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

NEWTON, MA -- (Marketwire) -- 03/04/13 -- "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   Molson-Coors
                            (M-C)
3    Kokanee                Anheuser-Busch         AB Inbev
4    Alexander Keith's      Anheuser-Busch         AB Inbev
5    Coors Light            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   SABMiller              Molson-Coors
     ("MGD")
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   Carling Black Label    Molson-Coors           Molson-Coors
19   Phillips               Phillips Brewing       Phillips Brewing Company
                            Company
20   Strongbow Hard Cider   Heineken N.V.          Molson-Coors
21   Moosehead              Moosehead Breweries    Moosehead Breweries LTD
                            LTD
22   Lighthouse             Lighthouse Brewing     Lighthouse Breweing
                            Company                Company
23   Rolling Rock           Anheuser-Busch         AB Inbev
24   Social Lager           GIN/Creemore Springs   Molson-Coors
                            (M-C)
25   Driftwood Ale          Driftwood Brewery      Driftwood Brewery

"Of the Top-25 on-premise beers 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       SABMiller                         Molson-Coors
("MGD")

"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.