Boston Beer Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Boston Beer EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.16
• Consensus EPS: $0.78
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.38
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.04

Boston Beer Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $481.36 million
• Expected Revenue: $436.27 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$45.10 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +6.50%

Boston Beer Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 4/24/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, April 24, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Boston Beer (NYSE:SAM) Company, Inc. is an American beverage company that develops, produces and sells alcoholic beverages. Founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, the company helped popularize craft beer in the United States with Samuel Adams Boston Lager, its flagship brand.

Boston Beer’s portfolio includes Samuel Adams and other craft beer brands, as well as Truly Hard Seltzer, Twisted Tea hard iced tea, Angry Orchard hard cider and beverages associated with Dogfish Head Brewery, which it acquired in 2019. The company also offers a range of seasonal, specialty and limited-release products across beer, hard seltzer, cider and other flavored alcoholic beverage categories.

The company sells its products primarily in the United States through a combination of distributors, retailers, restaurants, bars and other hospitality channels. Boston Beer operates its own brewing facilities and also uses third-party production arrangements to support its portfolio. Jim Koch remains associated with the company as its founder and chairman.

Boston Beer Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Boston Beer reported Q1 shipments up 5.3% while depletions dipped 1%, driving its highest first-quarter gross margin since 2019.
• The company generated strong cash flow, repurchasing $61 million of shares year-to-date and ending Q1 with $152.5 million in cash plus $150 million of available credit.
• Boston Beer reiterated full-year EPS guidance of $8.00–$10.50 but warned of $20–30 million in tariff costs that could reduce EPS by $1.25–$1.90 and cut gross margin by 50–100 basis points.
• Management is stepping up 2025 advertising spend behind core brands and innovations like Sun Cruiser, aiming to triple its distribution by summer with major media and venue sponsorships.
• The hard-seltzer category fell 5% in Q1 and Truly underperformed, prompting a marketing refresh with Barstool Sports partnerships and a push of high-ABV Truly Unruly SKUs.

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings and welcome to the Boston Beer Company First Quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Andrews. You may begin.

[Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at The Boston Beer Company]

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. This is Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Boston Beer Company. I'm pleased to kick off our 2025 First Quarter earnings call. Joining the call from Boston Beer are Jim Koch, Founder and Chairman; Michael Spillane, our CEO; and Diego Reynoso, our CFO. Before we discuss our business, I'll start with our disclaimer. As we state in our earnings release, some of the information we discuss and that may come up on this call reflects the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future. Such predictions are forward-looking statements.

[Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at The Boston Beer Company]

It's important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's most recent 10-Q and 10-K. The company does not undertake to publicly update forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now pass it over to Jim for some introductory comments.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

Thanks, Mike. I'll begin my remarks this afternoon with a few introductory comments and then hand over to Michael, who will provide an overview of our business. Michael will then turn the call over to Diego, who will focus on the financial details of our first quarter results as well as our outlook for the remainder of 2025. Immediately following Diego's comments, we will open the line for questions. Our first quarter results are a solid start to the year in a dynamic operating environment. Depletions are down 1% compared to the first quarter of last year, and we performed in line with the beer category in measured channels while increasing our overall market share. As we expected, shipments were significantly ahead of depletions at 5% growth for the quarter.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

This was primarily driven by the timing of wholesaler demand for our Sun Cruiser and Truly Unruly innovations, as well as the continued expansion of Hard Mountain Dew. Our margin enhancement initiatives continued to show strong progress, and together with the volume growth, resulted in our highest first quarter gross margin since 2019. The business continues to generate strong cash flow, and we have repurchased $61 million in shares year to date. While we are encouraged by our first quarter performance, we are operating in a challenging and unpredictable macroeconomic environment. As I mentioned on our last call, we expect the broader beer category to remain highly relevant to consumers, with significant growth opportunities in the fourth category, also called Beyond Beer. There are some factors such as health and wellness and cannabis that seem to be having an impact on the beer category as a whole.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

However, our current view is that inflation and economic uncertainty are also significant drivers of the recent weakness, as well as some impact from the timing of Easter this year. Our priorities for 2025 continue to be supporting our category-leading brands to improve market share, launching strong innovation, and continuing to expand our gross margins. As I mentioned on the last call, we're stepping up our advertising investment in 2025 to improve market share trends, ensure a successful national launch of Sun Cruiser, and return to long-term volume growth. We continue to believe that increasing brand investments will drive improved long-term performance, and we will be disciplined in our approach and only invest where we see clear opportunities. In summary, I'm confident that we have the right strategies and team in place to deliver on our 2025 plans and generate long-term sustainable growth.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

We are highly focused on controlling what we can control and executing in the marketplace to improve share trends and expand our margins. I'd like to thank our Boston Beer team, our distributors, and our retailers for their continued support and a good start to the year. I will now pass the call over to Michael.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Thanks, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. Our first quarter results reflect continued progress in sharpening our execution. The strategy to nurture all our core brands pursues a fewer things better approach to innovation while transforming our supply chain is having a positive impact on our financial results. We have multiple ways to win as a diversified beer company. We are highly focused on executing our summer marketing plans and expect a slight increase in total portfolio shelf space this spring. Our 2025 innovation efforts remain focused on our vodka-based hard tea, Sun Cruiser, and the continuing expansion of Samuel Adams American Light in our Twisted Tea Extreme and Truly Unruly high ABV offerings. We're particularly excited about Sun Cruiser, which has received very positive feedback from drinkers, wholesalers, and retailers. However, the macroeconomic environment remains dynamic, with our depletions softening somewhat since our last earnings call.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

We remain highly focused on improving market share and driving distribution gains to help offset potential category weakness. I'll now provide an update on our brand performance and plans, beginning with our core brands. Twisted Tea grew dollar sales 1% in measured channels compared to the first quarter last year and gained market share of FMBs while maintaining an over 86% share in the attractive hard tea category. Early indications from spring self-resets are that Twisted Tea will continue to gain back shelf space as retailers begin to trim the numbers of FMB brands in their assortments. We did see a deceleration in measured channel trends during the first quarter, more than what we anticipated, as both the declines of the FMV category of -2% and larger beer category decline of -5% were higher than we expected.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

We currently estimate low single-digit growth from Twisted Tea this year, driven by strong advertising support, increased points of distribution, and the positive impact of national expansion of Twisted Tea Extreme. Our upcoming marketing plans include significant advertising investment behind our top-performing tea drop ads in the key summer months, as well as the return of our American Parties with Tea program. The program will drive thematic red, white, yellow, and blue programming across retail stores and includes the drinker favorite Rocket Pop and our original and light summer party packs. Twisted Tea is also collaborating with Ball Park Buns on displays in large-format stores to give drinkers their summer barbecue essentials. Our high ABV Twisted Tea Extreme offering continues to receive a positive response from drinkers and retailers.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

In the first quarter, the Lemon and Blue Razz flavors were the number two and three growth drivers in FMB volume and dollars in off-premise measured channels. These flavors were available nationally beginning in January and continue to build distribution. Importantly, Twisted Tea Extreme continues to bring new drinkers into the category and unlock new occasions for the brand. Our analysis shows that Extreme is incremental to the Twisted Tea brand and is sourcing drinkers from spirits and other high-alc FMB brands. Turning to hard seltzer, the hard seltzer category continues to decline, with category sales down 5% in the first quarter dollar sales in measured off-premise channels. We are not satisfied with our Truly performance in our increasing advertising investment behind the brand this year and refreshing our marketing strategy. Truly will continue to sponsor U.S.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Soccer and the Barstool Sports Podcast, Pardon My Take, the number one sports podcast in the country, and Chicks in the Office, a leading entertainment and pop culture podcast. We believe this Barstool partnership, along with the new brand and retail activation campaigns, will help reposition the brand to be more culturally relevant and improve volume trends over time. High ABV offerings continue to be a bright spot in the hard seltzer category. Truly Unruly, which was introduced early last year, has grown to a 2% volume share of hard seltzer. The Truly Unruly Variety 12-pack SKU was the number one dollar share gainer in the U.S. Beyond Beer market over the last 12 months. We introduced a second Truly Unruly Variety Pack in April and expect Truly Unruly to be a key contributor in improving the trajectory of the Truly brand.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Our beer brands, Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head, continue to be important parts of the portfolio. At Samuel Adams, we're pleased with the early results of the national expansion of American Light. American Light recently ran the Most Premium Light Beer in America campaign for March Madness and will be featured in our summer patriotic program along with Summer Ale. American Light is helping our Samuel Adams brand family gain shelf space while craft beer shelf space continues to decline. Our Dogfish Head beer brand achieved flat depletions for the first quarter, driven by the successful launch of its Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale. This launch is the largest in Dogfish Head history and has gotten great early traction in music venues such as The Sphere in Las Vegas and has achieved almost 2 billion media impressions.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Our Angry Orchard brand continues to be the number one cider brand with a market share of over 40%, and we believe it has potential to return to sustainable growth. We recently launched our new media campaign, Don't Get Angry, Get Orchard, and began our exciting new sponsorship of WWE Wrestling. Turning to innovation, we are pleased with the performance of our vodka-based hard tea, Sun Cruiser, which was a solid contributor to our year-to-date depletions and is gross margin accretive. Sun Cruiser has been well received by wholesalers, retailers, and drinkers, and will continue to drive awareness of this new brand through expanded distribution and significant advertising investment. On-premise has been an important venue to drive awareness and trial for Sun Cruiser. We're continuing to expand the brand into sports and music venues, including our recently announced multi-brand sponsorship of AEG Presents.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

After an initial regional launch focused on independence and on-premise, we're excited to announce that Sun Cruiser is now on shelf in larger national chain retailers, and we are on track to triple points of distribution for the summer. As the brand enters the spring national chain shelf sets, you should see a greater presence for Sun Cruiser in measured channel data. We're investing significantly in advertising support for the summer, including television, sponsorships, and retail activation. Our plans include a Chase the Sun national retail program running this month ahead of the summer season, a sponsorship of AVP Beach Volleyball, and detailed activation plans across more than 20 top local markets. In terms of product assortment, Sun Cruiser Lemonade Variety Packs and Pink Lemonade Single Serve are now rolling out nationally. With respect to Hard Mountain Dew, we're encouraged to see positive depletion trends for the third consecutive quarter.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

The brand was recently launched in Texas, and the iconic Code Red flavor debuted in stores during March. Hard Mountain Dew Code Red is now available in single serve and has been included in our new Hard Mountain Dew Variety Pack along with the three other most popular flavors. Growth for Hard Mountain Dew this year, but it will be a multi-year effort for this product to become a meaningful part of our volume mix. In closing, I'm encouraged by the progress we're making across the organization. We're highly focused on our commercial plans and executing well in the summer selling season. I continue to believe that there are multiple opportunities to take market share and drive margin improvement to create long-term value for shareholders.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

I'd also like to thank our team for all the hard work done over the last year to improve our processes, which positions us well to be more agile in the current macro environment. I'll now pass the call over to Diego to review our first quarter financial results and 2025 guidance.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, everyone. Depletions in the first quarter decreased 1%, and shipments increased 5.3% compared to the first quarter of last year, primarily driven by increases in Sun Cruiser, Hard Mountain Dew, and Twisted Tea brands, partially offset by declines in our Truly brand. Shipments were higher than depletions in the quarter due to multiple factors. Distributors built inventories to support our peak selling season, and we also have a significant increase in points of distribution related to our Sun Cruiser, Truly Unruly, and Hard Mountain Dew innovations. We believe distributor inventory of five weeks on hand as of March 29 is an appropriate level for each of our brands and is slightly ahead of the four and a half weeks at the end of the first quarter of 2024. Revenue for the quarter increased 6.5% due to volume and price increases.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Our first quarter gross margin of 48.3% increased 460 basis points year-over-year. Gross margin performance benefited from lower brewery processing costs per barrel due to volume leverage and brewery efficiencies, as well as pricing and procurement savings. These positive drivers were partially offset by inflationary costs. Advertising, promotional, and selling expenses for the first quarter of 2025 increased $17.3 million, or 14.3% year-over-year, due to increasing brand investments in media and local marketing. General and administrative expenses decreased $2.4 million, or 4.8% year-over-year, primarily due to Chief Executive Officer transition costs incurred in the first quarter of 2024. We reported EPS of $2.16 per diluted share, which more than doubled compared to the prior year. Our strong EPS performance was driven by revenue growth and higher gross margin, as well as a lower tax rate and the effect of our share repurchase.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

These benefits were somewhat offset by the increased investment in our brands. Now, I'd like to provide an update on our ongoing productivity initiatives. We've made strong progress, particularly in procurement savings, improved brewery efficiencies, and more disciplined inventory management. These demonstrated improvements in our supply chain and gross margin in the first quarter. It gives us confidence that we are tracking well on our multi-year savings projects. We believe with these improvements, we are in better position to react to the uncertain impact of future volume and product mix changes and tariff impacts. For the remainder of 2025 and beyond, we continue to expect contribution from all three saving buckets, as I discussed on last quarter's call. I'll now provide some highlights on our initiatives in each bucket. We continue to see opportunities for procurement savings on packaging and ingredients, primarily due to price negotiations and recipe optimization.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Our first quarter results benefited from lower negotiated pricing on certain packaging and ingredients, which we expect will continue to 2025. First quarter brewery performance was as we expected, with some benefits from higher line efficiencies. Our brewery performance efforts for the full year of 2025 include expected improvements in OEEs, driven by process improvements at our breweries and continuing to increase our internal production. In the first quarter, we increased our domestic internal production to 85% of our volume compared to 83% in the first quarter of last year. We have continuing opportunities to reduce waste and optimize our network, which will be enabled by improving supply chain processes and systems and more consistent and predictable volumes. The automated customer ordering and inventory management system that we implemented in 2024 continues to help us further reduce waste and optimize our network.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Multi-year operational improvements we are making in our business, together with the diminishing impacts of previously discussed contractual items, show that we continue to have a strong pathway for gross margin improvement. Now I'll discuss our 2025 guidance. The first quarter was a good start to the year, but we do expect the environment around us to continue to be dynamic. Exclusive of the estimated impacts of tariffs, we are reiterating our full-year financial guidance, with full-year 2025 earnings per diluted share expected to be between $8 and $10.50. Based on the information currently available and based on tariff programs announced to date, we estimate that tariffs will have an unfavorable 2025 cost impact of approximately $20 million-$30 million, or $1.25-$1.90 earnings per diluted share. These estimates include an unfavorable gross margin impact of between 50 to 100 basis points.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Given expected buying patterns and inventories currently on hand, we would expect tariffs to begin impacting our financials early in the second quarter. We'll continue to closely monitor the tariff environment and are looking across our operations for opportunities to mitigate some of the tariff headwinds. Our fiscal week depletion trends for the first 16 weeks of 2025 have decreased 1% from 2024. We are reiterating our volume guidance of down low single digits to up low single digits. While we are not making changes to our volume guidance today, if current depletion trends continue, we would expect to deliver the year closer to the midpoint of the range. As a reminder, the summer selling season is a significant driver of our full-year volume performance, and we'll have more visibility on market trends as we move through the summer.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

We continue to expect price increases of between 1% and 2%, and full-year 2025 gross margins are expected to be between 45% and 47%, exclusive of the estimated tariff impacts I discussed earlier. Where we land within the range of our guidance will be somewhat dependent on volume performance and the mix of products sold. The contractual shortfall fees and the production prepayment amortization that we discussed on our last call are expected to have a negative 100 to 140 basis point impact on our gross margin. We continue to expect advertising, promotional, and selling expenses increases to range from $30 million to $50 million, exclusive of any tariff impact. We expect most of these increases to occur in the first half of the year. This does not include any changes in freight costs for the shipment of products to our distributors.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

As you model out the year, please keep in mind the following factors. Our business is impacted by seasonal volume changes, with the fourth quarter typically our lowest absolute gross margin rate of the year. We expect first-half shipments to be toward the higher end of the full-year guidance range, with second-quarter shipment growth year-over-year at a lower rate than the first quarter. We expect shipments ahead of depletion trends for the first half, which we expect will reverse in the second half, primarily in the third quarter. As I mentioned earlier, increases in brand investment will be more heavily weighted to the first half of the year.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Turning to capital allocation, we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $152.5 million and an unused credit line of $150 million, which provides us with flexibility to continue to invest in our base business, fund future growth initiatives, and return cash to shareholders through our share buyback program. For the full year of 2025, we continue to expect capital expenditures of between $90 million and $110 million. During the 13-week period ended March 29, 2025, and the period from March 31, 2025, through April 18, 2025, we've repurchased shares in the amount of $49 million and $11.3 million. As of April 18, 2025, we have approximately $367 million remaining on the $1.6 billion share repurchase authorization. This concludes our prepared remarks, and now we'll open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press Star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. The first question comes from the line of Peter Grom with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

[Peter Grom, Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Thanks, Operator. Good evening, everyone. Hope you're doing well. I just wanted to ask about the gross margin performance in the quarter. I think it's the best first quarter gross margin since 2019. Can you maybe just unpack how much of that is a function of maybe the stronger shipments versus maybe some of the ongoing margin initiatives you've been discussing? What I'm really trying to get is just a very strong number, so just trying to understand how to think about that in the context of the full-year guidance. Thanks.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah, thank you for the question. I think as we laid down, we did have stronger shipments, and that does give us a little bit of an uplift in Q1. The underlying is mainly our gross margin projects and pieces that we've laid out before. That is why we're continuing with our full-year guidance that will be a year-on-year improvement, but we're not necessarily taking it up because of the first quarter because of that upside in shipments. I'd say there is a little bit of a benefit of the shipments, but the main piece is our underlying gross margin initiatives.

[Peter Grom, Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Great. Thank you so much. Maybe just a follow-up on tariffs. I appreciate the color that you outlined in the release and in the prepared remarks, but maybe can you just help us understand what's kind of driving the cost pressure? I think the numbers outlined, I just want to make sure, are those gross impacts or are they net of any mitigation efforts you guys might look to deploy here?

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. The first part of your question, there are a few drivers. As you know, they have changed a lot on a weekly basis. The first one is the cost of aluminum, which is a big component of our cans. The second one is point-of-sale material and other pieces that we are bringing in from countries that are currently on higher tariffs than we would have guessed, particularly China. Those are the two key components. The second part of your question, that is right now the gross. We are looking for actions to potentially mitigate that, but we will see that probably in the next quarter. We will come back and share what they are.

[Peter Grom, Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Awesome. Thank you so much, and congrats on a great start to the year.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Filippo Falorni with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

[Filippo Falorni, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to ask, within the 5.3% shipment volume that you posted, you mentioned a significant contribution from Sun Cruiser and Truly Unruly. Can you help us break out how much they contributed to the shipment volume? Also, more from a kind of sell-through standpoint, from a depletion standpoint. Obviously, Sun Cruiser, a lot of it is still untracked. Can you give us a sense of how it performed from a consumption standpoint in Q1 and just any early signs as you roll it out in new states? Thank you.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Thanks. We appreciate the question. We typically do not break out by product in terms of the shipments. I would say that Sun Cruiser is meeting our expectations, and we expect to have three times the points of distribution by the summer. You are starting to see the sets in the national chains, and we like the progress we are making. I think, as we mentioned in the earlier remarks, Sun Cruiser is margin accretive to our portfolio, which when we set out 12 months ago, that was a big part of what we were trying to do was bring in our innovation and make the innovation positive to our margins.

[Filippo Falorni, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Got it. Then maybe on Twisted Tea, you mentioned clearly the slowdown that we've seen in track channel in Q1. What do you think was the main driver of this slowdown? I guess you sounded confident that things will get better after Q1. Can you give us some more sense of what gives you that confidence in the balance of the year? Thank you.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. So I mean, if you look at the macro environment, we certainly recognize it's challenging out there. The other dynamic with Twisted Tea was that there were a lot of smaller competitors that came into the market last year. We're in the process, hopefully, of grabbing some of that space back, which should help get the growth rate up to higher than we did this past quarter. We feel confident we have some great investments, and we're heavily investing in not only point of sale, but actually national advertising for Twisted Tea. We feel pretty confident. We're thinking single digits versus the trailing double-digit growth, but we feel confident also with the innovations, both the high ABV and the light. Those are doing well.

[Filippo Falorni, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup]

Great. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Nadine Sarwat with Bernstein. Please proceed with your question.

[Nadine Sarwat, Equity Research Analyst at Bernstein]

Hi. Thank you for taking my question, everyone. Two for me. Just coming back to the guidance comments on tariffs, it sounds like most of that is cost, but can you comment on, are you making any assumptions about changes in consumer demand? Either way, could you provide color on how you're thinking of potential changes in consumer demand for the remainder of the year? The second question, a little more broadly, beer industry obviously has had a very weak start to the year. Weakening of consumer confidence is pretty well telegraphed at this point. Are you able to comment as to what you're seeing on the ground, in particular, any incremental consumer insights as to what's driving any changes in behavior, perhaps by demographics, income levels, etc.? I know you guys always track that very closely. Thank you.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. I think Diego will take the first part of that, and then Jim will pick up the second part, if that's okay.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. From a tariff point of view, you are correct that it's mostly cost, although promotional materials and point of sale is part of our advertising marketing budget. It does not include changes in demand. I think it's too soon to know what that will be for the rest of the year. That's what's included in the actual guidance from a tariff point of view. I'll hand it off to Jim for the second part of the question.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. I would break. Yep. The beer industry has been softer than we anticipated in the first quarter, probably than most other participants anticipated. We've seen some sort of macroeconomic trends, and then there's some longer-term, medium-term, kind of long-term trends. The macroeconomic ones are obviously the consumer confidence, the fear of inflation. There is also some pullback from the Hispanic consumers that they're just not going out as much. There are some longer-term trends that I think are real.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

There are things like moderation, Delta 9, meaning hemp-based THC beverages, health concerns, reduced sociability. People just aren't going out as much as they did pre-pandemic. There are minor things like GLP-1 drugs and online gambling. You put all those together, and it looks like it's taken a point or two out of what was expected. I would agree with what we saw from our friends at Constellation. They're projecting the beer industry down 1% or 2%. I think that's probably a new normal.

[Nadine Sarwat, Equity Research Analyst at Bernstein]

Perfect. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Eric Serotta with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

[Eric Serotta, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks, and good afternoon. Hoping you could give a little bit more color on the runway for Twisted as you look out over the next few years, a long history of double-digit growth from that brand, certainly accelerated over the past few years, COVID in the aftermath, and then has really slowed recently. I know you talked about low single digits for this year, but could you talk about what you're doing to sort of re-accelerate that brand going forward, and is getting back to low double-digit a reasonable planning assumption? On Truly, you've spoken for a while about sort of trimming the tail there and sort of getting back to the core of the lightly flavored PACS and Unruly. Can you give us any sense of the mix today? How much of a drag are those areas that you're continuing to de-emphasize? Thank you.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Sure. In terms of the first, I think the foundation this company has been built on is innovation. I think the Twisted Tea family of product has been driven by expansion of the offerings. Specifically, the high ABV and the light now are just starting their ramp. They're at low percentages of the total points of distribution of the core Twisted Tea products. We see a one to three ramp in those products to really get them out in front of the consumers like they should be. Big opportunities there on premise as well. We'll continue to innovate in the family. There are things in work now that we won't talk about, but we'll have new exciting products that come to market, much like Rocket Pop came before and was unexpected. Secondly, on Truly, Truly has been tough for us for a long time.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

I would say most of the editing and paring down of the flavor assortments has been completed. We're pleased with the energy that Unruly has brought to it. We're seeing, as noted earlier, some great progress there. We're suffering both from the decline in the category and then still trying to claw back now. A lot of the points of distribution we had as our business was contracting, we lost a lot of space. We're working on getting that back as well as through heavy marketing investment, as we talked about, being led by Barstool to accelerate the demand for the product and make it more culturally relevant. It'll be a journey. It's taken a long time to get here, but it's really important to us, and we'll continue to invest and innovate in that space.

[Eric Serotta, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

[Michael Lavery, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Thank you. Good afternoon. You held guidance and called out the tariff headwind separately. Would we be right to infer that your current operating assumption is that you'll absorb that incremental cost and that you're not planning to take pricing, or is that still TBD?

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Look, I think in terms of the tariffs, we're still identifying what is actual policy and what is posturing and what looks like a long negotiation. We are being very thoughtful and focused internally on if we needed solutions, we have them ready. We are assessing the marketplace to see what kind of pricing tolerance there would be, as well as we are constantly looking at finding efficiencies internally. I would say, I mean, one of the reasons why Diego explained it the way he did is because it is an evolving situation. We continue to watch it closely. Whatever scenario we get, we will be ready to do the thing that serves the business in the best manner for our shareholders long-term.

[Michael Lavery, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

It makes sense. Fair enough. Just to follow up on Sun Cruiser, you obviously started initially in more independence and on-premise. Any sense of what amount of that business is in measured channels? You also pointed to a distribution expansion by this summer. Any maybe a little bit more granular sense of timing? Would it be midsummer, or would you be catching the full kind of busy season? How do we think about how that rolls out?

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Thank you for the question. I would say for the first part, most of the volume that we're doing right now, or we've been doing till the beginning of the year, is not in the tracked channels. It's in the untracked channels. As Michael mentioned, we are expecting the modern channel point of distribution to triple in the next coming, I'd say, two to three months. Therefore, I'd say by the middle of the summer, you should start seeing some of that volume come through a more track channel point of view.

[Michael Lavery, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler]

Okay. Thanks so much.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Bonnie Herzog with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

[Bonnie Herzog, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

All right. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I had first a quick follow-up question on tariffs. You mentioned an impact from aluminum inflation. Curious if you're hedged at all on aluminum.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

No, we do not. As a matter of the way we work, we do not hedge aluminum. We have a pass-through through our can suppliers.

[Bonnie Herzog, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Okay. Thank you for that. Hoping you could help reconcile for me the stepped-up marketing spend in Q1 with your depletions being down 1%, as well as, I guess, negative depletion trends in April. I guess when do you expect to see the spend start to improve, I guess, depletion performance? Do you think your depletions would have been down even more during Q1 without the stepped-up spending? I guess ultimately, is it your expectation that your depletions will flip positive maybe in the second half? Thank you.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Jim, do you want to take that?

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

Sure. Yes, it is our expectation that depletions will flip positive maybe in the second quarter, certainly in the second half. Yes, I think had we not increased the brand support dollars, the depletions would have been down more than they have been year to date. Honestly, the beer category has been a couple of points weaker than we thought it was going to be. Our depletions are tracking pretty close to the midpoint of our guidance, and I think they would have been towards the lower end.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. Bonnie, the only thing I would add to that is that with a new brand like Sun Cruiser, creating awareness is really important. You do not necessarily see depletions track the quarter the dollars are spent.

[Bonnie Herzog, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Yeah. Not quite yet, but you're leaning in and continuing to push forward on the spending. Thank you for that color.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press Star two to remove yourself from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment while we pull for additional questions. The next question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

[Robert Ottenstein, Senior Managing Director and Head of the Global Beverages and Household Products Team at Evercore ISI]

Yeah. I'd like to just kind of circle back on Twisted Tea. Apologies if this was already asked. For some reason, my line dropped. I think we're all surprised at how fast and steep the drop has been on Twisted Tea. At least it had been my impression that it really had not been fully distributed in a lot of regions and underrepresented in a lot of regions of the country. I guess, and I'm talking about the core Twisted Tea product. Number one, is that correct, or was I mistaken? If I am correct, is there maybe it's just a brand that does not resonate in certain areas of the country, or is there an execution issue, or maybe is it just that I'm wrong and it just is fully distributed? Thank you.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

First of all, thank you for the question. I'll start, and then I'll hand that off to Michael for some color. We do have opportunities for distribution, but as we've talked about it, they're in specific brand extensions. For example, we think there's a lot of opportunities for light. We think there are specific opportunities in Hispanics that we've talked about before. I think in part of that, I think that's an opportunity. I would say the other part of the equation is there's other tea products, for example, like Sun Cruiser, that has a little bit of cannibalization to the product. If you look at the overall tea category, the category continues to be strong growth, and we continue to be the leader. It's just a little bit more brands in there than there used to be two years ago.

[Diego Reynoso, CFO at The Boston Beer Company]

I would say the third thing is the brand is 50 million cases now. It is significantly larger, and therefore, even a smaller percentage growth could be a smaller percentage growth, but yet significant volume growth in number of cases. I would say those are the three key things, and then I will put us to my side.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Yeah. Look, the pillars, again, as I stated before, and you may have missed it, but Jim founded this company as an innovation company. The success we've had is creating a lot of this sector. Both high ABV and light products in here are really underdistributed. I think we're looking at those as going to be part of the growth. The second part, which is the other dynamic, was the year that everybody decided to get into tea was last year. A lot of space was given to those smaller brands.

[Michael Spillane, President and CEO at The Boston Beer Company]

Nobody really made an impact. I think the highest penetrated competitive brand is 3.9%. We're looking at there's kind of a long tail in the category right now, and we're looking to claw that back. I do not think you can look past the macro headwinds. January, February are really tough on the entire category. I think it's a combination of those things. We continue to invest and innovate, and we have expectations to get that number higher.

[Robert Ottenstein, Senior Managing Director and Head of the Global Beverages and Household Products Team at Evercore ISI]

Terrific. Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Jim Koch for any closing remarks.

[Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder at The Boston Beer Company]

Thanks, everyone, for joining us, and we look forward to speaking to you about our second quarter. Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you, everyone. This does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.

Participants

Executives

• Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
• Jim Koch, Brewer and Founder
• Michael Spillane, President and CEO
• Diego Reynoso, CFO

Analysts

• Peter Grom, Equity Research Analyst at UBS
• Filippo Falorni, Equity Research Analyst at Citigroup
• Nadine Sarwat, Equity Research Analyst at Bernstein
• Eric Serotta, Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Michael Lavery, Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler
• Bonnie Herzog, Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Robert Ottenstein, Senior Managing Director and Head of the Global Beverages and Household Products Team at Evercore ISI