Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Newlands: Lauren, on-premise is still not quite back to where we saw pre-pandemic. As we’ve said before, it was roughly 15% of our business pre-pandemic, and it’s still in that 12% to 13% range, as we have come out of the pandemic. And it’s probably been a little more volatile, the hit and miss compared to what you see in tracked channels. We believe it’s going to continue to do well, and it’s going to continue to improve over the course of the summer, as we put the final touches hopefully on the pandemic behind us, but it’s admittedly not back to quite where it was ahead of time. The thing that we’ve often been very pleased about is we’ve seen many accounts in the on-premise get much more focused on well-known recognized brands. And obviously, whenever that happens, it’s to our advantage because of the strength of those brands.

Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Peter Grom from UBS. Your line is now live.

Peter Grom: Thanks operator and good morning everyone. So I kind of wanted to ask about beer margins, maybe two-parts here. Maybe first, I think marketing was up almost 17% this quarter. And I think the expectation in the initial guidance was for a low single-digit increase for marketing for the year. So I guess, how should we think about the phasing of marketing spend moving forward? And I guess has the outlook changed at all, given the high-teens increase in one or two? And then just related, you mentioned that monitoring some favorability across some of your key inputs and we’ll provide an update later. But I guess, conceptually, should there be any capability in those in would you anticipate those benefits dropping to the bottom-line? Or would you look to take out marketing further? Thanks.

Garth Hankinson: Well, thanks for the question. I mean, as we noted in our prepared remarks, the increase in Q1 marketing spend was largely supportive of the momentum behind our existing products as well as the support of the launch behind Modelo Oro. So marketing as a percent of net sales for the quarter came in at 9.5%. The outlook for the full year is unchanged. We will continue to spend in our normal algorithm, that 9% to 10% of net sales on a full year basis. And so again, nothing changed in that regard. As it relates to some of the improvement that we’re seeing, obviously, we’re off of some of the highs from a commodity perspective, with the exception of one or two things that have continued to be a little bit – they haven’t quite come off their highs just yet.

So we do think that there could be some favorability as we move through the year on the commodity side. However, some of that favorability could be offset with the strength of the peso. If we look at the outlook right now, the favorability we’re seeing on some commodities is being somewhat or completely offset by the strength of the peso. So right now, we’re not seeing necessarily when you take into account the peso and the improving commodity market, but we’re not necessarily seeing a big change for the balance of the year.

Operator: Thank you. Next question today is coming from Bryan Spillane from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Bryan Spillane: Thanks operator. Good morning everyone. Just one quick one for me, Garth. I think back on the 4Q call, when you talked about cadence, it was 55% of your volume first half and 55% of Wine and Spirits in the back half. So just wanted to see if that was still directionally kind of where we should be thinking as we’re beginning to kind of restack our models for the balance of the year.