São Paulo, May 15, 2026, 16:06 BRT
Ambev dropped 0.25% to 15.73 reais in late São Paulo trade Friday. UBS raised its price target on the stock to $2.90 from $2.65, sticking with a Sell call. Investors are weighing a strong beer quarter in Brazil against high valuations, with shares having climbed after earnings.
Ambev stock has climbed 13.49% since Jan. 1, MarketScreener data show. The company is counting on Carnival, higher-end labels, and the FIFA World Cup to drive sales with much of the consumer market sluggish.
Ambev’s ADR shed 6 cents to end at $3.09 in New York. The last trade was recorded at 18:50 UTC. U.S.-listed shares put the company’s market value near $48.66 billion.
Ambev reported a first-quarter profit of 3.89 billion reais, a 2.1% rise from a year ago. Organic net revenue was up 8.1%. Normalized EBITDA came in at 7.56 billion reais, gaining 10.1%. The EBITDA margin widened by 60 basis points to reach 33.6%.
Brazil Beer volumes climbed 1.2% to a first-quarter record, Ambev said. Net revenue for the segment rose 9.6%, driven by stronger premium sales. Labels like Stella Artois, Corona, and Original were up in the low twenties, the company said.
The company’s CEO Carlos Lisboa said it was “a solid start to 2026” in the statement. On the earnings call, Lisboa called it “the year of socialization,” connecting the strategy of more events and larger gatherings to greater beer sales.
Ambev is pitching its World Cup plans to analysts, CFO Guilherme Fleury said. Fleury said previous World Cups have tended to bring 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points to the industry’s annual growth, mainly during the second and third quarters. For this year’s campaign, Fleury said Ambev will use its Zé Delivery and BEES platforms to drive the push.
Ambev reported a 162.5% jump in operating cash flow this quarter, hitting 3.16 billion reais, on higher EBITDA and better working capital. The board cleared a 1.2 billion reais interest-on-capital payment for July 6 and flagged a second, about 700 million reais, coming in December. Interest-on-capital is Brazil’s term for distributing cash to shareholders.
Costs remain in focus. Ambev reported an 8.5% increase in consolidated cash cost of goods sold per hectoliter, or what it spends to make every 100 liters after stripping out some non-cash items. Cash COGS for Brazil Beer, excluding marketplace products, jumped 14.6%. Ambev kept its 2026 Brazil Beer cash COGS outlook unchanged, still seeing an increase of 4.5% to 7.5%. Fleury said cost pressures should start to ease in the second quarter.
Heineken keeps pushing. The company opened a $462 million plant in Minas Gerais last year, jumping into the premium and pure-malt segment that Ambev says it’s been growing in. For Ambev, premium now is about more than growth—it’s about holding onto share.
Some buyers are stepping in. MarketScreener data puts the stock at a Hold from 18 analysts, with the mean target at 15.87 reais, just over the previous close. Ambev doesn’t have much breathing room. The challenge now: turn the World Cup effect and new digital pushes into sales and hold the margins that have brought investors back.
