Monster Beverage Corporation, often cited as the best-performing US stock of the century, saw its shares slide ~4% last night on the back of a disappointing annual update.
Net income in 2022 was down some 13.5% to $1.19 billion compared to the year before, though the energy drink giant managed to maintain its impressive streak of revenue growth which now stretches back 3 decades.
Unleash the beast
The drinks company started life in the 1930s as Hansen’s Natural, a family-run fruit juice firm in Southern California. However, after 70 or so years in the juice and soda game, the company decided to launch an energy drink in 2002, creating a Monster that would go on to define the brand.
In 2002, the company netted just $92m in sales, a figure that rocketed past the $1 billion mark just 6 years later, and has since climbed to a whopping $6.3 billion in 2022. Hansen’s became Monster Beverage Corp. in 2012 when the energy drink’s status as its star seller was firmly established, and a strategic partnership with Coca-Cola followed in 2015.
With festivals, an F1 racing team, a smattering of global soccer sides, and over 11 billion cans sold last year, Red Bull is the loudest (all things relative) of the two big brands in the energy drink space. However, Monster’s slightly quieter approach has worked wonders. A theoretical $100 investment in MNST at the turn of the century would now be worth ~$113k, over 5x the return on the same investment in Apple.
