Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Anadolu Efes' Last Quarter 2021 Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Aslı Demirel, and I'm the Investor Relations Director of Anadolu Efes. Our presenters today, Mr. Can Çaka, the CEO, and Mr. 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, and 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 our 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 ground to Mr. Can Çaka, Anadolu Efes CEO. Sir.
Thank you, Aslı. Good afternoon to all. I'm very happy to host you for the full year financial results call. Obviously, this is not a great day to talk about the operations. Actually, yesterday we reported our very solid results for 2021, and basically yesterday we were thinking and contemplating to have like this call, talking about our solid results, what we have delivered last year, and how we managed this. However, as we all followed very closely all through the day, things changed rapidly in our region. Unfortunate events we are facing actually forced me to give an update on the current tension between Russia and Ukraine. Like many of you, we watched the developments very closely with sorrow. Obviously, we are not in a position to comment on the politics.
However, we hope that the two countries will meet on the ground of dialogue and as soon as possible, and that order and peace will be restored as soon as possible. Let me give you an update how we are managing with the developments and how all these are impacting our business as of today. That's obviously very early to make long-term statements any forecast. However, I mean, obviously the tensions didn't start yesterday. That was ongoing for a while. Since the start of the tensions, we had a team consisting of the top management and the key personnel who were working on several different scenarios. All these happenings are part of our scenario planning as well. We had a planning for this.
Our plans today were already ready, and we took very rapid actions up until now. Specifically for Ukraine. In Ukraine, we have three breweries. They're in the cities of Chernihiv in Central Ukraine, Kharkiv in the North, and Mykolaiv in the South, and around 3,000 employees. As usual, as always, our first priority is to ensure the safety of our employees. All possible precautions have been taken in this regard. We are making sure that we will support our employees in every other possible way. The second priority is to make sure that the plants and brewing infrastructure is safe in the country. As of this morning, the breweries were shut down and the sales operations were halted.
We are also making sure that the necessary equipment related to IT infrastructure and communication is also being relocated. In terms of financing and liquidity, we are checking our situation at the moment, but we still have some available limits from several banks. Let me remind that the share of Ukraine in operations within Anadolu Efes sales revenues is around 5% and even lower for our EBITDA. Similar to our results, the timing of the guidance that's a part of our annual results as usual was also kind of unfortunate. Obviously when we put forward certain assumptions and we provided the guidance yesterday, the assumptions were based on the normal course of business.
There will always be risks associated, and we have seen some of the risks materialized that as of this morning. Therefore, we need to observe what's happening, how long this will take. We need to revise our guidance in the coming days, but today is quite early to make any judgments, any forecasts. I can say there would be some amendments, and we need to follow the developments in the region. As of today, my focus is ensuring the safety of our employees, and my hope is around the peace will be restored as soon as possible. That's of the general remarks about what's happening in Ukraine specifically and the tensions between Ukraine and Russia.
Going into the year, at the end of today, we need to go to review our results. One thing we wanted to emphasize on this page, we just wanted to look back on a longer horizon, five years, from the last five years. I would like to note that, which I'm very proud with, is we have achieved solid and consistent growth momentum in every other metrics. Obviously, this has been supported with the merger in Russia, the inorganic growth as well. Again, that's a testimony of our value creation capabilities, our passion to create value for our stakeholders. We have been very successful to grow our EBITDA ahead of our revenues and our revenues ahead of our volume. That's quite a strong algorithm.
As you see all the numbers on the screen, and our free cash flow generation capability was even stronger than the EBITDA growth. Which grew more than 33% on an annual basis for the last five years on an average CAGR basis. Over the last five years, the growth came from both business lines. Obviously, thanks to the healthy growth that we have achieved in our beer operations, especially on the international side, our portfolio is now much more diversified and balanced compared to five years ago. Given what's happening on the ground, we may say we are on more geographies, and we are open and exposed to the issues, although in all these geographies obviously.
When we look at the international versus domestic portion, the contribution of our international business in both business lines has been continuously increasing, and where we are now generating almost 70% of our revenues. That's, again, underlining our, let's say, passion to grow our business internationally and becoming a successful regional player. Next page, please. Going into 2021, specifically, despite considerable headwinds and challenges we faced through the year, I would let me remind, the beginning of the year was, you know, marked with the increase in the COVID cases. Basically in every other country, there were lockdowns that were impacting our business.
Then starting from the mid-year second half, we are seeing enormous increases on the commodity prices. Despite all, I'm very satisfied with the very strong results that we have reported, we have achieved, where in some metrics, I would say, the results were beyond our planning and beyond our expectations. You would remember our guidance at the beginning of the year. As noted, the year started with strict pandemic-related restrictions, and in the second half of the year, we entered or despite the fact that we entered in a period of, you know, a normalization in terms of the COVID. The restrictions were lifted. We were more, especially during the season, things were much more normalized.
We started to see sharp increases in commodity and raw material prices globally, and that also inevitably impacted our business. These unexpected increases in our procurement prices as well as the inflationary environment reflecting all these across the board necessitated us to revisit our value proposition and basically to be ready for 2022. Actually, we have taken all the steps. We have discussed this in the third quarter call, actually, and we started to take pricing, increased prices in every other operations, looking into existing prices, price levels and also the hedges that we have. That also, these price increases in the last quarter also helped us to deliver the strong top-line growth.
Our revenues grew more than around 47% on a year-on-year basis. When we look into that on a constant currency basis, that the growth was 28%, and that was quite a strong growth. These numbers were obviously nourished by the strong volume growth, which was around 12%. The price increases that we have taken at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year, throughout the year, I would say, an increased share of our premium portfolio, as we discussed in every other call, and that those were supporting our top line growth.
Although we started the year with the strategy to continue to support our, you know, the brand power, the brand equity, so on and so forth. We were, as we discussed in the last couple of years, focusing to support more of our business with more marketing and sales spend. When we started to face the input cost pressures, especially starting from the second half, we've taken the, let's say, precautionary steps in spending less in that perspective in order to mitigate the pressure in gross margin, to some extent. As Gökçe will go through, we were able to cover some of the gross margin dilution at the profitability bottom line level.
Although we have still seen some dilution year-on-year basis, we were able to achieve profitable margins, I would say, this year as well. When it comes to working capital management, we had been presenting a superior performance for the last three years. Again, that supported our free cash flow generation this year also. We continued to deliver a record high level of free cash flow, which was more than TRY 4 billion on such a challenging year.
I'm also very happy to announce that in line with our commitment to maximize shareholder value, our Board of Directors proposed TRY 1.1 billion dividends for 2021, taking into consideration the significant amount of free cash flow generation throughout the year. Going on the next page. As you see, our consolidated sales volume showed a solid growth both in quarter four and for the full year, yielding a performance that's better than the prior quarters pre-COVID, let's say, period. The volumes also increased by 12% on a year-on-year basis on a reported basis.
If we exclude the impact of Uzbekistan acquisition by CCI, growth was still strong around 11% and reaching around 116 million hectoliters. Both business lines contributed positively to this growth. The Beer Group volume expansion was 5%. Again, that's supported by international and Turkish domestic operations as well. On the soft drink side, both the domestic and international operations were resilient, recorded double digits volume growth in specifically for the performance through the year. Going a little bit around various operations, probably we'll discuss around Russia and Ukraine, as I've started. Let's look into what happened throughout 2021.
Again, what's happened today on the ground, we have no, let's say, forecast or no vision how long this will continue, how much it would extend. That's very difficult to make any judgment here, comment here. Again, let's look back for 2021 performance. The Russian beer market actually grew throughout the year around 3%. Basically the Russian beer market, I mean, the news was that the Russian beer market was the fourth consecutive year of growth in Russia. Again, since the merger, we've been outperforming the market. With that outperformance, we sustained both our value and volume leadership in the country with around 30% value share on average for the year.
As you would recall, we are focusing on the value share, making sure that, you know, the volume performance is also supported with the pricing strategy in the country in order to improve the profit pool. Our sales main drivers of the success, the strong growth, or outperformance of the market was again, as we discussed in the past of the premium segment, the premium side of the business, and where we are having stronger position. Specifically our focus on the non-alcoholic and flavored beer categories as we are expanding into these categories. Slightly lately behind our competitors, but again, we have seen very strong double-digit growth rates compared to a year ago.
When looking at the brand performances, the growth was supported by our main premium brand, Bud, in the country, Redd's and Essa. Also on the mainstream side, Stary Melnik iz Bochonka, [audio distortion] and Bud Light was supporting together with the Gold Mine Beer, Zhigulyovskoe, and contributing to the portfolio growth. On the other hand, as I mentioned, we have started to focus on the growing non-alcoholic beer segments. Our portfolio again, with strong international brands, enabled us to achieve superior performance in the non-alc and flavored categories and demonstrating significant growth versus the market. We became the second player in the non-alcoholic beer segment. That was a result of strong performance through the year.
This performance, obviously the growth of the non-alcoholic segment, we are discussing globally, but also in Russia for more recently, supported with the trends around the healthy lifestyles as well as the development of e-commerce, and express delivery services. Look, that's about Russia. When we switch to Ukraine. For Ukraine, specifically for Ukraine, for us it was a, let's say, another tough year. It's very obvious that the whole market was impacted by the pandemic. Again, as our focus is more and more on the value, we had price increases higher than our competition. Our competition didn't follow us, let's say. We believe that's the right amount of price increases in the country.
We have taken the price increases, but unfortunately, the competition didn't follow the price increases properly, even continued to do promotions and discounting. Again, there is no regret on our side. We lost some volume share as a result of this underpricing and increased promotion by the competition. We believe that's much more healthy for the balance of our profitability and volume in the country. We are obviously focusing on the premium segment in the country like we do in other countries. That segment contributed to our sales volumes. Stella Artois, Corona, Kozel showed market share increases, so those were promising developments in Ukraine. We have seen, again, our volumes positively supported by the beyond beer categories.
As we discuss from time to time, we are focusing to expand our portfolio and beyond beer categories, especially kvass and cider specifically for Ukraine are part of our portfolio expansion. They outperform their segments, and we are happy with the developments in these new categories that we are moving into. Our cider brand in Ukraine had become the second biggest brand in this segment. Similarly, kvass brand, our kvass brand gaining the strong position in segment. Going into CIS. Basically, in CIS, as we discussed for the last three years, we've been focusing very much on strengthening our mainstream brands, premiumization, increasing the premium portfolio, premium brands in our portfolio.
Investing in our brands in both range. That was supporting our business and we see the results. Those results continue, and I'm very happy this let's say all these efforts, all this strategy reflecting into our performance. That's creating a very sustainable performance. We see the leadership in every other market. The volumes grew by mid-teens on average for the year. CIS countries other than Russia and Ukraine make up around 11% of our volumes. We have higher margins with our much more balanced portfolio in these countries. The contribution of these countries to profitability is higher in that perspective. In Kazakhstan, we have benefited from these restrictions as well as the economic growth in the country.
Again, I mean, maybe we need to make a statement here. At the beginning of the year, there were some public unrest in Kazakhstan. I was in Kazakhstan 10 days ago. Everything was calmed down in the country, so the business is continuous on a normal course. We have also premiumization in Kazakhstan. We have introduced Miller brand in the country two years ago, and I'd say it has become the leader in this premium segment, supporting our both top line and the profitability. We are expanding with non-alcoholic segment. We have now Efes 0.0 in Kazakhstan and flavored beers in our various brands.
We are expanding our portfolio in these countries as well. Similarly, a very strong performance in Moldova, especially on trade following the easing of restrictions similar to other countries. Our core mainstream brand and our premium segment continued to grow, and especially the premium was supported with our flagship brand Efes and Corona from the ABI portfolio. Similarly, Georgia showed a good momentum with strong growth rates supported by the economic rebound in the country with the market growth following that, and both our beer and lemonade sales achieved double-digit volume growth this year. Again, here we see the premiumization. We have Efes, Löwenbräu, Staropramen brands on top of the mainstream brands.
Basically, as I noted, I'm very happy with the performances of these successful operations and sustaining and even extending margins and continuing to generate a very strong free cash flow in these countries. Going into Turkey. Turkey, as we discussed from the very beginning of the pandemic, Turkey was the most impacted operation from the pandemic and following restrictions other than the pandemic. Most of you who are living in Turkey and following Turkey very closely would recall in the first five months of the year, actually, the restrictions were very tough. There has been almost no on-trade sales, and during the weekends, there were off-trade sales limitations as well.
Even in the, let's say, during the second quarter, mid of second quarter, there were a continuous 17 days of sales ban. Actually, I mean, curfew and the following sales ban for the 17 days of the second half of the Ramadan. Restrictions were tough. That impacted the market. Right after the restrictions were lifted, as we enter into the season, unfortunate events like the forest fires and other continue for two weeks in the southern provinces in Turkey, where actually the tourism and hotel reservations were affected at the high season through the beginning of the third quarter. However, during the fourth quarter we have seen normalization in our sales performance. Last year's fourth quarter was a very low base.
Again, 2020 fourth quarter was impacted by these similar restrictions in terms of the on-trade sales and partly with off-trade. That was a low comparable. We benefited in the fourth quarter this year or 2021. As a result, Turkish beer operations, we have seen volumes growing 5% on a year-on-year basis, reaching around 4.9 million hectoliters. Our export operations also demonstrated double-digit volume growth that has been led by the volume growth in China, Middle East, Northern Africa regions. With this performance, we've been able to reach our target of doubling our export volumes within the last three years. Now we are setting even higher targets.
As you may recall, we had in 2020 for Efes, our mainstream brand, our flagship brand, Efes, a new brewing technique, +1 technique. We have relaunched Efes +1. Most of the marketing was limited since the relaunch. Basically this year was our first year of the season. We had more marketing efforts in that perspective. Again, all these unfortunate events and the pandemic was kind of always a barrier in that perspective.
Anyway, we never gave up and continued investing in our efforts to reach out to our consumers and describing, telling them the story around the Efes +1 relaunch, better quality and better drinkable, smooth drinking experience, which our consumers are obviously liking much. That would continue. That would strengthen our ties with our consumers. Together with the efforts around our Efes, we also continue to have the innovation leadership and because Efes Glutensiz was the star of the year in that perspective. We have introduced the first gluten-free beer produced in Turkey. Again, that has been highly appreciated by our consumers, and we have seen volumes growing nicely and contributing to our volume performance. With all this, I'm also very happy with the development of our portfolio.
Our upper mainstream brands and Efes extension is also like the Efes special series, the green bottles where we have also sustainability effort behind our brand. We have seen such a phenomenal performance through the year with our Bud brand and with Efes, as I said, Efes special series. They increased their market shares in the period. Those were the positive developments in Turkey. Finally, a couple of short remarks. I'm sure you all follow the CCI, that's why we don't need to go into details. Again, a few words for those who are interested. Consolidated sales volumes increased its momentum in 2021. Then we reported a strong growth of around 16%, excluding Uzbekistan. The organic growth was around 14%.
Again, very strong and all operations contributed positively to this successful performance. Turkey operations, domestic operations for CCI recorded a strong recovery in 2021 and grew by 14%, stronger than the sector trend. Continued focus on at home consumption occasions and the recovery in the on-trade channel helped to this, let's say trend breaking successful result. On a full year basis, Coca-Cola brand grew around 15%. Both still and sparkling categories recorded double-digit growth, so that those are our positive contributors. We have also witnessed a significant increase in the share of on-trade compared to a year ago. That's obviously a result of released pandemic related restrictions. In the international side, all operations, particularly Pakistan and Kazakhstan, contributed positively.
Despite the price increases taken throughout the year, Pakistan's sales volumes in Pakistan increased around 17% and sustaining its leadership in the market. Good performance was based on higher penetration in the outlets, improved route to market initiatives and, again, a strong promotion in trade management. In Kazakhstan, sales volumes grew around 15% with the support of the sparkling category growth. One word about the new operations newcomer to the portfolio, Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan contributed just for one quarter into the performance and recorded around 25 million unit case, which was predominantly sparkling beverages. Let's look into the numbers before I leave the ground to Gökçe through for more, much more details.
Let me give a very high level introduction to the consolidated when we look into our consolidated financial results, revenues grew around 47% to TRY [39.3] billion as a result of the solid volume performance as we discussed. On top of that, the price increases, premiumization, and revenue growth management initiatives supported this further growth. Please note that excluding the impact of the FX translation in our results as we report in TL basis, the growth was still quite successful, was at around 28% on the top line. We were able to deliver 38% EBITDA growth with a margin of close to 18%, around 1 percentage point below last year, in line with our guidance of slight decline, I would say.
We have been impacted from the rise in the procurement prices, as I noted at the beginning. However, we had obviously hedges in place and all those helped with the strong volume performance also. We were able to limit this the margin dilution impact of all this commodity and input price increases, and we were in line with our guidance in that in margin perspective. We delivered TRY 1.1 billion net income compared to TRY 815 million a year ago. Increase our bottom line profitability as well. This growth was coming from higher operational profits obviously, and higher financial income supported by the FX gains on the softening operations.
On the other hand, the losses from Anadolu Etap and increased tax expenses, so the profitability increase limited the growth to some extent. Together with all the profitability bottom line growth, we recorded all-time high free cash flow. As I mentioned at the beginning, around TRY 4.2 billion, and that's supported with the operational profitability and working capital management and obviously, as usual, a prudent CapEx spending. As a result, we closed the year with a consolidated net debt to EBITDA ratio of around 1.5x , mainly due to the acquisition of Uzbekistan and partly sharp devaluation of TL in the last quarter, which also was a contributor to this.
If we were to exclude the currency impact in that perspective, the leverage would have been around 1x. Thank you for listening. Let me yield the floor to Gökçe to take us through more details.
Thank you, Can. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to also start repeating the same wish, actually, that I hope that the dialogue will start as soon as possible and the peace will be restored. While you have just seen our strong set of financials on consolidated level for fourth quarter and full year, so I'm going to focus on the financial results of Beer Group. As a matter of fact, we are reporting another quarter with growth in sales volume, revenues and profitability, which actually means that we achieved to grow in all four quarters of 2021 versus last year. These results obviously makes us very happy in such a challenging year end environment.
Beer Group sales revenue was again substantial ahead of volumes and grew by 66.9% in fourth quarter versus last year, mainly driven by higher pricing, better discount management and premiumization of our portfolios across the board. The growth in fourth quarter is the highest quarterly growth achieved during the year. The FX- neutral growth was also quite high and realized at 22.4%. Beer Group sales revenue in full year 2021 reached TRY 17.4 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 40.6%. That makes on a constant currency basis an increase of 18.4%. Well, as discussed many times by now, one of our major challenge of 2021 has been the dramatic rise in input costs.
As this is expected to continue in the foreseeable horizon, we responded with pricing actions in fourth quarter, which are extended to 2022 as well. Naturally, we saw a decline in gross profit margin. However, the decline was less compared to third quarter, thanks to these price increases implemented. As a result, the Beer Group gross profit in full year 2021 was TRY 6.4 billion, with a margin of 37.1%. Pressure in gross profit was partially offset by efficiencies and savings in OpEx. Consequently, EBITDA grew by 39.8% and 20.2% respectively in fourth quarter and full year, and increased to TRY 2.4 billion. Beer Group cash flow generation also beats last year's numbers, both for fourth quarter and full year. In fact, it's more than 2x compared to 2020.
We were able to deliver a very strong free cash flow of almost TRY 1.8 billion. In the next slide, I'm going to give you more details on EBITDA and free cash flow. Actually, EBITDA bridge tells the story of fourth quarter and full year very clearly. Both for fourth quarter and full year, we see a very similar trend of strong revenue growth, which was ahead of our guidance for the year. Fourth quarter got even better with additional price actions taken to mitigate a rising cost pressure. The numbers you see on the graph, by the way, are on a constant currency basis. To underline again, successful revenue management is a result of volume growth, price increases, and favorable price product mix.
In other words, growth is driven by all three growth components of revenue moving in the right direction, which makes it a very healthy case. We can also clearly see in the graph that the pressure from COGS in fourth quarter got bigger compared to the full year numbers. Again, this was also linked with rising input costs starting from second half of the year. What's also obviously seen in the graph is that tight OpEx management was under our focus throughout the whole year. This effort paid off even better in fourth quarter as we were able to move the prices but limit the increase in OpEx. We were able to keep increase in OpEx lower than the revenue increase, not only in fourth quarter but also in full year, thanks to our zero-based budgeting approach.
The other line you see in the EBITDA bridge mainly refers to currency translation. Overall, I believe we have done pretty good job growing our EBITDA despite headwinds during the year. Free cash flow numbers were also very strong up until fourth quarter, and I'm happily reporting that the same trend continued in fourth quarter despite higher CapEx spending, which was, by the way, already expected to be realized in the last quarter. However, this impact was melted off with strict working capital management, especially on trade payables side. Consequently, better working capital together with higher profits led to TRY 133 million in fourth quarter and TRY 965 million more cash generation in full year. Again, this is more than doubling its level versus a year ago. On the next slide, I want to talk about balance sheet.
Our policy is to hold a majority of our cash in hard currencies. Given the volatile environment together with geopolitical risks, we had even more cautious approach in cash management. By the end of the year, close to 95% of our cash we hold, we are holding was hard currency denominated in Beer Group and 75% in Anadolu Efes consolidated. One of the highlight of the year was to refinance our existing bond maturing in November 2022. Again, considering current volatility, I think we have executed our transaction with great timing and achieved to extend our maturity for another seven years, which makes our average debt maturity four years now. Net debt to EBITDA was 1.5x for Anadolu Efes consolidated and 2.5x for Beer Group.
You would remember that we experienced a very rapid FX hike in Turkey in the last quarter of the year, even very close to the end of the year actually. Turkish lira got depreciated very rapidly and sharply. This led to a translation difference for balance sheet and P&L items. If you were to exclude this impact, our net debt to EBITDA would be 1x for Anadolu Efes consolidated and 1.6x for the Beer Group. In an environment where we constantly speak about commodity price increases, I would like to give you a piece of information about our commodity and FX hedges for 2022 as well. From the commodities we can hedge, we have so far hedged 64% of aluminum, 95% of PET, and 82% of our barley exposure for the next year.
Turkish lira was already up and volatile, as I said, since quarter four of 2021. Unfortunately with recent developments, we are experiencing a volatility in Russian ruble as well. These fluctuations obviously make our FX hedges even more important. To give you an idea, around 38% of our COGS and OpEx are FX denominated. 29% of this comes from Russia and Ukraine, and 6% comes from Turkey. The good news is that in these countries, we have available tools to utilize to hedge these exposures, and they are almost completely hedged. 91.1% for Russia and Ukraine, 98% for Turkey exposure already hedged. Next slide. Last but not least, I want to talk briefly about our financial priorities for 2022. As you see, we have four pillars. The first one is profitability.
In an environment of high inflation and cost pressure, and looks like this pressure will be persistent in 2022, pricing is very important. Therefore, ensuring necessary pricing action is our number one priority to protect our bottom line and margins. At the same time, tight OpEx management, actually as this year, should also continue and support our bottom line. We have budgeted almost 70% of our OpEx through zero-based budgeting approach. In a year that we will see cost inflation, declining OpEx net sales ratio will help protecting our margins. Second pillar is balance sheet management. Here our priority is the same forever actually, and it's to maintain leverage at healthy levels and to ensure dividend flow from operations, especially dividend from CIS, contributes to our cash flow steadily.
From risk point of view, risk management point of view, we've touched base a few moments ago, but it's mainly about commodity and FX hedges being in place. At the same time, supplier-based expansion and diversification is also very critical, not only from cost point of view, but also for business continuity. The last pillar is cash flow, free cash flow. We want to continue our disciplined approach to CapEx spending and tight working capital management to support our cash generation. This will conclude my presentation, so I will give word back to Can. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Gökçe. Let's look into again our strategy, our priorities, and I will try to reflect back to the outlook. Given what's happening on the ground today, the outlook we need to revisit and once we have much more visibility. Again, when we look at the portfolio priorities, you would recall for the last three years, I've been talking about strengthening our core segment, making sure that our mainstream brands that are national champions, that are the largest volume contributors, that are key to our business success, so we wanted to strengthen that. Basically here that was a kind of a message also in every other market. We see our competition more and more going into economy segments, trying to underprice so on, so forth.
The strengthening of the core segment, actually that's a response to these developments as well. The stronger the mainstream brands, we are much more stronger to respond back to the pricing environment, so on, so forth. That was the key. That still will be the key going on. On top of that, we always continue to discuss around our focus on the premium portfolio expansion. We have, throughout the last three years, expanded our premium portfolio, improving our profitability, supporting our top line growth over the volume growth. That's an ongoing effort and that would continue. That's very important. That's how the global experience shows that the premium portfolio is expanding and we are having a much stronger position in every other country.
Again, staying together with the core, ensuring affordability to play, especially given the happenings with the pandemic, its impact on the economies in our region especially. Moreover, I mean, given the price escalations in every other line, energy prices are increasing, cost of living increasing, inflation increasing in every other country. In that perspective, the disposable income of our consumers is under stress. There we have to ensure that we are obviously we produce the best beer brands, the best, the most relevant beer brands to our consumers, but I'm sure that also we are also helping them in that affordable perspective. That's part of the strategy going forward.
Finally, the expanding into the adjacent categories, non-alcoholic beverages, low alcoholic beverages and different ciders, so on, so forth. We have commitment, and now we have much more strong portfolio with a stronger mainstream, growing and stronger premium. Our portfolio and our muscles are, we believe we are capable of carrying different categories. Obviously consumers, I mean, we have seen also throughout the pandemic healthy lifestyle expanding, so on, so forth. Consumer preferences are changing. In that perspective, we have to make sure that our portfolio is responding properly to these trends in every other countries. We have commitment into expanding our portfolio in that perspective. Those are the portfolio priorities, and that will shape our strategy going forward. Next page, please.
When we look at the capital allocation priorities, from our side, again we will continue to strengthen our position as a leading regional beverage company, but more and more focusing on our presence in our operating markets with the portfolio strategies, having a higher share in every other market we are. Our strategy goals are to maximize organic growth, to investing into our brands, as I mentioned, and into the markets where we are present. Obviously catching the right trends and ensuring we are tapping those consumer trends. Digitalization and automation of the processes are inevitably going into our agenda. Again, two years ago we started the digital revolution in Anadolu Efes, and we'll continue and invest to become more and more efficient.
We believe there are a lot of opportunities in that perspective to become more efficient and also create much more value to our partners, to our customers with the data that we are generating within the operations. Furthermore, we believe also that we have some track records of successful acquisitions, integrations, and that's also an opportunity to continue growing organically and the expansion of our operations in that perspective. Export is another area that also. So that's also seeding for this inorganic growth. Export geographies is an opportunity. We know we learn more of the markets. We learn more of the consumers in these markets. We believe that seeding our brands before making any investments is important.
As I mentioned at the beginning, during the presentation, our export volumes are growing very strongly. We are happy with all these developments. We also take into account our commitment to maintain our investment grade rating. Our target is to sustain a healthy balance sheet as Gökçe went through and keep the leverage ratio below 2x and probably over 1x and optimizing that. That would help us to optimize the capital structure and ensure efficiency of our balance sheet and the overall cost of debt.
Finally, we are also committed to preserving shareholder value, and that will be. We are happy to offer higher dividend yields and providing high returns to our shareholders as evidenced by the proposal this year and also what we have done for the last two years. Finally, the outlook for 2022. Again, please note that this was as of yesterday, before all these unfortunate events happened in Ukraine, as we all hope, expect to, and pray that this would be settled soon. As we need to revisit all these outlooks once we have much more visibility in that perspective.
However, I mean, while we were setting the outlook for 2021, obviously what we have achieved throughout 2021 was giving us the confidence and, despite the cost increases as we discussed and all these macroeconomic developments in the country. Obviously the risk factors were these macroeconomic developments, geopolitical tensions, currency volatilities and the course of the pandemic, which I believe it's fading away. You see, this is starting from the second quarter onwards. We'll see much better, let's say, situation versus compared to the pandemic end. Like, unfortunately, as I noted at the beginning of my speech, one of the risk factors is realized today. So that would cause us to revisit our guidance.
Under the circumstances as of yesterday, we were expecting our consolidated sales volume to grow by mid-single-digit level. Significant price increases we have taken, we are expecting there would be an impact on the beer markets, especially in Turkey and Russia probably, and more now. Ukraine, again, more and more now may face some headwinds than would be expected. On the CIS side, volumes to be flat and slightly higher over last year. Therefore, our overall beers volumes were expected to decline by slightly mid-single-digit levels, and we expected a high single digit to low teens growth in soft drinks side of the equation.
As the price increases as we started from the fourth quarter onwards in every other business lines, our consolidated net sales revenue is expected to grow low 30s on FX-neutral basis. Our beer revenues are expected to grow by mid-teens on an FX-neutral basis with high single-digit growth in international beer revenues and low 50s percentage growth in Turkey beer revenues. The expected growth from the soft drinks was low-to-mid 40s on FX-neutral basis as well. Our consolidated EBITDA margin is expected to decline around 100 basis points impacted by the increased cost pressures as we discussed.
As usual, our CapEx sales ratio would be stable-ish and normalized levels of five single digit, where we'll continue to invest our brewing and filling infrastructure and our brands. Accordingly, we will continue to deliver strong free cash flow. Obviously, we will be cycling a very high level of 2021. Those were the let's say guidances as of yesterday as we report the results. Basically, thank you for your patience. Thank you. I have seen a lot of questions actually on the screen. Thank you for your questions. Basically, when I look at the questions, the first couple of questions were around, let's say, the different proportions of Russia and Ukraine. I'm sure Gökçe will help in that respect, and I can comment on some other ones.
Gökçe, if you don't mind, can you take the lead there?
Sure, sure. Let me start with the questions then. Thank you. Actually, the first question was about the beer EBITDA breakdown between regions. I can give a rough guidance on that, obviously. If you are talking about beer EBITDA, around 50%-55% of that comes from our Russian and Ukrainian business, and close to 20% is from Turkey, and the rest is coming from CIS. The second part of the question was about the net debt of Russian, Ukraine, Russia/Ukraine JV business. There also I can say that this was less than $100 million by the end of last year.
The second question again comes with Russia, related with Russia, but this time revenue percentage of the group, and this is around 30% of our group is consolidated revenues comes from Russia and Ukraine operations, I can say. We have a question about the cost per hectoliter increases for the group and for beer alone. There actually, on a constant currency basis, our costs per hectoliter are increasing around 25% for the Beer Group and more than 30% for the overall group for the next year to come.
Gökçe, I mean, I think there's a question around the price increases in Russia during.
Yes.
fourth quarter and during 2021. Let me note therefore our price in Russia was higher than the inflation in Russia throughout 2021. Basically, that's throughout the year. That's what I can say and was ahead of our competitors. Basically, I mean, the following question is around the performance back in 2014 and 2015. Frankly speaking, I can't recall the performance throughout that period of time. I mean, please, answer that, that's a very good question. I understand where we are coming from. I recall very well as well throughout that period of time. There were a lot of claims around the [audio distortion]
Can [Non-English content] can you repeat, because the line was broken?
I was hearing some noise. [audio distortion] thank you for the question. I understand that you are trying to make an analogy with the 2014 similar events unfortunately happened at that time and sanctions in Russia. Again, I mean, let me remind you that back in those days, there were a lot of regulatory changes in Russian beer market as well, basically between 2010 and 2017, 2016, I would say. There were impacts of those in the market. It is very difficult to make the same analogy here. When it comes to self-sufficiency in production in Russia, I would say the barley is local. Majority of the barley is local.
The packaging producers are local, so there is not that much of an issue in terms of. I mean, I'm sure there are certain chemicals or there are certain products for our suppliers, I would say, than I refer to chemicals for the production of the, I don't know, various packaging materials or so forth. There might be further, let's say dependencies on, let's say importation. But again, I mean back in 2021, we had the supply chain dependencies. We haven't seen any issues in that respect. Probably there wouldn't be much of an issue. The team is on the ground looking into all those respects. Is there any debt or substantial cash sitting on these two entities?
Gökçe, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say basically no, because I mean there is debt, but that's majority is local debt in both countries and cash was distributed as a dividend to our shareholders and to our Dutch entity. Again, in the question around what would be the price increase in Russia during 2020, we have taken a price increase at the beginning of the year following the fourth quarter increase also. That basically again, we believe our pricing in the country will be higher than the inflation throughout the year. We are following the competition. We have seen the competition following the price increase that we have taken during the fourth quarter.
That's the good news for specifically for Russia. We have the price increase at the beginning of the year. We expect them to follow that and that would be helpful for the profitability improvements that we are expecting. Well, I mean, the next question is about the strategy plans against the developments. I mean, frankly speaking, that's very. I mean, we have a team following all what's happening on the ground and ensuring first in Ukraine for the safety of our people and keeping the infrastructure ready for when everything is resolved. Russia is more or less on the normal course of business. We don't have a brewery in Rostov in Russia, I would say. We had in the past.
We closed down that brewery. I can't recall the year exactly, but probably 10 years ago. Again, I mean, that's very early to make any judgment what's going to happen. Volume and price split for, again, we gave the volume guidance and the difference between the volume and the revenue growth, basically majority is the pricing, and we also have a little bit of premiumization and channel improvements. In that perspective, I would say, how do you expect profitability in Russia to develop during 2022 is again, we need to see how things would evolve around the current conflict. Before that, it's very difficult to make any judgment today.
I would have said, I mean, if we had this call the day before, I would say our aim is to have our profitability, you know, in line with our general guidance, I mean, the pricing, the costing, the pricing and everything. Now, again, I have to be more cautious, and we need to see. Have you, in the beginning, seen any negative developments where volume impacts from price increases in Beer Group? That's a very good question. I would say, basically, again, region by region, different reactions. CIS was kind of normalish, so we haven't seen any major impact with the prices we have taken at the beginning of the year. For Russia, it was okay.
In January, again, Ukraine and Turkey were struggling more with the pricing, I would say we have taken at the beginning of the year. That is, I guess, that takes us to the end of the questions. Thank you very much for your interest. Again, this was a kind of a difficult call for us, within all the heat of the developments. We've been following all what's happening and trying to reach out to our people, ensuring their safety and helping our teams on the ground. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for your questions. As I, well, use this time, I see no new questions. Basically, I will take this as a time to say goodbye and to end this call. Thank you all.
Thank you.