Grace Wines Holdings Limited (" Grace Wines "), a Hong Kong-listed company, announced that it intends to sell all the issued shares of its subsidiary Pacific Surplus and 30% of its subsidiary Epic Wealth to its controlling shareholder Chen Fang, with the proceeds mainly being used to pay a special dividend to shareholders. Pacific Surplus is mainly involved in distillery businesses such as whisky, while Epic Wealth is involved in wine distillery businesses.

This means that after five years of cultivation, Grace Wines has decided to abandon the whisky business and refocus on the wine market.

It is understood that Grace Wine has injected about 78.6 million yuan into the distillery business. In the second half of 2023, Grace Distillery whisky production officially began, and the release of gin series products; The distillery will be fully operational in the first half of 2024.

However, the development of the distilled spirits business did not meet the expectations of Grace Wines, among which, the sales of gin in the first half of this year was 11,000 yuan, accounting for only 0.07% of the company's total revenue in the same period. Grace Whisky is expected to go on sale as early as mid-2026.

In the whiskey business, due to cyclical factors, it is expected to go on sale as early as 2026 - now, Grace Wine's active divestiture means that it will not wait until the whiskey is fully listed.

Grace Wines expects to recognise a disposal loss of approximately HK $32.5 million in profit and loss in 2024 as a result of the sale of Pacific Surplus. The sale of a 30% stake in Epic Wealth will recognise a loss on the sale of approximately HK $19 million in "other comprehensive income".

Chen Fang said that he will continue to invest in the whiskey business, and now that the factory has been built, the rest is production and operation.

So why, after five years of investment and cultivation, Grace Wine has taken the initiative to give up this piece of business? Even sell at a loss?

First, the outlook for the whisky business has slowed. Data show that before 2018, the compound annual growth rate of whiskey consumption in China was as high as 10.1%, but since then the compound annual growth rate has dropped to 5%, and the industry predicts that it will further slow down.

In other words, when Grace Wine entered this track in 2019, whiskey was still thriving, and now times have changed, and we can't see the good prospects of this track.

Second, Grace's whiskey products are expected to be launched in 2026, and that time happens to be the time for domestic whiskey products to be launched in large quantities. Citic Securities Research report pointed out that China's whiskey industry in recent years in the rapid development window period, showing a rising volume and price trend, domestic whiskey production capacity is expected to be gradually released in 2025-2026.

This means that Grace Wine will face extremely fierce competition at that time. Authoritative information shows that there are as many as 42 whiskey companies in China, which has increased several times more than five years ago, and some famous wine companies, in the case of capital and personnel, are also involved in the whiskey track, which undoubtedly forms a squeeze on the existing industry.

Third, changes at the consumer end have led to a slowdown in market demand for whisky products, and even affected imported products. In the first nine months of this year, whiskey imports amounted to 321 million US dollars, down 28.5% from the same period last year, and imports fell 20%.

Some people in the industry said that whiskey is the foreign category, compared with the local production of whiskey products, consumers are more inclined to the origin of foreign products, now, even "foreign products" are declining, this consumer end of the impact on the whiskey category can be imagined, domestic whiskey natural pressure greater.

Finally, for a diversified enterprise such as Yi Yuan Wine industry, although it will also face the difficult situation that wine is cold in the domestic market, relatively speaking, the whiskey track is more unfamiliar, rather than continue to invest in a strange track, it is better to stick to the familiar main business, shrink the front, return to the main business, at this time has become a more conservative, but also a more rational choice.