Leading brewer Sabeco speeds up phase-two shakeup

Vietnam’s top beer maker Sabeco, owned by Bangkok-based ThaiBev, is accelerating its phase-two business restructuring toward becoming an international brewer, Sabeco CEO Neo Bennett said Wednesday.

ThaiBev, Thailand’s largest beverage maker, acquired a 53.59% stake in Sabeco from Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade for up to $4.8 billion as it sought to dominate Southeast Asia’s beverage market. The Thai giant had plans to turn the Ho Chi Minh City-based brewer into an international beer producer, appointing Singaporean veteran Bennett as the new Sabeco CEO.

The three-stage business restructuring toward such an international company would take 10-12 years, he told the Vietnam M&A Forum 2022 in HCMC.

The year 2021 ended the first phase of this transformation. Sabeco has been strengthening its competitiveness by implementing transformation initiatives across seven strategic pillars namely sales, branding, manufacturing, supply chain, costs, personnel, and governance.

“We are riding on the first phase’s success to carry on phase two with a positive outlook,” said the Sabeco CEO, who was invited to speak at the forum to share business-doing experiences from a typical M&A deal in Vietnam - ThaiBev’s strategic investment into the domestic leading brewer.

“By and large, the board of directors of a company in Vietnam is involved in corporate governance. In other countries, the BoD deals with long-term development strategies, while the executive team is in charge of daily business. This is the difference between Vietnam and the world,” he said.

Another lesson in M&A, according to him, is due diligence, or DD. “We did not undertake the DD process carefully to thoroughly assess the target company. There is no formula for DD.”

ThaiBev managed to buy into Sabeco via that shocking $4.8 billion acquisition. In Vietnam, the face value of each share is VND10,000 (equal to $0.4 now) but the unit price ThaiBev paid was VND320,000, up to 32 times higher.

Bennett also said personnel affairs were the hardest task to do in doing business and in the restructuring process after an M&A deal.

Sabeco reported an after-tax profit of VND4,424 billion ($178 million) in the first nine months of the year, up 75% year-on-year. Its net revenues reached VND24,950 billion ($1 billion) during the period, up 44%, of which revenues from beer sales hit VND22,129 billion, or 90% of the total.

After nine months, the major brewer completed nearly 72% of the year's revenue target and 97% of its profit plan. Sabeco's sales of raw materials, beverages, wine, and alcoholic drinks also recorded positive growth over the same period.

The brewer operates 26 factories across Vietnam with a total capacity of around two billion liters of beer per year.