USA: MillerCoors now has only one owner

The sun rose on MillerCoors' Chicago headquarters on October 11 just the same as the day before. It was, as MillerCoors CEO Gavin Hattersley often says, business as usual, but with one small exception.

"The biggest change is we are now the largest American-owned brewer, and that's a big deal for me. I'm quite excited," Hattersley said in a phone interview to Chicago Tribune on October 11.

No longer a joint venture, MillerCoors now has only one owner, as of October 11 — Molson Coors, now the third largest brewer in the world. Technically speaking, Molson Coors is an American-Canadian company, with dual corporate headquarters in Denver and Montreal, but the vast majority of its shareholders are in the U.S. — hence Hattersley's point.

As the foam settles on Anheuser-Busch InBev's roughly $108 billion acquisition of SABMiller, which closed on October 10, forming the largest beer company in the world, MillerCoors remains focused on its goal of turning its business around.

"We have a lot of work to do to get back to (sales) growth," Hattersley said.

In order to gain regulatory approval for the so-called megabrew deal, SABMiller sold its 58 percent stake in MillerCoors to Molson Coors, which already owned the rest, for $12 billion. It remains to be seen how the change of ownership will affect MillerCoors' stated goal of achieving sales volume growth by 2019.

In acquiring the rest of MillerCoors, Molson Coors projects at least $200 million a year in savings, mostly through eliminating overlap in purchasing and global supply chain, by the fourth full year. MillerCoors will remain headquartered in Chicago; Hattersley said impact to staffing at the Chicago office would be "little to none."

"A lot of people have their eyes on MillerCoors and will it change. We have their statement. We'll see what happens," said Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer's Insights, a trade publication covering the beer industry.

The larger question is how the beer industry in general aims to recapture market share ceded over the past decade, Shepard said. Despite the craft beer boom, which is now slowing, many consumers, and particularly women, now favor wine and spirits.

Contrary to Hattersley's "business as usual" mantra, MillerCoors has been busy trying new things to reclaim those lost consumers. In just the past year, it acquired four craft breweries and launched Henry's Hard Soda.

More craft acquisitions could be coming, though Hattersley said his preference would be to first work on integrating those recently acquired, which include: Texas-based Revolver Brewing, Terrapin Beer Co. in Georgia, Oregon's Hop Valley Brewing Company and San Diego.-based Saint Archer Brewery.

MillerCoors also is trying to breathe new life into its top-sellers, Miller Lite and Coors Light, to reach new consumers, such as women, millennials and Latinos. As one example, Coors Light has changed its advertising to appeal directly to women as well as men. In recent commercials, strong and athletic women are featured doing yoga and running through an obstacle course.

Another key part of the MillerCoors turnaround will be turning around the flagging sales of economy beers like Miller High Life and Keystone Light, Hattersley said. Though both are declining, they still represent the third and fourth top-selling brands respectively in the MillerCoors portfolio, according to data from IRI, a Chicago-based market research firm.

11 October, 2016