Introducing Danone, along with Gaurav Jain, our Global Tobacco Analyst, Ian Simpson, our European HPC Analyst, Alex Sloane, our European Ingredients Analyst, Patrick Folan, our European Food and HPC Analyst, and Mandeep Sangha, who also works on European Beverages and then not to forget, Rupert Trotter, our Global Consumer Staples and European Luxury Goods Industry Specialist, so obviously, we have a full complement of coverage here with us today. As I mentioned, the conference is in its thirty-third year, which is just remarkable, but I guess time flies when you're having fun.
I won't try to guess the number of inflationary or emerging market growth or commodity cycles that have been discussed over those years, but surely it is the enduring nature of the staples industry that has allowed our conference to remain as relevant as it has been, keeping its annual placeholder on everyone's calendars, but also to keep growing. This is a team effort, and we appreciate all the hard work that our management teams put in to make these on-stage sessions and meetings possible every year. The same goes for our incredible Barclays events team. Thank you so much for your hard work and very, very high standards. So we hope everyone is well rested and well-caffeinated, and we are pleased to host another year with a great lineup and look forward to all the listening, the questioning, and thinking that is to come over the next few days.
In keeping with tradition, our entire team will be very easy to find over the next two nights at the newly redecorated and rebranded hotel lobby bar, Fellini, and once again, also tomorrow, once the content concludes for the day, we're going to be hosting a private reception in the Matria Private Dining Room and Terrace on the first floor of the hotel, and on Thursday, at the close of the conference, Boston Beer will host their annual reception, even though their presentation is earlier in the day, so a little bit of a, a change versus prior years, so plenty of opportunities outside of the more formal conference sessions to catch up, compare notes, and engage in the fun and healthy debate that makes what we do so much fun.
And as always, we appreciate any and all feedback about what you like about the conference and what can be improved going forward. So with that, thank you everyone for being here, and we're going to kick things off with Constellation. Thank you. I guess I'll stay here. Is that okay? Is that weird?
It's okay.
All right. All right. Quick transitioning.
That's right. Here we are.
I feel like I'm in a very different zone. Okay. Great. We have Constellation Brands kicking off the conference this year. We have Bill Newlands, the company's President and CEO, and Garth Hankinson, the company's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bill, Garth, thank you so much for being here today. Since we had you here a year ago, you hosted the Investor Day, which we thought was very quantitative, probably more than I think we expected, and a lot of people did. Then you gave the update on the medium-term algorithm. We've got lots of volatility in the marketplace and total beverage alcohol, so we've got lots to talk about today.
So first, as I'm sure many of you have seen, you issued updated fiscal 2025 guidance this morning, lowering the top line below the Medium-Term Algorithm, but with better cost savings and below-the-line items that keep you aligned with the double-digit EPS growth of that same algorithm. So could you just talk a little bit more about the puts and takes that drove the updates you made this morning?
Sure. Why don't I start with that? We took a look at our top five markets, California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and what we were seeing is that those markets, which are roughly half of our business, have been a little slower. They're in the low single-digit growth profile, and they're big. Partly, what we're seeing is there are also markets that are over-indexed in the Hispanic community, and there's been a bit of an uptick. As most of you know, the Hispanic consumer represents over half of our total volume. We've seen an uptick in the unemployment rate with that consumer. However, if you look at the other sort of forty-five states, we're up high single digits, and the business continues to accelerate in those markets. I think the important thing to recognize is this is an election year.
If you look back at every sort of four years where there's a real question in consumers' minds as to who's going to be elected president, people tend to pull in a bit, and that's part of what we're seeing, is you're seeing a bit of that consumer wariness. Most consumer companies are saying the same thing, and unfortunately, we're not quite immune to that. The important part, though, and you noted it, is because of some of the terrific cost savings agendas, we're actually going to spend more against our business in the back half of this year, than we had planned. We have raised the lower end of our operating income on our beer side because of the strength of that. Let me make clear, we're not cutting our marketing.
In fact, we're going to spend more money on our marketing in the back half of this year than what we'd originally planned. And I think it's also important to recognize we're still gaining share. We're up in our fiscal year to date, 1.3 share points in the beer business. We're 4.5 points better than CPG, if you look at Circana data. So our business remains very, very strong, and we're looking forward to a good back half of the year.
Yeah, I mean, Lauren, thanks for the question, and the only thing I'll add on to Bill is a few points here. You know, one, in addition to some of the macro consumer headwinds that we've seen, beer, to a much lesser degree, the top line of beer is also being impacted a little bit by a couple of other factors. You know, one being some lapping from last year with Modelo Oro and the Modelo Especial awareness pump that we had, as well as some betterment trends. That being said, as you both noted, we've gotten to the cost savings initiatives a bit faster than expected and which has provided incremental benefits to the company. The progress on there has really kind of come from our contract renegotiations and our logistics initiatives, and we're using some of those incremental benefits-...
to invest incrementally in our in brand building. We're doing this mainly in national TV and with retailers. It's not promo or discounting or couponing, and it's with our biggest brands. Likewise, in wine and spirits, we're doing the same. We're taking that same approach. We're investing incrementally in some tactical pricing actions as well as marketing actions to support the demand of our largest, most important wine brands. Unlike beer, though, the cost savings agenda hasn't yielded enough results to offset some of the deleveraging, which is what's driving the bottom line down there a little bit. But if I think about this from an enterprise-wide perspective, it's very much a positive story, and I kind of leave you in this question or the answer to this question with sort of four points.
One is, we made a prudent adjustment to top-line expectations for our beer business. A bit of a, you know, marginally lower dose versus the long-term growth algorithm. But again, we expect to deliver the bottom line as we laid out our guidance, in fact, be at the lower end of our prior guidance. Point number two is wine and spirits. The trends have got a little bit harder and worsened since the beginning of the year, and obviously, that's leading to the impairment. Important for everyone to remember that the impairment's non-cash, so it doesn't impact operating cash flows or free cash flows. Third, again, as Bill referenced earlier, in light of these guidance changes, we're still gonna deliver double-digit EPS...
or still expect to deliver double-digit EPS growth this year and lower the bottom of the range, given some of the cost savings improvements that we've seen. And then finally, if we think about this from a capital allocation perspective, both our priorities and our execution remain unchanged. We still expect it to be at three times leverage this fiscal year. We started this fiscal year at three point two, ended Q1 at three point one, expect to be at three times. We've continued to pay our dividend, $185 million in Q1. Through the first half of the year, we've repurchased $450 million worth of shares, an acceleration versus the first half of the year.
Again, free cash flow, operating cash flow doesn't change, and we continue to invest in the beer business.
Just, just for clarity, we raised the lower end.
We raised the lower end. What'd I say?
The other way around.
Sorry about that. Raised the lower end.
Good catch. One question that I've had from people just kind of milling about before sitting down this morning was the degree to which the guidance adjustment on beer revenue simply takes into account the softness you've seen in the quarter itself, or also, you know, how are you thinking about the balance of the year? Because you've referenced that it's macro, you've referenced, right, the unemployment. So how, if you have tempered your expectations for beer in the back half of the year, and sort of does it need to improve from what we're seeing at, from an industry standpoint or not?
No, I don't think it needs to improve. Obviously, if you're going to make a revision, you want to make a revision with the expectation of what you expect the rest of the year to be. And you know, Garth will probably go into it, but if you look at many of the macro trends, you know, the belief is that unemployment was gonna stabilize, inflation's gonna continue to come around, the election will be behind us, and people will understand exactly where we sit. That usually opens up people's purses a bit. So we believe this is reflective of what you would expect to see for us for the rest of the year.
Not bad.
All right.
Okay, great. I'm gonna change gears. So it's been a little bit over a year since you announced the collaboration agreement with Elliott. Could you just talk a little bit about, like, what learnings have come from that relationship to date? And also, are you where you want to be from a corporate governance perspective? I think there was another recent change on the board, so maybe you could speak to that as well.
Sure. It's been a very collaborative relationship. When they first came to see us, they had a few thoughts in mind, many of which we were already doing or had or planned to do, so they've talked to us, for instance, about adding financial expertise to our board. That's something we felt we needed to do, and we've added two folks, who are financial experts, to our board. We've recently brought on our first independent Chair in Chris Baldwin, which has gone very, very well. A lot of governance changes have occurred over the course of that interaction, but we're still doing more. For the first time, we have an outside group that's done a full assessment of our board, including individual assessments of individual board members. That hasn't been done before.
So we're continuing to evolve our governance approach at the board level, and I think Elliott's been very helpful to us in that.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I would add on there, as Bill said, right, I mean, the discussion and the relationship with Elliott has been very positive, as it is with all of our large shareholders.
True, yeah.
Those conversations, and again, to double down on what Bill said there, a lot of what they came to us with were things we already had in motion. So we were. Our discussions focused around runway for beer as well as best-in-class beer margins and how do we maintain those. You know, the steps needed to, you know, get wine and spirits on a trajectory where it's adding value, and then third, you know, our capital allocation priorities. Again, very consistent with what we've heard from other large shareholders, and we welcome those conversations with shareholders. We see that as really a dialogue, and again, welcome the feedback from everybody who's here as well.
Okay, great. Okay, so let's go back to longer-term trends, beer and beverage alcohol. So beer, let's call it until the last two years or so, right down one to plus one in terms of industry volume, and now you've had more pronounced declines prior two years, and it seems like we're, you know, on track for that again, industry-wise, right? So fully understanding your portfolio's relative positioning, continued share gains, and long-term opportunity, we're just kind of curious what assumptions or thought, you know, underlies your assumptions through fiscal 2028 for beer industry volume trends?
Well, at the risk of being the master of the obvious, there have been a lot of changes in the beer business in the last year. I think the important part to think about is you often see, and I touched on it briefly already, but you often see some moderation before an election year cycle, and I think you're seeing that, and I think you're seeing it across all alcohol beverage. It's not unique to beer. But you know, our belief is beer has fairly consistently been in that range of sort of plus one to minus one for a number of years. I think that's likely to be roughly what you see going forward. I think the important part is that we're in a position to continue to gain share in that marketplace. We have brands that are growing.
We are putting our toe into new areas, like things like Corona Non-Alcoholic or Modelo Aguas Frescas, areas that go into sort of new occasions and new situations. Pacifico continues to be a real success story. Our Chelada business continues to be a real success story. So, you know, our view is we're going to continue to be the share-gaining leader. You're gonna continue to see a strong growth profile, and, you know, as Garth and I often joke, I'm sure most any CPG company would love to have our income statement.
I think it's also. I mean, I know, I know the question, Lauren, was specific to the category, but I think it's important to remind people, like, what are, what are the, the building blocks of our outlook through 2028, in, particularly in our beer business, right? And as we've said, we'll deliver some high single digits, 7-9% top-line growth. You know, that's, that's really underpinned by sort of three things. That's gonna come from distribution. We've always said that's gonna be about 40-50% from distribution, about 20-40% in innovation, and about 30% in demographics. If we click into those, just a little bit more detail.
On distribution, we laid out at our Investor Day our plan to add 500,000 incremental points of distribution, really across every region of the U.S. We've had really good success with that so far. In FY 24 and FY 25, we've gotten low double-digit gains in that front, and we continue on with our Shopper-First Shelf initiatives that have been very, very successful. On innovation, you know, the 20%-40% is anchored in kind of what we've been able to achieve in the last five years, which has been about a 30% contribution from innovation, and it's important for everyone to understand that innovation for us isn't just new-to-the-world products. That's line extensions, flavor enhancements, and that's pack size.
Finally, on demographics, you know, the LDA Hispanic consumer is expected to increase about two times the rate of the general consumer, so that's a real tailwind for us. The general consumer is also an opportunity for us. If you look across our portfolio, about 50% of our business comes from the general consumer, broadly speaking. If you look at a brand like Corona Extra, about 66% comes from the general consumer, so that's a real opportunity for some of the rest of, for growth for us. You know, of that 70%-80%, volume is gonna account for sort of mid- to high-single-digits, and the rest comes from pricing. We've had really good traction with our pricing, as you've seen.
We know we've done a really nice job of being able to take enough pricing to, you know, the last couple of years, help offset some of the higher inflation. In years going forward, we'll expect that to account for more of that, but we've been able to do that without impacting the momentum of the top line. So it's a really winning formula.
Yeah. Okay. On that, you talked about that 70% of the growth expected to come from the general population. How do you balance going after that while maintaining the authenticity?
Mm-hmm
... of the brand?
That, that's a really key point. You know, the brands have to be authentic. And I know that sounds simple, but it's a very true statement. You know, I think a great example is to think about the fact that we've only really advertised Modelo, even though it's the number one beer by dollars in the country, to the general market population for the last seven years, which is a relatively small period of time when you think about it. But part of what we've seen is the general market makeup of our Modelo business has gone from roughly 20% of the business to 45% of the business in that window of time. Take Corona as the example. That's 70% in the general market.
So when you think about the possibilities, for a brand like Modelo going forward, I don't want to say they're endless, 'cause that would probably be a little ridiculous, but it's massive. It's massive. And then, you know, when you look at the two biggest share markets that we have, which is Nevada and California, it's more than twice the share we have across the rest of the country on average. So there's just tremendous runway. But your point is really true. We stay true to what these brands stand for. We're not trying to do an IPA in Modelo. It just wouldn't be relevant or appropriate.
These are Mexican heritage brands that are reflective of great product in the bottle and very refreshing, and therefore, we think there's a long runway for particularly for Modelo.
Okay. So, so in that vein, I mean, we do get a lot of questions about that total addressable market-
Sure
... for Modelo, right? And we've done our own attempt at kind of in-depth work, looking at assuming continued share gains in key markets and use California as that best-in-class reference point. So are there any markets that where you see structural factors that could prevent Modelo from achieving the number one spot? Like, how much do demographics matter in a given market, or do you see the top share position as a viable end goal for, you know, all states?
Yeah, I think it actually is. I mean, it may not be every one of the 50 states, but let's use the biggest one to give the example. In LA, Modelo Especial is bigger than the next four brands combined, and we're still gaining share, and we're still growing in that market, despite the fact that we've got tremendous market share. You then look across the country, and the upside that exists in so many other markets from a share gaining perspective. Remember, our household penetration on Modelo is less than Corona, and that's still less than some other domestic brands. So again, a lot of opportunity. Garth often talks about the number of distribution points that we have lined out, that we covered in depth at our investor conference last November.
There's just so much opportunity for us to continue to become more important. Last year, we were number one in thirteen markets. We're number one now in fourteen markets. When you think about that, I don't think that's a big number, even though we're the number one beer in the country by dollars. Our belief is there's just tremendous runway, just purely talking about Modelo, irrespective of Pacifico, which I'm sure you'll ask about at some point.
And I'll just add really quickly to that, too. I mean, as Bill referenced in response to your first question, we're growing in 45 states.
Yeah.
Right? Or, you know, in the other 45 states. Those include states that you wouldn't think are traditionally, you know, fit right into the demographic of the Hispanic consumer. So you think of some states, particularly, you know, in the Southeast, where we're seeing really good growth. And that goes into how we think about marketing our brands. You see that, you know, if anybody watches college football, you'll see our presence in college football, particularly, you know, with the SEC. Though that's really meant to, you know, attract and drive demand in some of those states, again, that it would be less obvious states for us to win.
Okay, I do want to ask about Pacifico.
I figured you were gonna.
I know, 'cause I always felt like it was that third leg of the stool, and it. You know, but now it's scaled. Right now, we've gotten to where, I guess, passing the 20 million case milestone, it can start to matter. So that said, do you does the approach need to evolve at all, right, as the brand has gotten to more critical mass, kind of order? So because I feel like it's shifted a couple times in the last 8 or 10 years, or the approach to marketing Pacifico. So maybe what's gotten you to that 20 million case mark, and do you need to evolve from here with it hitting that critical mass?
I think the brand positioning's in a good spot. Living life to the fullest is something that people can rally around. I think the yellow can, you know, in the same way that the orange Veuve Clicquot did very well for Veuve Clicquot once upon a time. I would argue it's distinctive. It stands out. Brand positioning is working. It's easy to say, "Oh, yes, but it's all the West Coast." Granted, it's now the number two beer in Los Angeles. It's terrific. You've got places like New Jersey and Texas and Illinois and Florida that are up anywhere between 25% and 70%, depending on the individual market. You're seeing real penetration with new audiences.
It tends to be a bit younger than the rest of our profile, for some of our other brands, so we just think it has a long runway. The one thing that we've worked really hard at is to do it slowly and intelligently. You know, you never want to find yourself in a position where you put something into the market, and they have to pull it out. That's never a great scenario, so we've been very careful as to where we put it, and it's reflective of the sheer growth profile that it's had over the last few years.
Corona. So Corona Extra depletion has declined in the first quarter. But you still expect the depletion growth this year. And at the Investor Day, you spoke to low single-digit growth as a medium term for the brand. So can you just talk a little bit about what gives you the conviction to continue growth of that brand, and especially pointing out how significant it is with general market consumers already?
Sure, you bet. Corona skews a bit toward the east, and the east, in the first part of this year, had a lot of squirrely times. The weather wasn't great, particularly around a number of key holiday seasons. But what I'd say is Corona continues to be important, and the family is doing well. Familiar, as an example, is up double digits. Corona Non-Alcoholic continues to just explode in the marketplace. So the brand family and what Corona as a brand entity stands for is still very strong, and we think Corona's gonna be just fine in the near term. We don't expect it to have the same growth profile that Modelo or Pacifico has, but it's still gonna be just fine in that low double digit growth profile look.
Okay. All right, great. Let's shift gears a little bit, because I've been really interested in the language you used at the Investor Day around transitioning from builder to operator. And we've seen real achievements on productivity, and also you've pointed out the cost savings today, right, that are enabling you to invest more in the business than originally planned. But I think you've already done $260 million through the first quarter, right, of cost savings, and it's a $300 million program through fiscal 2028. So rather front-loaded, it would seem, and I feel like it also seems maybe fair to ask if that's kind of the low-hanging fruit, and that there's more to come, right? That's 'cause through fiscal 2020, we've got a long way to go, but only $40 million of savings left.
I think it's fair to say that we're ahead on that agenda. We hired a chief procurement officer three years ago, and he's done a tremendous job. A lot of it with digital tools. You know, we've heard us talk a lot about working on the digital side of our business, and that area is a great example of where it's really brought a fair amount of our ability to do a better job, really, from soup to nuts, logistics, procurement, you name it. That's allowing us to spend more against our business and to put more at the bottom line than what we had anticipated.
Yeah, I mean, to your question, you know, obviously, we've gotten after it faster than expected. So the results are coming in, you know, certainly front-end loaded. You know, that being said, we won't be done when we hit $300 million. I mean, there's always going to be cost savings initiatives for us to go after, and that obviously is part of how we've laid out what are some of the drivers and drags of our operating margin targets going forward. But the team has taken a really holistic, creative approach to this. You've seen some of the benefits that we've gotten so far, as we've already touched on, have been out of procurement and logistics.
Things like going from wood pallets to plastic pallets, which is cost-effective and also does away with the single use of wood pallets. We've gone from 50-foot rail cars to 60-foot rail cars, and we're going to double stacking. Again, made the cost of logistics on a per case better, certainly, you know, better than expected, and some of those initiatives will continue to have benefits over the next one or two fiscal years as we continue to layer in the benefits of those. So that's what we've done. That's what we're doing from a merch procurement and a logistics perspective. Also, on procurement, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we've just done a better job on managing contract, renegotiating contracts.
But we're also taking this from builder to operators, not just on procurement and logistics, but also on how we operate breweries and becoming more efficient there. And you remember last year we announced kind of an unlock of sort of 2.5-3 million hectoliters of incremental capacity, which resulted in us being able to take down our CapEx estimates by $1 billion, right? So you know, we're doing a better job in that regard, and we're also doing a better job on the modular expansion that we outlined. So we're able to layer in that incremental capacity more in line when the capacity is needed.
In the guidance we announced today, you know, the improvement in interest is really kind of the delaying of capitalized interest as we're gonna bring on that capacity more in line with when we need it.
Okay. Okay, great. So I know 39%-40% is still the right medium-term goalpost for beer operating margins, but I'd love to talk a little bit more about gross margins. Specifically, so COGS inflation for this year is supposed to be high single digits. Well, the last commentary was high single digits, but the medium-term guidance is for low single digits from fiscal 25- 28. So is 2025 more challenging than you anticipated last fall, or how should we think about bridging back that low single-digit inflation number over the four-year period?
Right. Yeah, so I think it's important to note what we've said at our Investor Day versus what we do when we're providing annual guidance. And so at Investor Day, we were saying, as you think about the inputs, you think about those as low single digits when you take into account inflation net of our cost savings initiatives. What was excluded from that at Investor Day was then depreciation, which incremental depreciation, you know, is gonna be around 3.5%-4% a year, and then the volume impact as we increase volume. So when we laid out our guidance for the fiscal year, that included depreciation, and that included the volume impact. So it wasn't just inflation, it was total COGS going up as a result of the depreciation and inflation, net of, savings initiatives. And those are the...
Those are gonna be the drivers and drags as we go forward. You know, from a top-line gross margin improvement expectation, we're gonna continue to benefit from fixed overhead absorption as we layer in incremental volume. We're gonna benefit from more than the 2% pricing. We're gonna benefit from our cost savings initiatives. The drags on there will be just inflation and depreciation. So that's how we get comfortable with 39%-40%, knowing that in any year, we could be a little bit above that or a little bit below that, depending on, you know, headwinds or tailwinds.
Okay. All right, great. Last question on beer before we go over to wine and spirits. So tariffs have been coming up again in conversations coming to us as we approach the election. So proved to be basically a lot of noise in 2016 and 2018, without much impact, the actual business. But maybe you could talk about how you're thinking about this as a potential risk ahead.
Sure. I think it is important to point out that the last... Because it obviously relates specifically to a Trump administration. Our business was up double digits four years in a row during the last four years of a Trump administration. So I think it's also important to recognize, we work very closely with governments on both sides of the aisle. We work with the government of Mexico on both a federal and a local level, and our biggest trading partner is Mexico. The general belief is that if there is going to be a situation related to tariffs, it's highly likely that Mexico is not the main target, it's China.
So our belief is it's a little too early to get concerned about that particular topic, although, as Garth would be happy to tell you, you know, we have a group that is evaluating all potentialities, with the what ifs, if any particular situation occurred, what we do about it, as you would expect.
Yeah, I think you hit it.
Okay. Okay, great. So wine and spirits. I didn't revise my questions after this morning's update, so I got to figure this out. But generally speaking, right, I mean, still even notwithstanding the update this morning, you stood by the strategy you outlined last November, and it sounds like the path forward is really about execution. It feels like an increasingly big lift, given how weak the category backdrop has been. So maybe you can talk to us about kind of the path back to low single-digit top line, 2%-4% operating profit growth over the medium term. Like, how much is in your control versus the hold in the industry trends?
There's a number of things involved there. First of all, I'd say, the macro environment on wine, wine in particular, has been very bad, comparatively, worse than we expected. I'll say this, I'm very glad we sold 90% of the low-end brands that we did over the last few years, as we've weaned our portfolio down to a much more higher-end portfolio. A lot of work is being done on multiple fronts. One is we're focusing our attention on the sort of 10- 12 brands that really matter, and we're investing more against those. We're starting to see some green shoots against some of that work that's been done. Garth touched on it briefly a couple minutes ago. We are starting to see some benefit of that.
We're doing a lot of cost work on the wine side, as I think we needed to do, and we would expect to see some of that start to be reflected in the back half of the year. And our work with our distributor partners, I think, is better than what it has been in recent years. I think that's an important piece of what we're doing. But there's no question the macro environment, particularly on the wine side, has been more challenging than we anticipated.
Okay, and I guess, I mean, it sounds like this, like, because it's execution, right, a lot of this is going to be, by definition, gradual. Like, you can't really reposition a brand overnight.
True.
So how should we think about the next major milestones you're watching for, like, as validation that the strategy is working? Because it seems, again, like it's very hard to be spotting those green shoots when the industry's doing what the industry's doing.
You might remember at the beginning of this year, we said it was going to take nine to 12 months for this thing to fully kick in in terms of all the work. Garth and I spent months at the early part of the calendar year with our wine and spirits team, working out what needs to—what do we need to be doing, what the focus needs to be on, and what our operating plan was going forward. Recognizing just what you said, it doesn't turn on a dime, particularly when the macro environment is not as healthy as we'd like to see. But we're expecting to see incremental progress in the back half of this year against many of those initiatives that we've put in place as we start to track to that nine-to-12-month timeframe.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we're doing... just to double down on what Bill said, you know, we are expecting to see some improvements in the second half of the year, both from, you know, cost-saving initiative actions that we took in the first half of the year, as well as some of the support we're doing with the tactical pricing and marketing. Bill mentioned that we've started to see some green shoots because you have to look at it on a bit of a market-by-market basis. You're not necessarily seeing it in the syndicated data quite so much just yet, because every state is a little bit different as it relates to how you go about price support and when you can take pricing actions.
In those states, in those markets where the pricing has been in market the longest, that's where we're seeing those green shoots. We think that as that gets more fully baked across the rest of the country, we'll see those in the results. But we're controlling the controllables, right? I mean, we're taking costs out of the business. We're tactically investing in both pricing and marketing actions to support demand. Clearly, the category's got to be better, but you know, we're executing, certainly according to how we laid out at the beginning of the year.
Yeah. Okay. Let me take an opportunity then to also ask about total alcohol consumption. 'Cause it's interesting, right? Right now, we've got beer is actually I mean, the industry's rough, but beer is gaining share, which is interesting, right, in terms of total alcohol in and of itself. But, you know, we get asked all the time what is sort of the unanswerable, like, are people just drinking less? Why are they drinking? You know, is this just a temporary dynamic, or younger generations can change their behavior? Does, you know, adaptogens, Delta-9, like, do these things matter, GLP-1s? What's your current view on what we're seeing? I know you've articulated the macro impact on beer specifically, but just in general, on beverage alcohol consumption trends.
I think you are starting to see some change in the way consumers address things. The key areas that we always talk about are flavor, betterment, and premiumization. I think all of those are gonna continue to play. But I'll give you a great example. You know, twenty-plus years ago, the category that was viewed as dead on arrival was bourbon. Dead on arrival. It was like this every year. Today you would argue it's one of the healthier categories that exists in spirits, because interesting and dynamic new things were brought to the table that opened up the aperture for people to look at it in a different way.
I would argue, our Corona Sunbrew opens up that same kind of window for a consumer, a new consumer, to look at these, the products that have particularly been in this category in a slightly different way. I would argue Modelo Aguas Frescas could do the same thing. We haven't been as successful as an industry, nor have we, yet, on the wine side, creating some of that thing that opens up interest. I think the important part for us is we're investing in areas that can be approachable if the consumer does change, and that is on the betterment side. You know, on the wine side, we've done it with Illuminate from Kim Crawford or, and we've done the same thing in our Meiomi brand. You saw it in Corona Non-Alcoholic.
Nonalcoholic beer is only 3% of the total industry today, but it was 1% five years ago. So we're putting ourselves in position where if there is some movement with consumers, that we have an offering there to attract them if their behavior does change.
Okay, great. So in our final few minutes, I just want to talk a bit about capital allocation. So you laid out capital allocation plans very clearly last fall, leverage target of three times this year. You still have $2.6 billion left in the share buyback program at the end of the first quarter, and you've proven your willingness to respond opportunistically in the market. But over time, particularly when capital needs ease down the road, might we ever see a more programmatic approach to share repurchases?
Yeah, so I would say that, you know, this management team, for the last five years, has been pretty consistent with our capital allocation priorities and our execution. Obviously, you laid out what our capital allocation priorities are, so I'm not going to go back into those with more detail. But I think one of the things that's underappreciated about the Constellation story right now is that inflection point in free cash flow generation as the CapEx requirements to support the growth of our, you know, Mexican beer business start to subside. That's gonna give us lots of flexibility to do things like potentially do more programmatic share buybacks. Maybe, you know, we'll revisit things like how quickly do we pay down debt, do we adjust our dividend, or are there other opportunities to invest in the business?
So you know, we'll continue for the balance of this fiscal year to be opportunistic in the approach on share repurchases, but certainly, as we think about those opportunities, we'll do so in a whether that is investing in the business, share repurchases, dividend, debt paydown, we'll do so in a manner that's very financially disciplined and in a manner that delivers, you know, the maximum amount of shareholder value.
Okay, perfect. All right, we're gonna wrap it there. Bill, Garth, thank you so much for being here.
Great. Thanks for having us.
Thank you.