FDBusiness.com

Benefiting from favourable currency exchange factors, Italian drinks business Gruppo Campari has reported a 10.5% increase in sales to €757.9 million, with net profit up 36% to €77.9 million for the first half of 2015. Organic sales growth was 2.7% and the net sales organic growth excluding the negative impact from the non-core sugar business in Jamaica amounted to 3.4%. The exchange rate effect was 6.7%.

EBIT before one-off’s rose by 11.5% to €138.7 million, a 2.5% organic change. One-off’s of €2.9 million related to the gain on the sale of Federated Pharmaceutical division in Jamaica of € 5.0 million, in part offset by one-off’s restructuring costs. Reported EBIT reached €141.6 million, an increase of 16.8% or 18.7% of sales.

Gruppo Campari increased advertising and promotion spending by 11.9% to € 124.9 million, or 16.5% of sales, during the first half.

Starting from January 1, 2015, Gruppo Campari has reorganised its geographic reporting segments to reflect some recent organisational changes. The new regions are Americas, SEMEA (Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa), North, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia Pacific.

“We achieved positive growth across all performance indicators in the first half of 2015,” says Bob Kunze-Concewitz, chief executive of Gruppo Campari. “The positive results in terms of organic growth and the margin accretion were achieved despite a very tough comp base in 2014 and the negative effect of the non-core Sugar business in Jamaica, affected by the poor weather conditions.”

He continues: “Looking forward, we are on track to achieve a positive full year performance. We expect a positive performance of the key brand-market combinations and the full margin accretion to come throughout the year. Overall we expect risks and opportunities to be evenly balanced for the remainder of the year.”