Diageo will report its half-year results on Thursday (11 February).
Here, just-drinks takes a look at the highs and lows for Diageo in the three months to the end of December.
- Back in November, Diageo’s Indian headquarters received a visit from customs and revenue officials. A report in India’s Economic Times newspaper cited unidentified sources as saying that the company was under investigation for possible tax evasion, but Diageo declined to comment on the reasons for the visit.
- In December, the company finally celebrated the end of the long-standing row over its Scotch whisky restructure plans. The “vast majority” of the Diageo workforce affected by the programme, which cut more than 10% of Diageo’s Scottish workforce, fully accepted the offer and the proposals.
- Two days later, however, it emerged that the affected workers had received better pay-offs than initially proposed.
- Also in December, the company confirmed to just-drinks that it was exiting the market for first-growth Bordeaux wines in the US due to falling prices and lower market demand. Diageo said that it will sell off its existing stocks of Bordeaux in the US, where market conditions for so-called wine futures have deteriorated.
- The US remained in the spotlight for Diageo in December, when the company’s North American chief warned that consumer demand for spirits in the country had been lower than expected in November. Ivan Menezes also said that the firm had cut its expectations for December, while forecasting “very modest” growth in US spirits volumes in Diageo’s fiscal half-year.
- Finally, last month, Diageo hailed its legal victory over UK drinks firm Intercontinental Brands over its Vodkat vodka-based spirit beverage as a boost for the protection of the vodka category. Intercontinental Brands was ruled to have been “passing off” Vodkat as a vodka product, the court found. Last week, however, Intercontinental Brands was given clearance to continue using the name Vodkat, despite its legal defeat.