FDBusiness.com

Italian drinks giant Gruppo Campari has reported a 2.4% increase in sales to €1.56 billion for 2014, driven by organic sales growth of 3.4%. EBITDA decreased by 10.5% to €294.4 million and EBIT by 11.9% to €255.0 million due to negative one-off items amounting to €43.4 million, mainly relating to provisions for restructuring initiatives and write downs. Pre-tax profit was down by 15.7% to €194.2 million and group net profit fell by 13.9% to €128.9 million, negatively impacted by one-off’s.

Gruppo Campari is the sixth largest player worldwide in the premium spirits industry. Employing around 4,000 people, the group’s extensive portfolio spans three business segments -spirits, wines and soft drinks.

Organic sales growth in 2014 was achieved across all regions. Americas were up by 4.0% and Italy increased by 3.5%. Organic sales growth in the rest of Europe was 3.2%, thanks to a solid performance across key markets, particularly in Russia driven by sparkling wines and Western European markets driven by Aperol, compensating the softness in Germany.

The rest of world showed a positive organic sales performance of 1.5%: Australia remained weak, as expected, and was more than offset by the positive development of emerging markets (particularly Nigeria, South Africa and China) and Global Travel Retail.

Bob Kunze-Concewitz, chief executive of Campari, comments: “Key performance indicators in 2014 were in line with expectations. The organic sales performance was solid, with acceleration in the fourth quarter, and doubled comparing to the previous year. Thanks to the acceleration of organic sales growth and the strong accretion in gross margin in the fourth quarter, organic EBIT pre one-off’s was flat on a full year basis. This result was achieved despite enhanced advertising and promotion spending and significant investments in new route-to-markets.”

He continues: “Looking forward, we expect that the volatility in some emerging markets and the price competition in some core regions for the group will continue also in 2015, thus limiting the visibility at this stage. However, we expect the business overall and margins to be positively impacted by the positive performance of the top 5 spirit franchises, in particular the aperitifs business, the rum portfolio and the American whiskies, also thanks to the positive contribution from acceleration in innovation.”