Australian culinary icon Maggie Beer’s ASX-listed company posted a nearly $10 million loss after suffering a technical issue that cannibalised online sales at Christmas.
The 81-year-old’s eponymous entity Maggie Beer Holdings recorded a $9.5 million statutory loss after tax in its full-year results for 2026, tumbling by nearly 60.8 per cent.
Maggie Beer’s ASX-listed company posted a $9.5 million loss after a tech upgrade Instagram
The Maggie Beer brand blamed the multimillion-dollar sales slump largely on a “loss of organic search traffic” and a decline in online sales following Hampers and Gifts Australia’s major upgrade to e-commerce platform Shopify ahead of Christmas 2025.
Organic search traffic crumbled after the upgrade, with Maggie Beer’s site losing up to 38 per cent of visits directed from Google by January this year.
Beer’s company spent $800,000 on emergency advertising and marketing in a desperate attempt to offset the Google glitch.
However, it was not enough to save net sales for Hampers and Gifts Australia from plummeting by 6.3 per cent.
Maggie Beer Products delivered strong sales growth despite a catastrophic slump in Hampers & Gifts Australia. Maggie Beer
“Organic traffic declined at both The Hamper Emporium and Gifts Australia, with peak-season organic clicks on key hamper search terms down,” the company said in its announcement to the ASX.
Total revenue for the business remained stable at $75.7 million.
Meanwhile, the South Australian chef’s twin brand Maggie Beer Products delivered strong sales for the business, with net sales jumping 8.2 per cent to $34.3 million for the period.
The company noted that one of its key goals for the 2027 financial year was rebuilding the lost organic search traffic.
For the comparable full-year period in 2025, net sales for Hamper and Gifts Australia climbed by 5 per cent.
Beer’s full-year results also included an executive appointment after the company hired Chris Illman as managing director.
Illman formerly worked as head of group sales, marketing and hospitality at the Bickford’s Group of Companies.