SCOTTISH drinks firm BrewDog recorded a £37 million loss last year, according to an update sent to the company's shareholders.
The troubled beer firm – which recently had its beers axed from 2000 pubs across the UK – saw annual debt repayments rise to £17m, while its sales growth slumped to just 1%.
It comes after The National exclusively revealed the firm's co-founder, Martin Dickie, stepped down from his role "out of the blue" last month.
BrewDog's other co-founder, James Watt, quit as chief executive last year, after 17 years in the role.
The latest figures were revealed in an update sent to BrewDog's shareholders on Thursday afternoon.
While pre-tax losses narrowed from £59m last year to £36.6m, BrewDog still fell £34.5m into the red after tax.
The firm's largest shareholder, a private equity investor called TSG Consumer Partners, has also agreed to lend it a further £20m, on top of high-interest loans that the brewer took out in 2022 and 2023 on an interest rate of up to 18%.
The increase in debt helped push up BrewDog’s annual interest payments by £4m to £17.3m.
In its statement, BrewDog played down the significance of stalling revenues and persistent pre-tax losses, the Guardian reports.
Instead, bosses pointed to its preferred “adjusted” profit before factors such as interest payments and tax, saying this earnings figure of £7.5m showed the company had “returned to profitability for the first time in several years”.
James Taylor, who took over from Watt as chief executive, said the company had “achieved our highest ever share of the UK beer market, selling the equivalent of 4.5 cans of beer every second in UK supermarkets”.
BrewDog was founded by Watt and Dickie in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, in 2007. It has 71 of its own pubs in the UK, 17 of which are in Scotland.
Last month, it was announced that BrewDog would close 10 bars across the UK – including its flagship Aberdeen pub as well as its Dundee pub.
