In the last week, we’ve read a bunch of articles stating "38 percent of beer-drinking Americans would not buy Corona under any circumstances now."
This triggered the release of another series of articles that took shots at the intelligence of the public, declaring that “the fact that Corona Beer is experiencing a profit loss shows you that there is a problem with the IQ level of the general population.”
And yet, Corona beer maker Constellation Brands Inc. reports that the brand’s U.S. sales are up in the early part of 2020. The company has said that Corona Extra sales grew 5% in the U.S. in the latest four-week period, which ended Feb. 16 — “nearly doubling the 52-week trend for the brand.”
Moreover, the company’s sales are primarily focused on the U.S. market. Only 2.7% of the company’s $8.1 billion in sales of all its products were outside the U.S. in the fiscal year 2019. As such, the company doesn’t have much exposure to international markets such as China, which have suffered a greater impact from the disease.
Constellation Brands also said that all units supporting its beer business are seeing positive sales trends for the brand so far in 2020, despite the rumours about the impact of the coronavirus on its business.
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this terrible virus and we hope efforts to more fully contain it gain traction soon," said Constellation Brands Inc.’s CEO, Bill Newlands. “It's extremely unfortunate that recent misinformation about the impact of this virus on our business has been circulating in traditional and social media without further investigation or validation. These claims simply do not reflect our business performance and consumer sentiment, which includes feedback from our distributor and retailer partners across the country. We've seen no impact to our people, facilities or operations and our business continues to perform very well.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/03/business/28reuters-china-health-constellation.html
