Diageo plc

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our results presentation for the first half of fiscal 25. Today, I will begin by providing an update on our performance for the half. Then our new CFO, Nick Giangianni, will share his early impressions of the business and discuss our results, the recent tariff announcements, and the near-term outlook. I will then come back and share some final reflections. Starting with performance. Despite a continued challenging macro environment and industry backdrop, in the first half of fiscal 25, our results showed positive momentum. Organic net sales returned to growth of 1%, with growth in four out of five regions, including North America. While consumers remain cautious and the macroeconomic recovery is taking longer than expected, particularly in North America and China, I am pleased with the results we have delivered in the half. At the end of the last fiscal, we shared our confidence that the actions we were taking would return us to growth as the consumer environment improves. Today, our performance demonstrates that we are making meaningful progress, even though the environment remains challenging and will likely continue to be volatile given the recent tariff announcements. Our focus strategy is delivering results. Notably, we have held or gained market share in 65% of our net sales and measured markets. We also continue to effectively leverage the strength of our diversified portfolio across price tiers and geographies to respond to emerging consumer trends. Looking ahead, we see opportunities to continue to outperform. We are focused on strategic initiatives that will enhance our financial resilience driving sustainable long-term growth and the ability to deliver positive operating leverage in the future. More on this from Nick and me later. One of Diageo's great strengths is our broad and diverse presence across regions and markets. This provides resilience and the ability to participate in global growth opportunities through our globally recognized brands and our vibrant local portfolios. Some brief highlights from the regions. Return to organic net sales growth in North America, albeit slight, but a meaningful sequential improvement compared to the last fiscal year. I'll come back to this. Europe delivered resilient performance in a continued challenging environment, with Guinness again the key driver of growth in the region. In Asia Pacific, performance was negatively impacted by a weaker macroeconomic environment in Greater China, challenging trading conditions in Southeast Asia, and the region was also impacted by the lapping of Xuejingfang supply replenishment in the prior year. Latin America and Caribbean, our LAC region, is back in growth, partly attributed to deliberate actions that we took across the region. Destocking is now complete, and we are also seeing a consumer environment that is modestly improving, notably in Brazil, and we are also seeing some stabilization in Mexico. Finally, we continue to deliver strong organic net sales growth in Africa, despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges. Moving to market share. In the first half, we held or grew share in 65% of our total net sales in measured markets. We have delivered share gains in almost all of our largest markets, including the U.S., most of Europe, and greater China. I'm particularly pleased with our improved market share performance in the U.S., which has shifted into solid share gain position driven by U.S. spirits, a testament to our strong and focused in-market execution. While these results are encouraging, I continue to see opportunity for us to do more. We are firmly focused on driving further improvement. Our strategic investments in digital and route to market, which are progressing well, should underpin future outperformance. Digging in a bit deeper in the U.S., despite a gradual improvement in consumer sentiment, the U.S. broader consumer environment continues to be under pressure, with grocery baskets still at 30-year highs. In this environment, total beverage alcohol has been slightly declining, with the U.S. spirits market modestly better but remaining flat. Premiumization in bottled spirits continues with super premium plus priced products driving growth, while premium and below core price products are declining by low single digit. With ongoing economic pressures, we've seen that consumers have opted for smaller pack sizes. In fact, four out of 10 of our largest share gainers have been in these smaller formats. Importantly, these formats have ensured that consumers stayed with our premium brands. Our strategy in the U.S. is delivering results, fully leveraging our innovation and targeted investment and driving stronger execution. With circa 90% of our U.S. total net sales winning or maintaining TBA market share at the end of the half. We focused our resources and investment in high growth categories and brands like Don Julio and Crown Royal. And we're encouraged by early results from our regional investments as part of our route to market transformation announced in the last fiscal. In whiskey, Crown Royal's share performance continued its momentum, gaining share of US total spirits market in the half, driven by strong performance from Crown Royal Blackberry. This initially launched as a limited time offer, but has shown strong consumer demand and has been the number one innovation of bottled spirits in Nielsen for the past seven months. Because of the success to date, we've made it a permanent addition to our flavor portfolio as it attracts a distinct audience, driving excitement and interest in the trademark, and recruits new drinkers with one in five being new to whiskey. In tequila, our portfolio delivered strong results led by aged variants of Don Julio, particularly Don Julio Reposado, where organic net sales growth more than doubled in the half. Don Julio maintained share leadership of the tequila category and was the number one gainer in total spirits as well as the number one tequila category share gainer. While I'm pleased with results, there is more work to do and we are not standing still. One example of this is Casamigos. We are making progress on its turnaround. We announced at the end of the last fiscal year that we're fully integrating the brand into our dedicated transformed distribution network. The team's focus has been on commercial execution, and enhancing brand awareness. And we're encouraged by some of the early signs of success, although it is still early days. Looking ahead, while we are pleased to have returned to slight organic net sales growth in such a difficult environment, we have more opportunity in front of us to emerge stronger. We are confident that the actions we are taking are working, and this will enable us to continue to win as the U.S. consumer environment improves. Moving on to our largest categories performance. In Scotch, we are proud of our advantage position and our brands account for more than one in three bottles of Scotch sold globally and represent one quarter of our global net sales. In the half, Scotch organic net sales declined by 5%, largely driven by softer industry performance in North America and greater China. We saw some down trading within the category as a result of the macroeconomic environment and continued pressure on the consumer. Importantly, while maintaining price discipline, we are gaining quality market share in the Scotch category in measured markets that represent 70% of our total NSV, including the U.S. This was led by Johnny Walker delivering strong share growth in the category. Our success has been supported by fewer, but larger and more impactful collaborations, such as Johnny Walker Black Label and Squid Game, and Johnny Walker Blue Label and Ice Chalet. We continue to drive recruitment to the category, and we've also focused on supporting innovation that attracts younger LPA Plus consumers and women. This includes the ongoing rollout of Johnny Walker Blonde and the introduction of Johnny Walker Black Ruby. We've continued our focus strategy on single malts with our priority brands gaining share globally. In the latest data, the Singleton, our number one priority malt brand, was the fastest growing single malt globally. Tequila organic net sales were up 21% in the half with share gains across our business. North America was the biggest driver of the growth. Our Don Julio Ultra Premium brand has been the biggest driver of this growth, specifically Don Julio Reposado, as interest has accelerated in aged tequila. Don Julio 1942 growth was supported by strong interest in the 1942 50ml bottles that we featured at the Oscars last year. This launch alone drove more than 50% of the total 50ml tequila market growth. Our global rollout has continued throughout the half. Tequila organic net sales more than doubled in Africa, and we delivered double-digit growth in Europe as well. In the more established North America and LAC regions, we also delivered double-digit growth. The Paloma cocktail continues to be our successful recruitment tool in Europe through Paloma tours, fashion weeks, and major international festivals, such as the British Summertime in London and the SIGGET Festival in Budapest. In the first half of the year, we served nearly 275,000 Paloma cocktails into the hands of our European consumers. I have spoken before about Gen Z in the U.S. being more likely to purchase spirits than millennials were at the same age. Within this, what we also see is that tequila is a significant driver of Gen Z penetration growth for core spirits, representing an exciting and promising growth opportunity for Diageo. And Guinness continues to outperform. Guinness has now achieved its eighth consecutive half of double-digit growth, delivering 17% organic net sales growth in the half. Importantly, we held a grew share in our three largest markets. Guinness is now the number one TBA brand in Ireland, and in Great Britain, the number two TBA brand and number one beer brand. Demand in Great Britain has surpassed our expectations with one in 10 pints sold now being a Guinness. And while we are pleased by Guinness' success in its heartland with double-digit growth in Europe and Africa, we are encouraged by its growing global momentum in the rest of the world. Cultural engagement activations like our partnership with the English Premier League and strong social media engagement have driven impressive traction in North America, Australia, and Greater China. In the U.S., Guinness was the fastest growing major import beer in the on-premise, with distribution expanding well outside of our traditional home in the Irish pubs into casual restaurants, sports bars, and neighborhood bars. To meet the continued strong demand for Guinness Zero-Zero, we are doubling our original investment to expand capacity. In the half in Europe, Guinness Zero-Zero continues its record almost doubling its top-line growth Guinness Zero Zero now represents 12% of Guinness net sales in Great Britain. I am motivated and inspired by the passion and pride that our teams around the world are bringing to this iconic brand. We are looking forward to showcasing this at our event in May. I will now hand you over to Nick to take you through his first impressions of the business. He will also discuss our performance, the recent tariff announcements, and our near-term outlook.

Thank you, Deborah, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm very excited to be with you to discuss my first set of financial results as the company's new CFO. As Deborah mentioned earlier, it's a volatile and uncertain time for the sector and the market, but that uncertainty creates a lot of opportunity for us. And as such, I'm very excited to be joining at a moment in the company's history where the opportunity has never been greater. Before I delve deeper into these results, I'd like to share a few reflections on my first few months with the business. It's truly been a whirlwind, and I have literally traveled around the world, immersing myself in Diageo and the broader spirits business. I've visited four continents on which I've spent time with the local teams in New York, Miami, Amsterdam, Milan, Cape Town, Bangalore, Singapore, Nairobi, Shanghai, and Chengdu, and also with the teams here in London. And most importantly, I've visited with all of our executive teams in their local markets. This is clearly a company with amazing brands that are full of history and heritage and amazing people who are passionate about those brands, and quite rightfully so. I'm particularly grateful for the openness with which I've been welcomed and with the relationships I've started to build, especially with Deborah, the executive team, my CFO leadership team, and the board as we work in partnership. I'm also grateful for the feedback that both investors and analysts have shared with me on this journey. And rest assured, the importance of consistency of performance through top line delivery and positive operating leverage has been heard loud and clear. Let me reinforce that we are committed to doing the right thing and are firmly focused on what we can control and manage through this more challenging industry backdrop, including the evolving situation on tariffs. While this is a business with very attractive margins and one which is highly cash generative, there is more for us to do. An immediate priority will be to strengthen the balance sheet and deleverage so that we can add more flexibility. And I'll go into these in more detail after going through the results. So let's start with the half-year highlights. We are very pleased to be back in growth with an improvement in organic net sales up 1% in the half. We drove not only incremental top line improvement, but also gross margin improvement and lower absolute A&P reinvestment. However, overhead costs, including staff costs and incentives and strategic investments, largely one-offs, negatively impacted our profitability and our organic operating profit declined 1.2%. More on this in a moment. Pre-exceptionally, PS declined about 10% to 97.7 cents per share, primarily due to the performance of more Hennessy, in which we have a non-controlling interest and also unfavorable foreign exchange. Pre-cash flow increased by 125 million to circa $1.7 billion, driven by working capital management. More on this and leverage later. Finally, as you will have seen, we have today also announced a dividend of 40.5 cents for the half. This is flat on last year, which we think is the prudent thing to do given the current environment. We do remain committed to growing our dividend over time, and we will also look to maximize total shareholder returns, a key priority for us. So let's get into a bit more detail. Looking at the top line, organic net sales grew 1%, a sequential improvement from the second half of fiscal 24. The primary driver of the growth in organic net sales was price mix, with four out of our five regions delivering positive price mix, which was great to see as we must look to achieve broader discipline around pricing going forward. Starting with volume, NAM, Europe and LAC also volume declines given the cautious consumer sentiment in light of ongoing macroeconomic volatility and inflationary pressures. This was only partially offset by positive volume growth in Asia-Pac, particularly in India and Africa. While we're not relying on a return to positive volume in the short term, we acknowledge its importance in driving improved net sales performance going forward. Looking ahead, as consumer confidence improves, we would also expect volumes to come back. Moving to price mix in North America, positive price mix was driven by tequila, with consumers increasingly moving towards aged liquids. Whilst in Europe, Guinness was the main driver of the growth. We saw a good turnaround in lack price mix as the region recovers from a period of consumer downtrading. In Asia-Pacific, price mix declined, driven by consumer down trading in Southeast Asia and China, and in particular, a double-digit decline in Vietnam, more than offsetting premiumization in India from prestige and above. Now turning to operating profit. Organic operating profit in the first half of fiscal 25 declined 1.2% versus the first half of fiscal 24. As I said, the decline was primarily due to increased overheads due to stock costs, including incentives and wage cost inflation, as well as strategic investments. Excluding the impact of reinstating incentives, clearly a one-off, organic operating profit would have been slightly up. This reflects our current assumption of recovery after lower bonuses for the last few years, given improving performance, as well as the need to acknowledge with broad employee engagement. Going forward, we would, after navigating the disruption of the evolving situation in the U.S., expect to more than offset these increases through positive operating leverage, including through productivity and efficiency savings. Gross profit increased $83 million, driven by top-line performance, and gross margin increased 19 bps as a result of our supply efficiency initiatives and aided by easing inflationary pressures. A&P investment declined by $37 million, or 2% organically, primarily driven by lower investment in Asia-Pac, mainly in China. We do remain agile with our A&P spend, ensuring that we invest as and where appropriate. For instance, we deliberately increased investment in Don Julio in the US and Guinness in Europe, and both delivered strong results in the half. Across the rest of the globe, the majority of A&P efficiencies were reinvested back into the business, But more on this approach as we look forward. So on to cash. Year over year, free cash flow improved by $125 million, largely driven by working capital improvements, resulting from the movement in creditors and a reduction in investment in maturing stock. The latter is not expected to be repeated in the second half. And we haven't sent anything to indicate that you should expect a dramatically different increase in maturing stock for full year fiscal 25 compared to the last year at this point. On working capital excluding maturing stock, looking ahead to the full year, I'm mindful of the strong working capital performance the team delivered in fiscal 24. While I do see an opportunity to deliver more from working capital over time, for fiscal 25, I expect any in-year free cash flow benefit to be more muted. CapEx was over $600 million, a small increase from last year due to continued projects to support tequila expansion, investments in digital capabilities, and our supply agility program, particularly North America, which was announced on Thursday last week. As a reminder for fiscal 25, we guided to capex at the higher end of the guidance range, implying higher capex to come in the second half. I noted earlier that EPS pre-exceptionals declined almost 10% compared to the first half of fiscal 24, and this was largely driven by a non-controlling stake in Moet Hennessy. Additionally, FX resulted in a materially adverse impact on operating profit. Looking ahead on FX, we're looking at our hedging policy and we'll revert on this for next year. The changes that we're looking to make will be focused on reducing volatility and providing more clarity on our hedging approach. The impact of lower tax was also beneficial to EPS. Moving to the balance sheet, we finished the first half with average net debt of $21.7 billion, an increase of $1.1 billion on last year, mainly due to the share buyback impact in the second half of fiscal 24. Closing net debt, however, was relatively flat. Given the lower EBITDA year-on-year, our leverage ratio increased to 3.1 times ahead of where we ended in the prior fiscal year and above our target range of two and a half to three times. Clearly there's a lot of work to do here and reducing this is one of our key priorities going forward as I said earlier. Now moving to tariffs, unfortunately this adds complexity to providing forward-looking guidance today. While we had hoped to share before last weekend's news of building momentum in fiscal 26 with further sequential improvement in organic net sales growth and positive operating leverage, this is now on hold pending greater visibility on how the situation evolves. As you will know, President Trump, in one of his three separate executive orders, announced the implementation of 25% tariffs on goods imported into the US from Canada and Mexico. The US executive orders further stated that should any reactive tariffs be imposed by such nations, This would, in turn, attract further retaliatory tariffs. It is clear that the situation is still extremely fluid, particularly around the implementation and timing of any retaliatory tariffs and the impact and, of course, any potential response to that retaliation. Importantly, Diageo starts from a position of strength with a broad global portfolio across categories and geographies, and we have demonstrated agility in navigating tariffs in the past. While tariffs can be quite disruptive in the short term, we generally can mitigate long-term impact with our broad and resilient portfolio. However, in the US, circa 45% of our net sales of our products sold must be made in either Canada or Mexico, given geographic origin requirements. The key products which would see this impact Input costs would be tequila, which must be made in Mexico, and of course, Canadian whiskey. The vast majority of our net sales impacted is from Mexico. As a reminder, tariffs will be on the input cost, not the retail price. The introduction of tariffs was an anticipated scenario, albeit the effective immediate timeline does create additional uncertainty. We have done considerable contingency planning over the last few months focused on what we can control and on the potential depth and timing of tariffs. Given our extensive supply chain and broad and advantaged portfolio, there are a number of possible actions to help mitigate the potential impact, including pricing and promotion management, inventory management, supply chain optimization, and reallocation of investments. Some of these actions can be implemented rapidly, and in fact, some have, including on inventory management, but others will take time. We will continue to be agile and respond with speed as key details are confirmed, as well as look to providing updated guidance as and when appropriate. Let me now talk to our reshape priorities to deliver long-term sustainable performance. We have adapted these priorities based on my prior experiences and importantly to also reflect the slower market recovery given the current macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. We expect these renewed long-term priorities to drive both increased agility and resilience across the business. While these priorities aren't entirely new to Diageo, they will have a clearer and more prominent focus across the organization going forward. First, we will be dedicated to delivering sustainable top-line growth supported by continued outperformance against the market. Second, we are committed to deliver operating leverage, not just through efficiencies, but also by being more effective in how and what we do. Through increased operating leverage, we intend to maximize free cash flow, thereby deleveraging and creating more flexibility. And we see a number of opportunities here, which I will discuss in a moment. Finally, through all of this, we will continue to optimize our returns, not just for the business, but also ultimately for the shareholders. Let me take you through all of this in a bit more detail. So to start, we will be focused on driving sustainable top line growth with the right balance of volume, price and mix. We intend to drive volume growth through capturing growth from the longer term favorable macroeconomic drivers and underlying fundamentals and leveraging the strength of our portfolio and brand building capabilities, which I believe are really best in class and of course, supported by world class innovation. Also, we will be rigorous in applying disciplined pricing across our markets. And as market leader, there's more that we can and should be doing. For this, we will be using both existing digital tools and price spike architecture across our markets. And Deborah has already talked to some of the benefits we're already seeing from this with the small sizes in the U.S. and a lot more growth to capture here. There's much more we can do to learn best-in-class RGM capabilities from our consumer peers, which both Deborah and I have been well exposed to. Strengthening our capabilities here will underpin and support our sustained top-line growth. Finally, we will be looking at the RTD and RTS category, an area where perhaps our strategy has been less clear to date. We believe that in selected markets, this can be a strategic advantage. as a strong driver of recruitment for LPA plus adults, and ultimately by offering a great entry point into Spirits. Let's now turn to operating leverage. Deborah and I see great opportunity to drive sustainable, positive operating leverage. The Azure has talked about the $2 billion productivity program. The intention is to recut this and apply across the fuller business But importantly on this, we are also committed to sharing the expected benefit that we would like to drop to the bottom line to support operating leverage growth. While I remain fully committed to investing for both the short and long term with A&P spend, we will be adding more rigor on measuring the effectiveness of the spend. This includes fully leveraging data using our updated catalyst tool and ensuring that we're rootless in allocating the right level of spend of non-working and working marketing dollars. With the latest technology developments, we clearly see opportunities to reduce non-working spend. Our marketing teams are now structured around conscious create and agile brand communities, teams on our global brands to help embed this focus around the globe. We will continue to be highly focused on media efficiencies, which will enable us to get a more balanced approach to reinvest savings back into the business, but also drop to the bottom line where appropriate. Internally, we're also increasing the focus on commercial excellence across the business. This is the real opportunity to do more, ensuring that our brand activation is increased at point of sale in what is typically a crowded store environment. and increasing our presence in the on-premise as well with, for instance, more listings on menus, with cocktail offerings, with our terrific brands and greater displays on the back bar. Here too, we will look at the spend to drive more rigor on returns and maximizing value for each dollar invested. Finally, underpinning all of these actions will be a need to ensure that Diageo has the right capabilities, not just for today, but also for the future as well. Let's now move to maximizing free cash flow. There's clearly headroom to improve free cash flow, an area where I'm extremely focused on as we move forward. Consistent with ensuring our business is well-placed for the long term, the team has clearly invested quite heavily in recent years, which Diageo previously guided would normalize from 2027. We will be reviewing all CapEx commitments and future CapEx plans to assess any needs to reprioritize and or rephrase using clear and consistent IRR and payback metrics for all future CapEx, but also drive greater asset utilization and efficiencies from my existing asset base. Are you really trying to sweat our assets a lot more? I'm also fully aware of the importance of laying down liquid and the significance of maturing stock for future business needs. This offers us a huge competitive advantage. Deborah and I have initiated a deeper review with scenario planning around recovery timelines for the categories and future growth potential in the short and long term, particularly in whiskey and agave liquids, to ensure that the spend here is balanced and leverages the significant step up in investment over the past number of years. We have some of the best age liquid inventory to the team's credit, and we will need to leverage this differentiated profile as we think about our pricing looking forward. And also, while the team has unlocked a lot of value from working capital improvements, as I said earlier, we will continue to look to deliver further sustainable improvement in working capital. Finally, we have a best-in-class supply team, and I know jointly we can unlock a lot of future value. All of the work I've just talked through should ideally position us to optimize returns for our shareholders. We will be ensuring that the business has the right balance of investments for the long and short term, but also where appropriate and consistent with our evolving strategy, we will be more rigorous in pursuing disposals where it is in the best interest of both Diageo as well as our shareholders. This will clearly support our immediate focus to deleverage our balance sheet. As you've seen more recently with the disposal of our shareholding in Guinness, Nigeria and in Guinness Ghana, which was announced last week,