The Artisanal Spirits Company (“ASC”) creates and sells outstanding, limited-edition whiskies and experiences around the world. Its shares are listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange (symbol: ART) and have a market cap of £34m.
We were delighted to welcome CEO Andrew Dane and CFO Billy McCarter, to the latest Yellowstone Advisory webinar to provide an introduction to the company and update on recent performance. A recording of the webinar is available here.
Based in Edinburgh, ASC owns The Scotch Malt Whisky Society (SMWS), Single Cask Nation (SCN) - bought in 2024, and J.G. Thomson (JGT). ASC owns over 18,000 casks primarily comprising Single Malt Scotch Whisky from 150 different distilleries across 20 countries which is sold to members both as individual bottles and whole casks. With an established global presence in some 30 countries, SMWS operates a direct-to-consumer model (90% of revenue) with over 40k subscribers.
The financial highlights of 2024 point to an improving financial performance. EBITDA improved to £1.1m, slightly ahead of market expectations and net debt reduced by £1.5m in the second half of the year. The value of the 18k casks was independently assessed at £102m which is around 4x net book value.
The 2024 performance comes on top of steady progress since the IPO in 2020. Membership is up 57% to 42,700, revenue is up 57% to £23.6m and Cask Spirit inventories are up 49% to £27.8m (valued at cost).
At the time of the IPO a significant investment was made in the cost base and inventories to enable strong revenue growth and revenues are up 57% over that period. The last year saw flat revenues but costs as a percentage of sales have reduced back down to the IPO level at 59%. Further revenue growth is expected in 2025 and with a relatively stable cost base, without the need to invest in stock, a lot of this growth should drop through to the bottom line. This will help the continued improvement in cash generation.
One of the other key components of the strategy was to diversify revenue and this has also been achieved. China, which previously made up 25% of revenue, now accounts for 10% and growth has come through particularly in Europe.
It is also worth noting that £5m of cask sales were made in FY23 and FY24 and the average multiple to book value was 4.9x,…
