BEER GIANT HONING IN ON SPIRITS
Since the Swedish government announced plans to off-load a number of their government owned companies, including V&S owned Absolut, the alcohol beverage industry has been wild with acquisition speculation. Analysts and the media (WSD included) have thrown around names like Pernod, Beam Global and Diageo as possible suspects, but one name we’ve been hearing more of lately is beer giant Anheuser-Busch (that’s A-B to you insiders.) It’s no secret that beer growth is diminishing while wine and spirits are seeing an all time high, so perhaps it’s not too over the top to assume that A-B would be eager to enter a new alcohol sector.
Our sister publication, Beer Business Daily, believes “A-B is looking at wine, but the business is very tricky, fragmented, and tough to brand and achieve scale. Spirits provide a much steadier and fatter profit stream.”
“We are confident that A-B is at least looking at the Absolut vodka deal and modeling it out with slide rules.”
A-B AND JACK. Another possibility? Well, there’s always the chance that A-B could strike a deal or take a stake in a spirits company a little closer to home. This is pure speculation, and we repeat, speculation, but we think Brown-Forman would be a possible candidate. Both companies have similar cultures and B-F is smaller than many of its peers, making it easier to swallow.
But if A-B were ever to buy a stake in the company, now’s the time to do it. Brown-Forman’s stock is at a 52-week low thanks to soft U.K. sales of its Jack Daniels brand, making its stock price cheap.
Our sister publication, Beer Business Daily, believes “A-B is looking at wine, but the business is very tricky, fragmented, and tough to brand and achieve scale. Spirits provide a much steadier and fatter profit stream.”
“We are confident that A-B is at least looking at the Absolut vodka deal and modeling it out with slide rules.”
A-B AND JACK. Another possibility? Well, there’s always the chance that A-B could strike a deal or take a stake in a spirits company a little closer to home. This is pure speculation, and we repeat, speculation, but we think Brown-Forman would be a possible candidate. Both companies have similar cultures and B-F is smaller than many of its peers, making it easier to swallow.
But if A-B were ever to buy a stake in the company, now’s the time to do it. Brown-Forman’s stock is at a 52-week low thanks to soft U.K. sales of its Jack Daniels brand, making its stock price cheap.
posted at 1:51 PM
<< Home