Soft drink sales at the owner of the Fruit Shoot and Pepsi Max brands have surged, while plant-based ranges continue to grow.
Britvic reported a 13% uplift in pre-tax profits to £78.2m year-on-year in the months to the end of March. At the same time, revenue was up 11.2% to £880.3m., beating analysts' forecasts.
“We’re in a pretty resilient category," said CEO Simon Litherland.
"We tend to outperform the category with our family-favourite brands like Pepsi Max which grew 8.5" and Fruit Shoot which was up 7.6%."
There was an 168.5% increase in revenues of Plenish, a plant-based drinks company which Britvic acquired three years ago.
Litherland added: "We’re not reliant on M&A [mergers and acquisitions] but we always look and when we see the opportunity to fill in our current portfolios, like Plenish or Jimmy’s Iced Coffee, we will take them as long as we can buy them at the right price.”
Shares in the firm rose 11% (100.5p) to £10.18 after a £75m share buyback scheme was announced, alongside the strong results.
FTSE 100
The UK's flagship share index, the FTSE 100, was down 26-points at 8,419 shortly after opening this morning.
Brent crude oil futures were up 0.35%, trading at $83.04 a barrel.
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- Grainger - Q2 Results
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