The De­cem­ber 1 fire at the house of An­gos­tu­ra did not dim An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Lim­it­ed’s prof­its as the com­pa­ny once again topped $1 bil­lion in rev­enues for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed in­creased prof­its and rev­enues in its sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for pe­ri­od.

An­gos­tu­ra record­ed af­ter-tax prof­it of $151.9 mil­lion for the year, which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 4.64 per cent com­pared to the $145.2 mil­lion the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny earned in 2022.

The com­pa­ny’s prof­it be­fore tax in 2023 was $220 mil­lion, which was 7.84 per cent more than the $203.9 mil­lion it de­clared in 2022.

Chair­man Ter­rence Bharath said, “This rep­re­sents an im­prove­ment in our prof­itabil­i­ty ra­tio by 100 ba­sis points to a 20.8 per cent prof­it be­fore tax mar­gin.”

He al­so not­ed the com­pa­ny se­cured back-to-back rev­enues top­ping the bil­lion dol­lar mark.

Bharath said, “The com­pa­ny de­liv­ered a ro­bust per­for­mance, as we con­fi­dent­ly steered An­gos­tu­ra through the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the spir­its mar­ket post the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Build­ing on last year’s his­toric achieve­ment of sur­pass­ing the one-bil­lion-dol­lar rev­enue mark, rev­enues reached $1.05 bil­lion in 2023, grow­ing by $26 mil­lion or 2.5 per cent.”

He said, “This ac­com­plish­ment was main­ly dri­ven by our suc­cess­ful in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy, which led to 76 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s year-on-year growth. This was fu­elled by key mar­ket­ing in­vest­ments dri­ving rev­enue growth of 13 per cent for icon­ic An­gos­tu­ra® Bit­ters in the USA, whilst rums, 69 per cent be­ing pre­mi­um rums, con­tin­ued to gain trac­tion around the world, with nine per cent growth.”

The An­gos­tu­ra chair­man point­ed out in his state­ment that the An­gos­tu­ra brand is among the top ten trendi­est rum brands, ac­cord­ing to Drinks In­ter­na­tion­al, with the in­no­v­a­tive An­gos­tu­ra Tam­boo® spiced rum lead­ing the way.

He al­so not­ed the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca mar­kets al­so achieved strong rev­enue growth with in­creas­es of 12 per cent and 16 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly, while An­gos­tu­ra® Chill con­tin­ued to per­form above ex­pec­ta­tions in the Caribbean re­gion with rev­enue growth of four per cent or $14 mil­lion.

The lo­cal mar­ket al­so saw im­prove­ments, as Bharath ex­plained, “Rev­enue from the lo­cal mar­ket grew by $10.7 mil­lion or 1.6 per cent, dri­ven by the strat­e­gy to re­cap­ture con­sumer de­mand by in­vest­ing in the on-trade and at Sol­era, our re­tail chain, which both achieved sol­id sin­gle-dig­it rev­enue growth com­ple­ment­ed by a new Sol­era branch which was opened at Al­bion Plaza.

“An­gos­tu­ra’s pre­mi­um rum range rev­enue grew by 11 per cent in the lo­cal mar­ket, to­geth­er with the port­fo­lio of agency brands which gained 13 per cent in the lo­cal trade.”

He al­so hailed con­tin­ued in­no­va­tion in the rums seg­ment with the launch of Sym­pho­ny 2023 Edi­tion, which he de­scribed as “a care­ful­ly craft­ed and bot­tled mas­ter­piece of ages, flavours and aro­mas”.