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Welcome to The Boston Beer Company first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Michael Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. This is Michael Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of The Boston Beer Company. I'm pleased to kick off our 2026 first quarter earnings call. Joining the call from Boston Beer are Jim Koch, Founder, CEO, and Chairman, and Diego Reynoso, our CFO. Before we discuss our business, I'll start with our disclaimer. As we state in our earnings release, some of the information we discuss, and that may come up on this call reflects the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future. Such predictions are forward-looking statements. It's important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's most recent 10-Q and 10-K.

The company does not undertake to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I will now pass over to Jim to share his comments.

Thanks, Mike. I'll begin my remarks this afternoon with an overview of our strategy and operating results before turning the call over to Diego to discuss our first quarter financial results and our financial outlook for the remainder of 2026. Immediately following Diego's comments, we will open the line for questions. In the first quarter, we were encouraged to see some signs of improvement in the total beer and RTD category, which we estimate was flat in volume compared to a decline of 4% for the full year of 2025. Beyond beer continues to outperform traditional beer in volume in measured off-premise channels with an increase of about 3% for the quarter compared to traditional beer, which slightly declined.

While these trends represent modest industry progress, we continue to anticipate volume headwinds for 2026, given a dynamic macroeconomic environment and evolving geopolitical developments that may impact consumer spending. With respect to the Boston Beer portfolio, we have not yet fully participated in the improvement in category trends. We are encouraged that Twisted Tea and Sun Cruiser together are growing depletions, driven by the strong performance of Sun Cruiser and some sequential improvement in Twisted Tea. Angry Orchard and Dogfish Head have now experienced four consecutive quarters of growth. However, Truly remains a meaningful portion of our mix and continues to lose share. We've also seen some softness in Samuel Hard MTN DEW. our first quarter depletions were down 4%.

As we expected, shipments trailed depletions at down 7%, reflecting first quarter 2025 shipments comparisons when distributors built inventory for our Sun Cruiser and Truly Unruly innovations. Additionally, improvements in the responsiveness of our supply chain to meet consumer demand led to moderately lower distributor inventory of four and a half weeks on hand at the end of the quarter versus five weeks on hand in the prior year period. We continue to make strong progress on our margin enhancement initiatives, delivering 49.3% first quarter gross margin, and we're on track to achieve our planned full year 2026 savings. The business is generating strong cash flow, and we have repurchased over $30 million in shares year to date.

Our priorities for 2026 continue to be supporting our category-leading brands to improve market share trends, launching strong innovation, and continuing to expand our gross margins. We remain focused on controlling what we can control and executing in the marketplace, and I'm confident in our operating plans for the key summer selling season. Incremental advertising support for our brands following a significant step-up in 2025 is on track while maintaining flexibility to adjust toward the lower end of our financial guidance range and brand investments as we monitor the energy cost environment. With respect to our full year outlook, we expect the factors that I discussed on our last call, including tighter consumer budgets, pressure on the Hispanic consumer, and moderation trends to continue.

Based on year-to-date depletion trends and our latest outlook for the balance of the year, we are slightly narrowing our 2026 volume range to down low single digits to mid-single digits from our prior guidance of flat to down mid-single digits. As we look to the summer, we're highly focused on executing our marketing plans with strong partnerships, programming for the U.S. men's soccer team during the World Cup and local market activations. We expect to slightly increase our total portfolio shelf space this spring while we continue to make progress on regaining lost display space. I'll now provide an overview of our brand performance and plans. As I mentioned on our last call, a key priority for 2026 is to improve share trends and grow volume in the hard tea category through progress in Twisted Tea and the continued expansion of Sun Cruiser.

On a combined basis, Twisted Tea and Sun Cruiser delivered depletion volume growth in the first quarter. As a reminder, to the extent that Sun Cruiser sources volume from Twisted Tea, this is revenue and margin accretive for us. Twisted Tea off-premise measured channel depletion trends improved sequentially in the first quarter, but are not yet where we want them to be. Measured channel sales dollars declined 4% in the quarter compared to a decline of 9% in the fourth quarter against more difficult prior year comparisons. Twisted Tea continued to gain distribution and shelf space with lower velocities reflecting broader category headwinds, reduced feature and display activity, primarily due to the expansion of RTD Spirits and some interactions with spirit-based hard tea. The declines are primarily concentrated in the original lemon tea and variety packs, particularly in 12-pack sizes, as previously discussed.

Encouragingly, Twisted Tea Extreme and Twisted Tea Light are both growing and gain shelf space in the spring resets. We're seeing much better trends in single serve across the full brand portfolio, which indicates continued consumer engagement with the Twisted Tea brand. Far this year, we've increased advertising investment, added new partnerships, and launched new pack sizes and Twisted Tea Extreme flavor innovation. This summer, we'll be running our high-performing Tea Drop national ads complemented with in-store display programs and always-on media for Twisted Tea Extreme and Twisted Tea Light. We've expanded partnerships including Barstool's number one sports podcast, Pardon My Take, and with Realtree Camo. Lastly, we continue to increase our investment in Hispanic and Hispanic language brand content, including new media and digital content, to continue to widen the brand's appeal.

Our pack size innovations, including lower price point four-packs, a 16-ounce can, and a 24-can value pack, and the Twisted Tea Extreme variety pack are now in market. While it is still early, we believe these offerings will continue to provide more options for consumers to engage with the brand and benefit volumes over time. Sun Cruiser has quickly grown to a top five spirits RTDs and is the fastest growing brand in the category by volume across combined measured and off-premise channels. Built in bars and restaurants, Sun Cruiser is the leading RTD spirits tea and lemonade brand in the measured on-premise channels. On-premise remains a key driver of trial, and we are investing in the channel alongside our off-premise expansion.

We expect strong distribution gains for Sun Cruiser in 2026, but continue to expect measured off-channel, off-premise data coverage to be lower versus our other brands due to Sun Cruiser's strong premise in on-premise and independence. Advertising support for Sun Cruiser includes content around the Let the Good Times Cruise media campaign, which includes television, paid social, and digital advertising and key influencers. We will be present where Sun Cruiser fits into our drinkers' lifestyles with a particular focus on music and sports. We recently announced a multiyear USGA partnership, making Sun Cruiser the official ready-to-drink cocktail of two of golf's most noticeable championships, the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women's Open. The partnership goes live this spring, and programming includes retail and tournament activation, golf media, influencers, and experiential marketing programs, as well as wholesaler incentives.

Sun Cruiser will have continued media presence in sports, including the NCAA, the MLB, the NFL, and sponsorship of numerous music concert series. From an innovation perspective, we're maintaining a disciplined range of tea and lemonade styles while expanding package options, including new 19.2 oz single serve packages, single style 8 packs, and tea and lemonade sampler 12 packs. We expect these offerings to broaden drinker occasions and support strong growth in 2026. Turning to hard seltzer, the overall hard seltzer category has continued to improve and grew slightly in dollars in measured off-premise channels for the first quarter. Truly has maintained its number 2 share position in the category. However, share trends remain challenged.

Our effort to improve our share during 2026 include investing in new equity building creative. Capitalizing on the U.S. Men's Soccer team participating in the World Cup and continuing to expand Truly Unruly. We're continuing to build our communications platform of Make Your Dreams Come Truly, while leveraging our U.S. Soccer partnership through our Drink like a Believer program. Drink like a Believer commercial activities launched in May and have been well-received by major retailers. The programming includes displays and a U.S. Soccer collector set of singles, along with a soccer-themed Star Squad Rotator 12-pack and 24-pack. In addition, we will have significant local media and retail programming investment in the 11 host cities. High ABV offerings continue to be a growth driver in hard seltzer, and Truly Unruly continues to grow both volume and distribution as our second-highest volume 12-pack.

In cider, Angry Orchard continues to grow, supported by new positioning, refreshed creative, and strong retail programming, including our St. Patrick's Day-themed promotions and displays in the first quarter. The new Angry Orchard Crisp Imperial 19.2 single-serve cans are a growth driver for the brand, and overall Crisp Imperial volume has increased more than 40% in the first quarter in measured off-premise channels. For our Samuel Adams brand, we have recently updated our brand messaging around Independent Since Forever and are excited to celebrate America's 250th anniversary this summer. To support our Drink Like It's Seventeen Seventy-Six retail programming and promotions, we have launched limited edition retro packaging. For our Dogfish Head brand, which returned to growth in 2025 and has grown for four consecutive quarters, we continue to expand Dogfish Head's Grateful Dead beer collaboration and invest behind the Minute Series IPAs.

Turning to innovation, we continue to prioritize high-growth margin-accretive opportunities. Our Sinless Vodka Cocktails are full-flavored spirit-based cocktails with zero sugar and zero carbs. With approximately 100 calories per can, it is positioned as guilty of flavor, free of sugar and carbs, and targets incremental consumer segments that complement our core brand portfolio. Sinless was tested in a small number of states in 2025 and expanded to more than 30 states in March. Sinless is in the early stages of launch, Initial feedback from wholesalers, retailers, and drinkers has been positive. In closing, I'm encouraged to see modest improvements in category trends. While the macroeconomic environment remains dynamic, we are focused on executing our operating plans for the upcoming summer season. We're acting with urgency to leverage the strengths of our brands, our innovation capabilities, and our distributor relationships to improve performance and drive long-term value.

I'd like to thank our Boston Beer Company team and our distributors and retailers for their continued support. I'll now pass the call to Diego for a detailed review of the first quarter and our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, everyone. Depletions in the first quarter decreased 4% and shipments decreased 6.9% compared to the first quarter of last year, primarily driven by decreases in our Twisted Tea, Truly, Samuel Hard MTN DEW brands, partially offset by increases in our Sun Cruiser, Angry Orchard, and Dogfish Head brands. Consistent with our plans, shipments declined at a higher rate than depletions in the quarter, with shipments lapping strong growth in the prior year to load innovation. Distributor inventories at the end of the quarter was four and one half weeks on hand, which was approximately one half of a week lower compared to the end of the quarter last year. This decrease in distributor inventory was due to the timing of innovation and supply chain improvements, as Jim mentioned earlier.

Revenue for the quarter decreased 4.4% due to lower volume, partially offset by price increases and favorable product mix. Our first quarter gross margin of 49.3% increased 100 basis points year-over-year. Gross margin performance primarily benefited from procurement savings and brewery efficiencies. A positive impact of pricing and product mix were offset by inflationary commodities and tariff costs. Advertising, promotional, and selling expenses for the first quarter of 2026 increased $2.5 million or 1.8% year-over-year due to higher freight rates, partially offset by lower volumes. Brand investment were flat, lapping mid-teens increases in advertising investments in the first quarter of 2025. General and administrative expenses increased $4.4 million or 9.1% year-over-year.

Excluding legal costs related to the one-time litigation expense, general and administrative expenses increased by $0.4 million From the first quarter of 2025, primarily due to increased consulting costs. We recorded $216 million in total pre-tax litigation expenses in the quarter. As we previously disclosed, this amount is related to a supplier contract dispute. We intend to pursue all available post-trial motions and appellate remedies. We cannot estimate when or if damages or interest will ultimately be paid, but do not expect this issue to have a material impact on our operating plans. The total impact of these litigation expenses represented a $15.52 impact to our first quarter GAAP EPS. Excluding the litigation-related expenses, we reported non-GAAP EPS of $1.64 per diluted share. I'd like to provide an update on our ongoing productivity initiatives.

We continue to make progress and are on track to deliver our 2026 savings target. As I noted on our fourth quarter call, we expect year-over-year gross margin improvement in 2026, although at a lower rate than that of 2025, given strong performance in 2025. We believe the multi-year operational improvements that we have made in our supply chain better positions us to manage variability and volume, product mix, and the tariff and commodity environment. For the remainder of 2026 and beyond, we continue to expect contribution from all four savings buckets, as I discussed on the last quarter call. I will now provide some highlights on our initiatives in each bucket. In brewery performance, we continue to see improvements in OEEs driven by process improvements, which help to increase our internal production capacity.

In the first quarter, we produced 95% of our domestic volume internally, compared to 85% in the first quarter of last year. For the full year 2026, we continue to estimate domestic internal production will be over 90%, compared to 86% last year. In procurement savings, our first quarter results benefited from lower negotiated pricing on certain packaging and ingredients. As discussed previously, procurement savings have been a significant contributor to our gross margin improvements over the last two years. While we expect some continued benefits in 2026, the impact is expected to moderate versus 2025. In waste and network optimization, we're continuing to enhance our customer ordering and inventory management system. These efforts helped us achieve high customer service levels, lower inventories, and improved our cash flow. In addition, we reduced obsolete inventories 36% in the first quarter.

Revenue management capabilities were added this year as part of our margin agenda. These efforts are in the early stages in 2026, with a more meaningful contribution expected in 2027. Turning to our 2026 guidance. As Jim mentioned earlier, our volume guidance range of down low single digits to down mid single digits reflect year-to-date depletions and market share performance, and our latest outlook for the balance of the year. Fiscal week depletion trends for the first 17 weeks of 2026 have declined 4% year-over-year. A sequential improvement from down 6% in the fourth quarter of 2025. As a reminder, the summer selling season is a significant driver of our full-year volume performance, and we will have more visibility on market trends as we move through the summer.

Since our last earnings call, we are seeing additional inflation in energy and aluminum that could impact the balance of the year. We do not hedge commodities and are closely watching recent market cost increases driven by macroeconomic factors. As a result of these two factors, we are narrowing our full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to $8.50-$10.50 from our prior guidance of $8.50-$11.00. This EPS outlook embeds our latest volume and energy cost projections as well as productivity and cost mitigation efforts. We also expect to maintain flexibility to reduce incremental advertising spending if needed to offset further headwinds from the macroeconomic cost pressure. We will update our EPS outlook if commodity inflation continues to increase.

We continue to expect price increases of between 1% and 2% and some additional benefit from mix. We continue to expect full year 2026 reported gross margins to be between 48% and 50%. Our outlook expects tailwinds from positive pricing, favorable product mix, productivity savings, and lower shortfall fees, with headwinds from tariffs and commodity inflation. As a reminder, the majority of our freight expense is booked in advertising, promotional, and selling expenses. Our 2026 guidance reflects a full year tariff cost estimate of $20 million-$30 million, versus a partial year in 2025 of $11 million. These tariff cost estimates are based upon tariffs that we are currently being charged by our suppliers and that what we expect to continue going forward.

We continue to estimate that our investments in advertising, promotional, and selling expenses will increase between $20 million and $40 million. This amount does not include any changes in freight costs for the shipment of products to our distributors. As I mentioned earlier, we may choose to spend at the lower end of the range depending on the commodity and energy costs environment. We are estimating our full year 2026 non-GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 29%-30%. As you model out the year, please keep in mind the following factors. Our business is impacted by seasonal volume changes, with the first quarter and the fourth quarter being lower absolute volume quarters, and the fourth quarter typically our lowest absolute gross margin rate of the year.

We expect first half shipments to decline toward the lower end of our full year volume guidance, with better shipment performance later in the year. This is due to higher shipment comparisons in the first half of the year as the company shipped ahead of depletions in 2025 to support innovation and build distributor inventories, as well as 2026 innovation launches, which are second half weighted. Additionally, improvements in the company's supply chain responsiveness that enables modestly lower distribution inventory levels are expected to have a more meaningful impact on the first half and begin to be lapped throughout the second half. During the full year 2026, we estimate shortfall fees and non-cash expenses of third-party productions prepayments in total will negatively impact gross margin by 40 to 60 basis points. We expect year-over-year gross margin rates improvements to be the most meaningful in the fourth quarter.

We typically expense the majority of our shortfall fees in the fourth quarter. We expect lower shortfall fees in 2026, the timing of this benefits, together with the fact that the fourth quarter is a smaller dollar quarter, has an outsized favorable impact on the gross margin rate. Incremental advertising in-investment is expected to be weighted to the second and third quarters to support the key summer selling season. Turning to capital allocations. We ended the quarter with a cash balance of $164 million and $150 million of availability on our line of credit. These balances, together with our projected future operating cash flow, enables us to maintain operating investments in our business and cash returns to shareholders, as well as the potential litigation related payments. We expect capital expenditures of between $70 million-$90 million in 2026.

These investments will be primarily related to our own breweries to build capabilities, improve efficiencies, and support innovation. We will continue to be disciplined in our capital spending as we monitor the dynamic industry environment over the long term. During the 13-week period ended March 28, 2026, and the period from March 30, 2026 through April 24, 2026, we repurchased shares in the amount of $23.8 million and $7.4 million. As of April 24, 2026, we had approximately $197 million remaining on the $1.6 billion repurchase authorization. This concludes our prepared remarks. Now we'll open the line for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Eric Serotta with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Great. Thanks so much for the question. Good afternoon, everyone. Jim, I wanted to get your perspective on Twisted from here. You made a number of interventions last year, including some selective pricing adjustments for certain packs and certain channels. The brand still seems to be stubbornly declining. Can you talk about how you're looking at the outlook from here? I know you talked about some innovation in packaging, new packaging coming, but do you think you need something, you know, sort of a little bit more of a reset or something a little bit more, I don't want to say drastic or extreme, but more extensive to get the brand back to where you want and need it to be?

Yeah. To answer your question, I don't think it needs a drastic reset, but it does need some levers. What I think is going on is the success and the rise of vodka-based teas has certainly eaten into the Truly volume. There's no question about it. It's happened in a bunch of ways. One is it took a lot of display space in 2024. In the first half of 2025, we were getting significant display space for Twisted Tea. We lost some of that last summer to sort of the new shiny penny, which was brands like Sun Cruiser and Surfside. In total, our Twisted Tea and Sun Cruiser volume is actually up this year.

Of course, the shift is, we lost volume in Twisted Tea, made it up in Sun Cruiser, which happens to be margin and revenue accretive in that shift. Our volume in hard tea is actually up a little bit, there is movement from FMB tea like Twisted Tea to Sun Cruiser and Surfside and the vodka-based teas. What we're doing with Twisted Tea, there's a bunch of sort of smaller levers. One of them is, you know, trying to reset some of the pricing. There are markets where it's up at Stella pricing or Modelo pricing, and it's traditionally lived a little bit below FMB pricing because of a more kinda blue collar, but upscale blue collar clientele for Twisted Tea.

Second, we've actually gained shelf space for Twisted Tea in the resets. A lot of that went to Twisted Tea Extreme, which is growing triple digits. We are putting more advertising dollars into it, and things that don't show up as advertising dollars like Pardon My Take, which is the number one sports podcast in Barstool. We're adding more advertising money and pushing it towards NASCAR, Realtree Camo, those kind of partnerships that refresh, you know, our connection to our original more blue collar drinker base for Twisted Tea. Then we've introduced some new packs to give us a better price pack architecture.

Things like a four-pack of 16 oz for under $10 because even the six-pack pricing has gotten over $10. This gives us an entry point, and then at the other end of it for value, some 24-packs. Those are the things we're doing with it. Within FMB hard tea, I think Twisted Tea is holding or perhaps gaining share 'cause the new entrants that have come in the last five years from like Monster and New Belgium and even Lipton are kind of falling away. Those are the actions that we've taken. None of them is a drastic reset, but there's a bunch of tweaks.

Thanks, Jim. For Diego, look, your gross margin performance over the past year has really been very impressive, especially in light of the commodity pressure and some of the volume de-leveraging. It looks like you're basically maintaining the gross margin guidance for this year and the EPS guidance more or less, despite the incremental costs since the war. Can you help us unpack some of the gross margin drivers from here? I know you don't give specific quantifications, but you know, kind of order of magnitude what you're expecting for incremental cost headwinds. LME aluminum is up quite a bit since the war. I believe you don't hedge. If you'd help us understand the moving pieces there, it would be great. Thanks.

Yeah, sure. First of all, thank you for the comment. Look, our margin agenda has always said, look, we think we can get to high 40s. The difference between high 40s and 50s is that to get to 50, you need the external kind of situation to kind of whether it's volume or geopolitical to help. I think that's where we've gotten to where we're still delivering the savings. To your point, those savings are being used to offset some of the challenges that we have. If we look at Q1 for the moment, you can see that like just in aluminum for the quarter, which is in a small volume quarter, we've got like $4.3 million of aluminum tariff costs.

Which is the biggest piece of the tariffs. We also have some POS costs in there and some ingredients. We've been able to offset some of those. We think for the rest of the year, we'll be able to take our continuous agenda, which is procurement savings, brewery efficiencies, we're 95% in-house versus out of our production facilities. The other piece is the positive mix that Jim mentioned when we're talking about things like Sun Cruiser and some other innovations that we're launching this year that are accretive to our margins. All of those things are helping us offset some of these external pieces that have challenged our cost structure.

Now in order for us to actually improve our gross margin even less, what we need to do is maintain those opportunities and savings and hopefully, as those headwinds disappear, hopefully in the future, we'll be able to maintain those, and that would be the only way we could drive our margin even higher.

The next question comes from the line of Robert Ottenstein with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Hey guys, this is Greg on for Robert. I just had a quick question about Sun Cruiser. Maybe if you could talk a bit about how the ACV and the brand's penetration differs between the East and the West Coasts and sort of like as you build the brand across the country, where you see the biggest opportunity still for TDP gains. Thanks.

It's strongest in New England. I mean, it's been sort of game changing in some ways. In New England it's the size of Twisted Tea at a higher margin. Our distributors are quite delighted with the performance there. Mid-Atlantic is fairly strong. You do see differences in, you know, penetration. Like Twisted Tea, the last major market, was California, and it was almost 15 years behind New England. There is that regional gap. With Sun Cruiser you have the added complexity of the state tax rates, and the distribution limitations because it's vodka based. You, you have much bigger variations than we have with Twisted Tea. You have states where you have to buy it from a state liquor store, like in New York, for example.

It's not readily available cold. It's not in the same distribution channels. You know, in Texas, you have to go through a different class of distributors to get to the bars. There's just much In Washington State, there's this huge tax on any spirits based product, so there's no really great potential, like in a Washington State that we would have in a Massachusetts or a Connecticut. There are these big differences. To try to boil it down, I think we do have ACV upside if we, like, look at it versus High Noon, which is highly developed. There's definite upside, maybe another 50% ACV.

You know, we were, we did not pitch it to chains this time last year, so we didn't get on the sets quick enough. Now we are, we weren't on the shelves a year ago, but we had successful distribution drives this year. In the shelf sets this year, there's gonna be significantly more Sun Cruiser. In some of the chains we got, you know, one item, and now we're getting three or four. I see a nice bump in the next three or four months, and then long term continued upside as the category gets more and more developed.

Great. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Peter Grom with UBS. Please proceed.

Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. Jim, you touched on the category improvement. Can you maybe just give us a sense for how you see category growth evolving from here and maybe just some perspective around why you think category trends are getting better?

Sure. With the kind of caveat, my crystal ball is no better than anybody else's. You know, we can look at the numbers so far this year, and there's been an improvement. You know, it's, there's no precise number. You know, people don't agree on what's in the beer category when you look at the lot of numbers. For example, hard cider is in there. Overall, what we're seeing is when we look at traditional beer and hard cider, it's down this year, maybe 1.5%, something like that, as opposed to 5%, 5.5% last year. That's a significant improvement.

If I try to attribute that to something, I would say that some of the big factors last year, like the health, you know, publicity. A year ago, we were reading about, oh, beer causes cancer. Now we're hearing, "Wait a minute, beer is an important social lubricant, an important element of sociability, and it's a mitigation of the loneliness epidemic." You know, Dr. Oz talked about, you know, it helps people and creates social connections. We know that, you know, there's more and more evidence that those social connections are an important part of longevity, and beer is an important part of that. The dietary guidelines came out, and they basically said, you know, "It's okay to have a beer now and then.

Might just be a good thing. The health dialogue has become much more hospitable. Hemp, with, you know, the changes in the legislation and the basically a federal ban on hemp-based THC products, including the beverages, that has taken a fair amount of the excitement around, you know, the hemp-based beverages becoming 5%, 10%, 20% of beer. That looks like that's off the table. There's still a lot of them out on the shelves. You know, I think a lot of retailers are waiting to see if maybe the loophole has been extended, but it looks, and I think the Farm Bill got out of the House today without an extension of the loophole. It's an uncertain legislative landscape, but things look much more difficult for hemp-based THC replacing beer.

Finally, less pressure on the Hispanic community. We don't have as good a data as Constellation, so they're a better authority than we are, but we're seeing a little bit less pressure on that. That's where and that's where I would see the improvement. It's somewhat subject to the macroeconomic environment, which is probably worse right now than it was six months ago, but very uncertain. Consumer confidence is very unpredictable. You know, the price of gas can't help, and C stores are hurting a little bit. If I had to attribute this improvement, which is real, that's where I would go with it.

Finally, I'd add in from us, we view our kind of accessible market as being, you know, traditional beer, cider, beyond beer, and a certain part of the spirits-based RTD-type beverages. Last year when we ran our numbers, that looked like it was off about 4% versus 5%, 5.5% with beer. This year, it's probably slightly down, but significantly better than the 1.5%-2% that traditional beer is suffering, so closer to flat. The bad news is our volume's still off 4%. We think there's a lot of the things in the pipeline that will, you know, affect our trends over the next nine months in the back half of the year. We are planning on that getting better.

Right now, as opposed to last year when we held share, right now we've actually lost share of what we consider our addressable market.

That's very helpful color. Diego, you made a comment around updating the EPS outlook if commodity inflation continues. Just curious if you can maybe unpack what inflation assumptions underpin the outlook today. Just on the offset, you mentioned to Eric's question, mix and kind of the savings initiatives. Are you leaning more or leaning in here further, or are the benefits from these items greater than what was originally contemplated? Just trying to understand whether the shift in cost pressures changes your perspective around where you would expect to land in the gross margin guidance.

Okay. Perfect. Let me unpack that. First let's start with inflationary costs. As you can see in our 10-Q, for the quarter, we've got about $12.5 million of inflationary impacts, out of which most of that was aluminum. In that piece of aluminum, you got $4.3 million of tariffs. The rest is kind of the underlying cost of aluminum. We are forecasting that to continue mostly through the back end of the year. We're not expecting any big shifts like either up or down. We're just projecting our current situation and assuming that that will continue. That's kind of our base assumption of where we're going.

The second part of your question is, in the buckets we've kind of laid out, I think in general, we're a little bit better that we thought in total of the savings that we could deliver. Some buckets have delivered more, some less. The big difference has been the speed at which we've been able to go after it. Our procurement savings that we've kind of laid out a five-year roadmap, we've pretty much tapped out in three and a half years. Some of our other buckets, like our brewery efficiencies, again, are ahead of schedule. The one that I think is lagging a little behind and it still has some room to deliver is our footprint.

I'd say overall, in total, they are gonna deliver a little bit more than we thought, but it's more the speed of the delivery that has changed. What we have done is we've added a fourth bucket that hasn't really started delivering yet, but we expect it to start delivering in 2027, which is revenue management. As we've been able to accelerate some of our cost savings buckets, we're making sure that we keep adding new things that we think can maintain that gross margin or potentially help it depending on volume and inflation, and that would be the bucket that we're adding.

I'd say it's mostly acceleration, although in total, we will deliver a little bit more savings than we thought we could deliver of current buckets, and we're adding a new bucket to try to offset from those pieces. Hopefully that answers both parts of your questions.

The next question comes from the line of Filippo Falorni with Citigroup. Please proceed.

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Jim, I was hoping you can give us your perspective on the expectation in heading into the summer, especially with the big events coming, with the FIFA World Cup, Americas [2 fifth tier]. How are you thinking the consumption occasions will evolve, especially the interaction between traditional beer and, you know, as you call it, the fourth category and the RTD space? You see that more of an occasion for more traditional beer? How do you think you can get consumers into your core portfolio for that? I know you have the sponsorship with Truly, but maybe you can expand a little bit more how you're planning to capitalize on those occasions. Thank you.

Yes. We have a number of things that we're planning. The big one is with Truly, that is our sponsorship of the U.S. men's national soccer team. We have gotten good reactions from retailers. I mean, basically, we're using that to get on the floor, to get big displays, team displays around the U.S. Soccer team. We have a soccer ad that we're running about and a whole sort of campaign around, you know, believe in the U.S. Soccer team. That's the biggest thing we've done with Truly in a number of years. We've gotten good reception from retailers. We think, you know, that will have a at least temporary effect on bending the trends on Truly.

With Samuel Adams, we are using it more in a PR sense. We're having a quarter of a million person toast to America's birthday for 250,000 people to raise a Sam Adams. It also, as we go into the summer, we benefit from just the seasonality of Sun Cruiser and hard tea in general. We expect the fact that, you know, Sun Cruiser is the fastest-growing significant RTD out there, and, you know, it's a heavily seasonal product, so that growth of Sun Cruiser is gonna mean a lot more in Q2 and Q3 than it did in Q1. Those are the big summer-oriented promotions.

How much more, you know, are they gonna benefit traditional beer more than the fourth category? I don't know. I don't think they will. I mean, we are seeing, you know, Gen Z accepting, you know, the beyond beer category as being as attractive, in some ways more attractive, than traditional beer. Traditional beer is much stronger in, you know, people over 40. The people under that are quite accepting of fourth category as a beverage that they would consume in an occasion that 15 years ago was dominated by beer.

Great. That's very helpful. Then, Diego, maybe, on the cost front and the commodity front, can you remind us a bit of your hedging policies? Looking through your filings, it seems like most of the hedging is on some of the brewing ingredients like hops, but maybe on the packaging side, is it more on the spot rate? Should we think about it that way on the Midwest premium? Then maybe any comment on transportation costs as well, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Excellent, Filippo. Well, first of all, we do not hedge. In general, our policy is not to hedge. Some of our suppliers will decide to hedge for us, but we do not directly hedge. The Midwest premium kind of directly goes through our numbers. And we feel like overall, over time, that's actually a better approach than spending on hedge. From that point of view, that's why you're seeing kind of the movements in the Midwest premium in our first quarter, and that's why we're kind of disclosing what assumptions we're taking for the rest of the year. That's kind of the piece that we'll see during the year. If the Midwest premium comes down, we will be able to improve kind of our P&L.

On the second piece, as you know, we book most of our distribution costs through SG&A. We do kind of see the impact of diesel like everybody else is doing. Although it hasn't materially impact our numbers, we've been able to offset it through other pieces. I do think that is going to be a challenge for everybody as the year continues in two fronts. From a impact on the actual fuel cost, can be at, right now we're probably thinking kind of mid-single digits in millions, but it will depend on the mix. The second one is we're also seeing the availability of truckers being a challenge, given some of the policies implemented.

I think as we go through the year, especially in the high season, that's something that we're working very close to our supply chain team to ensure that we can minimize the impact to our P&L. That is definitely something that is going to impact pretty much every CPG company as we go into the summer.

The next question comes from the line of Kaumil Gajrawala with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Hi, team. Hey, good job on getting my name correct. Just want to ask a question on Dogfish Head and Angry Orchard. You know, it's great to see that you're delivering growth once again. What would you point to as the key drivers for this level of improvement for the brands? Is it new customer additions, or are you growing more penetration with younger drinkers? On a go-forward basis, how do you think about, like, how do you see this playing out for the remainder of the year? Do you expect to sustain this level of growth that you're currently seeing?

Let me talk about those brands. I think the growth with Angry Orchard has come partly from us, you know, focusing on a little bit, and, you know, focusing on the core. We did a year ago, a push on Angry Orchard Draft that gave us a bunch of draft lines. Some of them stuck. Some of it's just consumers are sort of swinging back to cider. You know, they're open to non-beer experiences, so in some ways, this is like a fourth category. Cider has, you know, it kind of belongs in beer occasions. It comes out of a draft line. You drink it in a pint glass. It happens to be gluten-free. It's very, you know, friendly to drinking when you're in a group drinking craft beer.

It's, you know, it's very fruit-forward, like a lot of fourth category products. It's sweet. It sort of bridges traditional beer and fourth category products, and that's given it some underlying, you know, consumer-driven growth. We focused a little more on it, cleaned up the portfolio. We have an effective advertising campaign underneath it, "Don't Get Angry, Get Orchard." We had a very successful Halloween promotion with the Friday the 13th character, and we're repeating that this year, I think it will sustain itself, repeating it with Scream, another Halloween franchise. I think that will sustain itself.

With Dogfish Head, again, we went in, sort of cleaned up the brand, cleaned up the clarity of the product line, around 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, which was very easy for consumers to understand. And we're getting growth from Dogfish Head Spirits. Dogfish was one of the original craft distillers over 20 years ago, they've got a history of, uh, being a distiller and, a line of just delicious, you know, canned cocktails that they sell at a price premium over a Cutwater or a similar product, they have a higher end niche. I think that those are the things that have made both of those brands grow.

Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

The next question comes from the line of Michael Lavery with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Just was wondering if you could start by unpacking some of the shelf space, shelf resets and display upside you've talked about. I don't know if you could quantify some of that or maybe clarify on some of the displays, either timing or, you know, how temporary or relatively permanent they might be, and just how to think about that retail distribution piece of the equation.

Yeah. Overall, we were one of, maybe two or three suppliers that gained shelf space. I think the beer category was a little bit stressed, given its performance last year. Nobody was really eager to add significant amount of beer and beyond beer, fourth category shelf space. We were fortunate enough to be one of a couple of suppliers who did. That was driven on the upside by, as I talked about earlier, a lot more shelf space for Sun Cruiser. You know, in the, you know, in 2024, we didn't really pitch, you know, Sun Cruiser very strongly, and so we didn't get a lot more shelf space. Last year, we did, and we're reaping the benefits of that this year.

Where the, you know, Kroger had one SKU, now they're going to have thee, some stores four. Some chains didn't put it in at all, and are now giving us multiple SKUs. I mean, because, I mean, Sun Cruiser is the fastest-growing brand in probably the fastest-growing category in the RTD, spirits-based RTDs. We're getting that. Twisted Tea actually gained shelf space, because they found a place for Twisted Tea Extreme. We got a lot more, you know, shelf space for Extreme that more than offset where we lost a peach or a raspberry. And that works out advantageously to us because the SKUs that we lost have a lower rate of sale than Twisted Tea Extreme. There's kind of a double benefit. We got more space, and it's going to be more productive.

Where we lost, and lost significantly, was on Truly, and a little bit on Samuel Adams. The net of it was, not only more points of distribution for our portfolio, but even more an increased share of the available shelf space.

Okay, thanks. That's a great color. Just on a brand that doesn't get as much attention, but can you maybe walk Hard MTN DEW and just a little bit of maybe what hasn't worked there? It seems like when it first launched, you know, in the states where it launched through PepsiCo's distribution, it had, you know, sort of a two-ish share of FMBs, but it doesn't seem like it's held or gotten to that with the broader distribution from your system and is down, you know, it's soft now. Can you just help us maybe understand what happened there and, you know, kind of how I'm assuming that didn't come out as much as you would've expected.

You know, maybe just a little bit of a review of how to think about what happened with that brand.

Yeah. I would say overall, the hard sodas that came out, have not had the appeal on an enduring basis that I think a lot of us thought they would. They've actually struggled against sort of new to world purpose-driven brands. That's across all of the hard sodas, whether it's, you know, Fresca or some of the other extensions like Simply and so forth. Well, our experience with it's a very strong brand. I'm not sure that we've found our niche with it, so we are looking at where is Hard MTN DEW consumer, and what is his or her Hard MTN DEW, which has very strong attributes.

You know, it's a sort of a has some energy drink attributes in it, and we wanna see if there's a way to bring those to the fore as in the hard soda category. There have been some distribution issues where the remaining independent bottlers have been able to block it coming into their territory. That has then made it difficult to get chain distribution, and it's difficult to get wholesaler support when, you know, the Pepsi bottlers territory doesn't have the same footprint as our wholesaler. Our wholesaler only has it in part of their territory, which makes it harder for them to give, you know, day in and day out support to it. That's, you know, some of the underlying issues.

At the end of the day, we continue to believe it's a really strong brand, and we continue to work to try to figure out, how do we find a good niche that's based on all the brand Hard MTN DEW, which is unique.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Chris Barnes with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Hi, good evening, and thanks for the question. Jim, recently Brown-Forman and the Brown family put their toes in the water on a merger process that ultimately didn't materialize. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on why you think they'd evaluate a transaction down here? Clearly, the investment community thinks the alcohol profit pool is evaporating. Is consolidation and the related synergy capture increasingly becoming a survival strategy that alcoholic beverage companies need to more seriously consider today? Thanks.

You know, that's a question that investment bankers and frankly, the brain power of the people on this call is much greater than mine. That's up there in the stratosphere. We're just down here, you know, going from bar to bar trying to sell more product. I, you know, there's clearly consolidation going on. I think we feel like, in some ways we're in a unique position, in that, you know, we've gotten, you know, gotten over the hump as a supplier, to the point where, you know, we're important to our wholesale partners, and we're important to our retailers. That importance, you know, is amplified. For a typical, an average wholesaler, we may be 10% of their gross profit.

That's a meaningful, you know, we're in their top five suppliers, so we're important to them. That's somewhat amplified by historically, we've been a bigger part of their growth. We have a, you know, a great innovation track record. We're very happy with our pipeline. Again, the success of Sun Cruiser in the last year has validated our continuing ability to bring new-to-world brands to our wholesalers that they don't have to pay for and buy from somebody else. We continue to be big enough to get the attention that we need. I don't feel like we're disadvantaged.

I think, like we're in this sweet spot of, we're big enough to innovate and bring successful new products to market, with a strong, you know, 550-person sales force, bigger than any other sales force, in our category. We're small enough to be nimble, move quickly, be innovative, and continue to, you know, to grow against the opportunities that we're finding today, which primarily are in the fourth category, which is now, you know, 85% of our volume. It's where we've proven, our capabilities of bringing new, strong brands to our wholesalers and our retailers.

I would also add that I think as investors, when there's a segment that drops value like alcohol in general has, obviously there's a lot of people that see the value there and see it as an opportunity to jump in. I think part of the reason you're not seeing some of those mergers materialize is because people see the opportunity in the future and therefore hold on it. I still think it's an industry that has a lot of value. I do think that people see an opportunistic time, given that last year, on average, most companies have gone down to jump into something they see value in the future. I think the value will continue in the industry, and I think we're really well-positioned to play in that.

Great. Thanks very much for the perspective, both. Thanks.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session, and I'd like to turn the call back over to Jim Koch for closing remarks.

Thanks to everybody for joining us this afternoon, and it's an exciting time to be in this business. There's both lots of challenges and opportunities, and I look forward to talking to you in a few months.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and enjoy the rest of your day.