What Four Major Earnings Reports Reveal

Over the past few weeks, four of the largest beverage majors in the world—AB InBev, Heineken, Molson Coors, and Diageo—opened their books for earnings season. The same theme runs through all four reports: core alcohol businesses are largely stagnating, while non-alc portfolios are expanding.

The growth is not the story. What separates these four is disclosure. One company quantifies its non-alc business and builds a strategic pillar around it. One reports the number and files the ambition under sustainability. One gives the category a sentence. One promotes its non-alc beer and doesn’t raise non-alc spirits until an analyst does. What a company counts, bundles, and leaves out is a more reliable read on internal priority than any growth rate it publishes.

The spectrum of disclosure

AB InBev

AB InBev offered the most granular detail and the strongest vote of confidence. Non-alc beer revenue grew 27 percent globally in the second quarter. In its investor presentation, AB InBev set that against 11 percent revenue growth for the non-alc beer industry (Nielsen, quarter-to-date through May). Corona Cero revenue grew 25 percent, and Michelob Ultra Zero’s more than doubled. The wider “Balanced Choices” portfolio—low-carb, low-calorie, sugar-free, gluten-free, and non-alc brands—grew 13 percent.

Management also delivered the metric beverage executives care most about: incrementality. CEO Michel Doukeris cited an estimate that 60 percent of non-alc beer volume comes from new occasions and new consumers. Naming Balanced Choices one of four category expansion levers, alongside core beer, premium, and beyond beer, puts non-alc inside the growth architecture rather than beside it.

Heineken

Heineken published solid figures inside a cautious long-term narrative. Low-and-no volume grew 12 percent in the first half, its fastest-growing priority area, ahead of beyond beer at 8 percent and premium at 6 percent. That 12 percent bundles in low-alcohol beer and malt soft drinks such as Maltina. Isolated to non-alc, the picture is slightly more modest: the non-alc beer and cider portfolio grew 7.5 percent in volume, per the CFO, with flagship Heineken 0.0 up 7.2 percent.

The company also restated a target, set in late 2025, of at least 25 percent low-and-no volume growth by 2030 against a 2024 baseline. Compounded annually, that’s under 4 percent a year—a sharp deceleration from the segment’s current trajectory. The placement is more telling than the number: Heineken filed the target under the responsible pillar of its sustainability program rather than its commercial guidance. The timing supports that read. Heineken has been without a permanent CEO since Dolf van den Brink stepped down May 31, incoming chief Rafael Oliveira starts October 1, and the interim team cut roughly 3,000 roles in the first half of a planned reduction of up to 6,000. An organization in that position isn’t likely to raise a segment ambition.

Molson Coors

Molson Coors gave the category one sentence of prepared remarks. Against a U.S. beer industry down an estimated 4.2 percent, net sales falling 3.6 percent in constant currency, and underlying earnings per share dropping 22.9 percent, executives noted that Blue Moon Non-Alc and Peroni 0.0 grew brand volumes—evidence of relevance in a small but growing category, with no figures attached. Coors 0.0 went unmentioned on the call, prepared remarks, and Q&A alike, in its launch quarter. The growth story ran elsewhere: value brands, above-premium, and beyond beer, anchored by the $275 million acquisition of Atomic Brands, maker of Monaco Cocktails, which closed April 1.

Diageo

Diageo reported organic net sales down 2 percent, reported operating profit down 27.2 percent, and a full-year dividend cut from 103.48 cents to 50 cents per share. (Organic operating profit rose 2.0 percent; the reported decline reflects $1.5 billion of impairments and $0.9 billion of restructuring.) Non-alc received no line item.

At the Capital Markets Day on August 6, no Diageo executive named acquisitions Ritual Zero Proof or Seedlip in any presentation or prepared remarks. The brands surfaced once, in a question from a Morgan Stanley analyst asking whether the silence meant they had been de-emphasized. CEO Sir Dave Lewis answered without naming either brand. He said non-alc was “not deprioritised,” then sized it: 94 percent of Diageo’s no-alcohol business is Guinness 0.0, non-alc spirits is “less than 1%,” and investment will be “proportionate to that opportunity.”

Strategic implications for the category

The disclosure gap is the signal. Quantifying incrementality and naming non-alc a growth pillar commits marketing spend and a fight for shelf space. One sentence without numbers marks a secondary priority. And a non-alc spirits business that surfaces only when an analyst forces the question—then gets sized at under 1 percent with a promise of proportionate investment—has been ranked, precisely, in public.

For emerging brands, that spectrum is a map of incoming competitive pressure. In the non-alc beer aisle, three of these four are building infrastructure and contesting share. In non-alc spirits, the largest owner in the world brings up the category only under questioning. Within your segment, are the majors building, mentioning, or staying silent—and does your plan account for the difference?