Hawesko Cuts Full-Year Guidance as Weak Consumer Demand Bites

Hawesko Holding SE, Europe's leading premium wine and spirits retailer, published its half-year results on 12 August 2026, and the headline is a familiar one for the European wine trade this year: revenue down, margins up.

Weighed down by cautious consumer spending, geopolitical uncertainty, and a structurally shrinking German wine market, the Hamburg-based group has trimmed its full-year 2026 guidance — even as cost discipline and efficiency programmes are visibly starting to pay off.

Revenue Down, But Profitability Quality Improves

Group revenue for the first half of 2026 came in at €274.8 million, down from €285.1 million in the same period last year — a decline the company attributes primarily to macroeconomic headwinds rather than company-specific weakness. Notably, though, the gross profit margin improved to 45.2%, up from 43.9% a year earlier, reflecting a deliberate strategic trade-off: management chose to walk away from unprofitable B2B revenue (worth roughly €5 million) in favour of better-quality earnings.

Operating EBIT for the half came in at €5.1 million, down from €6.1 million in H1 2025. The dip is smaller than the revenue decline would suggest, again pointing to real progress on the cost and efficiency side — a signal management was keen to emphasise.

A Tough German Market, and a Structural Shift in Drinking Habits

Hawesko didn't mince words about the environment it's operating in. Rising energy prices are pushing up transport costs directly, while higher minimum wages and increasing toll and CO₂ levies are adding further cost pressure. On the demand side, the company points to muted consumer sentiment, a historically high household savings rate, and — perhaps most tellingly — a long-term structural trend toward declining alcohol consumption. That shift is visible in a lower average spend per purchase across the business.

The scale of the market malaise is significant: Hawesko expects the overall German wine market to contract by around 6% this year. Even as market leader, the company now expects its own revenue to decline by 2–4%, a level it frames as relative outperformance against a shrinking sector.

CEO Thorsten Hermelink summed up the strategy: "We're aware of the difficult market environment — which is why we're focused above all on cost and efficiency initiatives that are increasingly showing positive effects. As market leader, we're solidly positioned to keep investing in our business model, including new-customer acquisition and e-commerce." (paraphrased from the original German)

Segment by Segment: Retail Holds Steady, B2B Improves Quality, E-Commerce Needs Surgery

Retail (Jacques' and Wein & Co.) delivered a mixed picture. Jacques' revenue was nearly flat, down just 0.8%, helped by targeted new store openings. Austrian chain Wein & Co., however, saw a more noticeable decline, hurt by weak online sales and teething problems from a logistics-provider switch in June. Overall, Retail segment revenue was down 1.5% year-on-year.

B2B revenue fell 4.9%, but this was largely a deliberate outcome: the segment shed unprofitable business to sharpen its margin profile, particularly in the on-trade/gastronomy channel where new-customer acquisition remains the focus. The payoff was clear — operating EBITDA margin in B2B improved to 4.7% (from 4.2%), and operating EBIT rose to €2.6 million from €2.4 million. Management described the segment as "clearly moving in the right direction."

E-commerce was the outlier. Unlike Retail and B2B, which show visible signs of improvement, Hawesko was candid that its online business needs more sweeping intervention. A comprehensive package of measures is planned for autumn 2026, aimed at creating a "significantly leaner structure" in response to a continuously shrinking online wine market. As part of a broader logistics consolidation, all logistics activity is being progressively centralised at the group's Tornesch warehouse, with full migration targeted for Q1 2027; some activities previously earmarked for the Berlin site will already shift to Tornesch this autumn.

Notably, even amid the belt-tightening, Hawesko continued to invest in the future — spending €1.5 million more year-on-year in H1 2026 on IT, artificial intelligence, and advertising, specifically to support new-customer acquisition as a counterweight to broader demand weakness.

Guidance Cut for FY 2026

With third-quarter trading continuing to run below expectations and only limited seasonal improvement expected for the rest of the year, Hawesko's management board revised its full-year 2026 guidance downward:

The company cited geopolitical conflict, rising prices, and persistent consumer restraint — layered on top of an overall shrinking market — as the drivers behind the more cautious outlook for the second half of the year.

The Bigger Picture

Hawesko's half-year story mirrors a pattern showing up across the European wine trade this year: top-line pressure from a genuinely weakening consumer and a long-run decline in alcohol consumption, offset — but not fully — by disciplined cost management and margin-focused portfolio pruning. The retail and B2B segments appear to be adapting reasonably well, even gaining margin quality as they shed lower-value revenue. E-commerce is the clear laggard, and management has now committed to a more radical restructuring there this autumn. With full-year guidance cut across every headline metric — revenue, EBIT, free cash flow, and ROCE — the next few quarters will show whether Hawesko's efficiency programme (FOKUS) and continued investment in new-customer acquisition can outrun a structurally shrinking market before the guidance needs cutting again.

Source: Hawesko Holding SE