Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Garth Hankinson: Yes. So, on the Wine and Spirits margins — and so again, I’ll reference you to the deck that will be posted to our website after this call. But we’re actually forecasting wine margins to increase by at least 40 basis points on a year-over-year basis. And so, you’ll be able to see that detail on the website. As it relates to operating margin — or gross profit margin with beer, I mean, all of the headwinds that we’re facing really in beer this coming year will be in gross margin and not below the line. As we said, we’ll continue to — we’ll continue to effectively manage our marketing and SG&A spend and focus on the highest return and highest priority initiatives, and we’ll manage that effectively. So, the largest drag for us, as we’ve said for the last several months now, it’s going to just be the inflationary impact. Again, we’ll hit through COGS as well as some incremental depreciation throughout the year.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Nadine Sarwat with Bernstein.

Nadine Sarwat: So just coming back to the beer margin point, if I take the midpoint up your beer guidance for top line and operating income, it comes a touch below your initial 38 that I think you discussed. Was there anything in particular that changed to the downside versus your previous commentary, or I mean, is this just a situation of rounding here? And then just a follow-up on the margin point, given the margins of last year and what we’ll be seeing on the back of your guidance for this fiscal year. Should we still be thinking about 39% to 40% as your medium-term margin for the business? And would it be fair to 25?

Garth Hankinson: So, we do apologize because you broke there at the end

Bill Newlands: I think the back end of that was do we expect to get there in fiscal €˜25. You broke up, I apologize, but I think that’s what said. So go ahead.

Garth Hankinson: Yes. So I think as you’re working with the numbers that we provided, when we said 38% operating — approximately 38% operating margin. So that if you kind of look at the various points within our range, you’ll come up with various different outputs as it relates to what the margin will be. So we fully — we have full conviction that we’re going to deliver operating margins for our beer business on approximately 38%. As it relates to the outlook going forward, we’ve just provided our outlook — our margin outlook for our beer business for FY24. We’re not providing any guidance for future years. We typically don’t do that at this point. That’s not part of our process. Certainly, the biggest driver again this year that we have for FY24 is again driven predominantly by inflation and the inflation that we’re seeing, which I outlined in my scripts as well as some incremental depreciation.

Offsetting that, we’ll continue to take pricing as we have. And as we’ve said earlier, we’ll be — pricing in our 1% to 2% range. We continue to drive incremental volume, which helps to offset fixed overheads and depreciation as we grow into our expanded footprint, and we’ll continue on with the efficiency drivers that I mentioned as well. So, that’s where we stand for FY24, and we’ll talk about FY25 as we — closer to the end of the year.

Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Bryan Spillane with Bank of America.