Bud Light Weathers Stock Drop After Trans Partnership Backlash

Bud Light's parent company Anheuser-Busch appears to be weathering a recent decline in value following outrage and calls for a boycott of the brand over its partnership with a transgender influencer and activist.

On April 2, Dylan Mulvaney posted a video to her 1.7 million Instagram followers in which she explained that Bud Light had sent her a personalized can with her face on it to commemorate 365 days of being a girl. Those who have decried the brand as "woke" over the partnership have taken credit for a recent drop in Anheuser-Busch's value.

The row over transgender brand ambassadors is symbolic of a wider debate about the inclusion of transgender women in female issues and spaces. Some say transgender women should be treated the same as other women, while others say they are different and that hard-won women's rights must be protected.

A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's parent company, told Newsweek on April 3 that the company "works with hundreds of influencers across our brands as one of many ways to authentically connect with audiences across various demographics."

They added that the commemorative can it had given to Mulvaney "was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone and is not for sale to the general public."

"Anheuser-Busch—America's beer—has lost $4 billion in market value," Grant Stinchfield, a conservative radio and TV host, said on Tuesday.

"You don't think one person can make a difference?" he added. "You better believe you can, because you take the one person and you add it to the next person and the next person."

Daniel Spillett told Newsweek that "like many others I am thinking of selling my [Budweiser] stock if we can't oust the CEO and replace him with someone that thinks about the brand not supporting them minority of people when the majority oppose their dogma."

Newsweek reached out to Anheuser-Busch via email for comment on Wednesday.

Anheuser-Busch's market capitalization—the total value of a company's shares—had seen a steady rise since mid-March, marking a six-month upward trend in value, topping out at more than $134 billion on March 31, according to figures by Macrotrends.

However, since the furore over the partnership with Mulvaney, it has seen a fall in that value of over $3 billion, with a market cap on April 10 of $130.8 billion. That said, stocks in the company were trading in the high €60 to €61 ($65.50 to $66.70) range until they dropped on April 11, suggesting if the value drop was linked to the uproar, it was a delayed reaction.

Calls for a boycott of the brand grew from social media posts to reports of genuine acts of defiance against Bud Light. Supporters of Kari Lake, the Donald Trump-backed GOP candidate for Arizona Governor in 2022, refused to drink the beer brand at an open bar at a rally in Iowa. Meanwhile, a bar owner in Kentucky said he had noticed the beer sparking rows between patrons.

Anheuser-Busch stocks rose slightly on Tuesday afternoon before dropping again on Wednesday morning as the European markets opened. As of 6:30 a.m. ET, they were trading at around €59.10 ($64.60), a drop of about 3.3 percent on the previous day.

On Monday, Samuel O'Brient, a financial markets reporter at InvestorPlace, wrote that the stock drop appeared to be linked to the controversy over the company's partnership with Mulvaney, but that "this fad isn't likely to last long."

On Tuesday, he noted that the stock appeared to be rebounding, and that large investors in the company "remain bullish" about the asset. Among Anheuser-Busch's top five investors, three had offloaded a small proportion of their shares in the beverage firm, while two added to their portfolio.

These rises and falls in value are fairly common for such a large company, and could be construed as a normalization of stock prices after a peak in late March. Stocks had been rising from €47 ($51.37) in October and had spent much of the last six months trading at around €56-€57 ($61.20-$62.30).

This rise could be attributed to the company posting revenue growth of 11.2 percent in 2022 on March 2, from $54.3 billion in 2021 to $57.8 billion last year. At the same time, Anheuser-Busch told investors it predicted a net earnings growth of between 4-8 percent in 2023.

Anheuser-Busch has many brands under its umbrella besides Bud Light, and posted positive growth in markets across the globe. In 2022, while it saw a 6.7 percent rise in revenue in North America, despite a contraction in volume of 4 percent, it experienced double-digit growth fueled by increased sales in Central America, South America and Europe.

In a presentation to investors, Anheuser-Busch said its "diversified footprint provides a unique platform to lead & grow," with more than 60 percent of the markets it was in seeing growth. It noted that brands Corona and Stella Artois "led the growth of our global brands."

On April 6, Eddie Stableford, a food and drink branding expert, told Newsweek that boycotts would overall help the brand, as the U.S. is a saturated market and many American names are looking elsewhere in the world to expand into. He suggested they were doing this "by taking an approach that's more appropriate by those cultures."