There's a Monster under Hansen Natural's
Red Bull-sipping pros clearly didn't see it coming. They were looking for the company to earn just $0.36 a share on $217.7 million in net sales. Either they failed to grasp the wingspan of Anheuser-Busch's distribution reach, or their channel checks were limited to the oversized cans of Monster Energy.
Pop stars like Coca-Cola
Hansen introduced the non-carbonated Java Monster for the ready-to-drink chilled-coffee market at the start of the second quarter. Starbucks
Hansen also introduced the M-80 line earlier this year, adding a juice-flavored bent to its invigorating energy drinks.
I've been skeptical about Hansen in the past. When I saw Coke put a little marketing muscle behind its Full Throttle brand, I thought that Monster would be in for a world of hurt. It obviously didn't pour out that way. Other potential Monster slayers, like PepsiCo's
The energy-drink market belongs to Red Bull and Hansen's Monster. Everyone else is just fighting for scraps in the sandbox. What will it take before Coke or Pepsi wakes up and smells the taurine? If the Monster can't be slain, it's just a matter of paying $5 billion to $6 billion for Hansen today -- or $8 billion to $9 billion tomorrow.
Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola have made the cut as Inside Value stock picks, while Starbucks is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection. Take a refreshing swig of any of our market-beating newsletters free for 30 days.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a big fan of the low-carb version of Monster. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool's disclosure policy is all natural.