E-Malt.com News article: 3277

Czech Republic, Prague: The biggest central European brewer Plzensky Prazdroj, owned by SABMiller, will pay out 1.91 billion crowns ($74.14 million) in dividends on net profits from last financial year, a spokesman said on Friday, September 17. The annual general meeting of the Czech beer-making company approved the profit distribution which brings stockholders a payment equalling the nominal value of shares, Plzensky Prazdroj spokesman Alexander Bechtin said, according to Reuters.

Prazdroj, the largest brewer in the beer-loving country of 10 million people, earned 2.83 billion crowns in the year ending March 31, driven by a 10 percent year-on-year rise in sales. The Czechs drink more beer per head than any other country. SABMiller will reap most of the cash as it holds nearly 97 percent of the Czech company which produces more than 9.5 hectoliters of beer a year.

The world's second-largest brewer, which bought into Prazdroj in 1999, SABMiller has been seeking to make renowned Czech premium lager Pilsner Urquell a flagship global brand. For the previous financial year, Prazdroj paid out a total of nearly four billion crowns in two separate dividend payments.

Profit repatriation by foreign investors in the Czech Republic have soared in the past two years, undermining the economy's external balance and weighing on the crown.


18 September, 2004