LAGOS – Guinness Nigeria Plc, has released its results for the nine month period ended 31 March 2018. The announcement which was made to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), revealed a 17% year on year growth in revenue to N105bn. The results also showed a 14% growth in volume when compared to the same period last year.
Commenting on the results, Mr Peter Ndegwa said: “Against the backdrop of a challenging business environment as well as a slow and uneven economic recovery, we have delivered a positive performance with Net Sales of N105billion for the period mainly driven by the volume growth.
“Over the period, we continued the robust implementation of our strategy around our product portfolio, offering Nigerians quality brands across a broad range of occasions, from non-alcoholic to beer and spirits – we remain the first and only Total Beverage Alcohol Company in Nigeria. We also continued to focus on driving our productivity agenda, improving effectiveness and delivering efficiencies across our operations which partially mitigated the impact of high input inflation in the quarter.”
Administrative expenses reduced by 25% as a result of an increased focus on cost management while distribution expenses reduced by 11% driven by productivity initiatives such as improved truck utilisation and better truck turnaround. Marketing expenses increased by 16% as Guinness Nigeria continued to invest behind its brands over the period.
“We believe that our strategy and particularly the commercial execution are now yielding the desired outcomes. We will continue to focus on our strategy to deliver an improved performance in a challenging operating environment compounded by impending significant increases in taxes,” Ndegwa added.
Guinness Nigeria has over six decades of history in the Nigerian market and is a subsidiary of international drinks giant, Diageo Plc. Products from the company’s portfolio include iconic brands like Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Malta Guinness and Orijin. In 2016, the company acquired the rights to distribute International Premium Spirits (IPS) brands like Johnnie Walker, Captain Morgan, Baileys and Cîroc amongst others. In recent years, the company has also broadened its participation into the affordable segment across beer and spirits with brands like Satzenbrau Lager, Orijin Bitters and McDowell’s No. 1 whisky.
Over 68 years of operations, Guinness Nigeria has established several sustainable community projects including its flagship Water of Life initiative which has provided potable drinking water to over 10 million people across Africa, the Guinness Eye Hospital with centers in Lagos, Kaduna and Onitsha and its community-driven Engineering Scholarship programmes amongst others.
