Hello and welcome, everyone, to Diageo's Q3 Trading Update. The call today will be hosted by Debra Crew, Chief Executive; Nik Jhangiani, Chief Financial Officer; and Sonya Ghobrial, Global Head of Investor Relations. My name is Lucy, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. To begin, I will now hand over to Sonya. Sonya, please go ahead when you're ready.
Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Diageo's Q3 Trading Update call. I'm Sonya Ghobrial, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined this morning by Debra Crew, CEO, and Nik Jhangiani, CFO. Just a reminder, listeners on the call, that in the discussions today, the company may make certain forward-looking statements, including those that refer to our estimates, plans, and expectations. Please refer to this morning's announcement for more details, including factors that could lead to actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward-looking statements. Hopefully, you've all seen this morning's press release. On today's call, I'll hand over to Debra for some brief comments on the quarter before opening the line to those who'd like to ask a question.
If you could keep questions to one question per broker or investor, that would be appreciated and allow us to get through more and also to make flights to Dublin. With that, let me hand over to Debra.
Thanks, Sonya, and good morning, everyone. We saw good organic sales growth in our third quarter, and reported net sales of $4.4 billion were up 2.9% on last year, with organic net sales partly offset by unfavorable exchange and disposals. Q3 organic net sales growth of 5.9% puts us on track to deliver on our guidance, namely sequential improvement in the second half compared with the first half of the year. Organic net sales growth in Q3 saw a significant benefit from phasing, which we estimate was around four percentage points of the 5.9% organic net sales growth that we reported. We expect this phasing to reverse in Q4. This benefit was mainly in North America and also in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In North America, organic net sales increased 6.2%, driven by the pull forward of imports to distributors ahead of potential tariffs in the quarter, as well as continued tequila restocking, given strong Don Julio consumer sales performance. Favorable comparatives also helped. In Latin America and the Caribbean, organic net sales growth was 28.5%. We saw easy comparatives, given the lapping significant inventory destocking in the prior year, as well as continued stabilization, particularly in Brazil. In APAC, organic net sales were up 1.6% ahead of growth we saw in the first half, mainly due to soft comparatives in China and Southeast Asia, along with continued growth in India. In Europe, organic net sales were flat, with good continued Guinness performance offset by spirit softness. In Africa, we continued to see strong growth. Moving on to update on U.S.
tariffs and updating our earlier comments for the expected impacts of what remains an evolving situation. As you can see from the slide, based on the current announced U.S. import tariffs and assuming a 10% tariff on U.S. imports from the U.K. and Europe, which would include our Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Bailey's brands, we estimate that before mitigation, the annualized impact of this would be around $150 million. We would expect to mitigate before any pricing actions around 50% of this, leveraging actions including inventory management, supply chain optimization, and cost management. As you can imagine, given all the scenario planning we've been doing for some time, some of this work has been done or is currently already underway. The estimated tariff impact also assumes that our Canadian and Mexican imports into the U.S., which altogether are almost 50% of our U.S.
Net sales remain exempt from tariffs as part of USMCA. Going forward, we would look to mitigate fully the tariffs, and this is where we have a long track record of managing international tariffs, giving us confidence that we can do this successfully. To update on the full year, we have reiterated our organic net sales and organic operating profit guidance from our interim results. We continue to see a sequential improvement in organic net sales compared to the first half and expect organic operating profit in the second half of the year to decline, broadly in line with the first half of the year, which was down 1.2%. We have updated both tax and interest costs, and we now expect our effective interest rate to be slightly lower than fiscal 2024 of 4.3% compared with flat previously.
On tax, we have updated how we report, and on this basis, which excludes the impact of the share of associates, we expect the effective tax rate for fiscal 2024 to be in the region of 25%, broadly in line with last year. We expect leverage at the end of the full year to be in the range of 3.3x-3.5x . Looking forward to fiscal 2026, we continue to expect to deliver positive operating leverage with organic operating profit growth ahead of organic net sales growth. Finally, I'd like to update you on the launch in the first phase of our Accelerate program, consistent with our strategic priorities and our focus on what we can manage and control. The program sets out clear near-term cash delivery targets and a disciplined approach to operational excellence and cost efficiency. It will strengthen Diageo by increasing our effectiveness, agility, and resilience.
We will share more details on the actions being taken behind this program and our full year results on the 5th of August. However, today, let me share some expectations from the first phase. We expect to deliver around $3 billion in free cash flow per annum from fiscal 2026, increasing as performance improves. This will be supported by a cost savings program of approximately $500 million over 3 years, which will enable both reinvestment and future growth and also improved operating leverage. We also expect to return to well within our target leverage ratio range of 2.5x-3x net debt to EBITDA, no later than fiscal 2028, providing us with a lot more flexibility, which will also be supported by appropriate and selective disposals over the coming years.
I'm looking forward to sharing more as we move through the year, and I'm excited about how this can strengthen Diageo. Finally, it's important to highlight that nothing has changed in our view that spirits remains an attractive sector with a long runway for growth, supported by favorable long-term fundamentals. We continue to believe that the near-term pressure is largely macroeconomic driven, with continued uncertainty for consumers impacting both time and pace of recovery. With that, I'd like to hand back to the operator to open the line for questions for Nik and myself.
If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you do change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your line is unmuted locally. The first question comes from Andrea Pistacchi from Bank of America. Andrea, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Hi, Debra, Nik, and Sonya. My question is on the $3 billion free cash flow, please, the target you provided. I think consensus is more or less at $3 billion for the next few years. The question is, besides the cost savings you've announced, which will support the cash generation, what do you have to deliver that you're not doing already on working capital and CapEx efficiencies to get to $3 billion? In what circumstances could you actually deliver more?
Hey, Andrea. Listen, I mean, let me step back and first say, I think consensus has some very huge ranges on the estimates that are out there. Given the inconsistency of Diageo's delivery in the last five years, quite honestly, I'm not surprised that it is there. I think that's the first thing we need to do to help guide you guys much better, and that's what we've tried to do today to ensure that we've almost got this as our floor, and we know we can grow from here going forward. I think a couple of things that I would call out to you.
Firstly, in 2026 in particular, CapEx will remain a little more elevated, although coming down from the 2025 levels, given some of the projects that are in flight and what we need to continue delivering on because it's actually not going to help us to pull back. Some of those are actually productivity savings that will start helping as we look forward into 2027 and beyond as well. If I look at CapEx then, looking forward, clearly that will be a focus that will allow us to further drive that free cash flow delivery. On working capital, I think the team has done a really good job so far, and we do have more opportunities to unlock.
Part of that might be a little more, I would say, back-end weighted as we look to unlock pieces on both the receivable side, in line with what we're doing in terms of our commercial A&P, our trade spend, how we work with our customers, etc., as well as on the inventory side. I think both of those will start coming through as well. That will support an increase to that $3 billion number. The third piece I would call out to you is the work that we continue doing on maturing liquid.
Clearly, that will support us as well as we look to continue to tweak those estimates and forecasts and also continue to look at how we utilize the stock that we have in place in the right way because it is liquid gold for whiskey in particular that we need to look at from an angle of how do we best maximize value from that and how do we look to lay down appropriately, keeping the long term in mind as well. Those are three big elements, of course. The last piece, which is clearly what we're focused in on and supported by the Accelerate program, is what we can do to drive savings in our P&L that can support free cash flow delivery, even absent potentially a full recovery in the shorter term.
As Debra said, clearly, we do expect the long-term fundamentals of this category are very attractive, and the business will revert to growth, and there will clearly be that accelerated leverage even further coming through the P&L that will support that. I guess just summarizing back, it's really that floor from which we feel very good that we can grow, and there's multiple levers to help support that. That clearly will support our deleveraging alongside what we will be also doing on disposals.
One super quick follow up on this, please.
I'm supposed to, okay.
No, it's just a clarification on the $500 million of cost savings. Is there a cost of achieving those? I guess that would be obviously incorporated anyway in the target?
It will be incorporated, but we'll provide you more color and details on phasing of both the savings and cost to achieve as we finalize our plans around a bunch of those areas by August.
Very good. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Simon Hales of Citi. Simon, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, Debra. Morning, Sonya. Morning, Nik. Can I just stick with the Accelerate program, please? On the $500 million cost savings, can you share a little bit more as to where they're coming from, perhaps the phasing of those savings? You talk about some reinvestment, but obviously some dropping through to the bottom line. How should we think about that? Then associated with that and the Accelerate program and the midterm deleverage, Nik, you just mentioned potentially selective disposals in the coming years. How should we think about the timing of that, the potential scale of that? Is this just portfolio trimming for Diageo again, or could this be bigger strategic moves than we've seen in the past?
Yeah. Let me start with that one, Simon. Clearly, we see through our reviews that we have been doing internally and with the board some opportunities for what I would call substantial changes versus the portfolio trimming. Again, you can appreciate I cannot say any more than that, but clearly, it is going to be above and beyond the usual smaller brand disposals that you have seen over the last three years. What does that mean in terms of deleveraging and timing? Clearly, as you can imagine, our focus would be that we want to maximize value for Diageo and all our shareholders. With any kind of M&A or disposals transactions, you could get certain things kind of agreed and announced, but timing of transactions, closure, and cash coming in are very much dependent on a number of factors.
Leave that with us from an angle that I cannot give you more on it other than the fact that we have said no later than fiscal 2028, which should give you all confidence and comfort around two factors. One, we have talked about the fact that this is going to be well within. So well within is not just dropping into just sub-three. It is really being at least at that midpoint, if not below. Two, we do say no later because we do believe that it could happen even earlier. Again, we would do it in the right way to maximize value and do it in the right way to look at the buyer universe and all the elements that go with a typical disposal. That is on the first one.
On your question around the $500 million savings, listen, I would say there are four main buckets, and the first two are really around overall trade investment as well as our A&P spend. Now, I did highlight when we were at CADNI around the opportunity on the development costs and the non-working, but I clearly believe there are opportunities across all areas as we look at the levels of spend, the efficiency, the allocation and prioritization, and the returns, and keeping in mind where we need to drive for sufficiency. I think keeping the right principles in mind, I think across all areas, including trade investment, we have an opportunity.
The second piece is around overheads, and I think we've highlighted in the release how we want to think about our operating framework and model choices to really leverage our scale, but continue to build a much more agile and resilient, but then drive efficiency and effectiveness for how we do things. That is going to be the second big bucket. I think the third one is really our supply teams continue to do a great job as we look at offsetting inflationary pressures, but there are also broader efficiency plays that we'll be looking at within supply. Part of that goes back to some of the work that the team has done with the supply agility program. Those will start coming through as well.
On phasing and timing, Simon, we're working through that, so just be patient with us, and we'll provide you an update on that in August.
Many thanks.
The next question comes from Celine Pannuti of JP Morgan. Celine, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I will talk about the outlook. Debra, you mentioned H2 2026 to be broadly in line with H1 2026 in terms of top line. For fiscal year—sorry, I meant 2025. Apologies. For fiscal year 2026, I am getting there. Fiscal year 2026, you mentioned to have operational leverage, but can you talk about how you see the top line evolution and the current environment? It seems that you are still cautious on consumption. Am I right to believe that this is in the U.S.? Is there any other regions you would like to flag? From a price mix perspective, there are a few elements in your discussion where you mentioned downtrading. If you could as well elaborate on how you see pricing evolution, especially if there is no inflation-led true tariffs. Thank you.
Yeah. Let me take those—I think that's three questions in order. On fiscal 2025, that's where we had said we would see sequential improvement in the second half versus the first half. With this strong Q3 performance, we feel like we're on track to do that. For fiscal 2026, we have guided on operational leverage. We did not talk about the top line, and that was quite purposeful, in that we've done a robust kind of scenario planning around multiple scenarios, one of which you would see recovery, but we've also looked at scenarios where we may not see that recovery just given the uncertainty.
To your point, you asked about sort of U.S., certainly the uncertainty in the U.S., but we also see a lot of uncertainty still coming out, particularly in places like APAC, and we are seeing some downtrading in APAC, as well as Europe, I would say, in general, is just an uncertain environment. We're performing well with Guinness, but regardless, there's just a lot of uncertainty. With that, what we wanted to do was assure folks that we had done this robust scenario planning, and in any of these scenarios, we're looking at operational leverage, and we are looking at the $3 billion in free cash flow.
Thank you. Could you just comment on the pricing environment as well in that context?
Yeah. I think, look, I'm quite pleased that on the quarter, we delivered quite balanced between volume and price mix. There is a lot of promotion out there, particularly in certain categories. We're seeing it a lot in tequila. We're seeing it a lot in whiskey. RTD has remained another place that we certainly see a lot of pricing come in. That being said, if you remember from our first half results, we talked about our price pack architecture and some of the ways that we're focused on small sizes as a way to address the consumer pressure and address some of this pricing so that what we are seeing in a lot of markets isn't so much downtrading. They want premium products, but their household cash is strapped.
By offering a smaller size of premium products, we're finding that that's working for us in many markets, including the U.S.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Mitch Collett of Deutsche Bank. Mitch, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning, Debra, Nik, and Sonya. I'll stick to one. You say in your release that shipments are plus seven in the U.S., depletions five percentage points below that, so 2% depletion growth. I do not think you gave consumption growth. I agree. I appreciate that is not normally a number you give, but I would be interested in what you think consumption growth is trending at and how that has evolved really since your first half results back in February. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Mitch. I think it was hard to hear you, but I think you're asking about consumption growth in the U.S. and how that has moved since H1. I mean, as you know, Nielsen and NABCA only really track 40% of the U.S. And you see those numbers. What we saw, what I would say is if you go back to January, we came into the half feeling like there was the industry was getting a little bit of momentum. February and March were very tough. Of course, not only did we see it across our industry, but you saw it across all of consumer goods in the U.S. There was a sharp downturn in consumer sentiment. With that, look, in April, the industry recovered a little bit, but you also have to remember that Easter shifted from March to April.
You see our depletion numbers. I actually feel good about how we performed in the quarter. That being said, you do have to remember, and I flagged this in last year's prelim results, we did have retailer destocking. If you remember, it happened in West Coast retailers, which are tracked by Nielsen. That was a difference last year in the consumption versus the depletions. You also have to take that into effect that we were lapping that. What I would say is that we're acknowledging there's a lot of uncertainty out there, and this is one of the reasons we're doing planning around all of those scenarios to make sure that we are responsive to what's happening in the market.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Sanjeet Aujla from UBS. Sanjeet, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. One question from me, please, just around the outlook for agave costs. Nik, can you give us a feel for how material this could be in fiscal 2026 and to what extent this is also supporting your operating leverage outlook?
I would say clearly there will be benefits, but we also have to look at it from not just the cost of the material, but the elements around the currency piece as well. I think clearly growth in tequila and what we should see as a favorable trend on the COGS should help on that operating leverage, but we're not relying solely on that. There are other elements, like I talked about earlier, in terms of self-help. I won't break that down for you now, but as we give more guidance and color on 2026, we'll give you some indications on broader COGS benefits, absent mix, and then obviously the cost-save benefits as we talked about as well.
Got it. Just given your hedging on currencies, Nik, are you able to give us a feel for where you're landing on transactional effects, tailwind or headwinds next year?
Again, keep in mind we typically are looking to get towards that 80% level for current year on, as in current year being 2026, for transactional exposure. Clearly, we see that as a slight tailwind, so that will benefit us, but we will give you more color on that as we get into 2026. We will also give you a little more color, as I promised at the half year, around how we are looking at broader transaction and translation risk as well going forward.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question is from Gen Cross of BNP Paribas. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the question. The H1 results, I think you referenced expecting to deliver strong market share performance in the second half. I just wonder if you could give us a bit more color on how you see your competitive performance, particularly in the U.S., and whether your expectation of strong market share performance remains in place. Thank you.
Great. Yeah. We look at share on a yearly basis, on an annual basis, because we are looking for quality share growth, and not looking at monthly periods where you might see various promotions or other kind of elements come in and out. With that said, I do feel very good on our fiscal year-to-date share performance. Overall, clearly, that's being driven by our tequila portfolio and specifically Don Julio. It's being driven by Crown. Also in the portfolio, we're seeing good performance on Kettle One. We've got good within-category performance on Scotch with Johnnie Walker and Old Par, within gin on Tanqueray. Overall, I would say feeling good. Clearly, there's been some pressure of late, but some of that, you have to remember, we are cycling the launch last year of Crown Royal Blackberry, which did phenomenally well.
It was a limited-time offer and did so well it actually sold out. We are kind of lapping that initial launch period with a lot of merchandising, but we are where we would expect to be on that and feel good about delivering where we are at on share.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Edward Mundy of Jefferies. Edward, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, Debra, Nik, and Sonya. One question for me, please. As you shift the operating model with some of these reshaped priorities, including this point on consistency of delivery, I was wondering whether this might be accompanied by an evolution in incentives, either short-term or long-term. If you look at your short-term or long-term incentives, there is quite a lot of stuff on organics and free cash flow conversion, and you are clearly signaling today hard cash flow targets. I was wondering sort of how you are thinking about the overall incentive environment?
Yeah. Thanks, Ed. We are looking at both short-term and long-term incentives, and we're reviewing those to make sure that they're very aligned with these transformation priorities. More to come on that, and you'll hear more about that as we move through the year and get to August.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Fintan Ryan of Goodbody. Fintan, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Debra, Nik, Sonya. One question for me, please. I appreciate you've given a lot of color in terms of the potential headwinds around tariffs into the US, but clearly, we've also in recent weeks gotten news about tariff reduction into India. Give some color in terms of your thinking about how you'll manage the imports of Scotch into the Indian market, how much you plan to pass on versus you could take on your own P&L. Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, listen, as you would probably imagine, the whole agreement on the FTA is a huge achievement, and I think one that's been in the works for a while. Everybody feels really good around that. It's truly going to be transformational, I think, for Scotch and for Scotland, but ultimately, it's going to increase the quality and choice for the Indian consumer, which is critically important. Remember, India is one of the world's largest and probably one of the most exciting whiskey markets, so there's huge opportunity for growth. Now, keep in mind that this will take some time to embed into legislation. I think the belief right now is it'll come in through for 2027, but we'll keep watching that. That will start flowing through.
I think in conjunction with working with our friends at USL, we do intend to pass that through to consumer pricing fully, right? That is the whole idea of being able to really drive more growth in what is an exciting category. If you look at that reduction of about 150% down to the 75 initially, that will enable probably a high single-digit decrease in consumer price, and we believe that should drive a similar high single-digit % increase in volumes. Of course, a lot of that will depend across categories of Scotch in terms of bottled in the origin versus bottled in India, etc. Those will be different, but that is kind of the broad sense on how we look at it, but clearly the intent to pass through fully with that decrease in pricing and that increase in volume.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jeremy Fialko of HSBC. Jeremy, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, thanks for questions. So the one for me is if we could focus a little bit more on Europe. I guess when we strip out the good performance from Guinness, strip out the sort of inflationary growth you're getting in Turkey, it certainly does look like a pretty soft number from the kind of core spirit side. Could you perhaps go to a bit of detail on that market, what has caused that weakness, and also the extent to which the course was slightly depressed by the timing of Easter, what you think might shift back into Q4 due to when Easter was this year versus last year? Thanks.
Yeah. I'll start on Europe. I mean, clearly, Europe, the Guinness performance, putting that aside, it has been impacted by also consumer pressure and just uncertainty surrounding all the geopolitical conflict. We are seeing that impact kind of in having some downtrading on spirits. That being said, look, in GB, we are seeing brands like Casamigos do well in a tough market. We've got our non-alc portfolio doing well as well, particularly in places like Southern Europe. Southern Europe, by the way, is working through a transition. If you remember, in France, we've gone to our own versus a JV that we were operating through before. They're still working through that. Northern Germany, that is still soft, very similar to what we saw in H1. Price mix, we are seeing a downward pressure.
It's hard to see because Guinness gives us such great price mix. You see overall Europe showing very positive price mix, but we definitely are seeing downtrading on the spirit side. Now, we do have a very standard price portfolio within Europe, so we're having to navigate through that. No doubt, that is one of the pieces of uncertainty that we're really feeling in the market as well. Part of the reason we're doing a lot of scenario planning for fiscal 2026 is we look at the recovery there for spirits.
Anything on Easter at all?
Yeah. I mean, Easter, won't comment on that because it's not in the quarter. One thing about Q4 to remember, much of our results from Q3 are going to reverse in Q4 because of some of these things we mentioned about the lapping of destocking and some of the, of course, the U.S. pull forward.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question is from Lawrence [Wyatt] of Barclays. Lawrence, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. Could I ask one about Casamigos, please? I understand you've had it on your own distribution system for the best part of a year now. I think you launched your new advertising campaign, and I think there was a little bit of price adjustment as well. Just wondering if the combination of those three changes are having much of an effect on what you're seeing with regard to consumer demand. Thank you very much.
Yeah. We still have some work to do on Casamigos. What I would say is we're getting a lot of the pricing in throughout the market. That has taken a while to get in because you literally have to work that kind of store by store. We do feel like commercially, we've got the pricing is kind of finally getting to a place where we feel like it's priced right. The campaign is actually just launching. We talked about it at CAGMI, but it's literally just going into the market right now, as well as the RTD launch that we kind of flagged at CAGMI as well. We are looking forward to summer and seeing how that campaign performs and how the RTD does. We've had very good selling against it. More to come on that, but there's definitely more work to do.
I will say outside of the U.S., we are seeing some positive momentum on Casamigos, and we still feel very good about the brand over the long run. We just need to get awareness up again on the brand and get it into that choice framework when consumers come to the shelf.
Understood. Thank you. Do you think it's a reasonable expectation to get it back into growth within the next fiscal year?
I mean, look, certainly, we would like to see that happen. That being said, we really need to—this is going to be turning around a brand like this where you've got to get momentum back. We're going to have to see how the campaign does and also how the market's doing too. You can't forget within tequila, even though we've made some price adjustments, we're still very much in ultra-premium. We're in the ultra-premium segment. It is quite a competitive environment out there. We are wanting to build the brand back right as an ultra-premium brand. That takes time, and a lot of it is just going to be what we're seeing also competitively and in the industry.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Sarah Simon of Morgan Stanley. Sarah, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning. I've got two questions. First one, the supply chain agility program, is that still ongoing, or is that kind of morphed into the new program? The second one was, Nik, you were talking about kind of substantial disposals. Is your free cash flow guidance on the basis of the portfolio today, or is that after allowing for some substantial? Because obviously, I assume it's quite hard to give guidance based on a post-disposal profile. If you could just clarify that, please. Thanks.
Yeah. I'll take that one real quick. Yeah. Absolutely. It is pre any disposals. Obviously, as those happen, we'll be able to update that to you guys. You're absolutely right. Very hard to give you post-disposal type of numbers at this point.
Yeah. I'll take the supply agility question. Look, we've had some different productivity numbers flying around and supply agility as well and what was included in what. As Nik came in and he talked about the first half results, we stepped back and have recut and taken a look across all of these programs because some of these productivity things that were laid out included it was under very different macro conditions, different growth expectations, different CapEx expectations, etc. We have recut. As Nik mentioned earlier, as part of that $500 million, the supply agility, the programs that are ongoing will be included in that. We're trying to give better transparency to sort of one number that's all-inclusive of all of these efforts.
Thanks.
Thank you.
The final question comes from Chris Pitcher of Redburn Atlantic. Chris, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. A couple of clarifications, really, from me. Just on that last comment about rolling the new cost savings program into the supply agility. If my memory serves me well, the supply agility was meant to deliver $2 billion of savings between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2027. To have a $500 million savings program either implies you've done a hell of a lot in fiscal 2025, i.e., pulled forward, or actually the overall scope has perhaps reduced. Could you give us a feel perhaps how much is going to be delivered of the old supply chain in 2025? In terms of what you're targeting, I mean, trade spend has been targeted by Diageo for over a decade now. I think the system is called Polaris, which was being rolled out. How much have you reduced that by?
I think in dollars, it would be around $4.5 billion in old money in terms of trade spend. How much has that come down? How much more is there left to do? Therefore, when we are modeling it, it is more of a pricing benefit or net pricing benefit than a sort of an EBIT margin bridge type benefit? Thank you.
I'll go ahead and just to clarify on the productivity program. That $2 billion number was sort of an all-in productivity that included, so supply agility was a portion of that. It was never sort of the whole $2 billion. A lot of that supply agility did require, so remember, our asset base has changed as well because we've done some asset lighting in Africa. There was capital that was involved in that supply agility. Of course, to your point, some things have also been delivered in fiscal 2025. This is why going all the way through it, Nik wanted to recut all of this and look at supply agility inclusive of some of these other efforts so that way we did not have multiple numbers flying around. Nik, if you want to talk a little bit about trade or.
Yeah. Listen, Chris, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you and not going to be able to give you an indication of where things have come from over the last 10 years, right? Clearly, that is going to be a benefit to, as you rightfully said, the NSV number. Now, keep in mind, the number that's there is not always the level of addressable spend that you could go after because some of that is actually, for lack of a better word, I'm going to say paper money. It's just about how you actually invoice that, etc. So we will come back to you with more details around that. We do believe there's an opportunity there. That's going to be a multi-year unlock. That's not in a single year.
That will be very much around not necessarily so much that would just be absolute reduction, but how do you transition to a lot more in terms of pay for performance type of measures. Now, as you rightfully have said, I have been at previous companies. That is not something you just do in a single year. It is a part of a broader negotiation in terms of what you expect as you speak to your trade customers and how you drive that in conjunction too with what we spend as a part of trade or commercial A&P in our total A&P number. More to come on that, but we are confident that we can unlock value there in addition to, like I said, the other elements of A&P spend as well, both on media scale and reach as well as on the non-working/development costs.
Okay. Thank you very much. See you all later.
Thanks, Chris.
Thank you.
This concludes the Q&A session. I'll hand back to Debra Crew for final and closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I'm looking forward to sharing more on our Accelerate program when we next report results. I'm also looking forward to seeing some of you in Dublin tomorrow for our Guinness Deep Dive, which will also be Webcast for those who can't make it online. As always, any further queries, please follow up with Sonya and the IR team. Have a good day.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.