Welcome to the full-year 2021 results announcement conference call for Budweiser Brewing Company APAC Limited. Hosting the call today for 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 full-year ended December 31, 2021 can be found in the press release published earlier today and available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Budweiser APAC's websites. 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 these forward-looking statements. Budweiser APAC is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any such obligation to, update the forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. For a discussion of some of the risks and important factors that could affect Budweiser APAC's future results, see risk factors in the company's prospectus, dated September 18, 2019, the 2020 annual report it published, and other documents that Budweiser APAC has made public. I would also like to remind everyone that the financial figures discussed today are provided in USD, 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 2020. Normalized figures refer to the performance measures before exceptional items, which are either income or expenses that do not occur regularly as part of Budweiser APAC's normal activities. As normalized figures are non-GAAP measures, the company discloses the consolidated profit, EPS, EBIT, and EBITDA on a fully reported basis in the press release. Further details of the full-year 2021 results can be found in the press release published earlier today. It is now my pleasure to pass the time to Mr. Jan Craps. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you, Anna, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call. 2021 was a year with strong results. We delivered a double-digit top line and bottom line growth and increased our market share, thanks to the success of our strategy and the resilience of our colleagues and partners. While each market has been recovering at a different pace throughout 2021, volumes grew 8.3% as we consistently outperformed the industry, especially in China and South Korea. Revenue per hectoliter grew in all of our key markets, driven by premiumization, increasing by 6.1% versus 2020. We delivered a strong top-line growth of 14.9%, resulting in a normalized EBITDA increase of 27.3% and an EBITDA margin expansion of 308 basis points. On that note, let me share some highlights from each of our key markets, as well as some recent ESG developments.
Let's start with China, where we have seen very strong growth. Our disciplined commercial execution delivered an 80 basis points market share gain in 2021, in addition to double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth in both the quarter and the full-year. This result was driven by continued premiumization and supported by a well-defined brand portfolio approach. From a large brand portfolio, we have selected six mega brands on which we are focused to scale and address evolving consumer preferences across various drinking occasions. First, we have Budweiser, the icon for premium and the number one premium brand in China, which grew strong double digits and which will continue to lead and shape the premium segments. Then we have Budweiser Supreme, purpose-built to provide a differentiated experience for premium Chinese restaurants and celebratory meal occasions, which grew by more than 50% in 2021.
Laying the foundation for premium, we have Harbin Core Plus, leading consumers from core and value up to the Core Plus segments and underpinning the route to markets to expand our premium portfolio to more channels and regions. Finally, we have Corona, Blue Girl, and Hoegaarden in our super premium portfolio, which also grew by strong double digits as we expanded in the cities with higher disposable incomes. Innovation continues to be an important driver of future growth as we target more consumer segments and different drinking occasions. In addition to Budweiser Supreme, we cater to the growing she economy with Hoegaarden fruity variants and have seen their volumes more than double in 2021.
In the beyond beer category, we increased the number of distribution points for Red Bull by double digits while also making an investment in Miss Berry, a fast-growing, ready-to-drink flavored wine startup targeting female and Gen Z consumers. In digitization, our B2B platform, BEES, evolved significantly in 2021. More than 500,000 customers have adopted its straight marketing investment and digital engagement module. Moreover, within the two initial pilot cities, around 10,000 stores are using the transactional functionality of the platform as of the end of last year. We plan to roll out these to 60 cities this year, which will support the acceleration of our premiumization and geographic expansion and unlock new business opportunities. Let me now talk about South Korea. We continued to accelerate market share gains quarter after quarter in 2021, despite continuous channel mix headwinds from ongoing COVID restrictions.
Over the full-year, our market share expanded by 129 basis points, driven by our successful innovations, All New Cass and Hanmac, and supported by double digit growth in premium. In India, despite the market being severely impacted by COVID restrictions in the first half of the year, our premium and super premium portfolios grew strong double digits, which led to full-year 2021 EBITDA landing above pre-pandemic levels in India. Budweiser, which led our strong market share performance, crossed a double-digit market share milestone for the first time in the month of December. Finally, ESG remained an area of focus within our business and one which we continue to see as a strategic advantage. MSCI raised our ESG rating to A, marking the second consecutive year we see a rating upgrade in recognition of our continued progress across many ESG domains.
Our Wuhan Brewery officially became carbon neutral, the first brewery to do so in all of China, as well as the first within the entire AB InBev global network. With our 2025 sustainability goals paving the way, we decided to take our ESG commitment one step further. We want to take this opportunity to also announce Bud APAC's commitment to achieving net zero across our entire value chain by 2040, which we see as a significant step in building a more sustainable and inclusive future. On this note, I will now pass it over to Iggy to take you through our financial results in 2021. Over to you, Iggy.
Thank you, Jan. Good morning, everyone. As mentioned earlier, the improvement in operating conditions in the fourth quarter allowed us to resume the top and bottom line growth momentum we saw in the first half of 2021. In the full-year, revenue grew by 14.9%, supported by well-balanced volume and revenue per hectolitre growth. Volumes increased by 8.3%, while revenue per hectolitre grew in all of our key markets, increasing by 6.1% overall. This growth was the result of our continued focus on premiumization and the corresponding brand and pack mix impact that it drives. Cost of sales in the full-year increased by 9.7%, mainly driven by the aforementioned volume increase.
With strong cost efficiency initiatives and the benefit of our hedging policy, which minimized the impact of commodity price escalation on our results in 2021, we were able to maintain the increase in cost of sales on a per hectolitre basis to 1.2%, which was significantly lower than the commodity price headwinds over the past few months. We will remain focused on mitigating cost pressure as we see continued, and perhaps heightened, commodity price escalation and volatility in 2022. Normalized EBITDA increased by 27.3% as a result of our revenue and cost management initiatives, yielding a significant margin expansion of 308 basis points. Overall, profit attributable to equity holders reached $950 million in 2021, an increase of 85% on a reported basis as compared to 2020. Let's now look at our key markets in more detail.
In the full-year 2021, revenue and normalized EBITDA in China increased versus 2020 by 18% and 28.7% respectively, with both exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Volumes grew by 9.3% and revenue per hectolitre increased by 7.9%, driven by premiumization via our successful portfolio strategy. In South Korea, our revenue increased by low single digits. Volumes declined by low single digits as the industry faced substantial headwinds from COVID restrictions. However, this was partially offset by the strong market share growth Jan previously mentioned. In Q4, we saw a notable rebound in industry volumes, while we significantly outperformed the industry, driving revenue, normalized EBITDA, and market share to all exceed pre-pandemic levels. With a continuous focus on financial discipline, we are closing 2021 with a strong balance sheet. Our net cash position increased by $743 million as compared to the end of 2020 to $2 billion at the end of 2021.
Our recommended dividend per share increased from $0.0283 in 2020 to $0.0302 in 2021, landing at a 41% payout ratio. This strong finish to 2021 has left us with the right foundation for continued growth and success in 2022 and beyond. This marks the end of our presentation. With that, Jan and I are here to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. In the interest of time, we ask participants to limit themselves to two questions. Our first question is from Luo Chen from Bank of America. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Jan and Ignacio. Congratulations on the stellar Q4 results. I've got two questions on the COVID situation, as we understand that COVID has remained a key swing factor for 2022. First of all, on China, how is the COVID impact on our sales different this time around versus 2021 or 2020? Is there any color that we can share regarding our on-trade sales trend in the recent few months? Have we observed that China has started to adopt a more flexible approach towards the COVID restrictions? Also, what's our target for volume growth in China for 2022, and what kind of underlying COVID assumption have we adopted for our sales target? Secondly, on Korea. Korea actually saw the sharpest surge in COVID cases recently. Meanwhile, the COVID restrictions have also eased.
How can we measure the impact on the beer consumption and the overall consumer sentiment in South Korea? Thank you.
Thank you, Chen Luo, and good morning to you. Thank you for your two questions. To start with China, regarding COVID, you would have seen that in Q4, there continued to be some localized channel restrictions across different cities in China. Despite that, the industry still grew by mid-single digits, of course, also benefiting from an earlier CNY, which was two weeks earlier than the year before. If we look at October, for example, there were mostly outbreaks in Northwest, which led to the closure of the nightlife channels in several provinces, and also some channel closures in Northeast in Heilongjiang and in December in Zhejiang province, which are for us two strong provinces. So there was some level of impact in Q4, but I would say generally much less impact than what we have seen in the third quarter.
Despite this kind of limited impact, we still delivered a very strong performance both in market share and top and bottom-line performance in both the quarter and the full-year. When we look at the beginning of this year, we continue to see some sporadic cases across China. I think in the beginning of the year, more Tianjin, Beijing, Henan province, recently in Jiangsu, Shenzhen, now also in Wuhan. However, we do see the business impact is less than what we would have seen in 2021, and for sure, if we compare to the year 2000. What we see is typically in areas where we see a COVID impact, we do see nightlife and some on-premise channels where people gather impacted due to local restrictions. It takes, in our experience, between four and six weeks for the channels to normalize.
However, we are encouraged because, we do see the evolution of the Zero-COVID policy to a dynamic Zero-COVID policy in more and more cities, having a positive effect in terms of how the restrictions impact both populations and the business as a consequence. Because essentially, with a dynamic Zero-COVID policy, really the purpose is to identify the new infections as soon as possible and essentially cut off the transmission chains. When there are local cases, if maybe two years ago, there would have been whole cities impacted, and maybe last year would have been whole districts of a city. If I look at a city like Shanghai, we've had situations with some cases locally where only one block, one building, or even one store has been declared a medium risk zone.
So we see the level of granularity that the government is able to manage this dynamic Zero-COVID policy is actually quite strong and quite successful in terms of reducing the business impact of the situation. Of course, when we look forward, it is difficult to predict, right? What will happen with the COVID situation, especially with the Omicron variant being more contagious. But we are encouraged by the higher vaccination degrees in China, right? The vaccination rates are above 85% now, and also this dynamic zero policy that I just explained. When you look at the recent trends in volume, of course, Chinese New Year was about two weeks earlier than the previous year. By the way, this year or next year, it will be again 10 days earlier than this year. Of course, that always drives a more positive impact in the fourth quarter.
When we combine December and January, we still see a very strong CNY campaign. When you take all of these things into account, and you look at our volume so far this year, our volumes are essentially in line with our expectations at the start of this year. Let me then maybe move, Chen Luo, to the Korea part of your question. I think in Korea, we see a different situation in that the number of COVID cases has been increasing quite significantly recently. Korea is a country where, let's say in the second half of last year, the restrictions in place had allowed the government to control the number of daily cases between 1,000 and 2,000, 3,000 cases per day.
However, more recently, we see a sharp increase in the number of cases, driven by Omicron, and most recently, even more than 170,000 cases in the last couple of days. On the good news front, we do see that the number of critically ill and death rates remain stable. Actually, as you might know, also in South Korea, vaccination rate is very high. Actually more than 87% of the population fully vaccinated. The ICU, the intensive care unit, occupation remains below 40%, despite a very high number of daily cases. We are also encouraged recently that, despite this increasing number of cases, the government has slightly reduced the number of restrictions. Still private gathering restriction of up to six people. For example, restaurants and bar opening or closing time has now moved from 9:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M., despite increasing number of cases.
We also see when people test positive, that people who have been in contact with them, close contacts, if they're vaccinated and they test negative, they don't need to quarantine anymore. On another front, if you test positive, the quarantine period has been reduced from 10 to seven days. We see some level of change in the restrictions put forward. Some easing of the restrictions, which is encouraging us. On the broader front, of course, within that environment, we see our commercial strategy and our business results on the underlying trends very strong in South Korea. As I mentioned on the full-year, almost 130 basis points market share growth. We actually see our commercial strategy very successful in South Korea in that context. I hope that answered your question, Chen Luo.
Yeah, definitely. Thanks a lot for all the useful and detailed color, and congratulations again.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. As a reminder to everyone, please ask your question one at a time and our speakers will answer them accordingly. Your next question is from Christine Peng from UBS. Your line is now open, Christine. Please go ahead.
Thank you, management, for the excellent presentations. I have two questions. One is on a group level. The second one is specifically towards the Chinese beer market. The first question I would like to understand a bit more is the margin outlook in 2022 in view of the surging cost of pressure for the beer industry globally. The second question is specifically for the Chinese premium market. You mentioned earlier that in overall the beer market, Bud APAC has gained share in 2022. But what about specifically for the premium and the super premium market? Can you elaborate the market share trends you have seen in 2021 for these two markets specifically? Thank you.
Maybe the first question, let me pass you to Iggy, and then I will take the second one. Christine, good morning. Thank you for your questions.
Perfect. Thank you, Jan. Good morning, Christine. I think let's start maybe with the margin question. We don't provide, obviously, specific guidance on margin. I can share with you some of the drivers we have to manage, obviously, margin pressures, which include, of course, premiumization first and foremost, cost efficiency initiatives, and a revenue management strategy as well. Premiumization, as I mentioned, is the key driver for our margin expansion. Even despite the COVID volatility, the premiumization trend across the region remains intact. We continue to lead and grow in both the premium and super premium segments across Asia Pacific, which is critical. To give you an example, if we were to look at China, both super premium and premium grew more than 20% in the full-year 2021.
The weight of both segments with the premium and super premium segments have been constantly increasing in our portfolio. As we mentioned at a previous time, which is critical, the super premium has more than nine times the higher gross margin, versus core and value. The premium more than five times higher gross margin than core and value. Of course, there's a significant margin accretion that we're able to capture as we drive consumers to do that trade-up. Of course, we're experiencing transitional headwinds from a commodity pricing perspective. We've actually been mitigating that risk with several cost efficiency initiatives. We execute these initiatives across functions. We look to minimize consumption wherever possible to reduce the impact of cost escalations.
Just to give you an example here, we lowered our water usage significantly by 22% actually, versus the 2017 baseline, which also supports, of course, our efforts in sustainability, but has a meaningful impact from a cost perspective as well. Leveraging, of course, the global scale of Anheuser-Busch InBev, we also have the flexibility to adjust sourcing options as needed, which helps us to offset cost pressures as well. Then, of course, the hedging policy for raw materials, where we tend to hedge approximately a year in advance, has been a significant driver. If you think about it, as a result of the timeframe of escalations, our full-year 2021 cost of sales on a per hectoliter basis remain fairly stable at a 1.2% increase.
So below inflation, as I mentioned earlier, despite the headwinds that come from the premium channel and package mix effects, obviously, as we grow our premium and super premium brands. In 2022, we're seeing the impact of increased commodity escalations the ones that of course took place in 2021. However, the hedging policies have given us up to 12 months to plan ahead and build out cost management initiatives. Then of course, we have a comprehensive set of revenue management initiatives to ensure that we're not solely dependent on cost initiatives to protect our margin moving forward. I'll pass it to you, Jan, for the second one.
Thank you, Iggy. Christine, on the question regarding market share and then specifically the premium beer segment, we are quite excited with our results in China. You would have seen they were quite strong, both on the quarter and on the full-year. The quarter actually even accelerating versus the full-year, despite H1 easy comps last year. We see quite consistent market share growth in China. When we look at the premium, super premium portfolio, they actually continue to increase the share of revenue that they represent in our business. Budweiser grew more than 20% on the full-year basis last year. If we compare to two years ago, pre-pandemic, still grew by high single digits. Remember that Budweiser, even despite its scale today and a clear segment leadership, it is still well below 50% distribution in China. We continue to see expansion opportunities.
The super premium portfolio also grew by more than 20% last year. If you combine the two, as we mentioned in the previous calls, we estimate our market share within premium and above to be more than 45%. Of course, we drive the growth of these segments within the industry as we continue to lead and grow the segments. Our portfolio strategy, of course, is very important in that context, but also our go-to markets. When you look at our portfolio strategy, we continue to invest in driving new innovations to expand our portfolio. Also seeding and investing early in crafts and specialty brands as we create more experiences for beer drinkers in China.
Go-to market wise, we have a premium go-to market that we have been working on since over 10 years now, to essentially partner with strong wholesalers who have built their premium brand-building skills over time and who are also capable of investing in the channels at scale. If you look at our total results, we grew about 80 basis points market share in the full-year. If you compare to pre-pandemic level, we grew 24 basis points versus 2019. Q4, the last quarter, was actually our strongest quarterly market share since the IPO. We actually grow market share in both channels, both in on-premise and in retail in the full-year 2021. I hope, Christine, that answered your two questions.
Can I just follow up with a very quick question?
Sure.
So you mentioned earlier that you have very high visibility in terms of the cost environment. What is the forecasted cost inflation you are seeing for your company in 2022?
Yeah, of course, Christine. Maybe the way I would respond to that is we know that commodity escalations, price escalations, are in the double digit range, and they have been for a while. Of course, there is volatility, if you look at it now versus a few months ago, even actually on a week-by-week basis. But the way we look at this is looking at using all three of the levers I mentioned before. Of course, hedging from a timing perspective, cost initiatives, and revenue management initiatives to have a significant impact against that escalation. So double digits if it were left untouched, but of course you have seen our track record and our Q4 results as an indication of how we manage cost of sales increases.
Thank you. That is very clear.
Thank you, Christine.
Thank you. Our next question is from Lillian Lou from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open, Lillian. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Hey, Jan and Iggy. I also have two questions. First one is on China product strategy. Basically, that's a little bit of follow-up on Jan's comment just now. What's the key priority of your resource allocation among products in 2022, especially after the good performance of Budweiser, the mean brand, and the super premium? What are the goals for these two categories in 2022? Also, how was the performance of Budweiser innovation so far? That's the first question on China products. The second one is on Korea market strategy. How do you evaluate the performance of Hanmac in 2021 in South Korea? Also, what's the target for Hanmac and All New Cass in 2022? How do we see the market dynamic changes impact your commercial strategy in the market? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you, Lillian, and thank you for your questions. I hope you're doing well. On China, essentially, you know that we have a brand portfolio of more than 50 brands that we sell in China and our parent company more than 500 brands globally. What we do is, within this broad portfolio, where there is several brands with future potential, we actually focus on what we call our six mega brands. The six mega brands that I mentioned a little bit earlier, basically, let me detail a little bit why they are important, because actually they operate within our premiumization strategy. Premiumization, we really see as the continued big driver for the future performance of our business. When you look at, in China, the middle income classes in terms of number of households, we expect it to quadruple by 2030 versus today.
Actually, in the year 2030, when it happens, that would actually give China about twice the number of middle income households than the whole of the U.S. So it kind of gives you a sense of how big the future potential of premiumization is in China, and that's just based on GDP growth expectations and disposable income growth in the different parts of China. Our six mega brands, if I explain a little bit in more detail. Essentially, of course, the first and most important one is Budweiser. Budweiser is the number one premium brand in China, and it brings about half of our total revenues in the country. It continued to grow very strongly, so 20% growth in 2021, high single digits versus pre-pandemic.
But also the second one, Budweiser Supreme, was launched as a line extension of Budweiser, but is really focused on premium Chinese restaurants and celebratory meal occasions. So a very different kind of packaging, communication, positioning, and also beer, that goes very well with meals. And we've seen this innovation very successful. It actually got to quite a good scale in 2021. And it grew more than 50% versus 2020, with a small bottle expansion across China. Then, second part is in our Core+ segment, we have Harbin Core+. It is actually, if you look at the volume contribution, the second largest brand in our portfolio after Budweiser. And the role of this brand is that it is creating inroads for consumers to trade up from the core and the value segments into Core+.
The brand has been growing high single digits in 2021, and it actually plays quite an important role to support a strong go-to-market to prepare for premiumization. Then thirdly, it was kind of two Budweisers. One in Harbin Core+, and then we have three brands in super premium, at scale. So we have Corona, Blue Girl, and Hoegaarden. All of the brands grew by double digits. Super premium portfolio combined grew more than 20%, both in Q4 and in the full-year of 2021. And on the innovation front, we innovated quite a lot on the fruity variants in super premium, because we want to target more female drinkers. And we know that these fruity propositions, they please both male and female, but proportionately, we see a very good balance there with more exposure to female drinkers. So we innovated on Hoegaarden fruity variants.
And also for Corona, we launched a world first with Corona Sea Salt Guava. So a kind of a tropical fruity variant. If you look at Hoegaarden fruity, that business more than doubled in 2021 versus 2020. And now actually represents more than 10% of the total Hoegaarden volume in China. So it is quite a simple approach with six brands. It is simple as one plus two plus three, because it is kind of one Core+ brands, two in premium and three in super premium. And that is really the main focus for our team, to focus on the expansion, and distribution buildup, while of course, we continue to invest in innovations and in craft and specialty to identify the number seven, eight, and nine brand for the coming years. So then maybe moving to your second question, Lillian, which was about Korea.
Essentially in South Korea our two domestically focused innovations, which were All New Cass and Hanmac, have been performing very well. Since we introduced All New Cass in the first half of last year, where we brought a new visual brand identity and thin bottles to the market. The brand has been performing very strongly with market share gains in all channels, both in on-premise and in home, further strengthening its leadership position in South Korea. When we look at Hanmac being our Korean classic lager product, it actually further enhanced our brand portfolio because it is quite complementary to Cass as an easy drinking lager. Hanmac became the third biggest brand in Korean restaurants, which is an important channel for us. And we see very good early results.
We are about one year in the launch, even though we were not able yet to fully execute all the launch plans that we have because of the COVID restrictions. For example, that sampling, in retail or brand activations in on-premise, have not been fully executed yet. We believe there are further opportunities in the future to continue to build and expand the brands. We see both innovations have led to strong market share gains. When you look at 2021, we see that we have delivered market share gains in every quarter, despite the channel headwinds, due to the COVID restrictions. Overall, we had a gain of 129 basis points in full-year 2021. And actually Q4 was the 10th quarter in a row that we achieved market share gains versus the prior year.
We see that we gained share both in on-premise and in retail, essentially because of these successful innovations on Yuengling and Hanmac, especially Korean restaurant channel, very successful, but also in retail, on top of the double digit premium growth that we have with our leading premium portfolio in South Korea. I hope, Lillian, that answered your two questions.
Yes. Thanks a lot, Jan. Stay safe and take care.
You too. Thank you, Lillian.
Thank you. Your next question is from Euan McLeish from Bernstein. Your line is now open, Euan. Please go ahead.
Morning, chaps. Thanks for taking my question. I will follow on with another question about Korea and then maybe pivot to China secondly, if that is all right. So in Korea, I know that the beer excise tax is due to be adjusted for CPI at the beginning of April, and we have CPI running around 2.5% in January. Can you maybe talk a bit about what you are expecting in terms of the excise tax revision magnitude and the kind of considerations that you have to take into account when you are thinking about passing this on to consumers? The second part of that question is really around which mainstream brand pack channel combinations do you see the best opportunity for increasing pricing on? I saw that across the board, the international beer was up by 10%, pricing up by 10% in January.
Are there specific mainstream brand pack channel combinations where you think there is a really strong opportunity? Then maybe I will ask the China question separately, if that is all right.
Sure. Thank you, Euan. Good afternoon. Hope you are doing well. So on Korea, you are right. We took price on our premium brands in January. It was indeed a price increase on average by 10%, mostly in the in-home channels, and of course there, mostly on can packs. That price increase took place on the 1st of January. For the context, we do see in South Korea that the industry has been experiencing quite strong commodity price increases across different categories, mainly aluminum, which we use for the cans, but also malt, so the barley. We are implementing, of course, on top of these revenue management initiatives, quite some cost efficiency initiatives as well to mitigate the headwinds.
As you probably know, difficult for us to give any pricing guidance, but I think maybe for context, since last year, the Korean government has implemented the specific tax system, which essentially adjusts the excises on an annual basis, based on CPI over the prior year. Last year, what we did is that in connection with this excise increase, we did an excise tax adjustment of our prices in our price to wholesaler last year, early in the year. This excise adjustment system will continue this year, in 2022. We will continue to evaluate our pricings with the revenue management initiatives in the coming months. Thank you, Euan. I think you have another question on China, right?
Yeah. I am interested in the regional profitability of your business in China because it looks like these kind of periodic, localized COVID restrictions are going to be a feature of doing business going forward for some time. It would be really helpful if you can help us understand the regional profitability variances so that we can evaluate how these kind of swings in geographic mix are likely to impact your revenue and profit going forward. That would be really helpful. Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Euan. I think as we go back, since 10 years, we have been investing ahead of the curve in the premium segment, and that gave us quite a strong presence, especially in the cities with high disposable income. Today, the tier 1 cities and also the coastal cities, South, Southeast, and East Coast. The profitability by geography is mostly driven by brand mix. It is essentially provinces with a strong premium, super premium development will drive a significant, more positive margin for us for the geography. It is really driven by brand mix. Purely going by geography, it will probably be a bit misleading, but essentially, provinces with a strong brand mix to premium, super premium, which are typically South, Southeast, and East of the country, they will have a disproportionate profit contribution for us.
We are balancing, though, more and more our expansion because we do see a very significant opportunity to accelerate our expansion across China because of the increasing disposable income across the different geographies. We have been investing quite a bit. You know that we have this expansion playbook with a city stage model, and the city stages essentially are determined by the market maturity model combined with our market share position. Maybe just to do an update on that is that last time we talked about our super premium expansion, where at the time we identified 31 cities for expansion in 2021. Happy to say that we reached around 30% growth in these 31 cities combined. These cities, again, are mostly coastal cities and tier two cities. We talk about Changsha, Chengdu, but also, for example, Zhengzhou, Suzhou.
These are all cities that we focus on with our super premium expansion. Given the success we've seen, we are increasing the number of cities to more than 45 cities in 2022. When we look at Budweiser, as I mentioned earlier, we're still below 50% numeric distribution on Budweiser. We have a strong leadership in the premium segment, so we want to continue to expand the brand as well. Last year, we identified more than 50 cities for expansion. We also achieved more than 30% growth of Budweiser in these cities. These cities typically are more middle market maturity, but low market share for us. Think about Xi'an in Shaanxi Province or Handan in Hebei Province or Neijiang in Sichuan Province. These are typically cities that are middle market maturity, but low market share.
Given the success we've seen with our expansion strategy, we are now increasing the number of cities that we are targeting for expansion to more than 70. Last quarter in Q4, we increased the number of sales reps by about 150 versus year before in these cities, more than 200 brand promoters versus a year prior in these cities. We made about 5,000 new outlets customer by this expansion plan. Safe to say that given we are increasing the number of cities and the success we've seen in the expansion strategy, we are planning to invest additional resources to support the expansion in 2022 again. I hope, Euan, that gave you some context for your two questions.
Yeah. Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Euan.
Thank you. Your next question is from Melody Chen from CICC. Your line is now open, Melody. Please go ahead.
Okay. Good morning. It is Melody Chen from CICC, Food and Beverage team. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to ask these questions, and congratulations again for such a surprising result. I have two questions, and I am going to ask them one by one. The first question is about India. You have mentioned a lot on the business in China and South Korea. I am wondering what is the latest market situation in India, and how is your business performance? This is my first question.
Sure. Good afternoon, Melody, and good to hear you again. Hope you are doing fine. Regarding India, maybe to just describe the COVID situation there as well. In India, there has been a significant decrease of the number of cases in the last couple of weeks. For context, daily number of cases in India had increased with Omicron to more than 300,000 per day by the end of January. But in the last couple of weeks, has dropped already to below 30,000 per day. India is one of the countries with high vaccination rates, right? More than 60% of the population fully vaccinated, so more than 1.5 billion doses administered. And more than 90% of the eligible population has received the first dose. And in terms of hospital occupation, has also been very low numbers. Positivity rate, very low in the last number of weeks.
We actually see that India is already beyond the Omicron wave that happened during the month of January. As a result, even if, of course, in January, there would have been some impacts of the Omicron wave on the beer industry, we have seen a gradual month-on-month improvement. And retail essentially reopened now, and more than 75% of the on-premise also reopened by now in the industry. We do see that India industry is still below pre-pandemic levels, different than some other countries. When you look at our business in India, it has been quite successful. Last year, we have seen double-digit growth both in volume and in net revenue, despite these restrictions that I described. Our EBITDA actually in India is now not only above last year but also above 2019 level on a full-year basis, and in the quarter of course. That is all driven by premiumization.
So essentially our premium and super premium brands have achieved very strong double-digit growth both in the quarter and in the full-year. The contribution of the premium, super premium brands has been strongly increasing in our portfolio, driving very significant benefits in ASP, in net revenue per hectoliter. Our most important brand is Budweiser. Of course, number one premium brand in the Indian markets by far, and it actually outperformed the industry quite significantly. For the first time in the month of December, it even crossed the double-digit market share mark, which is quite a magical number for the team in India. Maybe for interest, we also expanded on Budweiser in the non-alc segment. We already launched the non-alc beer version of Budweiser last year.
To the end of last year in the fourth quarter, we also launched an energy drink, Budweiser Beats, that brings the kind of high energy premium image of Budweiser into the energy segment. I hope that gave you some color, Melody, on India.
Okay. Thank you so much. It is very helpful. My second question is about digitization. You have mentioned about digitization a lot in the quarters. How is your latest progress in this? What is your plan for this year, 2022? Thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you for the question, Melody. Digitization is actually quite an important strategic pillar for us. We put it at the same level as premiumization. We just do not communicate until we do it. It is kind of our approach. We basically want to underpromise, overdeliver. Maybe to give some color on digitization on the sales end, we have been investing quite a bit in technology in the last 12 months, with our own tech team, where we insourced our development engineers to develop the right applications and functionalities. What do we want to achieve with digital sales is essentially four things. We want to sell more, to more customers, with a higher ROI, and offering more services. These are really the four things we want to achieve. It is really not about cost efficiency alone, I should say. It is actually much more about top-line growth.
Selling more to more customers, with a higher ROI, offering more services. We already scaled these to significant levels. If you look at the part of these, the functionality that drives pre-marketing investments and digital engagement, we already have more than 500,000 customers that are on our digital platform for their business. When we look at a transactional functionality, we have piloted in two cities so far, in 2021. And we have now around 10,000 stores that are successfully using our transactional functionalities to place their orders with our wholesalers into our business. We have quite ambitious plans for these. We are set to roll out in more than 10 cities in the first half of this year to reach about 60 cities by the end of the year, 2022. We are actually quite excited about this digitization program. Thank you for your questions, Melody Chen.
Thank you so much. It is very detailed and very clear. Thank you again, and have a nice afternoon.
Thank you. Take care.
Thank you. There are some questions from the webcast participants. I will pass it on to Mr. Jan Craps to read out the questions. Please go ahead, sir.
Sure. I see we have one question on carbon neutral. What are your initiatives in the carbon neutral and net zero fronts? On that question, I think the biggest news we had last year was Wuhan Brewery achieving a carbon neutral status in 2021. Why was that so important? Because this was actually the first brewery in the whole China beer industry to go carbon neutral. It was also the first brewery globally within the whole AB InBev group, within our parent company's breweries. As you might know, we have more than 200 breweries around the world. This was actually quite a significant pilot and first brewery to achieve that. Wuhan Brewery is actually one of our biggest breweries in Asia. It was not just a small brewery where we were trying.
We actually went for one of the biggest ones and were able to realize carbon neutral. Of course, increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy use has always been a very important part of our sustainability commitments. Because as part of our 2025 sustainability goals, we want to have 100% of our electricity coming from renewable sources by 2025. On that path, we now have three breweries in China operating in RE100, so 100% renewable energy. We have seven breweries in China with solar panels and six more in Vietnam and India. South Korea this year will come online with solar energy through solar panel installations that will take place in the next coming months. Beyond our own footprints, we also work with our whole supply chain. We actually inspire and encourage our suppliers to take part of our ambition and our journey on sustainability.
One of our biggest suppliers, Huaxing Glass, they already now have four glass factories using solar energy. It is quite encouraging, and we continue to motivate our suppliers to invest, and also be part of this journey towards carbon neutral. Of course, with these 2025 sustainability goals paving the way, we now decided to take our ESG commitment one step further. I am really happy to take the opportunity to announce today, that we have a commitment to go to net zero across our complete supply chain and value chain by 2040, building a more sustainable and inclusive future. Expect more news in the coming months and quarters. We will not stop with Wuhan. We hope this year to do at least one or two more breweries in carbon neutral and gradually, basically convert the whole park to carbon neutrality, as soon as we can.
I think that is the only question I had on the webcast operator.
Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session today. I would like to turn the conference back to you, Mr. Jan Craps, for the closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Anna. In 2021, we made significant headway towards our dream to become the most loved high quality growth leader in beverage. In 2022, we will continue to progress to our commitments to our three strategic pillars. First, we aim to lead and grow the category through premiumization and expansion. Second, we will digitize our ecosystem to accelerate both existing and new business opportunities. And third, we want to optimize our business to drive top-line growth and margin expansion. In addition, ESG will remain a key priority this year as we advance towards our 2025 sustainability goals and our 2040 net zero supply chain goal, creating the greatest value in terms of commercial excellence, environmental resilience and social cohesion. Thank you very much. Stay safe and well, and I look forward to speaking to you all again. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's results call. Thank you all for your participation. You may all now disconnect your lines.