London - SABMiller doubled a pledge to cut costs as it seeks to rally shareholders around its rebuttal of Anheuser-Busch InBev, the larger rival seeking to buy the U.K. brewer for a record 65.2 billion pounds ($100 billion).
Annual savings in the 12 months through March 2016 should exceed $430 million and should reach $1.05 billion by 2020, the brewer said Friday in a statement.
The company had earlier expected about $500 million a year in savings by 2018, in a plan unveiled in May 2014. The stock was little changed as of 9:19 a.m. in London, after declining as much as 0.8 percent in early trading.
“Our recent trading statement highlighted our accelerating growth in the second quarter,” said CEO Alan Clark.
“Another key plank of our strategy is to build a globally integrated organisation to optimise resource, win in market and reduce costs.”
The enhanced plan illustrates how the onus is on SAB to prove they’re worth more as their board has said that AB InBev’s proposal “substantially undervalues” the brewer of Grolsch and Peroni. The new cost savings will come mostly from procurement and also from making manufacturing and distribution more efficient, the company said.
AB InBev said Thursday that SABMiller’s investors should push the board of the brewer to engage in negotiations.
BLOOMBERG