Paul C. Varga
Analyst · Bill Chappell of SunTrust
Well, I mean, you're immediately going to focus on 2 countries there, which are Mexico and the U.S. And I think it will depend a bit on what price segment you're in. We know that both in the United States and down in Mexico at the sort of standard, even approaching the lower end of the premium price segments, those categories remain really competitive. I mean, there's just a lot of entrants in there, some of them at 100% agave, particularly in the United States. And I mean, I was looking at the sort of more recent category trends in the United States in preparation for this, and the tequila business at the dollar level's been a little sluggish relative to total spirits in the last half a year or so. So we'll see how those competitive dynamics, how much of them are related to supply. Usually, the factor we look for is how many new entrants are coming in, I mean, because a lot of times people start to introduce new brands or new extensions. And if those slow down, you might get an indication as to how people are thinking about their own individual supply demand balancing acts. Against that, where we're positioned, particularly in the United States, is up at the higher end. And as Don talked about in his -- I mean, we're pretty small, to be honest with you, as a percentage of total tequila in the United States volumetrically. I mean, that's why we think there's so much potential for us. So off of that small base, I mean, right now particularly on Herradura, we think we've got some real momentum going. It sort of started when we introduced the new bottle and package and started to put a little bit more support behind it. So that's been growing. Last year, we had a very competitive year as one of -- a new entrant came in against el Jimador in the United States. And actually, I think the brand's weathered it pretty well and is this year off to a pretty decent start. We're continuing to do fairly well in the U.S. The Mexico el Jimador business is a real competitive sort of volumetric slugfest. But overall -- and then the other business that's tequila-based, which we've been pleased with generally over the last few years has been the New Mix business down in Mexico, which is an RTD business. So sometimes looking at the category trends when you have a small market share aren't as indicative as what you're doing as individual brands, and I would say that's kind of the case, particularly in the United States, for Brown-Forman's tequila brands.