Campari ‘on track’ after H3

Campari Group has announced “very positive” organic growth over the first nine months of the year, driven by strong sales in Europe and the US in particular.

The drinks group has reported sales of €1.2 billion, solid organic growth of +6.6%, driven by what was described as a “favourable sales mix” of Aperol, Campari, Wild Turkey and Espolòn in Europe, the US and Australia.

Bob Kunze-Concewitz, CEO, said: “In the first nine months 2018 we achieved a very positive net sales organic growth, accelerating in the third quarter, driven by the continued outperformance of the key high margin global and regional priorities in the core developed markets. The favourable sales mix continued to drive the growth of profitability and margin expansion, and helped compensate the expected adverse forex effect as well as the impact from the divestments of non-core businesses.

“Looking at the remainder of the year, our outlook remains broadly unchanged and balanced in terms of risks and opportunities. We remain confident in achieving a positive performance across key underlying business indicators in the year.”

Looking ahead for the rest of the year, the group said that sales growth was expected to be driven by its core brands in key markets, with the exception of Skyy vodka which is suffering in its biggest market, the US where sales have fallen 8.1%.

Nonetheless, the group reported that the double digit growth of Espolòn, Aperol and Campari in the US, as well as the strong performance of Wild Turkey, Jamaican rums and GlenGrant has “helped offset” the decline in Skyy’s sales.

Sales have also suffered in Argentina due to that country’s macroeconomic conditions and deflation but the overall effect on the group’s performance was declared negligible.