No excise duty hike, a relief for now. To recap, no excise duty hike was announced for the 8^th consecutive year in the recent budget tabled in September-12. It was a relief for brewers like GAB (MP; TP: RM17.10)  and CARLSBG (OP; TP: RM14.22)  as we believe that in the absence of any excise duty hikes, the MLM volume will continue to grow at midsingle digit in 2013. However, the underlying risk would be the announcement of an excise duty hike right after the much anticipated General Election ('GE13'). In the event of a 15% hike in excise duty, we believe that would still be a minimal impact to the brewers given their ability to pass through the cost.

Gen Y, the key driver for growth.  Generally, Malaysia has a young demographic profile with a median age of 27.6 years known as Gen Y and Non-Malays make up 50% of Malaysia's population of 29.3m (inclusive non-citizen) while Gen Y in this category (c.6.5m) makes up 22% of the total population. Based on statistics, Gen Y spends about 3% and 18% of their total expenditure in tobacco & alcohol, and restaurants & hotels respectively. Hence, we believe that Gen Y will be the key driver for MLM growth thanks to their rising purchasing power and disposable income due to urbanisation and also given that they are the fastest growing workforce in the country.

Premium segment the next growth node. With the trend of the MLM market shifting from coffee shops to pubs and restaurants, we believe that  the premium segment will be the next growth node for brewers as the segment attracts a younger population and more female drinkers with brands like Strongbow and Hoegaarden by GAB and CARLSBG, respectively. 

Cigarettes' TIV improved YoY.  The 3Q12 and 9M12 total industry volume ('TIV') for tobacco continued to improve 7.1% and 5.1% YoY respectively. This is because 1Q12 saw a consumption increase after the absence of an excise hike in Budget 2012. In addition, we reckon that the 3Q12 consumption was boosted by the improved sales of Marlboro Ice Blast by Phillip Morris as we saw a 3Q12 YoY decline in volume in both BAT and JTI. The TIV YTD registered sales of 10.9b sticks. Historically, the 9M TIV usually makes up 78.0% of the yearly consumption of cigarettes. Thus, we believe that the 2012 TIV will likely end the year higher YoY with about 13.9b sticks, implying its first positive growth rate of 5.2% since 2004.   

Pretty flat 2013?Nevertheless, premium cigarette price has increased by 20 sen in Oct 2012 across the board as the Royal Malaysian Customs had lifted the ex-factory pricing of cigarettes by between 26% and 58%. Moreover, the illicit trades also edged higher during the second wave (Jul to Sep) by 0.2bbp to 34.9%. Coupled with the uncertainty of future tax hikes, we are cautiously optimistic on the tobacco outlook for 2013 and are estimating a flat growth sales volume of 13.9b sticks. We still prefer BAT (MP; TP: RM66.30) for now as the company also manufactures for other markets such as Brunei, Australia, Philippines and Cambodia, where its contract manufacturing volume has increased by 46.6% YoY.

Source: Kenanga