More than four months after Bud Light's marketing blunder, the beer brand remains in the spotlight. Now Billy Busch, heir to the Anheuser-Busch dynasty, presents an intriguing proposition to Bud Light's parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev SA BUD.
"I urge that company, InBev, if they don't want that brand any longer, sell it back to the Busch family. Sell it to me. I'll be the first in line to buy that brand back from you. And we'll make that brand great again," he said during Tomi Lahren's show "Fearless."
In 2008, Belgium-Brazilian brewing company InBev acquired Anheuser-Busch for $52 billion, creating a new company named Anheuser-Busch InBev.
In April 2023, Bud Light partnered with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney. While Mulvaney boasts 10.7 million followers on TikTok, the collaboration triggered a backlash on social media and led some beer drinkers to boycott Bud Light.
According to consulting company Bump Williams, using data from NielsenIQ, Bud Light is no longer America's best-selling beer. The top spot now belongs to Modelo Especial, brewed by Constellation Brands Inc. STZ.
Busch slammed Bud Light's parent company for hiring woke students to run the marketing department.
"When you are a foreign company and you rely on these woke students that are coming out of these woke colleges to do your advertising for you, you're making a big mistake," he said. "You need to go out there and understand who your core customer is."
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Brewing Repercussions
The Bud Light fiasco has consequences for the company's financials.
According to Anheuser-Busch InBev's latest earnings report, the company's U.S. revenue fell 10.5% year over year in the second quarter.
In the first half of this year, the beer giant's sales to wholesalers in the U.S. decreased by 8.5%, while sales to retailers dropped by 9.2%. The company said that its underperformance in the industry was "primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light."
Shareholders have also felt the impact.
Since April 1, when Mulvaney first promoted the beer on social media, Anheuser-Busch InBev's New York Stock Exchange-listed shares tumbled about 15%, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars of market cap.
For investors, the downturn of Anheuser-Busch InBev shares serves as a reminder of the stock market's unpredictable nature. Even well-established brands with significant market presence are not immune to sudden shifts in market perception and valuation.
If you don't like that kind of volatility, you might want to look into reliable income plays outside the stock market — such as investing in rental properties with as little as $100 while staying completely hands-off.
Will He Buy It Back?
In a recent interview with Fox Business, host Stuart Varney asked Busch whether his offer to buy back the brewing business is serious.
Busch replied, "It's absolutely a serious offer."
Bud Light's declining sales could provide an opportunity for Busch to get a good deal.
"I haven't made any offer at this point, but I'm sure that it's probably worth, at this point, pennies on the dollar. I don't see InBev making money on it right now. It's probably costing them money. So, maybe they'd really be able to give me a great price to buy it from them," he said.
Busch added that he has been in contact with investment banks, and they told him they would be "right there in line" to assist with a potential buyback deal.
Bud Light is fighting an uphill battle, so even if Busch repurchases the business, he still has to convince beer drinkers to come back to the brand.
Busch indicated that should he regain control of Anheuser-Busch's brands, he would go back to the way his family advertised the business.
"That is, bringing back the values that it was built on. Those values were strength, they were pride, quality, honor — what this country is basically based on. And it was also built on fun and enjoyment and bringing people together. And it was never built on pushing a political agenda down your throat," he said.
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