Company Ambev foresees its more digitized and innovative future. For this, the brewery has already bet on initiatives such as Zé Delivery and Bees

On the first day of Ambev's Investor Day, April 12, Jean Jereissati, CEO of the brewery, declared that “being just a beverage company no longer represents us”. From there, he announced the transformation the company will undergo. At the event, Ambev's management should detail the directions of the company's plans for investors and analysts.

Known as the largest brewery in all of Latin America, Ambev's challenge is to transform itself in order to remain in constant development. Jean pointed out that the brewery sees itself as a “brand platform”, being a reference in the entire context of the beverage sales sector. To achieve the desired transformation, the first step is digitization, as started by stakes in the metaverse.

Innovative initiatives

In this sense, Ambev already has three innovation projects aimed at its most important customers. One of them is the application for home delivery of drinks Zé Delivery, developed 7 years ago. In December 2021 alone, the app already reached almost 5 million active users and has stood out in Ambev's surveys since the pandemic began.

In addition to this initiative, the brewery has Bees, which is a marketplace aimed at bars and restaurants created in 2019. Last year, the application reached 370 customers and shows a capacity for growth of 80%, according to Ambev estimates. In the Bees brand, there is also the fintech Bees Bank, which serves small and medium-sized companies. In about two years, it already has 220 accounts opened and R$1 billion in TPV (total payment transactions).

The balance sheets reveal that the brewery's new fronts have great growth potential, which is the company's objective. Evidence of the change in direction is the strategy of studying the company's performance based on the return on invested capital, the ROIC, and leaving aside Ebitda, the traditional operating cash indicator.

Brand growth projections

Thus, the CEO of the Ambev brewery stated: “As we develop new businesses with different financial profiles, we believe that ROIC will be the best metric to fully capture the value of a company that is transforming”.

The digital advancement of the brewery aims to provide several solutions and, in this way, trigger the company's expansion. The inspiration comes from the golden years of the company itself, when, in the first 15 years, Ambev's Ebitda increased more than 10 times with the boom in business.

“However, after 2015 we started to have some difficulties. Sales volume stopped, margins deteriorated, Ebitda stopped growing and our market value began to reflect this. The macroeconomic aspect played a big role [in this scenario], but the truth is that the industry has changed and we have not adapted. The time has come to evolve the growth model, transform the company through technology”, declared Jean Jereissati.

The biggest question is how to implement this change in the brand. Several investors, excited by Ambev's action plan, raised the company's shares to more than 3% on the eve of Investor Day. However, the challenge in explaining the brewery's strategy is great, considering that the "transformation is still in the early stages", as explained by Lucas Lira, CFO of Ambev.

He added: “We are looking at many opportunities not only in our core business, but also in our technological capabilities – which, if executed well, can unlock long-term and sustainable value creation”.

For Lucas Lira, the Bees initiative is a perfect example of what the brewery hopes for its future. “It is something very different in terms of the business model, which Ambev would not have had in the past. Bees showed us that this is possible: it accelerated the growth of the core business, helping us to serve our customers better. The result is smarter campaigns, better product offerings and technology-enabled revenue management tools. With this, we expand the distribution reach not only for beer, but also for non-alcoholic beverages, reaching new business opportunities”.