Fevertree Drinks PLC (FV8.SG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

As I was saying, I'm sorry that we arranged it at this time of day. It's a tragedy that we won't be able to use the bar properly, but next time. So thank you very much for joining us at Fever-Tree to hear about our '21 performance. It's a pleasure to welcome some of you back to the bar but others for the first time. My name is Tim Warrillow, Co-Founder and CEO. I'm joined by Andy Andrew Branchflower, CFO. There's Ann in the background -- our Director of Investor Relations and Oli Winters, is someone as well who is Head of Communication. And we've also got Charles Gibb, who will be joining us on a call for the Q&A part. He is very notably got up very early in the morning in New York. So this morning, I will start by reminding you why the long-term opportunity for the business is so compelling. How we're emerging from the pandemic in a strong position, and updating you on our significant progress with our sustainability agenda. Andy will then take you through the financial review before I present our strategic update. So despite the disruption in the last couple of years, the group has been proactive and maintained investment. This has been made possible by our strong financial position and asset-light flexible business model. As a result, the brand is emerging from the pandemic stronger and with significant momentum. We have grown our retail market share in all of our growth markets over the last 2 years, growing ahead of our competition, and driving the acceleration of the premium mixer category. These achievements have been supported by the continued premiumization of spirits and long mix drinks, which show no sign of abating. We've also seen a good recovery in the On-Trade, with Fever-Tree's performance driven by the ongoing support we provided to our customers during the pandemic, which has further strengthened our relationships with them as well as our investment in activations and collaboration as the channel started to recover. The brand strength across our markets in both the on and Off-Trade along with the growing consumer interest in long mixed premium drinks makes us look to the future with even greater confidence. So over the page, I believe in the long-term opportunity of the business has meant that despite the many unprecedented challenges, we have remained focused on building the brand and our operations for the future. We've continued to prioritize innovation and have launched a number of new exciting products around the world, including our premium soda range in the U.K., our Lime & Yuzu in the U.S., Distillers Cola in the U.S. and our Rhubarb & Raspberry Tonic in Europe. We have also maintained our marketing investments with multichannel campaigns across markets, utilizing co-promotions, TV exposure, retail displays, some are having garden takeovers and our fantastic pop-up bars in the heart of Covent Garden, New York and Dallas. And as well as maintaining our investments in the brand, we've continued to focus on setting up our operations for the future. Commissioning a bottling plant on the East and West Coast of the U.S. in order to ramp up our local production in this all important market as well as completing the successful integration of GDP's team in Germany, setting us up for success in the market and across Europe more broadly. So our long-term strategy remains unchanged as it continues to be underpinned by the strong global trend to long mixed premium drinks. As you can see from the chart on the left-hand side of this slide, spirits have been in growth over the last 5 years in Fever-Tree's top 15 markets, taking share from beer and wine, which have both declined over the same period. The chart on the right-hand side shows how the value of the global spirits market has been growing over the last 5 years. We have the most proven segments of our top 15 markets growing from just under 1/3 of the spirit category in 2015 to 40% in 2020, significantly outperforming the standard and value segments. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. And by 2025, the most premium spirits are forecast to make up over 45% of the global spirits market by value. And Fever-Tree's sits at the very heart of these trends. With the growing popularity of sports, especially at the premium end, fueling the growth of premium long mix drinks and ultimately, the premium mixer category. Now moving on to sustainability. I'm proud of the progress we've made in the last 12 months and excited by the opportunities that lie ahead for the brand. I truly believe Fever-Tree cannot only make a meaningful difference with its actions but also help drive awareness and stimulate change. The standout achievement of '21 was our announcement in October that all of our products sold in the U.K. are now carbon-neutral. We're the first mixer brand to achieve this status and have highlighted the achievement with on-pack messaging and through our digital channels. And what's equally exciting is the engagement we are seeing from our on- and off-trade customers across our regions to join forces to drive awareness and engagement in the sustainability space. In the U.K., we've recently signed a partnership agreement with 1 of our largest on-trade customers to support and promote the tiny forest movement across the U.K. And we were a founding partner with Tesco's as part of their reusable packaging initiative that is being trialed across a number of Tesco stores. Central to all our sustainability efforts have been our employees, whether it's running or cycling marathons to fund raise for Malaria No More or volunteering and mentoring with our charitable initiatives across our regions. Their commitment and drive has been fantastic. And in turn, the businesses continue to offer our employees support during periods of lockdown and remote working as well as has introduced initiatives to support the return to the office. Finally, I wanted to touch briefly on our response to the crisis unfolding in Ukraine. Whilst our business in Russia is very small, we have taken decision to stop trading with our Russian distributor for the time being. We've also made donations to Care In Action alongside our GDP team, a Munich-based charity that has been working in Ukraine for many years, helping thousands of orphans, vulnerable children and families. And in addition, I can reassure that we don't source any ingredients or materials from Russia. I'll now hand over to Andy, who will take you through a financial review of the year.

Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone. So revenue of GBP 311.1 million, growth of 23% is a strong result in a year that remained impacted by COVID, book ended as it was by lockdowns and restrictions in the on-trade. Performance was strong across regions, but particularly in growth markets such as the U.S., Australia, Canada and countries across Europe, where we have real momentum, are increasing share and driving category growth. The Board are recommending a full year dividend of 15.99p per share, which is up 2% year-on-year. But over and above this, we will be returning GBP 50 million to shareholders as a special dividend. This extremely positive move underlines the confidence we have in our ability to execute our strategic plan and is an acknowledgment of the continued strong cash generation that our business model provides for. Tim will talk in more detail about the strategic progress we're making across the regions. But first, I'm going to focus on gross margin, both the short-term drivers, but also why we're confident of a recovery over the medium term. So turning the page, this here is our 2021 gross margin bridge. And it's various components are very similar to what we saw at the half year. Whilst we had some further FX headwinds in 2021 and some marginal movements in sales mix and product margin, the main driver of gross margin dilution continued to be elevated logistics costs. As is well understood, 2021 saw significant disruption to global logistics networks, which impacted the availability and pricing of sea freight and HGV drivers across our regions. Against this backdrop of disruption, uncertainty and cost increases, we consistently took decisions to ensure we have products in market. And whilst these decisions have short-term cost implications, they were reflective of our focus on making the most of the opportunities to drive long-term growth. This was especially the case in the U.S., where our constant currency growth was 41%. And as you can see from the chart on the slide, U.S. logistics costs increased by 56% in 2021, and this alone contributed to 300 basis points of group margin reduction. The main factors driving this reduction were the significant increases in transatlantic freight costs. But alongside this, uncertainty in available capacity and unpredictability of lead times meant we took every opportunity to get stock to the U.S. in the first half of the year, and so increased local inventories, which increased storage charges, but it ensured we had products in market to supply the growth and demand. Some of the new distribution we expected to land in Q2 was delayed on the back of ongoing COVID disruption until later in the year, which left us with some stock that was too close to expiry to sell and subsequently recognized a GBP 1.5 million total write-down cost at the end of the year, a frustrating situation but one that underlined some of the operational challenges faced in the current environment. But also reflective of that decision to ensure we're well placed to market to take advantage of opportunities. As we move to local production in the U.S., not only does exposure to elevated sea freight reduce, our lead time for production to warehouse reduces from months to literally hours, allowing us to optimize inventory levels and storage charges and manufacture weeks ahead of confirmed distribution rather than months ahead of potential distribution, thus reducing the likelihood of future stock write-downs. Clearly, as we move to 2022, disruption and uncertainty is continuing. Based on our negotiations and agreements headed into this year, we were anticipating an unprecedented 9% increase in underlying products and logistics costs. As is well documented, and the case across the industry, there are significant inflationary pressures across categories, but we anticipate this having a 450 basis point impact on 2022 gross margins. We are, of course, monitoring the situation in Ukraine. Our position is that we've agreed product cost pricing with our suppliers, whilst elements of logistics costs remain more variable as has typically been the case. Whilst we do not have any direct supply chain exposure to Ukraine or Russia, uncertainty is extremely elevated, we recognize that sustained spikes in commodity pricing or sustained shifts in supply of aluminum and glass elsewhere could indirectly impact products and logistics costs as the year progresses. And as such, we believe it's prudent to adjust our guidance to reflect the risk of a further 150 to 200 basis points of dilution. Against these continued headwinds, we have a number of mitigating actions, which we expect to offset 350 basis points of the inflationary impact. In the U.K., we've increased price, sharing with retailers the benefit of an 8% increase in price on shelf and a CPI increase in the on-trade from 1st of April. Alongside increased price in the U.K., we're also anticipating a benefit from the continued return of the on-trade which we expect to make up circa 45% of U.K. sales this year. Alongside the U.K., we've also increased price to our importers in our more mature European markets. So across these mature markets, we've used price as an effective lever to mitigate these inflationary pressures. In our key growth markets, such as the U.S., we've taken a more strategic view and held price to maintain the strong momentum we have. We see this as an investment for growth and are very confident in the opportunities to improve margins in those markets in future through economies of scale and future price increases. And finally, we've now completed the commissioning of our East Coast bottling line and ramping up to full production. We expect to bottle circa 60% of U.S. sales locally this year, which will further increase next year as we have a full year of glass production in both cases, and it would increase again the following year as we onshore can production. Now this move to local U.S. bottling on base cost is a really important step. First and foremost, it ensures we are equipped to scale, but it's also a significant lever against some of the headwinds we are experiencing. We've had a long-stated strategy to develop from a U.K.-centric production model to a more global footprint, evolving the network at the appropriate time and level of local scale. We now have 7 bottling sites and 3 canning sites across the U.K., Europe and U.S., and we will continue to build this, currently reviewing appropriate partners in the U.S. for canning and in Australia for bottling. Whilst this expansion of production partners is absolutely necessary to ensure we have the flexibility and capacity to underpin our global ambitions, in the short term, it's reduced our economies of scale. From 2019 to 2022, our global production volumes have increased by 40%, but we have spread this incremental volume across multiple partners. In 2019, we had a network where 2/3 of our total glass bottle cells were produced by our primary U.K. partner, which optimized pricing on both production and glass. By 2022, the volume bottled by our primary partner has reduced. And whilst we're building volumes across our network, these all remain at lower levels per site than we achieved with our primary bottler in 2019. Clearly, though, this is a network that allows for far greater scale going forward, and we'll provide the opportunities to recapture economies of scale with bottlers and with local glass providers and with packaging suppliers over the coming years. At the same time that we've been establishing our production network over recent years, we've continued to predominantly bottle in the U.K. for the U.S. market, which has meant we've been exposed to elevated shipping costs and all of the efficiencies of servicing a high-grade market from the U.K., against a backdrop of long lead times and increased uncertainty and disruption. Again, with East Coast bottling online and U.S. canning to follow, we are dramatically reducing our exposure to those costs and operational challenges going forward. So finally, on gross margin, I wanted to compare the gross margin we make on Fever-Tree per case of product in 2019 and 2022. What this shows is that the height of the bar, which represents price per case is relatively consistent. This takes into account sales mix changes, price changes, and I'd emphasize the fact that promotional spend has not been a driver of gross margin dilution. Our promotional intensity across regions has not significantly changed over this period. Then you can see the impacts of product cost, which is up almost 15% per case compared to 2019, which is really the result of the recent inflationary increases we're experiencing and the potential for further increases resulting from the current geopolitical instability, whilst logistics costs have increased per case by 50% since [2022]. This is due to global supply chain disruption, but particularly increases in U.S. logistics costs, which represents 75% of this increase. But as we look forward to 2023 and beyond, we are confident of the margin improvements we will drive, particularly as we benefit from the actions we've taken over the last few years despite the challenges that COVID has been throwing out. On price, we look forward to further on-trade recovery and the ability to take price, especially in our mature markets. On product cost, we have a global network that can scale and with it we will drive pricing benefits, not just with our bottlers, but with our glass providers and local packaging providers. We also have in play a significant number of initiatives to drive further improvements. To give just one example, we've established our U.S. bottling with imported glass, which is at an elevated cost currently due to freight charges, but we'll move this to local glass providers as we scale with the opportunity for significant further savings. And on logistics costs, remember, 3/4 of the 50% increase in logistics costs since 2019 is U.S.-related. And this headwind will reduce as we enjoy a full year of local glass production in the U.S. in 2023, and then further reduce as we onshore cans in the U.S. and bring bottling online in Australia. Not only do these developments greatly reduce our exposure to sea freight, we're able to run more efficient inventories and be more reactive to local demand. Over and above this, we've begun a program in 2021 to update our ways of working and IT systems across our supply chain, which will allow for further improvements in efficiencies and planning and procurement going forward. So these are just some of the reasons we're confident of the opportunity to drive gross margin improvement as we reap the benefit of the move to local production in the U.S., as we drive scale through our global bottler network and as we continue to work on numerous initiatives across the business focused on reducing complexity and driving efficiencies. But whilst we're very focused on managing our cost base and driving gross margin improvement, at the same time, we believe it's important to continue to invest for the great ahead. 2021 operating expenses increased by 15% and remain ahead of pre-COVID levels at 21.9% of revenue. Our marketing spend was 9.3% of Fever-Tree brand revenue as we continue to invest behind the brand with TV advertising campaigns in the U.K. and Spain, and strong activations as the on-trade reopened. Following significant increases in headcount in 2020, we consolidated the team and continued the integration of GDP. We now have over 280 staff across our global team and have built seniority, organizational bandwidth and capabilities significantly over the last 2 years as we've invested ahead to build an organization that is better equipped than ever to deliver our growth plans. As expected, working capital improved in the second half of the year. Debtor days recalibrated to historic levels, whilst payable days reduced marginally, but the improvement in working capital was driven by the reduction in inventories, particularly in the U.S. as we approach the commissioning of the East Coast bottling line. This improvement in working capital resulted in 92% operating cash flow conversion and a 16% increase in cash at the year-end to GBP 166.2 million. This strong cash position is informing our decision to recommend a special dividend this year, which is an extremely positive reminder of the strong cash generation and high quality of growth that our business model provides for. So it is important to stress whilst this is the first such distribution we've made, we are a growth business, and we will continue to retain cash to take advantage of opportunities. So it's important to state, we don't expect this to be a regular occurrence at this stage of our development. Finally, turning to the final slide of this section. This morning, we're reiterating our revenue guidance from January with a range of $355 million to $365 million. Within this, we've assumed that the on-trade remains open and unimpacted by further restrictions, while our off-trade momentum continues across international regions. In the U.K., we expect the on-trade to recover to circa 45% of U.K. sales this year and the off-trade to moderate compared to 2021, but remain ahead of prepandemic levels. We've made a solid start to trading in 2022. And whilst it remains early in the year, we look forward to a strong performance as the on-trade is unencumbered by restrictions and aided by the increasing return of workers to offices, international travel and large events. I've talked through the headwinds and mitigating factors impacting gross margin in 2022, said we are very mindful of the current geopolitical uncertainty and potential for further disruption in costs as we progress through the year. And as such, we've updated our guidance this morning to reflect the elevated risk. We will, of course, remain focused on cost control and the strategic initiatives in this area, which will equip us to deliver future growth, reduce exposure to current headwinds, particularly in logistics costs and allow us to drive efficiencies going forward. Finally, we remain resolutely focused on the opportunity ahead for the group, so below gross margin, we will continue to invest appropriately in marketing and the team with GBP 75 million to GBP 78 million of operating spend expected this year, resulting in an EBITDA range of GBP 63 million to GBP 66 million for 2022. Thank you. With that, I'll hand back to Tim.

Thanks, Andy. So some regional highlights. All our regions delivered strong sales growth during '21 as the On-Trade recovered well. The brand maintains strong Off-Trade sales, and we continue to gain traction in our growth markets. We were delighted to be named the world's #1 best-selling and #1 top trending for the 8th year running, demonstrating the global strength of the brand, which is a testament to the way we have continued to invest throughout the pandemic. We also had a number of regional specific strategy highlights outlined on this slide, which I'll go into more detail as I talk about each region. But as you can see, we're making great strides across the world with important strategic progress in every market. So turning first to the U.K., Fever-Tree had a good year, reporting 15% sales growth driven by a positive recovery of the On-Trade during the second half of the year. The On-Trade recovered gradually towards more normalized trading as the year progressed. And despite a slowdown during the last few weeks of the years, Omicron concerns peaked, our On-Trade sales finished the year up 59%, and we increased our number of On-Trade accounts by 5% compared to pre-COVID levels. Encouragingly, Fever-Tree has also increased its value share over the last 4 years from 47.8% to 50.9% as we drive premiumization in the On-Trade and continue to secure new listings with large national accounts, including Marriott, Cote Brasserie and Pizza Express to name a few. And we are already seeing the positive impact from our unwavering support for our On-Trade customers. Both when they were forced to close as well as when they are allowed to reopen. We have strengthened long-term relationships and driven sales growth by providing branded merchandise targeting summer staycation hotspots, large sporting events and creating buzz through our pop-up bar in Covent Garden Central London. In the Off-Trade, we delivered a good performance in the U.K. with flat revenues compared to 2020 and encouraging performance considering 2020 included the benefits of stockpiling and significantly elevated retail sales as we entered the first lockdown. The last 2 years have seen a considerable increase in at-home consumption of long mix drinks with a mix of categories seeing value growth from increased consumption as well as premiumization. Fever-Tree has been at the forefront of this, growing both sales value and volume strongly over the last 2 years. And this growth has been driven by our ever-increasing rate of sale on shelf, which is almost 5x higher than the average rate of sale of all other premium mixes, and has been achieved despite the fact that very purposefully, our promotional intensity remains at around half the levels of other mix of brands at retail, a real demonstration of the strength of the brand. And we are consolidating our #1 position at U.K. retail, ending the year with 39.8% value share compared to 2.1% for all other premium brands combined as well as being well ahead of Schweppes at 34.9%. And our sales value has increased by 13% over the last 2 years, well ahead of all other premium mixes who have declined by 12% over the same period. And in addition, Fever-Tree continues to grow its household penetration in the U.K., reaching 15.4% of households during 2021 and increasing our consumer reach as at-home mixology continues to take hold. The brand is also building its popularity with younger consumers, increasing our number of shoppers under 45 by 8% since 2019. These younger shoppers are particularly interested in our premium soda range and Rhubarb & Raspberry Tonic, illustrating how our innovations are bringing new customers into the brand. And for the final slide on the U.K.'s performance, I wanted to take you through some of the great work our team has done to promote the brand as well as the exciting new mixes we've been creating. During '21, we have focused on TV, digital and social media to showcase the brand and deliver our brand message across as many platforms as possible, reaching millions of people. We've also continued to step up our investment in co-promotions with our Spritz Up partnership with Smirnoff for highlight of the year. And brand activations continue to be an important part of our marketing budget across the on- and off-trade, creating excitement around the brand with a few great examples this year, including our G&T bays in over 500 Sainsbury's stores and our infamous Spritz truck, which traveled around the country, launching our Spritz menus over the summer. And we have not stopped innovating. Our premium soda range Rhubarb & Raspberry Tonic and limited edition Damson & Sloe are attracting new often younger consumers to the brand as well as gaining substantial interest from spirit partners and exciting the category, bringing incremental value through additional sales. So as I hope you've seen from these last few slides, we have made great progress in the U.K. over the last year. We remain the market-leading premium brand by a significant margin in both the On-Trade and the Off-Trade and continue to focus on and invest in innovation, creating new products to excite and elevate popular serves as well as attracting new consumers to the brand. The emphasis we place on our relationships with our customers and spirit partners alongside the fantastic work our marketing team does to support the brand puts us in an unrivaled position within the U.K. market going forward. So turning to the U.S. The team produced another strong performance following on from the great growth achieved in 2020, delivering GBP 77.9 million revenue, an increase of 33% compared to 2020 and 41% on a U.S. constant currency basis. The supportive market trends continue as both premium spirits and premium mixes are accelerating ahead of the total category and the On-Trade is recovering quickly. As you can see from the chart at the bottom of the slide, consumers coming back to the On-Trade are increasingly choosing to consume their spirits as premium long mixed drinks, which along with the brand's strong execution in the market, gives us confidence for the future growth of the brand. The On-Trade started to open state by state throughout the second quarter of the year, with sales quickly surpassing prepandemic levels as U.S. consumers quickly regain their confidence and excitement about going out. Fever-Tree continues to increase its presence across the country, growing our points of distribution in the On-Trade by 15% compared to pre-COVID with a focus on high-quality accounts such as national gastro bar, Bar Louie, Hilton Luxury Hotels and wind resorts as a few examples. We are also supporting and accelerating the brand's growth through investment in On-Trade pop-ups and activations, targeted digital media campaigns and co-promotions with various spirit partners. This year, we have partnered with spirit brands across a range of categories to drive growth across our 4 drink strategy, including a co-branded digital campaign with Bombay to promote the G&T and a multichannel campaign with Jim Beam promoting whiskey and gingers and Grey Goose promoting Vodka soda. We launched Sparkling Pink Grapefruit just over 18 months ago, having spotted a gap in the mix of category for a premium grapefruit to pair the tequila, creating the increasingly popular Paloma cocktail. We're already driving over 50% of grapefruit category growth through a combination of strong distribution gains in large grocery chains as well as a high rate of sale once the product is on shelf, in some cases matching ginger beer velocity. The successful launch of Sparkling Pink Grapefruit alongside other low-calorie versatile mixes and our increasing partnerships with U.S. spirit brands increases our excitement as we continue to expand in the U.S. market, capitalizing on the local market trends and transforming the mixer categories. So Fever-Tree has also been performing very strongly in the Off-Trade, growing almost 4x faster than the total mix of category over the last 2 years with our growth in every segment outperforming the market. We continue to grow in our strongholds, Tonic Water and Ginger Beer where we've increased our sales value by 76% and 100%, respectively, over the last 2 years. And while the Ginger Ale market is largely mainstream, we still managed to grow our sales by over 60% in the last 2 years. In addition, the soda category, which caters to the spritz occasion is growing from a small base, and Fever-Tree is premiumizing popular serves to grow well ahead of the segment. And as you can see, the brand is in an excellent position in a growing market, and we're emerging from the pandemic in a strong position, growing at 5x the rate of sale of the total mixer market and over 3x faster than the premium mixer segment. So our recent success in the U.S. can be attributed to a number of factors, which are highlighted on this slide. Firstly, we have a significantly higher value rate of sale on shelf than other mix of brands, incentivizing our customers to give us more shelf space. This has been achieved without any increase in our promotional intensity. This has also enabled us to become "Category Captain" at 2 large retailers, unlocking more opportunities for the brand as we start to have more of an influence over the category. We continue to add new distribution both in terms of a number of accounts as well as our depth within each account, including space on shelf and expanding into new flavors and formats. This year, we've increased our total points of distribution by 25% through both expanding the number of accounts we're sold in as well as our presence within these stores. This has included notable gains in Whole Foods with over 600 new points of distribution added and Kroger and Total Wine, primarily through the expansion of Sparkling Pink Grapefruit pink cans. And as I hope you can see from these last few slides, we're delivering a strong performance across all mix of categories in the U.S. and the long-term trends continue to work in our favor with the ever-increasing strength of premium brands across both spirit and mixer categories. So consequently, we are well positioned for success and remain excited about realizing the significant opportunity that this market holds. So turning to Europe, where we also had a strong year. Fever-Tree brand revenue was GBP 78.8 million, and our total revenue, including GDP portfolio brands was GBP 88.2 million, an increase of 35% year-on-year and 40% at constant currency. This excellent performance is testament to our increasing brand strength, growing presence at retail across the region as well as good initial trading in the on-trade as it reopened towards the end of the summer. Fever-Tree had a particularly strong retail performance in Germany and France as we introduced a new flavor of Wild Berry to the market in Germany, and increased our distribution across both markets. Standout performances in the On-Trade came from Spain and Italy as they rebounded towards the end of the summer as the channel quickly took advantage of the lifting of restrictions and the return of tourism. What's been most notable over the last couple of years is how Fever-Tree has been driving growth of the mixer market across Europe. As the chart on the left-hand side demonstrates the premium segment of the mix category has grown from 16% to 20% over the last 2 years alone, with a CAGR of 22% compared to 8% for the standard and value segments. Fever-Tree's value share has grown to over 15% of the mixer category at European retail, a 3.5% increase compared to 2019. And as the chart on the right-hand side demonstrates, we have grown at almost 3x the rate of the mixer category this year and over double the rate of the premium segment. So comfortably maintaining our position as the largest premium mixer by value across the region. This puts us in a very strong position, not only to capitalize on the support of underlying trends, but also to drive these further by premiumizing the mixer category and partnering with spirit brands to promote specific serves. This next slide highlights that our growth across Europe is coming from all our key markets. As you can see, we're increasing our presence across the region with especially strong retail value growth in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France over the last year, demonstrating a significant amount of white space in our core next wave and early-stage markets. Our growth has been supported by the great co-promotions we've executed to drive the success of multiple serves across different markets as well as the success we've had after launching our Rhubarb & Raspberry Tonic in various markets during the first half of the year. We've partnered with Lillet in a number of our European markets, including Denmark and France, co-promoting with their brand to encourage new drinking occasions and catering to consumer demands for lighter drinking options. And in our Southern European markets, where more sales traditionally come from the On-Trade, we focus on this important channel as it reopened during the year with a host of On-Trade activations and co-promotions in prominent outdoor areas, such as beaches and rooftop bars. And we're also continuing to see our Rhubarb & Raspberry Tonic performing well across the region. After early success promoting this sweeter innovative gin pairing with activations using pink vibrant displays at retail and initial sales exceeding our expectations. I'd like to use the final slide on Europe, just to explain how our confidence in the brand's long-term growth in this region is underpinned by supportive drinking trends as well as the size of the market opportunity. As the left-hand side of this slide shows, premium spirits are growing strongly with substantial runway still ahead. In addition, spirits continue to gain share from wine and beer, and long mixed drinks become more popular and consumers focus on drinking less but better. Consequently, Fever-Tree as the #1 premium mix brand in Europe is increasingly well placed to take advantage of these trends, especially as the On-Trade returns. And as you can see from the right-hand side of the slide, we've based our analysis from the same starting point as we did in the U.S. last year. And just like in the U.S. market, whilst the size of the premium spirits market in Europe is larger than the U.K. and increasing its penetration of the category, the size of the premium mixer market is only half of the U.K., giving Fever-Tree a huge opportunity to premiumize the mixer category. And we will do this by utilizing building on our strong brand potentials, continue to invest in marketing to drive trial and awareness as well as tailoring innovation to meet European drinking habits, using this to drive further distribution gains. So consequently, we remain as confident as ever in the long-term opportunity with the medium-term potential for 2.5x the growth from a pre-COVID baseline in Europe. Our final region is the rest of the world, where Fever-Tree performed well, increasing our revenue by GBP 0.06 year-on-year against tough comparators, delivering total revenues of GBP 26.7 million for the region. It's worth pointing out that our underlying growth is much stronger, as about 20% of reported growth was impacted by the importer stock builds during the second half of 2020. Fever-Tree continues to expand its geographic footprint, entering 3 new countries during '21 as well as developing relationships with international partners, including hotel groups, retailers and spirit brands. In both Australia and Canada, which together account for 80% of our revenues in the Rest of the World region, we continue to drive mix of category growth and premiumization and remain the premium category leader with a particularly strong presence in tonics. In Canada, the mix and market continues to grow and premiumize at pace, and Fever-Tree is now the largest tonic brand by value in the market ahead of Schweppes, with 32% share. And in Australia, Fever-Tree is capitalizing on a number of very exciting trends, which I'll highlight in the next slide. So long mixed drinks continue to gain popularity and premiumize in Australia. Gin has been growing for a number of years, but we're now seeing exciting growth in both the vodka and tequila categories, broadening the number of consumer occasions Fever-Tree can access with our portfolio of mixes, including sodas and gingers as we seek to be the premium mix of choice across Australia's most popular and trending drink serves. Most of the growth in long mix drinks has come from the premium end. And as you can see from the chart on the top right-hand side of the slide, the mixer market is now 18% premium by value compared to 8% at the beginning of 2020 and is far outpacing the growth of the total category. Furthermore, as you can see from the chart at the bottom of the right-hand side of the slide, it's Fever-Tree that's driving this growth, growing by 52% in '21, ahead of the total mix of category at 3% and other premium mixes at 36%. So Fever-Tree continues to be the clear premium mix category leader and has grown to 13.7% value share of the total market at Australian grocery, an almost 5 percentage point increase in just 1 year. So we remain focused on driving the momentum in the premium mixer segment, gaining incremental distribution across all channels and increasing our range and formats to appeal to a broader set of consumers, all of which provides us with a good runway of growth ahead. So I'd like to finish by reminding you of our belief in the long-term opportunity for the business. Our strong business model and strategy allowed us to act on the front foot throughout the pandemic. Whilst we took proactive steps to mitigate against short-term impacts, we continue to invest for the future by launching new products, setting up new manufacturing, continuing to deploy marketing spend and investing in our customer relationships around the world. As such, the business is in a far stronger position than ever. The opportunity that lies ahead is bigger than ever before. And the brand with its leadership position is better placed than ever before. And whilst we are mindful of continued inflationary cost pressures and the volatile macro environment, our strong financial position, along with the benefit of the strategic actions Andy outlined earlier, will help us to navigate the current headwinds impacting the entire industry. I continue to be proud of our fantastic team with their resolute focus on and ambition in realizing the ever-burgeoning opportunity for the brand. And what's just as encouraging is that these ambitions are increasingly being supported by our retail and spirit partners, giving us more opportunities to extend our reach and capture a greater number of consumers. I therefore remain confident that we will emerge from this period of extraordinary global disruption in a very strong position. So thank you for listening. Andy and I, along with Charles -- I hope Charles is now online, fantastic -- we'd be delighted to answer any of your questions. Thank you.

Ashton Olds here from Berenberg. I guess the first question I have is just trying to gain a little bit of color about how we should think about scale advantages. So clearly, new sites have been planned in the U.S. and Australia. Is that going to hide some of the scale advantages coming through from growth at other sites? Or do you expect us to be able to sort of see visible signs in the next couple of years?

Sure. Absolutely. As I was illustrating, scale benefits don't just come from bottling fees, they come from improved glass procurement locally, improved supplier packaging procurement. So all of that feeds into the economies of scale we talk about as we scale. So what we've done, as we showed, is that we've been, over the last couple of years, spreading that volume. And so if you think about U.K. bottler, which used to bottle for large components in Europe and the U.S. as well year-by-year, that element of it has reduced. But I think we're in a good position now to certainly scale through that U.S. network through their European network. We can keep those U.K. bottling volumes relatively consistent even as we bring local Australian bottle network online, and then grow scale through all of those different sites around the world.

Sure. I guess next question just in terms of what components of the cost base are fixed for FY '22 and the areas where you sort of see that 150 to 200 basis points may be utilized?

So in terms of the first part, in terms of how does product cost and logistics breakdown in '22, yes, well, look. If we look at the whole basket of both of those costs and you go to kind of 2020, there would have been historically a spread of maybe 80% product costs, 20% of logistic. In '21, that skewed up in logistics. So it's more like 75% to 25% because of those incremental logistics costs, particularly in the U.S. As we move now to this year, it's more like a sort of 78% product cost, 22% logistics. It's weighting back to product cost because of the inflation we're seeing there, and some of the logistic offset through local U.S. bottling. So that's where we are. And then when we consider the extra sort of 150 to 200 bps of a potential risk from the current Ukraine situation, that we can evaluate where elements of logistic costs are exposed because they tend to be more variable. There are things like fuel surcharges. And then when it comes to product costs, as we said, we've agreed pricing with our suppliers. We do the same every year. And typically, once you agree pricing, it remains that way for the full year. What we're recognizing is given the spikes and shifts we're seeing now, and then the extent of those -- for some of those suppliers, and we've identified where we believe there's higher risk among certain baskets of suppliers, even with their own hedging, they're going to be exposed on the spot market, some significant shifts. And therefore, there's a risk that they will come to us and renegotiate pricing. And so rather than flag the risk, we're trying to quantify it, and that's where we get to the broadly sort of GBP 6 million to GBP 7 million of incremental costs coming in this year.

That's helpful. I guess final one, maybe one for you, Tim. Just in terms of the elasticity of the category, like how are you thinking about pricing?

What, sorry, I missed that.

Elasticity of pricing, like I guess how are you thinking about pricing strategies outside of the U.K. going forward? And I guess, are you worried that should consumer budgets tighten a wee bit, the category might not be as resilient as other categories?

Well, so taking that first one is that we're in a fortunate position in the fact that this category, and that of drinks has always proved to be extremely resilient in times of recession, in times of tightening of the purse strings. I mean it's -- as we all know, the white goods, the expensive one-off products tend to get hit and people are damned if they give up on having a good drink. And so we're pretty optimistic that will continue in this environment. And your point about elasticity is, look, as you can imagine, we spend a lot of time talking about pricing plans and strategy and running elasticity models. As you know, we've put price up here in the U.K., which I suppose you can say is the strength of the brand, the retailers have accepted that. But we really don't want to let the short-term headwinds affect the long-term opportunity. We've established this really pretty unique price position, where we've got a very notable premium to the mainstream. Yet we are a market leader in increasing amounts of categories around the world. So we've got this pricing position, and we just don't want to disrupt it for any sort of short-term concerns because we've proven the fact that we can really grab large parts of the category and grow the category. So that's why we've got to be very sensitive to any pricing that we might pass through.

Doriana Russo from HSBC. I've got 3 questions, if I may. The first one would be on current trading, whether you can give us some color of what have you seen in post recent events in terms of demand fluctuation in the U.K. and also abroad? And also my second question would be on competition. Throughout the pandemic, there's a sense that you have come out stronger and therefore, beat the competition, especially in the U.K. I would say, but maybe you can tell us what are you seeing in the U.S. and other markets of either sort of what you call mature or key markets for yourself? And finally, on the customer itself, whether you -- I mean, coming back to what you just said in terms of price elasticity, your decision not to increase prices in some of the markets which are younger for you. Is that because you fear that perhaps the consumer acceptance of your brand might change.

Yes. I mean, do you want to crack off for the first -- perhaps we can bring Charles in on the second, and then I am happy to pick up. It's a tragedy that Charles has gone up at this time of morning if we then don't ask him a question.

Yes. In terms of current trading, Doriana, I mean, we said we've made a solid start. And I think if you look at the U.K. the dynamic really is around -- as the On-Trade returns. Obviously, we had December really impacted by Omicron and Delta, and that kind of followed through to January. But certainly, in recent weeks, you're starting to see the momentum build and I think we'd anticipate a really good strong return. Just as we were seeing last year up until sort of late November, early December. The knock-on there slightly is that, of course, some of the demand shifts from the Off-Trade to the On-Trade, but we're seeing good resilient Off-Trade numbers relative to that sort of 2019 and even 2020 pre-COVID baseline as well. So I think we're very comfortable with how trading has evolved in the U.K. so far this year. Internationally it has been strong and really notable is the return of the On-Trade. In Southern Europe, we're seeing very strong numbers straight out the door earlier this year. Charles can probably talk to what we're seeing very similar in the U.S. and our Nielsen data as well. And I mentioned that we had some slight staggering of the distribution last year in the U.S., which wasn't expected, we would have typically expected it all to land in Q2. But you can start to see with that U.S. Nielsen data really picking up in the later stages of last year, and that's continued into this year. So it's been a good robust start to the year. I think Charles, is pointing to the speaker. Charles might speak.

Just to add, I mean, I was just out with our talent distributor very recently and it's amazing the way Southern Europe has bounced back in terms of the On-Trade. I mean I think what you can conclude is they enjoy themselves more down there in Southern Europe than we do here, who have been a bit more hesitant in the U.K. market. But I think we're increasingly optimistic talking to our customers here in the on-trade that this is building and building. And as more people go back to the office as well, more tourism comes back, I think, increasingly optimistic about this, the U.K. On-Trade going forward.

Should I take over to talk about competition. So in terms of competition, I mean we've seen a number of competitors come out with sort of me too type products in the U.S. We've seen a lot of small brands that sort of emerge but none of them really gained any significant traction. Indeed, even Schweppes has come out with a premium versus similar to audit in the U.K., which went on to shelves during COVID, and in fact, is now disappearing off shelf having not gained any traction whatsoever. The only, I would say, reasonable competitor to us in the U.S. in the premium mixer segment is a brand called Q Drinks. But even they've struggled essentially during the past 12 months, particularly after we launched our can business and our cans are growing wherever we put our cans in place, essentially they're taking business directly from Q. So Q did very well at the beginning of COVID, but with the expansion of our cans and our expanding distribution of cans and the consumer acceptance of our cans we've really found that our rate of sale is between about 60% and 90% greater than this, such that we've been invited to become Category Captain, as Tim mentioned, in a number of key retailers around the country. In addition to that, we are driving growth in segments where they were not able to drive growth, such as grapefruit, they've had a grapefruit on the market for a couple of years. Our grapefruit has come in and already overtaken that. So we're about 2.5x their size. We're growing faster than them, we've got better distribution than them in terms of weighted distribution, we're in all the best accounts -- and yes, we remain very confident of our competitive position, which really then flows over into the On-Trade, where again, the On-Trade operators are choosing Fever-Tree over other brands such as Q. I was recently told that in Las Vegas, we've just now secured the sort of the one final account, which means that we now dominate the Las Vegas Strip, which, of course, is a phenomenal opportunity for us to sample and trial new consumers as every American loves a weekend away and a trip to Vegas once a year at least. So no, we're very -- we feel very confident -- we're in a very strong position against our competitors here in the U.S. and continuing to grow faster than them.

And it's a very similar story in Europe. I mean you mentioned that U.K. you've seen the fact that our position against the premium competition really strengthens and the same in Europe. So we're not seeing any one competitor come forward and really sort of challenge or erode our position, quite the opposite, our position continues to grow. And also, we've given you the statistics for as far afield as Canada and Australia, the same pattern emerges. So I think it's really not an overstatement to say that our position against the competition is stronger now than it's ever been. And your third question, you were talking -- I think you used the word about we fear putting price up in these other markets. And fear is not the word I would use. But I would say that -- we are in a position of growth, real momentum in these markets. And with that, there's a gaining a rate of sale, which means you get more shelf space, which means you get more off-shelf space. And so we do not want to disrupt that momentum because of short-term considerations. And so as we have demonstrated here in the U.K., when you start getting to a more mature position, then you can start looking at that and that would be the right time as far as we're concerned. It's not to say we won't -- if conditions really continue and the whole market moves up, then we would look ourselves at moving up with it. But as I say, again, we've proven elsewhere how valuable this momentum is and what a fantastic position is put this brand in around the world. So we don't want to disrupt it in the short term.

It's Jaina Mistry from Jefferies. I've got 3 questions. First, maybe for Charles. And in Europe, you mentioned your target to grow the business by 2.5x in the medium term. And previously, you've stated that you want to grow the U.S. by 5x. Does that target still hold today? And then looking to 2022 in the U.S., how confident are you in building shelf space, building a number of formats and flavors within the U.S. Off-Trade? That's my first question.

Charles, did you get that?

Yes, I did. Thanks. Look, with regards to the sort of medium-term opportunity, absolutely, we remain very confident. And indeed, we're well on the way. If you look at the performance of the business over the last couple of years, we've essentially close to doubled it. We grew by 31% in 2020 and then 41% on a constant currency basis in 2021. So I would say we're well on the way there. We feel confident because the same opportunities remain. We believe strongly in the return of the On-Trade Fever-Tree's opportunity there. We believe strongly in our innovation agenda and capturing more drinks occasions through our 5-drink strategy. And finally, we believe that through expanded distribution and availability, i.e., our format expansion, we can capture more consumer occasions when people are looking to drink -- be that a single-serve occasion for that quiet Tuesday night at home or the barbecue party in the backyard celebrating 4th of July or something similar. So we believe we can span right the way across those occasions, and we do that through our formats. With regards to 2022, absolutely, we feel very confident that we are gaining more shelf space. I think the fact that 2 major retailers in the U.S. have asked us to become their Category Captains or their Category Validators. And essentially, that means that we are sitting at the table when they're making their decisions about how their shelves should look, what brands, what subcategories they've got to be allocating more space to. And clearly, that's a reflection of the strength of the brand the fact that we span multiple drinking occasions and therefore, can provide them with great insight into this category because we're the only true specialists that really look exclusively at this particular part of the shelf namely the mixer section. So we feel very confident there. Equally, I think our emerging spirits partnerships mean that we're going to continue to grow shelf space in liquor retail and drag us, if you like, from the back of the store, which has always been the challenge is bringing Fever-Tree and bringing mix -- bringing Fever-Tree really from the back of the store to the front of the store because we are an added value -- we are increment -- we are added value, we are incremental sale and we actually make the retailer decent margins compared to, if you like, standard mixes, which don't deserve that space at the front of the store because they don't bring the same added value and the same incremental margin to the retailers. So we're very confident in our sort of start to the year and the direction that that's taking. And I would be remiss if I didn't say something about the On-Trade because the bounce back in the On-Trade has been phenomenal, and the fact that we didn't follow anybody during lockdown meant that we won a hell of a lot of business during that period. And we're now reaping the benefits of those wins today, because as the On-Trade comes back, we've secured all these positions. And if you look at -- we've just recently secured the Four Seasons, which obviously is very high image, but also Marriott, which is 2,500 hotel accounts, obviously, various different grades of hotels within that. But 2,500 hotels, which will now carry Fever-Tree. So we can go out there and execute against some of these big wins that we've got. And we're certainly seeing the On-Trade bounce back much, much more strongly than we than we originally anticipated.

And just to add to Charles' point about this category captain ship. I mean this is a significant step. I mean this is something that is usually the preserve of the biggest volume, biggest business. And so the very fact that they -- these are the 2 biggest retailers just about in the U.S., the very fact that they've asked and appointed us is really a reflection of where they see the future value of this category going. So it's exciting and rather unexpected. So it's a wonderful reflection on the fantastic work Charles and the team are doing out there in the U.S.

And then my other 2 questions for you, Andy and Tim. Within guidance, Andy, what are you assuming in terms of commodity costs for the rest of the year? And can you talk to what areas of upside or downside to the GBP 63 million to GBP 66 million this year? And then to the first question on the macro volatility, and could you talk a bit more -- can you talk in a bit more detail by market. You mentioned in the U.K., your penetration of households is 15.4%. Do you think a period of recession, for example, could impact penetration in the U.K. And what do you see in terms of macro and down trading in the U.S. and Europe as well, given your smaller business in the younger category in those markets?

So look, I'll take the first one and then go to the second. So on the first, in terms of what we've built into guidance, just to be really clear. So when we began the year, this was on the back of the negotiations we've had with all of our suppliers, and that kind of underpinned our guidance of sort of GBP 69 million to GBP 72 million of EBITDA. And within that, the 9% inflation, we're expecting across kind of product costs and logistics. So that pricing was locked in. And obviously, you model the expected logistics costs as well across the year, that resulted in 450 bps [indiscernible]. So what has changed is clearly that commodity prices have spiked across categories. And what you're also seeing is a change in the supply -- the balance of supply on things like aluminum and ultimately, fuel and gas and oil. And how that has an effect on us is, frankly, we're not directly exposed to those. We are to an extent with certain logistics costs, fuel costs, fuel cost surcharges, which is a relatively straightforward to model out. But predominantly, it's our suppliers, it's our bottlers, it's our glass cost suppliers, it's our aluminum suppliers who are exposed to that volatility. And of course, they will hedge and they'll have a degree of -- kind of protection from those spikes, but they won't be fully hedged. And given the level of volatility, we -- our job is to recognize the risk, frankly, that they may approach us and say, look, at this current level of, let's say, gas price on the market, making the glass bottle is extremely -- it's very different from the basis in which we negotiated pricing at the beginning of the year. So what we're trying to do is that's the risk. And what we've tried to do is look across the basket of our product costs really and look at where we believe there's more exposure through, let's say, gas prices where they currently are and where we believe that could manifest in those kind of discussions later in the year. And of course, we have a mitigating factor in that we will negotiate very hard if that happens. But we also have to recognize the reality that in the current environment and the uncertainty, that negotiation is quite challenging because the situation is so different to where it was in January. And that's how we've kind of come to the number of sort of GBP 6 million to GBP 7 million of incremental costs that we've modeled out. We were recognizing the fact that in the 3 months year-to-date, we haven't been impacted. We've got no direct exposure to this. But over the following 9 months, there's clearly increased risk that some of those costs that we based our previous guidance on will change. And hence, that's what we are updating this morning.

And then in answer to your second question. I mean I mentioned earlier about the sort of recession-proof nature of our category. So I think that holds primarily in answer to your question. But what I'd also say is don't forget, these trends that I referred to in probably too many times, really are growing and growing, people turning away from beer and wine to spirits. So we are optimistic that, that trend will continue. So to your point about household penetration, what was really interesting is we're seeing young consumers coming into buying these products. So we think this universe will grow, and that's not just here in the U.K. but around the world. So I think for all of those reasons, we remain sort of confident and optimistic that demand will continue with the brand and the category.

It's Andrea Pistacchi from Bank of America. Two questions, please. First, could you -- I mean, what is the time line, please, for the canning in the U.S., bottling in Australia? And more broadly, could you size the potential logistics benefits, 150 basis points margin benefit this year. What could conceivably medium term or 2023, could there be beyond that? And then more broadly, on margins, looking out a little I appreciate there's a lot of uncertainty. I'm not expecting, of course, to give guidance for next year. However, when you think of logistics benefits more coming on stream in 2023, given where spot commodities are now? Do you think the 150, 200 basis points of sort of prudence that you put on the margin for this year? A lot of moving parts, but how do you feel about next year being able to recover that?

Sure. So in terms of the formal question, timing of -- so this year, we have just commissioned our East Coast bottling lines, we're going to be ramping up. So what that means across the full year, approximately 60% of our U.S. sales are going to be underpinned with local production. Obviously, as we go into next year, we'll have the full year of East and West Coast. We'll start the year, though still with cans being made in the U.K. and sent to the U.S. At the moment, we're going through a process to identify U.S. canner and an Australian bottler. We would expect to bring those online during 2023. So 2023 will start to get a benefit, and then you look to 2024 to get a full year benefit. And in terms of the upside, look, we've got 150 basis points of improvement this year from just ramping up to 60%. There's absolutely opportunity for those kind of levels of increase next year and beyond when it -- because it's not just about the savings on logistics. It's as I said, it's the ability to start to scale with a U.S. bottling network. We can start to get, as I described, we can onshore glass and make significant savings there. Our label procurement changes, all of these things start to move in a very different direction. So in terms of what's in our control and it kind of talks to future margin guidance. We're pretty confident that we've got a program of work, and it's not just all predicated on that network. We've got lots of other initiatives around procurement, around our systems, around how we could be more optimal with our inventory holdings. And we're very comfortable in able to drive good, strong basis point improvement over the coming years. To your point, there's uncertainty around the level of continued headwinds. But we've recognized incremental risk this year. We are sort of comfortable with an improvement next year. And I think house has about 20.5% EBITDA margin next year. And the improvement is being driven at gross margin because we're not going to change that investment behind the brand. I think we're comfortable then to keep expecting 100 to 150 basis points of improvement every year as we scale through this kind of international network.

Richard Felton from Goldman Sachs. My first question is on the U.S. I mean, congratulations on leading the premium mixer category there. And maybe it sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but how sort of the success and lack of competition, does that make it harder or more expensive for you to grow in the sort of thought processes, Fever-Tree has had a lot of success, but still a very small brand in the grand scheme of the U.S. market. But the lack of competition or other brands means it sort of falls on you to do the heavy lifting to grow the category to convince more of the on-trade to turn away from the gun. So does the lack of competition make it harder for your business to grow in the U.S.? That's the first question. And then my second question is on the U.K. Could you give us some sense of the balance of growth between your sort of core tonic waters and then some of the innovations with the sodas that you've done over the last sort of 18 to 24 months.

I'll start off. An interesting question. It's -- the reality is there's a lot of characters playing in this category in the U.S. So there's us, there is Q Drinks, there's London Essence. There's a number of other small emerging brands all of whom share a different distribution network to us. You have to remember that we're with Southern Glazer's obviously, which is the largest single wine and spirit distributor in the country and carries most of the major international brands. But there's other very strong -- equally strong but not quite as strong as Southern Glazer's, but other strong distribution networks who are also out there talking about premium mixes and talking about those in the On-Trade. The joy for us is that when the operator, the hotel operator, restaurant operator makes their decision, they're making their decision in favor of Fever-Tree more often than they're making their decision in favor of others. But there are -- not quite as many, but there's still a very large number of sales people out there talking about other premium mixes. It's just that when the decisions are being made, they prefer Fever-Tree. Why? Because I think, a, because of our range of products, we cover tonics, gingers, ginger beer. We've got the pink grapefruit. Because of our 4 drink strategies, so we think across a number of different drinks as opposed to being sort of more, I think, individually focused, which is where some others can come across as being. And finally, I think most importantly, is the quality of the liquid itself. It's simply -- we do taste tests the whole time, and we're very confident in the taste of our liquid, and that's validated by all these people and the work that we do. Equally -- and finally, I think I'd just say, we do take on the heavy lifting in the category. And that's why we continue to invest, invest in marketing, invest in people, invest in spreading the word about the category because we believe -- and also because every time we get another consumer into the category, i.e., premium mixing, we get in the Off-Trade, we get 46% share of that category. So we get 1 in every 2 consumers, therefore, it's worth for us investing more in the category because we get the majority of the benefit and we only reinforce our position as the leader, the more we continue to invest.

And Richard, a sort of brief answer to the U.K. is that our tonics account for 85% or so of our U.K. business. But that other 15% has grown pretty rapidly over the last couple of years. Our gingers grew at 70-odd percent last year. Our sodas, I mean, from a small base, because they were launched year before have grown very quickly. And it's interesting because it is bringing in a different consumer, a slightly younger consumer, particularly in the case of the sodas with the sort of link to vodka. It's also bringing in some more spirit partners, I mentioned about Smirnoff but others very keen to start investing with us. And that whole sort of breadth of the spirit category and the sort of focus on mixing has grown a lot in the last couple of years. So we're having some very interesting conversations with tequila and rum producers all who are really now sensing a great opportunity. So we anticipate that, that will continue to grow and with the opportunity.

It's Mitch Collett from Deutsche Bank. I've got 2 questions, hopefully, both of them are quite quick. The first is going back to pricing. I understand why you don't want to take pricing when you're in sort of full on growth mode, but some of your markets in Europe are a bit more mature than others. Have you taken any pricing in any of your European markets ex U.K.? And in the U.S., is it about the gap? Or is it about the absolute level of pricing being a barrier to be increasing? And then my second question is on the longer-term margin opportunity. And I feel like you've answered this with the annual progression, but is it still reasonable to expect that at some point in the future, you might get back to a 30% margin?

Well, just very briefly, on Europe, we have taken pricing. We have taken a few percentage points of pricing, broadly speaking, a little bit more in some countries and a little bit less than others, but that's how it averages out across the U.S. -- in the Europe, sorry. And with regards to the U.S. Yes, we've run all sorts of dynamics depending on the format of the category, the competition depending on price barriers, depending on the elasticity relative to the competition as well. So there's a whole range of reasons that we've arrived at the pricing multiple that we have. So that can be changed, no question, there's no hard and fast rule, there's no barrier that we can't go through. But as it stands, we believe that in the U.S., we're very well priced, very premiumly priced, make no mistake. In the U.S., it's a higher price point than we have here, but still very well priced against the competition to be able to continue to drive the growth we are.

Yes. And in terms of the longer-term margin, I mean, look, we are clearly, at the moment, focused on driving incremental margin improvement over the coming years. But when we stand back, we're looking at one margin per future here. But when you separate it out into where we have mature markets, at scale with really strong value share and the profit we make in those markets, we're very comfortable in the longer term as those other growth markets mature, we can still achieve 30% EBITDA margins in the fullness of time, absolutely. But while we're growing those other markets are going to be running at a lower margin. But there's nothing structurally that's going to prevent that, particularly in a market like the U.S., to Tim's point, our price point in the U.S., even post repositioning is the highest across anywhere else in the group. So we have a high price point. We've had challenges to the margin by virtue of the fact we've been exporting from the U.K. to the U.S. in an environment where sea freight charges are doubling and then doubling again, but with local production and a local network there we can really optimize that margin at gross margin level, giving us the optionality to invest in A&P as well. And at scale, at 5x plus scale in the U.S., very comfortable with the long-term margin we can achieve there.

Brilliant. Well, I'm sorry if there are a few questions left, but thank you very much for coming and listening. And as I said, we will try and get you back when the bar is open.

Thank you.