Anora: Good growth from Viva Wine, the main competitor in wines, in Q4 as usual

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 02/21/2025 at 07:00 am EET

Viva Wine, the main competitor of Anora's Wine segment, announced its Q4 result yesterday. Despite the subdued market development, Viva continued to grow and gain market shares. Its profitability improved clearly from the comparison period, supported by growth and price increases. Compared to Anora’s Wine segment, Viva’s performance has been better for a longer time and Viva's revenue developed clearly better in Q4 as well. However, Anora’s margin was stronger in this quarter.

Viva Wine continued growing with good profitability

Viva Wine's Nordics segment is very similar to Anora's Wine segment, although Anora has operations in Denmark while Viva does not. Viva was able to increase its volumes in the monopoly markets (Finland, Sweden, Norway) by 3% in Q4, while the market declined a bit. Viva thus continued its long-standing upward trend in market share in all markets and is the market leader in Sweden and Finland. Viva's revenue grew by 11% from the comparison period, while Anora's fell by 1%. So, the difference in business development is considerable.

In terms of profitability, Viva significantly improved its profitability from the comparison period as expected, when considerable price increases took effect in the spring. Viva Nordics segment's adjusted EBITA margin was already 10% (6.7% in the comparison period) in Q4, compared to the company's target (for the group) of 10-12%. Profitability was on the same level as in Q2-Q3. The improvement was supported by both the increase in the gross margin and volume growth. In Q4, Anora’s gross margin only increased slightly from the comparison period. It was, however, at a strong level, as we believe Anora made clearer price increases already in 2023, unlike Viva. The EBITDA margin of Anora’s Wine segment increased clearly in Q4 compared to both the beginning of the year and the comparison period.

In terms of volumes, Viva expects the Nordic market to be at the same level or slightly lower this year, but to grow in value. This is broadly in line with Anora’s market outlook, which expects a steady volume and value increase. We were somewhat skeptical about Anora's assessment, so Viva's market comments support Anora's view. The market is of course partly different, with Viva talking about wines and Anora of both wines and spirits and also including Denmark. In addition, Anora also expects its market shares to improve.

Viva's margin is better and more consistent than Anora's

As you can see from the graphs below, the margin development of Anora's Wine segment has been much more volatile than Viva's both in the longer term and by quarter. In Q4, Anora achieved a better margin than Viva, but this was also the case in Q4’23, so there may be some differences in seasonality/accounting. The rolling 12-month margin has, however, developed quite similarly over the past year. The graphs also show that Viva's margin jumped in Q2'24 to early 2022 levels after a long period of flatness and has since remained roughly at the same level. Viva commented that it expects its gross margin to remain at a good level this year but that fixed costs relative to revenue will increase. In Q1, it still has a weaker comparison quarter, but after this, margin development is likely to level off. It is worth noting in the graphs that the margin for Viva is EBITA, while for Anora it is EBITDA, which creates a small structural difference in the figures.