Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Monster Beverage Corporation's Investor Update Meeting for 2024, webcasting live from the Nasdaq MarketSite in frigid New York City. I'm Roger Pondel, with Pondel Wilkinson, the company's investor relations representative. For those of you here in person, thank you so much for braving the weather and attending. It's a pleasure to see you face-to-face again. For those of you listening on the webcast around the world, around the country, certainly, and the world, thanks for joining us today.
Before I introduce and turn the meeting over to Monster's Co-Chief Executive Officers, Hilton Schlosberg and Rodney Sacks, and the company's Executive Vice President, Legal, Paul Dechary, I want to remind everyone that certain statements made in today's presentation may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws, as amended, regarding expectations of management with respect to the company's future operating results and other future events, including revenues and profitability. The company cautions that these statements are based on management's current knowledge and expectations and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are outlined or outside of the company's control, that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from the statements made.
For a detailed discussion of risks that could affect the operating results, please see the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, and subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. We ask that you please hold all questions until the end of the presentation, as Emelie Tirre, Monster's President of the Americas, and Tom Kelly, the company's Chief Financial Officer, will be joining Hilton, Rodney, and Paul on stage for the Q&A portion of today's meeting. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Rodney Sacks, who will kick it off.
Thank you very much. Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon. We'll go through the industry quite quickly and the results, and the trading results. It's nice to see that the energy category is still the fastest-growing category that... In the beverage industry. It's growing at the last 13 weeks at $387 million out of a total of $861 million, which is the growth in the category at 3.2%. If we look at the individual performance of the energy category, Monster is still the, you know, growing together with a lot of the other brands in our portfolio and continuing to perform well.
If you look at the category, on its own, it is quite interesting to note some of the newer entrants into the category, just referred to them, Celsius. You can see a sort of leveling off in their sales in the last few, three, four months. And you'll also have a look at which is noteworthy, Bang, which was on the decline until we acquired the brand. It seems to have got stabilized, and we're now busy sort of taking steps, which we'll go into more in the presentation, to reestablish it, regain the shelf space that was lost, and to get the brand into its growth phase again. On unit share, obviously, we similar position.
But if you go to the convenience category in the last 13 weeks, again, the exciting part is that the category is sort of accelerated a little bit in growth. It had slowed earlier in the last year. It's now growing at 4.9%, and within the category, energy drinks continue to be the lead category that is continuing to grow at $237 million. What's interesting in this category is that if you look at the actual whole category, energy drinks is now by far the leading category in convenience and gas. Monster is continuing to grow. All our brands in the portfolio similarly are continuing to show growth, and the category continues to be healthy.
The 5-week numbers were put up for you, for you to have a look at. Similar situation. Over the 5 weeks, the category has grown 7.5% in convenience, the energy category, and all our brands in our portfolio are continuing to show good growth.
I think the one point we wanted to just address is that when we've shown these Nielsen statistics, we have shown Bang as a separate brand and not integrated into total MEC. And the reason is that because of the issues with Bang, the litigation, the labeling, Bang suffered very significantly, as you all know. So to lump in Bang into the MEC numbers, I think at this stage, would not be appropriate. And when we circle on numbers that the company assumed responsibility for Bang, we'll then include it in the total MEC numbers. So when you look at MEC, and you look at the percentages and the growth, just bear in mind that Bang, which obviously we own and we operate, is separate from those numbers.
... and I think it's important that when you look at the company and the performance of Monster and Reign, I think you do have to separate those and not try and lump them together. It really is confusing. In summary, Monster is now distributed in 144 countries and territories worldwide. Strategic brands, which are the brands we acquired from the Coca-Cola Company, are now distributed in 64 countries and territories. Reign, which we created 4 or 5 years ago, is now distributed in 25 countries and territories. And Affordable Energy, which is really led by Predator and Fury, is now growing in many countries and is now in 37 countries and territories around the world.
So if you look at countries in where one or more of our brands are being sold, we are selling products now in over 158 countries and territories worldwide. The next slide is one which we've often shown just to show the distribution. There are two independent markets. One of the largest one, obviously, is Japan, where we have Asahi as our bottler, but otherwise, they're all distributed through the Coke system. The next slides are really hard to sit and talk about, but it's, I think it's good for you to be able to look at. It shows you in a picture form exactly which brands we have in which parts of the world.
So if you go through the next four or five slides, these will be able to really show you and create a good picture of where our different products and brands are distributed. Interesting to note that, for example, Affordable Energy has a really good representation in Africa and Middle East and sort of Eastern Europe and then Central America, and we are looking to expand that now further into South American markets.
Bang, we've kept at this time, only in the U.S. Look at opportunities at a later time. We're bedding down the brand. We're getting increasing distribution, trying to regain the distribution that was lost and maintaining it within the U.S.
On the in the affordable market area, just some noteworthy areas that we are going to be going into and expanding the brand. The principal focus this year will be the launch of Predator in China, in the affordable category in China. Some other bigger markets where we think they are large, very large energy markets, but they're in that affordable lower tier, is Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, and other countries in Latin America, where we think that we'll have some good opportunities, is the main countries are Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Just to give you a snapshot on some of the selected markets and where we are worldwide, we've made good progress, continue to grow share.
If you take South America, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, we have very strong shares and are continuing to grow in those markets. In EMEA, in France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, we're also all growing in those major markets. Those are the largest markets in Europe. Japan, where we have a commanding lead, we are still actually getting some share growth. And if you look at some of the markets where our share may have marginally decreased, if you look at the actual value of our sales, we are continuing to increase our sales in all of those markets, being South Africa, South Korea, where we have a 56% share, but we are continuing to grow, and Poland, where we're also continuing to grow. Give you an update on China.
China has been a steady and sustainable growth for Monster over the years, and we are continuing to see continued growth in China in 2023. We are planning to launch a new product, Pipeline Punch, in China in 2024, and as I indicated a little earlier, we are planning to launch Predator in China around about May. Predator in China will be in a PET 500 ml plastic bottle. We're not gonna go into a can. We're gonna compete with Eastr oc and some of the other brands in a in a PET version, which will be manufactured in China. Monster is available generally in pretty much throughout China, but we've really focused on nine markets.
In the case of Predator, our initial launch will focus on four markets, and then we will, you know, build out and expand from there. Our marketing in China has been focused on street basketball and UFC. We have one of the world champions, Weili Zhang, and we're doing an under-the-cap promotion with her this year. Major sponsorships for the company continue to be dominated by UFC, NASCAR, Supercross, BIG3 Basketball, Power Slap, which is a new addition. Interesting sport and being very popular with enormous social media followings and exposure. So we are involved there. We're involved with MotoGP, X Games. Traditionally, we've always stayed involved with, which is an important sport for us and our consumer.
W e've also stepped up some involvement with PBR on a larger scale, which is also becoming more and more popular in the U.S. and in certain other markets outside of the U.S. as well. On the motorsport front, you know, we've had a long relationship with Mercedes over the years. The cost of doing business in Formula One has continued to go up to a point where we were unable to come to terms with Mercedes going forward. We just didn't believe we had, you know, were getting good value for the spend. U ltimately, we've left on good terms, but we decided to move on and to look at an alternative team, which we did. And we've tied up with McLaren, which has a very, very long pedigree in racing. It's a very exciting young team.
They do things more the Monster way, the way they approach things. They have two very good drivers, particularly Norris. So we are very excited and looking forward to our ongoing relationship with McLaren. We've been able to secure good exposure from the McLaren team, and we are quite positive about staying in the sport and continuing to participate in Formula One on a worldwide basis through McLaren. We continue to be proud of the ambassadors that have been associated with Monster throughout the years. Some of them are, you know, past world champions, and they continue to represent the brand and be involved with us. From Tiger Woods to Valentino Rossi to Rob Gronkowski to Chloe Kim, Kurt Busch, Jamie Anderson.
We have a fantastic roster of representatives and ambassadors who speak for and who represent our brand around the world. In 2023, we were fortunate to have a lot of champions and being able to sponsor and pick good athletes who succeeded, and ultimately, Bagnaia won his second-time world championship in a row in MotoGP. Chase Sexton won the championship in Supercross. We had a number of surfing championships, Filipe Toledo, a skateboarding championships, Rayssa Leal, and a lot of other snowboard and ski champions, and Ty Gibbs, who has stepped up to who was the Rookie of the Year in NASCAR Cup. And so we have a lot of good athletes going forward. In MMA, interesting, sort of very popular sport, continued to grow.
One of the things that's been a little tougher challenge is actually finding and selecting champions, because you select somebody who's got a great record, and he goes into the ring after you sign him, and there's a blow on the head, one lucky punch, and he's down and out. A ll of a sudden, you look at yourself and say: What did I just do? But, so it's sometimes you've got to keep, keep going and find champions. W e've had, we've had a good, we've had a good record, and it's, it really has done well for us. The sport is growing internationally. We've had great champions in Jon Jones, Sean Strickland, who's in fact fighting another one of our athletes, Dricus du Plessis, in Toronto next week, and Islam Makhachev. So we've, we've got a lot of people.
We also continue to sponsor Bellator, which is another series in the fighting series, but again, has its own following and is important for us and for the brand. This is an interesting slide. We sponsored Joan Mir in 2020, when he won the MotoGP Championship on a Suzuki. We sponsored Fabio Quartararo when he won the championship the next year on a Yamaha, and we sponsored Francesco Bagnaia in 2022 and again last year, 2023, when he won the championship in both years in a row. So we've actually won MotoGP now for 4 years in a row, so that's been quite a great achievement for the brand.
O f course, MotoGP, while it's not that popular in the United States, it's extremely popular in EMEA and other countries in the world. So what we do and a lot of the stuff we do, we have to focus on not only the, the U.S. market, but all of our other markets around the world.
A s we've always said over the years, our, the pillars of our brand are, sports, music, Monster Girls, and, really social media, e-sports and gaming. Gaming is a big platform. And so, we continue to support those, those pillars. E-sports, we are continuing to sponsor the major events in gaming, like DreamHack, that are series around, take place in many places around the world, and also individual teams, gaming teams, from Team Liquid to the others. We also do, as you'll see later, a lot of promotional tie-ins with gaming and with the, with these, e-sports. Music continues to be one of our platforms. We continue to have a full lot of athletes that we... Sorry, musicians who we line up with and sponsor.
One of the things we did this year, there's some tours, important tours, Up & Up and Outbreak tours that take place on many occasions during the year. But we've also signed a sponsorship deal, worldwide tour with Green Day, which will also give us a lot of exposure around the world this year as one of the main sponsors of the Green Day World Tour. They've gone on tour. Social media, just to give you some of the stats we showed, we continue to do well in social media. We have a lot of Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok followers. I think that's one of the areas we are focusing on. We're going to place more emphasis on the social media. We're putting more financial resources behind the social media.
We plan to grow that part of our marketing spend this year and going forward. It's becoming a bigger and more important part for Monster. For some of the other brands, it is already probably the major part that they focus on and that you communicate through. It's always been a smaller part of Monster. We're now increasing that on the Monster side, and obviously, we're gonna continue to support a lot of our other brands, like Reign Storm and the other brands and Bang through the social media channels and areas. Summarize some of our retail promotions that took place in 2023. We launched our Zero Sugar original Monster Green and Zero Sugar, which have been a very successful product, and we had a promotion in the first trimester.
We did a UFC time promotion in the second trimester and a gaming promotion in the third trimester. In 2024, our retail promotional trimester programs are gonna be. We're gonna focus on, in this first trimester, on innovation, on execution, in-store execution, and getting our innovation out. We think that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit. We really do need to focus on and improve our execution, and so we are determined to do so, and we are taking steps to do so in trade and in stores on retail shelves. In the second trimester, we're gonna go with a gear program. We've had them in the past years, some of them many years ago. They are very...
Our clothing is very highly in demand, and so we think that this is a real call-to-action program, and we're gonna get a lot of response from consumers to the gear program. And then finally, we have a last trimester tie-in with Call of Duty, which is a very big game, and we think that that's gonna really be big for us, and it works well in on where we do these tie-ins, on pack, in store, and on promotion. In 2023, in EMEA, we thought we'd just give you some sight or vision to their marketing, 'cause it's a big market for us. They do quarterly promotions. In the first quarter, they had Lewis Hamilton. Second quarter of 2023, they had a MotoGP tie-in.
Third quarter, they tied back into UFC and in New York City, and Call of Duty on pack at the end of the year. And then in 2024, EMEA is gonna again have 4 promotions. They're launching Zero Sugar and getting it out extensively now into Europe in the first quarter. There's a couple of launches late last year, but that's gonna be their focus. They're gonna do it again, a MotoGP Ducati experience in the second quarter, a UFC experience to leverage our UFC association in the third quarter, and again, to tie in with us in the U.S. with the Call of Duty on pack and promotion in the fourth quarter.
If we just turn to some of our product families, just to go through them, I mean, we have an Ultra family that's continuing to grow, continuing to establish itself in the Zero Sugar category. We are starting to look at these families and to promote some of the families and spend some of our dollars directly supporting these families to also look for growth in these areas. Whereas before, we really focused mainly on Monster Green and used that umbrella to cover everything. We are starting to allocate and have specific promotional activities or marketing activities devoted to the families. So in the case of, you know, Ultra, we have some activities. Juice Monster, we're having additional activities and promotions for our Juice Monster family.
Java Monster, we're looking at separate promotions, separate positioning within the Monster umbrella to just be able to again focus on events, and have events that Java Monster leads. And then finally, Rehab Monster, which is continuing to grow again. We think it's got a lot of growth in that tea category. We've sort of taken it back to its tea roots and I think Java Monster is showing nice growth. We've, as you know, we launched a wild berry tea this last year, and I'll show you this now, the plans to launch more innovation in the Monster family. Reign, as you know, has continued to be a solid brand. We are continuing to grow that brand.
We want to continue to focus on Reign and its own existing positioning. So when we come and talk about Reign Storm, the positioning for Reign Storm is going to be very different and separate from Reign itself. We're not looking at trying to merge the brands or one being a sort of extension of the other. We're actually positioning them as separate brands, standing on their own and with different programs, attractive to different, basically, consumer groups. This is the innovation we have for Reign and some of the marketing programs. Reign Storm, as I said earlier, it is positioned differently. It's a softer brand; it's more generally accepted. We have new innovation because we've launched it with four SKUs.
We think that we need to expand our presence on shelf so that the brand is more visible to consumers, and we are continuing to do that. Our partnerships and platforms for Reign Storm are beach volleyball, pickleball. There are a number of different ways in which we're promoting Reign Storm, and also putting a lot of emphasis on social, digital and social media for Reign Storm. To really just give you a heads up and innovation for 2024. In the Ultra family, we've got Ultra Fantasy Ruby Red, which we're launching. Now, we've got Rio Punch, which is a really, really good-tasting juice product. We have Irish Crème, which we've reformulated. Irish Crème is, Irish has been a flavor, if you remember, many years ago, and there are some pockets where it, it's sales per point are extremely high.
It just didn't really get out and didn't have enough momentum. But we think today, with the system, we will be, you know, focused on it, and we do believe that we will be able to get extensive distribution and that this will be a successful line extension for our Java Monster line. And then finally, in our full-calorie line, where we do believe there is still a big market, everybody's focusing on zero sugar, and we have a full, you know, array of products that address the share, the zero sugar, you know, consumer. Not only for Monster, but obviously for Reign and other products and Reign Storm. But we do believe there is a market in the U.S., particularly Middle America, where consumers still want a full sugar product.
W e started to do really nicely in the Reserve line, starting to come on, and we're gonna launch Peaches n' Crème as a new flavor this year. Innovation for Reign is focused on Sour Gummy Worm. Innovation for Reign Storm, to help build out that market and our presence on shelf, we've got four new flavors. They're here for people who are attendees to taste. We think these flavors are great. The one thing I think we've got in the Reign Storm line is better-tasting products than our competition. Hands down. It's just as simple as that.
W e've just got to get them out, we've got to get them on the shelves, and we're gonna do that, and we're gonna focus on them and execute, and we believe this is going to be, you know, one of our drivers in 2024. A lot of you will have obviously known about our acquisition of Bang towards the latter half of last year. Bang lost a lot of shelf space. They were delisted by a number of chains, so we've, we've, we've taken over the brand, we've rationalized it. We now have 12 SKUs focusing on what we think are the more core items in the Bang line, that some of their flavors that were traditional for... that in the Bang lineup, that they don't have a lot of competition with.
We're going to focus on getting them reestablished, which is what we're now doing. We've got listings again, and we are also going to get them onto shelves, and we think that we have a good opportunity for Reign to make up some of the lost share that they got. As you know, Reign was at one time 6%-7% share. It's down to about a 1.5% share now, and we see great low-hanging fruit and good opportunity to establish Bang. There are some loyal Bang consumers who actually like the flavors, like the flavor profile that Bang has, and they will, I think, come back. Once we get regular supply and regularly get it on the shelf, the Bang consumers will come back. And it's positioned differently to our other products.
It's positioned differently to Reign, positioned differently to, to Reign Storm. So we think there is a place on the shelf for these various products in our, in our portfolio. Strategic brands, we are continuing to innovate this year. They are seeing growth in, in a lot of the selected markets in which we have them. We're going to introduce a new Relentless product, a new Burn Guava, and a new Nalu product, which is very strong in the Belgium market. NOS, as you know, is one of the brands we acquired from Coke. It's pretty much a U.S. brand. It continues to be one of the top five or six selling SKUs in the convenience channel. It's a strong brand. We've introduced a zero sugar, and we think that's going to give it a great lift, similarly to what Monster Zero Sugar did for the original Monster Green.
Y ou can see how we've positioned it as being very similar in design, and the taste is almost indistinguishable from the full-calorie NOS. Full Throttle has been a... As they say, it's a hardworking American energy. It's a hardworking brand. It's out there. It sells, it repeats. It's got its loyal consumers. We have a third flavor already developed and can designed. It's locked and loaded, but we, we're not gonna pull the trigger on that yet. W e'll see how the brand goes and what happens this year. W e do have, some, you know, a backup to expand this brand if, if the need should prove itself or if we can find shelf space, for it. The question is finding shelf space for all the brands we, we have. Relentless in the U.K. is a solid brand, pretty much a U.K. brand.
Burn is growing nicely in some selected markets in Europe. Mother is an Australian brand that is holding its own and doing really nicely. It's positioned differently to Monster. So if you take both of our brands together in Australia, it gives us a really strong position that we can compete with the leading brands in the Australian market. LIV+ is a lifestyle brand in New Zealand. Again, we have Mother, we have LIV+, and we have Monster in New Zealand. If you take those brands together, again, it gives us a very strong positioning in the energy category in New Zealand. Power Play is the local South African brand we acquired from Coke. It continues to, again, have its own niche and its own positioning. In South Africa, we really have four brands.
It's quite interesting. We have a really strong position. We continue to find place on the shelf for these different brands, different positioning. We have Burn, we have Predator, we have Power Play, and we have Monster. So we have a strong, strong position and a strong position in South Africa and some of the African countries. These brands play an important role in some of the African countries as you go up the continent. Nalu, as we said, it's really a strong brand, but it's only in Belgium. On the affordable side, that's our basically full calorie portfolio. We have some interesting flavors that play in different markets. For example, the Malt Mash is a leading flavor in Nigeria. The brand has got a very good position in Nigeria, Predator and some of the African countries.
That is continuing to grow, and we're continuing to be able to innovate and find the appropriate flavors that meet the demands of local tastes and local consumers in different parts of the world. It, it lets us have a lot of flexibility. We're not constrained by some of the brand rules that you would normally be bound to follow in the case of Monster, and you don't want the brands in different parts of the world to look different and taste different. I think this gives us a lot of, a lot of flexibility. This is a list of the active countries where we have Predator. And as I indicated earlier, there are a number of new markets we are looking to launch Predator later this year.
Our main marketing push behind Predator, which has enabled us to leverage, is our relationship and sponsorship of Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League. That's enabled us to execute promotional programs literally in all of almost all the countries which we have Predator, which is relevant. Football or soccer, we call it, is relevant in most of these countries, and this one program has enabled us to leverage the brand, even though its sales are sometimes small in these new countries we're launching, and have a real credible marketing program that we can go out with and continue to grow the brand. So we're gonna continue to persist with that strategy. We talk about CANarchy going on to alcohol. This is sort of the full lineup of the CANarchy portfolio.
Beast Unleashed is one of the top 10 best brands that have been launched, and it's continuing to be a solid, solid brand. We launched it in 12-ounce and 16-ounce. I think the market sort of seemed to have moved a little more into the bigger sizes in the convenience channel, and we are moving the 16-ounce. We'll still retain it, but we are moving the single serve into a 23-ounce size early in this year, and we are transitioning that and keeping the variety pack, and we're going to have a second variety pack. So we think that the Beast will continue to grow nicely. This is some press coverage and display activity that we are showing that we have, we're able to secure for the Beast when we launched it earlier last year.
The marketing pillars of the Beast are not exactly the same, but not dissimilar to Monster. Focusing a lot on music, music events, on premise, motorsports, tailgating, and after parties, et cetera. What we are really excited about is the launch of Nasty Beast, which is a 6% alcohol product. We're launching it in a 12-ounce and in 23-ounce, 24-ounce single-serve cans. The 12-pack variety pack is, as we speak now, going out to the initial beer distributors in the network, and it will be continued to be launched throughout January and into February. We are also producing and have produced and are now building up inventory of the 24-ounce single-serve cans for Nasty Beast, and we are going to launch that shortly within the next month or two.
W e look at the Nasty Beast product line. If you look at that, together with Beast Unleashed, we think that the two of them together are now gonna give us an ability to have a presence on shelf, so that it won't be lost with one or two facings. We think it's gonna make a big difference to the whole line. We're putting an emphasis on convenience channel in for 24-ounce for both of those product lines and also for the multipacks in the more traditional and the bigger stores, grocery and the bigger box stores. The rest of the portfolio, we are continuing to manage. We're trying, you know, we're rationalizing some of it, focusing on what we think are products that have growth to become, go out and become more national.
Jai Alai is one of our leading brands. We do believe that this brand is capable of a lot of growth still. The Dale's family, which is established, we've realigned the packaging. You can see on the top left, we've really got the packaging now to line up and be constant. We've introduced a light lager, which we think is a really good tasting beer, and we think that, again, this lineup, you know, it'll take time, and we'll work it, but we think there is good upside opportunity for Dale's as well.
You know, I should mention that the craft beer and seltzer categories, as you all know, remain pretty challenging. And as a result, you'll see in the company's fourth quarter results, and I don't want there to be any surprises, there will be included impairment charges relating to certain non-amortizing intangibles that were acquired as part of the CANarchy acquisition. Just that you're aware of that.
Just to talk about Tour Water. I think most of you saw some of the cans here today. We have decided to take the Tour Water brand. It's going through our beer distribution network, which is the CANarchy network. It's sort of, we think it's very opportune. I think you guys may have seen the news recently about some concerns on bottled water, plastic bottled water. We think there is a market for a canned water product, and we think we have a product that has a good attitude about it. We're, you know, gonna be doing a lot of marketing in the on-premise situation. You can see the sort of the tie-ups we've got is Rocklahoma and things of this nature, music events, concerts. We just do believe that there will be a good market for this product.
W e're gonna build it, and it's pure water, still and sparkling, doesn't have any energy component to it. But we think that that's something we can add to the distribution system, to our partnership with beer distributors again, and so we can take this product to them, and to the market through them, together with the Beast products and some of the other craft beers that we have with them at the moment. Turning to production, we never had production before, but all of a sudden, we're now in the production business. But we acquired the Norwalk facility from Safeway. We're gonna close it down, and we've turned that, and that did a lot of production for us. We've now, you know, fixed it up, and we've done things, and we're starting to produce there.
It's gonna be a great facility to give us our own facility. We've got the volumes on the West Coast, and it'll reduce our freight, and we'll, we'll do much more production there. The Phoenix facility was the Bang facility, which we acquired as part of the Bang acquisition, and it is a good facility. It's a state-of-the-art facility. We are making changes to the facility, to water and a couple of things to enable us to run Monster products there. At the moment, they're running all the Bang products, and they're capable of running all the Bang products that we need for the U.S. It may obviously behoove us to produce some of those products on the East Coast through co-packers down the line, but this plant has the capability to, to do everything.
Yeah, we've run trials already with our Ultra line, 'cause Bang is zero sugar. So we've run trials with Ultra, seems fine, and also with our Reign products. So we're quite excited about opening up that facility to be able to produce a lot more product for our own needs.
Reference to San Fernando, you know, when we acquired the AFF business, our flavor company, they were scattered in little facilities. It must have been six or seven or eight different facilities in different parts of Los Angeles. Sometimes some of the facilities were 10 miles apart. So as we've grown, it's obviously put pressure on them to be able to produce, and so we purchased land, and we've now putting up a large, state-of-the-art, modern production facility. They'll be able to produce their flavors there. They'll be able to process the juices there. In fact, it's... We're growing. We're still, we're sort of getting to the point where we're actually acquiring additional properties around there because it's to service us.
T hat facility is in the course of construction, and it should be up and running by about mid-year. But it, it's gonna really change our whole production, all of our development work. We also acquired a facility from Coke, as you know, in Ireland, to help us produce our flavors and concentrates closer to the EMEA market because we were shipping everything, including juices, and the times and delays were really causing us major supply issues. The Athy plant is up and running completely now. They've got qualified on just about every single flavor of ours. They're all being run out of EMEA; it's all being produced in Ireland now.
They don't have the capacity to run juice products, so we've now constructing a substantial juice building there, where we will be able to, once completed, we'll be able to actually do all of our juice concentrates for Europe at that plant as well. So that's becoming a major production facility for us, for EMEA and Africa and Middle East, which is really exciting. Paul, sort of turn over to sustainability, if you'd like to take the meeting and take everyone through that.
I'll thank you, Rodney. I'll try to make this quick. In 2023, the company continued on its sustainability journey. 97% of our products are produced in 100% recyclable aluminum cans. We've continued to recycle hundreds of thousands of pounds of material at our warehouses. We've continued to install solar arrays at the majority of our company-owned facilities. Just recently, we have committed to set science-based emission reduction targets in accordance with the SBTi framework. We've also just published our water stewardship policy, which is available on our corporate website. So those are just a few of the sustainability highlights. We can go to the next slide.
When, on the ED&I front, we've continued on that journey as well, and just recently, we've appointed our first SVP of ED&I and philanthropy at the company, so we're very excited about that. We've also appointed new EDI regional councils, which will work on training of our employees, continued training of our employees as we move forward. Lastly, I would just like to note that our EEO-1 Report for the 2022 year is available on our corporate website as well. Next slide. Lastly, global philanthropic support. We continue our support of first responders, the military, and athletes through sponsoring a variety of charities and philanthropic efforts, including the Invictus Games, the American Red Cross, the MS Society, and we provide financial support and humanitarian aid to these agencies.
These partnerships are in addition to our continued support of direct employee aid as well. We have emergency financial aid that we make available to our employees. We have a very generous charitable matching program that we do with our employees, and we also have paid time off for volunteering. So with that, I'll hand the call back to Hilton or Rodney.
Well, I think that, Tom, I don't know if you want to weigh in on this, but, we have a really fantastic record of, increased sales and profitability. And as you know, we report at this meeting only for, or only up to the nine months ended September 30, 2023, which we all had a deep dive on, in the beginning of November. So, the only point I just think we should mention, Tom, is the subsequent to the company's Q3 earnings release. The company purchased approximately 0.8 million shares at an average price of $54.57 per share.
All right.
No, I think everybody has got these numbers. No sense in going through line by line. I think we've all been through, I think we've all memorized it, and everybody's waiting. It's, it's hard for me, the CFO, to come in here and not be able to speak on fourth quarters or what the plan is for 2024, but that's all I'm allowed to say right now. So, any questions on the 2023 up to September 30th, happy to answer those.
Thanks.
Thanks. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll now turn to the question and answer session.
I'm gonna read this.
Please wait for the microphone so that everyone on the webcast can hear you, and limit your question to one, if we can, so we can get as many in as possible. For those of you listening on the webcast, what is going on in the room right now, we're Emelie Tirre and Tom Kelly are walking up to the stage to participate in the Q&A session. I think we paid extra for these. Okay, do we have a hand for a first question? Please state your name, if you would, please, and company.
All right. Thank you. Andrea Teixeira from JP Morgan. That's a lot of responsibility for the first question. I think on the, the main question that we receive from investors is, like, the competitive environment as you're looking to Nielsen and seeing some of your competitors, in particular in the US, potentially taking pricing. So if you can comment on that, and, and how you're, you're positioning to gain more shelf space as you have more SKUs to come through.
Okay, to coordinate this Q&A session, I think I'm going to take the questions and, maybe comment, maybe not comment on, and then get my colleagues to participate. Otherwise, it'll be a free-for-all, and, I don't know where that'll go. Might be fun, actually. So, on the question on pricing, we haven't made up our minds in the US, you talk about. We're continuing to watch the market, watch what Red Bull have done, and see if there are opportunities for us to take price. It takes 60-90 days to implement a price increase, and we're very conscious of the opportunities that may or may not be there for us to take price. I think we also have to be very careful when we look at international markets.
There's a lot of kind of fallout from our competitors, and I think you've probably seen that in various countries in the world, where the retailers are saying: enough is enough, and if you cannot justify a price increase, we are gonna discontinue your products from the shelves. Now, that's not our case because we have really underpriced relative to inflation over the years, so we're not so much concerned about that. But you have to appreciate the environment in which we are all working. So getting back to the US, I'm gonna ask Emelie, there you are.
Yeah.
I'm gonna ask Emelie to, if she wouldn't mind, just talk a little bit about-
Sure. The question also was about shelf space, and so we're actually the team has done a really nice job this year in getting with our retailers here in the United States that we control the call point. And so the team has done the negotiations with the major retailers here in the United States, and we're very pleased with what we're seeing on gains of shelf space in the convenience channel and the supermarket channel. So we are, we're pleased with where we're sitting right now for shelf space for 2024.
I think you will be, too, actually.
Thank you. It's Michael Lavery from Piper Sandler. Just was wondering if you could elaborate a little on, you know, now that you have some of the production facilities, it puts you in a different position with the co-packers you still use, and you've got, of course, your internal capacity without tolling charges and things like that. How much appetite do you have for more facilities, and when... Can you give us any ability to kinda quantify the savings it might drive and what kind of margin upside that could have?
W e have always relied on third-party co-packers, and it was also the Coca-Cola's dream for us to be able to manufacture in the Coke facilities. Now, that's happened internationally, but really hasn't happened in the U.S. A s we've disclosed during the COVID times and beyond, we really had a struggle with regard to supplying our customers. We just didn't have sufficient capacity. You know, we had a lot of raw materials. We brought in raw materials from overseas, but we didn't have the filling capacity that we necessarily needed to satisfy our customers. So when Norwalk became available, it was a facility that was in the Safeway organization.
It was almost exclusively a Monster facility, and when the acquisition happened and Safeway was acquired by Albertsons, one of the executives said, "What am I doing with a co-packing facility?" So we, we bought that facility, and we spent a lot of time fixing it up and engineering it to something that we are really very proud of. And so that was the first step. Phoenix was the second step, and there may well be opportunities for us to take on additional capacity and ourselves in other areas of the country. And it's not a necessity right now, but we're continuing to look at it. And then with regard to the flavors, and we spoke a little bit about that in the presentation, and you saw the pictures of AFF's facilities.
They will have two state-of-the-art facilities by the middle of 2024. They will have two state-of-the-art facilities, one here in the U.S. and one in Athy, Ireland, capable of producing by far the majority of the needs of the Monster and affordable brands. Obviously, a lot of the strategic brands that were acquired from Coke, a lot of those concentrates are still manufactured in terms of an agreement with the Coca-Cola Company.
Thanks. It's Mark Astrachan. I guess just a follow-up to the first question and then an actual question. If we look at Red Bull, the volumes have actually been pretty solid since the price increase in early November. What are you looking at to give us a sense of what we should be looking at to get a sense of whether you actually follow? You know, is it volumes? Is it is the pricing that sticks? They don't have to promote it back. And then the second one is a question that we get frequently on the Nielsen data in particular. IRI shows stronger rates of growth than Nielsen does. Your data in the U.S. especially has shown stronger growth than both from untracked channel contribution. Is there something wrong with Nielsen as you see it?
M aybe I'll start with a bit and then, we'll pass over to one of my colleagues. But, I've said in the past that we have a large unmeasured channel, channels, food service, Amazon. And what's also interesting, and we're trying to integrate those numbers into the Nielsen system, is that if you order online and pick up at the store, which a lot of customers are doing, those numbers are not reflected in the Nielsen numbers that we show. They're in a separate, a separate section, and we're trying to incorporate them into the numbers that we show. Nielsen is a guide. It's not 100% accurate. It's a statistical representation that will never be 100% accurate.
Costco, for example, don't participate in Nielsen, and there are a bunch of other customers that really don't participate in Nielsen at all. When you look at the small stores and the smaller convenience stores, it's a crap shoot how much of those numbers go into Nielsen. W e always look at Nielsen as a guide, but it's not 100% accurate. Then getting back to that second question about or the first question about Red Bull and pricing. I'm going to ask Emelie to respond to that.
Sure. Mark, what we do is we were looking at, you know, different price packages compared to Red Bull. So we have a pricing strategy in the US where we have now 12-ounce, we have 16, we have 19.2, we have 24-ounce, which matches up against their 8-ounce, 12-ounce, 16 and 20. T hen we're indexing it, right, to where our price is sitting versus where their price is sitting. Same in the multipack strategy. N ow we have different price points in multipacks that compare to their multipacks, and so we're trying to meet the consumer with the different price points in the different channels, and that's how we're looking at it.
Don't get us wrong, I mean, we really do want to increase pricing as quickly as we can. Obviously, it's in our interests, and we're all shareholders. So, but we just have a business to run, and we just have to be cautious and make the right decision for the business. You don't seem happy.
Hi, it's Bonnie Herzog at Goldman Sachs. I wanted to ask about the promo calendar. I was intrigued by some of the comments you made about doing more promos on some of the brand families. So I wanted to get a sense, are you pulling dollars from Monster Green, or should we think about your, your dollar spent this year stepping up? Just trying to get a sense of how we should think about the level of promo spend for this year.
Are you talking about marketing activities or-
Right.
the promotional calendar?
The promotional calendars.
The promotional calendar has always been focused on various brands.
Mm-hmm.
So nothing is gonna change. I think the point that was made in the presentation is that up till, up till now, we've really focused-
Right
... our marketing on Monster Green, and the other brand families of Monster followed within that marketing structure.
Right.
Now, what we're doing is we are focusing not only on Monster Green, but we're giving these other parts of the brand family, the opportunity to shine as well.
To be clear, there's no increased spend level as you make some of these changes?
Well, there will be increased spend, but as a percentage, no.
Okay.
You know, we're very focused on our marketing expenses.
Okay.
Hi. Thank you, guys. Filippo Falorni, Citi. A question on the Bang brand. You mentioned, obviously, the Bang the brand has gone from 7% share to, like, 1%-2% share now, and you're planning to rebuild that share. As you saw the decline of the brand, based on your studies, where do you think the consumer went, towards other brands? You were able to capture some of those consumers. On the flip side, as you're looking to rebuild, where do you think the market share and the shelf space comes from? Is it incremental or from some of your competitors?
Well, a lot of the retailers that had discontinued the brand for the legal reasons and the labeling reasons are really embracing the brand back again. There's now security with distribution of the brand, and they're very excited to have it back on their shelves. I'm talking any number of retailers. The brand was discontinued at Walmart, save for a variety pack. It's now back in Walmart, and it's getting back as the sets are done from February onwards. It's in and has been accepted in any number of retailers.
The Bang brand, we believe, is a lifestyle brand, and it, as Rodney mentioned earlier in the presentation, there are significant consumers for the Bang brand that are still there, that may have gone to the competition, that may have gone to us, but they're very strong Bang consumers that we believe, given the product back on shelf... And remember, it was, its ACV dropped dramatically, so it wasn't available for customers to buy. N ow that it's becoming more available for customers to buy, and it's getting attention, it's getting the love and attention, we really believe that the brand will, you know... And I'm not. We don't give guidance, so I'm not saying it'll get back to where it was, but it'll certainly increase from where it is today.
I f I could just add, you asked about the consumers. I think it's, you know, it's clear if you look at the category, you look at the rise of a number of small brands over the past 2 years, they've all got share in a different way. They were initially positioned against Bang. All of the guys went out, which was C4. They've changed their positioning now a little bit, so part of it is still the 16-ounce, and part of C4 is now in a 12-ounce. And then you had Alani Nu, and you've had Ghost and obviously Celsius. So I think what happened was as that consumer brand was not available, they started to look around for new brands, and they've tried new brands.
L argely Red Bull and us had our core consumers, and they stayed where they were. Obviously, some of these new brands have taken some consumers, but they've expanded the market as well. W hat's happening now is that as we've seen Bang getting back on the shelf, we're getting consumers back, and I think they're gonna come back largely from these alternative brands that are out there with shelf space, and it's gonna be positioned on the shelf against Celsius, Reign, Reign Storm, Alani Nu, C4-
Ghost and Bang's gonna be in that whole group, and they're gonna take share back from that group. We believe that will be separate and incremental to the Monster share, which is positioned differently. NOS is probably positioned more closely to Monster, and obviously, you've got, you know, Rockstar in that sort of camp, as well as Red Bull. So that's where we see the consumers going back, and that's where we think they came from. And of course, Reign has grown dramatically, as you've seen over the last 52 weeks.
Hi, Chris Carey at Wells Fargo. I'm not sure to what extent you'll actually comment on this, but, you know, Monster is one of these companies where gross margins, probably more than most in consumer staples, are still well below pre-pandemic levels. You've said that you have not priced in line with inflation in certain markets over time. I think that maybe comes from the penchant of the company to really sustain volume growth, which I think to a certain extent, makes sense. But you've had your major competitor now take pricing in the US, with gross margins now still well below pre-pandemic levels, and I would've thought there was a more concerted, you know, confidence in the ability to take pricing, you know, given that kind of environment.
T he question is, you know, you have a lot of moving parts now with, with Bang coming in a high margin product. You've got the production facilities. Do you now think there are more kind of like, arrows in the quiver now, where you can rebuild gross margin? Or should we not be thinking about it that way, and you're more after sustaining attractive growth over time from the current levels? So any context on that would be helpful.
Well, I'll start off, and then I'll, I'll pass on to Tom. But, you know, there, there are a number of factors. Pricing is, of course, one factor that's very much under the microscope. The second factor is cost of goods, and yes, we, we will be producing ourselves a portion of our needs. That will help gross margin. Aluminum has come down, and I've said that before. That will help gross margin. Freight, we've seen reductions in freight, and overall, that will also help gross margins. But against that, you know, we have ingredients, some of which have gone up, others have gone down, and then we have this, this big item of sugar, that somebody in this audience thinks that sugar's going down. In fact, sugar is actually going up compared to last year.
S ugar is a big nut in, you know, in our cost of goods. So, the imported cans largely out the system, we don't even talk about them anymore. But, there's a number of factors that are positive, some are negative, but, you know, that's where we are with gross margin. I cannot give guidance, so I'm very hesitant in what I say, but I've... T here's a lot of moving parts in gross margin, and obviously, you know, we would like to increase gross margin, but we also sell a significant amount now internationally, as you guys know, and the international margins will never be at the same level as the U.S. margins. W e have a mixed concern as the business grows.
I nternationally, we price against Red Bull. If we don't price against Red Bull internationally, we've seen impacts on market share and impacts on sales. So we're very cautious about the pricing internationally. We've taken a lot of price internationally, and we still have this, this mix issue with US versus international. Tom, I don't know if I've forgotten about anything, but-
No, my microphone? Yes. I think you've addressed all the highlights with respect to, you know, the gross margin profile. I just wanna add in that in the short term, we always look at, at what happened in the fourth quarter, and we did buy a production facility. We've got the Norwalk that's come up and running. We've got the Phoenix that's incurred some cost. So we are at that point where we've got to now straighten out those production efficiencies and, and so looking at the fourth quarter could look a little bit different than the, the rest of the year. Then you talk about the geographic mix that, Hilton mentioned. It's easy. The U.S. business is pretty consistent.
We do have some volatility when it comes to inputs, such as the cans, which have come down. We still have some inflationary points that we have to hurdle over on the ingredients and on our co-packers. But the rest of the world, we're facing with the same types of challenges, but then when you look at the geographic mix, we don't have that same percent of gross margins that we do here in the U.S. Just one little additive. We, when we purchased the Bang business, we had to purchase their inventory. I believe it was about $30 million of inventory, and we had to do it on a stepped-up basis, which means that typically, that inventory would be acquired and acquired by us for something much less, you know, $15 million-$20 million.
But we had to bring it in at $30 million, because that was the step-up basis following the accounting rules. So we have a little bit of that, that we filtered through on Q3. We have some remaining on Q4. So there's always these little noise, that we call it, but overall, I, you know, like what I see so far with respect to the margins.
Great. We have time for one more question. If we have any more questions. I see a couple of hands there.
Thanks. Peter Grom from UBS. Tom, maybe just to follow up on that, could you maybe help us understand how different fourth quarter gross margins might look versus what we've seen here today?
If you're asking about the fourth quarter, I can't comment on fourth quarter, if that's what the question. It was worth a try. Yes. Okay.
H e, you did make a point that... And I don't know, I didn't understand the point either. So I don't know how to answer this, but I think what Tom said, and I maybe he'll tell me if I'm wrong or not, but I think what he was saying was that Q4 will be consistent with 2023 Q3, but not consistent with 2024, 'cause he has better expectations for 2024. Is that what you said, Tom?
I'm gonna say yes.
Okay.
Without dissecting that any further.
I think that answered it because there was—
That's it
... a question in my mind as well.
Yeah.
What the hell is he saying?
I always point out there's always some noise that's going on, and that's, I'm gonna agree with what you said.
Great. Great. That's a great way to end. Rodney and Hilton, you wanna-- any parting goodbye words or... I think we're done with the Q&A session.
Yep. Just thanks, everybody, for attending. As we all know, it's the first time in four years, and I see a lot of familiar faces. Thank you. Thanks very much, and we, you know, we're quite excited about the new year. We have some, you know, plans to try and improve our execution and get our, you know, sell rate up. You know, one of the things we did, you know, find we struggled a little bit within 2023 was getting focus for this large range of ours, and I think we are taking steps to address that. And so we're pretty excited about 2024, and we've got great products, great innovation.
The key is obviously to get those products on the shelf and get sufficient distribution, and that's what we're gonna focus on and work on this year very much so. We think we're, you know, gonna have a good year. We're happy with where we are, and thank you for your support. Thanks very much.
Thanks, everyone, for attending today.
Thanks for coming, everybody. I think our webcast is over. I think I mentioned it earlier, and again, just because it's still flu season, there's still COVID around, you're welcome to hang a little bit if you like. Some of the guys will be here, but maybe keep your distance a little bit. Okay. Thanks. Good seeing everybody. I didn't say that. No?