James Thompson

It's got about 60% of the market in bottle shops and the biggest pubs portfolio in the country, which means pokies and food and drink.

Australians are known for a drink and a punt, and this is the company for drinking and punting, yet its shares have been at an all-time low.

What's going on here, Anthony?

Well, you're not drinking enough, Anthony, and neither am I, and neither are our listeners, to be frank.

I mean, those alcohol consumption numbers that you referred to earlier, that's really the central problem.

It's not just an Australian trend.

It's a trend right around the world.

And so how a lot of winemakers have responded to that is through what's called premiumization and the great strategy that treasury wine estates had that they want to get out.

I'm picking round numbers here.

They want to get out of the under $10 a bottle business, and they want it to be in the over $10 a bottle business, so the more premium end of the market.

But the problem is there's so many grapes around the world, so much wine capacity, that that's infected the premium end of the market too.

So there's just too much wine in the world, too many wineries, too many grapes, too much product.

And that's brought down prices to some extent, but certainly margins for most winemakers.

It's just become a really, really tough business.

So I think that's why we've seen, you know, treasury wine estates struggle.

They had been very reliant on this trade into China, which was whacked by tariffs, and now it's been that those tariffs have sort of come off.

But it's just harder to get into the Chinese market.

The Chinese aren't spending as much on wine as they once were.

So, again, a lot of those growth corridors have been shut off.

I think even in America, you know, this push to GLP-1 drugs like Azempic and Wegovy, they've also hurt the wine business, you know.