24th Jul 2018 08:05
LONDON (Alliance News) - Soft drinks producer Britvic PLC said Tuesday that revenue in its third quarter increasedon last year, helped by the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, commonly known as "Sugar Tax".
For the three months to July 8, group revenue rose 3.4% to GBP366.9 million. However, without the sugar tax, it dropped 0.6%. For the year-to-date, revenue increased 4.2% - up 2.8% excluding to sugar levy - to GBP1.10 billion.
"Britvic has delivered a strong underlying performance in the third quarter, through continuing outstanding execution of no sugar carbonates and substantial growth from our stills brands," Chief Executive Officer Simon Litherland said.
In the UK third quarter revenue increased by 8% year-on-year to GBP221.6 million, while the company's Irish business saw revenue up by 11% to GBP42.2 million.
The FTSE 250-listed company said that Pepsi continued to gain share due to an "outstanding execution" of its diet brand MAX.
However, the company said that the "well-documented" disruption to the supply of carbon dioxide in the UK and Ireland prevented it being able to "fully capitalise" on hot weather in the UK.
"To ensure continuity of supply across all trading channels, we temporarily scaled back our promotional activity and reallocated some of our secondary feature space to stills," the company explained.
Revenue in the French division dropped 15% at constant exchange rates to GBP66.7 million in the quarter, due to "exceptionally poor weather in June". Brazil saw sales up 10% to GBP22.6 million.
Britvic added that the measures taken to moderate the hit from the carbon dioxide shortage leaves it confident in achieving market expectations in the full year.
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