Few purveyors of alcohol will be toasting the new year. Just three days in to 2025, the US surgeon-general was advocating labels to warn drinkers of the link to cancer. This time next year, Ireland will be health-labelling its drinks.
The sector has little to be merry about in any case. Abstinence is in vogue, at least in swaths of the developed world. The ranks of US adults aged 18-34 who have “ever” drunk an alcoholic beverage has fallen from 72 per cent to 62 per cent over the past two decades, according to Gallup polling. As if lower sales are not headache enough, tariffs mooted by US president-elect Donald Trump stand to erode earnings.
This starts to smack of structural decline. So far, the weak Chinese consumer — quaffing a tenth of Pernod’s net sales — and a natural slide from the Covid-inspired boost, had all the hallmarks of a cyclical downturn. Share prices and valuations duly crumpled. UK-listed Diageo, with shares off by a tenth last year, looks relatively unscathed beside France’s Pernod Ricard, nearly 30 per cent, and cognac maker Rémy Cointreau’s 40 per cent.