Australians Down Under

Shares in antipodean wine companies are propping up the league table. But, worryingly, even they are doing better than leisure shares

Seeing as the great and good of the global wine business are all gathered in Vinexpo this month – and no doubt using any spare moments wisely, in order to check out db – we thought it would be timely month to take a look at the performance of global wine brand owners and producers.

At the top of the performance tree sits Pernod Ricard, owner of Jacob’s Creek, up 11.07% in the three months to May on the back of the Allied Domecq offer, we suggest. Meanwhile, Chilean producer Concha y Toro is continuing to reap the rewards of posting high Q4 earnings earlier in the year with a price increase of nearly 6%.

At the other end of the scale, however, Australian producers are not having a good time of it, with three drinks companies seeing a drop in price. Right at the bottom is Lion Nathan, posting a drop of 4.57% despite enjoying an increase of 51.9% in net profit after tax to AU$127.6m for the first six months to March 31 2005.

For our comparision we’ve pitted the global drinks industry against the might of the hotel, restaurant and leisure world this month, only to discover that the latter is massively underperforming against the former. However, since a significant portion of drinks are consumed through this sector, it will be worth watching what effect this has on our own industry. With indications that consumer confidence is dropping, a speedy recovery in the hotel, restaurant and leisure index would be welcome.

Methodology: MSCI builds its indices from the industry level up by classifying securities by country of domicile; determining a Foreign Inclusion Factor (FIF) for each security; classifying securities according to the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®) into: Sectors (10), Industry Groups (24), Industries (62) and Sub-Industries (132); screening securities for size and liquidity; and finally, initiating security selection process to target 85% free float-adjusted market capitalisation for each industry group, within each country. Source: MSCI