Britvic Performance ‘Resilient’ Despite Weather

17/10/07 Britvic has reported robust trading in the 52 weeks to 30th September 2007, with branded revenue growth of 3.7% to £702.5m compared with the same period last year, driven by stills up 3.9% and carbonates up 3.0%. All figures in this update are before any contribution from the recent acquisition of the soft drinks businesses of C&C Group plc (Britvic Ireland) on 29th August 2007.

Branded revenue for the 24 weeks to 30th September 2007, the period since the last update to the market, was down 1.5%, with stills down 0.3% and carbonates down 3.1%. This illustrates a resilient performance against the backdrop of extremely poor summer weather and tough 2006 comparatives, which benefited from an above average summer and a high level of promotional activity based around the football World Cup.

In stills, Britvic continues its strong outperformance of the market in all of its key categories driving revenue growth. J2O, Fruit Shoot and Robinsons squash consolidated their position as market-leading brands, the latter performing particularly well in large pack. The recent relaunch of Drench, as our take-home water offering is showing very promising signs, while Pennine Spring, the third-largest on-premise water brand, displays continued good growth. Fruit Shoot H20 continues to deliver a strong performance. The recently-launched Robinsons pure juice brands, Smooth Juice and Fruit Shoot 100%, have performed in line with management expectations given the poor weather.

In carbonates, Britvic has delivered a solid performance, driven by further market share gains by Pepsi and a strong performance from 7UP. A continued focus on promotional effectiveness, especially over the summer, has, combined with improved pack mix, led to a growth in average realised price over the period. The revenue performance has also benefited from distribution gains in the discounters sector, mainly achieved during the first half of the year.

Britvic recently completed, as planned, both the outsourcing of its secondary retail distribution network to KNDL and the acquisition of Britvic Ireland. Neither transaction had a material impact on the group's performance during the period.

Paul Moody, Chief Executive commented: "We have actively grown market share across our key categories, and our brands have performed very well, despite the poor summer weather which presented extremely difficult trading conditions for the soft drinks market. We have continued to deliver on our strategy of improving average realised price and managing cost, and consequently we expect to at least deliver our ambition of increasing operating profit margin by 10-15 basis points. We are confident that our profits for the year will be within the range of current market expectations, before any contribution from Britvic Ireland."