(LifeSiteNews) — Microsoft co-founder and left-wing financier Bill Gates’ foundation reportedly sunk a nearly $100 million investment last quarter into Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of major U.S. beer brand Bud Light which has suffered a large and enduring drop in sales following its disastrous promotional team-up with transgender-identifying TikTok activist Dylan Mulvaney.
A former Anheuser-Busch executive has called the investment a bad move.
According to a regulatory filing, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust purchased 1.7 million shares of Anheuser-Busch valued at $95 million last month as the ongoing conservative-led boycott against Bud Light continues to rage on.
As LifeSiteNews has reported, Bud Light’s sales sharply nosedived and consistently plummeted after the company’s disastrous April decision to team up for a promotional video with gender-confused TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney, leading conservatives to hail the boycott as among the most effective in recent memory. The fallout has also made a noticeable financial impact on Bud Light’s parent company.
While the investment by Gates — who The Epoch Times noted has previously admitted isn’t “a big beer drinker” — into Anheuser-Busch seems to indicate that the billionaire has confidence in the resilience of the massive beer brewing company, the data is shaky.
Citing the company’s second quarter results report, CBS reported that Anheuser-Busch’s revenue “declined 10.5%, its sales to wholesalers declined 15% and its sales to retailers declined 14%.”
“This underperformance is attributed primarily to the decline of Bud Light,” the outlet noted.
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This summer, Anheuser-Busch wholesalers have said they don’t anticipate that disaffected Bud Light drinkers will go back to purchasing beer from the company.
“Consumers have made a choice,” an executive at a Texas-based beer distributor who asked to remain anonymous told The New York Post. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.”
This week, a former executive with Anheuser-Busch said the Gates foundation’s decision to invest capital in the company isn’t a good financial move.
“Bill Gates is definitely making a mistake,” Anson Frericks said, according to Fox News Business.
“If I was looking for advice on investing [in]to software companies, tech companies, I might go to Bill Gates,” he said. “But if you’re looking at the beer industry, he doesn’t have a great track record of investing in winners at this point.”
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The former Anheuser-Busch executive also suggested that Gates’ investment isn’t likely to help the company regain its lost connection with its customer base.
“For the company’s sake, they’d probably be better off [with] maybe somebody who is more of, kind of the everyman type of person,” Frericks said. He argued that Gates’ interest in the corporation “doesn’t really resonate with sort of that common man, that everyday Bud Light beer drinker.”