This article will go into the Celsius investment case in 2026, post Alani & Rockstar Acquisition, and Pepsi Captaincy from a distribution perspective. Prior to reading, I recommend going over the most recent Celsius quarterly report, and becoming familiar with their general product offerings.

My approach is a fundamental first approach that involves breaking down analysis into the fundamental and most critical components affecting a business, which is how we will evaluate the new Celsius for 2026.

The majority of all energy drinks are sold in retail stores.

For energy drink beverages, sales are a function of the following:

Every grocery/convenience store has shelf space. Distributors work with those stores to get allocation of shelf space.

Whenever a potential buyer visits a store, they look at the beverage shelf, they buy the beverage they want from that selection (or buy none at all).

The more popular a beverage is, the more velocity of sales they have in that shelf space. IE, you turnover the product more.

A distributor (they stock shelves with products from the manufacturer) will negotiate with a retailer to get a certain amount of shelf space allocated to them to sell beverage products.

That distributor decides what products they distribute to place where. If a product doesn’t sell well, the retailer isn’t happy, so the distributor will generally remove that item when able and replace it with another item in hopes it sells better.

As shelf space renews with a retailer (happens in Spring and called the Spring Reset in March/April) the retailer may choose to give away shelf space to whoever is generating the most sales in that space. If a brand/distributor does poorly, shelf space may be cut and given to someone else.

Generally speaking, you don’t want duplicate products in shelf space. You want variety. There is strong diminishing returns on duplicated products.

This is why many new drink companies grow by offering new SKU’s (new items, same brand), rather than having two shelves of the same item. Thus, a new beverage company that only has 1-2 items that are very popular can potentially secure more space, until additional items are not very differentiated to the consumer anymore.

Distributors are the people who are stocking those shelfs for retailers. You may have a great energy drink product that people like, but unless you can get a distributor to stock your energy drink in a convenience store, you won’t be selling many energy drinks.

If you want to play the game and sell energy drinks, you need to work with a distributor.

It’s very hard to become your own distributor as you are fighting against other distributors who already have secured shelf space and have wide distribution networks that are costly to setup. Not to mention, existing relationships with retailers.

Once you are successful and big, you may become the distributor yourself. But starting off, when your product is not yet massive, you need a distributor.

This is a barrier to entry. A type of industry moat. Unlike online sales, there is a limited amount of physical shelf space in stores. And that shelf space is controlled by distributors.

And those distributors all have shelf space allocated to them already. They aren’t just going to go and reduce shelf space of a longstanding customer brand.

Sometimes there is an opening, which is the opportunity for a new drink to come to market for a distributor.

For instance, a previous brand a distributor sold went bankrupt, or got purchased by a competitor who distributes with someone else. This creates an opening and that distributor will look for someone else to fill the void. This happens sometimes, but is not a frequent occurrence.

If you want to sell a beverage nationally across grocery and convenience stores, eventually, you will need to use one of these distributors. They control the inventory to be a national brand.

Together, these distributors distribute all top 10 energy drink brands nationally.

From Celsius’ most recent quarterly report, here is the market share of the top 10 energy drink beverages in 2025. Celh owned brands are highlighted (Celsius, Alani Nu, and Rockstar).

As you can see, to be a national seller of energy drinks, you need to be distributed by one of these players. Let’s analyze them all and if there is room for new entry by competitors.

Coke - Already owns a stake in Monster. Monster owns Nos. If you want to distribute with Coke, you will need to sell your brand to Monster.

Pepsi - Already owns a stake in Celsius. And Celsius runs their energy category. You will need to be acquired by Celsius.

Dr Pepper - They have moved aggressively and have wide range of products now with Ghost, C4, and Bloom. With 3 distinct products, you would be competing with crowded SKUs.

InBev - This is an opportunity. They now have space created by Alani moving to Celsius and Pepsi. However, to become truly large, you would likely eventually want to move away from InBev, just like Celsius and Alani did.

Coors - This is also an opportunity. Zoa is underperforming. They may be looking for a replacement soon.

Red Bull - They only distribute their own products.

As we can see, the space is already crowded. Major distributors have locked down their energy drink partners, often with an investing stake.

This showcases the barrier to entry for new energy drink entrants. You can’t just come up with a good flavor energy drink and go national. There are very few openings in the distribution space.

However, there is competition among these distributors. If Bloom, for instance, becomes more popular, a retailer could increase space given to Dr Pepper, and reduce space of whoever is underperforming, such as Zoa.

Celsius is now in a highly advantaged position within the energy drink industry. Currently, they are distributed by Pepsi in North America.

Pepsi owns 11% of Celsius shares. They also have the right to designate 2 board seats. This is an incentivized collaborative partnership.

Celsius has a captaincy agreement with Pepsi in the energy drink space.

Instead of just being another beverage loaded onto a delivery truck, Celsius is granted the authority to heavily influence how energy drinks are organized, displayed, and promoted when Pepsi deals with retailers. Celsius effectively owns their RTD (ready to drink) energy drink strategy.

With Pepsi having a massive retail presence, including cold shelves, Celsius has secured a highly coveted North American footprint. Celsius can create and launch new SKUs and influence how and where to place them inside Pepsi’s network.

If a new and upcoming brand emerges, Celsius can even decide to buy it and start placing them alongside Celsius and Alani Nu. Celsius is no longer a single product fighting for coveted shelf space. They are the ones deciding shelf space.

Now that Celsius is in some regards their own distributor in partnership with Pepsi, they can choose what products to place where in the shelf space allotted from retail.

As part of the deal with Pepsi, Pepsi sold Rockstar to Celsius.

Now, Celsius owns the following brands:

This gives them a robust footprint to work with inside the Pepsi distribution network. If consumers start preferring one brand over another, they can allocate more shelf space to it. They can also use insights of one brand to help increase sales of the others.

Celsius + Alani + Rockstar captaincy within Pepsi is magnitudes more robust and durable than when it was just Celsius energy drink being distributed by InBev.

The market doesn’t seem to appreciate it yet, as the stock is flat as of the time of writing vs when they were distributed by InBev in 2022.

When you think of Celsius, envision a North American footprint of shelf space across every grocery and convenience store, all being influenced by them.

This is where the free version wraps up. Thanks for reading this far! Curious about whether I'd put my own money into Celsius today? That's waiting for you on the other side of a subscription. Over 1,000 words on Celsius with additional analysis, my personal fair value estimates, and more.

Finally, we come to Celsius valuation. How do we price a business like Celsius?