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Doing The Aperol Math - Campari H1 Recap - Quench Report Issue #44

Plus: How To Look At Segment Growth, New Label Report, Hot Jobs, and more.

Author

Matt Rice
August 24, 2026

This week's Quench Report is focused on Campari.

On July 29th, Campari Group posted H1 2026 results and raised full-year guidance, the fifth straight quarter of organic top-line growth, in a market where almost nobody is stringing two together. The market liked it. The stock ran as much as 8% intraday before settling up +4%.

But the headline numbers aren't the interesting part. Two slides buried in the deck are: one that shows exactly where U.S. growth is being manufactured, and one that quietly reveals how profitable the Aperol RTS lineup probably is. We did the back-of-the-envelope math on the second one, and the answer surprised us.

What’s on tap for today:

  • 📰 Deep Dive - Campari H1 Results & The Aperol Format Math

  • 📓 Field Note - Stop Benchmarking Against "The Category"

  • 🏷️ New Label Watch - What's Coming To Shelf

  • ♨️ Hot Jobs - Apply Today

📰 Campari’s H1 Results Review

On July 29th, Campari Group reported H1 2026 results and raised its full-year margin guidance. The stock jumped as much as 8% before finishing the day up +4%.

First a few numbers:

  • Net Sales - up +2.7% organic. Not a number that normally gets anyone excited. But on the call, CEO Simon Hunt made the claim that Campari "is the only listed player now with five consecutive quarters of organic top-line growth." In this environment, that's worth something.

  • Adj EBIT - up +8.5% organic with benefits from gross margin enhancement, SG&A savings, and a reduction in A&P.

  • Guidance raised -, now guiding to ~3% organic topline growth with improved adjusted EBIT margin, citing softer-than-expected U.S. tariff impact and operational efficiency gains.

Ok that’s enough numbers. Let’s get to the two slides we think are most interesting.

First this fascinating look at performance, by channel, in the U.S. and Europe 👇️ 

What struck us is that U.S. on-premise number. +12% growth for their priority brands in a channel growing +1%.

Spirits companies have been extolling the virtue that "brands are built in the on-premise" for as long as any of us have been in this business. Campari is one of the few actually resourcing it. In the commentary they mentioned they added 21 new "brand activators" in the U.S., each covering 75–100 accounts.

Want proof the activation works? Velocity in covered accounts is reportedly 4x the velocity in uncovered ones. For anyone running an emerging brand, this is the most usable insight in the entire release.

The following might be the single best slide in their entire deck. It’s a summary of Aperol’s product format lineup. 👇️ 

We love how Aperol is thinking about their product lineup.

That said, the “gross profit per serve” is a super wonky way to communicate profitability to investors, and we suspect that's exactly the point. It communicates the shape of the economics without revealing how profitable any of it actually is.

Lucky for you, we can do some back-of-the-envelope math and try to guess what this means.

Start with the bottle:
- A bottle of Aperol goes for roughly $25 at retail
- On average, Campari likely makes ~$12.50 per bottle net sales
- Using their own 3-2-1 math, a bottle of Aperol has ~12 servings
- That puts net sales “per serve” at roughly ~$1.00
- They don't break out profitability by brand, but the overall company runs at roughly 60% gross margins, and we'd expect the core bottled product to be close to company average
- So call it ~$0.60 gross profit per serve. That's the "+"

Now the 4-pack. If it indexes at “3x” the bottle on GP per serve:
- ~$1.80 GP per serve, or roughly ~$7.20 GP per package
- Based on web research, these 4-pack packages sell for roughly ~$18 at retail
- Between the low ABV and the FET savings, we'd expect the company to get closer to ~$10 net sales per package on these
- ~$7.20 on ~$10 is a ~70% gross margin

Is that possible? Can the RTS really be accretive? We think it is.  

Yes, that's a lot of assumptions stacked on top of each other. But here's the check that makes us comfortable: Campari's own index gets you to the same place. The bottle is 12 serves at one "+". The 4-pack is 4 serves at three "+". Twelve either way, meaning a single 4-pack kicks off roughly the same gross profit as a whole bottle.

All our bottom-up math adds is that the 4-pack is probably a little better than that.

Which is the part that matters. These formats aren't a defensive play to keep RTD brands away from Aperol, they're accretive. That's a completely different reason to be in the category.

FIELD NOTE TIP OF THE WEEK: STOP BENCHMARKING AGAINST “THE CATEGORY”

A lot of our recent consulting work has been trying to make sense of category declines.

And one thing comes up in nearly every engagement: emerging brands beating themselves up for failing to grow at category rates.

Here's the problem with that.

That category growth number is almost entirely a function of what the biggest brands are doing, and the biggest brands behave nothing like everyone else. When you split the same category into rank bands of similar size, you will find some interesting nuggets of insights.

If you're a challenger comparing your growth to "the category," you're measuring yourself against a number that describes a different business than yours.

The tip: benchmark against your “band”, brands of similar size within the category, not the category itself. It's a harder number to pull together. It's also the only one that will tell you anything true about how you're actually performing.

THIS WEEK’S NEW LABEL WATCH

This new section comes from our friends at BevGenie, who track TTB label approvals. Worth understanding why this data matters: a brand files a label months before the product hits shelf. This is a read on what is coming next.

  1. Here comes more cocktails. Margarita-named approvals are up ~50% versus the same weeks last year; mules and espresso martinis doubled. Cross-check that against NABCA control states and it holds up, premixed cocktails growing 22% in volume while every classic spirits category declines.

  2. Agave filings continue to fly. Tequila filings are up 44% and agave spirits up 79% overall into a category where control-state sales are flat. Single malt Scotch is even starker: labels running at 4x last year, almost entirely from independent bottlers, into a category declining 6–7%.

  3. The next hot flavors. Rising: peach, cucumber, spicy, prickly pear, passion fruit. Falling hard: cherry, coconut, banana, key lime. Our favorite new approval, On The Rocks got a Caramel Apple Martini approved in mid-July. We would assume that means it’s coming this fall! We can’t wait to try it.

THIS WEEK’S HOT JOBS IN BEVERAGES

Want your open role featured? Email: [email protected] 👇️ 

THANKS FOR READING

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