‘Resilient’ performance from Britvic

Announcing its results for the 28 weeks ended 13 April, chief executive Paul Moody said the difficult pubs market and last year’s poor summer had provided a difficult trading environment. "Britvic has delivered a resilient performance in the first half with market share gains across the majority of our brands. This is a positive result given the challenging trading environment in the Licensed On-Premise market in particular and also in Take Home where the market is still recovering from the effects of last year's poor summer,” he said. The integration of the Britvic Ireland business was progressing well and the company was confident of delivering the €14 million synergies it had previously announced. He went on: “The first half of our year has been a period of modest growth for the soft drinks market overall, with improving growth trends evident in the early weeks of the second half. We are well positioned to drive group earnings growth through brand and product expansion, innovation, a continued close focus on cost control, and the realisation of the benefits of the outsourcing of retail distribution. The board remains confident that we will deliver on our full year expectations." In the period, revenues were 29% up at £455 million compared with £354 million for the same period last time while pre-tax profits were 13% up at £17 million (£15m). Highlights included strong international growth, with Robinsons and Fruit Shoot driving Britvic International’s revenue growth up 17.6%; and out-performance of the market in still drinks although, despite a strong post Christmas performance, carbonates were impacted by the weakness in the licensed on-premise channel. Britvic is the UK and Republic of Ireland’s largest supplier of still soft drinks and the number two supplier of carbonates. Its brands include Robinsons, Tango, J20 and Fruit Shoot. It also produces, markets, sells and distributes the Pepsi and 7UP brands under appointment from PepsiCo.