Diageo plc (DEO) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining us this morning. Nick and I are here to share with you the results of fiscal 26 for Diageo and I'd also like to say something about the capital markets day which is taking place in our office this afternoon. We've issued today two statements one to cover 26 and the other to cover capital markets day and I think the way we'll do this if it's okay with you is I'll ask Nick to walk you through the results of last year. and then I'll come back and share a few thoughts as we get ready for the Capital Markets Day this afternoon. Take over to you. Thank you, Dave. So fiscal 26 has been a mixed year with good momentum in Europe, Latin America and Africa, but with challenges in North America and Asia Pacific that we've talked about through the year. We're focused on becoming more competitive in the US and we'll share more details on this later at our Capital Markets Day. We have delivered strong free cash flow which has enabled us to reduce leverage at the end of the year. We've made good progress on the three priorities that Dave set out at our interim results and the implementation of the new operating model is already well progressed. The savings from the actions we are taking will allow us to invest without reducing operating profit and we look forward to expanding and sharing more detail on this later today. Now let me walk you through our results. In the context of a continued challenging macro environment and industry backdrop in many of our markets, but in particular US spirits and Chinese white spirits, organic net sales declined 2%. However, our group operating profit increased 2%. Notably, excluding the impact from Chinese white spirits, Organic net sales would have declined around half a percentage point,...