Magners market shareup 4%

MAGNERS cider significantly outperformed its British peers, last month, upping its market share by more than 4% in the process.

Latest monthly sales data for the British off-trade sector, from Nielsen Research, shows that Magners — C&C’s chief cider brand in Britain — grew sales by 33.6%, year-on- year, in the four weeks up to Christmas Eve.

This compared favourably with a growth level of 16.4% for the British off-trade cider sector, as a whole.

As a result of the good December performance, Magners’ actual month- by-month market share jumped from 9% in November to 13.5% in December.

“Evidently, there is a lot going on in the category, but, broadly speaking, the off-trade cider category is growing well ahead of beer this year and Magners is growing slightly ahead of the off-trade cider category,” said Richard O’Donovan of Davy Stockbrokers.

“We also note that C&C’s management appears to have timed promotional activity well to exploit the heightened activity during the busy Christmas season,” he added.

C&C is set to issue its third-quarter trading update — the company’s financial year runs up to the end of February — next Tuesday.

Nielsen’s December figures showed that the Magners brand performed solidly across all the variants within the British cider sector.

Its special flavours represented 6% of total brand sales for the month, with Magners Pear showing an especially strong performance, through a 74% sales jump.

“Pricing across the category looks to have been down for the four-week period, as a lot of promotional activity and discounting seems to have taken place to coincide with the busy festive season,” said Mr O’Donovan.

“Magners’ average retail price (ARP) was £2.02 (€2.45) for the period, down from £2.25 in the previous period, while Stella Artois Cidre was also down from £2.13 to £2.05.

“Bulmers kept pricing broadly flat at £2.15 versus £2.12 for the previous four-week period,” Mr O’Donovan noted.

C&C underlined cider as its core product in November, as it expanded further into the US with the €20 million acquisition of Hornsby’s — that market’s second-largest cider brand.

Management hasn’t ruled out introducing the product into both the Irish and British markets.