In terms of your other questions to what gives me confidence that we can sustain the share gains that we’ve got in the U.S. Look, I mean, the gains we’ve seen in our core brands have been consistent for over 9 months. We are growing in every region, every channel and with every major customer in the United States. And at this point, we believe that the shift in the U.S. beer industry are permanent. We’re off to a fast start in Q1, as I said, momentum is continuing. We are leading all brewers in year-to-date dollar share growth. Our data shows that the majority of consumers who switched to our brands post April have stayed with us throughout 2023, and then much more loyal to [technical difficulty] brands than historically. So yes, I mean I would expect one of our competitors will almost certainly claim that anything better than minus 30% is a big win.
But the reality is there’s no reason to believe that these buyers are suddenly going to revert in April. We do expect strong continued growth in Q1. We expect it to continue to follow the patterns we saw last year. We saw signs of this with our momentum in Q4. For example, Coors Light volume growth in Q4 was higher than it was in Q2. So we’ve got multiple sales tailwinds from a sales perspective. And let me just run a couple of those for you, Nadine, given the high interest in this particular area. We expect even more space at retail starting in Q2, and then we’ll start to see the benefit from spring resets. The majority of major retailers do full reset in the spring, both nationally and from a regional point of view, and we expect to be the biggest beneficiary of these [indiscernible] gains.
We’ve already seen, as I said in my opening remarks, several of our chain retailers that put space for our core brands, well ahead of the 6% to 7% gains that we saw in summer and fall of 2023. And that’s including some larger retailers. We expect to have much better strong — and stronger display activity in the first half of this year. We are already seeing that with the Super Bowl. In the latest 4 weeks of Super Bowl retail program, Molson Coors gained more dollar and volume share of displays than any other U.S. brewer. And [indiscernible], I don’t know, about a 25% lift in sales when they’re on display. So last year, we were a clear winner on displays, and we expect that to be the case as we start cycling in April. And then the final point because I’ve gone on a little here maybe is in the on-premise.
It’s not letting up. We were by far the largest share gainer in the channel last year. We grew 3x more share as the next major brewer, which in this instance was Constellation. And just to put that into perspective, Coors Light and Miller Lite each grew more in dollars in the on-premise and Constellation it is a total brewer. And that’s as of the latest 12-week C.J. Nielsen reads. Now let me stop there. I could go on into the marketing campaigns that we’ve got for [indiscernible Miller Lite but there are so many reasons to believe, Nadine, and we have strong confidence in the guidance in which we’ve given.
Operator: The next question comes from Bill Kirk at Roth MKM. Bill, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Bill Kirk: Thank you. I’m going to try the COGS per hectoliter guidance again, but maybe regionally. And I asked because I think Americas COGS per hectoliter was down year-over-year in 4Q. So is it fair to expect that to continue regionally and in the Americas, but just in Europe, the COGS per hectoliter is up enough year-over-year for the total company COGS per hectoliter to be up in 2024.
Gavin Hattersley: Well, look, you’re right. I mean, we do have regional differences in our cost of goods sold, all driven by — all the factors that go into cost of goods sold from cost savings programs to premiumization. Obviously, the U.S. is coming off a smaller base from a premiumization point of view than EMEA APAC is. The U.S. will be more impacted negatively by a growth in the above premium and for example, EMEA and APAC would be inflation is slightly higher in Europe at a macro level. But as Greg rightly pointed out, our hedging program is designed specifically. It’s been this way for more than 10 years to eliminate the highs and lows of our input costs. So you’re probably looking for more detail than we are willing to give you. There are so many things that go into COGS bill and it all ladders up into our guidance of mid-single digits for underlying pre-tax.
Operator: The next question is from Chris Carey of Wells Fargo. Chris, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Christopher Carey: Hi. Thanks for the question. Gavin, can you just comment on the portfolio outside of [indiscernible] and how you feel about shelf for this year? And then separately, just from a cash perspective, obviously, there’s a lot of debates about growth, specifically on the top line. Can you just maybe let us know how you would be thinking about deploying the balance sheet. Should the fundamental picture become a little bit less as you expect as the year progresses. Another way, if volumes come in a little bit short, would you lean in on some of your buyback initiatives, front load those a bit more than you might have otherwise done on the multiyear plan. So any perspective on cash use would also be helpful in addition to those just how — how the businesses are setting up for this year from a shelf perspective on with the non-Miller noncore business? Thanks so much.
Gavin Hattersley: Yes. From a — from an overall portfolio outside of the U.S., Chris, Canada, we do continue to see softness in the beer industry. But while the industry is down in, frankly, all regions, we’ve had strong share growth in Canada. And it’s being driven by the strength of our core brands and the expansion that we’ve made into flavor. So since last March, Coors Light has been the #1 light beer brand in the industry, Molson brand family is growing share of industry and our flavor portfolio is looking really positive when you compare it against the rest of our competitors. We are growing the business. We are the only major brewer growing share and flavor in Canada. So whilst a little bit more cautious about the overall macro environment in Canada, our portfolio is strong and getting stronger, frankly, as we go forward.
Our LatAm business, 2023 was a tough year, right? There were large macroeconomic challenges in some of our bigger markets in which we operate. We are seeing signs of improvement from that perspective. Miller High Life is performing really well in Mexico. Brazil remains a big opportunity for us. And overall, we do see some level of improvement from a macroeconomic environment in Latin America. And then finally, I covered off on Central Eastern Europe, where we are seeing some signs of slowing down inflation and consumer benefiting from that. In the U.K., we remain cautious as we watch the impact of some of the excise tax impacts in the fourth quarter. But overall, our portfolio in the U.K. is strong. From a calling [ph] point of view, from a Coors family point of view and from a — from Madri and some of our brands, which we talk less about, Croatia, Ožujsko reached its highest market share since we kept records.
Madri is expanding outside of the U.K. So overall, from a portfolio point of view, we are feeling really good about it. Cash — capital allocation, Greg, do you want to take that one?
Greg Tierney: Yes, Sure, Gavin. So Chris, I think Gavin answered the question a little bit earlier around buyback, right? But our capital allocation priorities have not changed, right? They remain always to invest first in our business. We’ve done a fantastic job on leverage. That continues to be a focus. We talked about bringing our leverage ratio down to 2.2x, down from below our or within our longer term goal of under 2.5%. And then the third capital allocation prioritization that we’ve spoken a lot about is returning cash to shareholders. We’ve raised our dividend again another 7% this year after raising it the year — the prior year and the year before. And obviously, we’ve made very good progress on our share buyback, the $2 billion 5-year share buyback program that Gavin spoke about earlier. So the capital allocation priorities remain the same.
Gavin Hattersley: Thanks, Greg
Operator: The next question is from Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank. Steven, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Steve Powers: Hey, thanks. On the buyback, I’m sorry if I missed it, but I don’t know if there was a specific level of repurchases that were envisioned in the ’24 guidance. That will be helpful to know. I also just curious on the drivers of the higher interest expense relative to the run rate we saw exiting ’23, just anything that you’re contemplating in that in terms of refinancing or the like. And then my real question is just maybe you could talk a little bit. I didn’t hear anything about Blue Moon. And I know that there are plans around that brand for [indiscernible] nonalcoholic, an updated marketing commercialization plan. Just any update on those endeavors relative to what we heard at Investor Day? Thank you.
Gavin Hattersley: Yes, sure, Steve. Thanks for the questions. I’ll take your first one. From a share buyback point of view, look, the way we are running this program is on a sustained and an opportunistic basis. So we obviously do have forecast of what we will do for 2024 in our guidance assumptions. We are not going to get into that level of detail. I don’t think legally, I’m allowed to do that. But you can assume that we’ve got a $2 billion share buyback program and that implies roughly $400 million in a year, and we will execute that on a sustained and opportunistic basis as we go forward. As far as Blue Moon is concerned, yes, I mean, we had a challenging year with Blue Moon in 2023. It hasn’t been immune from the challenges that exist in the craft beer market as a whole.
On the positive side, we are seeing some signs of improvement in the on-premise, where Blue Moon is actually growing share now based on the last 4-week Nielsen CGA data. And obviously, we are not satisfied with the brand’s performance. We’ve got big plans to turn it around in 2024, Steve. We’ve got redesigned packaging that hit shelves in March. And it’s going to unite the whole Blue Moon family, which was not the case before where each of the Premium brands almost felt like a different brand in of itself, and that’s going to be is rectified the right word in the new packaging, which we are launching in March. We’ve got a new campaign, which is also going to launch in March. We’ve got strong media pressure with TV and digital and retail. And then to round it out from a Blue Moon point of view, we’ve got two innovations, which we believe are going to bring more drinkers to the brand in 2024, provide a halo effect to Blue Moon itself.
And one is the repositioned Blue Moon Light, which is already the #1 light craft beer. It previously was — went under the name Blue Moon Light Sky. And the other is Blue Moon Non-Alcoholic. It’s obviously very early days for Blue Moon Non-Alcoholic, but it’s already jumped to the #3 craft in a franchise by volume in the last 4 weeks, which is how long it’s been in the market. So the feedback from both retailers and consumers has been overwhelmingly positive. So overall, we have high hopes for overall Blue Moon family of brands in 2024. Greg, I might have missed the part of Steve’s question that was [indiscernible].
