3 Takeaways From Recent IRI Retail Data

U.S. retail sales, released by IRI, for the four weeks ended August 7 showed Constellation Brands, Inc. STZ's beer sales grew 16 percent. Monster Beverage Corporation MNST's sales rose 3.4 percent and PepsiCo, Inc. PEP's overall retail sales were flat.

Constellation Brands

Constellation Brands sales in measured retail channels grew 12.8 percent for the four weeks ended August 7. Beer continues to be the driver, with 16 percent growth. Domestic wine sales increased 2.7 percent and spirits advanced 3.8 percent.

"We expect continued strong performance from Constellation in retail scanner data for the next few periods given its strong momentum in beer; however, we note that comps steadily increase in difficulty as the year progresses (peaking in September-December, averaging +21 percent)," CLSA analysts wrote in a note.

CLSA has an Outperform rating on Constellation Brands.

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Monster Beverage

In addition, CLSA's Buy-rated Monster Beverage's sales for the period grew 3.4 percent.

"While the 4-week growth rate was soft, we note the two-year average (+8.0 percent) was fairly consistent with recent months (8–9 percent) and we had expected modest growth given difficult prior year comps," the analysts noted.

PepsiCo

Further, PepsiCo sales grew +0.1 percent. The company continues to lag in CSDs, particularly in diets. Regular CSD sales fell 3.5 percent, compared with The Coca-Cola Co KO's +0.6 percent. PepsiCo diet CSD sales fell 10.4 percent versus KO -2.1 percent.

PepsiCo, which CLSA rates Outperform, recently announced it will reintroduce the aspartame version of its Diet Pepsi drink, while continuing to sell the new aspartame-free version.

Diet CSDs accounted for 6.5 percent of PepsiCo's retail sales in the past 52 weeks, according to IRI data, compared with 17.9 percent for Coca-Cola and 17.1 percent for Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. DPS.