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The Kraft Heinz Company (KHC)
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Restaurant Brands International Inc. (QSR)
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Ambev S.A. American Depositary Shares (Each representing 1) (ABEV)
Q: Interested in your opinion on Ambev, the Brazilian brewing company (ABEV). If that’s a bit too far afield, what would be your top choice among the larger beverage companies?
5i Research Answer:
It is beyond our focus, so we will be brief; ABEV is a famously well-run beverage company by the Brazilian investors – 3G Capital. Their playbook was to acquire consumer staple companies with a large amount of debt and improve the operations (largely through cost-cutting). However, aside from QSR, both KHC and ABEV have drastically underperformed market indexes, and we are skeptical of whether this approach is still working. We tend to stick with more conservative companies with decent growth prospects, for beverage names, we like STZ, MNST, CELH