Brazil: Brazilian beverage company, AmBev, is forecast by analysts to report a 30 % increase in its quarterly profit next week, helped by stronger beer sales at home. Companhia de Bebidas das Americas, which is owned by Belgium brewer InBev, is expected to post a net profit of 565 million reais ($214 million) for the fourth quarter, up from 434 million reais a year earlier, according to the average forecast of five analysts polled by Reuters on February 25.

The estimates ranged from 386 million reais to 848 million reais, due to uncertainty about what impact AmBev's newly incorporated Canadian unit, Labatt, will have on its bottom line. It will be the first quarter in which Labatt's results are fully consolidated in AmBev's balance sheet. AmBev is scheduled to post its results early on Wednesday.

"We expect AmBev initiatives in Canada likely to be evident at the time of results. Administrative headcount reductions appear likely to generate initial severance charges," Melissa Byun, an analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York, said in a research note. Pedro Galdi, an analyst at ABN Amro in Sao Paulo, was also worried about differences between assets and liabilities in U.S. dollars.

"AmBev always says that it has a perfect hedge, but we always see something unpredictable," Galdi said. On the operational side, analysts expect net revenue in the quarter of 4.3 billion reais, 54 percent higher than a year earlier. In January, AmBev said beer volume sales rose 14 percent in the last three months of 2004 in Brazil, its biggest market. "Fourth-quarter margins should benefit not only from the strong volumes, but from the impact of a strong real on raw material costs," according to UBS Investment Research. ($1 = 2.640 reais)

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