Boston Beer stock is crashing because the hard seltzer boom is basically over
Brian Sozzi
Bottom line: The hard seltzer boom is over.
Shares of Boston Beer crashed 20% in pre-market trading on Friday as the maker of Truly hard seltzer and Sam Adams badly whiffed on its earnings expectations and slashed full-year guidance. The culprit: Execs overestimated the potential of the hard seltzer market, which continues to slow amid rising competition and people returning to bars coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic as Yahoo Finance has reported.
"We overestimated the growth of the hard seltzer category in the second quarter and the demand for Truly, which negatively impacted our volume and earnings for the quarter and our estimates for the remainder of the year," Boston Beer founder Jim Koch told analysts on a conference call. "We increased our production of Truly to meet our summer peak and have had lower than anticipated demand for certain Truly brand styles, which has resulted in higher than planned inventory levels at our breweries and increased supply chain costs and complexity."