Resilient financial Indicators: a new paradigm?
In a context marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, organic sales growth amounted to +1.8% in 2020/2021, proving genuine resilience. It is difficult to accurately assess the impact of Covid-19 on the Group’s annual performance. We can nevertheless estimate that:
- it deprived the Group of a few growth points, notably due to the collapse of Travel Retail, which affected the Group’s sales throughout the financial year. Excluding Travel Retail, the Group’s organic growth would have reached +10%;
- the closure of a large part of the on-trade channel (bars, restaurants, clubs, etc.) was offset by a transfer effect to home consumption (notably in the United States, the UK and Australia), thanks to the rise of mixology;
- a new paradigm? In addition to the boom in mixology and home consumption, other trends already observed before the pandemic have also accelerated in recent months: the outperformance of high-end ranges, the strong growth of online sales and the growing interest in corporate social and environmental responsibility;
- the Group’s two principal markets, the United States and China, delivered strong double-digit growth in 2020/2021.
Net improvement of non-financial indicators
The pandemic did not slow down the Group’s sustainable development efforts. It even helped to improve certain indicators monitored by the Group, even if this is temporary for some:
- nearly 4,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent were eliminated through the sharp reduction in business travel and teleworking;
- the frequency rate of workplace accidents fell to 3.5% (compared to an average of 10% over the last five years), despite high productivity rates in the second half of the year;
- the number of training hours amounted to around 20,000 hours, proving sound resilience given the circumstances (23,000 hours on average over the last five years).
