While the pending results announcements from beverage brand owners will continue to feature some eye-popping numbers, Remy Cointreau appears to be as future-proof as a spirits company can get. And, considering the group’s tumultuous history in recent years, that’s a well-deserved position. Yesterday, the Remy Martin brand owner kicked off results season with a 21% sales rise in the three months to the end of December – the company’s fiscal third quarter – and a 38% top-line leap in the final nine months of calendar-2021. Spirits industry observers would be forgiven for their excitement at Remy’s performance, though that excitement will be harder to maintain in the coming weeks. After all, we can expect most if not all listed spirits brand owners to have done remarkably well in the run-up to Christmas, if only because of the shaky comparisons from a year earlier. For Remy, however, it’s the background moves that should be making the headlines. Having over-relied on China’s Cognac consumers to such a degree at the start of the last decade that anti-extravagance measures kicked their legs out, the group’s global reprioritisation sets the future scene nicely. Of Remy’s three reporting regions – Asia-Pacific, the Americas and EMEA – it is the Americas where the most effort has been put in, and in the US, in particular. Blips may appear for Remy in the US going forward – supply chain issues were flagged yesterday as having hampered its quarterly showing in the quarter – but the geographical reprioritisation on the group’s part bodes well at a time when taking price is going to become more by necessity than choice. After all, the premiumisation trend in aged spirits is well-established in the US, where Cognac consumers will be less resistant to rising prices than their peers in China. In a note to clients today, Bernstein analyst Trevor Stirling makes the valid observation that “the Cognac market in China is much more premium than the US”. The risk/reward equation of these differing markets, however, especially for a company operating in as traditional a category as Cognac, suggests that Remy is on the right track, not just for tomorrow but also for the day after. Rémy Cointreau Performance Trends 2017-21 – results data