Pernod Ricard’s results highlight the challenges for Scotch
In this month’s issue of Whisky Business, Ian Fraser takes a look at the results of the drinks giant Pernod Ricard and how the company is dealing with the headwinds hitting the sector.
Scotch whisky makes up roughly a quarter (23 per cent) of Pernod Ricard’s global sales, but barely got a look-in at the Paris-based drinks giant’s annual results at the end of August. Indeed, “Scotch” was mentioned only twice during the 90-minute presentation and Q&A with chairman and CEO Alexandre Ricard and his new deputy CFO Mauve Croizat, while “whisky” went unmentioned.
Even so, whisky is performing better than the Group’s 3.9 per cent fall in its overall organic net sales. Pernod’s Scotch whisky arm, Chivas Brothers, fell two per cent – a smaller decline than in the previous financial year, and one that saw a return to growth in the second half. Pernod dubbed Chivas’ FY26 performance “resilient”, with sales of Ballantine’s up one per cent (to 9.4 m cases), Chivas Regal flat (at 4.7m cases), The Glenlivet down five per cent (to 1.3m) and Royal Salute down nine per cent (to 200,000).
Chivas Brothers – whose other Scotch brands include Aberlour, Long John, Passport, 100 Pipers, Scapa, and Something Special – also reported sales growth of 24 per cent in Africa & the Middle East, six per cent in India, and 26 per cent in Turkey. No figures were given for the US or China.
The ‘big picture’ of sales performance since 2010 put the last three years of pain in the shade: Ballantine’s sales have risen 59 per cent to 9.4m cases since 2010; Glenlivet is up by 116 per cent to 1.3m today; and Royal Salute by 200 per cent to 200,000 cases The laggard is Chivas Regal, which sold 4.2m cases in 2010 and 4.7m cases in FY26 – so a rise of just 12 per cent.
Pernod’s Irish megabrand Jameson’s has almost trebled to 11.4m cases over the period.
Chivas Brothers results
The Dumbarton-based Chivas Brothers has been without a permanent CEO since Jean-Etienne Gourgues shifted to another role last October, so it was left to the chief executive of Pernod’s Aged Spirits & Champagne division, Nodjame Fouad, to comment on Chivas Brothers’ results.
Fouad argued that the breadth of Chivas’s Scotch portfolio “enabled [it] to respond with agility to evolving market conditions – leveraging quality brands, innovative products and smaller pack formats to answer the preferences of today’s whisky drinkers.” There was no mention of Chivas Crystal Gold.
India’s whisky growth
In FY26, Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal and Jameson all outperformed in India and Ricard said a “buoyant” India will continue be a major growth driver for the company. “All the lights are green from a business point of view in India,” he said
However, he declined to reveal how Pernod intends to leverage the UK-India FTA to boost sales, saying only: “You shouldn’t be surprised if we were to introduce new propositions coming from the UK into India around Scotch. You shouldn’t be surprised to see acceleration around innovation.”
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the results, however, is that Pernod continues to struggle in the critical markets of the US and China. In the US – the company’s biggest market – sales fell by 14 per cent. In comparison, Chinese sales tumbled by 19 per cent after Beijing restricted duty-free sales of Cognac in retaliation for EU tariffs on Chinese EVs. While Ricard warned that US sales are unlikely to recover until 2029, he was more hopeful of a quicker turnaround in China.
Overall, the group seems to be running to stand still. As well as the fall in organic net sales of almost four per cent, profits from recurring operations fell 5.2 per cent to €2.4bn, but 17.9 per cent on a reported basis.
Given three years of falling sales and two of falling profits, it is perhaps unsurprising that Pernod, like its big rival Diageo, has fallen out of favour with investors. Since peaking at €214 on 21 April 2023, the shares have tumbled 70 per cent to €64 – with the group’s market capitalisation shrinking from €55.5bn to €16.2bn.
Ian Fraser is a financial journalist, a former business editor of Sunday Times Scotland, and author of Shredded: Inside RBS The Bank That Broke Britain. This content has been produced in collaboration with Whisky Invest Direct, the cask whisky trading platform for distillers, traders and private investors.