Tequila and non-alcoholic Guinness doesn’t sound like the most alluring cocktail, but those two drinks are the latest star performers in the Diageo portfolio.
The drinks specialist behind Johnnie Walker whisky, Smirnoff vodka and Tanqueray gin pleased the stock market last week with a sparkling set of first-half results to the end of December. Reported net sales of £8 billion were up 15.8 per cent, with strong underlying growth partly offset by adverse foreign exchange movements. Organic net sales grew by a fifth across all regions, which, with a boost to the margin, translated into a 22.5 per cent rise in operating profit.
According to Ivan Menezes, the company’s chief executive: “We have made a strong start to 2021-22. While we expect near-term volatility to
