LONDON (Alliance News) - Central and Eastern Europe-focused spirits maker Stock Spirits Group PLC hiked its annual dividend Wednesday after profit and revenue both grew amid strong performance from its key Polish and Czech Republic businesses.
For the year ended September, pro-forma pretax profit widened 14% to EUR45.6 million from EUR40.0 million the year prior. This was after pro-forma revenue rose 8.7% to EUR282.4 million from EUR259.8 million the year before.
During the year, Stocks Spirits changed its year-end to September from December.
Stock Spirits proposed a 6.01 euro cents per share final dividend, up 5.1% from 5.72 cents the year prior. For the full year, the dividend rose 5.1% to 8.51 cents from 8.10 cents the year before.
Net debt fell 40% to EUR31.6 million at the end of September, down from EUR53.1 million at the end of December.
"This has been a year of good growth for Stock Spirits, and today's results show that our strategy of focusing on premiumising our range and increasing the use of digital channels in order to engage with millennial consumers is working," Stock Spirits Chief Executive Officer Mirek Stachowicz said.
Volumes rose to 13.3 million nine litre cases from 12.9 million the year prior.
"We are pleased with the increasing strength and resilience of our core Polish business, and also with the way in which we have combatted the headwinds experienced earlier in the year in the Czech Republic," Stachowicz added.
Despite this, trading conditions in its Italian business remained "tough" as a result of "high levels of unemployment and consumer consumption being impacted by rising inflation."
"Given the positive momentum in our underlying business and our portfolio of strong brands that are responding well to our ongoing programme of investment, we remain confident of being able to achieve further growth in the future", Stachowicz continued.
Shares in Stock Spirits were 0.5% higher at 196.20 pence on Wednesday.