Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Anadolu Efes third quarter financial results conference call and webcast. My name is Aslı Kılıç Demirel, and I'm the Investor Relations Director of Anadolu Efes. Our presenters today, Mr. Can Çaka, the CEO, and Ms. Gökçe Yanaşmayan, the CFO. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Following the first part of this call, there will be a Q&A session where you will be able to write down your questions on the question box of your web screen during the presentation. For those who would like to ask questions, please write your questions before the Q&A session because it takes some time for us to see them on the screen. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded and the link will be available online.
Before we start, I would kindly request you to refer to our notes in our presentation regarding forward-looking statements. Now I'm leaving the floor to Mr. Can Çaka, Anadolu Efes CEO. Sir.
Thank you, Aslı. Hello all. Like Aslı's usual disclaimer statement, let me start with my usual we are proud statement as well. Putting aside the joke, we are really proud with what we are delivering, and it's especially making it for the third consecutive quarter. That is also much more important in a period where we have lots of challenges. As you would recall, in our prior calls we discussed this last year. At the end of last year we discussed this, I mean, right after the exit of the pandemic, the supply chain disruptions, inflationary environment was putting a lot of challenges for every businesses, not only on ours. Basically, we were expecting that to reflect into consumers' disposable income and further to their confidence as well as a declining mode.
On top of that, certainly what's happening in the region has also put a lot of challenges and continue to put a lot of challenges. However, we were able to accelerate our momentum through the season actually to the very the most important quarter for our business. We obviously during the first half we benefited from obviously COVID impacted lower base of 2021. Yet on the third quarter our last year's volume base was quite strong. You would recall during August when we were talking about the first half results, we were cautious, let's say, reasonably cautious for the rest of the year. Today we are obviously much more clear.
We had managed to perform this last year's high base with a very good momentum, and we have received, I mean, strong results in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, in Beer Group and when we look into the soft drinks side also that's supported by Uzbekistan. On top of the volumes obviously, volume side was an important contributor to our business. As we discussed again, pricing would have been the most important part of the, let's say, the performance for this year, given the increasing cost base and potential increases on the inflation would have an impact. We managed that very strongly. We had much stronger top-line growth. Obviously, that is supported with our very timely and very smart pricing decisions.
We have also supported our top line with the revenue growth management initiatives that we have taken through the year. We are also constantly improving our effective discount management, promotion management all through the business line. We also benefited from the foreign currency translations or I may say the strengthening of the local currencies of our international businesses versus the domestic businesses. That is obviously a result of our well-diversified geographic footprint. With the support of this strong top line, we obviously achieved a much better operating leverage. We also backed our disciplined OpEx management, and that also together with the use of hedge mechanisms that we are effectively implementing every other year, that also contributed to the operational profitability.
With the higher operational profitability and good momentum in payables performance and postponed investments to the last quarter, we had an outstanding level of free cash flow generation at the end of nine months. Therefore, our consolidated leverage ratio has shown significant improvement as well and was realized as below 1x. Having said that, payables performance, we expect it to be normalized partly in the last quarter. Also, as we are discussing, as many businesses you are hearing from, the lead times are getting longer. That's why we are going to accelerate our CapEx for 2023 and even beyond 2023.
That will have an impact in the last quarter. However, our overall results, with our very strong results in the nine months, and they are ahead of our expectations, ahead of our initial plans, especially in the Beer Group. That led us to improve our Beer Group outlook, and that is also reflected into the consolidated results or expectations guidance. I will be talking about it at the end of the presentation. Looking a little bit more into the volume part, different markets, and beer operations. Our reported volume declined by 1% this quarter. That's impacted by, I mean, by Ukraine obviously.
However, if we exclude Ukraine, where we didn't have operations through the seven months of the year now, our Beer Group sales volume grew more than 3 percentage points compared to last year. I mean, driven by successful momentum, as I mentioned at the beginning in Turkey and Georgia, and partly Kazakhstan, I would say. In Russia, the market slowed down after the peak season with a mid-single digit decline in the quarter. The market was affected by high price adjustments, as we all had at the beginning of the year. That is slightly offset by the favorable weather conditions, especially in August. Yet, the current pricing level is putting pressure on the consumer demand. Cycling a high base of high single-digit growth last year, our own volumes performed slightly below the market.
Yet some of our key brands in core segments in Russia performed and contributed throughout the period. That's a positive sign. That's a positive momentum which we are following very closely. We are obviously very dedicated to our strategy on focusing on volume and profitability balance and moving towards our long-term goals in terms of increasing our return on investments in Russia, specifically. As I mentioned in our previous quarterly calls, we are aiming to resume operations in our Chernihiv Brewery in Ukraine. As we speak now that our brewery in this central part of country is operational. We are producing beer and starting to get our shelf space in the country.
Other than Russia and Ukraine, other CIS operations, particularly Kazakhstan and Georgia, continued to sustain their growth momentum. The average growth in CIS was low single digits in the third quarter. Kazakhstan grew slightly on a year-over-year basis, thanks to especially having support from both the premium and affordable segments in our portfolio. Only in Moldova our volumes declined around low teens. That is partially based on the rising inflation. Moldova has one of the highest inflation in the region and putting a lot of pressure on the consumer demand, as a result of the consumers' purchasing power affected with the higher inflation, higher necessity spending. Mid- to high-teens growth achieved in Georgia, supported by positive market momentum as a result of the strong seasonal performance.
We gained market share also in Georgia in both beer and soft drinks operations. Both our soft drinks and beer contributed to the volume growth. Finally, Turkey. We recorded a significant growth, 24%, even exceeding the strong growth achieved in the first half. Obviously, that is supported by the recovery on the on-trade channel as well as a very good tourism season in Turkey throughout the season. Those all supported. We are very pleased with our successful new brand launch, and that was at the beginning of the summer period. That showed that they contributed with solid volume potential, gaining significant market share. At the same time, our core brand, Efes Malt, also showed a resilient performance throughout the quarter.
With all said, I mean, our consolidated sales volume grew by slightly higher than 1% on a reported basis. With this, with the contributions of the soft drinks operations, we reached more than 36 million hectoliters in third quarter, bringing our nine months volume growth to 9%. We did discuss partly Beer Group volumes anyway. Excluding Ukraine was only down by 1%, supported by the continued strong momentum in Turkey and Kazakhstan and Georgia in the third quarter offsetting the volume decline, as I mentioned in Russia. In nine months, excluding Ukraine, Beer volumes grew by more than 3%. Soft drinks, I will let beer touch base with the soft drinks on the next slide. A few words.
Obviously, I'm sure you have heard our colleagues earlier this week. Citing a historically best quarterly performance of the last year. Our soft drink consolidated sales volumes grew by 7.5% with solid growth achieved, especially in international operations. The consolidation impact of Pakistan offset the volume decline in Turkey. Then also on the sparkling category continued its high momentum and grew by almost 11% on the back of strong Coca-Cola and Fanta performance. This still category recorded similar growth rates around slightly higher than 7% with strong ice tea and energy drinks performance. Water category declines around 14% in line.
That's in line with the company's focus on the small packs and value generation strategy, and again, a cycling of a high base of last year. Turkey domestic volumes declined by slightly less than 8% due to the impact of high inflationary environment and lower consumer confidence, obviously, and also to some extent, lower temperatures compared to last year's summer season also contributed to this. International operations recorded almost 20% volume growth on a reported basis. Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were again the main contributors to the growth of international operations, and Uzbekistan was the fastest growing operation among CCI countries, recording more than 40% growth rate. With that said, obviously, I'm trying to emphasize the revenue growth over the volume growth.
Let's say, as we can't operate in Ukraine, we were expecting the volume performance impacted. Obviously, high inflation and higher price taking also, we expected certain limitations on the consumer demand. Again, I think the important factor or criteria for us was to be able to support the top line growth. As I mentioned at the beginning, we had, let's say, a cautious decisions in terms of taking pricing even earlier, starting to the year. With those smart decisions and also with revenue growth management initiatives and again, very effective promotion management through the quarter, we had an outstanding performance in our top line this year, which is and which contributed to the very strong profitability filtering through through the P&L.
Our consolidated net sales revenue increased by 153%. Obviously, we benefited from the translation of international operations into TL. Even if we exclude the FX impact on a constant currency basis, we have very strong growth rate. Price increases implemented, obviously in order to cover the cost inflation. Excise tax increases also. Those were very timely and together with the hedges, together with the, let's say, increase inventories at the beginning of the year to lower the cost base or smoothen the cost increases, those all helped us. We also supported the top line with the revenue growth management as I tried to mention, including smart sizing, SKU prioritization, focusing on certain elements and in that perspective.
Obviously, our emphasis for the last couple of years, improving our discount and promotions management, making it much more effective, much more linked to the volume performance as well. Those are all working properly and supporting the top line growth. The growth achieved in Beer Group was around 147% in third quarter. Almost same contributions in Turkey and international operations. While volume growth was contributed to some extent, especially in Turkey, international beer benefited from price adjustments and strong ruble against TL as well. On the soft drink side, sales revenues increased by 156% in the third quarter. Uzbekistan consolidated accounted for 20% of the reported growth.
All said, in terms of the volume and revenue, that was translated in an exceptional profitability expansion. I would like to mention again, and we are very pleased to deliver such results. In third quarter, as we went through before Anadolu Efes revenues grew more than 150%. Soft drinks margins performance was impacted partly with the high base of last year, as well as from the pressure from FX volatility and commodity and energy price inflation. However, despite all these factors, the EBITDA expansion that we delivered on the Beer Group was much stronger. Our margin expansion was more than 930 basis points, and that translated into more than 250 basis points expansion at Anadolu Efes consolidated level.
Our net profitability reached TRY 2.1 billion in third quarter, more than tripling its level what we had last year. Strong improvements in the operational profitability led to a solid improvement in the net profitability, obviously overcoming the impact of the higher financial expenses. Gökçe will give you much more color on this. Finally, before I leave the floor to Gökçe for the elaboration on the financial performance, obviously we have a very strong all-time high free cash flow generation, around TRY 7.1 billion in nine months of the year. As I noted at the beginning, we improved our, let's say, our guidance while we are improving our performance and balance sheet health.
Let me leave the floor to Gökçe, and I'll be back with the guidance at the end of the presentation.
Thank you, Can. Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to our conference call for third quarter results of 2022. Obviously, I'm also very happy and proud to present very strong set of numbers in third quarter. Let me get into the beer results and underline them a bit more and elaborate on them. In third quarter, we are looking at a volume decline of 13% almost, though this number would have been 1% decline only if we were to exclude Ukraine operations. Yet Beer Group sales revenue has significantly increased by 147% and reached TRY 12.3 billion in third quarter. You've seen similar growth in Turkey and international beer operations. While international beer revenues expanded by 148%, Turkey's revenue grew by 45%.
That actually means that we have maintained our revenue growth momentum and achieved an increase of 128% year-on-year in nine months and reached TRY 27.3 billion . On the cost side, we have observed inflationary pressure in our cost base more than previous quarters, primarily in packaging materials and energy prices. Actually, the cost pressure shifts from commodities to energy. The level of pressure varied from one country to another operating country. However, as a general comment, I can say that effective use of commodity and currency hedging, together with successful pricing strategy, helped us to outperform the increase in top line. Gross profits grew by 188% and reached TRY 5.6 billion, while gross margin expanded by 645 basis points.
This resulted to a growth of 163% for nine months with a margin improvement of 562 basis points. Another good news, Beer Group EBITDA performance was ahead of gross profitability. EBITDA grew by 109% and reaching to TRY 2.9 billion. As a result, nine months EBITDA were up by 289% to TRY 5.4 billion with a margin improvement of 814 basis points. Free cash flow also expanded in third quarter and reached to TRY 759 million, and in nine months we are looking at a free cash flow generation of TRY 5.8 billion versus 1.5 billion of last year. In the following slide, let me show you EBITDA and free cash flow bridges to give you a bit more detail.
In EBITDA bridge, we again see our growth algorithm working successfully in third quarter. That means revenue is growing more than cost of goods sold and operating expenses. Price adjustments, revenue growth management initiatives, and effective discount management that we have previously mentioned enabled us to grow revenues by 37% on FX neutral basis, while this number remained as 21% and 22% for cost of goods sold and operating expenses, respectively, thanks to our discipline in cost and expense management and ZBB zero-based budgeting effort, basically. Conversion still has a very positive impact. TL, Turkish lira remains weaker and ruble stronger versus last year. Overall, another very strong EBITDA performance for third quarter. When it comes to free cash flow, we also have an increase in free cash flow generation in third quarter. In this quarter, the increase is primarily driven by better profitability.
You will remember that we had noted in our first half call that we were expecting working capital to get normalized with lower payable levels and increased stock level. As this has happened in line with our planning and expectation, we see the reflection of this in our free cash flow bridge for third quarter. Yet in nine months results, we continue to have a record level of free cash flow. Again, in the following slide, let me touch base to balance sheet and risk management. By the end of third quarter, 50% of our cash we hold was hard currency denominated in Beer Group, and this was 58% for Anadolu Efes consolidated. We are looking at a very healthy leverage ratios at the end of third quarter, thanks to significant EBITDA growth.
Our net debt to EBITDA has also improved significantly and declined to 0.7x, both for Beer Group and Anadolu Efes consolidated. Finally, let me update you about the Beer Group hedges. Basically, from the commodities that we can hedge, we had hedged already 88% volume million, 100% of PET, and 93% of barley exposure for 2022. This number is 50% of hedge for Turkey, Türkiye and CIS countries actually for 2023. On the FX side, we are pretty covered for this year's P&L, and for 2023 we have already hedged around 60%-70% of Türkiye's exposures as well. This concludes my presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Gökçe. Let me go through the guidance update. As we discussed in prior calls, earlier this call as well, the operating environment was kind of difficult throughout the year. We have faced unprecedented challenges obviously. We would never foresee these when we were doing our budgets at the beginning of the year. One of the most important operation became non-operational in February, unfortunately, and we faced enormous inflationary pressures across the board, and that is valid for any business, I would say. On top of that, yes, we see some commodity prices are softening, but still the energy prices are very high, and energy prices are impacting obviously the packaging costs in every other operation.
Grain prices are still higher than historical levels, and we see increased prices. Despite all these difficulties, we managed to beat our estimations, plans during the quarter, therefore, we are making another improvement in our especially Beer Group guidances and which also have an impact on the consolidated outlook as well. We improve our Beer Group volume decline expectation from mid-teens to low-teens, primarily due to the very good momentum we achieved in Türkiye. Therefore, on a consolidated basis, we now expect our volumes to grow by low to mid-single-digit, which initially was low-single-digit, guidance.
We improve our beer revenue growth expectation from high teens to low-to-mid 20s on FX neutral basis with improved volume guidance, as well as stronger ruble and performance in international operations. On a consolidated basis, this translates into our revenue growth to be around low 40s on an FX neutral basis. Again, here, the initial guidance was mid-30s at the beginning of the year. In terms of the profitability, for Beer Group EBITDA margin outlook, we make a very strong improvement here, and we now expect our margins to improve around 400 basis points compared to a year ago, which was at the beginning of the year. They've led to slight margin expansion. That also has an impact on the consolidated margin expectations.
We now expect our margins to stay flattish or to expand 100 basis points. Again, the initial expectations was more on the stay flat at the beginning of the year. Thank you for your interest and patience to the presentation. Now we are ready to take your questions. We see a lot of interest, a lot of questions. Let us start. I would ask for the convenience of the audience. I would ask Aslı to read the questions, then we will, either me or Gökçe, and hopefully more Gökçe will respond to these.
Thank you. We have a couple of questions. Some of them are already published so that we don't have the same questions over and over again. The first one that we got is: Have you progressed on your JV acquisition in Russia? Can you outline anything on that transaction? Furthermore, have you considered the sanctions risk associated with this?
Thank you. The transaction is progressing probably on a slower rate than what we initially foreseen, but it is progressing. We have very good, let's say, discussions with our partner and shareholders. In that perspective, that is. Given the current challenges, given the, let's say, issues in Russia, in moving parts, I would say, that's a very cautious, very, let's say, prudent progress. In that perspective, we expect it to continue to progress in this manner. Frankly speaking, I think there were also questions about the potential timing, so on and so forth. We expect to see some sort of, you know, let's say, clarification on the terms of the deal in the coming period.
We would have the regulatory approval process. I mean, even if we go as fast as we can, I think this would only be realized, finalized, completed, whatever the verb is, by mid-year in the second quarter next year. That would be certain time required for the regulatory approvals in both countries. Having said and for us to complete the transaction documents as well. Having said that, as partners and as we are fully committed to the business and concentrated on the performance, making sure that the business, especially in Russia, progresses as we outlined, as we put targets for the management and also resuming and strengthening our operations in Ukraine. Again, those are the main targets.
From the compliance risk point of view, obviously, we are constantly reviewing that. That's obviously something we have to be very careful. For the time being, neither in Turkey nor in any other country there aren't any sanctions against, with respect to our business, let's say our industry. Other than that, obviously we are following all the developments. That is what we can say for the time being.
Thank you. The next question is, could you please disclose contribution of Russia and Ukraine to the beer EBITDA in 3Q? Could you specify the amount of cash that was in Russia and Ukraine as of 3Q? Both S&P and Fitch are worried about potential deals to acquire Efes stake in Russia and might downgrade the ratings if they see increase in leverage. Could you please comment on this issue? How and if do you plan to approach the transaction in credit neutral way?
Well, let me start the first question. Russia and Ukraine contributes around 60%-70% of our Beer Group EBITDA. Cash-wise, we can say that close to 40% of our cash basically is in Ukraine and Russia, again, in Beer Group, and it's less than 20% when it comes to Anadolu Efes consolidated. About the deal, potential deal acquisition, obviously I can't give flavor that much now, but we know our long-term commitment of leverage targets between 1x-2x , so we will try to stick to those targets.
Thank you. Could you please comment on your ability to stream dividends from Russia?
Yes.
Well, I mean, again, we are taking actions with this direction too this year. For the time being, as Can says, yes, actually we don't see a negative thing there. We are taking our action, and we are expecting to stream the dividends.
Do you expect positive impact of pricing to fade in 2023 and margins to normalize? Or, do you think markets will give opportunity to price further with no major interruption in volumes?
That's a very good question. Obviously, let us be very transparent here as well. Challenges are continuing despite, as I mentioned, aluminum, maybe some other commodities are below their peaks of last year. Our hedges for 2023 are below what we have this year. In that perspective, there would be some relaxation. Again, energy prices are high, grain prices are high. From the cost input cost point of view, from the raw material cost point of view, we still see the pressure. Obviously that requires, given the again inflationary environment continues almost everywhere in the globe. This would require all the industries to take pricing.
That is expected to have a considerable impact on the consumer demand to a certain point. We see that as the prices move higher and higher, that impact on the consumer demand. That is why 2023 would be as challenging as 2022. In that perspective, we are making our plans considering the current inflationary environment will continue. It will be a tough and challenging year from the consumer demand point of view. We have lots of very strong portfolio. You would remember for the last couple of years. I'm talking about various of our investments into people, our investments into our brands, into our digital platforms, so on and so forth.
All these investments, all these preparation has created much stronger business profile as of today from the, let's say, management capability point of view, from the portfolio point of view, from the way we understand our consumers and the way how we can react. The challenges will continue, and our responsibility is to continue to our superior performance. That's what I can say today. Having a good, let's say, a proper and realistic, rational understanding of these challenges, as a management team, we are preparing ourselves. I'm sure as we delivered throughout the last couple of years, despite all challenges, we'll continue to deliver.
Thank you, Can Bey. We have couple of more, but almost the same questions. Therefore, I'm not reading them.
Thank you.
Other than that, we have no further questions actually.
Good. Thank you, Aslı.
Okay, this concludes our conference call. Thank you for your participation.
Thank you all for your participation. Thank you.
Thank you.