Soaring popularity of Guinness helps pub group Young’s to record profit

Soaring demand for Guinness helped pub group Young’s to a record full-year profit, as cool weather shifted Britons’ drinking tastes.

Chief executive Simon Dodd said sales of Guinness were up a “whopping” 29 per cent — higher than top-selling beers such as Estrella and Peroni — with the volume in the 12 months to April more than a fifth higher than the year before.

He added that cooler weather had encouraged punters to stick to the Irish dark stout beer throughout the year.

“Probably the weather has helped a little bit, [as] we haven’t had any sunshine since September,” Dodd told the Financial Times. “People tend to drink Guinness when it’s colder and then switch to lager when it’s warmer. But it’s fair to say that Guinness is performing exceptionally well for us.”

The product has become “accessible to all, [including] females 18 to 80,” he said, referring to its growing popularity across age groups. Dodd said customers were also using an “on-and-off approach”, where they interspersed drinking a normal Guinness with a non-alcoholic version.

The popularity of Guinness was also cited by rival JD Wetherspoon last month, as its founder and chair Tim Martin said in a trading update that the rocketing popularity of Guinness and a revival for some traditional ales were pushing its annual profits “towards the top of market expectations”.

“The gods of fashion have smiled upon Guinness, previously consumed by blokes my age, but now widely adopted by younger generations,” Martin said.

Young’s reported an annual adjusted pre-tax profit of £49.4mn, up 9 per cent from a year earlier as it defied high input costs, interest rates and consumer uncertainty. Revenue rose 5 per cent to £388.8mn, partly helped by the £158mn acquisition of City Pub Group, which was completed in March.

Young’s, which has more than 280 pubs and hotels across London and the south of England, invested a total of £84.5mn in its existing pubs and also made eight individual acquisitions outside of the City Pub Group deal.

Dodd said a summer of sports would lift consumer confidence, adding that the Uefa European football championship match between England and Serbia boosted sales up 31 per cent compared with the same day the previous year.

“There is an appetite for the weather but there’s also an appetite to go to the pub and watch sport, especially [matches involving] England,” he said, adding that Young’s would benefit from a number of pubs it had in Wimbledon and in the surrounding area during the tennis tournament. “We are optimistic about the road ahead,” he said.