Good afternoon. Welcome to Corby Spirit and Wine's Fiscal 2024 Q3 results conference call for the period ended March 31, 2024. Joining me on the call this afternoon are Nicolas Krantz, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Juan Alonso, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Hopefully, everyone has had the opportunity to review the press release which was issued on May 9. The press release, the fiscal 2024 Q3 results financial statements, and MD&A have been filed onto SEDAR+. Before we begin, I would like to inform listeners that information provided on today's call may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated.
Risks and uncertainties about the company's business are more fully discussed in Corby's materials, including annual and interim MD&A, filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada as required. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following management's commentary, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at the time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star 0 for operator assistance at any time. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Krantz. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good evening, everyone. I hope you can hear me properly, and let's get started. I hope as well you can see the slide moving. We have a short presentation, as the host said. We will go through that at pace to be able to give the floor for some Q&A. As we released our quarterly earnings, I just wanted to start with some key highlights for the quarter and, in fact, the year-to-date of our financial year, mentioning that we've been very pleased to generate some solid retail value growth with a whole portfolio.
What is quite important for us, we've been able to, in fact, grow ahead of the market, outpacing therefore the spirits and the heavy drinks market for the 6 consecutive quarters, which means that we are really creating a momentum in terms of commercial performance and then looking growth. We attribute, of course, this performance to, of course, the execution of our strategy, very much focused on amplifying the growth across the whole portfolio and, of course, targeting different I mentioned a lot consumer occasion, but of course, this year, many price points. So we've been able to play a different part of the category in the market, which has been a big feature for us this year. As a result, we've been able to deliver some dynamic revenue growth. One we'll present to you in a minute of financial result.
And doing so, we continue, of course, to manage very purposefully and tightly the resources, which means our investment behind our brands and our organization. We continue as well at pace to continue our digital transformation, which was essential for us to build this competitive advantage using data to better inform our action plan and our decision-making. And last but not least, we have announced very recently a further expansion in the highly attractive ready-to-drink segment with the acquisition of a new brand in order to strengthen our foothold in Western Canada. And I will come back specifically on that in a few slides. So if we look at the state of the market, wanted to share with you the context on what we call the rolling 12 months, the spirits market is in slight decline in value.
It is more in decline in volume, but there is still a positive value conversion, which means price and mix are generating some value. But nonetheless, slight decline on the spirits side, further decline on the wine side. That is 1.6%. You will see here that the ready-to-drink segment is showing some solid growth around 8%. If we look at the last quarter in terms of the market data, these are the market sellout data, which are public information from the LCBO. The spirits market is back to a slight growth. The wine market has recovered compared to also it had a comparative basis, which was in its favor for this quarter. The ready-to-drink continues to show some solid growth. So that's really the theme. You have a flattish, I would say, market on the spirits side.
The wine has been a bit more challenging until now, and the ready-to-drink continue to perform quite strongly. Now, if you look at the category in which Corby operates, you know we present regularly, I would say, the various spirits categories. We are showing in this graph the growth of the respective category in the market. Then we are showing our value retail growth in those categories and our value share as a result. Here, pleased to see that we are, in fact, taking share in almost all categories. That's something that is, of course, the condition to unlock growth, to take market share across a portfolio. This is what we've been very much focusing over the last, of course, 12 months. As a result, again, pleased to confirm that we have been creating this momentum, beating the market for six consecutive quarters.
Whether we look at just the spirits market, the RTD, or the combined spirits, RTD, and wine market in Canada, we've been able to outpace the market growing overall between 1.4% for spirits, steadily in the ready-to-drink, and therefore in total, 1.7%. So that's, in a nutshell, the context in which we are operating. I wanted, before going to the financial reasons, giving you a little flavor of the brand highlights, which are very much behind our performance. This year, we've been doing a lot of transformation, including in our portfolio. We've been revamping, I would say, the communication platform behind our main brand, which is J.P. Wiser's, with a new pack, a new communication platform, and of course, the launch of the J.P. Wiser's 10 Year Old, which is the number one Canadian whisky innovation in the market.
We've been able as well to revamp, I would say, the platform for Polar Ice Vodka with a new campaign and launching as well some innovation with the Berry Blizzard, which is the number one innovation right now in the LCBO. So a lot of activities there. We've been also launching some premium offerings. We're going to launch soon the J.P. Wiser's 42 Year Old, which is aimed more for the halo effect, of course, launching in the Toronto trade show a few weeks ago. Again, I attribute our success through what we call the last three feet and point of sales activation. This is where the Corby team is really excelling, which is bringing to life the portfolio we're having at point of sales or in different activations.
So this has been very much the focus of the year, going from strategy to execution and making sure that we are winning at point of sales every week. With that, I pass on to Juan to give you a highlight of our financial results year-to-date. Juan, over to you.
Thank you, Nicolas. Hello, everyone. So let's talk about the financial highlights of March year-to-date, FY 2024. But before I start talking about our financial performance, I want to explain our adjusted earnings definition, which are non-IFRS financial measures, to better understand our underlying core business performance. So whenever I mention adjusted figures, we are excluding the impact of ABG inventory market fair value adjustment worth CAD 3 million before taxes and CAD 2.2 million after taxes, as well as costs and termination fees related to some distributors' transition, restructuring provisions, and interest charges related to non-controlling interest obligations. So I will start by our top-line drivers. You see that our shipment volumes increased by 83% to 2.9 million cases in year-to-date March, out of which 1.3 million cases came from the inclusion of Ace Beverage portfolio, leading to a very strong operating revenue growth of +13.7%.
Those results were complemented by dynamic export sales and also robust domestic case goods sales, despite overall spirit market deceleration and also despite stock levels normalization at liquor boards. I will go into further details on our revenue drivers in the next slide. In addition to the marketing activities and overheads related to ABG, we continued our strategy to invest behind our key brands while closely managing our overhead. We basically invested a lot on J.P. Wiser's package redesign, Polar Ice media campaign, and also to sustain the growth of our RTD brands portfolio. As a result, you see that our adjusted earnings from operations increased by 33% in year-to-date March, FY 2024 versus last year, while our adjusted net earnings increased by 13%. Cash from operating activities was positive at CAD 14.7 million, which is minus CAD 1.8 million lower than last year.
The board of directors declared a dividend of CAD 0.21 per share for the Q3 of FY 2024, leading to a robust total dividend declared over the nine months at CAD 0.63 per share, consistent with previous year. Now, moving into our next slide, when we deep dive into our sales performance, we see that fiscal year-to-date March revenue growth of +CAD 44.4 million was primarily boosted by the inclusion of Ace Beverage Group performance, but also supported by some other drivers. Our domestic case goods revenue, excluding ABG, saw a solid 2% growth despite stock levels normalization at liquor board and also despite market deceleration. It was primarily led by J.P. Wiser's family revenue up 5% versus last year due to pricing favorability and also Polar Ice Vodka increase of 8% versus last year through promotion and spend optimization and price increases as well.
We recorded dynamic export sales at +44% through opportunities in new markets, also the recovery of Lamb's Rum performance in the U.K. market, and also broad-based price increase. Our commission income for represented and agency brands remained resilient through Pernod Ricard brands cycling high comparison basis last year and offset by declining on other agency sales. From a commercial perspective, most of our key Pernod Ricard brands have gained market share over the first three quarters of FY 2024, notably our flagship whiskies Jameson and The Glenlivet. If we take a quick look at our quarterly revenue split, you can notice that we have delivered solid top-line performance quarter after quarter, boosted with the inclusion of Ace Beverage Group results. So to summarize our P&L results, we enjoy a dynamic 30% growth of our revenue enhanced by ABG brand portfolio performance inclusion, landing us at CAD 163.1 million.
Because of the inclusion of our newly acquired portfolio as well as some inflationary pressure on costs of raw materials and finished goods, our total cost of sales, marketing, and administration increased +42%. As a result, our adjusted earnings from operations grew +33%. And when impacted by the one-off impact related to ABG's inventory market fair value adjustment of CAD 3 million, our reported operating earnings grew +21%. Our adjusted net earnings grew +13% in year-to-date March versus last year, affected by an increase in our interest expense, of which CAD 4.4 million were from the loan to acquire ABG. Our reported net earnings were in decline of -6%, further affected by the one-off accounting impact related to ABG inventory market fair value.
So finally, given our net earnings, we are looking at adjusted earnings per share at CAD 0.81 and a reported earnings per share at CAD 0.67. Now moving to our cash flow performance, you're going to see that through the first three quarters of the fiscal year, cash from operating activities was positive at CAD 14.7 million, which is minus 1.8 lower than last year. This is due to a slight improvement in working capital that was offset by higher interest expenses and also higher tax payments. We have generated CAD 12.7 million of free cash flow at the end of March, seeing a minus CAD 1 million slight decrease from last year. Our investing activities included a CAD 136.3 million payment for the acquisition of ABG on July 4th, 2023, while our financing activities were mostly comprised of the CAD 17.9 million in dividend paid over the period.
As a result, our net debt position was CAD 103.3 million at the end of March, made up with cash held in cash management pools of CAD 24 million and offset by the Pernod Ricard loan agreement of CAD 120 million and ABG bank indebtedness of CAD 7.3 million. On a full-year basis, our cash conversion remained strong, with a cash generation 1.6 times higher than our net profit at the end of FY 2023. Our dividend yield continued to grow with a 6.3% yield and our payout ratio reaching 95%. Now, I hand over back to Nicolas.
Mr. Krantz, can you please check if your mic is on mute?
Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you, Juan. Thank you very much for this overview. Let's take a few minutes to zoom in on the recent announcement of the acquisition of Nude. You will remember that, of course, last July, we did close the acquisition of ABG and really taking clearly a step towards the fast-growing category in the RTD. Well, we had a great opportunity to double down and to really expand in Western Canada, which is a strategic market for ready-to-drinks. I will show that in a minute. And I think for us, there was a perfect complementary, I would say, opportunity to accelerate our ambition in that space. This transaction will enable us to really roll out the playbook that we have in ABG out West and also to have a large footprint.
It's interesting to mention that RTD is all about innovation and pace of innovation. The Western market of British Columbia and Alberta are much more open markets because you have private channels, and those private retailers are enabled to innovate much faster and to really test and learn, I would say, the concept. And this is what we intend to do. In terms of, of course, opportunities, that would also enable us to generate some synergies, both in terms of organization and operation. And this is something that we intend, of course, to capitalize. So briefly, to present you what is Nude Beverages. Again, it's a major brand in Western Canada, number 4, in fact, in British Columbia, doing close to 1 million cases already and generating a retail value close to CAD 50 million.
Approximately the last trailing months in terms of 12 months of revenue of around CAD 20 million with 25 active SKUs across the country and regarding the adjusted EBITDA, around CAD 4 million. So again, a very attractive complement of our business. I will simply summarize maybe the footprint by showing this slide, which I think we have also used that during ABG. Ace Beverage with Cottage Springs is a leader in Ontario, which is a large, of course, province, but with a very small footprint in the West and equally Nude as a small footprint in the East. So you can see here very clearly, visually, the fact that we will step up on the two main provinces in terms of RTD using the Corby machine as well in terms of customer relationship and trying to play as much as we can sales and marketing synergy across the country.
So a very complementary, I would say, footprint across the three business units. And Nude brand is going to be now fully integrated into the ABG with the same structure that we had originally on this acquisition with ABG. Now, just to finish on the portfolio, it's really simply to illustrate the fact that we are continuing here to evolve our consumer offering. And that's something that has proven to be useful this year in terms of unlocking the growth across the portfolio. Now, just to finish off, just again, to conclude by saying that we are pleased to report a solid commercial performance year-to-date and a robust quarter in terms of financial quarter. That gives us, of course, confidence for the future and this enables us, therefore, to confirm the dividend payout that we had initially on this acquisition.
For the business model, for those who know Corby, this is where we are today. We want to make sure that we are continuing here to focus on our execution. Really, the next step now for us is to unlock more dynamic growth going forward. Now, this is quickly for our presentation. I propose now that we pause and we open, of course, if there is any question on the line. Juan and myself will be very pleased to be able to answer a few questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Questions will be taken in the order received. Should you wish to cancel your request, please press star followed by the 2. I would like, as a reminder, that is star and 1 to ask your question. Once again, that is star and 1 to ask a question. There are no questions at this time. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.