Operator
Good morning, and welcome to Corby Spirit and Wine's fiscal year 2026 first-quarter financial results conference call for the period ended September 30, 2025. Joining me on the call this morning are Nicolas Krantz, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Juan Alonso, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Hopefully, you've had the opportunity to review the press release, which was issued yesterday. Before we begin, I would like to inform listeners that information provided on today's call may contain forward-looking statements, which can be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated.
Risks and uncertainties about the company's business are more fully discussed in Corby's materials, including annual and interim MD&A filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada as required. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Following management's commentary, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions.
If you have any difficulties hearing the conference, please press *0 on your phone for operator assistance, or click the help button on your screen. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr.
Krantz.
Nicolas Krantz
Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I am Nicolas Krantz, and it's a pleasure to connect with you today, joined by Juan Alonso, our CFO, to share Corby Spirit and Wine Q1 results as we kick off fiscal year 2026.
In a few minutes, Juan will walk you through the financials in more detail, but I will begin by highlighting the key drivers behind our strong start to the year in what continues to be a volatile and evolving market environment. Indeed, it's been a strong start, with a record-high quarterly reported revenue and net earning growing +16% and 9% respectively, fueled by continued share gains in spirits and a rapid expansion of our RTD business.
This marks our third consecutive year of outperforming the overall spirit market, a testament to the strength and resilience of our strategy and diversified brand portfolio. Our RTD strategy continue to deliver.
Corby is now positioned as one of the key players in the Canada fastest-growing RTD category, and importantly, we are outpacing category growth as well. Part of the success for the RTD portfolio and our wine portfolio has been successfully capitalizing on the Ontario route-to-market modernization, creating new opportunities for consumer engagement.
Now turning to market dynamics, the Canadian spirits landscape is evolving, and we've seen some reduced purchasing patterns in Ontario as a new channel expands, and we are now lapping the LCBO labor strike from July 2024. Despite these factors, we have delivered consistent profitability margin against a dynamic backdrop, reflecting strong operational execution.
Notably, our Q1 performance reflects the excellence of our sales execution, with a strong share across the total portfolio and within the context of the US-origin products being removed from shelves, also benefiting from favorable order-phasing effect expected to normalize in Q2, but more on that to come. Beyond top-line growth, we continue to actively manage our portfolio to enhance Corby's growth profile, and during the quarter, we completed the disposal of certain non-core ABG brands, and also Juan will give a bit more detail, allowing us to sharpen our focus, our priority categories, and accelerate our growth.
Finally, from a financial perspective, we deliver strong cash flow generation, supporting by attractive capital returns to shareholders. Our balance sheet remains healthy, and the net debt to adjusted EBITDA at 1.4 is proving to show our flexibility for balance sheet.
In line with our confidence in the outlook, we maintained our quarterly dividend at 23 cents per share, consistent with our Q4 FY '25 and up 5% relative to the Q1 FY '25, signaling the sustainability of our dividend policy. Before Juan digs a bit more in the details of our financials, let me give you a quick glimpse of the wider market context.
As I mentioned, Corby saw an acceleration of our share gains across all category in Q1. A lot of this is pointing towards the excellence of our sales execution, as we plan to capture share following the US-origin products being removed from shelves.
In the rolling three-month period ending end of September, while the Canadian spirits market declined by -0.9%, Corby value performance outpaced the market by 6.8 points, delivering a 5.9% growth in value. Our wine portfolio as well deliver a very strong result, achieving +20% growth against fairly flat market at 0.7%.
As I've explained previously, we can specifically highlight the RTD category that continue to be, of course, in good growth, but Corby has fairly established itself as a major player, consistently outperforming the market with 44% growth, which is, of course, an outstanding 27 points to the market. Market as well, if you look at the first quarter of the year, this has been, of course, a very strong result, but also if you move to the R12, it continues to be also a very resilient market.
Effectively, the broader market on the R12, we can see that the spirits market is declining by 3.8% and we are almost flat, slightly growing, again with a strong performance versus the spirits. On the RTD, the market remains in double digit and we are outperforming as well the category.
On the wine side, slight decline, and we are also outperforming the category. Now deep diving a bit more on the spirits category, we can see that we continue to outpace the market in almost all spirit category over the last 12 months, with share gain acceleration in the last two quarters as we benefit from this US-origin product being removed from shelves.
We have, of course, uniquely a diverse portfolio across every price point in every category across spirit, RTD, and wine, and this is very much a competitive advantage of Corby right now that we are leveraging with impact. Turning a bit more on the RTD portfolio, which is very important for us, Corby's RTD growth has accelerated over the last 12 months with a sustained share gain driven by strong innovation and strategic execution.
In Q1, as I mentioned earlier, our RTD portfolio delivered an outstanding +44 value growth, significantly outpacing the category nationally. Over the last three months, the RTD portfolio took share in every region, reinforcing the strength of our brands and the effectiveness of our strategy.
Specialized route to market now perform a key advantage, with ABG proving strategy reach from Ontario, but also new strengthening in presence in Western Canada. In that category, innovation continues to be a core strength and our pipeline is robust.
We see now that we have a lot of new brands winning share, allowing Corby to rapidly attacking whitespace and capture further growth opportunities. In Ontario, we've been capitalizing on the route-to-market modernization since September 2024, leveraging the breadth and the depth of our RTD portfolio, and this has translated into growing prominence in grocery store where our brands continue to lead and benefit from the strong consumer demand.
Of course, our flagship brand, Cottage Springs, is at the forefront of that success and remain the number one RTD in Ontario. Finally, we've taken the advantage and strategic steps to enhance our RTD portfolio and growth profile.
This quarter, we have also announced that we've increased our ownership of ABG by adding 5%, bringing our ownership to 95% subsequent to this call option being exercised. I've mentioned before that we have also taken the opportunity to streamline the portfolio from ABG, and we dispose some non-core assets, particularly Ace Hill beer and the Liberty Village cider.
Non-strategic asset has been divested to refocus the portfolio on our core strategic SKU. Finally, before I hand over to Juan, and I don't want to dwell too long on our strategy since it was already well covered in previous pages, but I want to make clear that our goal remains to really focus on market share gain to grow sustainably and also in a profitable way, we can create value for our shareholders.
Now with that, I hand over to Juan to highlight our Q1 financial results.
Juan Alonso
Thank you, Nicolas, and good morning, everyone. I'm Juan Alonso, Corby's CFO.
I'm pleased to walk you through our financial results today. Very briefly, before we talk about our financial performance, you are going to notice some mentions of adjusted metrics and organic revenue growth.
We believe that these non-IFRS financial measures support a better understanding of our underlying business performance and trends. We provided the detailed explanations of each of those elements in our Q1 FY '26 MD&A, and I invite you to refer to this document for any questions related to it.
Now let's start with Q1 results. In the first quarter, Corby delivered strong results, with record quarterly revenue and adjusted EBITDA, sustained by the expansion of our RTD business and the acceleration of our spirits market share gain.
Corby generated $75.4 million in revenue, a +16% increase over Q1 of fiscal 2025. This performance marks Corby's highest quarterly revenue achieved in a challenging retail environment.
I will go over the key drivers in more detail shortly. Strategic investments behind key brands and diligent control of expenses, our adjusted EBITDA also reached a record high, totaling $20.3 million, up +4%, and adjusted earnings per share was 39 cents, with reported at 36 cents, representing a solid +9% growth in reported earnings and a +8% in adjusted earnings.
Our cash flow from operating activities totaled $5.6 million, a $1.9 million increase year over year. This was supported by earnings growth, disciplined management of costs, and working capital favorable.
On Wednesday, the Board of Directors declared a dividend at 23 cents per share for the first quarter of FY '26, consistent with the previous quarter, which represented an increase of 1 cent, or 5%, compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. The Board of Directors assesses the dividend on a quarterly basis, and as a reminder, the quarterly dividend was last increased in Q2 FY '25.
Now let's go to the next slides and delve deeper into our year-to-date revenue growth. To reinforce, Corby delivered an all-time high quarterly revenue of $75.4 million in Q1, representing a 16% increase over Q1 of FY '25.
This growth can be attributed to, firstly, domestic case goods performance reached $61.3 million, reflecting a +15% growth. This is highlighted by improved shelf prominence of Corby Spirits, capitalizing on the removal of US-origin products in key provinces.
ABG brands grew +33%, with continued strong momentum on new channel expansion in Ontario and Western Canada. Secondly, commission revenue rose to $8.2 million, a growth of +7% versus last year, driven by imported RTDs tapping into routes-to-market modernization opportunities with the openings of grocery and convenience channels across Ontario.
In addition, represented brands lapped the LCBO labor strike impact last year and benefited from favorable LCBO order phasings in Q1 this year, which is expected to normalize in Q2. Lastly, export revenue increased to $4.9 million, or +55%, reflecting a strong recovery of shipments across all markets, also benefiting from favorable shipment phasings in the US.
To summarize our P&L results for Q1, Corby saw a strong 16% revenue growth, leading to a record quarterly performance bolstered by the strength of our portfolio, specifically the acceleration in RTD portfolio, tapping into new channel expansion in Ontario, and spirits gaining additional shares in the spirits market. Our total operating expenses increased by 18% to support the continued growth and expansion of our RTD business, in addition to strategic investments behind the key brands, such as the J.P.
Wiser's NHL partnership, and also a disciplined people cost management. As a result, Corby delivered a record-quarter adjusted EBITDA, marking 4% increase versus last year, growing at a lower pace than revenue due to an adverse portfolio, market, and channel mix, along with lapping very low marketing expense levels last year to mitigate the business impact of the LCBO strike last year.
For the sake of clarity, when we talk about adverse portfolio mix, it refers to RTDs growing at a faster pace than the rest of portfolio, and notably, our more profitable spirits. The adverse market mix refers to standout recovery of our export business across all markets, less profitable on average than our domestic market.
Lastly, the adverse channel mix deals with the increase of direct delivery sales of RTD products following the routes-to-market modernization in Ontario that is more costly than the retail channel. Finally, on a per-share basis, our adjusted net earnings was 39 cents, and reported net earnings was 36 cents, reflecting growth of 8% and 9% respectively versus last year.
Moving to our cash flow performance, in Q1, Corby generated $5.6 million in cash from operating activities, supported by higher net earnings and favorable working capital movements, partially offset by higher interest and tax payments. These working capital benefits were primarily driven by timing of spend.
Our free cash flow also improved, increasing by $1.3 million compared to the prior year. As a result, our net debt position was $93 million at the end of the quarter, representing a $16 million improvement versus Q1 FY '25.
Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio improved at 1.4 times, down from 1.8 last year, demonstrating robust solvency and reinforcing our financial health. Corby maintained an attractive dividend payout ratio at 55% on a rolling 12-month basis, highlighting the sustainability of the company's quarterly dividend.
Notably, quarterly dividend payment increased by 5% in Q1 FY '26 compared to Q1 FY '25. These actions have contributed to a high dividend yield over recent years at 6.6% at the end of the quarter, providing consistent returns over FY '24 and FY '25.
We are proud of our performance in Q1, and we remain focused on delivering long-term value for our stakeholders and shareholders. With a strong portfolio, disciplined execution, and a clear strategy, Corby is well positioned to continue driving growth and shareholder returns.
Before I finish, I want to share our outlook and priorities for the remainder of the year. After all you've heard today, you can see that Corby is well positioned to continue outperforming the market in FY '26, even as the environment remains dynamic.
Our ambition is to continue to gain market share in spirits despite the challenge of a potential slight market decline. We are going to remain agile and respond appropriately whenever US products are permitted back on shelves.
We are confident in our resilience, leveraging leading brands, local footholds, top-tier marketing, and advanced tools like AI-based prioritization to stay ahead. Our RTD portfolio remains a major growth engine, and we see significant potential to expand across Canada, led by strong traction from ABG.
In Ontario, we will continue to capitalize on routes-to-market modernization, meeting evolving consumer preferences with agility and breadth. From a financial perspective, we remain focused on protecting margins, driving profitable growth, and generating long-term shareholder [returns?]
. Finally, regarding the outlook for the next quarter and beyond, we expect Q2 results to be softer than Q1 due to the normalization of LCBO orders from Q1 and the impact of BC labor strike that elapsed over September and October.
We anticipate these effects will normalize over time and will not impact Corby's ability to execute on its market-leading strategy. Now I hand over to Nicolas for some closing remarks.
Nicolas Krantz
Thank you very much, Juan. Strong financials indeed and good clarity for outlook.
I want to leave you with the core reasons you should invest in Corby, really, and for us, it's really the backbone. Corby remains, at the end of the day, the Canada's largest publicly listed multi-beverage alcohol company in Canada, with the most diversified portfolio in the market, and that's something really to anchor.
Add to that our close partnership with Pernod Ricard gives us strategic advantages and, of course, access to global best practices. The diversity of the portfolio and the strength of the portfolio is supporting us as well.
We have a clear strategy, strong execution, and a proven ability to outpace the market with value growth. Our innovation pipeline, marketing strength, and recent acquisition continue to drive performance and operational excellence.
Finally, we have consistent financials. It means that we have resilient revenue, strong cash flow, and a healthy balance sheet that support attractive and growing dividend.
Now, as we recently announced upcoming leadership changes at Corby. This means that today is my last day hosting our earnings conference call as the President and CEO of Corby.
I am extremely proud of what we've accomplished over the past 5 years, and leading Corby has been an honor. I will continue to work closely with Florence Tresarrieu, the incoming President and CEO, as we transition.
I know she will lead Corby with energy, strength, and passion, and she's looking forward to connecting with Corby's shareholders. With that, thank you once again for joining us today and for your continued interest and support in Corby.
Juan and I, of course, are now happy to take any of your questions. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the 1 on your touch-tone phone.
Should you wish to cancel your request, please press the star followed by the 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys.
Once again, that is *1 should you wish to ask a question.
Nicolas Krantz
I think we have a question here. Thank you very much regarding the export opportunity.
Listen, the export today is a relatively small part of our business. It's an opportunity because, at the end of the day, from a small base, it's showing on a regular basis, of course, a good growth.
In term of our, I would say, battleground, we really have two types of battleground. The first one, of course, mainly for whisky business, it's the US.
The Canadian whisky category is actually a large category in the US, and J.P. Wiser's and the rest of our Corby portfolio is relatively small.
We are showing good trajectory from a small base, but this is something which we'll continue to do. The rest is more in Europe, where we export J.P.
Wiser's and Lamb's rum, Lamb's rum in particular in the UK, but also J.P. Wiser's is showing some good traction in country like Sweden and Central Europe.
That's also something that we are going to do. Now regarding the commercial opportunity for the RTD, for the moment, we think we have plenty of opportunity to scale up the business in Canada.
That has been the focus in term of resource allocation and the team. Listen, there is no doubt that the US is, of course, a large playground as well for RTD.
I think for us, it's a matter of timing, of maturity, and in the long run, of course, the US may also represent a good opportunity for Cottage Springs or, for that matter, for any other brand or innovation, what we call new-to-market brand, that could be developed for the US market. In the short term, I would say, probably not the focus for the RTD portfolio; in the mid to long term, likely to be also an opportunity for us.
Maybe, Juan, you're okay to take the questions on the debt and the cash flow?
Juan Alonso
Yes. Thanks for that.
The question is related to the increase of the cash flow and if the company intends to prioritize debt repayments or other potential use, such as dividend increase. Our idea is to continue to amortize our debt straightly.
We have 10 years to pay our intercompany debt with Pernod Ricard that was taken in 2023 for the acquisition of Ace Beverage Group for the amount of $120 million. We had a 10-year term to amortize this debt, and we have been amortizing straightly across the years.
At the same time, this enable us flexibility to continue to increase dividend as our earnings from profit increase. That's both: so continue to repay the debt, and continue to assess dividend increase as the business profit grows.
Nicolas Krantz
Is there any further question?
Operator
There are no questions on the phone lines.
Nicolas Krantz
Okay. With that, again, thank you very much for your attention.
I usually close, specifically on the Friday, to say the best way to get to know Corby is to get to know portfolio and enjoy our brand responsibly, specifically before the weekend. With that, I wish you a very good day and a very good weekend.
Thank you, everyone.
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The conference has now ended.
Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect your lines.
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