Monster Beverage Earnings Call Insights: Incrementality of Zero Ultra and International Markets

Monster Beverage Corp (NASDAQ:MNST) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Incrementality of Zero Ultra

Kaumil Gajrawala – UBS: I know you’re happy with the success of Zero Ultra. Can you talk a little bit about the incrementality of the product and maybe how much is cannibalizing low carb or Absolute Zero or maybe even green can?

Rodney C. Sacks – CEO: We don’t think that it’s cannibalizing the green can; start off with that. That is still up nicely and that is the largest product. So that is up quite nicely. We have seen some cannibalization against the – basically the low carb and our Absolute Zero. We are seeing some cannibalization against those two products and that is to be expected. They’re all basically playing in that zero or low-carb category. The actual sales – we saw – we reached about 72% distribution in convenience. We still have some distribution to gain and we think also quality of distribution in some cases it’s been squeezed on to (shelf), so we think that there is some room for expansion in both numbers and quality. And it is already pretty much our second best-selling SKU on a per point basis in the stores it’s in. So, it has been very, very successful.

Kaumil Gajrawala – UBS: And just quick make sure I understood, you said green can was up; did you give a number or did you say it was up strongly…?

Rodney C. Sacks – CEO: I didn’t give a number. It’s up 4.4% in the 13-weeks.