How Heineken got a boost from Mother Nature

AMSTERDAM - Dutch brewer Heineken says warm summer weather in Europe helped increase beer sales in the third quarter, while tough market conditions led to a drop in sales volume in Russia.

Heineken said Wednesday that revenue rose 7.5 percent organically -- stripping out the effects of currency fluctuations and acquisitions -- to 5.5 billion euros ($6.08 billion) in the three months to October.

The company recorded a net profit for the first nine months of the year of 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion), including an extraordinary post-tax gain of 375 million euros on the sale of its Mexican packaging unit Empaque, up from 1.1 billion euros in the same period last year.

Heineken is ending a share buyback it began earlier this year. It spent 365 million euros buying 5,229,279 shares.