A tem­po­rary lack of Chill con­tributed to a de­crease in prof­its for An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd in the first quar­ter of 2024.

In the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial re­port for the pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, 2024, the An­gos­tu­ra Group’s per­for­mance re­flect­ed prof­it af­ter tax for the pe­ri­od of $20.6m, a nom­i­nal de­crease of $0.5m or 2.5 per cent over the same pe­ri­od last year.

There was al­so a de­crease in to­tal rev­enue, as the $188m earned in the pe­ri­od rep­re­sent­ed a de­crease of $9.5m or 4.8 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

Chair­man Ter­rence Bharath said, “Lo­cal brand­ed rev­enue de­creased by $6m or 5 per cent, main­ly due to a tem­po­rary re­duc­tion in An­gos­tu­ra Chill rev­enue as a re­sult of a pre-planned pro­duc­tion line main­te­nance pro­gramme in Q1. Full re­cov­ery is an­tic­i­pat­ed from Q3 2024.”

He al­so ex­plained the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal stan­dard rum seg­ment de­creased slight­ly by 1.7 per cent over the same pe­ri­od in the pri­or year.

He said, “De­spite this mi­nor short­fall, the For­res Park brand grew by 7.5 per cen. We are con­fi­dent that this tem­po­rary short­fall will be re­versed by the end of Q2. Pre­mi­um rum and agency brands rev­enues grew by 7 per cent and 3 per cent re­spec­tive­ly over the same pe­ri­od in the pri­or year. Re­gion­al­ly, Caribbean rev­enue con­tin­ued to show strong per­for­mance with growth of 18 per cent over the same pe­ri­od last year, dri­ven by our An­gos­tu­ra® Chill rev­enue growth across most is­lands and com­ple­ment­ed by our ro­bust dis­tri­b­u­tion part­ners in these mar­kets. Du­ty-Free busi­ness al­so in­creased steadi­ly with growth of 18 per cent, main­ly dri­ven by the pre­mi­um rum seg­ment, grow­ing by 44 per cent, as a re­sult of ex­cep­tion­al re­sults from Sym­pho­ny 2023.”

The re­port al­so not­ed there was a de­crease in in­tern­taion­al brand­ed rev­enue by 3 per cent in Q1 2024 when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023, dri­ven by Bit­ters in North Amer­i­ca.

Bharath said, “This de­cline is tem­po­rary giv­en un­usu­al mar­ket fac­tors in 2023. Rev­enue in North Amer­i­ca is ex­pect­ed to nor­malise over the com­ing months. In­ter­na­tion­al brand­ed rev­enue in the rest of the world grew by 9.4 per cent com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2023.”

The An­gos­tu­ra chair­man said de­spite the de­crease in first quar­ter prof­its the com­pa­ny still had a pos­i­tive out­look for this fi­nan­cial year as rev­enue growth will im­prove as sus­tain­able mar­ket ex­pan­sion dri­ves new busi­ness.

He added the com­pa­ny had “plans for the Group’s 200th an­niver­sary in­clude the re­lease of sev­er­al in­no­va­tions as well as oth­er ini­tia­tives as we cel­e­brate with our stake­hold­ers. It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that these events will height­en vis­i­bil­i­ty and po­ten­tial­ly pro­mote rev­enue growth in our key mar­kets world­wide.”