Virgin Wines reports strong momentum into second half of the year

By Oliver Catchpole

Published: 17 March, 2026

Leading online wine retailer Virgin Wines has announced that it is still on a positive track, with revenue for January and February up 12% year-on-year.

The group also grew new recruits by 53% and 83% in January and February (respectively) compared to the last year.

This comes after a strong Christmas trading period (as Harpers reported) that saw a 5% increase in revenue year-on-year in the seven weeks to 26 December.

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Cavendish, an investment bank, said that Virgin’s overall results are driven by investment in customer acquisition (up 40% year-on-year), one of the pillars of its five-year growth plan.

The strategy also focuses on three other ‘pillars’: Development of commercial partnerships (which saw strong year-on-year growth); investment in its mobile app (which soft launched earlier this month); and investing in Warehouse Wines (which has seen a revenue increase of 105% over January and February).

Reflecting this investment, Virgin saw a loss before tax of £0.4m, compared to a profit of £1.3m the year before.

Commenting on this plan, Jay Wright, CEO of Virgin Wines, said: “Over the course of last few years, we've been very disciplined in terms of how we've gone about doing our business.

“We've built up an incredibly healthy balance sheet and we're debt free. We wanted to make sure we use that cash, and the number one thing that we want to do with it is invest in growth.

“We felt that this could be a really good time to go out and get some market share gains, which I think that so far has proved to be the case.”

Virgin also released its full results for the six months to 2 January (H1) 2026 – expanding upon a trading update released with its Christmas report – which show 2% year-on-year revenue growth.

When put in the context of a market that has declined 11% in the same period the group said that this demonstrated “meaningful market share gains”.

Virgin noted that its balance sheet had net cash of £10.6m (down from £17.3m the year before) and gross cash of £17.9m (down from £23.7m).

These decreases are attributable to increases in investment and a share buyback programme.

The group added that it is “aware of the volatile macro environment and ongoing pressures on consumer expenditure” but, despite an additional £0.55m investment over the remainder of the financial year, expects to remain profitable “at EBITDA level”.

Wright added: “We’re very pleased with how things are going. It’s not easy to have a business growing like ours is doing in the current environment.

“It’s a real credit to the full team that we've been able to deliver the kind of results we have, and we look forward to keeping that trajectory moving.”

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