Heineken’s success
So Heineken announced its best performance for over ten years and saw volumes increasing by 7.7% which helped the company beat market expectations on its results.
Heineken is the world’s second biggest brewer with brands like Amstel, Tiger, Sol and Strongbow under its umbrella and it benefited from the increasing popularity of its zero percent beer.
It seems that non or low-alcohol beer is increasing in popularity due to ongoing innovations in brewing and currently makes up 12% of beer sales in Spain.
Given that European alcohol consumption has fallen by 20% in the eleven years to 2016, I think that it is going to become increasingly important for brewers to come up with a broader array of beverages as consumer tastes continue to change.
We’ve already seen them dabbling in fruit juice, energy drinks and cannabis-infused sparkling water, so things should get interesting!
Key development for an electric car platform maker
The other thing I wanted to talk about today was Amazon and General Motors’ as yet undisclosed investment in Rivian – a ten year old company based near Detroit that is developing a platform for pick-up trucks and SUVs that can be used by other carmakers.
This new investment could imply a valuation of about $2bn for Rivian!
Amazingly, none of the big carmakers are in the advanced stages of developing an electric pick-up or SUV so I think that, given the continued popularity of these types of vehicles, it would make a lot of sense to make these electric platforms.
As a motor manufacturer, if you could buy a platform off the shelf from Rivian you could save yourself a big chunk of development costs and get an electrified pick-up or SUV out to market much more quickly than if you had done it yourself.
