Dan Murphy’s and BWS were the solid performers for Endeavour Group in FY23, with the two core brands contributing $658 million to the group’s EBIT of $1.023 billion and Hotels accounting for the remaining $428 million.
It was a slight drop (1.2 per cent) in Retail with MD and CEO Steve Donohue saying the performance showed resilience in the “face of heightened macroeconomic pressures”. The festive season was a “particular highlight”, he said.
Hotels had recovered from the pandemic and both Retail and Hotels were in growth in H2.
Snapshot
- Group Sales up 2.5% to 11,884m;
- Group EBIT up 10.7% to 1,023m; and
- Group NPAT up 6.9% to 529m.
(EBIT: Earnings Before Interest and Taxes; NSR: Net Sales Revenue; NPAT: Net Profit After Tax)
Retail generated $9.9 billion in sales, down 1.8 per cent on FY22 as consumers returned to on-premise socialising and in-store purchasing. While Christmas trading was strong, Easter was not due to non-comparable holiday timing, but May and June saw sales momentum return.
Donohue said its advanced analytics capability was being used to inform decision making on new product development, ranging, price, and promotions.
He said the ready-to-drink (RTD) category was driving sales, growing “faster and bigger than it ever has done before”. Donohue harked back to the arrival and success of Stolichnaya’s Lemon Ruskis in the late 1990s. “It is history repeating itself and twice as fast. It highlights how we have to understand the consumer,” he said.
Pinnacle Drinks continued to deliver high quality and innovative products at comparative prices, he said. It introduced 550 new Pinnacle Drinks products and won 781 awards including 12 wine trophies.
Pinnacle’s Paragon Wine Estates portfolio acquired Shingleback Wine in August 2022 and Cape Mentelle in May 2023.
Endeavour’s Dan Murphy’s member program grew 15.6 per cent to 5.2 million active users and its Voice of Customer score was 79. BWS’ Voice of Customer was 74.
The group rolled out more than 2000 new product lines between the two.
The group launched MixIn, its Retail Media business that delivered more than 700 in-store and digital campaigns for 98 suppliers.
The company’s optimisation program helped mitigate inflationary pressures including wage and salary increases. The program has been at play since the Woolworths demerger and has delivered $90 million in incremental savings across Endeavour’s end-to-end value chain.
Donohue said investments in FY23 included omni-channel customer experiences, digital capabilities, and strategic acquisitions. The group expects customer demand to remain resilient in FY24.
