Heineken: Best Idea 3Q26 - Hope (still) Springs Eternal

Research evidence excerpt

Heineken: Best Idea 3Q26 - Hope (still) Springs Eternal

24 July 2026

European Beverages

For several years, Heineken has been a very frustrating stock to own and recommend. Trevor Stirling

+44 20 7676 7521 On paper, Heineken has very high intrinsic growth, with over 70% of profits coming from

trevor.stirling@bernsteinsg.com Emerging Markets, much of it in low per-cap countries in Africa and Asia. Furthermore,

historically, Heineken has been under-focused on costs, with material room for

Nadine Sarwat, CFA improvement, such as managing Europe as a common brewery network and the

+44 20 7676 6849

nadine.sarwat@bernsteinsg.com introduction of a Global Digital Backbone to replace 47 different ERP systems. However,

investors have suffered serial disappointments, as the top-line growth has not materialized

Asavari Paluskar, CFA, CA (India) and the net benefit of the cost-savings fell well below expectations. All that said, hope (still)

+44 20 7676 7291 springs eternal; and we believe 2026 could finally be the year of delivery.

asavari.paluskar@bernsteinsg.com

We are modestly ahead of cons for 2Q vol growth and solidly ahead on 1H EBIT growth.

Matthew Cheung Europe should benefit from easy comps from last year’s destocking, hot weather and +44 20 7676 6809

matthew.cheung@bernsteinsg.com a World Cup where 3 of their top Euro markets made it through to the semis. This is

reinforced by Nielsen data showing Heineken up +3.2% for the 4wks though to 14th June.

Specialist Sales In Asia, Vietnam is the largest contributor to EBIT and government stats show continued

mid-teens growth in beer production. Africa is likely to remain solid, with the Americas being

Alix Turner

+44 20 7762 4044 the major area of weakness due to: soft economies, share losses to ABI and headwinds