Firm Attributes Revenue, Profit Growth To Operational Reforms

The managing director/CEO of Guinness Nigeria Plc, Girish Sharma, has attributed the company’s strong start in 2026 to a blend of operational efficiency, localised decision-making, and expanded market reach.

Speaking in an interview with CNBC Africa, Sharma said the results reflect not only financial resilience but the strength of a deliberately re-engineered operating model.

“We grew distribution, we have become far more efficient today, and we were able to make our people more agile because we brought decision-making down to Nigeria,” he said. “The past year has been a year of reset, but expecting 144 per cent revenue growth might not be what we should be looking at.”

The company reported a 48 per cent year-on-year increase in profit after tax to N10.39 billion, alongside a four per cent rise in revenue to N122.77 billion. Earnings per share improved, while net finance costs declined significantly, signalling tighter cost management and improved capital efficiency. In a strong show of confidence, the Board approved an interim dividend of N2.00 per share, amounting to approximately N4.38 billion in total payout.

The results position Guinness Nigeria among a select group of consumer-facing firms sustaining shareholder returns despite macroeconomic pressures, including inflation and currency volatility. More broadly, the performance reflects disciplined execution, a strengthened balance sheet, and a business increasingly optimised for long-term value creation.

Beyond the topline figures, Sharma emphasised that the company’s performance is rooted in a deliberate strategic reset executed over the past year. According to him, the leadership team developed a structured blueprint anchored on four key pillars.

He explained that “from a strategy perspective, I spent the first 100 days drawing the blueprint.

At the end of it, we actually broke the strategy into four pillars. First was culture; we needed to make people feel more empowered, more than anything else. Second was operational excellence by localising what we do; we wanted to achieve more efficiency with this.”

He added that “consumer-centric innovation remains central to the company’s growth ambitions and we are very obsessed with the consumers, so we had them at the centre of our strategy. And finally, is the financial performance.”

For Guinness Nigeria, the reset year has cleared the pathway to a sharper phase of execution, one focused on translating operational discipline into category leadership and durable consumer relevance.