This week sees the start – of sorts – of results season as publicly-listed companies turn their attention to how they performed in their latest quarter. Ahead of Constellation Brands leading the way on Thursday, Global Drinks Intel considers which listed alcohol brand owners are leading the pack and which companies have ground to make up.
Constellation Brands is always first out of the blocks each quarter, although that’s less to do with the efficiency of the group’s investor relations team than the timing of its financial year: The numbers on Thursday will cover the three months to the end of August, rather than calendar-Q3, to the end of September.
Indeed, comparing results isn’t as exact a science as we – or, no doubt, you – would want it to be. As the chart below highlights, not all companies adhere to the calendar in the same way; Brown-Forman is the most obvious guilty party here. Then, there are those – stand up, Diageo – who report on a six-month cycle rather than quarterly.
With those caveats in place, here’s how alcohol brand owners have performed in recent months.
Our headline said it all in July as Moët Hennessy enjoyed "Champagne celebrations" when posting its numbers for Q2. The group flagged the impact of price increases - a well-used trope by all brand owners this year - as well as "the easing of logistical pressures as the period progressed" on its +30% year-on-year showing in the three months to the end of June.
Not far behind the Hennessy brand owner was French peer Remy Cointreau, up 27% as a "normalising" off-premise scene in North America failed to derail the company's strong performance. Elsewhere among the pure-play spirits companies, growth ranged from +21.4% at Diageo to Campari Group's +12.5%.
As we start to cycle slightly more 'normal' times a year ago, we can expect to see these double-digit rises drop to more comprehensible levels in Q3.
Over in beer, the bragging rights belong to Heineken, although the 23.9% top-line jump in the second quarter will be, according to the group itself, a precursor to a "tougher closing half for 2022". Carlsberg - up almost 19% - will have been equally pleased to better market leader Anheuser-Busch InBev, which came in at +11.3%.
Despite Heineken's pessimism, the brewers among us are likely to retain not-too-dissimilar rates of growth, if not in Q3 than most likely in Q4, as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 gave the on-premise channel a Christmas to forget in 2021.
Lastly - and leastly, which is harsh but fair - the listed wine brand owners provided little to write home about, though this was very much due to their relatively successful navigations of the pandemic: After all, home consumption, the category's dominant trend, became the enforced norm.
In August, Viña Concha y Toro - +5.6% in Q2 - flagged "a normalisation in post-pandemic consumption habits" among wine drinkers in Europe as the main reason for a double-digit drop in volumes. Having already leant into price increases this year, the Chile-headquartered group will do well to keep its sales in the black for the rest of the year.
Propping up our chart is Treasury Wine Estates, though the company deserves a bit of a break, given the outright disappearance of its main growth engine a couple of years ago. Navigating a China-free future will test Treasury's mettle, so we'll cut them some slack - Until the start of 2023, at least.
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