Many 'HC' stocks have this title for a thread to try to limit...

Many 'HC' stocks have this title for a thread to try to limit the creation of numerous other small threads, so I guessed it was time for one here.

The website tool similarweb.com shows that visits to EDV's bws.com.au increased from 1.2 and 1.3 million in October and November 2022 respectively to 1.8 million in December 2022. While this should occur given December marks the birth of Christ plus school holidays and summer's 'beer time' commencement, it's pleasing that the site took off.

Many BWS patrons would just turn up at a bottleshop, be it attached to a WOW supermarket or at one of the 330 plus ALH group pubs, but some may refer to the website to check catalogue specials and most importantly, stock availability at a particular BSW outlet/ This latter feature comes in handy as who wants to walk, drive or catch trams or trains to a BWS outlet only to find it's out of stock of one's favourite tipple?

Similarly, visits to the danmurphys.com.au site rose from 3.8m in October 2022 to 4.7m in November and a mammoth 7.1 million in December 2022.

There were only 74,400 visits to alhgroup.com.au in December 2022 but it isn't really a name known to most Australians: they just know to head down to the pub.

This all augurs well for what should have been a good trading close to calendar 2022 for EDV.

However when yesterday buying beer form an inner Melbourne BWS that has a Dan Murphy's quite close by, the friendly attendant said to me summer trading so far had been 'fairly quiet' but he then clarified stating 'here, Dan Murphy's does the heavy lifting'. So asking someone at that BWS wasn't a good indication as to how BWS is trading.

Conversely, one weekday this week I was passing an ALH group hotel in Melbourne's south where four cars were lined up purchasing at the drive-in bottleshop. That was a pleasing indication of people stocking up for forecast warmer weather. So far in Melbourne since 1 December 2022 we've had only seven of 45 days where the maximum has reached 30 degrees or above, although today is supposed to be 37 as is next Tuesday. Some days have had tops well below 20 degrees, less conducive to high alcohol consumption.