The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Burwick: Yes. Vivian, I think it can because we look at it again, when we split that category to 2, the cut water version of that category, the RTDs and Dogfish can cocktails, higher ABV fewer occasions, lower buy rate, just less — lower frequency of consumption. When you look at the other side, there’s a lot — obviously, it looks and acts just like a Hard Seltzer. It’s all about — really, it’s about refreshment. It’s about session ability, it’s about variety. And we think we’re building a brand that could stand for those 3 things: refreshment, session ability and variety and whether you take that in a traditional like super space, Hard Seltzer market is Truly Hard Seltzer or within the Vodka space or we’ve already talked about getting into Tequila as well, which to us, they’re all kind of the same occasions.

It’s largely the same consumer. Some of the — that the spirits consumers tend to be a little more a little older, more a little more wealthy than the Hard Seltzer for consumers, but it’s essentially — it’s the same pool that we’re playing in. And we think the way the brand has been built, it can play in those spaces and consumers, we’ve done a lot of consumer work. So we’re not just kind of making it up as we go. Consumers have given us permission to go there. Now we’re going there. We’ll see how it goes and we’ll evolve accordingly.

Vivien Azer: That’s super helpful. And then just my follow-up for Frank. You guys before this like toward growth in Hard Seltzer had a pretty clear formula for offering guidance. If I recall correctly, you were really extrapolating off of trailing 12-week trends. If I look at what we’re seeing in the Hard Seltzer category today, in particular, on the 2-year stack. It seems like you’ve reverted back to that methodology. Can you just comment on whether that’s accurate or not?

Frank Smalla: Yes. Yes. Certainly, for Truly, as Dave has said, like on the low end, the minus 8 or minus 7 on a like-for-like basis. We’ve just looked at the trends that we’ve achieved in 2023 and in 2022 and assume that there is no change to that. So we’ve reverted back a little bit to that. We’ve looked at trends that we have achieved, what did we really realize and then use that as a basis and build it up. Now we believe we have really strong plans in place for 2023. One component is what we announced today is the relaunch of Truly, but we want to see how much traction we — in actuality, we’re going to get. So we have been carefully modeling that.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Kevin Grundy with Jefferies.

Kevin Grundy: A few for me. Let me pick through these quickly. Dave, just the down 10% to 15% for the seltzer category that you’re expecting. Just in the interest of clarity, that’s the multi seltzer category. You’re not talking seltzers broadly. Is that fair?

David Burwick: Yes, that’s right. I think the rule of thumb that we’re using, Kevin, is add — if you throw in the spirit-based seltzers, you’re probably going to add about 3 points of growth to that — minus 7 to 12, yes.

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