MW Brown-Forman's stock is the S&P 500's top gainer Thursday as merger drama heats up
By Bill Peters
The Wall Street Journal reported that Sazerac has expressed interest in a deal, just days after the Jack Daniel's maker confirmed talks with Pernod Ricard
Alcoholic-beverage giants Brown-Forman and Constellation Brands were among the S&P 500's biggest gainers on Thursday.
Shares of Brown-Forman had their best day in years on Thursday, after the U.S.-based spirits seller Sazerac reportedly expressed interest in doing a deal of some kind with the maker of Jack Daniel's.
A Wall Street Journal report that cited people familiar with the matter had very little detail about the talks. But it comes less than two weeks after Bloomberg reported on March 26 - and the Journal followed with its own report - that Paris-based Pernod Ricard (FR:RI) was looking at a potential buyout of Brown-Forman.
Brown-Forman's stock $(BF.B)$ shot up 12.9% on Thursday. That was enough to make it the S&P 500's SPX top performer on the day, and it marked the biggest one-day gain since the stock ran up 14.7% on March 17, 2020.
The stock, which in March closed at a 14-year low, has soared 29% since the Pernod Ricard reports surfaced.
While some analysts said other companies could also express interest in Brown-Forman, they also raised the prospect of pushback by the Brown family and of antitrust scrutiny.
Sazerac said it had no comment on the Journal's report. Brown-Forman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Any interest from New Orleans-based Sazerac - the second-largest name in the U.S. distilled-spirits industry, with an alcohol portfolio that includes Southern Comfort, Goldschlager, Svedka and nearly 450 other brands - would add to the drama over Brown-Forman's fate, as the alcohol industry looks toward consolidation to offset concerns about increasingly health-conscious consumers struggling with price hikes elsewhere.
Brown-Forman last month confirmed it was in discussions with Paris-based Pernod Ricard, the home of Jameson and Absolut, over a deal the company said would be "akin to a merger of equals."
A deal between Brown-Forman and either Pernod Ricard or Sazerac would fuse two companies that are each under considerable family control. TD Cowen analyst Robert Moskow, in a note last month, said the Brown family had around 67% voting control of Brown-Forman. The Journal said Sazerac is completely family-controlled, and the founding family of Pernod Ricard also retains an ownership stake in that company.
Moskow said the Brown family, which has roots in Kentucky, has a record of rejecting other acquisition attempts, such as one from beer and wine maker Constellation Brands $(STZ)$ roughly a decade ago. But he said the family and the company's board might be more amenable this time around, given weaker trends industrywide.
In a note on Thursday, Moskow said he believed any buyer of Brown-Forman would likely have to pay a 30% to 35% equity premium to do a deal with complete change of control. But he added that Sazerac was one of the few players in the industry that was actually expanding its production footprint at the moment.
Still, he said, regulators would likely take notice of a deal with Sazerac.
"Anti-trust could pose a concern given that the combination would constitute 18% share of the U.S. market and nearly 40% of American whiskey," Moskow wrote. "Also, the controlling family members of Brown-Forman may have reservations about yielding total control of the company."
Coincidentally, the third-biggest gainer in the S&P 500 on Thursday was Constellation Brands, which is best known for selling Corona and Modelo in the U.S. The stock surged 8.5% after the company said late Wednesday that it had grown more cautious on its outlook for demand, but that beer sales had crept higher during its fourth quarter.
-Bill Peters
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April 09, 2026 16:48 ET (20:48 GMT)
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