Crown bucks economic trend with fourth-quarter profit rise

The company put the increase down to growth in beverage and food can sales and ongoing efficiency improvements, which offset an unfavourable foreign currency translation of $25m.

Its net sales for the quarter increased slightly to $1.9bn, excluding the impact of $166m in unfavourable currency translation – net sales grew 9% in the quarter.

Crown Holdings said the increase in net sales reflected a growth in sales in both global beverage cans and food cans and the pass-through of higher raw material costs.

Fourth-quarter sales fell across all of the company’s European businesses: beverage (35%), food (8%) and speciality packaging (1%).

Full-year gross profit grew 19% to $1.2bn. The improvement was driven by beverage and food can sales unit volume growth, increased operating efficiencies and foreign currency translation of $27m, said the firm.

The company’s net sales rose by 8% to $8.3bn. It revealed that 74% of net sales were from outside the US in 2008, compared with 73% in 2007.

John Conway, chairman and chief executive, said: “We experienced a 5% unit volume increase in our global beverage can sales during the fourth quarter and 4% for the year.

“These increases were generated by our businesses in the developing markets of Brazil, the Middle East and Asia, which continue to grow. In the US, our fourth-quarter beverage can volumes were equivalent to those of the same period last year despite industry volumes being down 4%. Equally important, our fourth-quarter global food can unit volumes were up more than 2%.”

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