Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Rob Ottenstein with Evercore.

Rob Ottenstein: Just a follow-up on Garth on some of your guidance comments, and I don’t know if I — just maybe I didn’t follow you. But I think you were talking about productivity measures that would help get to the margin target. And then you talked kind of very quickly or with some points on hedging programs and the amount hedged or not — and I just — I apologize, I lost you on that. But I was kind of trying to connect what hedging would have to do with productivity and trying to exactly the point you were trying to make.

Garth Hankinson: Yes. So sure, Robert, thanks for the question. And just so as Joe indicated at the beginning of the remarks, we are going to be posting some slides to our website immediately following this call specific to the efficiency — productivity efficiencies and the hedging. The point on that is it’s just like in any given year, we have certain productivity goals, efficiency goals, savings to help offset the impact of cost increases related to inflation. So, that’s no different than any other year. And the point of the comment was that those increases that I had stated previously, those are net of those efficiencies. And then on the point around hedging is just that we continue to have a fairly robust hedging policy program.

Typically, we are only able to hedge around 10% to 15% of what’s in our cost of goods. And so, we are hedging against those things right now. And as we enter this year, we’re at where we would normally be in terms of the percent of commodities that are hedged.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Nik Modi with RBC Capital Markets.

Nik Modi: Just a few follow-ups. So — just curious on — Bill, you mentioned some of the distribution gains you’ve seen in California. Just was hoping to get some context on your view on resets and kind of what you’re seeing more broadly, especially in the markets where you’re undershared relative to where you are in California? And then the second question is just there’s been a lot of discussion in the trade about some of the other brewers perhaps rolling back some pricing or promoting back some of the recent price increases. Just wanted to get some context on kind of philosophically how you think about if that were to happen, kind of would you need to react or not? And just would love your context and perspective on that.

Bill Newlands: Yes. You bet, Nik. Thanks for the question. One of the things that relative to resets, we are doing extremely well in reset situations. And I think it’s just simple, good business because with our portfolio representing more than 80% of the growth in the total beer category, it just makes sense for retailers to increase our shelf positions versus the competition. You see, as we said in our prepared remarks, Modelo being the number 1 growth driver and Corona being the number 3 growth driver and Pacifico being the top 10 growth driver, these brands demand more space on the shelf. And we’re very fortunate that our team is specifically focused on that very topic. Relative to pricing, as Garth noted, we carefully analyze the elasticities against our brands, and I’ve said this on many other occasions, we’re very mindful that we want to keep our consumer.