Japan: Kirin brewery announces lower operating profit


The Japanese brewer, Kirin announced on August 10, its 1/2 year operating profit dropped
16 % with its popular beer-like drink failing to boost its overall beer-related sales, according to Reuters, and lowered its annual profit growth forecast.

Kirin introduced a so-called "third-type" beer in April, snatching the top market share in the growing products that include regular beer and low-malt happoshu. field from third-ranked Sapporo Holdings Ltd. The added market share, however, failed to boost Kirin's overall sales of beer-related Third-type beers are made from ingredients such as hops, bean protein and caramel and taste like beer, but like the low-malt happoshu, they escape the high taxes on beer because the ingredients mean they are not classified as beer.

Kirin, whose products include Lager and Ichiban beers, posted a group operating profit of 37.53 billion yen ($335.8 million) for the six months to June, against 44.87 billion yen a year earlier.

It reduced a little its annual operating profit forecast to 110 billion yen from a previous projection of 111 billion yen. That compared with a 109.4 billion yen profit in 2004 and an average forecast of a 110 billion yen profit in a Reuters Estimates poll of 10 analysts.

Enlarged promotional costs to win customers amid intense competition also weighed on beer makers' bottom lines in the first-half. Both Asahi and Sapporo last Friday reported weak half-year profits and cut their already dull full-year forecasts. Shares in Kirin rose 6.4 % in the January-June period, underperforming an 8.9 percent climb in the Tokyo Stock Exchange's food subindex.

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