An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has re­port­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $19.4 mil­lion for the first quar­ter end­ed March 31, 2026, mark­ing a 14.5 per cent de­cline from the $22.7 mil­lion record­ed in the same pe­ri­od last year.

In its sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three months end­ed March 31, 2026, chair­man Gary Hunt ex­plained this out­turn was pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by two ex­ter­nal fac­tors.

First­ly, the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of in­creased ex­cise du­ties in the lo­cal mar­ket sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed the cost of goods sold, with ex­cise tax­es now rep­re­sent­ing 41 per cent of to­tal pro­duc­tion costs com­pared to 29 per cent in the pri­or year.

Sec­ond­ly, glob­al fi­nan­cial mar­ket volatil­i­ty, aris­ing from geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and Iran, re­sult­ed in a re­duc­tion in in­vest­ment in­come dur­ing the quar­ter.

“Notwith­stand­ing these chal­lenges, the group de­liv­ered strong cost dis­ci­pline across its op­er­a­tions. Sell­ing, mar­ket­ing, and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es were all main­tained be­low pri­or-year lev­els, re­flect­ing proac­tive man­age­ment ac­tions, im­proved ef­fi­cien­cies, and the de­fer­ral of non-es­sen­tial ex­pen­di­ture. These mea­sures have helped to par­tial­ly off­set mar­gin pres­sures and po­si­tion the busi­ness for im­proved prof­itabil­i­ty in the com­ing quar­ters,” Hunt ex­plained.

He added that the group’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion re­mains sol­id, with to­tal as­sets in­creas­ing by six year-on-year, sup­port­ed by high­er in­vest­ment bal­ances and work­ing cap­i­tal lev­els.

“Liq­uid­i­ty re­mains sta­ble, and the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ac­tive­ly man­age its cash flows in light of in­creased tax­a­tion and in­ven­to­ry re­quire­ments,” Hunt said.

The chair­man fur­ther out­lined that to­tal rev­enue for the pe­ri­od in­creased by $6 mil­lion or three per cent over the pri­or year, sup­port­ed by a strong per­for­mance in the lo­cal mar­ket, which grew by 16 per cent year-on-year.

“This growth was dri­ven by con­tin­ued de­mand for our core brands, in­clud­ing White Oak, For­res Park, and our Ready-to-Drink port­fo­lio (420 and Cu­ba­ta), demon­strat­ing the en­dur­ing strength of our mar­ket po­si­tion and con­sumer loy­al­ty,” Hunt shared.

Look­ing ahead, the chair­man said the board is en­cour­aged by the un­der­ly­ing strength of the busi­ness and the re­cov­ery mo­men­tum al­ready ev­i­dent in rev­enue per­for­mance, stat­ing that the group re­mains con­fi­dent in its abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment and de­liv­er im­proved re­sults in the up­com­ing quar­ters.

“Our strate­gic fo­cus on in­no­va­tion, brand de­vel­op­ment, and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion con­tin­ues to po­si­tion An­gos­tu­ra for sus­tain­able long-term growth,” he added.