Molson Coors Profit Misses Estimates as Canada Sales Fall

Molson Coors Brewing Co (NYSE:TAP) reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit, hurt by a fall in beer sales in Canada and higher spending on marketing.

The company earlier this year sold the rights to distribute Grupo Modelo's brands in Canada to Anheuser-Busch InBev . Anheuser-Busch acquired Mexico's Grupo in 2012.

Molson Coors reported a net loss attributable to the company of $34.4 million, or 19 cents per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a net profit of $134.3 million, or 73 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, profit was $1.46 per share.

Analysts on average had expected earnings of $1.48 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net sales at Molson Coors, whose brands include Coors Light and Cobra beer, fell marginally to $1.17 billion and were in line with analysts' average estimate.

Underlying pretax income from Canada fell 8.9 percent to $132.6 million. Pretax income from Canada has risen only once in the last 11 quarters.

Separately, MillerCoors LLC, the U.S. operations of Molson Coors and SABMiller Plc, reported an 8 percent rise in quarterly net profit, helped by strong sales of its highest-priced beer brands.

Molson Coors owns 42 percent and SABMiller the rest of the business, whose "above premium" brands include Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy and Blue Moon Belgian White.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Sriraj Kalluvila)