Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola Co. will pay $2.15 billion to buy a 16.7% piece of Monster Beverage Co., the fast-growing maker of energy drinks.
- Under the terms of the deal, Coke's energy brands -- Burn, Full Throttle, and NOS -- will be moved under Monster management.
- The move comes just days after news broke that Monster, second only to Red Bull in the energy drinks business, plans to debut a morning brew and lower-caffeine products.
Dive Insight:
Coke, just like rival PepsiCo, has a problem: People aren't drinking soda like they used to.
What the soft-drink companies should do about that is a subject of much debate on Wall Street and in the beverage business. Interestingly, one much-repeated bit of advice has been that Coke or Pepsi should buy Monster.
Now Coke has done that. Sort of.
What's interesting here is that Coke has bought a minority stake, just as it has with Keurig. That might suggest that Coke is at least as interested in investing in other companies and management teams as it is in the brands themselves.