Italian drinks firm Gruppo Campari has posted net sales of €431.1 million in its third-quarter results after the company benefitted from strong sales for its orange aperitif Aperol.
The Aperol brand continued to ‘outperform’ with a 19.5% increase, driven by the brand’s core markets of Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, despite poor weather conditions in central Europe.
Campari, the world’s sixth-largest premium spirits maker, also saw growth in the Americas region, which represented 44.5% of the total group’s sales in the third quarter, posting an overall increase of 15%.
In the first nine months of the year, it recorded net sales of €1.28 billion – 8.1% stronger than the first nine months of last year.
Campari chief executive officer Bob Kunze-Concewitz said: “We delivered very good results in the first nine months of 2017, delivering sustained growth, both in organic and reported terms, across all performance indicators.
“The sustained gross margin expansion, which benefitted from the continuous improvement of our sales mix by brand and region, helped contain the progression of A&P [advertising and promotion] and SG&A [selling, general and administrative expense] investments, albeit gradually normalising during Q3, as expected. These effects led to a slight margin dilution in organic operating margin in the first nine months. Looking at the remainder of the year, our outlook remains fairly balanced and unchanged.
“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. 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 in key developed markets.”
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