For Q&A, we'll just jump right in. Gavin, I wanted to start with you. As many in the room probably know, you've recently announced your intention to retire at the end of the year. This will be your final time with us in Paris as CEO. We're sad to see you go, but excited for your future. I guess, as you reflect on your tenure, first as CEO of MillerCoors and now as Molson Coors since 2019, what would you say are the accomplishments you're most proud of? What is your assessment of the company's positioning against future challenges and opportunities?
Yeah, thanks for having us again, Steve. Look, I mean, the thing I am most proud of, and I mean, it's probably less maybe important to the investment community, but it's really important to us as our people and our culture. I mean, we've been around for hundreds of years, and our culture has been developed over a long time. I think we've really made some great strides over the last six years. I think that has allowed us to weather innumerable challenges that we've had to weather over the last six years, some which other companies have had to weather as well, but some have been unique to us. I think I leave a legacy of great people, strong bench, and a really cohesive and strong culture. I feel really good about that. I feel really good about our balance sheet.
I think our balance sheet, compared to what it looked like when Tracey and I took over Molson Coors six years ago, it is in a substantially better place. Our leverage is below 2.5x. We've got a really strong capital allocation plan, which we've executed against, I think, very nicely. Our cash flow is substantially more than it was at that time. I feel really good about that. I think the legacy that I'm leaving for, whoever succeeds me, from a balance sheet point of view, is strong. We're making a lot more money, which is also pretty helpful. Our core brands are in a great place. I think we proved a number of our skeptics wrong when we had the dislocation in the premium light space. We've retained almost all of the share that we gained.
We have certainly retained and actually gained a little bit more shelf space than we had about a year ago, mostly through Coors Banquet. Coors Light and Miller Lite have held their own quite nicely. I am feeling really good about that. We have launched the best innovation we have had in 25 years. It is a top 10 brand already for us. In Madri, it has expanded into a few other countries. We have got Peroni, which we are just about to, and you will see it in the data that is out there, the public consumer data, Nielsen IRR, how Peroni is trying to do what we said it was going to do, which is accelerate as we got all the stars aligned around that brand. There is our move into the non-alc space. I think that the acquisition of Fever-Tree is exciting.
This year is obviously a transition year for us as we've bedded down in our network. It plays a nice role in the intersection between alcohol and non-alcohol. I think the opportunities through our distribution network are strong. I could probably go on for a bit longer, Steve. I think those are the high points I'll cover off on.
Yeah. As you can see from Gavin's answer, he's not done yet. He's still sprinting to the finish line. In that context, when we zero in on the here and now, look to complete 2025 against just a difficult backdrop, what are you most focused on in terms of making sure you get right, executing on over the balance of the year?
Yeah. I mean, you're right. It is a tougher economic environment, macroeconomic environment, consumer sentiment's tough. We are really focusing in on the pillars of our strategy. We are focusing and making sure that we do not drop the ball from a share point of view on our core brands, that we keep the momentum of Coors Banquet going. We've talked for a while now about the potential behind Peroni. We also talked about the fact that a lot of those plans were going to hit in the second quarter. They are hitting now. There is a lot of focus on Peroni inside our team to make sure that we execute appropriately, right? I mean, we've now got all the stars aligned on that brand. It's being produced in the US. Our cost of goods sold is a lot less.
Producing it in the US allows us to introduce SKUs that we have not perhaps been able to utilize before. The significant margin expansion that we have got from onshoring, we are now able to invest through additional marketing, which we are doing. All of that has given us a really great story to take to retail. We are seeing the benefit of that in substantially enhanced shelf space. A lot of focus is going on that. Obviously, bedding down and transitioning Fever-Tree is really important. I am excited about that brand. I think it really has the potential to accelerate our non-alc portfolio meaningfully. I think Zoa will benefit from that because we are putting a lot of extra, a couple of hundred extra folk behind our non-alc activities who will not only be focusing on Fever-Tree. They will also be focusing on Zoa. I am feeling really good about that.
Now is the time for us not to drop a ball because we are busy transitioning across to largely our distributor network. It is really important that we keep the momentum of that brand growing. North of the border, Canada, we have gained share for eight consecutive quarters. Making sure that we keep the foot on the accelerator up there with brands like Coors Light and Molson Canadian is seeing a resurgence. Miller Lite, which plays in the above premium space up there, is doing really nicely. Making sure we do not drop any balls there either. I am pretty much, Steve, doing what I have been doing my whole career, right? I am going to run through the tape and then head off.
Great. Because you were mentioning Fever-Tree and Zoa, maybe I'll ask about it now. Just what is the opportunity there that you see? I mean, both for each brand individually, and then, as you say, the linkages between them and how they may sort of reinforce each other, especially with your distributor network.
Yeah. I mean, just at the very bottom of the pyramid, I suppose, is that we've taken on roughly 500,000 hectoliters, which is a meaningful size brand for our distributor network. And it's profitable. That doesn't often happen when you try something new. We've taken on an established brand. I'm not saying it's going to be easier, but it will be easier than, for example, building a brand from the bottom up, like we've had to do with Zoa. With all the extra resourcing that we're going to put behind Fever-Tree, at the same time, they will be focusing on Zoa. They'll be focusing on Naked Life, which is the non-alcoholic cocktail that we've brought from Australia. We've now got critical mass in that non-alc portfolio. Our distributors know we mean business there. Their reaction to the RFP was very strong.
They are clearly excited about it based on their reaction. I think the capability of our distribution network and the number of additional points of distribution, the outlets that they are going to get to, is going to be meaningful. It is also fairly underdeveloped, if at all, in the C-store chain, which, when you couple that with our push into the higher alcohol space through singles, through Blue Moon and Simply and Topo Chico, you layer onto that Fever-Tree. I think we have now an even better message to take to our C-store customers than we have ever had before. Yeah.
Okay. Very good. Like a lot of companies in general and here at the conference, Molson Coors recalibrated lower 2025 financial targets alongside calendar Q1 results. Tracey, I'll have you weigh in here in a bit. Just, I guess, walk us back in time and kind of the major drivers of that revision. As we sit here today, how do you see demand shaping up relative to your revised outlook?
I mean, the singular big issue that we did not have coming into this year is that we certainly did not predict or I do not think anybody predicted that the industry was going to be down as much as it was in the first quarter. We certainly did not have a down five on our bingo card. As we looked at that and as we looked into the future, we did see, and our guidance is predicated on an improvement in that. Getting back to not sort of where it has been for the last three years on an annual basis, but certainly for the balance of the year, we saw it migrating back to the sort of down three level, which is where it has been for the last several years. Why did we think that?
We had the data points in April, which showed that it had migrated back to 2%-3%. If you remember, Steve, we had a particularly tough summer last year from an industry point of view. Certainly, that makes our comps, June, July, August, a lot easier. When we factored all of that in and a settling down of the consumer environment and sentiment, that is what we baked into our ongoing forecast. We saw that for April. We saw that for a couple of weeks in the beginning of May. We have had some really tough industry numbers that have come out more recently. I hate blaming the weather and do not yet have the data to blame the weather entirely.
I think based on the markets, which seem to have been most affected over Memorial Day, they were the ones that had really poor weather. It was rainy in the Northeast, and temperatures were 20 degrees lower than they were last year. Once you've got a more fulsome assessment of what happened on Memorial Day, I'll be able to share it with you. We do not have that yet. That certainly is the emerging hypothesis. A lot of what happened over Memorial Day weekend was.
Cold, wet.
Was cold weather and wet. Yeah.
Okay. Tracey, so building on what Gavin just ran us through, there are just a number of timing puts and takes this year in the outlook. Just general shipment versus depletion considerations. You've got recycling last year's contract brewing excerpts we talked about, Zoa and Fever-Tree layering on. Maybe just help us with the kind of level set on those factors and maybe walk us through the financial implications as we think about the balance of the year.
Yeah. A lot of puts and takes, as you say. If we look at the volume that's coming out from a contract brewing point of view, that's 1.9 million hectoliters that we had in our volume last year. As we wound down the year, we had roughly in Q1 about 590,000 hectoliters that we were cycling. Q2 is a similar amount, about 570,000 hectoliters. It sort of continues to decline to the balance of the year where by the end of December, we would have cycled completely out of the contract brewing arrangement, which we're really happy with, by the way. It obviously is a headwind from a volume and a deleverage point of view. If I go back to the top line, we do have Fever-Tree, which is incremental. The consolidation of Zoa now is incremental.
It is offset by, if you recall, we sold our craft breweries. There is a little bit of a headwind from the craft breweries that is going to impact that. We have got premiumization built into our top line. Gavin spoke about our plans around Peroni. We have got Madri in the U.K. and now expanded into other markets that he mentioned. That is above premium. Our Canada business is doing really well as well. Miller Lite up there is growing. Miller Lite is an above premium brand up in Canada. There is a lot of portfolio shifting. If you recall, we have got a medium-term target of getting to a third of our brand revenue coming from the above premium side of the portfolio. About half of that we expect to come from beyond beer, which is things like Fever-Tree, Zoa, flavors, etc.
From a balance of the shipments, if you recall, we also were expecting a strike at our Fort Worth brewery at the beginning of last year. We built up inventory going into the summer. That was around 1.1 million hectoliters for Q1 and Q2. Q2 was about 350,000 hectoliters. As we go through the balance of this year, we expect our shipment and our retail to converge, mainly Q3 and Q4. Comps will be easier. As we look at G&A, for example, our G&A, we're expecting that to be higher this year. With the transition of Fever-Tree, we had transition costs. We mentioned about $30 million in Q1. There's another under $10 million coming in Q2.
Marketing, we're going to continue to invest behind our brands, our core brands in particular, but also around some of the above premium innovations, whether that be Fever-Tree, Zoa is getting incremental spend, Peroni. The fact that we're onshoring that, it frees up a lot of costs. We're investing that behind the brand. Brands like Coors Banquet, which just continues to grow, even in bad weeks, we're seeing good growth from Coors Banquet. That'll get incremental dollars as well. That's how we're kind of looking at the sort of balance of the year.
Perfect. As it relates to costs, you mentioned sort of the investment initiatives. Remind us where you stand on key cost considerations from an input perspective. I guess any updated thoughts around how you're managing through tariff-related volatility and then the productivity on the offsetting side?
Yeah. From a COGS point of view, obviously, again, the deleverage of the contract brewing is a headwind. Premiumization is also a headwind on the COGS side because generally, your above premium brands come at a higher COGS, but comes at a higher margin as well. We are happy to take that cost. From a commodity point of view, we have spoken about our extensive hedging program. From a tariff point of view, the work that we have done over the last number of years where we have actually diversified our to the US and to Canada, we import very little. The only impact that we have, I would say from a commodity stroke tariff point of view, is the Midwest Premium.
I think everyone is really challenged and frustrated by the Midwest Premium because it sort of went through the roof as people just mentioned tariff, but there is no fundamental reason why it should behave that way. We do hedge the Midwest Premium, but it is difficult and it is expensive and it is very. Obviously, as it relates to consumer sentiment and inflation, and that is something that we are watching. Every day, it is a little bit different.
Okay. Gavin, Tracey mentioned sort of the above premium initiatives that the company has and premiumization within your—I was going to say within your alcohol portfolio, but within your portfolio overall has been a big theme. In the current environment where we've heard a lot about value-seeking behavior amongst consumers, does the role of premiumization change at all in how you think about initiatives and allocate strategic capital?
No, it doesn't. It's an important component of our overall strategic pillars and arguably even more important for us to really get a bigger share of our net sales revenue into the above premium space. It doesn't change our focus or dilute our focus at all. From a consumer point of view, we've not seen much change in behavior, certainly from a brand point of view. Folks are not trading down in any noticeable way from a brand point of view. They might be making slightly different pack decisions. It is not changing our focus. Tracey mentioned that we're going to push hard on Peroni, Miller Lite up in Canada, Madri as it expands into additional markets. That will get extra marketing in our EMEA APAC division.
All of our brands in South Central America are in the above premium space, so we'll continue to push into that space. The short answer is no, Steve. It's not going to change our focus.
How do you think about long-term category growth, maybe kind of parsing US versus ex-US or however you want to—however you think about it? Has your thinking around those kind of normalized growth rates changed at all as we've seen fluctuations in more recent demand?
The industry in the U.S. and Canada have pretty much mirrored each other. They sometimes are a little different. By and large, I would say they are pretty similar. They have been pretty similar with the exception of what happened in Q1 for several years now. Certainly, that is a world that we see. It is one of the drivers behind us wanting to make sure that we become a total beverage company and not just a pure play beer company. We have been on that journey now for several years. I think we have laid a really nice platform and springboard for success as far as that is concerned. We have seen the U.K., in particular, has been more resilient. Central East Europe has been more volatile. Last year, we had a pretty good year from an industry point of view. This year is a little tougher.
It is also the macro environment, a slightly different macro environment to what we are experiencing in the US. Still, macro environment is influencing consumer confidence and driving more cautious behavior from a spend point of view.
Okay. Maybe to round out kind of the category dynamics and how number one is on-premise versus off-premise, dynamics you're seeing evolve over the current in the current environment, number one. I guess the mirror image of the question on premiumization, the core kind of power brands in your portfolio, is there appetite to lean more into those brands to meet consumers where they may be economically in the current environment?
From an off-premise point of view, Honors is performing slightly better than off. That has been a somewhat consistent theme for a while now. Certainly, we are seeing that right now. In the last few years, it has been more normalization of folks going to bars and restaurants post-COVID. I think we are kind of through that normalization now. We are still seeing folk spend more time in bars and restaurants for sure. As far as our core portfolio is concerned, we are certainly going to keep our foot on the pedal there. If you look at how Canada has gained share for the last eight straight quarters, it has been on the back of Coors Light and Molson Canadian more recent resurgence. We are going to continue to invest and push what is working up there, which are those two brands.
In our EMEA APAC operation, brands like Ožujsko in Croatia is a big brand. It's strong. Its market share within its space is doing very nicely. It's got more than half of the market. We will continue to lean in there. We will continue to focus on our value versus volume approach in the U.K. with Carling. If you cross back over to the U.S., as I said, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Coors Banquet gained a lot of shelf space over the last year. It's retained that shelf space by and large. Coors Banquet, in fact, has actually gained additional shelf space. I think the last number I saw was in the low teens of additional shelf space. That has helped us retain almost all of the market share that we gained a few years back. Coors Banquet's a really interesting brand, right?
It's been around for hundreds. I mean, it's been around for a long time. It goes back to the beginning. It is a big brand, and it's growing. Even in the weeks where you see the industry performing particularly poorly, Coors Banquet is just chugging along. Most of the time, it's growing double digits. In the really poor industry weeks, it's still growing, but at a slightly slower pace. It's attracting new consumers to our portfolio, whether it's Latino consumers, whether it's younger legal drinking age consumers are coming in through Banquet. They love the Western heritage. They love the heritage of the brand. They love the sort of original stubby bottles, which is unique in the marketplace. They love the marketing, whether that's Yellowstone or whether it's our program around firefighters and the first responders in the West.
I think we've got a formula with Banquet which is working really well, and we're gaining a lot of share from that. Yes, we're going to continue to lean into our core brands, not because consumers are trading down to them. We haven't seen that, but consumers want them.
Okay. Yeah, Coors Banquet, I mean, it's a multi-decade growth story.
It is.
Is it kind of lightning in a bottle, so to speak, in terms of it's just really unique? Or are there things that you have done over the course of the last half-decade on Coors Banquet that you can take as learnings and apply to other brands?
It depends who you talk to in our organization, right? If you talk to the marketing folk, they'll say this is entirely marketing. If you talk to the brewing folk, they will tell you it's a great high-quality product. If you talk to the sales folk, they'll tell you it's all the extra distribution we've got. I'd say it's all three of those things, right? I mean, I remember a few years ago at a sales conference, we actually put up a chart for our distributors where we showed them where distributors had Coors Light and Coors Banquet distribution and on display together, how both brands actually performed quite a lot better than those distributors that just had Coors Light.
Over the last couple of years, we've seen a narrowing of the gap on distribution between Coors Light and Coors Banquet, but there's still a long way to go. There's a lot of distribution upside for that brand. It was one of those seminal moments in the distributor convention where you can see and hear that something has landed. That landed with our distributor network, and they've been executing really well against that. Steve, it's a combination of all three of those things. Getting more distribution on Coors Light and Miller Lite is a little hard because they've got a lot of distribution. Closing that gap with Coors Banquet is a real opportunity for us.
Yeah. Okay. We've kind of alluded to a lot of change in the portfolio, a lot of reshaping in terms of the additions of Zoa and Fever-Tree and the investment of the Craft portfolio, etc. Maybe a question for both of you in terms of both the strategic desire for more portfolio reshaping and also the financial capacity to undertake it.
Yeah. As I said, I think as we look at our long-term growth algorithm of getting to about a third of our net revenue to come from our above premium portfolio, about half of that growth we expect to come from beyond beer. Part of that is expanding into spaces like we have done with Fever-Tree, which was a white space for us, but also something that our distributors are really excited about and get behind. We have said that from an M&A point of view, we like the string of pearls approach. We think it works for us.
The pearls, because of our ability to generate the significant free cash flow that we are able to generate and the fact that our balance sheet is so healthy, it does give us a lot of optionality, but it also means that those pearls could be a little bit bigger, like the investment that we made in Fever-Tree. Yeah, I mean, we've got the capacity. We want to do things though properly, things that does fill a white space. It does give us the right to win, but also that's scalable. Something like Fever-Tree is the perfect example of that. Yeah, we've got options. We certainly will look at things that fill all of those spaces that I just spoke about.
I know you get this question a lot, but how do you balance that consideration against the other capital allocation priorities, obviously investing in the business as we talked about, but you've got an ongoing buyback that's quite considerable. There's obviously the dividend that is very healthy. Is there a point at can you do both? Is there a point at which the M&A would take precedence over the share buyback?
Yeah. I mean, we do have models that we run our capital allocation decisions through. I would say that, again, with the strength of our balance sheet and free cash flow, we were able to do all of those things. If you just look at what we have done over the last number of years, we've invested in capabilities, whether that be in our breweries, whether that be through systems and tools, whether that be AI, for example, in our breweries where we actually use AI quite a bit, or whether that be returning cash to shareholders. You mentioned our share buyback program. It's a $2 billion buyback over five years. In the first six quarters, we've already utilized 40% of that. We're well ahead of where, if you just take a straight line, where we would be.
We actually think our share is a good investment. Reinvesting in our shares ourselves, but also part of that capital allocation is to sustainably grow our dividend. We have been doing that actually for the last number of years. I think depending on what gives our shareholders the highest return is where we are going to invest. Because we have the strong free cash flow, we do have the ability to flex, whether that be M&A or whether that be returning more cash to shareholders. I mean, it depends.
Okay. Gavin alluded to it a little bit in his opening, but as did you just now in terms of advances in organizational capabilities across a wide spectrum of initiatives. Are there specific capabilities that you feel you want to highlight as something that you've made the most advance on just in terms of your own improvement? Or I guess more importantly, are there places where you see true advantage versus the competitive set? I guess the other side of that is if you had one capability you'd want to further hone over the next year or two, what would it be?
Okay. Let me start and jump in if I miss anything. I think we are really proud of the capabilities that we've invested in, whether it be in the commercial space or the supply space. If you think about commercial, the capabilities that we've built around our insights and analytics has driven us to make decisions and innovations like Happy Thursday, where we looked at a cohort of legal drinking age consumer. We've got a consumer group that looks at that. We brought the bubble-free flavored malt beverage in Happy Thursday to market. It also gave us insights around our c-store strategy, say that quickly. It's things like where we're investing in higher ABV for our c-store single serve. Whether that be Blue Moon Extra or Simply Bold or Topo Chico Maxx, we haven't played in that space.
We've under-indexed in c-stores. What we've been able to glean from our insights is this is a place where the consumer is looking for higher ABV, single serve, c-store, quick run-in, run-out. We've just launched those three brands in c-stores. That's driven by our commercial insights. From a supply chain point of view, which I'm mostly proud of because it has driven returns, you can see that in our COGS per hectoliter. You can see that in the ability to mitigate some of the inflation that we're seeing as we've built two brand new automated efficient breweries in Canada. We've just completed the modernization of our Golden brewery, which is our largest brewery. It's going to drive a lot of efficiencies, a lot of waste out of the system.
We've built additional capacity from a brewing and packaging point of view in our U.K. business. We've built flavor capabilities, which we didn't have before. So now we can do all of those flavors, Simply, Topo Chico, Happy Thursday in our breweries. We've also built capability around variety packing, which is a lot of cost savings because we save a lot on logistics. I would say there's a number of things that we're really proud of. And again, I mean, you're starting to see those investments come through, especially on the COGS line, where our COGS per hectoliter is not as high as what it has been over the last couple of years, driving a lot of efficiencies, a lot of cost savings. Yeah, I don't know if I'm very proud of a lot of things.
You've covered all of them. In terms of wish list, in terms of one or two, whether it's on the supply chain or in market commercial or consumer insight building, is there one place or one or two places you'd really like to kind of make the next quantum leap?
I mean, I think we're all talking about AI. And so we're really actually proud of some of the investments we've made around supply chain using AI. Whether that be things like we call it smart SKU. What is the SKU we need in this market that's going to drive lower out of stocks or no out of stocks, but this distributor needs it in the market? We've done a lot of things around what are the smart SKUs that we need. AI has driven that. For me, using some of the AI capabilities is really.
The solve for that.
Yeah.
Okay. We've got a couple of minutes left, Gavin. I want to go back to today's operating conditions, there's a debate between the structural versus the cyclical, right? Obviously, skeptics around the industry's challenges are more structural, whether rooted in demographic headwinds or health and wellness headwinds or what have you. Obviously, more optimistic investors are on the cyclical side. Where do you stand in that? How do you separate the cyclical from any kind of structural considerations?
I think very clearly, Steve, I'm on the cyclical side. I think the macroeconomic environment's uncertain wherever you are in the world, right? And perhaps more so in some of the bigger markets in which we operate. That is a macro situation that will change and it will improve. Now, I can't tell you when exactly, but I'm certainly on the cyclical side.
Okay. In the last few minutes, Gavin, final question. If your successor was in the room with us today, what would be your key messages or words of advice for him or her? What's critical that they get right to best position the company for profitable growth throughout their coming tenure?
I could make some mischief now. I couldn't.
You could.
I think I'd start by saying that our board is supportive of our strategy. I think that's an important point. I think that my successor needs to treat our culture with care because I think it's a strong culture and I think it's a good culture. I think that there's a reason why some of the folk who choose to partner with us do. That is because of our culture, because of our people. I think to Fever-Tree and I think to Yuengling. We've got partnerships with a lot of folks. Some of them would surprise you. I think that's a strength of ours. I think it's because of our people and our culture.
I think that would be something I would take care with because it has been built up over a long time, not just in the last six years. I think that obviously Tracey talked extensively about the balance sheet and the strength of it. We generate a lot of cash. I think we have been really smart about how we have allocated that cash. We obviously believe that we are undervalued at the current price. As Tracey said, we have leaned into share buybacks. I think we have a double-digit cash return in our business. I think we are one of the best out there. It does give my successor optionality. I think we have proven particularly good at doing string of pearls M&A. If I was still around, I would be continuing that process because I think we have laid a nice foundation.
Obviously any CEO is going to put their own stamp on an organization. Every CEO does. I am sure the next CEO will as well. I think the foundations of our strategy are laid quite nicely. They can lean hard into some of those areas where perhaps we have not been as successful. Look at perhaps Above Premium in the U.S. market specifically. They could lean harder in there. I think they have got a really good brand with Peroni in the beer space and Fever-Tree in the non-beer space to really go after. Yeah, I think there is a lot of opportunity there. I feel good about our long-term growth algorithm. I feel good about it partly because of what Tracey said, right? As we are removing quite a few headwinds that we are experiencing this year from contract brewing and getting out of the craft space.
I look forward to seeing him or her progress.
Great. I thought you were going to say, "Make sure you always come to Paris in June." That would have been a good one.
Yes. This is a very good one to come to. Yes, I'll give them that advice.
I think that's a great place to end it. We're right at time. Thank you, Gavin. Thank you, Tracey.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining us. Appreciate it.
Thank you.