Businessweek

Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV operates as a brewing company worldwide. The company’s business zones include North America, Latin America North, Latin America South, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, the Asia Pacific, and Global Export & Holding Companies. Strategy The guiding principle for the company’s strategy is a dream to be ‘the Best Beer Company in a Better World’ by uniting brand development, sales execution and best-in-class efficiency with the role of a responsible global corporate citizen. Its business model is focused on organic growth. Products Beer The company manages a portfolio of approximately 200 brands of beer. Its beer portfolio is divided into global, multi-country, and local brands. Its portfolio includes three global beers with worldwide distribution, such as Budweiser, Stella Artois, and Beck’s. In addition, the company has a multi-country portfolio of brands, such as Leffe, a full-bodied beer that hails from Belgium, available in approximately 60 countries worldwide; and Hoegaarden, a Belgian wheat (or white) beer. North America: The company offers Bud Light, Bud Light Lime, Bud Light Platinum, Bud Light Lime Lime-A-Rita, Michelob ULTRA, Natural Light, Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Beck’s, Land Shark, and Shock Top. Latin America: The company offers Skol, Brahma, Antarctica, Bohemia, and Quilmes. Western Europe: The company offers Jupiler and Hasseröder. Central & Eastern Europe: The company offers Sibirskaya Korona, Klinskoye, and Chernigivske. Asia Pacific: The company offers Harbin and Sedrin. In certain markets, the company also distributes products of other brewers. Non-Beer Soft Drinks The company, through its subsidiary, Companhia de Bebidas das Americas—Ambev (Ambev) and in the United States through Anheuser-Busch Companies, LLC (Anheuser-Busch) produces and distributes soft drinks, primarily in Latin America. Soft drinks include both carbonated soft and non-carbonated soft drinks. The company’s soft drinks business includes both its own production and agreements with PepsiCo related to bottling and distribution. Major brands that are distributed under these agreements include Pepsi, 7UP, and Gatorade. Ambev has long-term agreements with PepsiCo whereby Ambev has the right to bottle, sell and distribute certain brands of PepsiCo’s portfolio of carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks in Brazil. The agreements would expire on 31 December 2017 and are automatically extended for additional ten-year terms unless terminated prior to the expiration date by written notice by either party at least two years prior to the expiration of their term or on account of other events. Ambev also has agreements with PepsiCo to bottle, sell, distribute and market some of its brands in the Dominican Republic and in some regions of Peru, including the north and the Lima regions. Through its Latin America South operations, Ambev is also PepsiCo’s bottler for Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay. Apart from the bottling and distribution agreements with PepsiCo, Ambev also produces, sells and distributes its own soft drinks. Its main carbonated soft drinks brand is Guaraná Antarctica. In December 2012, Ambev and Monster Energy Company announced that they had signed a distribution agreement for the sale and distribution of Monster Energy drinks in Brazil. In the United States, Anheuser-Busch also produces non-alcoholic malt beverage products, including O’Doul’s, O’Doul’s Amber and related products. On a limited basis, the company entered into arrangements under which other non-alcoholic products, such as Monster Energy drinks, are distributed and sold in select markets though the Anheuser-Busch distribution network. In Europe, the company also produces non-alcoholic products, including Jupiler Force, Hoegaarden 0.0 and related products. Intellectual Property The company has approximately 100 patent families for which patents are pending or registered; that means it has or are seeking to obtain patent protection for approximately 100 different technological inventions. Research and Development In 2012, the company spent USD 182 million in the area of market research and on innovation in the areas of process optimization and product development at the company’s Belgian research and development center and across its zones. Regulations Affecting Business At the federal level, the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department oversees the industry, and each state in which the company sells or produces products, and some local authorities in jurisdictions in which it sell products, also has regulations that affect the business conducted by the company and other brewers and wholesalers. History Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV was founded in 1366.