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Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Soan Wealth Fund, and today I'm here with Deborah 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, Bailey's, Johnny Walker, lots of great tequila brands and

Tengere 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 the spirits 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 less than before?

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