DENVER (AP) — Falling beer sales and the strong dollar are weighing on Molson Coors Brewing Co.
The seller of Coors Light beer reported Tuesday fourth-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street's forecasts. Its worldwide beer volume fell 0.3 percent.
Molson Coors also said a spate of issues including early payments of invoices, the stronger U.S. currency — which reduces the dollar value of overseas sales — and increased tax payments will leave it with less free cash in 2015.
Shares of Denver-based Molson Coors were down $3.01, or 4 percent, to $73.33 in afternoon trading after dipping to $71.85 earlier in the day.
Molson Coors reported net income of $94.1 million, or 50 cents a share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 55 cents per share. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 67 cents per share.
Revenue fell 5.3 percent to $973.8 million — but was above analysts' estimate of $969.2 million, according to FactSet.
The company also increased its quarterly dividend 11 percent, to 41 cents per share.
In a conference call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Gavin Hattersley said Molson Coors' free cash, which stood at about $957 million in 2014, will be lower by almost half in 2015 because of one-time early payments of invoices by large customers, the strengthening U.S. dollar, higher tax payments, and increased cash contributions to fund benefit pension plans.
For the year, the company reported profit of $514 million, or $2.76 per share, on revenue of $4.15 billion.
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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on TAP at http://www.zacks.com/ap/TAP