Source : Carlton PR & Marketing LLC

04 mars 2013 12h19 HE

SABMiller's Exit From Molson Coors Partnership Provides Opportunity for Improved Canadian On-Premise Position

NEWTON, MA--(Marketwire - Mar 4, 2013) - "SABMiller is putting its own team on the ice now," says Chuck Ellis of SABMiller's prospects now that the company has dissolved its Canadian partnership with Molson Coors. Ellis is President of Restaurant Sciences LLC (Newton, MA), which tracks on-premise food and beverage sales in the U.S. and Canada. "Our Q4 2012 sample of more $30MM in beer sales for Canadian restaurants and bars looked at brand distribution. We were surprised by the depth of brand diversity in spite of AB-Inbev and Molson Coors' control of a combined 80 percent market share."

The chart below shows the Top-25 brands for Q4 of 2012:

Canadian On-Premise Brand Rank, Q4 2012 Rank Brand Manufacturer Canadian Distributor 1 Budweiser Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 2 Granville Island GIB/Creemore Springs (M-C) Molson-Coors 3 Kokanee Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 4 Alexander Keith's Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 5 Molson-Coors Molson-Coors 6 Guinness Diageo Diageo Canada 7 Labatt Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 8 Heineken Heineken Molson-Coors 9 Corona Extra Modelo Molson-Coors 10 Molson Canadian Molson-Coors Molson-Coors 11 Stella Artois Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 12 Miller Genuine Draft ("MGD") SABMiller Molson-Coors 13 Okanagan Spring Sapporo International Sapporo/Sleeman 14 Rickard's Molson-Coors Molson-Coors 15 Big Rock Big Rock Brewery Big Rock Brewery 16 Sleeman Sleeman Brewery Sapporo/Sleeman 17 Kronenbourg Carlsberg Group Carlsberg Group 18 Molson-Coors Molson-Coors 19 Phillips Phillips Brewing Company Phillips Brewing Company 20 Strongbow Hard Cider Heineken N.V. Molson-Coors 21 Moosehead Moosehead Breweries LTD Moosehead Breweries LTD 22 Lighthouse Lighthouse Brewing Lighthouse Breweing Company Company 23 Rolling Rock Anheuser-Busch AB Inbev 24 Social Lager GIN/Creemore Springs (M-C) Molson-Coors 25 Driftwood Ale Driftwood Brewery Driftwood Brewery

"Of the Top-25 on-premise in Canada, only Budweiser has a double-digit market share," said Ellis. "The Canadian market is an intensely competitive landscape with twenty-five brands having on-premise share-of-sales of 1 percent or greater." While Molson Coors has 39 percent of Top-25 on-premise sales by dollar (compared to 40 percent for AB Inbev), SABMiller's Miller Genuine Draft makes up only 7.7 percent of the total. Here's a look at what MGD had to compete with for attention as part of the Molson Coors portfolio:

Canadian

Top-25 On-Premise Brand Manufacturer Distributor Granville Island Granville/Creemore Springs (M-C) Molson-Coors Coors Light Molson-Coors Molson-Coors Heineken Heineken N.V. Molson-Coors Corona Extra Modelo Molson-Coors Molson Canadian Molson-Coors Molson-Coors Rickard's Molson-Coors Molson-Coors Carling Black Label Molson-Coors Molson-Coors Strongbow Hard Cider Heineken N.V. Molson-Coors Social Lager (GIB) Granville/Creemore Springs (M-C) Molson-Coors

Miller Genuine Draft ("MGD") SABMiller Molson-Coors

"If SABMiller can combine good consumer marketing with a new distribution portfolio, they can improve on the position they had with Molson Coors," said Ellis. "AB Inbev and Molson Coors have built beautiful brand portfolios in Canada. But with 9 of the Top 25 brands coming from outside these two Goliaths, there is an opening to coalesce a strong third beer distributor there. The on-premise channel has long been the brewer's platform for consumer trial and adoption, and will fuel overall growth."

About Restaurant Sciences Restaurant Sciences is the premier provider of syndicated data and insights on food and beverage consumption in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and other foodservice establishments. The company delivers market share, market basket, competitive analysis, pricing, promotional, trend, segmentation and custom analytics to food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, as well as the broader industry they serve. Restaurant Sciences transforms over $1 Billion per month in guest check-level sales information into detailed data and insights across all segments of the foodservice landscape in the United States and Canada. Insights are delivered online through their business intelligence tool or through custom analytics. Visit www.restaurantsciences.com.

Contact Information:

Marianne Sabella Dempsey CPRM 508-435-2020