Hello, everyone. Can we find our seats, please? So our last presenter of the day is Diageo, but before I begin, I have two quick announcements. First, a reminder that this is the last presentation of the day, so after this, the room will be locked for rehearsals later. Please remember to bring all of your belongings with you as we move to the breakout room. Second, please join me in thanking Diageo for its generous sponsorship of tonight's dinner, which is always a highlight of the conference. Diageo is a global leader in the premium beverage alcohol industry. In a march back to attractive long-term growth that is underpinned by structural drivers like demographics and rising incomes in the developing worlds, the industry has faced an uneven demand backdrop.
Diageo's broad and diverse footprint, as well as its brand-building capabilities, enable it to participate in a wide variety of opportunities that are specific to the regions in which it operates, enabling outperformance against the market. Furthermore, the company is committed to redoubling its efforts around controlling the controllables, enhancing productivity delivery, driving effectiveness of spend, and sharpening its focus on commercial excellence. To bring this to life for us, we are joined once again today by CEO Debra Crew and CEO of North America, Sally Grimes, who are accompanied by a few faces that are not new to the investment community but who are relatively new additions to Diageo: CFO Nik Jhangiani and, of course, Head of Investor Relations, Sonya Ghobrial. Thank you so much for being here, Debra. I will turn it over to you.
Great. Thanks, Tim. Good afternoon. It's great to be here again at CAGNI today with our new CFO, Nik Jhangiani. This is his first CAGNI with Diageo, but many of you, of course, know him from CCEP and interactions over the past six months. I'm also joined by Sally Grimes, who leads our largest region, North America, which in the first half of fiscal 2025 returned to organic net sales growth and gained share of both U.S. TBA and total spirits. So first, our regulatory statements. Today, we'll discuss our progress in returning to delivering long-term sustainable growth and how we are committed to driving shareholder returns. I'll give you context on Diageo and the strength of our portfolio before highlighting the attractiveness of the TBA industry and specifically spirits. I'll also take you through how we are making progress with our growth ambition, both capturing and shaping consumer opportunities.
Sally will share details on North America, where recent results showed green shoots of industry recovery and improved momentum, and Nik has brought renewed energy and financial rigor, and he will share our priorities to strengthen the agility and resilience of our business as we navigate this volatile backdrop. We continue to believe in market recovery and remain confident in our ability to outperform. Despite the possible disruption from tariffs, we are firmly focused on what we can manage and control. At Diageo, we are proud of our portfolio of brands that play a role in a broad range of consumer occasions and continue to recruit new consumers globally. We have $13 billion brands, are the number three player in TBA and number one in international spirits, where we are one and a half times larger than our next international spirits competitor.
The passion our 30,000 employees worldwide have for our brands is a distinctive part of Diageo culture and key to strengthening our business. Our brands are culturally relevant, connecting and engaging with consumers, and we do this at scale across our markets. So let's watch a short video showcasing our cultural engagement.
Somebody handed me a shot of Don Julio in the middle of the Oscars last night.
I got tequila for everyone in the audience. Salud, everybody!
Salud, everybody! I'm here with my friend, Ago. Oh, man, that's good.
Oh, God, that smells great. Cheers, and keep walking.
As shown in the video featuring our global activations, Diageo has extensive reach and broad category participation worldwide. This regional breadth allows us to flex prioritization, investment, and activation, increasing our ability to capture growth and reduces dependency on any one single region or market. Our manufacturing footprint across the globe helps us maximize product availability and efficiently manage our inventory and supply chain. We have a diverse and broad portfolio of brands with leading positions in more categories than our competitors. We also have participation in Chinese white spirits, unique for an international company, and our 34% shareholding in Moët Hennessy provides exposure to champagnes and cognac. Importantly, the categories where we are number one in value are key for growth and have driven almost 80% of our NSV growth over the last five years.
Additionally, our portfolio is spread across the full pricing ladder, across and within categories, importantly providing choice whatever the economic environment. Overall, our portfolio is more premium than the spirits industry, with over 60% of fiscal 2024 net sales in premium and above versus the industry average of 35%, and this reflects our premiumization strategy and our focus on people drinking better, not more, and this is important as premium brands are growing faster, with super premium plus price tiers growing at nearly 1.5x the rate of total spirits, and we expect this trend to continue positioning us well for future growth. Moving to the broader industry environment, there is currently ongoing debate on whether near-term industry pressure is cyclical or structural. This is not a new debate. Two of my predecessors, both Paul and Ivan, faced similar questions in prior cycles in 2004 and 2014.
While some of the themes, such as GLP-1s and cannabis, are new, we are not seeing material impact from them. What we are seeing is the current pressure on the industry is cyclical and not structural, and that spirits remain an attractive sector with a long runway for growth where we expect to continue to gain TBA share. Since 2020, the industry's gone through two cycles: the COVID supercycle, which saw exceptionally high growth, immediately followed by a cycle of high inflation with significant pressure on consumer wallets, with a slower pace of recovery in key markets of the U.S. and China. I'll take you through our view of both the opportunities and risk and what gives us this confidence. Consumer wallets are under pressure, and our analysis of U.S. data shows macroeconomic uncertainty is the biggest factor weighing on current industry volumes.
While macroeconomic headline numbers and sentiment are improving, consumers remain focused on personal wallets, with savings and credit card debt still under pressure compared to pre-COVID normal levels. Inflation in groceries remains a priority, and spend is elevated versus history, with consumers spending 20% more for 11% less, given cost inflation, and while this is putting pressure on discretionary spend, reassuringly, consumer spend on alcohol as a percentage of total expenditure has marginally increased over the last decade and held up during the more recent period, reflecting that consumers want to prioritize occasions where Diageo brands participate. Additionally, the breadth of our portfolio across different price points ensures that we offer something for everyone, addressing accessibility, affordability, and premiumization as seen in the strong performance of our smaller-sized Don Julio tequila bottles.
This is why we remain confident that as wallets recover, we will see stronger growth across our portfolio. Looking beyond the near term, we are also confident that favorable fundamentals will continue to provide powerful tailwinds for our industry, driving both volume and price mix. First, strong consumer demographics underpin the TBA market. We expect 600 million new legal-aged or LPA consumers to enter the market by 2030, with growth in the middle class also accelerating, resulting in household consumption growth. Within this, Gen Z is forecast to become the only generation ever to reach 2 billion people with associated spending power. Secondly, data suggest premiumization is expected to continue despite the current backdrop, and we are well placed as our portfolio is premium skewed.
Finally, we expect International Spirits to continue its 10-year trend, taking share of occasions from Beer and Wine within TBA, given its versatility and innovation. So let's dig into the drivers of this trend, specifically in the U.S.. So taking a detailed look at the years since the extraordinary growth following the COVID supercycle in the U.S., both TBA and Spirits saw volume decline. However, over the same time, Spirits gained 40 basis points share of TBA servings, with Core Spirits and Spirit-based RTDs the only segments of TBA where household penetration increased. And this was driven by Spirits recruiting more consumers across more occasions. Importantly, we expect positive demographic trends from the growth of Gen Z and ongoing category share gains to continue underpinning our confidence in the Spirits category.
With increased recruitment and increasing household penetration, we are not seeing a material negative impact on premium spirits from either cannabis or GLP-1s. On cannabis, while we continue to closely monitor the newer impact of legal THC in the hemp-based THC beverages, to date, we see the strongest interactions with canned formats and occasions, so no notable impact on our business. In the U.S., with estimates of 15 million users of GLP-1s at any one time, we have not yet seen a material impact that is distinct from broader moderation trends of people drinking better, not more. Early studies indicate that they may have a role in reducing excessive consumption, so as an example, excessive drinking to moderate drinking, which we, of course, would be supportive of.
Separately, the versatility of spirits plays well into potential changes in taste preferences of people using GLP-1s, and we are tracking data across 21 markets. Moving to Gen Z, U.S. household penetration of spirits is actually increasing. It was up 6 percentage points to 55% in 2024 compared to 2020. We believe spirits-based canned RTDs have played a role in this as LPA plus Gen Z increasingly enter TBA in this category versus historically entering in beer, and increased tequila penetration is a significant contributor too, with the category having gained 5 percentage points of Gen Z household penetration since fiscal 2020. As the number one tequila player globally, this is an exciting opportunity for Diageo. Also, LPA plus Gen Z household penetration numbers are slightly higher than prior generations at their age, and typically, household penetration increases over time.
Of course, every generation's different with varied preferences and habits, and we continually evolve to recruit into new occasions through brand building and innovation. There's also meaningful opportunity to grow U.S. household penetration further across our portfolio. Looking at key spirits categories and our largest brands, we have a significant runway for growth with more opportunity to recruit consumers. While tequila has increased penetration by 3% over the past three years, we still have plenty of headroom. In the U.S., our largest brand, Crown Royal, sits at just under 19% penetration, and Casamigos, which Sally will discuss later, is under 5%, so finally, let me share what we are doing to address moderation, so perhaps the biggest potential disruptor of our industry, but also one of our greatest opportunities as the market leader in this growing space.
We always recognize our responsibility to educate consumers to make informed choices, being clear when alcohol consumption's not appropriate, and providing clear and transparent health information about alcohol misuse, and while at Diageo, we believe in celebrating life every day, everywhere, we have drinks for every occasion, including some more suited to moderation. Our insights tell us that in occasions where others may be drinking alcohol, some consumers want to enjoy a non-alcoholic drink, yet still want to feel part of that occasion, and non-alcoholic spirits have a role here and can source volume from outside spirits, in particular from beer and soft drinks. Interestingly, in the U.S., 93% of non-alc buyers also purchase alcohol with a higher total spend.
We are building new non-alcoholic brands, including Seedlip, which grew value in the U.S. double digits since launch, and the newly acquired Ritual, the number one non-alc spirit brand in the U.S., which provides spirit alternatives perfect for mixing, and we have extended Tanqueray, now the number one non-alc spirit in GB, Gordon's, and Captain Morgan into 0.0 segment with distinctive packs and branding. Alongside our spirits brands, Guinness 0.0 goes from strength to strength. Launched first in GB and Ireland and rolled out in the U.S. over 12 months ago, it is recruiting new younger LPA plus consumers with an exciting opportunity to accelerate growth and expand into more markets.
To ensure we maximize the opportunity from our advantage portfolio, Diageo's focused on our growth ambition, and we are making meaningful progress delivering on this while navigating the volatile backdrop at this more uncertain time, focusing on what we can manage and control. While the key pillars and principles don't change, being agile means we continually shape and sharpen its application to reflect evolving consumer and market trends. So I'd like to share some examples of delivery against this strategy. At the heart of our strategy is unleashing the power of our brands and portfolio to lead and shape consumer trends while adapting quickly to the changing environment. We continually work to identify growth opportunities by understanding consumer behaviors, trends, and occasions, and matching this with the most attractive value pools.
Over the last year, we embedded our dial-up behaviors to drive speed and agility across our teams globally, an essential element to deliver on our growth ambition, so let me bring this to life, starting with leading and shaping consumer trends. Our growth ambition calls out six trends with the most opportunity to lead and shape the industry built from external insights and our Consumer Choice Framework. These trends help us identify and prioritize opportunities, so cocktail culture is an area where, given our portfolio, we have a competitive advantage. The RTD is a key driver of this and a priority as well as an area where we will do more. It's important for both premiumization and for trial and recruitment, as a typical cocktail drinker is more likely to trade up and experiment.
Recognizing the importance of this, Diageo started the World Class platform, the largest, most respected bartending competition 15 years ago, and has amplified this. So let me show a taste of it. We are celebrating today 15 years. It's the world's biggest cocktail competition. As you saw in the video, bartenders are challenged to create amazing cocktails using Diageo brands. Over half of our judges are on Drinks International's Most Influential List 2024 and five own or operate venues in the world's 50 Best Bars list, reflecting true industry influence. And this is key as bartender recommendations and menus are essential for engaging and recruiting cocktail drinkers, particularly for Gen Z. Another trend is the consumer desire for exploration.
Inspired by the 2024 launch of What's Your Cocktail, an AI-driven platform recommending cocktail pairings with food, we have expanded this technology into other categories such as What's Your Tequila, which is live in 10 markets, including Mexico, the U.S., and China, where we have engaged with over 150,000 tequila lovers with personalized serve suggestions. So as we unleash the power of our portfolio, we identify opportunities for growth and recruit consumers into new occasions and key categories. A couple of great examples of this. In Latin America, we challenged the Scotch stereotype at the same time as directly accessing the beer occasion. We extended Johnnie Walker to recruit a more diverse consumer with Johnnie Walker Blonde, which is now expanding from Latin America to Europe following its success in Brazil.
Notably, 60% of those trialing Johnnie Walker Blonde were female, and importantly, 76% of volume came from outside whisky with 30% from beer. More recently, we launched Johnnie Walker Black Ruby, an accessible sweeter liquid compared with Johnnie Walker Black Label. Tested in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Australia, it sourced 77% of volume in Mexico from outside of Scotch, with 20% from beer and wine delivering a repeat purchase rate of just under 70% in three months, and we're only starting its rollout. Another example is in tequila, as the global tequila leader, we are building the category globally. Don Julio, which grew more than 50% in our most recent half-year results, is now in nearly 60 countries and is leading tequila premiumization globally. Typically, when we introduce Don Julio in a market, we initially invest and activate through Don Julio 1942, our luxury lead variant.
Its distinctive tall bottle is iconic, stands out, and has great brand recognition. When the tequila category reaches more scale, we shift our focus to core variants, assessing more occasions and broadening growth, and we've seen investment in media for Don Julio 1942 has a halo effect on brand sales as we've seen in the U.S. Specifically, when Don Julio 1942 featured in an advertisement, over 85% of the incremental volume in the measured period came from core variants of Blanco, Reposado, and Añejo. We are also engaging talent worldwide, working to strengthen our capabilities, driving growth and embedding increasing speed and agility with greater accountability for decision-making across the business. Two great examples from the U.S. First, we had the first TBA brand launch and activation at the Oscars with Don Julio 1942 Mini 50 mL bottles.
Another example is the scale launch of a new impaired driving prevention campaign from three of our largest brands partnering with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the NFL, and Uber. In the U.K., Johnnie Walker Princes Street, our brand home, has transformed how we engage with our consumers and has welcomed over one million visitors, and finally, our global Guinness Premier League partnership. By acting decisively, this was negotiated in just three months, and it's already providing access to new occasions in more countries and contributed to the strong performance of Guinness with its eighth consecutive half of double-digit growth. I'm looking forward to sharing more at our Guinness event in May. These success stories are driven by our leaders around the world who are experienced, passionate, and inspired, so I wanted to let you hear from some of them today.
I've been so lucky to have my entire career here.
I have worked across different geographies, across different channels, and across different categories. I have managed distributors, and I have managed customers, and I've also had the opportunity to work across sales and across marketing. Today, I'm really proud to be leading our open states business, which is our largest business across North America. My past experience in sales and marketing has really helped me lead this new team where we are looking for how we're going to go after the right consumers in the right markets. Don Julio 70 is a super example. We know exactly who we're going after, and we know where we're going to execute these amazing plans for long-term sustainable growth.
I have more than 20 years in Diageo. I started as an intern in Venezuela, and now, since three years ago, I've been working and leading the innovation agenda for Latin America.
Working in innovation is a great way to recruit consumers, not only in different age moments, but also in different occasions. We have several examples of great pipelines. Smirnoff Spicy Tamarind, which started in Mexico and is now spread around the world. We also have Johnnie Walker Blonde, which was led by Brazil. Being able to have a brand experience has helped me to understand different kinds of consumers.
I've been with Diageo for 14 years. The reason I joined Diageo is my love for Johnnie Walker. It was always there, and I always associated that brand with birthdays and anniversaries. I've worked in sales. I've worked in commercial roles, customer-facing roles, distributor-facing roles. All of the experiences I've gained, I think, are going to be incredibly valuable as we think about leading the luxury business across spirits within the GB market.
I was in North America at the birth of the tequila boom. How can I take some of those learnings, some of that thinking, some of those actions that we did within the U.S., and bring that to the GB market?
I'm pleased by the progress we are making towards our growth ambition, increasing agility at pace given the rapidly evolving macro environment. As we've said, our focus is on managing what we can control and prioritizing resources where we see the best growth opportunities. To share detail on how the team in North America is implementing this in practice, let me hand over to Sally.
Well, thank you, Debra. It is so great to be back on the CAGNI stage this time representing Diageo North America. Now, North America is Diageo's largest region, close to 40% of net sales and just under 50% of operating profit.
We're the market leader, one and a half times the size of the next largest spirits competitor. Now, firmly established, leading this fantastic team, I'm really motivated by the potential for North America. Since I joined Diageo, my team and I have focused on maximizing the portfolio and improving commercial execution, making sound decisions for the present and the future. I'm really pleased with our first half results, which showed positive momentum and share gains. I'm excited by the opportunity to do more. Brands covering around 90% of our U.S. total net sales won or maintained quality TBA market share, including gaining share in spirits for the first time in three years. As Debra mentioned, this is in a market which remains challenging for the consumer, given the impact of inflationary pressures and where the overall spirits industry remains soft. Importantly, our inventories are normalized.
So today, I want to show you how we are leading industry change by strengthening three core capabilities. First, brand building, maximizing our industry-leading portfolio of brands. Second, innovation, how we grow categories and continue to gain share of occasions from beer and wine. And finally, the transformational commercial changes we are leading in the U.S. spirits route to market. Now, it all starts with people, and I am surrounded by some of the industry's best. Steve, Marsha, Ed, and Michael are here today. They lead the critical functions of commercial, supply, and marketing and innovation. They each have over 25 years of experience at Diageo. So we have deep industry and Diageo experience, and that's complemented by strong, relevant capabilities built at other world-class consumer-centric companies. This is an exceptionally strong management bench. We have clear priorities for the future, and we work as one empowered team to deliver.
Now, our ambition is simple. Meet the changing needs of consumers and customers to consistently gain share with a focus on profitable growth. The greatest tool we have is our portfolio, which spans consumer occasions, categories, and price tiers. We have developed disciplined priorities for growth with sharp choices to guide investment and resource decisions. Grounded in consumer insights, category, and local market trends, it integrates our consumer choice framework. Now, all our brands have a clear strategic role. Our new model evaluates the entirety of our portfolio and ensures our resources are well aligned to the strongest growth prospects. This can mean investing to win within a specific space, for example, behind our new Ketel One campaign, where we gained share of spirits in the first half, or the new innovation from Captain Morgan that I'll talk about shortly.
But this can also mean going bigger and shaping the market, as we have done with tequila. So let's talk more about tequila. Tequila is the fastest-growing core spirits category with a double-digit growth forecast and well-positioned with trends around exploration, cocktails, luxury, and spirits with food. This natural fit has led to strong consumer adoption and growth, and yet household penetration for tequila is still behind other major categories. Tequila delivered more growth than any other spirits category over the last year, and Diageo delivered most of this growth, and we can do more. Our teams have been working to implement distinct brand positionings for growth, rebalancing target consumers, occasions, serves, outlets, and price points. So this provides our customers with a total category solution, from a recommended shelf layout in retail to menu options in a bar. And Diageo's tequila portfolio is gaining momentum.
We're up over 150 basis points of tequila share in the last year and nearly 800 basis points over the last four years. From Casamigos now gaining incremental floor space to dual listings for Don Julio and Casamigos on Chili's menu, helping the national chain become the top seller of margaritas in the U.S. So Don Julio, it is a brilliant example of Diageo brand building. So we identified that Don Julio Reposado was delivering for consumers eager to explore tequila. So we rapidly reallocated spending to launch dedicated advertising, with first-half sales of Don Julio Reposado up 150%. The brand captured more share of the spirits market than any other in the industry. Don Julio large-scale activations range from the first-ever spirits integration at the Oscars to the recent culinary mashup with Popeyes at the Super Bowl, where Don Julio chicken sandwiches sold out in hours.
Now, while these big moves are incredible, this brand also creates cultural cachet from collaborations with influential artists, including Don Julio 70 Añejo Cristalino, which was designed by the first Mexican designer ever to show at New York Fashion Week, to the Super Bowl weekend when Don Julio took over Bourbon Street for a dueling DJ's event. Don Julio truly lives in creative culture, and there's even more to come to build on this momentum. Okay, now on to Casamigos, which we fully integrated into Diageo last August to improve performance. Great commercial execution is one of the three elements of the Casamigos growth plan. In the first half, we leveraged Diageo scale to improve execution around menus, display, and distribution. We have increased distribution on large and small packs to meet consumer demand and have implemented a very clear and aligned pricing strategy.
We're now launching a new national campaign to build brand awareness, given Casamigos has under a 5% household penetration. The campaign reinforces the easy sociability of the brand and the accessibility of the liquid, and finally, we have some really exciting Casamigos innovation, making the brand more convenient and accessible with a ready-to-drink Casamigos Margarita in four delicious flavors, so taken together, I am confident we have a strong plan for Casamigos, leveraging Diageo's capabilities, scale, and talent. Now, at Diageo, we have a legacy of innovation, and as trends are changing faster than ever, we're adapting and we're evolving these capabilities. Our scale in North America ensures we can fully leverage innovation by building strong distribution and creating consumer demand. Now, Crown Royal Blackberry is a great example of this. For context, flavors are a really powerful recruitment tool for whiskey.
It's now about 25% of the retail sales value of whiskey produced in North America, accessing new occasions and consumers, so our insights tools pointed to Blackberry as an emerging flavor trend, and we quickly activated our supply organization to launch a limited edition. It created fantastic consumer demand, and then we moved it into a permanent listing. Today, it is the number one innovation in spirits over the last year. Critically, Crown Royal Blackberry is recruiting. 28% of consumers are new to whiskey, and innovation doesn't stop there. Beyond Blackberry, we have also been very successful with launches including Johnnie Walker Black Label Squid Game, Baileys Churros, and the Cocktail Collection Ready-to-Serve Cocktails, which are bringing new consumers into the brands. We have a strong innovation pipeline, including Captain Morgan Sweet Chili Lime. Now, this is our first innovation on Captain Morgan in over three years.
Developed with direct input from Gen Z consumers and with extremely high pre-launch testing scores, it's launching nationwide this month. So I'd like to end with the most differentiated transformation of our U.S. spirits organization in a decade. It evolves how we work with our distributor partners and sets us up for future growth. Changing consumers and customers demand new ways of selling, moving from brand education to helping them grow their business profitably. Over the past year, we've worked with our partners to add new skilled brand building and sales roles in key geographies dedicated to the categories and outlets with the greatest potential for growth. The team equips them with the training and the tools and the insights to grow whiskey and tequila for the retailer while increasing Diageo share. And a powerful example of this is an industry first. It's the Academy of Beverage Leadership.
We worked with the University of Michigan on a five-month curriculum to build category expertise and business skills. Now, upon completion, sales leaders have practical skills to bring to the market, helping customers grow their tequila and whiskey businesses, and while it's early, these investments are delivering returns. 250 leaders have participated in the academy so far, and about 20% of our first cohort is from right here in Florida, so it was great to see in the first half of fiscal 2025, we gained spirit share in both whiskey and tequila in Florida, and we increased our menu listings in the on-premise by 50%, with potential to double our menu share in targeted accounts. Now, through the remainder of the fiscal year, we will ramp up our team and their capabilities, with 450 key leaders expected to complete the academy by the end of June.
While there is more for us to do, I am proud of the progress that my team and I have made, and we are committed to continue to drive this further. Diageo North America has the right team, the right capabilities, the right portfolio, and the right plan. And this is what sets up our business to outperform and grow. So with that, I will hand it over to Nik.
Thank you, Sally. And it's great to be here with you at CAGNI. Three years on, and all I can say is CAGNI officers, Orlando, really. But okay, so on to serious stuff. In my first six months, good, thank you. So there's support for what I'm saying here. Okay, good. So in my first six months, our people and their passion for our brands has really impressed me, okay? And I'm looking forward to working with Debra.
And what I think is a really exciting time for Diageo as we take this business forward with a renewed set of financial priorities, with an ultimate goal to maximize shareholder returns. I've come into this role having spent 30 years in the consumer sector, mainly at Coca-Cola. And while it's different from the spirits world, I think I can bring some rich learnings and experiences, which I know I can leverage at Diageo. I've also enjoyed learning from our shareholders and our analysts on their thoughts on Diageo and what we need to do to improve. And the team and I are committed to delivering on this. What's super clear is that Debra and I are very aligned on our priorities, and we're moving at speed to deliver them.
We're clear that we need to drive greater financial rigor and discipline, and we're working to increase the agility and resilience at Diageo to deliver long-term sustainable growth. At our recent results, I shared the headlines of these renewed financial priorities. I'm going to talk through some of those again today. So let me start by building on what Debra and Sally have shared by reiterating the key financial strengths that make Diageo a very attractive business and one where I know we can do more to drive value creation. Diageo has maintained a very attractive margin profile, one of the highest actually in the consumer goods sector, and we believe there's still more room to grow this over time. Diageo is a highly cash-generative business, and our immediate focus is to delever our balance sheet, allowing us more flexibility as we look ahead.
We also remain confident in both the industry recovering from the cyclical pressures and, more importantly, our ability to outperform the market. However, as Debra talked to earlier, the TBA industry at this time is volatile, including ongoing uncertainty around the impact of U.S. tariffs, and the pace of this recovery remains uncertain, particularly in two of our largest markets, U.S. and China. As a reminder, we shared guidance excluding the potential impact from tariffs for fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 with our recent results. This guidance has not changed, and we remain committed to sequential improvement in organic net sales growth and from fiscal 2026 positive operating leverage. I firmly believe Diageo can return to its rightful position as a top quartile CPG company, but it'll be more than just top-line growth. It's also about operating leverage, cash flows, and broader capital allocation strategies.
We'll come back to you with guidance when there's more certainty on the timing of the recovery, but now let me take you through the refocused priorities we have set out for the business and which we are already working on today. I shared this chart two weeks ago, but you can see clearly four areas where we have reshaped priorities on our journey to drive sustainable, long-term profitable growth. Our four priorities are to, firstly, holistically drive balanced sustainable top-line growth ahead of the market and thereby deliver quality market share gains over time. Secondly, deliver better operating leverage in a balanced way through our P&L with a commitment to do this from fiscal 2026, as I said earlier. Thirdly, maximize free cash flow, striking a careful balance on the shorter term without compromising on investment for the longer term.
Finally, optimize returns across the business by focusing on what we can control and manage. This will ensure that Diageo is stronger, more agile, resilient, and better positioned to recover. Looking at each of these areas, we've identified tangible opportunities where we know we can do more. Most of these actions cut across all markets and teams and are heavily driven by behaviors and capabilities. With fast and agile adoption, we can learn from the best in class and tailor to local needs as well as share best practice across the group. Just as we have embedded our growth ambition and Dial-up behaviors across Diageo, we will do the same with these financial priorities. Let me take you through some examples of that. Delivering top-line sustainable growth is key, and we have an approach to this.
Our Market Growth Framework allows us to navigate market differences and supports market growth by standardizing certain capabilities and tools. This ensures we are agile in allocating resources across markets and occasions to optimize growth. This will apply to allocations of liquids, A&P spend, technology, CapEx, and talent. There's opportunity to do this in a much more structured and consistent way, and we're starting to use this across Diageo regions with a one Diageo mindset, highlighting opportunities and better prioritization. Alongside this is our Consumer Choice Framework, which has been refreshed. And we can also access more data on consumption, such as key demographics, location, time of day, and activities, which can help us target brand participation and growth opportunities better. As a part of our priority to increase operating leverage, we're committed to significant improvement in how we drive effectiveness and measuring returns on A&P.
Diageo has some of the best brand marketing capabilities I have seen, and the depth, skill, and expertise is exceptional. However, there's more to do here. We see clear opportunities to reduce non-working spend and are working towards reducing non-working costs to 10% of A&P from currently 19%. Savings from this would be prioritized based on returns or dropped to the bottom line. We will continue to improve rigor on measuring and decision-making on the effectiveness and efficiency of our marketing spend. I also see a real opportunity to be more effective with commercial A&P spend, adding more rigor into commercial excellence and activation in market with the right focus on driving more displays, menus, and distribution to ultimately drive brand presence, recruitment, and frequency, and Sally just talked about that with her example in Florida.
There's also work to do around price-pack architecture, where compared to other consumer categories, our capabilities are underdeveloped today. It's an area where Debra and I can leverage our Pepsi and Coca-Cola experience. We're committed to bringing all this together in a structured way, moving quickly to share best practice, centralized capabilities where applicable across Diageo to deliver more growth. Importantly, we remain committed to investing for both the short and long term in both brand building and innovation. Moving to cash flow, Diageo, like I said, is a highly cash-generative business, but it hasn't been consistent over the years. We will be intently focused on maximizing free cash flow, and there's further opportunity to do so to drive absolute dollar cash flow growth and consistency.
Clearly, there will be opportunities for us to drive further sustainable working capital improvements, but let me also dive a little deeper into CapEx and maturing liquid, so we've recently initiated a review of the level of CapEx investment that's required going forward. In recent years, we've invested around $1.5 billion per annum, implying a 7%-7.5% of net sales annually during the fiscal 2022 to 2024. The majority of this spend has been on increasing capacity, critical in supporting long-term sustainable growth in areas such as Scotch, Guinness 0.0, tequila, and Chinese whiskey. As you will have seen, we recently announced a new manufacturing and warehousing facility in Alabama as part of the Supply Chain Efficiency Program, and this is expected to start delivering savings from fiscal 2026.
Given that a number of these initiatives are still in flight, we have guided fiscal 25 spend to be towards the upper end of the $1.3-$1.5 billion. Having made this elevated investment, we expect to return to 5%-6% of NSV in the coming years, with potential to reduce this further as we move forward. Clearly, we need to invest for long-term sustainable growth, but we also need to ensure that this spend is appropriate, delivering the right returns, and we have to continue to sweat our assets much more, and I know our global supply team is committed to doing this. Laying down liquid and maturing stock is key for Diageo's future growth. For example, Johnnie Walker Black Label, which I've kind of grown up with, is matured for a minimum of 12 years.
Now, we have made substantial investments in recent years, rebuilding Scotch stock and expanding tequila. The value of maturing stock at the end of fiscal 2024 was $7.8 billion, which is a significant investment, but this will continue to offer us a huge competitive advantage. We have an opportunity to improve this while at the same time maximizing free cash flow. Recently, we've initiated a deeper review with scenario planning around consumer trends, recovery timelines for the categories, as well as future growth potential in the short and long term. Particularly in whiskey and tequila, this will ensure that our spend is optimized and leverages the significant step-up in investment to date. We will keep you updated as this progresses, but let's hear from our supply team on our Scotch journey and how they're using new digital Scotch planning tools.
Scotch, water of life, liquid gold.
Whatever you call Scotland's national drink, it's a product that dates back to at least 1494. At Diageo, we believe our competitive advantage lies in our unrivaled portfolio of over 100 individual Scotch brands crafted with care from over 30 distilleries. We have over 10 million casks maturing across Scotland, laid down for future celebrations across the world. Over the last 10 years, we have invested more than $1 billion in Scotch whisky. These investments give us an incredible return for the future. We are accelerating automation and digitization, which puts us at the cutting edge of Scotch production. Robots in our cooperage, our filling store, and our new warehousing facility are helping us to drive increased safety and productivity. For even greater growth, our Scotch Intelligence Platform, SIP, is protecting every drop and digitizing our supply chain from grain to glass, ensuring every drop of Scotch is maximized.
The opportunity is significant. We can reclaim tens of millions of liters of whiskey by minimizing the liquid losses during maturation. By using AI and advanced scenario modeling, we can make data-driven decisions today and for the future, connecting global demand with supply, synchronizing our network, using real-time insights to ensure we maximize capacity and deploy the right capital investments to drive profitability across all our markets, keeping Scotch at the cutting edge for the 21st century and beyond.
Pretty impressive. I think, as the video showed, our unrivaled portfolio of Scotch combined with our digital progress puts us at the cutting edge of Scotch production. And we will utilize these learnings to support our future investments into the category. So moving to our approach on portfolio management. Now, Diageo has had a strong track record of active portfolio management, curating our portfolio of high-growth brands.
However, where appropriate and consistent with our long-term strategy, we will be more rigorous in pursuing disposals, where it is in the best interest to both Diageo as well as our shareholders. This will clearly support our efforts to deleverage our balance sheet. As you have seen recently with the disposal of our shareholding in Guinness Nigeria and in Guinness Ghana, which we announced last month, these disposals have gone beyond the more normal active portfolio management with individual brands. And we will continue to explore further opportunities through multiple value creation lenses as we move forward. These actions will be undertaken with a view to improving flexibility while at the same time maximizing shareholder returns. The actions I've talked through collectively contribute to delivering on our commitment to drive sustainable long-term performance while optimizing returns.
I am confident that this renewed focus on the priorities for the business will benefit Diageo, our consumers, customers, and ultimately our shareholders. We will continue to keep you updated on progress as we work on these priorities with speed, particularly through our more frequent market updates. I know I stand between you and experiencing our amazing brands this evening, so I will close by summarizing our key messages, so Diageo has an incredible portfolio of category-leading brands and a broad geographic footprint. We are well placed for continued market outperformance and future growth. We are confident in the fundamentals of spirits in the TBA industry and are making good progress, as Debra said, on our growth ambition. In North America, Sally talked, and we are encouraged by our recent results and are well positioned to outperform going forward.
We are focused on what we can manage and control as the market recovers and recognize there is a lot to do to regain credibility and build confidence in our delivery. These actions will ultimately strengthen our business and support the delivery of sustainable growth. We hope many of you will now join Debra, Sally, the North American leadership team, and myself for dinner on the 19th green, where you'll have the opportunity to enjoy our iconic brands. With that, I'm going to end with one of my favorite brands, which is Don Julio, and has been the star performer in our North America business. By the way, this is also a great thing I get to do versus CCEP. I get to play cool videos. So with that, Don Julio and Cristalino.