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Bud Light could be shunned by some drinkers 'for the foreseeable future' after backlash over transgender promoter, Wall Street warns

May 24, 2023, 02:21 IST
Business Insider
Analysts at JPMorgan predict some consumers won't drink Bud Light "for the foreseeable future" following backlash the brand faced for a promotion that featured transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press and Rob Kim/Getty Images
  • Analysts at JP Morgan said some consumers won't drink Bud Light 'for the foreseeable future.'
  • Anheuser-Busch, parent company of Bud Light, has experienced backlash for a promotion.
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The fallout from Bud Light's promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney could lead to a persistent dip in sales — and some Americans could turn away from the beer brand entirely for the foreseeable future, JPMorgan analysts warned.

The analysis, which was shared with Insider on Tuesday, predicted that even with some improvement to sales in the coming months, Anheuser-Busch's US sales volume could drop 12-13% on an annual basis.

On Anheuser-Busch's May earnings call, global CEO Michel Doukeris said that the company was tripling its summer budget for the Bud Light brand in the US.

But even with an increased marketing budget, the JP Morgan analysis predicts that the drop in sales will stick, and there will be only a "slight improvement" in sales over the next year.

"We believe there is a subset [of] American consumers who will not drink a Bud Light for the foreseeable future," the report read.

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The beer brand was hit with backlash after Mulvaney, the influencer, posted a promotion on her Instagram that featured custom Bud Light beer cans with prints of her face in April. Some critics who opposed the beer brand working with Mulvaney called for a boycott.

The fallout from the promotion appeared to lead to a dip in Bud Light sales.

On the earnings call, Doukeris said that the beer brand's dip in sales following the backlash represented only around 1% of the company's global sales volume during that time. At the time he said "it is still too early to have a full view" of the impact of the promotion on Bud Light's beer sales.

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that Bud Light Sales in US stores dropped 17% by mid-April, per data created by Bump Williams Consulting and analyzed by Nielsen. Then, closer to the end of April, those sales dropped 21% compared to the previous year, according the data analysis reported on by the Journal.

This month the company also lost its LGBTQ+ equality score and "Best Places to Work" title from the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, for the way it handled the backlash.

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