YOUNG PEOPLE ARE DRINKING LESS ALCOHOL. CAN CEO MICHEL DOUKERIS PERSUADE THEM TO KEEP DRINKING AB INBEV'S BEERS?

SOME TIME AGO, top CEOs at an invitation-only seminar at Harvard Business School were asked to imagine the four crises they would likely confront during their tenure at the top: a health emergency, a geopolitical conflict, an economic downturn, and a trade war.

- VIVIENNE WALT

For one participant in particular-Michel Doukeris, CEO of the world's biggest brewer, AnheuserBusch InBev-the list hit home. "So, according to your research, I'm ready to retire," he recalls telling the Harvard professor. "Because I have seen all that in the first two years." Doukeris had been promoted in July 2021 to lead AB InBev (as the brewing giant is known). It was a baptism by fire, beginning at the height of COVID, when millions of drinkers were under lockdown or avoiding crowded bars.

Then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine, spiraling inflation, and deepening trade disputes between the U.S. and China. And in 2023, American drinkers launched a boycott against Bud Light-one of AB InBev's best-known and bestselling beers-after the company hired transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote it on Instagram. The backlash briefly clobbered AB InBev's stock, and the company estimates that the boycott cost it $1.4 billion in U.S. sales.

Today, Doukeris has no stated plans to retire (despite what he told the professor). But he says he gleaned an important insight at the seminar: Upheaval is the new normal. "Change is coming much faster," he says, sitting one rainy morning in AB InBev's office in Brussels, overlooking the Belgian capital's soaring 15th-century City Hall.

"The cycles are shorter than what they used to be." For AB InBev, the churn has been challenging.

Analysts estimate that the company generated $60 billion in revenue in 2024, but neither its size nor its portfolio of iconic brands which also includes Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois-has shielded it from economic gyrations. In the third quarter of 2024, its earnings rose, but beer sales fell about 3.1% compared with the year-earlier period, thanks largely to a slump in spending in China.