right, about 2024 commodity impacts, they follow fairly closely to the spot pricing benefits that we saw last year versus 2022. So obviously this year we're benefiting from barley pricing becoming more subdued. It actually had roughly a double-digit decline as 2023 unfolded and that drove an increased or increasing benefit in 2024. If you look at aluminum, it's been a bit more volatile. The price has really largely dipped from the small peak we saw at the start of 2023, hitting a low point in the summer last year and has been slowly but steadily rising since. And then in the case of energy, there was a lot of speculation that prices would increase significantly, but they've actually remained largely flat right on the electricity, natural gas and diesel side.
Overall while it's a bit too early to give a full perspective on 2025 COGS, I can give you a bit of color based on the current spot rates. If you look at barley, it's actually continued to decline versus the previous year. So it's a more muted decline, more muted than it was last year, but it's continued to decline a bit. Aluminum prices have risen. They're now sitting at roughly $2,600 per tonne, so probably about a mid single digit increase versus last year's numbers. And then energy is a little bit harder to predict and of course to hedge as you're well aware. But I think even beyond the commodities, our continued efficiency improvement and cost management initiatives, those should be fairly consistent. Quarter on quarter and year over year. You should expect us to deliver those next year as we historically do.
So thank you so much for the question.
Yeah, thanks a lot Iggy and again Jan, both answers are very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you Lillian.
Our next question is from Linda Huang from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi. So I have two questions. The first one is regarding China because in late September we can see that the Chinese government issued that like a policy stimulus. And so I just want to see whether you have already witnessed any of the benefits for the beer demand after this policy and do you see any improvement particularly during the Golden Week holidays and the rest of October. That's my first question.
Thank you, Linda, and good afternoon. Thanks for your question. I think we have seen several stimulus measures announced recently with the purpose of increasing the consumer confidence and also consumption. I think as long as the current level of consumer confidence doesn't change, we don't really expect a significant change in the business environment. So what we want to do is we control what we can control which is basically focusing on the consistent execution of our strategy so capturing the full potential of Budweiser, growing innovations like Zero Sugar and accelerating the enormous expansion. As I was mentioning before, of course investing in our brands and digital capabilities will continue to drive value for our customers and our consumers. And we also want to remain very disciplined with costs and revenue management while we are agile with our commercial investments.
So that's the way we look at the current environment. So a little bit early to really talk about any impacts of stimulus on the really short term and let's see what happens in the future. So thank you Linda for your question.
Thank you. And my second question is regarding for India because this is the first time we saw that you add some comments about India market and this time is talking about that you guys have the project to enhance the digitalization and the system integration. So I just want to know that can you go through the detail regarding for what is the project related and how does that impact our financial performance during the quarter?
Sure.
Thank you Linda. Good question. Let me pass this one to Iggy.
Thanks Jan. We've undertaken several system integration projects in India, including most recently transitioning to SAP S/4HANA as our new ERP in India to support the significant growth opportunity we have ahead. This went live in the third quarter and there have been some incremental operating costs arising from both the transition and the Hypercare period now that the system is in use. So that includes some inventory write-offs as I alluded to earlier in the COGS question. Moreover, obviously during the process of this implementation we also identified some historical assets and liabilities that needed to be written off in accordance with our assessment of their respective values and those were fully undertaken in the third quarter and have been reflected accordingly as non-underlying items as well.
The purpose really of these projects in India, they're designed to enhance digitization and system integration for both financial and non financial information, to improve processes and management visibility and set us up with another strong milestone in the growth journey for our India business. Thank you so much for the question Linda.
Okay, it's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Linda.
In interest of time, our final questions will be from Chen Luo from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi Jan and Iggy, this is Chen. I've got two questions. First is on China again. So we noticed that the sales and marketing expense as percentage of revenue has kept declining over the recent few years. Of course this year could be a bit different given the big sales deleverage, but I do believe that in absolute dollar terms our sales and marketing expense in China is actually declining at the moment. Meanwhile I think previously another question is also regarding our market share loss in China and in fact if you track our numbers versus the industry number released by the Chinese government versus the number from CRB or some of the local players like the Pearl River Zhujiang. So it seems that we are losing market share on all fronts.
So, how comfortable are we with the current situation and still attribute the current market share to either bad weather in Southern China or high base or our over index exposure to the entry channel? Or, alternatively, now the things are actually coming to a point where we start to become worried about the potential under investment in China. So, if we are actually on the second camp, what are we going to do differently in the future with regard to the commercial investment? So, this is my first question.
Thank you, thank you Luo, Chen . Good afternoon and thank you for your question. Let me ask Iggy to go for this commercial investment view.
Thank you Jan and thanks for the question. I think at the end of the day we remain very committed to the long term and to continue to invest in our business so that won't change in terms of commercial investments. We look to remain agile and to continue to optimize those investments for efficiency, and I think that's where our digitization efforts are allowing us to be more efficient, more effective in both our trade program executions as well as interconnected consumer promotions, and now that BEES covers approximately 70% of our China net revenue as of September of this year, it puts us in a stronger position to leverage it for that purpose in terms of marketing investments.
More specifically, while the brand power of our portfolio, as Jan mentioned earlier, it's critical to driving premiumization and it really becomes a reference for our market share growth potential, particularly as consumers look for more differentiation and value from Premium brands and experiences. In the third quarter, our sales and marketing actually as a percent of net revenue increased. So this was really mainly driven by the marketing investment we did in the Bud Summer of Sports and Music campaigns. Some of our efforts as well in the Harbin ICGD Zero Sugar NBA campaign which was a big point for us as well. And these we invested in as we continue to create Premium and trend setting experiences that are designed to be rooted in very specific consumer passion points.
When we look at 2024 sales and marketing as a percent of net revenue on a larger basis, it can and should remain at a similar level versus 2023 while driving further incremental value. It's more really I think a question to your point around market dynamics. It's a question of us fine-tuning our resource allocation by brand and by channel as both in-home occasions continue to develop and as the macro environment continues to evolve and then I think beyond the commercial investments, I mean we look at the end of the day to continue to apply our cost, connect, win mindset and approach which you know all too well to try and reduce, of course, our indirect overhead costs and then reinvest hopefully these savings into our commercial plans. Right.
So at the end of the day we'll continue to connect with consumers and look to win in the marketplace and deliver long-term value for our shareholders in this way. Thank you so much for the question.
Thank you.
My next question is with regard to the South Korea business. So yes, the easy base is actually going to be behind us. So the previous question mainly focused on the pricing part. But when it comes to the market demand and the competition. So what is the outlook ahead in South Korea and what kind of things are we going to do and what kind of product innovation could be in the pipeline at the moment? Thank you.
Thank you a lot. Chen, and I think you know in South Korea we see strong momentum of our business, right? As you have noted consistently in the last number of quarters. So we continue to invest behind our leading brands and also our innovations and our capabilities. So we have built a strong brand portfolio in South Korea both in the core and the Premium segments. We are leading both segments while the total industry remains soft given the macroeconomics still not yet recovered to the pre-COVID levels. So when you look at the third quarter we continue to outperform the industry and we actually have a strong overall total market share gain supported by share gains both in the on-premise and the in-home channels.
And when you take a step back and you look at history, our total market share is now above the 2018 levels. So pre-COVID also pre significant competitor launches in the last 56 years. When you look at Cass, Hanmac and Stella Artois which are our three mega brands, we focus most of our energy on. All of these brands grew market share despite a lot of competitor launches in the last number of months. If you look at brand power, our brands are healthy. We also continue to invest in our innovations to your point. So this year we launched Cass Light Zero Sugar. This innovation grew by more than 20% year to date and it became a top five beer brand total beer brands in the in-home channel in South Korea. So it really became a very sizable innovation.
If you look at the non-alcoholic segment, Cass 0.0 grew by almost 50% by zero and is leading the non-alcoholic segment supported as the first mover in the Korean restaurant channel. Cass Lemon Squeeze is another innovation that we made a permanent listing this year. It grew by almost 50% versus last year with more than half of the growth sourced from outside of our portfolio according to our consumer research including sourcing from the RTD segments, the ready-to-drink segments. So we're actually quite confident in our strong and healthy brand portfolio in South Korea, our route to market and our people capabilities to lead the beer industry growth in Korea for the future as well. So I hope that answered your question.
Luo Chen.
T hank you. That's very clear. Thanks for all the helpful answers.
This concludes our Q& A session today. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Jan Craps for the closing remarks.
Thank you Ray. As we continue to invest in our brands and capabilities to execute our strategy, we remain agile for the short term challenges. Meanwhile we are confident about a medium to long term opportunity and we believe we are well positioned to drive long term value creation and to lead the premiumization in the beer category. Thank you all for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking to you soon. Thank you.
This concludes today's results call. Please disconnect your lines. Thank you.