From “It Has Never Been Not Hard” (March 2025): “As Boston Beer weathers sustained volume declines from ‘Truly’, along with heightened competition and maturation at ‘Twisted Tea’, their hope is that ‘Sun Cruiser’ will become a meaningful volume growth driver in the years ahead. (As a reminder, Twisted Tea has grown each year since it was introduced in 2001.)”
On August 1st, Boston Beer (SAM) announced that CEO Michael Spillane was stepping down to focus on “important personal matters”, a C-suite shakeup that comes less than 18 months after Spillane assumed the role. He will be succeeded by founder Jim Koch, who turned 76 years old in May and has control of the company through the Class B shares. (As Koch noted in a recent interview, “There are two things that the board can’t do: They can’t get rid of me and they can’t sell the company… We have the luxury of not worrying about our quarterly earnings, or even our annual earnings… How do I make the company more valuable in five years? That, I worry about a lot.”)
On August 11th, ten days after the CEO change was announced, CFO Diego Reynoso was granted RSU’s valued at $1.2 million that will fully vest in one year; as noted in the filing, “The purpose of the award is retention and to maintain stability in light of the CEO transition.” To put that in context, he also received RSU’s valued at $1.3 million earlier this year (as part of the broader NEO comp plan), but which vest over a period of four years. That’s a long way of saying the board wanted to be quite sure that Reynoso stuck around.
“Beyond Beer”
As discussed in the initiation, while Boston Beer and Jim Koch are most commonly associated with Samuel Adams and craft beer, more than 80% of the company’s business is now attributable to the “beyond beer” brands – most notably Twisted Tea, Truly, and Angry Orchard. (As noted in the 2024 annual report, Twisted Tea accounts for more than 50% of the business.)
