BUD Anheuser Busch Inbev SA NV

By Jennifer Maloney 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (April 23, 2019).

The head of the world's largest brewer has sharply curtailed the time he spends poring over sales figures. Meetings that used to last up to three hours now take 30 minutes. And the briefings sent to the CEO a couple of days before a meeting must be short -- 20 pages instead of 200.

After 10 years at the helm of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA, Carlos Brito has decided that in order to pivot the company toward the future, he has to change with it. So the self-described numbers junkie is pulling away from the minutiae of operations and trying to check his micromanaging impulses.

That has freed up time for him to take crash courses in artificial intelligence and robotics, and shepherd new ventures such as a Keurig machine for cocktails. He has gone on so-called consumer safaris, shadowing millennial shoppers in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. And he has paid visits to companies like Starbucks Corp. and Harry's to pick executives' brains on mobile technology, consumer insights and building disruptive brands.

"The only way to do this is to get out of your comfort zone," Mr. Brito said in an interview at AB InBev's New York office. "You have to be exposed to things that make you uncomfortable because you don't know about it, because it's new territory, because it's new technology, because it's something you don't do well."

The 58-year-old Brazilian is at a critical moment. AB InBev has struggled to pay down its $102.5 billion debt load as it deals with declining beer consumption in key markets. The brewer last fall halved its dividend, sending its stock price tumbling. Investors question whether the company, which now makes one out of every four beers sold world-wide, can boost revenue by building brands rather than making blockbuster acquisitions.

In December, Mr. Brito gathered his top executives on a conference call to give them new marching orders.

"We've been in a much tougher situation before," he told them. He had rallied his lieutenants in a similar conference call in 2008, when the financial markets crashed as the Brazilian-Belgian brewer InBev was closing its landmark acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, putting Mr. Brito atop the combined company. This time he told his team to simplify their priorities and home in on their two most important targets: growing revenue and deleveraging.

While he has urged executives to narrow their focus, the CEO has been broadening his own.

Each time the beer giant has made a major acquisition, Mr. Brito said, he has closely overseen its integration, including its most recent takeover of SABMiller in 2016. Now, with that combination complete, he said he is "leaning towards the future, not because I'm better than anybody, but just because that's my job."

He has stopped asking questions, for example, about regional sales numbers that happen to pique his interest -- "the numbers that I should never have been talking about."

"I grew up in the operations, especially sales," he said, "and I love the details, so I have to force myself to say, 'OK, I have great people. I have a team I can trust so I can do the things I need to do.'"

"This is a big change," said Michel Doukeris, head of the company's North America business. In the abbreviated sessions, Mr. Brito "doesn't have the time to ask all the questions, all the details and everything." Mr. Doukeris said the shorter meetings give him more time to focus on consumer trends in the U.S. and Canada.

There are fewer people in the room, too. Gone are accountants, controllers and individual brand managers who previously attended in case they might be needed to answer a question.

The changes have trickled down, said David Kamenetzky, the company's chief strategy officer: Zone presidents are holding shorter meetings with their own teams, too.

Mr. Brito has shuffled his senior leadership team. Three years ago, it was stacked with executives experienced in sales and finance; now more than 40% of its members are marketers. He tapped Mr. Doukeris, the new North America chief, to slow the decline of Bud Light while growing its higher-priced beer brands and pushing into other categories with hard seltzer, cold-brew coffee and canned cocktails.

Amid pressure from employees, investors and board members, Mr. Brito over the past two years has adopted changes to the company's recruitment and promotions system to address the absence of women in AB InBev's highest ranks, a situation that still persists. Now he gets monthly or quarterly updates on companywide objectives such as digital transformation and the diversity of the workforce.

An engineer by training, Mr. Brito was groomed by Brazilian investment banker Jorge Paulo Lemann, who paid for his first year at Stanford Business School. When Mr. Brito graduated in 1989, Mr. Lemann offered him a job at a Brazilian beer company he and his partners were acquiring called Brahma. By 2008, after a series of mergers, it was the biggest brewer in the world and Mr. Brito was its CEO.

When the company took over Anheuser-Busch that year, Mr. Brito brought to St. Louis the stringent cost-cutting and budgeting practices that were developed at Brahma and later became hallmarks of companies controlled by Mr. Lemann and his partners at private-equity firm 3G Capital. Those practices have fallen out of favor in the consumer-goods industry after r ecent troubles at 3G-owned Kraft Heinz.

Mr. Brito defends the approach, saying there is no end to the savings you can find to reinvest in the business.

The CEO recently spent three days with more than a dozen tech experts assembled from top universities to learn about blockchain, robotics and the applications of machine learning. AB InBev has been experimenting with AI, drones and blockchain as it looks to anticipate mechanical problems earlier, help retailers avoid running out of stock and give Zambian farmers a record of their financial transactions so they can establish a credit history.

Mr. Brito's takeaway from his three-day tutorial: "Now it's time to scale up. Enough of pilots; enough of small initiatives."

Corrections & Amplifications Carlos Brito has visited companies including Harry's to gain insight from other executives. An earlier version of this article and subheadline incorrectly referred to the company as Harry's Razor Co.

Write to Jennifer Maloney at jennifer.maloney@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 23, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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