UK-based Shore Capital Stockbrokers, which tracks Britvic's stock, has said that the drinks giant's move into the Brazilian market "looks to be a value-creating opportunity" in the long term.
Britvic announced in late July that it acquired Empresa Brasileira de Bebidas e Alimentos SA (‘ebba’), which opens it up to the emerging market for the first time.
Commenting, Phil Carroll, of Shore Capital's Agri-Food Equity Research department, said, "We see this as an interesting move by management that subtly changes the group’s investment case to now include not just exposure to a new international market, but to an emerging market, which, incidentally, contains the largest dilutes market in the world within the sixth-largest soft-drinks market globally."
Carroll added that he believes that Britvic’s "investment case is now evolving away from being just a cost-savings-driven earnings-growth programme to a business with both organic growth potential through an appropriate balance of market exposures and a deleveraging balance sheet, providing shareholder value-creating options."
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
