Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian Soan Wealth Fund, and today I'm here with Debra Crew, the CEO of Diageo.

Now, Diageo, one of the most successful brand builders in the world.

They have a portfolio which includes things like Smeanov, Guinness, Baileys, Johnny Walker, lots of great tequila brands and Tinkerey in the gin sector.

We own 2.2% of the company, equivalent to $1.3 billion.

Pleasure to have you here.

It's great to be here. Thanks.

Deborah, what's happening in this bearish industry just now?

First of all, we see a really long runway for growth in beverage alcohol, and particularly in spirits. And, you know, and it's total beverage alcohol has been growing consistently

for 20 plus years.

And alcohol is a percent of discretionary spending and percent of consumer kind of

discretionary wallets.

It's quite modest.

It's less than 2 percent.

And that's been very consistent over time.

No doubt right now, the industry is quite challenged. And it's challenged because of the cyclical kind of economic pressures.

The inflationary, the prolonged inflation that consumers are having to navigate has compressed that kind of discretionary wallet.

And that's really impacting the volumes of the

industry. That being said, people forget just how resilient the industry is. And so, you know,

we do see this, it's cyclical, it's going to come back. And this resilience can really be explained

because of the kind of underlying structural drivers of demand

that really give us tailwinds.

Or if we look at some of the things which are happening just now, are young people drinking

...