Bud Light is no longer America's best-selling beer after boycott, Wall Street analysts warn Anheuser-Busch faces 'permanent' damage



Bud Light has been dethroned as the king of beers in the United States following a widespread boycott.

CBS News reported that Anheuser-Busch InBev sold $297 million of Bud Light for the four-week period ending on May 28 — tumbling 23% from the same duration from the previous year, according to consumer-behavior analytics firm Circana.

Meanwhile in the same time period, Modelo Especial beer raked in $333 million in sales, jumping 15% over the past year.

Bill Newlands, the chief executive officer of Constellation, told Newsweek of becoming the best-selling beer in the country, "We thought that would take a little longer. We've been very fortunate that, that's gone a little quicker than we had anticipated. But what a great position to be in on the beer side."

Modelo Especial was the second-fastest-growing beer brand in 2022, according to data from Circana/IRI.

Modelo Especial was first brewed in 1925 and is part of Grupo Modelo. In 2013, Anheuser-Busch InBev sold Grupo Modelo brands Modelo and Corona to Constellation Brands as part of a $2.9 billion deal.

Sales of Bud Light have declined for seven consecutive weeks after transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney promoted the beer brand on Instagram — which ignited a consumer boycott.

Without a course correction, experts warn that slumping sales could be "permanent," thus hurting the entire Anheuser-Busch InBev corporation.

Analysts at global asset management firm Bernstein warned that Anheuser-Busch InBev should expect a "permanent 15% haircut" to Bud Light sales. The Wall Street research firm also lowered AB InBev's overall 2023 profit forecast by 6.7% after the Bud Light boycott.

The Drinks Business reported, "Going forward, analysts from financial services company Jeffries have said that the 'Bud Light saga may endure.' It said that within their survey of beer distributors some 65% believed that 'protracted Bud Light demand weakness' is 'expected to linger' with an expectation the controversy could last more than six months. A third of respondents believed there could be a 'permanent lapse in Bud Light consumers' as well."

Dave Williams, vice president of analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, told CBS MoneyWatch, "Unless Bud Light starts to experience a serious course correction in terms of performance, which can only come from consumers finding their way back into the brand family, then that firm grip on the No. 1 rank by year-end loosens a bit more every week."

Sales supervisors revealed that Bud Light sales for the week ending on Memorial Day plummeted by as much as 60%.

A sales supervisor told ABC News, "This has really, really killed a lot of the guys who are commission-based. That's who it's really hurting. There's nothing they could've done – this was thrown in their faces."

Williams told Fox Business, "I think a lot of Anheuser-Busch distributors have been working exceptionally hard to communicate to their local communities that it wasn’t their fault. And once they clearly stated that this was not on them, I think their strong relationships in retail and with the local communities began to resonate."

Anheuser-Busch InBev hsa lost as much as $27 billion in market value since Mulvaney promoted the brand on social media.

Bud Light has also faced boycotts from the LGBTQ community for not fighting against the conservative backlash.

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'Shocking deterioration': Bud Light sales continue downward spiral as boycott proves effective



The boycott of Bud Light over its sponsorship of transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney continues to be effective.

For the third consecutive week, Bud Light sales have plummeted. Sales data for the week ending April 22 showed that dollar sales are down 21% compared to the same sales period last year.

That's an increase from a 17% drop for the week ending April 15 and the 6% decrease for the week ending April 8, initial week of the boycott.

Beer Business Daily described the drop as a "shocking deterioration" of Bud Light's market share. "We've never seen such a dramatic shift in national share in such a short period of time," the newsletter said.

Meanwhile, volume sales — measuring the number cases sold outside of restaurants and bars — decreased a whopping 26% for the week ending April 22 compared to last year. That's an increase from 21% the week prior and 11% for the first week of the boycott.

Beer industry expert Bump Williams told the New York Post that the decline in volume sales indicates that Bud Light's core customers, those most likely to purchase large cases of the beverage, are a significant contributor to the sales decline.

"Larger packages of Bud Light are not being purchased — the 30-pack suitcases, the 20-packs, the 18-packs, the 12-packs — they're all being impacted," Williams said. "It's going to be very, very hard to reverse the decline."

In fact, Williams predicted that Bud Light will lose its spot the No. 1 beer in America by the end of the year if Anheuser-Busch fails to reverse the damage.

Anything else?

Speaking with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Williams explained that Bud Light's biggest competitors — for example, Coors Light and Miller Light, which are owned by parent company Molson Coors — are directly benefiting from Bud Light's declining sales.

What's more, other Anheuser-Busch brands are suffering because of the boycott.

"I also think that what's happening now is that anybody that is a Bud Light drinker and switches to Michelob Ultra because they don't want to be seen holding a Bud Light, someone down the bar is going to say, 'Hey, buddy, that's an Anheuser-Busch product you're holding,'" Williams said.

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