8 Best Beer Stocks to Buy Now

4. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 28

Next up in our list of the Best Alcohol Stocks is The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM), one of the largest American-owned brewing companies, best known for its line of all-malt beers under the brand name Samuel Adams.

The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) declared in its Q3 2024 earnings call transcript that it had generated over $200 million in operating cash flow YTD and maintained a cash balance of $256 million at the end of the third quarter with no debt. The company also continues returning access cash to its shareholders. As such it had repurchased $191 million in shares this year by the end of Q3 and recently even expanded its share repurchase authorization by $400 million, bringing the repurchase agreement total to $1.6 billion.

As the craft beer market continues its decline, The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM)’s focus has been on diversifying its portfolio of products by including flavored malt and hard seltzers, among others. The company continues to see hard tea as an attractive category and its Twisted Tea Brand enjoys an 85% market share, with the most successful competitive brand limited to a low single-digit share in the market. However, Boston Beer Company’s hard seltzer category truly underperformed in Q3 as it declined 11% in volume in measured channels. The company has also kept up with the up-and-coming no-lo trend by launching a distinctly American light craft lager called Samuel Adams American Light.

At the end of Q3 2024, The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) was held by 28 hedge funds in the IM database with a total investment value of $361.02 million, an increase of 24.1% from the previous quarter.

SouthernSun Asset Management LLC stated the following about The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) in its Q1 2024 investment letter:

“In the near term, we believe the company will remain focused on sustaining Twisted Tea’s growth, turning Truly volume trends, improving operations to enhance gross margins, and thus providing more funds to invest in its core assets as a company – its brands and its sales force. Overall, we remain confident management’s efforts and investments are likely to produce profitable growth that will reward investors over time.”