Global brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev has announced its intention to reacquire a minority stake in multiple US-based metal container plants.
In a statement today (6 January), the Budweiser brand owner said it plans to buy back a 49.9% stake in the plants for around $3bn from a group of institutional investors led by private-equity firm Apollo Global Management.
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AB InBev sold the stake to the Apollo-led consortium in 2021 for the same amount. It still held operational control of the packaging facilities as part of the agreement.
The Stella Artois brewer said it expected the latest deal to be “EPS accretive” and that it would close in the first quarter of this year.
According to the statement, the metal container plant operations are comprised of seven sites in six US states.
The facilities “are a strategic component of our business”, AB InBev said, “ensuring quality, cost efficiency, speed of innovation and supply security for our brands, while providing industry-leading manufacturing jobs and driving economic growth in communities across the US”.
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By GlobalDataReflecting on the news in a note to clients this morning, Bernstein analyst Trevor Stirling said the move was “more akin to a debt repurchase”.
The agreement today “is earnings enhancing”, Stirling added. “But it will make a modest dent in the rate at which they will delever in 2026; or put it another way it will modestly reduce the scale of the future buybacks.”
In December, AB InBev made significant adjustments to its US brewing operations, announcing the planned closures of two breweries and the sale of another.
At the time, the Leffe maker confirmed it would be shutting facilities in Fairfield in California and in Merrimack in New Hampshire. It also said it would be selling a brewery in Newark in New Jersey to property business Goodman Group.
Approximately 475 people were said to be affected. A spokesperson for the Michelob Ultra owner said it would offer all the employees “a full-time role elsewhere in our US operations”.
Production at these three sites was expected to be moved to the group’s other US sites, a company spokesperson said at the time.
“These changes will enable us to invest even more in our remaining operations and in our portfolio of growing, industry-leading brands,” the spokesperson added.
