After a week that has seen some challenging news for Australian distillers, a strong result, exciting rebrand and positive future plans from Lark bring much-needed good news to the industry.
Lark’s impressive financial results for the full year ending 30 June 2025 saw net sales rise 12 per cent to $15.6m, up $1.7m compared to FY24.
This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year sales growth, highlighted by a six per cent uplift in Q4 revenue (April–June 2025), amounting to $3.5m, driven largely by strong direct-to-consumer (DTC) performance.
Speaking during the results webinar, Lark CEO Sash Sharma said the ambition is to “make Lark a leader in new world whisky”.
He added: “We have the platform to go bigger and further than ever before. FY25 has been a very significant and successful year for Lark, both operationally and from a growth perspective. Importantly, we made strong progress against all of our strategic priorities, with the foundations now in place for Lark’s next stage of growth.
“The enormous effort over the last two years to cement the foundations of this business should not be overlooked. Lark has never been stronger and more future-proof than it is at this moment.
“The entire Lark team has worked incredibly hard to balance the day-to-day operational improvements in the business while keeping a firm eye on our longer-term strategic priorities, to allow us to accelerate into the future.”
Within sales channels, DTC sales increased by $400,000 in Q4, underpinning the quarter’s growth. Global Travel Retail remained steady with sales of $300,000, matching the prior year, while direct export sales dipped by $100,000 to $200,000, reflecting initial shipments to markets such as Malaysia and the Philippines.
Domestic B2B revenue fell by $100,000 to $1m, due to the shift of distribution through Spirits Platform and the removal of Lark’s in-house sales team. The inclusion of Spirits Platform’s margin in net sales contributed to this outcome.
Sharma said: “We successfully completed our transition to Spirits Platform for our B2B business on 1 August 2024. Spirits Platform is Australia’s leading independent spirits distributor and the market leader in ultra-premium and above single malt.
“The net sales impact from having Spirits Platform’s distribution margin embedded in Lark’s selling price has been more than offset by underlying operating cost savings, which means improved channel profitability.
“We are extremely happy with the performance to date of Spirits Platform, which is showing the benefit of market-leading scale, unmatched portfolio strength and commercial reach to drive both brand equity and sales growth across both the current and, crucially, the restaged Lark portfolio.”
Lark closed the year with a strong balance sheet, holding $23.1m in cash and term deposits, alongside a $5m undrawn bank facility. The company said this provides a solid foundation to execute its strategic plans.
In addition, Lark’s whisky under maturation as of 30 June 2025 was 2.5m litres at bottle strength, with a book value of $57.2m. The whisky is a strategic asset that helps support Lark’s near-term growth and future export expansion.
In the results webinar, Sharma also went through the Lark restage, which he described as “one of the most significant steps in brand evolution that we will take in the history of the company”.
The Shout will bring you all the details of Lark’s exciting restage program on Monday.