Hong Kong, Oct 10 - Tsingtao Brewery, China's best known beer brand, said it expects its profit for the first three quarters of the year to rise 75-85 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Tsingtao reported a net profit for the first three quarters of 2008 of 699.82 million yuan ($103 million), or 0.5349 yuan per share, based on Chinese accounting standards, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Friday.
"During the first quarter to the third quarter of 2009, the company has been striving to explore the domestic market, promote the optimisation and improvement of brand integration and product mix; and strengthen its management in the plants, (and) try to lower its costs, which helped to maintain continuous growth in sales, earnings and profits of the company," it said.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S expect, on average, the company's profit for the full year 2009 to rise about 60 percent to 1.11 billion yuan.
In August, the company, which competes with Heineken, Carlsberg and Kingway Brewery reported a 68 percent year-on-year rise in first-half profit, and projected a recovery in beer consumption in China to continue into the second half.