Campari has reported positive first half 2017 results, in line with expectations, globally although there has been a slight drop in sales within Australia.
Global sales increased by 13.5 per cent to €844.7m ($1.26bn), with a reported group net profit of €108.6m ($161.9m), up 61.7 per cent on last year.
Gruppo Campari’s CEO, Bob Kunze-Concewitz, said: “We delivered very good results in the first half of 2017, delivering sustained growth, both in organic and reported terms, across all performance indicators. The solid organic growth was achieved after an acceleration in the second quarter of both sales and profitability.
“Macroeconomic environments in some emerging markets remain uncertain whilst the political uncertainty persisting in some regions might continue fuelling the volatility of major currencies against the Euro. Moreover, we believe that the progressive strengthening of the Euro against the US Dollar may have a more adverse impact in the second half of the year.
“Nevertheless, we remain confident in achieving a positive performance across key indicators for the year, driven by the outperformance of the high-margin global and regional priorities.
“We expect the gross margin to continue benefitting from the favourable sales mix despite being penalised by inflationary effects on material costs in emerging markets as well as rising prices in some raw materials.”
In Australia the group reported that the organic performance registered a -2.7 per cent decline, which was driven by weakness in the Wild Turkey ready-to-drink portfolio and Wild Turkey bourbon.
Campari said the RTD performance was impacted by competitive pricing pressure as well as poor weather at the start of the year. Wild Turkey was also coming off a tough comparison base, which was a 12.6 per cent increase in sales in the first-half of last year.
However it was not all bad news here, with Campari saying that there were positive results for the Aperol, Glen Grant and Espolòn brands in Australia.