CORONA, CALIF. — The Monster Beverage Corp.’s shifting of its domestic and international distribution system to Coca-Cola bottlers is paying dividends. For fiscal 2016, ended Dec. 31, the company’s net income rose to $712,685,000, equal to $1.21 per share on the common stock, and an increase compared to fiscal 2015 when earnings totaled $546,733,000, equal to 97c per share.
Sales for the year rose to $3,049,393,000 compared to sales of $2,722,564,000 the year prior.
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| Rodney Sacks, chairman and c.e.o. of Monster Beverage |
“We are pleased to report continued progress on the strategic alignment of our distribution system with Coca-Cola bottlers, both domestically and internationally,” said Rodney C. Sacks, chairman and chief executive officer. “In the United States, we continue to see improvements in the quality of our distribution, particularly in the food service channel, and we transitioned distribution of Monster Energy drinks to the Coca-Cola bottlers in Wisconsin early in January 2017.”
Internationally, Monster Beverage transitioned distribution in such countries as Brazil, Costa Rica, Panama and China.
“In China, we continued with launches in Shanghai, Hunan Province, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Hainan in the quarter,” Mr. Sacks said. “Further launches are planned throughout 2017 in China.”
During the coming year Monster Beverage plans to continue the roll-out of its Mutant soda and introduce its Hydro line of energy waters to the marketplace in early April.
Mr. Sacks called the Mutant roll-out, which began this past September, a “bubble up” effort that was limited to specific convenience store channels.
“For the 13 weeks ended Jan. 21, 2017 (per) Nielsen total U.S. convenience, Mutant had the highest dollar share gain of any single serve soft drink brand,” he said March 1 during a conference call with securities analysts. “For single-serve packages sold in convenience stores during the same (period in) dollars, Mutant outsold a number of well-established single serve brands such as 7-Up. We remain confident about the potential of this brand.”
Mr. Sacks added that Monster Beverage purposely did not promote the Mutant brand during the winter months.
“We are taking steps to deal with expanded distribution,” he said. “We will obviously increase our promotional and other activities around the brand, as we continue to go into spring and summer.”
The Hydro introduction will be somewhat different than the limited Mutant roll-out, Mr. Sacks said. Hydro will be a “broad-based launch” that will be focused in the convenience, gas and independent channels.
