Anora: Viva Wine, the main competitor in wines, continued its good development in Q3

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 11/21/2024 at 6:16 am EET

 Viva Wine, the main competitor of Anora's Wine segment, announced its Q3 result yesterday. Despite the weak market development, Viva continued to grow and gain market share. Its profitability improved significantly from the comparison period, supported by growth and price increases. Compared to Anora’s Wine segment, Viva’s performance has been better for a long time and the companies developed in clearly different directions in Q3. We wrote about Viva Wine's development in recent years and targets in this comment in the spring.

Viva Wine grew in a weak market with good profitability

Viva Wine's Nordics segment is very similar to Anora's Wine segment, although Anora has operations in Denmark while Viva does not. Viva was able to increase its volumes in the monopoly markets (Finland, Sweden, Norway) by 3% in Q3, while the market declined by almost 4%. Viva thus continued its long-standing upward trend in market share in all markets and is the market leader in Sweden and Finland. Viva's revenue grew by 8% from the comparison period, while Anora's fell by 5% year-on-year. So, the difference in business development is considerable.

In terms of profitability, Viva significantly improved its profitability from the comparison period, as expected, when the main price increases took effect in the spring. Viva Nordics segment's adjusted EBITA margin was already 10.4% (7.6% in the comparison period) in Q3, while the company's target (for the group) is 10-12%. Profitability also improved slightly from the Q2 level. The improvement was supported by both gross margin growth from price increases and well-managed fixed costs. Anora’s Q3 gross margin rose only slightly from the comparison period and decreased significantly from the beginning of the year, partly due to temporary problems in Denmark. Anora's Wine segment's EBITDA margin declined in Q3 compared to both the early part of the year and the comparison period, which is clearly a different development direction than in Viva. Viva’s management commented that the price increases made in the fall should continue to support the gross margin during the rest of the year, i.e. Q4 will improve from Q3 levels.

Viva's margin is better and more consistent than Anora's

As you can see from the charts below, Anora's Wine segment margin development has been much more volatile than Viva's. It also shows that Viva's margin jumped in Q2'24 after a long period of flatness to early 2022 levels, which we believe is the closest to "normal" of the periods reported by Viva, as the 2021 result was supported by the exceptionally high volumes of the COVID era, while the 2023 and also Q1'24 results were weighed down by weaker currencies and higher raw material costs and the delay in price increases to compensate for them. For Anora’s Wine segment, Q3’24 was once again one of the weakest quarters in history. It is worth noting in the charts that the margin for Viva is EBITA, while for Anora it is EBITDA.