Comment - Pernod Ricard, Diageo playing a game of two halves

Pernod Ricard's share price has edged up after a set of resilient half-year results, but it all hangs on the next six months.

There is sometimes an advantage to going second, and so it may be for Pernod Ricard, which today reported its half-year results exactly one week after arch-rival Diageo.

With market expectations tweaked over the last seven days, Pernod saw its share price edge up 1% in today's trading, despite reporting drops sales and profits - just as Diageo did, except its share price fell.

In some ways, the two groups' results were eerily similar, with both reporting a 2% fall in second quarter like-for-like sales and both maintaining the same guidance for full-year operating profits growth - pinned firmly to a predicted improvement in trading the second half.

They differed in that Pernod's bottom line appears to have been hit harder by unfavourable foreign exchange rates.

"At a profit level, the transactional impact was a negative EUR101m, significantly weaker than our expectations," said analyst group Sanford C Bernstein. 

"Pernod guided to a negative FX impact on profit in FY10 between EUR100m - EUR120m, which would imply an approx 2% reduction in our FY10 earnings per share estimates."

However, Pernod appears to have the edge over Diageo on like-for-like profits, having reported flat comparable earnings against a 3% drop for Diageo.

All to play for in the second half, then...