A Burrito Awakens St. Louis From A Siesta
So, InBev’s bid for AB has been approved by the board of directors and everyone in St. Louis is freaking out. I am not saying that St. Louis didn’t feel different immediately after the news was announced. I am not saying that this isn’t going to permanently change the cultural landscape in St. Louis - it will because all of the sponsorships and philanthropy that have been such a major part of being in St. Louis are out the window. But there are a couple of things that I would like to say:
1) St. Louis needs to calm the crap down. The buyout has been approved by the board, but it still has to be approved by the shareholders (which it probably will be) and the government needs to approve it as well (which I don’t know much about so I am not sure what will happen with that). It has been gloom and doom here, end of the world madness I tell ya! I went to the grocer last night and everyone in front of me in line had cases of Miller and Coors (it was a late night run), something rarely seen before in St. Louis. You used to be peppered with questions if you walked into a party around these parts with a case of anything that didn’t start with the letters B and U (Bud or Busch). No longer will we have to withstand this type of interrogation - we can proudly walk in with our local micro-brews and not look like beer snobs - I see this as a bonus.
2) Are you kidding me? If someone walked up to you and asked you for your burrito, and offered to pay you twice what you paid for it, you would sell it too - even if it was a French guy who asked you for it. AB has been a stagnant stock for years and the company has been resting on their laurels not buying up other companies to strengthen their value when they saw the other brewers doing the same. AB was caught sleeping. I know these majority shareholders aren’t really the guys who are struggling to fill up their gas tank, but we are - so we should understand their desire to make money. Though we won’t know until the end of the next quarter if we are in a recession (it takes two quarters before you can say that) the way this quarter looks, we very well could be entering one, and these stockholders have probably taken an Economics class, probably know that the potential is very real, and are shoring themselves up just in case. Financial savvy dictates that you shore yourself up before financial downtimes and start buying low when others are forced to sell because they weren’t shored up - that’s capitalism.
Yes, I understand that they are the uber-American brand, and it will be awkward to see the Clydesdales parading during the next Super Bowl or if they dare to refer to themselves as the “American Lager”, but the beer is still being brewed in the United States so the brewing and bottling jobs are staying in St. Louis. YES - the majority of the money is going over seas but back to the burrito - are you really going to turn that offer down on the basis that the guy is French when you can barely afford gas? I don’t think you would, so why would you expect AB to do it? It would be financially irresponsible for the sharehoders and the board to reject the offer. You don’t make money when you trade based on emotions, do you see the guys on the stock exchange weeping everytime they trade with foreign companies? And for that matter, do you know how much of your 401k is invested in foreign companies? And if you do, have you noticed how nicely those stocks have been performing? “American Greed” are the words I keep hearing - mularky its ”Financial Savvy”.
I know what your thinking - you want to deport me, and you are free to say and think that, but I have to think that I am not the only one who feels this way.
