- Twelve-month sales – to end of December – rise 7.2% to EUR194.2m (US$209.3m)
- Top-line performance in line with previous year’s 7.8% sales improvement
- Closing quarter comes in up 8.1% at EUR50.1m
Just under a year after warning that 2023 would require a “prudent approach”, the France-based company, which is 78%-owned by La Martiniquaise-Bardinet, has booked a 7.2% increase in year-on-year sales. The performance represents a near-repeat of 2022’s +7.8% top-line showing.
The third quarter’s 6.1% sales slide was eclipsed impressively by the final three months of the year, when sales headed in the other direction to the tune of just over 8%. While the group’s domestic market was up 4.2% in Q4, Marie Brizard highlighted that the same period a year earlier had been negatively impacted by glass shortages.
Also of note in France was the admission that the market for under-12-year-old blended scotch, which is where the William Peel brand sits, is “generally declining”. France regained its top-place ranking for scotch exports by volume from India last year, according to figures released earlier this month.
Further afield, Marie Brizard’s ‘international’ reporting region stole the headlines, delivering 11% sales rises for both the fourth quarter and the overall year. Leading the way was Spain, where “industrial subcontracting” and cross-border sales for William Peel drove a 23.2% jump in 2023. Bulgaria and Lithuania were also up by strong double digits, but the continued “highly competitive market” for vodka in the US, which has long affected brand Sobieski’s sales, coincided with inventory management practices for spirits more broadly to pull the top-line down by 27.4%.
“We are witnessing a gradual market normalisation of the inflation, with an expected slowdown in the first half of 2024,” the company said in its results commentary. “The group needs to maintain a cautious sales business outlook, given that it operates in an international environment that remains volatile and turbulent, coupled with uncertain economic forecasts.
“The group remains confident in its key strengths, namely offering consumers quality products at mainstream prices during a period of high inflation and declining purchasing power.”
As well as Sobieski and William Peel, Marie Brizard also owns the Gautier cognac brand as well as its namesake line of cocktail-focused liqueurs and syrups.
