华润啤酒（00291）：精益化时代控费增效，运营表现超预期

Investment Rating - The report assigns an "Accumulate" rating for China Resources Beer [1][11]. Core Views - The company's performance met expectations, with operational data for January and February exceeding forecasts. The management emphasizes entering the "Three Precision" era, aiming for quality improvement and efficiency enhancement, which is expected to lead to sustained profit margin improvements. The current stock price corresponds to a PE of 16X for 2025 [3][11]. Financial Summary - In 2024, the company achieved revenue of 38.635 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0.76%. The net profit attributable to shareholders was 4.739 billion yuan, down 8.03% year-on-year. EBITDA increased by 2.9% [11]. - The projected net profits for 2025, 2026, and 2027 are 5.190 billion yuan, 5.483 billion yuan, and 5.814 billion yuan, respectively [11]. - The company plans to increase its dividend payout, with a projected dividend of 0.387 yuan per share for 2024, resulting in a payout ratio of 52.1% [11]. Operational Performance - The company reported a beer sales volume of 10.874 million kiloliters in 2024, a decrease of 2.5% year-on-year, while the unit price increased by 1.5% to 3,355 yuan per kiloliter. The gross profit margin improved by 0.9 percentage points to 41.1% [11]. - The management has set a short-term sales target of 1 million kiloliters for Heineken and aims to double this figure in the second five-year plan starting from 2024 [11].