Feb 24 2025 19 mins
Did we just experience the defining moment within the better-for-you, functional lifestyle products movement? Celsius Holdings (NASDAQ: CELH) had quarterly revenue of $332.2 million, which was down 4% YoY. And while that now marks the second straight quarter of YoY revenues losses…sequential QoQ revenue activity increased sharply at 25%. According to Circana last 52-week data, CELSIUS accounted for 30.3% of all energy drink category growth YoY. In addition, Celsius sustained its market share of 11.8% and is securely the third-largest energy drink brand in the category. And I don’t want gloss over this accomplishment…as CELSIUS became the first brand in over a decade not named Red Bull or Monster Energy that was able to capture more than a 10% share in the U.S. energy drinks market. Celsius energy drinks has seen massive growth in convenience stores, foodservice (e.g. fast food restaurants), mass retailers like Walmart, the club channel in retailers like Costco, and the Amazon marketplace. Additionally, the early international market development groundwork starting to formalize with CELSIUS extending its relationship with Suntory Beverage & Food and also the first major international market expansion under the PepsiCo umbrella (i.e. Canada). It's my opinion that international expansion presents significant opportunity for incremental growth over the next three to five years. With Celsius at basically full distribution now…the TDP growth will have to come from increased items carried per store. Going forward, Celsius will increase items per store through a combination of product strategies like flavor, format, pack size, and variant expansion. Additionally, CELISUS will continue scaling up the new Essentials lineup that has exceeded the company’s expectations. Moreover, they will seek more store placements like leveraging cold display activity in Celsius-branded coolers. But the huge breaking news that accompanied this earnings report was CELSIUS entering into a definitive agreement to acquire Alani Nutrition for a net purchase price of $1.65 billion, comprising a mix of cash and stock. In 2024, Alani Nu became the fourth-largest U.S. energy drink brand…reaching more than $800 million in retail sales across tracked channels…growing an astonishing 63% YoY. Moreover, the combined brand platform of CELSIUS and Alani Nu energy drinks would be considered the fastest growing energy drink brand portfolio of the top 10 categorical competitors...generating slightly below $2 billion in revenue and more than $3.5 billion in tracked channel retail sales over the full-year 2024 period, and would have 16% category share (trailing only the Monster Energy combined brand platform and Red Bull). But I'll also analyze a collection of questions that have huge energy drinks market implications like why did CELSIUS acquire Alani Nu, is there cannibalization risk, will PepsiCo distribute Alani Nu now, CELSIUS product category expansion, and will this set off more market consolidation and another game of independent DSD musical chairs.