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

Garth Hankinson: Yes, Bryan, absolutely. No changes in that. And obviously, that’s one of the reasons why we think wine will continue to improve through the year. And again, no change that – the Beer business is pretty seasonal and tried and true. So that’s absolutely what the outlook is for the Beer Business.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Bonnie Herzog from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Bonnie Herzog: All right. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I guess I had a question about the Bud Light issue and how it may be impacting your business as well as your distributors? And any changes you might be making there? And then also in light of this, wondering if there might be an opportunity for you to possibly secure more tap handles from Modelo, just thinking about the on-prem business. And then just finally, any changes that you might be making to your marketing strategy or possibly spend levels in light of all of this. Thanks.

Bill Newlands: Well, obviously, the single biggest change that we’ve seen, Bonnie has been that Modelo has taken over as the number one beer by dollars in the U.S. We – Jim Sabia has often said that, that was going to happen in the next few years. But obviously, it happened a little sooner than we had anticipated. I think one of the things that you’re likely to see if some of that challenge continues is when we look at shelf sets in the back half of the year. Many retailers look at velocities as they are doing their re-shelf setting, which, again, often happens in the fall. And that always works to our advantage. I think when you – the retailing environment has gotten very, very sophisticated about seeing where the growth profiles are and the velocities against those.

We’re particularly excited in our Beer business, the fact that the buy rate, both on our core as well as our high-end beer, including the Hispanic consumer, went up year-on-year during the first quarter. I think that’s going to continue to be positive for us, and I think it’s going to help us accelerate expansion of shelf and again, some of that is coming because of the growth and velocities that you’re seeing on our brands, but also the decrease that you’ve seen, as you know, from some of our competitors.

Operator: Thank you. Next question is coming from Nadine Sarwat from Bernstein. Your line is now live.

Nadine Sarwat: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. You mentioned some commentary at the start on Oro. I’d be keen to get a little bit more color there in terms of either repeat rates, cannibalizations and feedback from consumers now that it’s been out in the market for a while. Thank you.

Bill Newlands: You bet, Nadine. It is – the incrementality on the actual market has been better, a slight bit better than what we had anticipated coming out of our test markets. And we are quite pleased with it in the test markets. So we’re getting very good response on that. It is already a top 10 share gainer, as I noted in my prepared remarks. And again, we’ve done this with, I would say, a careful approach. We only have two SKUs in that particular product at this point in time. Recognizing, as Garth pointed out in his remarks, should that continue to show the positive signs that it has to-date, we do have the capacity now to more aggressively go after that as the year continues, which I think, again, is very, very positive and speaks to the success that we’ve had in our operations in Mexico of creating some ability to go beyond what our initial plans are when those opportunities present themselves.