European Beverages Q2/H1 26 Preview: Brewers and Bottlers continue to outperform

Research evidence excerpt

European Beverages Q2/H1 26 Preview: Brewers and Bottlers continue to outperform

Global Research

13 July 2026ab

European Beverages Equities

GlobalQ2/H1 26 Preview: Brewers and Bottlers

continue to outperform Beverage

Sanjeet Aujla

Analyst

sanjeet.aujla@ubs.com

Beverages remains bifurcated, still prefer Brewers and Bottlers +44-20-7567 4529

Trends across the European Beverages sector have remained bifurcated YTD, with Arnaud Autier

outperformance from the Brewers and Bottlers supported by improving volume trends, Associate Analyst

while Spirits remains impacted by the deterioration in the US market in recent months as arnaud.autier@ubs.com

well as a broad-based weak industry pricing environment. Looking ahead, we see upside +44-20-7901 6849

risk to Q2 volume trends for the Bottlers helped by recent favourable weather trends

across Europe. For the Brewers, we see most upside risk for Heineken on org EBIT, and

whilst volume expectations for Carlsberg & ABI seem prudent, we think the path

forward will be influenced in part by the health of the Chinese market into Q3. For

Spirits, Diageo's capital markets day will set the tone for the sector - we expect

downgrades to US expectations, however this can be funded by higher cost savings,

which might be enough for investor sentiment to trough and improve.

Brewers - Heineken has most upside risk on H1 profits; China key focus for

Carlsberg and ABI

We expect Q2 volume trends to be supported by favourable weather trends in Europe,

as well as some benefit from the world cup particularly across LatAm, where key markets

Mexico and Brazil are lapping prior year disruption from weather trends. We expect

China volumes to deteriorate, however exit rates into July (peak season) will be key for