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Artisanal Spirits Company Highlights Positive Financial Start to 2024
Artisanal Spirits Company confirmed that the positive pace of earnings improvement that characterized the first half of fiscal year 2023 continued in the first half of this year.
The company revealed an annual increase of approximately £1 million in EBITDA compared to the first half of 2023.
In its latest trading update for the six months ended June 30, 2024, the company said the trading conditions and consumer purchasing behavior seen in FY23 have continued into H1 FY24 and ASC remains focused on maintaining a high-quality, committed and engaged global membership, which will underpin sustainable revenue and profit growth over the long term.
The company said its growing global presence with launches in new markets such as Taiwan, the acquisition of Single Cask Nation (SCN) in January this year and the development of our members’ cask sales program, allows ASC to mitigate the Group’s exposure to any market, such as China, where trading remains challenging. With a larger and more diversified business, China is increasingly a smaller proportion for the Group.
However, the group’s revenue was virtually flat in the first half of 2024, but SMWS membership was virtually stable and annual costs were reduced.
As the company focuses on delivering FY24 consensus EBITDA of £1m, commercial priorities continue to drive quality member growth through international development and initiatives such as ‘Membership and a Bottle’, a product range review that will simplify and streamline its member offering, our member cask sales programme now available internationally, further growth of SCN and continued cost efficiency management.
Andrew Dane, CEO of Artisanal Spirits Company, commented: “While trading conditions remain challenging in some markets, we are pleased with the continued improvement in year-on-year profitability in the first half and remain focused on achieving consensus full-year EBITDA expectations of £1 million and ensuring sustainable profitability over time.
“ASC’s proven strategy of investing in whisky stock has built an impressive inventory that will meet our needs well into the next decade, whilst also delivering significant upside in value creation and whilst we have an independent expert valuation estimate of just over £100m today for the casks, the business is focused on generating maximum value creation through the maturation and bottling of these premium whiskies, which ultimately delivers a multiple of cask value, with an estimated future retail value in bottles of almost £0.5bn.”
“Furthermore, with our cask levels now at an optimum level, we have reached a turning point in the requirement for cash investment in the business. Historic levels of investment in whisky inventories are no longer required as we transition to purchasing on a replacement basis to meet future growth demands, representing a very positive inflection point for the Group’s cash profile.”