Updates & Ideas

AG Barr - Another premium soft drinks firm on lowly PE

October 2026

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

There’s no better example of the depressed state of “Mr Market” than soft drinks brand firm AG Barr. Over the past 16 years, Barr has more than doubled sales from £200m to £437m, with pretax profit increasing 136% from £27.9m to £65.8m. Adjusted for a 3-1 share split, EPS have grown almost 1.5x from 17.8p to 44.2p and yet news of a minor supply chain problem has compressed its soon-to-be prospective PE to just 11.7, which compares favourably to almost 30x at its 2019 heyday of 970p. Its flagship is IRN-BRU, which famously outsells Coca-Cola in Scotland and is celebrated as "Scotland's other national drink" alongside whisky with more than 90% of the population drinking it at least once. When the soft drink was first launched in 1 ...

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ASA International - Gross loan growth ex-India surges 23%

AG Barr - Valuation ignores high quality soft drinks brands (November 2026)

AG Barr - Owner of IRN-BRU has £150m war chest for acquisitions (September 2022)

AG Barr -All share merger with rival Britvic (January 2013)

AG Barr - Irn-Bru owner offers rare buying opportunity (June 2012)

Barr (AG) - IRN-BRU and Rubicon drive 18% like-for-like sales growth (July 2010)

With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

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