Why Molson Coors Beverage Stock Dropped Today

Molson Coors Beverage (NYSE: TAP) stock dropped 5% through 1:45 p.m. ET Thursday after reporting mixed earnings last night.

On the one hand, analysts forecast Molson would earn only $1.15 per share, but Molson reported $1.21 per share in Q4 instead. On the other hand, analysts thought Molson's quarterly sales would be more than $2.7 billion -- but they ended up under $2.7 billion.

Molson Coors Q4 earnings

Sales declined 2.7% year over year at Molson, and GAAP earnings dropped 6.9% at the beer company. For the full year, Molson reported a 4.2% sales decline to $11.1 billion, with a disappointing loss of $10.75 per share.

Molson blamed a "non-cash partial goodwill impairment charge" for turning what should have been an annual profit into a big GAAP loss.

CEO Rahul Goyal lamented that 2025 was a "tough year" for Molson, but insisted his company has the "brands, infrastructure and people, and a strong balance sheet to weather this macro volatility."

Is Molson Coors stock a sell?

This "weathering" may take some time. Turning to guidance, company CFO Tracey Joubert warned of "rising commodity input costs pressuring our bottom-line" in 2026.

2026 sales are expected to be basically flat against 2025 -- about $11 billion. Combined with rising costs, though, the company forecasts an 11% to 15% year over year decline in "underlying" earnings (i.e., non-GAAP, not counting the 2025 write-downs).

The good news is Molson still expects to generate about $1.1 billion in positive free cash flow this year. On Molson's $9.6 billion market capitalization, that works out to a price-to-free cash flow ratio of only 8.7. Molson shouldn't have to grow much at all to justify that valuation.

But it does have to grow at least some.

Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.