Despite being around for nearly three decades, La Croix has seen a recent meteoric rise in sales while becoming a darling among millennials looking for a fizzy drink that isn’t full of sugar and artificial ingredients. And while it took a few years, drink giants such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo finally caught on and responded to consumer preferences by adding sparkling water to their product lines, so much so that sales of La Croix have been in a “free fall.”
While investment firm UBS upgraded their recommendation of parent company National Beverage’s stock (FIZZ) from sell to neutral, believing that the warmer summer weather will lift sales, analysts at Guggenheim Securities aren’t so optimistic, blaming it in part on the strength of their competition, bad press, and inexperienced management, saying “we think it’s unlikely that La Croix can recover to any meaningful degree while in the hands of National Beverage.”
National Beverage’s stock has been in a tailspin, losing nearly half of its value in the last year, which has us asking, what if someone new took over La Croix, and if so, what would it look like? Could you reboot the brand?
