William Rainer
Following the remarkable plummet of the Bud Light company’s sales and value this year, the Bill Gates Foundation has purchased a hefty $95 million worth of stock in Anheuser-Busch.
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Anheuser-Busch has been under extreme scrutiny this year due to one of the worst marketing blunders of all time. The focus of this mistake came from Anheuser-Busch’s former most popular brand, Bud Light.
Bud Light ended up gifting the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a custom can and had an Instagram ad campaign to go with it. The issue is, Bud Light found out the hard way, the large majority of their consumers are not your typical trans supporter. It turns out that most people who drink Bud Light prefer women to be women and men to be men.
Bill Gates Buys $95 Million In Anheuser-Busch Stocks
Bill Gates buys $95M worth of Anheuser-Busch shares following Bud Light disaster https://t.co/rP96NMHGjK pic.twitter.com/MuyknyUNEd
— New York Post (@nypost) September 6, 2023
All of that to say, the boycotting by famous individuals such as Kid Rock and others was a huge blow to Bud Light, dropping the company’s sales by roughly 25%. The hit caused Bud Light to lose its crown to Modelo and fell face first on July 4th.
Before buying into Anheuser-Busch, Bill Gates bought 3.76% in Heineken, as reported by CBS. This comes as a mere addition to Bill Gates’ shares in Walmart and of course Microsoft which he co-founded, along with many others.
Since then Bill Gates dropped some cash on the order of $95 million. That got him 1.7 million shares which are worth a 0.1% stake in Anheuser-Busch. Although Bill Gates made it clear that he is not a ‘big beer drinker,’ when he bought into Heineken, he is clearly a big beer investor.
Buying into such a controversial brand may be a dangerous game, but it looks like the reward outweighs the risk for Gates. Although Bud Light tanked the Anheuser-Busch valuation, he is placing his bet that Anheuser-Busch will rebound.
Read More: Bud Light Sales Drop 29.5 Percent in Latest Week Since Dylan Mulvaney Boycott Calls
