How does this company make money?
The main revenue stream is selling cases of Corona and Modelo imports to U.S. distributors at a wholesale price per case — distributors then mark up and resell to stores and bars. The company also sells wine bottle by bottle through retail stores and directly to consumers, and sells spirits through distributor networks where each state sets its own markup rules.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Each state grants distributors exclusive territories under alcohol law, which makes it legally complicated for a competing supplier to simply step in. Retail stores arrange their cooler shelves around specific brands in a formal layout, and changing that layout requires renegotiation with the supplier. Bars and restaurants that have installed draft lines for Corona or Modelo have already paid for that equipment, so switching to a different brand means writing off that investment.
What limits this company?
The glass furnaces at Nava are the hard ceiling. Furnaces run at high heat continuously and cannot simply be switched off and back on. Building a new furnace takes 18 to 24 months. So no matter how much demand grows or how hard distributors push for more product, bottle supply cannot increase faster than those furnaces allow.
What does this company depend on?
The business cannot run without five things: the perpetual licensing agreements with Grupo Modelo for the Corona and Modelo brands, the Nava and Obregón brewery facilities in Mexico where the beer is actually made, the glass furnaces at Nava that produce the bottles, U.S. Customs and Border Protection to clear imports at the border, and state-licensed alcohol distributors across all 50 states who are the only legal way to reach retailers and bars.
Who depends on this company?
U.S. beer distributors would lose their highest-margin imported beer lines if Corona and Modelo stopped shipping. Restaurants and bars would have gaps in their most-ordered imported beer options. Retail chains would lose the Corona and Modelo products that currently fill significant cooler space and drive meaningful shelf revenue.
How does this company scale?
Adding new markets or launching new product sizes mostly means extending existing distributor relationships and running more marketing — neither requires building something new from scratch. What does not scale easily is glass furnace capacity, which takes 18 to 24 months to expand, and the brewery-to-border logistics chain, which cannot be automated or quickly duplicated. So as volume grows, the furnace ceiling becomes more of a constraint, not less.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
Changes to U.S.-Mexico trade rules under USMCA could directly affect the cost or legality of importing beer from Mexico. Shifts in the peso-to-dollar exchange rate change how much it costs to brew in Mexico and sell in the U.S. Changes in U.S. immigration policy affect the availability of seasonal workers tied to supporting farming operations.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
If a U.S. court ruled that the licensing agreement had been violated, or if a future government action forced Grupo Modelo to take back or reassign the U.S. rights, the licence would be cancelled. Because there is no backup import right for Corona or Modelo — no second version of this deal exists — the entire chain from the Nava brewery to U.S. store shelves would lose its legal basis at once.
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