With the third quarter of 2023 now in the rearview mirror, Global Drinks Intel considers which listed alcohol brand owners led the pack in the three months to the end of September and which companies have ground to make up before the year is out.
During the penultimate quarter of this year, the main issue – and one that came up frequently in results commentary – has been the inventory levels held at the distributor/wholesaler/retailer point. Indeed, no sooner had the supply chain problems of the last two years subsided than rising interest rates meant the trio have had to redress their stock levels.
As recently as last week, Diageo (which doesn’t appear in our chart as the group reports its results half-yearly) highlighted the problem in its ‘Latin America & Caribbean’ reporting region. Of wider geographical concern to brand owners, however, is how managing inventory levels is now the top priority for distributors, wholesalers and retailers in the US, the most reliable – and steadiest – source for beverage alcohol growth in recent years.
To the sales figures themselves, kudos must go to Molson Coors Beverage Co for topping the pile in Q3. While much has been made this year of the group's benefit from Anheuser-Busch InBev's consumer reaction to the Dylan Mulvaney drama in the US, Molson Coors put its success down to "not ... one market, a couple [of] brands, or one segment of the category".
"The improvement in our business started before April 1."
Low- to mid-single-digit sales increases dominated the chart, with Constellation Brands the best of the rest at +7% [albeit from June to August]. The company has long been reliant on its beer business in the US for growth, finishing second in a top five monopolised by brewers.
Best-placed of the spirits brand owners was Campari Group, which summed up the category's more general trading environment perfectly as being "the expected normalisation as well as the very tough [year-on-year] comparison base".
Five of the 16* listed multinational beverage alcohol brand owners in our coverage booked negatives from the three months. Propping up the chart - both with double-digit declines - were Rémy Cointreau and Moët Hennessy. The pair have Cognac to blame, specifically the [here it comes again] normalisation of consumption levels in the US and the [and another] rebalancing of inventory levels.
The Cognac category's US headache has been felt throughout this year: The 2023 monthly figures from the country's Control States - widely considered an accurate gauge of the US's spirits performance - paint a bleak picture.
*Two listed companies - Diageo and Treasury Wine Estates - do not appear in our Q3 chart as the pair report their results on a six- rather than three-month basis. Brown-Forman's Q3 numbers comprise its fiscal Q1 to the end of July. The company will report for the three months to the end of October on 6 December.
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