The Boston Beer Company, Inc. is one of the largest independent U.S. craft-focused alcoholic-beverage companies. The business began in 1984 when founder James “Jim” Koch introduced Samuel Adams Boston Lager, using a family brewing recipe and positioning the product around traditional brewing quality, distinctive flavor, and premium craft credentials. Rhonda ...The Boston Beer Company, Inc. is one of the largest independent U.S. craft-focused alcoholic-beverage companies. The business began in 1984 when founder James “Jim” Koch introduced Samuel Adams Boston Lager, using a family brewing recipe and positioning the product around traditional brewing quality, distinctive flavor, and premium craft credentials. Rhonda Kallman was also a co-founder. The company is headquartered at One Design Center Place in Boston, Massachusetts, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SAM.
Boston Beer’s portfolio has broadened substantially beyond its original flagship lager. Samuel Adams remains a core beer franchise, while Twisted Tea provides a major presence in hard iced tea and flavored malt beverages. Truly operates in the hard-seltzer category, and Angry Orchard is a leading cider brand. The company has also added or developed brands such as Dogfish Head, Angel City, Coney Island, and Concrete Beach. This portfolio gives Boston Beer exposure to multiple consumer occasions, flavor preferences, alcohol formats, and price points, although performance can vary considerably by category and brand maturity.
The company primarily sells in the United States through approximately 400 wholesalers. Those distributors supply grocery stores, club stores, convenience stores, liquor retailers, bars, restaurants, stadiums, and other on-premise and off-premise accounts. International sales are supported through wholesalers, importers, and agencies in markets including Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Mexico, and parts of Central and South America. Boston Beer uses a combination of owned brewing facilities, contract brewing arrangements, packaging operations, brand marketing, sales execution, and distributor relationships to bring products to consumers.
Its cost structure includes malted grains, hops, yeast, fruit and flavor ingredients, sweeteners, tea components, cans, bottles, cartons, labels, freight, production labor, advertising, promotions, and wholesaler-related selling expenses. Because beverages are packaged and distributed at significant scale, input costs, transportation, aluminum prices, co-packing rates, and inventory levels can materially affect margins. The company’s bill of materials differs by product: beer requires grains, hops, yeast, and packaging; cider relies on apple-based inputs; hard tea and hard seltzer require tea, water, flavorings, alcohol, carbonation, and specialized packaging.
Based on the supplied trailing-twelve-month data, Boston Beer reported approximately a 45.1% gross margin, negative net margin of about 3.4%, negative earnings per share, and positive free cash flow of roughly $204 million. The data also indicates relatively low leverage, with debt-to-equity of approximately 0.044, while profitability has been pressured by operating costs, category competition, and changing consumer demand. The company reported 2,736 full-time employees, placing it in the 2,001-5,000 employee range. Jim Koch serves as chief executive officer and is also the company’s founder and a prominent strategic figure. Boston Beer’s continuing priorities include maintaining brand relevance, innovating in beer and beyond-beer beverages, improving production and distribution efficiency, strengthening wholesaler execution, and generating sustainable profitable growth.
Operator : Greetings, and welcome to the Boston Beer Company's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Please go ahead.
Michael Andrews : Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome. This is Mike Andrews, Associate General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of the Boston Beer Company. I'm pleased to kick off our 2026 second quarter earnings call. Joining the call from Boston Beer are Jim Koch, Founder, CEO and Chairman; and Diego Reynoso, our CFO. Before we discuss our business, I'll start with our disclaimer. As we stated in our earnings release, some of the information we discuss and that may come up on this call reflects the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future. Such predictions are forward-looking statements. It is important to note that the company's actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's most recent 10-Q and 10-K. The company does not undertake to publicly update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I'll now pass over to Jim for introductory comments.
C. Koch : Thanks, Mike. I'll begin my remarks this afternoon with an overview of our strategy and operating results before turning the call over to Diego to discuss our second quarter financial results and our financial outlook for the remainder of 2026. Immediately following Diego's comments, we will open the line for questions. In the first half, the overall beer market improved modestly, although demand was uneven throughout the period. The category was nearly flat in the first quarter before softening in the second quarter, with May proving particularly challenging. Trends improved in June as consumer demand benefited from increased drinking occasions around the World Cup and Americas 250th anniversary celebrations. We estimate the combined total beer and beyond beer market was down 2% in volume in the first half compared to a decline of 4% for the full year of 2025. Beyond Beer continues to outperform traditional beer in volume in measured off-premise channels decreasing 1% for the first half compared to traditional beer, which declined 4%. We anticipate industry volume headwinds for the remainder of 2026 as consumers remain under pressure from the cumulative effects of inflation and a significant increase in gas prices. With respect to Boston Beer portfolio volume trends, our performance continues to lag the pace of improvement in the broader category. In the second quarter, we delivered triple-digit depletion growth in Sun Cruiser, continued growth in Angry Orchard and strong on-premise results across the portfolio as major events …
