My name's Jim Salera. I run the packaged food and beverage practice here at Stephens. And today, I'm excited to announce with us are Toby David, Executive Vice President, and Cameron Donahue, Head of Investor Relations, both with Celsius. Thank you, guys, for joining us today. Excited for our conversation. I think a good place to start, a lot of investors are familiar with the brand, but a lot of investors, I think, are still, you know, starting to gain familiarity with it. Celsius is one of the fastest-growing brands, really across all categories. What would you say about your product resonates so much with consumers that supports the growth that we've been seeing?
I think the brand is capitalizing on the health and wellness movements that have been underway probably the last five to 10 years. The brand has actually been around since all the way back in 2005. It was born in the fitness space, really more of a pre-workout dietary supplement. And over the years, you know, through different management teams, we've transitioned into more of an energy beverage that has multiple usage occasions throughout the day. So whether it's as a workout drink before going to the gym, whether it's for traditional energy drink purposes, whether it's for consuming with lunch, which is, you know, a really nice usage occasion for us and is one of the ways we differentiate from traditional energy.
We just have multiple areas where you see the consumption of Celsius, and we are, you know, a better-for-you brand. You look at, we have a cleaner label, no sugar, no artificial preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors. We have seven essential vitamins, green tea, guarana, ginger, so just overall a cleaner label. I think also just the roots being from fitness give us credibility and authenticity with the consumers. You take a look at other brands that try to launch and maybe position themselves with an influencer, and it just might not resonate because it feels like it's forced. It works in some other categories, but haven't really seen that really resonate in the energy category. So we're capitalizing on that now. We've got a fantastic marketing team.
We've increased share, and, you know, quite frankly, we feel like we're the energy 2.0, and we're here to compete with Red Bull and Monster.
And I think also the demographics that we have is not like traditional energy. You know, typically, we had been kind of that 24-45. Probably the last three years, that 18-24 has, you know, been the fastest-growing segment of the demographic, and then as well as the index of male/female. So we're really driving a lot of market share from outside traditional energy.
That's great. Last year, you guys got a big win, signing distribution partnership with Pepsi. Can you just offer us some thoughts on how that partnership has helped fueled your growth and really kind of the incremental opportunity that that brings to distributing the brand?
Yeah. So, the opportunity presented itself in August 1st. We signed a deal last year with Pepsi. They came in as an 8.5% owner, within Celsius. We transitioned the distribution over to them October 1st of 2022. We were sitting at about a 65% ACV, which means we're in about 65% of the tracked retail locations nationally when we commenced that transition. Quickly, rapidly, we jumped to about a 90% ACV by the end of the year, and now we're situated around 95%, which is close to, you know, full, full distribution at this point. I mean, really, it's just the opportunity to partner. There's really a big two, you know, between Coke and Pepsi. Being able to partner with Pepsi has been fantastic. They're best-in-class as far as their distribution, merchandising.
So we've been able to leverage that. We, we still have our team making all the call points with the retailers, but being able to leverage their muscle has, has really been phenomenal for us. I think that's part of the reason why we've seen so much growth. But getting on the shelf isn't enough. There's a lot of brands that get on shelf, but being able to rotate is really the key, and that's where, you know, ultimately it comes down to your marketing. And I think, you know, what people have seen is our velocities have really maintained with this massive distribution that Pepsi's been able to, you know, get us out to, especially within the independents. But there's, I mean, so much they're bringing to the table. Food Service, that's really an area that we hadn't tapped into previously.
So food service, the way Pepsi defines it, therefore, we define it the same way. It's traditional eateries, but it's also could be college and universities, vending, Lowe's. I mean, it's all over, all across the board, hospitals, hotels. So, you know, we're going out to Vegas for the F1 race, you know, after, after the show. You know, the casinos are part of that as well. So it's just been a phenomenal opportunity, and really, it's the opportunity to be the number one energy drink in their portfolio and the lead horse for Pepsi in, in this fast-growing category.
That's great. Toby, one of the metrics that you mentioned there was ACV and how we saw a pretty rapid step up in that following the partnership. But if we think about the actual breadth of your products available in the store, how do you think about the opportunity there to really increase the number of available SKUs and the number of facings, especially relative, you know, to some of your peers you mentioned, like a Monster, like a Red Bull?
Yeah, there's still quite a bit of opportunity for further distribution for us, and not necessarily new retail locations, at least within the track channel, but the breadth, as you call it. We're sitting around 15 SKUs per location in the track channels, and when you look at Monster, Red Bull, they're around 25. But it's not just SKUs, it's the facings within the cooler, where you'll have one... The Monster green can, for example, that's one SKU. They might have two full shelves just of that one SKU. So you see Red Bull and Monster with 40, 50 facings in a lot of these traditional retail locations. So we're situated really, we're one for one, one SKU, one facing, for the most part. So really, for us, it's about getting more SKUs, more facings, better location.
I mean, a lot of times you find Celsius, we're down in the bottom shelf, up in the, you know, up at the top rack, and, you know, that's because when we were negotiating with retailers last year, we were at about a 3.5 share. This year, it's quite a bit different. We're able to negotiate from a, you know, 10 share, number 3 in the category. So the hope is, is that next year we get more, more SKUs on the shelf and much better location, which drives trial, trial. And we have a stickiness, where when people try our product, they tend to stay with us.
... I think, you know, we touched on a little bit some of the unique characteristics that Celsius has. But how does that enhance your ability to really reach beyond that core energy drink consumer that we've talked about? And in particular, tying that back to retail, how does that impact your ability to maybe gain shelf space that's outside of, you know, where your energy drink peers are positioned in the store?
Yeah, that's really one of our strengths, is we're bringing so many new consumers to the category. I think Numerator had some data out that around 44% of our consumption is new to category, and then another 40% or so is what they term user intensification, which means that people are consuming more of the product than they otherwise would have. So what that means is over 80% of our consumption is incremental to the category, and that's really important to retailers. They don't want to just trade out of from a, you know, a Red Bull or a Monster to Celsius. That's just changing dollars. It doesn't benefit them. So number one, we're bringing new, new dollars to the category and to that retailer. We also have a higher ring rate. People are consuming or eating other products when they go into convenience stores.
So that creates opportunities for us to, when we go in and pitch retailers, not only is our velocity strong, therefore we merit more space, but we're also bringing these new consumers. And who are those consumers? We over-index clearly with females. Many people know that, and that. And we're about a 50/50 male-female split, roughly. We're unisex. We don't, you know, position ourselves one way or another. We also, I mean, per Numerator, we over-index African American, Hispanic, we really have this broad swath of consumers that find our drink appealing, and we're incredibly popular with the college-age students. Anyone who has children may, you know, probably could ask them, and they can, you know. Celsius over-indexes in that crowd.
But also, I mean, I run into people in their fifties and sixties all the time who are not your traditional core energy consumers, and they drink Celsius all the time. Especially, that's why we come to all these investor conferences. We try to get people hooked here, and then hopefully that can help create higher velocity for us.
Well, to go off of that point, obviously, you have your product here at our conference. Kind of the traditional, you know, white-collar office worker, we've seen a very high adoption rate in that cohort, which, you know, is not your typical energy drink cohort. You talked about some of the brand positioning, but what do you think about Celsius, again, relative to some of your peers, allows them to win in a category, you know, with white-collar workers, where, you know, energy drinks normally wouldn't be?
Yeah, we used to, like our CEO and I used to joke that, and this is before we were picking up a lot of market share, but, you know, someone walking into their office on Broadway, you know, with a, whether it's, you know, whatever fund it might be, and if they were walking in with, like, a Bang or, you know... I won't name other names. I'll just stick with Bang. You know, their boss might be like, "What, what, what did this guy do last night? Like, was this guy out partying? Like, you know, he has to drink this?" Whereas, you know, the perception of Celsius is cleaner label. It's really, if somebody shows up with a Celsius, they're not like, "Okay, this guy's suffering from a hangover," or something like that.
It's got a little bit different reputation. I think it's because of the roots in the fitness, in that you see a lot of, you know, hardcore, like, trainers and other people like that, that consume our product, and it just kind of snowballs from there. That if those people feel this is a quality product to consume, then it's good for me. And there's just really a lot of different usage occasions for it. I mean, people are swapping out their coffee in the mornings, or and maybe their afternoon coffee for Celsius, again, you know, consuming with their lunch.
I look at it almost as a functional soda, in some senses, where some of our flavors taste like a traditional soda that is maybe better for you, but also provides that energy to help them get through the rest of the day, and it pairs well with food.
That's great. Why don't we pause there and see if there's any questions from the audience?
Just as you think about your share gains, when you talk about kind of taking share within that, like, white-collar market, do you feel like your real share gains are getting kind of more expanded within that market or kind of moving downmarket?
Yeah, so as we look to pick up share, you know, we'd like to have our cake and eat it, too. So we're gonna wanna pick up share by bringing new consumers to the category. But, you know, obviously, when Monster and Red Bull control roughly 70%-75% of the category, you know, you want to be able to pull from others, including those two. So I think, you know, when we look at what we're trying to accomplish, it is, it's both of those, right? And, you know, we've had some success stories. You look at Amazon, we're the number one energy drink on Amazon. We've historically performed very well there. We just passed Monster for number one this past quarter. We've called out... Understandably, some people were skeptical about the Amazon data.
Will this convert over to brick-and-mortar?" And, you know, earlier this year, we began citing our South Florida data because it is a very strong market for us. It's a top 10 energy drink market in the country, and we're situated around a 24% market share down there. And, you know, I've been saying it throughout conferences this year, that we feel like it's not a fully baked in, fully mature market at this point. And if you look at it, we called it out on our last earnings call, or John did, our CEO, that at the beginning of the year, we were roughly, I believe, a 17.7 market share in South Florida, and we're up to 24 now. So that's a mature market. So what we're looking to do is replicate that across the country.
We have what we call drill-deep markets. That was the foundation when we came in as a turnaround management team, was we had finite resources, so we really focused in on 5 markets around the country to put all of our capital and resources towards. It was South Florida, Tampa, New England, Dallas, and Los Angeles, and then we picked up New York somewhere along the way when we picked up Big Geyser as our distributor there. And if you look at those 6 markets, we really over-index there from a market share perspective versus our national average. South Florida is the only one we've named, but I can just say the other markets well exceed that 10% national average. So what we're doing now is we expanded to 18 markets last year....
When I say we expanded, we've been in these markets on the shelves to some degree, but we're putting resources there, whether it's marketing or sales, feet in the street, identifying from a marketing capacity what events are the cool ones that we want to be associated with, sales reps out there helping to get us incremental placements in stores, and then geo-targeted marketing tactics. So we've been putting those resources towards those 18 markets last year, 23 markets this year, and we're gonna expand to 30 markets next year. Now, we also have an umbrella marketing national plan that we, you know, pour a lot of resources into as well.
But we're essentially targeting the top energy drink markets in the country, and we feel that the success we've had in those original core five or six markets showcase that we have an ability to expand, not just in South Florida, not just in Boston or New York or Dallas or LA, but we can do this across the country and then hopefully, internationally.
I think just one other thing is that 58% of our sales are coming from C store. If you look like a Monster or Red Bull, it's closer to 70%. There's still a lot of room to go as far as getting the expansion within that convenience channel.
Yeah.
Just to follow up on these focus markets. If you thought of them as cohorts, how should we think about that ramping to market share? Take five years, take three years?
So it shouldn't take 10 years, like South Florida did—or however long it's... we've really been around. It's tough to identify exactly what that timeline looks like. I think each market's gonna be a little bit unique, 'cause you have to— We have a playbook, and then we toggle it for, call it regionality or, like, the culture of the market, because Portland, Oregon, is a little bit different than Miami. So you've got to kind of figure out what are the little tweaks and, you know, whether it's different events that you're participating in. That's why it's important we have marketing folks on the ground to tell us what we want to be associated with in each market. So, I mean, I can't really give you a firm timeline. It's not gonna take 10 years.
I think that when you look at that South Florida data, though, I mean, we jumped from a 17.7% market share to 24% in 10 months, which is, I mean, really phenomenal. So, you know, as a percentage, what is that? Like, a 25%, roughly, gain over the course of the year. I don't know if that's the expectation in every market. I don't want to, like, put a firm number on it, but I would anticipate and what we're seeing is market share gains in some of these newer markets for us. And there, I mean, there's some of these cities, I mean, we, we've really only been focused in, in the last, you know, 12-24 months, so it's taking some time to get that brand awareness.
There's a lot of accounts, like Circle K as an example, second largest convenience store chain in the country. We just went into most Circle Ks in the last 12 months. So to Cameron's point, we're under indexed from as a share of our total revenue coming from convenience, but it's not because we're not performing there. We perform. Our velocity is strong there. So that just means there's a lot of opportunity, not only from a velocity standpoint, but really in these new markets that we're where our brand awareness is relatively low. By driving that brand awareness, which therefore drives increased velocity in those major energy drink markets, and then you'll see it in the total national numbers as well.
Just with that growth on the top line, you know, it would probably be $300 million. Is that approximately 20% that's sold on the sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue? So, you know, you get $300 million versus $150 million, so you have a lot more capital to accelerate those markets.
Just to follow up.
Yeah.
The top five markets that you started with, like, what, roughly what % of the energy drink market is that, and what would the 30 markets be?
They're probably top 10 markets.
Well, I mean, L.A. is the largest energy drink market in the country. Dallas is either number 2 or number 3. Miami is a top 10 market. Tampa is a top 25 market. New England is a top 20 market, like Boston. So, I mean, just for a perspective... New York's-
New York
... a top five market. So, I mean, just I don't know what as, as a percentage, I can say, you know, the 23 markets we're in now, it's kind of like 80/20 rule. So these are the, you know, very... Most of them are large metropolitan areas where, that drive, and they all drive a ton of energy drink sales. So that's why we identified them. Some of them would be surprising. I don't want to name them all because, you know, you know, some of the brands might be listening to this right now, and I don't want to, like, let our total playbook out. I mean, they have a pretty good idea what's going on. But, we're, we focus on where the energy drink consumption is, and then that's where we want to focus on, and then we can start focusing on the mid-markets after that.
Can you just talk about canning? Usually you either have in-house or contract it out. You know, just the hard seltzer market of 2021 and 2022, you know, how do you avoid the forecasting issues that can be?
Yeah. So we're very fortunate. About two and a half years ago, we have a gentleman named Paul Storey we brought to the team as our head of operations. Paul was the head of global operations at Monster Energy, so that was, you know, a really nice coup for us to be able to pull him over to our side, over to the good side. So you know, Paul's... I mean, Paul was also the head of operations at Rockstar as well. So, I mean, he's incredibly talented. He knows the business. He has best-in-class relationships. I bring that up just because, I mean, he's able to scale, you know, be part of some pretty large organizations, helped scale Rockstar, you know, and he's helping to scale us. We have plenty of capacity. There's challenges that we have.
Well, he'll challenge the sales team, like, to outsell his capacity. So, we work with the biggest can companies, you know, Ball, Crown, Ardagh. We're very well situated there from a co-packing perspective. I think we're, I don't know what the exact number is. I believe we're around 13 or so co-packers at the moment. We have what we call an Orbit Strategy. So if you picture a bunch of circles on a map, we're up to 8 orbits, where what we try to accomplish is we try to produce the product, ship the product to a warehouse, ship that product from the warehouse to the distributor, and that distributor ships it to the retailer, all within these, like, geographic circles, because we want to put as few miles as possible on the product.
Helps with on pricing, it helps on damages, you know, user experience, everything. So we have a pretty sophisticated organization from the ops side, and we're very well situated to scale... It's all co-packed right now. At some point, I mean, the vertical integration could be something we take a look at. You've seen Monster do that, they've, you know, they acquired a flavor house, I believe, about a decade ago, that had been producing their flavors. I think they actually have two manufacturing facilities now, one, I think, in California, and I know they acquired one in Arizona through the Bang bankruptcy. So it's something that we look at if it makes sense, and if it's, you know, the right thing for us, the business, and our investors, that's something we'd take a look at potentially.
Great. Maybe just to wrap up, as we were kind of talking about the versatility theme, you know, Toby, you had mentioned some of the Food Service opportunity with Pepsi. Recently, you guys announced pretty significant wins at Dunkin' and at Jersey Mike's. Can you maybe just give us some color into how those partnerships unfolded and what the opportunity in Food Service looks like?
Yeah, so, you know, for quite some time last year or two, we've seen, you know, and I've mentioned already here, we've seen people consuming Celsius with meals. So we always felt and had heard... We had felt it, and we had heard it anecdotally that, you know, some sandwich shops and, you know, in the bodegas in New York City, and, you know, what we see locally down in South Florida, where we're based, people consuming it with meals. So when we transitioned over to Pepsi, we had had very little food service as part of our business at that point. But because of really, the bandwidth that Pepsi has, it provided us an opportunity.
Ramon Laguarta, CEO of Pepsi, he actually helped coax somebody out of retirement that had just retired from Pepsi, that was an executive on their food service team, and he joined our organization, which was really critical to have somebody who understands the infrastructure of Pepsi. It's a very complex organization, so if you're coming as an outsider, like myself, it would be incredibly difficult to navigate it quickly. It would take a while to understand it. The acronyms they use are phenomenal. I don't understand most of them still. But we were able to get this gentleman, Rand is his name, over to the team, and he just knows the insides and outs of everything Pepsi, their food service. So that really in Q1 is when we began leveraging him and his knowledge base.
So it's not just food, but you said it, you know, Jersey Mike's, that's a huge opportunity for us. Went into 2000 Jersey Mike's around the country. It's an opportunity for us to create a proof of concept that then we can take to other eateries around the country that are, you know, especially the ones that are Pepsi-oriented, and that's gonna be an opportunity moving forward. But then, on top of that, the college and university component of food service, that falls within food service is huge for us. Just to be able to go after the early adopters, the heavy consumers, the college kids. You couldn't get on college campuses historically, unless you're on the red or blue truck, because of the contracts they have with the campuses.
Pepsi caters to, I believe, about 60% of the college and university population in the U.S. So that's a huge opportunity for us, not just from a revenue standpoint, but just to get in front of these kids from a marketing perspective. And we wanna, we wanna touch people where they live, work, and play. So whether it's like at the convenience store when you're on your way into, you know, to work, whether it's at your gym when you're working out, whether it's at your office and it's in a vending machine, we wanna be touching people. Or the airport, we're starting to get in a lot more airports. We wanna touch people as frequently as possible, and that's something that we're accomplishing.
Do you think, especially given some of the dynamics we've talked about around, you know, traditional kind of white-collar workers consuming your product, if you can capture a consumer at the college level as they, you know, transition through their life cycle and enter the workforce, does that give you an opportunity to really solidify them as a lifetime Celsius consumer, if you reach them at college and they just really switch kind of the daypart that they consume it in?
Yeah, I think, like, theoretically, that's like what you want to accomplish. You wanna retain these people as, you know, as long as possible. And I think what's, what's interesting is, because you see people of all ages drinking Celsius, that, I mean, if someone does become a lifelong consumer, I mean, you're looking at, like, a 50- or 60-year run runway with them, and that's like perfect world, right? So I think really what we're trying to do is, they are the... You know, the 18-25 crowd are the, call, like, heavy users, where they drink 1-2 cans a day. So you wanna, you wanna get in with them, because they're gonna be the ones purchasing with the most frequency, that and the, the blue-collar consumer as well. So these are, like, all things that we, the, we wanna work on.
But yeah, certainly, you wanna get that lifetime consumer. And what we've found is, you see it where, you know, people still drink Red Bull. People still... A lot of people drink Red Bull. A lot of people drink Monster because they've been doing it for years. So we feel that Celsius is similar, that you can capture people, even if it's for a decade or 15 years, that's a pretty, pretty good run with someone.
Absolutely. You did touch on your, your co-manufacturer relationships. Can you just maybe give us a couple quick comments on capacity-wise? I mean, since you guys have been growing so strong, is there ample room to scale up with them?
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's why Paul challenges the sales team to outsell them, because he's very confident that we can continue to produce product as we scale. You know, we're gonna probably sell close to 2 billion cans this year, so, you know, that's a lot of cans. So yeah, yeah, we're very confident we can increase and flex with different co-packers around the country. I mentioned around 13 now, we probably predominantly use more like 6 or 7, and we have some flex space with the other ones. And we also work with some, you know, Refresco, as an example, and they have multiple co-packer locations around the country and globe that we can pick up as well, if needed, and around the globe for international expansion as well.
That's great. If we zoom in to the near-term environment, what are you guys seeing right now with kind of promotional spend? What have your retail partners been saying to you regarding kind of expectations around promotion and pricing?
... Yeah, I'd say that, I mean, we have a very sophisticated sales organization, and, you know, we're in a very highly promoted category. So I think it's around 25 weeks a year, roughly, that energy is on promotion. So really, what we're focused on is, like, what's the depth of the promotion that we're going on? Do you need to do a two for $4, or can you do two for $4.50 and squeeze out $0.50 extra cents a margin? Do you lose any sales when you do that? So we have a lot of analysis that goes on to that. You see the other, you know, Red Bull and Monster, they promote very frequently as well. You know, supposedly, Red Bull's taking price, which is gonna be interesting.
Are they really taking price, or are they just saying they're taking price, and then are they gonna deal down on their promotional spend? So it's, you know, these are all things we take a look at. We evaluate the landscape. We pay attention to what the others are doing, but we typically make decisions where it doesn't really involve what the other players are doing. We took price at the beginning of last year. We made the decision before anybody else announced theirs. So, you know, with Red Bull taking their price, we'll see what Monster does. I'm not sure if Monster is gonna take price. They may follow down the road, and then we're gonna play it by ear and see what happens. But if we do take price, you guys will find out.
How do you feel, just trying to keep it on that same train of thought, about your price position relative to your competition? I mean, obviously, there isn't a ton of private label in the category. Do you guys think about, like, maintaining a certain price gap versus peers? Is that something that doesn't really matter in the category? Just the thoughts around that.
Yeah, I mean, historically, we've been priced in between Red Bull and Monster. Monster has increased in price, you know, you know, quite a bit, where—but on a per ounce basis, we're more expensive, and we still fall in between them. So I, I think that—and we do feel we have price elasticity and that we could increase price, but part of... You know, we're a growth brand right now. So part of the decision-making process is, if Red Bull does take price, and it's getting close to $4 a can, that could be an opportunity to get some of their consumers to say, "It's—you know, listen, it's $4 is too much for me. I can trade into whatever we're priced at, at that location, $2.75, $3," whatever it might be. So, I mean, we, we take a lot of things into account. We meet monthly.
We have a small, call it management team, that sits and discusses and looks at all the analytics, but we feel like we're well positioned right now. The consumer, we feel the consumer views us as a premium offering, and that's why I think... I mean, Red Bull has that perception as well, I think, within the category as being more of that premium offering as well. So I think that that could be an opportunity for us to, if and when they do take price, to maybe capitalize on that.
Great. While we're keeping on the topic of kind of pricing and promotions, you know, when you think about limited time offerings, seasonal offerings, what role does that play in your broader merchandising strategy? And maybe any thoughts we should think about kind of entering the new year, and again, relative to kind of, you know, peer set, you know, what you see them doing.
Yeah. So we historically haven't done the LTOs or the seasonal offerings that you see some other brands have, that are only out for, call it, a couple months. If it's like a Thanksgiving, like, I don't know, gravy soda, I don't know what they would do in the other brands. You know, what you'll find with us is, we'll do run exclusives with different retailers over a period of time. We have really good partnerships with a lot of the top retailers in the country because it really needs to truly be a partnership. You can't just like demand, demand, demand. You need to, you know, there needs to be some give and take. So, you know, for example, at 7-Eleven this year, we launched a green apple cherry flavor, and it's been an exclusive all year at 7-Eleven.
Then that's gonna roll out nationally in January for other retailers. So that's typically what you find us doing, is running more exclusive flavors for... And sometimes it's just like an early launch. Maybe we'll give it to Walmart for-
... 30 or 60 days. Essentials is our new 16-ounce line that's sitting in front of me. We just rolled that out at 7-Eleven about two weeks ago. We were planning on launching it in January, and 7-Eleven said they would take it early, so we're giving them a two month exclusivity with four SKUs, and then in January, we're gonna begin rolling that out nationwide as well. So that's more of our strategy is, you know, when you, when you take care of your partners, they tend to take care of you as well. So we like to, you know, offer them some form of exclusivity, whether it's like 30, 60, six months, whatever it might be.
That's great. And... Oh, go ahead.
Is a smaller form factor, 6- or 8-ounce kind of product on your roadmap?
So I sit on the innovation team, and we talk a lot about about a lot of different options. I think that could make sense to have, whether it's an 8.5, I think, a 250 mL, like the Red Bull can, maybe at a lower caffeine offering. We haven't made any decisions as far as that. I mean, we just rolled out the 16-ounce for next year. So I think, you know, from an innovation perspective, you don't wanna launch too many things at the same time. You wanna be able to focus your resources on whatever you just launched. We're also gonna have a bunch of new flavors coming out next year as well, of our Core and Vibe lines.
But yeah, I think that's certainly something that's interesting, because if you had a lower caffeinated version, maybe you get an extra purchase from somebody throughout the day, or maybe, you know, if it's 4 P.M. and somebody doesn't want traditional Celsius 'cause they feel like it'll keep them up all night. Yeah, it's certainly an opportunity and something that we've looked at, but, you know, that's kind of TBD right now.
Great. Again, keeping on the same train of thought with, you know, expanded in-store visibility and driving kind of trial. You guys have been expanding the number of branded fridge placements that you're doing. What do you think the opportunity is there, and do you find that in stores where you have branded fridges or kind of, you know, off-shelf displays, that you see a lot of incremental trial buys and that brings new consumers to the brand?
Yeah, I mean, the sales are astronomical in some of the locations where we put a branded cooler. I mean, if you throw one into Walmart in a, like, really good position, the number of case sales that that drives is... I mean, I can't tell you, but it's a lot. The coolers pay for themselves very quickly, over, like, four, five, six months. I mean, if it's at a Walmart, probably in about 3 days it'll pay for itself. So that's been a high priority for us. I think John, our CEO, called out that we were gonna be pushing for about 20,000 total coolers placed out in the field this year, so we'll see how close we get to that. It's gonna continue to be a really critical piece for us, 'cause it's our silent salesman.
They really pop. They give you an incremental placement in the store, catches people's eye. You can put a ton of different SKUs and offerings in there, so we're gonna continue to push that. They're a great investment. We amortize them, I can't recall if it's either over five or seven years, but again, they pay for themselves so quickly that they're really an incredible investment for us. So that's gonna continue to be one of our primary tools that we use.
Do you get any pushback from retailers when you try to put fridge placements in, or kind of any thoughts on that?
Yeah, it just depends on the retailer. You know, every retailer is different. So typically, if it's a store that, you know, sees. It's typically a store that either we have someone on the ground there that has a relationship with that store owner or manager, or the Pepsi folks have a relationship with them, and they're able to say, "Hey, I've got you know, would you like to take a Celsius cooler in?" Sometimes in the past, we used to run promotions where maybe we'd give them what they call a free fill, where you get a full cooler of cans for free if you place it in there. We haven't had to really do that anymore, just because a lot of the stores see value in, you know, the incremental placement, and it drives more dollar sales for them.
But it just depends on the retailer. Some retailers aren't allowed to, so like 7-Eleven, you won't find branded coolers typically in there, but then a lot of the independent convenience stores are where the opportunities are as well. But if you can get them in a Walmart, Target, some of these locations, they drive incredible sales.
That's great. I'll open it up for questions one more time. I think let's switch gears. We talked a lot about the top line. Maybe talk about some of the operations piece of the business. I think a good place to start, you know, near term, just what you're seeing, kind of commodity basket, and how you guys feel about, you know, gross margins moving into 2024.
Yeah. We've seen some really improved gross margins out of us over the last 12 months. We came in just a tick north of 50% on the gross margin side in Q3. There were some one-offs in there that were to our benefit. I think a more normalized rate would've been around 49%, and that's spelled out in the Q if anybody wants to take a look at it. We've said, you know, really as a benchmark for, like, the very near future, that maybe the Q2 margin profile is probably, like, what to set that as the baseline. We've said historically, over the last few years now, that we look at Monster and what they've been able to accomplish as really the benchmark of where we want to eventually get to.
There is a little bit of noise there because they don't include outbound freight as part of their cost of goods, so that's like a 4% delta. So, you know, back. And Monster's kind of been, you know, all over the place on their gross margins over the last few years, as they've done a lot of different innovation outside of energy. But I think if you look back about three years ago, they were in the upper 50s as far as gross margin, so call it 59 for them would be 55 for us. So I think that's, like, a really nice aspirational number that we've kind of looked at. And we think with scale and, you know, maybe some vertical integration and some other things going on, that that's something that's certainly achievable.
Then I think historically, they've been in the 30%-35% on the EBITDA side, and that's something that we're. I mean, we came in at 27% last quarter, which was, you know, pretty strong. That 30%-35% number is something that, you know, we've set that as kind of a target for us as well.
That's helpful. Maybe keeping in that same train of thought, you guys currently have very strong balance sheet, you know, $750 million, whatever, in cash. What are your thoughts about optionality for you? You mentioned vertical integration, but, you know, does that cash just build? Do you have a couple kind of key places that you think it would be best deployed?
Yeah, I've been pushing for management bonuses for a while now, since we're sitting on so much cash, but that's... They're turning a deaf ear to that one. Well, I mean, we have a dividend payment that we make to Pepsi, so right now that $750 million is, you know, gaining interest, and that kind of offsets that dividend payment. It's nice to have the flexibility to be able to make decisions if there is an M&A opportunity. But we're gonna be really strategic about it, where, you know, we look at a lot of different opportunities, but right now our mindset is to focus on this unicorn of a brand that we feel we have, and we're gonna continue to drive share.
Whether there's an opportunity on M&A with other brands, vertical integration, these are all things that are on the table. But, I mean, we're gonna be very cautious with our approach, and it's got to make sense to our investors.
That's great.
Just on customer acquisition costs, and I guess I'm trying to get a sense of what kind of visibility or precision you have, and you know you're gonna spend, you know, what's the payout on that? Is it adding people? I'm thinking again, going through these top five markets, you know, 3-30. Is it marketing dollars? Is it people on the ground? Like, what is really making that, those volumes?
... Yeah, so as a percentage of revenue, we're gonna continue to invest in sales and marketing at a similar rate to what we've historically done. So in more recent times, it's been closer to 19%, and then, you know, in the last few quarters, and then it was closer to 21%-22% prior to that. So it's gonna probably be somewhere, you know, in between that range. As a growth company, we're gonna continue to invest in it. As far as acquisition costs, you know, one of the things that we really focus on, John, our CEO, it's his mantra: "We want to own the phone." We're all like, I don't know, I wouldn't say all of us, but many of us are just, like, staring down our phone all day. Our necks are killing us 'cause we're staring down at it.
It's something that, unfortunately, everybody's doing, so we wanna therefore own the phone, whether it's targeted ads, Hulu, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat. We want to hit people over and over, and we can be very strategic in the way that and precise with the way that we do that. So if I want to target a 20-year-old male that lives in Portland, that loves UFC, I can run a targeted ad with our Dustin Poirier, who's our UFC fighter, targeting him on YouTube, because we know what they watch, and we know their demographics.
So we feel that a lot of the more modern tactics, call it, are. You can have better visibility on the type of ROI you're getting, especially if you're driving them to, call it Amazon.com or Walmart.com, or, like, some of these other places for immediate sales. But we have. I mean, internally, we know we've never really publicized, like, what our, you know, ROAS is and all these other acronyms for marketing. But, you know, we're pretty. We do very, very well on the digital front, and we're getting. We're gonna probably consistently stay in the way that we market and maybe stay away from more of the traditional forms of marketing, although we're dabbling right now.
Two questions, one on scanner data. So when, you know, scanner data for the more mature guys, it's tough to tell the sales because, you know, they, they're not growing as fast.
Mm-hmm.
You guys, scanner data's been pretty predictable for a while. Is there a point where you think scanner data, because you're on tracked channels, Amazon is a big dollar amount for you guys, becomes less predictable to results or if you give any thoughts on that?
I think over time, you'll see a narrowing from the... You know, the, it's, you know, been a, like, kind of decent gap. It's tough, I'm sure, for you guys. Like, you try to plug it into the spreadsheet, and it's not adding up the way that it, you know, that what you end up seeing. Especially... And I don't know when that's gonna happen, because if you look at where a lot of the, call it, like, the meat left on the bone is for us, is a lot of these independent, non-tracked channels. Really, Red Bull and Monster own that space, and Pepsi gives us the vehicle to get into those locations, and we're in a lot of those locations now.
But you might only have two or three or four SKUs, maybe not the best location, because you're just getting into these indies for the first time. So for us, it's about getting, you know, full rows, two full rows, three full rows in these independents. But to answer your question, I think at some point, and, you know, I don't know if it's a year out, two years out, when it is, you'll start seeing a narrowing of that gap. I do think that, you know, we're in a unique position as a growth brand, that we're generating so much revenue from non-tracked accounts like Costco and Amazon, like those two in particular. You're looking at probably, what? Like, $250 million on a run rate wise of our sales, so call it like $500 million of retail sales.
If I could just... Nobody else has to put up with that. That's a growth brand. Red Bull and Monster do, but nobody else is. So if you want to, like, look at how some of the other growth brands are doing in our space, like, how would we compare to them if you pop $500 million of Costco and Amazon into our tracked channels? Then all of a sudden, our velocity looks amazing. Our market share looks totally different. But, I mean, these are all things that we're, you know, it's a good problem to have, right? We've been fortunate that our marketing team has done a phenomenal job, our sales team has done a great job, that we've been able to continue to grow our velocities in tracked while we're growing in all these other channels at the same time.
I don't think we referenced it here, but we're number one on Amazon now, number one on Instacart, which, I mean, it's really phenomenal for us to be... These are, like, the areas that you want to be winning in because it's the direction that many people are flocking to. So we're having success there, and I think you're seeing it in the data that we're calling out in South Florida, and we'll see in the future. We want to be careful about how many markets we put out there. I mean, we basically put a, you know, a bull's-eye on us, so to speak. I mean, as soon as we bring up the South Florida data, you've got hordes of Red Bull and Monster folks flying into South Florida with, like- ...
50-100 people just trying to battle us in the streets.
Mm-hmm.
It's become interesting.
Yeah, just to follow up on that, you mentioned the Amazon stat, which I'm gonna ask a question. So number one on Amazon, you guys announced last quarter. Can you just talk about if there's anything different in that customer mix? You guys have always done, you know, outhit on Amazon, but is there anything that's different in the customer mix that makes that market share not obtainable in less than one?
I mean, I think pretty much everybody uses Amazon these days, so I feel like that... What we've always said was, we felt on a fair basis, where everything is equal, where Red Bull and Monster don't have 4 or 5 full shelves, and we're stuck with, like, 5 cans in a cooler, Amazon's a neutral playing field, and we feel that, you know, obviously, we compete very well. So, I mean, if you gave us the same space that Red Bull and Monster has, I'm not saying we'd be number one today, our share would be pretty significant. It would be a lot higher than it is today if you gave us 4 shelves in every store in the country like they have. I think it's an indicator.
It's like what I mentioned earlier, I get that there's some skepticism of how that translates over to brick-and-mortar, but that's why we've been citing the South Florida data. And then, depending on... I mean, it's available for purchase. I mean, you guys can go dig into the Boston data, the LA data, the New York data, the Dallas data, Tampa. I only bring up Tampa because that was one of our core fives, another just incredible market for us. John, our CEO, always wants to talk about Buffalo 'cause his family's from Buffalo. I told him nobody cares about Buffalo other than people from Buffalo, so we're probably not gonna call that one out, or John might. He might just get crazy one day and bring it up.
... great! Well, maybe as we wrap things up, we can just close with some thoughts on the international piece of the business, which I think sometimes gets overshadowed, just given the size of the domestic opportunity. But maybe just closing thoughts on kind of the opportunity you see in international markets, and anything we should be aware of there.
Yeah, I mean, I'll continue to cite Monster 'cause they're an amazing brand. I mean, and I'm sure everyone in the room knows, like, what their trajectory has been like, as a publicly traded stock. So we always like to kinda use them as that benchmark, and I think about 37%, ballpark, of their revenue's coming from international, which is pretty amazing that still 67% of a what? $7.5 billion company or in revenue company is still coming from the U.S., which really highlights that that needs to continue to be our focus. The state of Ohio is probably a top... Would be bigger than most countries around the world as far as their consumption of energy, so that's why it's important for us to continue to focus there.
That being said, we also appreciate that expanding internationally is gonna be a great way for us to incrementally grow. We're gonna be strategic about it. We're not gonna have a shotgun approach, where we're dumping $10s of millions into markets, where it's screwing up our bottom line, and all of our investors are upset with us on a quarterly basis. So we announced that we're going into Canada in Q1 with Pepsi Canada. We're looking and speaking with some distribution partners around the globe right now. We're looking at certain countries in Europe. We're looking at, you know, Japan as an interesting market to us. Australia is an interesting market. Pepsi is our preferred international distribution partner by our contract with them. That being said, we're not mandated to use Pepsi. We'd like to.
We'd like to use them or their bottlers if it makes sense, but, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we're gonna ultimately do what's in the best interest of us as a company and our investors, and we're gonna do right by them. So there's a lot of negotiating going on. We wanna make sure that we build out frameworks, that five years from now, I'm not up here and you guys are, you know, killing me with questions about, "Why did you sign these terrible international distribution deals?" So, you know, we're doing our best to make sure we lay the foundation for a successful future, and we also wanna make sure that we're able to execute in the first 12-18 months, so that then we can start taking that playbook and that framework into other markets and expand more rapidly in 2025 and 2026.
Great. I think that's a great stopping point. Toby, Cameron, thank you very much for your time today, and thank you everyone for joining us.
Appreciate it. Thank you.