If Brown-Forman execs want to grumble about Molson Coors Beverage Co. ranking higher than them in The Wall Street Journal‘s 250 Bet-Managed Companies list, we don’t blame them. The list was developed by Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker Institute and focused on customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility, and financial strength.
Molson Coors was ranked No. 160 out of 250 companies on the list. Brown-Forman came in second among bev/al stocks, at No. 175.
But here’s the thing: Brown-Forman had four stars in three of five categories — customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, social responsibility and financial strength — while Molson Coors had four start in only two categories, customer satisfaction, and social responsibility.
Where B-F had four stars for employee engagement and development, Molson Coors had 3. Both companies had three stars for innovation. As for financial strength, Brown-Forman had three stars while Molson Coors had only two — and was given a red flag for financial strength, meaning it was in the bottom 25% of the 846 companies examined for the rankings.
Add up all the stars, and Brown-Forman is clearly ahead with 16 stars compared to Molson Coors’ 14 stars. And not only did Brown-Forman’s financial strength earn it three stars compared to Molson Coors’ two stars, the Louisville distilled wasn’t flagged for being in the bottom 25% of all companies evaluated for the rankings.
The only reason we can see that Molson Coors was ranked higher than Brown-Forman was that the guys at Claremont Graduate University were drinking beer, perhaps laced with a bit of cannabis, while doing the computations.