Jayne Hrdlicka faced Endeavour Group shareholders for the first time as chief executive on Friday 30 October, and she did not sugar-coat it. “We are far from a high performing business and there is significant untapped earnings growth potential across every corner of the portfolio,” she said, according to Business News Australia. “This will come in the form of both cost reduction and revenue growth.”

The career

Ms Hrdlicka took over as managing director and chief executive of the owner of Dan Murphy’s, BWS and the ALH pubs on 1 January 2026, after Endeavour announced her appointment in April 2025. According to Endeavour, she began her career as a management consultant at Bain and Company in the US and Australia, rising to senior partner and working with clients including Woolworths. She went on to lead Jetstar, Qantas Loyalty and the a2 Milk Company, and most recently was Group CEO of Virgin Australia, where Endeavour says she led the airline out of administration and back to profit.

She also has history with the business she now runs. Between 2010 and 2016 she was a non-executive director of Woolworths Group, which then owned Endeavour’s liquor brands and the ALH Hotel Group. At the AGM she called joining Endeavour “something of a full-circle moment”, Business News Australia reported.

The first-quarter numbers

Endeavour’s trading update for the 14 weeks to 4 October showed total sales up 2.8% to $3.18 billion. Retail, home to Dan Murphy’s and BWS, rose 3% to $2.58 billion, while hotels sales rose 1.9% to $603 million and gaming revenue was flat. AAP reported that the result missed forecasts.

“Sales growth in Hotels moderated in Q1 as growing cost-of-living pressure, including higher fuel prices, impacted discretionary spending,” Ms Hrdlicka said. Of the outlook, she said: “we expect customers to continue to manage their spending carefully and prioritise value for money in their purchasing behaviour.”

The challenge

AAP reported that Endeavour’s shares have lost more than 60% of their value since August 2022 and that, in May, Ms Hrdlicka announced a $300 million cost-saving plan including offloading wineries and streamlining hotel operations. One shareholder told the meeting the problem was structural: “We’re all drinking less, and consumption per capita is continuing to fall.”

Her answer was that the plan does not rely on a growing market. “We have a lot of work to do to get the fundamentals right, in addition to getting our experiences right to tap the full potential of the customers who are already shopping with us, and so our strategy does not depend on market growth,” she said, as reported by AAP. “Market growth would be nice.”

She also argued the industry had lost touch with younger drinkers after the pandemic. “The industry was not thinking about how do we capture the attention of consumers with innovation and how do we think about the upcoming generations that had social challenges during COVID,” she said.

What to watch

Ms Hrdlicka has described the 2027 financial year as “a significant year for investment and transformation”. The second quarter, which takes in spring racing, Christmas and New Year, is the first real test of whether that plan can lift a business that, by its own board’s admission, has not met expectations since it listed in 2021.

Sources: Business News Australia (30 October 2026); AAP (30 October 2026); Endeavour Group announcements (29 April 2025 and 16 December 2025).