Pernod Ricard: US and China struggles drag down Q3 growth

By Hamish Graham

Published: 16 April, 2026

French drinks giant Pernod Ricard has detailed its Q3 performance with a flat quarter (+0.1% organic sales growth) stymied by continued challenges in the Chinese and US markets. Excluding these two markets organic sales growth sat at +5%.

For China, organic sales shrunk -7% in Q3, with the company touting weak domestic demand and higher regulation as continued drawbacks to growth (some of the context of which Harpers explored here). However, this was a less steep rate of decline compared to the -28% drop seen for H1 of Pernod Ricard’s financial year.

The US market decline appears to be heading in the wrong direction, with the business’ organic sales falling -12% in Q3 which is close to the -15% fall in the US seen for the entirety of H1 of its financial year. Elsewhere in the Americas, both Canada and Brazil saw growth.

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India saw good growth for Pernod Ricard in Q3, rising +11% in terms of organic sales. Elsewhere in the Asian market Korea returned to growth.

Both Africa and the Middle East have seen double digit growth for the year to date, which the business says is driven by Turkey, Nigeria and South Africa. It was noted that Pernod Ricard is anticipating end of year net sales to be impacted (up to -3% to -4%) by the conflict in the Middle East.

Europe saw slight growth, organic sales rising +1%. Both France and Germany have seen declines for the year to date though Spain was in growth for Q3.

For the ‘global travel retail’ market, Pernod Ricard charted a +11% increase in organic sales growth. This was buoyed by the resumption of Cognac sales in Chinese duty free. The banning of sales of Brandy in Chinese duty free was a collateral impact of a tariff battle between the EU and China.

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