Finance News Network Transcription of Discussion Given by Coca-Cola Amatil Limited (ASX:CCL) Managing Director, Alison Watkins We’ve traced the Coca-Cola Amatil Limited
(ASX:CCL) origins as a bottler back to about 1968, when we first acquired the franchise in Western Australia. And since then, we’ve built up our bottling operations; we used to be in a lot of other different kinds of businesses as well. But the Coca-Cola Amatil of today is first and foremost, Coca-Cola franchisee. We have franchises across six markets, our main market here Australia. We also have Indonesia, New Zealand, PNG, Fiji and Samoa.
And then we have a couple of other pretty important businesses as well. SPC Ardmona, which is a fruit processing business with a very long proud heritage, based in Shepparton in Victoria. And we also have our alcohol and coffee business, where we have a number of alcohol partners, such as Beam Suntory Inc. (NYSE:BEAM). And our coffee business, which is the Grinders brand - is the main brand there, which most people would probably know. And also we’re involved in brewing in Fiji. We own Fiji Breweries, which is the leading brewer in Fiji.
Financial results for FY15 were pleasing for CCA. We grew our revenues by around about 3.1 per cent to $5.1 billion. EBIT came in at just over $660 million, so that was up about 1.4 per cent. Our NPAT was up 4.8 per cent at $393 million. And on a statutory basis NPAT was actually up 44.6 per cent, because pleasingly in 2015, we didn’t have the significant items that we’ve had in recent prior years. So overall, a good result.
For the next 12 months, we are aiming to take another step towards that target that we have of mid single-digit EPS growth. And we’ll do that in a way that is steady and measured. Certainly the rate, at which we’re going to be able to do that, is going to depend on the success of some of our top line growth initiatives in Australia. And also the Indonesian economy, which is something that we can’t control, but we are definitely aiming to take another step there.
We’ll also continue to maintain a good healthy dividend payout, so in excess of 80 per cent, we’ll manage our CAPEX fairly carefully. We’ve got CAPEX in Australia pretty well contained; we’ve invested in that business very well over recent years. So we don’t need to invest particularly heavily over the next little while, which means it’s a very good strong cash flow generator for us.
And Indonesia of course, we will invest and we look forward to continuing to add more capacity there. That investment is effectively funded already, because the Coca-Cola Company are now 30 per cent owner of our Indonesian business. And they put in $US500 million just about one year ago. So that business has got a really strong balance sheet, which means it’s going to be able to fund its own growth, for a number of years to come.
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