Henry Kravis has outcrafted the world’s biggest beer maker, netting a nearly $2 billion profit, The Post has learned.
KKR and Affinity Equity Partners announced Monday they were selling South Korea’s Oriental Brewery back to Anheuser-Busch InBev for $5.8 billion, four years after buying it from them.
KKR and Affinity will each be making roughly $2 billion profit, two sources close to the situation said.
The PE giant put $375 million down in the $1.8 billion 2009 buyout, which represented just under 10 percent of its $4 billion Asian fund. Now the gains are equal to half the fund. KKR and Affinity are set to make five times their money, a source said.
They bought the division for roughly an eight times EBITDA multiple when A-B InBev was raising money to pay down the loans it arranged a year earlier to acquire Anheuser-Busch.
Since the deal, premium Korean beer brands like Oriental’s Cass have seen sales grow 10 percent a year, the companies said.
Now A-B InBev is exercising its right to buy back the brewery within five years for a much richer 11 times EBITDA multiple.
Beer makers are looking overseas at a time when domestic beer consumption is is going flat.
“It is easier to play M&A than address issues in the US market,” an industry executive told The Post.
KKR declined comment.